CommentsERIC PREVEN'S NOTEBOOK - In the reported agreement, the former prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu will admit to two counts of breach of trust, resulting in a suspended prison sentence and a few months of prison time that will be converted to community service.
Not unlike, Mitchell Englander, who is already out of federal prison and chillaxing at a halfway house in Long Beach. The Don Knabe operation is very solid down in Long Beach, FYI. Mitch must be very comfortable.
Netanyahu is on trial accused of trading preferential treatment for a major Israeli telecom company in exchange for positive articles on its Walla news site. He is also a defendant in a second case involving claims of soliciting favorable coverage, and a third alleging he received gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy friends.
There is also a charge of moral turpitude – a formal declaration that Netanyahu is desperate to avoid as it could bar him from political life for seven years.
Let's brainstorm how we can devise a law here that blocks future service, so a bad actor is not able to slide down Grand Park to a new gig but rather, is properly shown the door. A year ago, I wrote Permanent Restraining Order. It still applies today.
And one in a series of beefs, with the LA Times...
Eric Hacopian is not an impartial political consultant and should not be interviewed on matters involving pay to play activity at City Hall.
He's actively engaged in fundraising with these very parties. It's all perfectly legal, in his eyes, but talking to the man who guides Mitch O'Farrell and Paul Krekorian through the fundraising forest is not qualified to comment on Mike Feuer's stepping out of bounds.
Let me give it a try.
On February 7, 2019, I initiated a CPRA for all complaints to GSD from public or employees spanning from January 2017 thru to the present, on the subject of "trash, rats, fleas" in city hall and a "homeless encampment" just outside (presumably) city hall.
I had grown exhausted with the incessant nonsense being served by Herbert J. Wesson, whose Chief of Staff sidekick, Deron Williams was implicated in the FBI's investigation. Something very fishy was clearly going on.
A month later, in March 2019, Chief Assistant City Atty. Thom Peters of Mike Feuer's office, resigned after The Times had inquired about outside fees he reported collecting.
Two months late in April 2019, the Deputy City Atty. Elizabeth Greenwood, who worked closely with Thom Peters, was diagnosed with typhus, made a $5 million legal claim that Mayor Garcetti, City Atty. Mike Feuer and the City Council allowed garbage and human feces to accumulate on the streets outside City Hall East, “recklessly endangering the public” by allowing rats and fleas to thrive.
Two weeks later, near the end of April, Feuer said his team looked at each settlement, examining such issues as whether a plaintiff in a case experienced pain and suffering, lost wages or sizable medical expenses, and determined that the public was “well served” in each case. “I’m very confident in the analysis we’ve gone through,” he said.
Hours after Feuer made his remarks, the Panish firm issued a statement saying its lawyers were pleased that Feuer’s review reaffirmed its reputation as a “successful and ethical” law office.
“Every case we have had against the city of Los Angeles … resulted favorably to our clients because we worked hard to prove that our clients suffered tremendously and that the city was clearly at fault,” the statement said.
“We obtained these results because we are good lawyers with good clients. Not because we paid a referral fee to former Assistant City Attorney Thomas Peters on an unrelated matter.”
And what about the case of Peter Godefroy? That case will get the proper scrutiny and judgment that it deserves one day. Panish and Peters had found a resolution in 2017 when Eric Garcetti was out of town and Herbert J. Wesson was serving as acting mayor!
Like the case in Israel where a media company accepts favors in exchange for positive articles about Netanyahu, Godefroy took a $6.5 million settlement in his lawsuit over severe injuries suffered after his bicycle hit a pothole in Sherman Oaks, the press reported but failed to investigate.
Spoiler: Godefroy's accident was a classic case of the city getting ripped off by a "successful and ethical" law office.
Last week, Thom Peters, who was chief of the civil litigation branch in Feuer’s office during the Godefroy period, agreed to plead guilty to one count of aiding and abetting extortion. In his plea agreement, Peters admitted that he threatened to fire one of the city’s outside lawyers unless that lawyer paid off a person who was threatening to reveal damaging information about the city's handling of the DWP mess.
The always very confident (but frequently dead wrong) Mike Feuer in a statement, said he is “furious and disappointed beyond words” that one of his employees committed such a “breach of trust.”
What about the Panish firm?
What about Peter Godefroy's highly irregular case?
What about Elizabeth Greenwood's settlement?
Alpha Garcetti:
Alissa Walker cleverly connected the dots on Twitter as @SecretaryPete and @mayorofla and others declared "Christmas was saved" by the ramp-up to 24-hour port operations.
