Today is May Day, which in the rest of the world is a holiday for worker’s rights. Here it brings flowers! Links…
• Traditionally, immigrant’s rights advocates hold May Day rallies throughout the state, and this year was no different. San Francisco and Los Angeles held events.
• Jerry Brown may be the state’s top cop, but thieves made off with his tires in Sacramento late last week. Of course, this was right before the convention, so someone should at least question those Newsom newbies running around the Capitol.
• There are a few runoff elections happening in LA around the same time as the May 19 special election, and the City Attorney’s race between Jack Weiss and Carmen Trutanich has grown particularly ugly. Now LA County Labor Fed will drop $335,000 for negative ads on Trutanich. The airwaves are plastered with attack spots.
• So out of nowhere, a woman stepped forward and declared her father the Zodiac killer. Thanks for holding that until AFTER David Fincher’s movie, lady! Think of the extra insight at the research phase! This must be the week to identify serial killers, however.
• The state has opened a public comment period on their use of lethal injection procedures in execution cases. Something about this misses the point.
• Sprawl finally begins to reverse itself on the exurban fringes of Southern California, as the following video from Victorville of new homes being demolished illustrates. As banks get hit with the costs of maintaining vacant homes, and sometimes getting fined when they fail to do so, it becomes cheaper to just tear it down. This is a good sign, in a way – hopefully sprawl has finally reached its limits:
The crew was headed to Temecula next.
• Isn’t it time for tax reform yet? Sen. Lois Wolk had a very wonkish op-ed in the Vacaville Reporter.
I’m a constituent of his. He is roundly hated all around the Council District. It’s possible that the level of rancor is exaggerated, but it’s not undeserved.
Trutanich has some nice attributes. But I think many many people around here would vote for a baboon, an 11 year old, a rational republican, before they would EVER pull another lever for Jack Weiss.
Perhaps Weiss (and “Ace”), amidst their money and the support of Mayor Ambition, can drag things far enough in the gutter to sully the entire election and give him a fighting chance.
Guess we’ll find out.
last night’s episode of NUMB3RS also dealt with Charlie using math to find a serial killer.
So yeah, this really is the week for identifying serial killers.
Today’s LATimes Opinion by Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Irvine Law School and a principal author of the L A City Charter, validates Weiss on his insistence that Trutanich must reveal his client list as a pre-requisite to even being considered for the office.
I think Weiss’s insistence on this at the first debates made him appear like he wasn’t as interested in debating, but he had a valid point: without this, and in comparison to his own open public record, his opponent had no business running let alone trying to run by distorting Weiss’s record and just promising he’d do better and WOULD HAVE done better, had he bothered to lift a finger on behalf of any of the issues — DNA rape kits and victims, public safety and gun violence and gangs, land use and traffic issues, billboards which do matter to the homeowner groups — instead of working for the other side. Basically, this is a guy from a 2-person law firm which is known on a national level as the go-to firm for the gun lobby, rapists and thugs, toxic polluters, shady characters of all kinds, hasn’t performed any public service during his decades doing this, has no public record of any kind, yet one day his buddy D A Steve Cooley urges him to run so he carpetbags into San Pedro and concocts an image of himself as a gang prosecutor and calls himself an “environmental attorney.”
Except these are things he did as a prosecutor in the 80’s BEFORE he went to work for the other side. But he knows revealing what he does now wouldn’t appeal to voters so he’s conflated the decades to run on his perhaps more idealistic youthful past, and downright disguise what he does now. At debates he’s yelled at Weiss for trying to get him to “illegally” divulge his client list, read from alleged codes backing up his position, and condescendingly told Weiss he’d teach him what any first-year law student knows.
EXCEPT that Chemerinsky says “he cited several provisions of the American Bar Assn’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct. But the provisions he mentioned are not relevant and in some instances don’t even exist.” Wow.
