Questionable circumstances surrounding State Bar of California Board of Governors member Laura Chick had been the subject of a complaint previously submitted to federal authorities, The Leslie Brodie Report has learned.

According to sources, federal law enforcement personal were asked to investigate Laura Chick — as well as the founder of the Lawyers’ Mutual Insurance Company — Mr Robert Chick.
   

More specifically, authorities were asked to investigate the alleged “relationship between the State Bar’s discipline investigation policies and the fact that State Bar lawyers, officials and members complained against may be insured by Lawyer’s Mutual Insurance Co. Chick’s husband Robert is the founder and CEO of Lawyer’s Mutual.

A finding a State Bar member has violated an ethics rule would constitute negligence per se, create a presumption and shift the burden of proof from the plaintiff to defendant in a legal malpractice case.”

See relevant links @:

http://lesliebrodie.posterous.com/2010-laura-chicks-former-husband-robert-chick

http://lesliebrodie.posterous.com/2006-2007-laura-chick-appointed-state-bar-of

Following on the heels of major discoveries of alleged public corruption by a Yoloan Rabbi relating to several members of the State Bar Board of Governors (“BOG”) in areas relating to self-dealing, conflicts of interest and lack of disclosures; the BOG recently took swift action by calling a special meeting and passing a resolution to encourage the California Legislature to adopt new and revised “Conflict of Interest” policies that would apply to all members, and establish the qualifications expected from those who serve as public members of the BOG.

As previously reported here, and according to confidential sources, State Bar’s establishment was shocked by the scope and magnitude of the revelations purveyed by YR as they relate to member Jeannine English and her husband, tribal gambling attorney Howard Dickstein.

In addition, the BOG was prompted to action by previous revelations purveyed by YR concerning CaliforniaALL, CCPF, Ruthe Ashley, Buchalter Nemer’s Holly Fujie, CCPF’s Judy Johnson; State Bar Executive Director Emeritus, Gwen Moore, Girardi & Keese’s Howard Miller, Howard Rice’s Douglas Winthrop; UNH’s Sarah Redfield; member Council on Access and Fairness, and others.

As such, according to the sources, a complaint and a request for investigation delivered to the Board of Governors on June 12, 2011 see http://tinyurl.com/jeannineenglish , relating to member Jeannine English as well as prior revelations prompted the BOG to convene a special session on June 17 to, among others, introduce amendments to the proposed legislation.

Below is a snapshot of the outcome of the meeting and the result of the vote.

(photo:courtesy yr)

All members voted “yes”, except Laura Chick, Angela Davis, George Davis, Jeannine English, Dennis Mangers, and Michael Tenenbaum.

Moreover, and according to sources, the current “conflicts of interest” policy is still lacking, and proposed revisions will soon be dispatched to the point of contact.

According to the sources, a recommendation will be proposed by which an area on the BOG website will be devoted to disclosures – similar to those appearing on court websites that provide “seminar disclosures” by judges – on which members can make public disclosures concerning matters such as membership and involvement in other organizations, foundations, business dealings, and particularly regarding litigation matters.

For example, if BOG Member A and BOG Member B presently represent plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit, such information should be disclosed and otherwise be made available for public viewing.

“I ruffled a lot of feathers,” Laura Chick told CBS 13.

The Inspector General blew the whistle on wasteful spending. She identified millions of dollars in federal stimulus funds bungled by government bureaucrats. Just last month she blasted some local agencies for misspending money designated for sexual assault victims.

And across the board she found plenty of resistance.

“The culture here in Sacramento is we don’t air our dirty laundry,” Chick said. She criticized some government agencies for taking the attitude that “Our job is to make the governor look good and to keep him from looking bad.”

[worldnow id=5400691 width=385 height=288 type=video]

Laura Chick added, “But here (Sacramento), if you talk out loud about something that everybody knows is broken – you are a traitor.”

Laura Chick was appointed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but she’s getting the boot from Jerry Brown, who says he’s streamlining state government. Brown’s office released this statement today:

“In response to the state’s multi-billion dollar budget deficit, Governor-elect Jerry Brown will be streamlining operations and eliminating redundancies in the Governor’s Office and throughout state government.

The Legislature established the Office of the Inspector General on a limited term basis, and it was set to expire on June 30, 2011.  Governor Brown will discontinue the program six months earlier, when he assumes office.

The six pending audits being performed by the Inspector General will be concluded by other state auditing entities, such as the Bureau of State Audits, the State Controller’s Office, or the Office of Audit and Evaluations in the Department of Finance.

Ending this redundancy will save the state’s General Fund over $700,000 in fiscal year 2010-11.

We thank those who have worked in the Inspector General’s Office for their service.”