The Rhodes Scholars left all the negative impacts on the communities and neighborhoods through which the highway of goods and trucks had flowed, to the women, like @RepBarragan, @SupJaniceHahn @Hildasolis
"It came down upon the women for survival," as the Be Good Tanyas song "Ootischenia" makes text.
"Impossible to keep a straight line," as I read an essay in the New York Times by Alex McElroy, the author of "The Atmospherians," a novel that I have not read about two friends who start a cult to reform problematic men.
McElroy is some kind of an expert on Toxic Masculinity.
The take, after plenty of Ted Talks and podcasts helping men share their vulnerability and evolve following #metoo in 2017, McElroy is understandably worried that the movement has been subsumed by 'petulant vulnerability."
"Men who share their feelings the way avalanches share snow," often as a form of manipulation or passive aggression, are coopting the vulnerability space.
According to McElroy, "If true vulnerability means accepting change, personal fallibility and the human condition of reliance on others, petulant vulnerability feigns emotional fragility as a means of retaining power."
The solution; men's groups, more nuanced leads on TV, obviously, but without real "blueprints" they fear, there will be no change,
McElroy quotes bell hooks in her 2005, book Men, Masculinity and Love, "To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate."
And pass the baton of domination to whom?
Women?
No, to them.
In the 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, the characters played by Michael McKean and Christopher Guest concluded "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."
Gaslighting Elmo:
Over the years we've all looked on enthusiastically as the "Sesame Street" tent expanded to make room for everyone and their special interest group. The First Asian, First Arab, The First Homeless, First Autism muppets took their place alongside Elmo and other celebrities like Lil Nas and Jimmy Fallon, among dozens of others.
This week, Unhinged Elmo, went viral on Twitter. “Elmo losing his s— is the best possible start to 2022,” one tweeter tweeted.
The atypical hostility came up in the context of the little red fella's feelings about Zoe and Rocco.
The backstory: Upon meeting Rocco for the first time, Elmo laughed at Zoe for befriending a rock. But Elmo’s amusement soon turned to frustration once Zoe gave Elmo’s favorite cookie to Rocco. “Has anybody ever seen a rock eat a cookie? Elmo is just curious.”
Even worse for Elmo, none of the other “Sesame Street” characters seemed the least bit bothered by Rocco’s presence, consistently taking Rocco’s side and playing along with Zoe’s nonsense as if part of some cruel conspiracy to drive Elmo to his wit’s end.
The recirculated footage has spurred a wave of public support for the (usually) friendly monster on behalf of anyone and everyone who has ever simply had enough.
Elmo is not the type of muppet you can gaslight without receiving a strong passive-aggressive response on Twitter, where he assured people and muppets that “Elmo and Zoe practiced sharing and are still best buds forever! Elmo loves you, Zoe! Haha ha!”
“Elmo doesn’t want to talk about Rocco,” he added.
Pongal:
A colorful four-day harvest celebration in southern India, Pongal honors the sun, the earth, and the cow.
According to tradition, the festival marks the end of the winter solstice, and the start of the sun's six-month-long journey northwards when the sun enters the Capricorn. [To refresh the memory, Monica Rodriguez's was born on January 7 in an unidentified year, so she too is a Capricorn]
Pongal is traditionally an occasion for decorating rice-powder-based kolam artworks, offering prayers in the home, temples, getting together with family and friends, and exchanging gifts.
The first day is for cleaning everything in the house. On the second day, freshly harvested rice and jaggery (palm sugar) are put to boil in new pots, and people cry out, "Pongal!" ("It boils.")
On the third day, village cows and oxen are bathed, decorated with garlands of bells, beads, and leaves, and worshipped. [To refresh the memory, I am a Taurus]
Some Tamils celebrate the fourth day of Pongal as Kaanum Pongal, wherein bundles containing money are tied to the sharpened horns of bulls. Young men who are brave enough try to snatch the money from the bulls' horns...
It's perfectly legal.
According to Lobbyists, who did not want to be identified, Jaggery is an unrefined natural sweetener. Some say it is a superfood because it has more vitamins and minerals and a lower sucrose content than sugar.
Watch for Jaggery at the finer markets in Studio City, and Erewhon!
Studio City Tourism:
Would be a smart piece of political swag for a candidate trying to emphasize that the global climate is shifting and changing... now.
In the past, it was rare to have to scratch actual frost off of a windshield in Studio City.
But it's been the case a half dozen times in the last couple of weeks.
As I zipped off early one morning this week to the YMCA swimming pool for a bit of transformative meditation/swimming, I encountered a barefooted blonde person in pajamas pushing a full shopping cart past a man wearing a winter jacket with a wool hat, also pushing a cart but in the opposite direction.