“No room for a covert client list in city attorney race,” is the header of Chemerinsky’s very strong article. “The voters should know who Trutanich has represented, and there are no legal grounds for Trutanich’s stonewalling…There are many reasons that the voters should know who the candidates for city attorney have represented as lawyers in their private practices…The voters need to know…in order to be able to evaluate whether the past representations will cause the need for disqualifications and thus necessitate the hiring of outside counsel, which will involve substantial costs to the taxpayers.” Weiss mentions at least one such conflict of interest that is known, but it’s likely many of Trutanich’s clients will result in problems and cost us millions.
And here’s a reason that goes straight to the heart of the matter, and Weiss’s central contention: “More importantly, there is the need…to know if a candidate for city attorney took positions that will compromise his or her ability to represent the city effectively. For example, Weiss has asserted that Trutanich has repeatedly represented the National Rifle Association and major polluters and has therefore taken positions on gun control and environmental protection that could hinder his ability to effectively represent the city’s positions on these issues.” Absolutely. Trutanich is endorsed by the NRA and National Pistol Assn. etc., and saying “my partner did it!” in a 2-person law firm because he’s tried to distance himself personally since deciding to run doesn’t cut it.
“If Trutanich has done work for the NRA…then that surely may be relevant to some voters in evaluating his suitability for office in a city with strict gun-control ordinances.” (Some of which Weiss authored, with support of the police chief.)
Chemerinsky concludes that “any candidate who refuses (to disclose) should be deemed unsuitable for this high office.” Period.
Of course the right is trying to discredit Chemerinsky as an ACLU leftie, but he is very highly respected by legal scholars across the political spectrum, and I don’t see how anyone can rationally quibble with these particular points.
Trutanich spinning like a dervish and trying to deflect from himself to make it all about Weiss’s record is a ruse.
Re: the Bruin student’s comments on the homeowner groups and the CD5 issues: yeah, that’s what they’re like and maybe you can see why Weiss would have been unable to “appease them” sufficiently. Many want zero development, oppose the subway as they have for decades disastrously, and are generally oblivious to the mass transit needs of students, bikers and anyone outside their demographic. I’m a homeowner too and believe we have a right to oppose things which would reduce our property values, but some things these people have been vehement against like Century City don’t do that, the redevelopments enhance the area and the developers have worked extensively with the communities. It’s unrealistic to expect no new or redevelopment of any kind, because the city needs a tax base especially with a shrinking home sales market and the huge deficit. But many of these people want no new development of any kind until the traffic problem is magically solved, yet won’t compromise on issues like Pico-Olympic which they just stonewalled, and basically want someone who’s their puppet. I’ve attended a few of their various meetings but if you’re not a knee-jerk Weiss-hater they just vilify you, too. There’s a level of irrationality to them which is scary. (And their claims to getting a certain number of signatures were never verified. In my community no one signed and These groups are backing Vahedi (AND carpetbagger Trutanich, who’s promised to do what they want as IF he cared about the westside, it’s all cynical opportunism) who’s promised never to meet with a developer without someone from this group present, which means they’d try to control him. He seems decent enough, not a Trutanich type, but his being beholden to those people is bad news.
I know Weiss would be a fine city attorney when freed to do the litigation, enforcing legislation and big picture public safety issues he’s focused on anyway. Trutanich is flat-out unsuitable for anyone with his dissembling and stonewalling, and especially for anyone who’s even moderately progressive.
As for Sinister’s assertion that it’s Weiss and Ace dragging this thing into the gutter, excuse me, but it’s Trutanich who went neg and nasty from the very start. Mailings showing Weiss as a dog and with twisted twists on “Mother Goose” nursery rhymes, tv ads showing Weiss as unflatteringly as possible, a whole section on his website under “initiatives” which actually take you to more Weiss-bashing. While running on false claims about himself and stonewalling to hide who he really is.
Amazing, the collective amnesia on this issue. Baca’s partisan bashing is disgraceful and in light of Chemerinsky’s analysis, shows he should keep his nose out of legal opinions that just ape Trutanich’s “don’t even exist” legal codes.
The author of the video is more libertarian than half the people in Orange County… combined. While you make a good point about sprawl, I’m sure you’re aware that the author’s agenda is to show how “socialism” is “destroying wealth.” Or something like that.