In a twist of fate, it was Jerry Brown who gave Laura Chick the Oath of Office in Los Angeles five years ago. Chick has the picture of that ceremony in her Sacramento office noting, “This is a picture of Governor-elect Jerry Brown, swearing me in as L.A. City Controller.”

“And now,” Chick said, “ironically he’s getting sworn in as Governor and I’m getting a different kind of handshake I guess.”

Jerry Brown’s office says he’s committed to cutting his own budget by 25% – and that by taking this action today, he is leading by example.

Chick, Delgadillo Legal Fight Continues: KNX 1070′s Bill Cooper Reports[audio_link url="http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/nyc.podcast.play.it/media/d0/d0/d0/dV/dS/dX/dF/VSXF_3.MP3" artist="KNX 1070" name="Audit Shows Delgadillo Wasted Millions: KNX 1070's Bill Cooper Reports" config_file="configE.xml"]

The audit — which former City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo tried to block by suing then-City Controller Laura Chick — found that during his administration, the Workers’ Compensation Division referred only 4 percent of claims to fraud investigators when the industry standard is 17-21 percent.
The lack of oversight is potentially costing the city $5.4 million a year in benefits that should never have been paid, according to the audit.

The division was also faulted for collecting only 6 percent of the claims to which the city was entitled, potentially depriving the city of about $3 million in revenue each year.

Another $1-2 million is potentially being lost because of a practice of adjusting disability payments to mask errors committed by the Personnel Department, according to the audit.

Finally, the audit found that the division took about 5.8 years to resolve cases, when the the industry standard is a year or two. One case had been open for more than 20 years before being closed, according to the audit.

The delay was attributed in part to the division being understaffed. The auditors found that the City Attorney’s Office persuaded the City Council to hire lawyers and investigators to handle workers’ comp cases, but actually had them perform other work.

“The audit found that the City Attorney’s Office management of its workers’ compensation program was plagued with poor oversight, a lack of budgetary accountability and had the potential for millions lost to the city each year,” current City Controller Wendy Greuel said upon releasing the audit.

“I hope that this serves as a roadmap for the current city attorney to reform the Workers’ Compensation program in his office,” she added.

Current City Attorney Carmen Trutanich agreed to let Greuel conduct the audit, even though a judge agreed with Delgadillo that the city controller does not have authority to audit programs in the offices of elected officials.

“That was a power play between Laura and Rocky, Rocky versus Laura, and I’m not into that …,” Trutanich said. “The Charter does not authorize this type of audit, but for me, I welcome it, because if you have two heads thinking about something, you come up with a solution.

“I’m not the smartest guy in the world, I don’t claim to be, and if I get somebody else to come in and look at something and they say `You know what, you may have missed this,’ then God bless them because it helps the citizens,” Trutanich said.

“I welcome this because I want to fix the problem. I don’t want it to propagate. It’s not about me, it’s about the people of this city.”

Trutanich added that reforms are already under way, including boosting staffing for the Workers’ Compensation Division.

(©2010 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)

But some things are more solid. They don’t disappear. Down the hill at Melrose and Gower the old RKO Globe is still there, above the studios where Fred and Ginger danced in an imaginary foggy London and an imaginary sunny Rio – it’s now part of Paramount and where the Star Trek shows and movies were shot and now where they tape Doctor Phil being all earnest about your problems. But it is still there.

But what really lasted was the WPA stuff. Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration was the government’s response to the collapse of the economy. With tens of millions unemployed, perhaps a quarter of the workforce or more, people needed jobs – or they’d starve. And too, if no one had money to spend we’d never get out of this mess, would we? Hey, there’d be no point in making anything if there is no one able to buy what you made, so why make anything? The economy had come to a dead stop.

So the idea was to build things – roads, bridges, libraries, schools, dams or whatever. The government would foot the bill for all this, and yes, that meant massive deficit spending. But at least this would unlock the paralyzed economy – no one else would dare ramp up and hire people to make things, as at that time no one could buy much of anything. And we’d get good stuff that would be quite useful and last a long time – along with new millions of working folks with some money in the pockets, who’d buy things. And that would mean others would make things for them to buy, and the private economy would finally return from the dead.

It was an interesting theory – classic Keynesian stuff – when pure private capitalism collapses under its own weight and dies, well, you do this kind of socialist thing. The government steps in and acts as employer of last resort. And it also is, due to the circumstances, the only possible customer for goods and services left standing. So the government steps in and plays both those roles until at least some money is flowing through the system again and making commerce of any sort possible. Then the government slowly steps back and lets private enterprise, now beginning to function again, barely, regroup and rebuild and gather momentum until it snowballs into an avalanche of wealth and prosperity for everyone. At that point everyone says government is stupid and oppressive, and private-enterprise capitalism is golly-gosh wonderful and should be left to work its magic to make us all happy and rich, and free from ham-handed big government doing things it shouldn’t be doing.