It was not clear if these two individuals were friends or strangers or experiencing homelessness near Kiwami by Katsu Ya. Chef Katsuya opened his first restaurant, Sushi Katsu-ya, in Studio City in 1997. As one of only a small select group of Master sushi chefs in Los Angeles, Chef Katsuya Uechi brings culinary artistry and restaurant operations to the world.
I was reminded of the inspection I had conducted at the Hollywood Bowl Parking lot the week before, opposite the SunCafe Organic restaurant. The cleanup of that lot resulted in large yellow metal barricades being installed to prevent cars from entering (something you'd expect to see at the White House).
I was told by the security guard with whom I have watched the transformations, this way and that over the years... the lot will eventually be surrounded by a perimeter fence.
The people who had been camping out on the lot have moved across the street to the neighborhood south of the SunCafe Organic.
As I continued under the freeway, toward Magnolia, I spotted a chap wearing scrubs and a t-shirt twitching energetically in the 44-degree weather. An office chair with a desk positioned outside a decent-looking tent, nearby seemed more... sane? No. Relatively, speaking.
Still, I thought these people are too close to the freeway.
Heading home on Laurel Canyon after swimming, I noted that the freeway underpass residents and their tents and art and stuff, have moved around a corner to the sliver of land between the westbound entrance to the 101 and a one-year-old, two-story housing complex with UNPARALLELED proximity to the freeway. read: Way too close to the freeway.
Mental Health Workers:
When you have a patient or family member who is locked in a bathroom, of course, it is frightening. But calling the police is a last resort and the recent spate of responses from law enforcement raises a real question as to whether calling the police, when the bathroom door shuts and the person shouts, "I'm done..." is a good choice at all.
The Police dispatchers frequently get parsed information and all too often this can result in an unwanted officer-involved shooting.
The definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same mistake over and over and expecting a different response. It's also the definition of tenacity.
Mental health patients and law enforcement, who are brothers from the same mother, deserve something different than unfortunate misunderstanding after misunderstanding.
Mental Health MET teams do exist, but we don't have nearly enough to keep up with the orders.
One idea, rooted in the tradition of mediation has Cops and Activists... working together.
O'Farrell prefers hiring Urban Alchemy.
The public wants police to be diplomatic, as they swarm into a crisis with 'nonlethal,', 'lethal' and 'superlethal' force as in the Burlington debacle.
Archive of Shame:
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Preven
To: Kamala Harris
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Tue, Jul 5, 2011 8:00 pm
Subject: Private Money, Public Service -- Agenda Item 18 -- July 5, 2011
Please direct me to the Attorney General's opinion regarding Anonymous Donations to local government and whether the Mayor of LA County has any ethical obligation to share information about the identity and affiliation of an ANONYMOUS donor who sent a cashier's check to the Auditor-Controller last week. I concur with the attached LA Times editorial, "When private donors give money to help government do its job, the law should require that the donor's name and affiliation be disclosed."
Any idea who might have given ten thousand dollars to LA county government? Maybe someone who benefitted or stands to benefit? Disclosure would resolve many questions, but cash gifts from "venerable" friends of the supervisors, it seems to this county resident, should not be exempt from disclosure. Au contraire, they should be advertised and celebrated.
As a resident, I reach out to the Attorney General's office to go beyond the assumption that issues of "open government" are under control in Los Angeles County and install a Department of Justice monitor for future Board of Supervisors meetings until we are mutually confident that our leaders are providing meaningful opportunities for civic engagement. As you have been informed, there is a feeling among the Board of Supervisors that they are only obliged to answer to themselves. All entreaties to 'meet and confer' with stakeholders about an improved process have fallen on deaf ears.
We know it is naive to assume that the California Attorney General is going to pick up the telephone and call Andrea Sheridan Ordin, the County Counsel of Los Angeles 213-974-1801 or the District Attorney of Los Angeles, Steve Cooley 213-974-3501, or the supervisor from the fifth district, Mayor Michael Antonovich, of the Board of Supervisors 213-974-5555 and tell them what to do such as honoring the government code 29080 or disclosing who gave $10,000, but we can't rule it out.
So, we're very appreciative for the donation from the Anonymous donor, but the public craves and deserves transparency. To donate $10,000 to the LA county government says a lot, just not quite enough.
Who, specifically, is doing the donating is the information needed to determine any possible conflict of interest. We doubt it, but to be sure the county ought to turn on the lights when we receive gifts.
Eric Preven
Realogy:
"There must be some way to blame a victim who has offered a lively attack on our integrity?"
(Eric Preven is a longtime community activist and is a contributor to CityWatch. The opinions expressed by Eric Preven are solely his and not the opinions of CityWatch)