Then it all collapses again and we go though the cycle again. We’re getting good at this. And we’re in that point in the cycle where we’re hearing the first sounds from the golly-gosh cheerleaders for pure private enterprise. The government is stupid and oppressive and it’s time to let us have the keys to the car again. And of course Obama is resisting:

So after they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. You can’t drive! We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch! We just got the car out! … No!

It might be better just to point out the WPA stuff still standing – like, out here, the cool astronomers up at the Griffith Park Observatory or even a snazzy swimming pool down in El Segundo. There are tens of thousands of such things all around the country. Each is a quote solid rebuke of the idea the government is good for nothing.

But we never went full-on WPA this time, we just got the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the stimulus bill – the idea we’d spend seven hundred billion on infrastructure projects and education, energy, homeland security and law enforcement. The Republicans protested, saying big government is stupid and oppressive and the only thing that ever worked to stimulate the economy was big tax cuts so private enterprise had all that extra money to run their businesses – and FDR was a fool who made things worse and actually created the Great Depression. So Obama said fine – half of the seven hundred billion will be tax cuts. In the end the whole thing was a compromise that wouldn’t do much.

But out here it took an odd turn, and they warned us about it last New Year’s Eve:

The Sunset Boulevard “strip” has not been repaved since the thirties. So it’s possible there may be gum deposited there by movie stars who once frequented the Strip, like Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo or even regal Shakespearean actor and unlikely gum-smacker, Sir Laurence Olivier.

Beginning on Monday, the city of West Hollywood will begin giving the Sunset Strip – its roadway and sidewalks – its first face-lift since it was converted from a dirt road.

City officials and business owners say they hope the touch-up will not only spiff up, but also help enliven a boulevard that has been challenged in recent years by outside competitors and the tattered economy.

“It’s the heart of rock ‘n’ roll,” said Mikeal Maglieri, the owner of the Whisky a Go-Go and the Rainbow Room. “This is sort of a revitalization in tough economic times. I think it’s good for business. It’s a face-lift. It’s a rejuvenation. It needs to be done.”

Of course the Senate Republican leadership put this particular project on its hit list. They said it was “a free million-dollar nose job from Uncle Sam.” Yeah, well, those of us who live here will attest this is a strange neighborhood. But the last time this bit of roadway was paved was when Los Angeles County replaced the original dirt road with concrete during the Great Depression. And we’re talking 1.6 miles of the Strip between Sierra Drive and Harper Avenue will be repaved and spruced up at a cost of about five and a half million, including a little more than a million in federal stimulus money, and no more than that. And it will be done in about six months, in time for the Sunset Strip Music Festival in August. It’s a pain – traffic is a mess and there’s a fine coat of dust on everything here by noon every day, but in the great scheme of things, this is no big deal.

But of course it’s the symbolism of the thing:

Beyond its commercial uses, the Strip has always had a strong residential component. The list of one-time residents is a who’s who of Hollywood: Paris Hilton was living on Kings Road in 2007 when she spent time in jail for breaking parole. Lindsey Lohan ran up a $1 million tab when she lived in the Chateau Marmont Hotel a few years ago. Clark Gable once lived at the Marmont, too. It was there that he romanced Jean Harlow while she was on her honeymoon. John Wayne lived in an apartment at the Sunset Tower, as did the gangster Bugsy Siegel until his arrest there in 1944 for bookmaking. Bette Davis spent her later years in the Colonial House Apartments on Havenhurst Drive. Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, who was married to someone else, secretly shared a bungalow on director George Cukor’s Cordell Avenue estate. Marilyn Monroe rented an apartment on DeLongpre Ave. after her split with Joe DiMaggio. Cary Grant and Randolph Scott lived together on the Strip for many years in the 1930s. But hands down the most famous resident of the Strip has to be Ronald Reagan, who lived in three different places along the boulevard before, during and after his marriage to Jane Wyman.

Oh, the irony! And for the record, the congressman who represents the Strip is Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Republicans hate him, what with all his wonky questions about who is cheating whom. And the senators involved are both Democrats – Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. But the key here is Laura Chick – and yes, that’s a cool name. Take it from someone who used to work for Candy Nunn. We do names right out here in LA.

But Laura Chick has been a big gun in LA politics, a longtime city councilwoman and the Los Angeles City Controller – she’s one smart chick. And when Obama signed the Federal Recovery Act, our Governor Schwarzenegger turned to her to be the first-in-the-nation Inspector General to oversee the more than fifty billion in economic stimulus dollars that California is receiving. Schwarzenegger may be a Republican, and a second-rate actor who specialized in playing that killer robot from the future, but this might have been a good move. She signed off on this.

But now she’s hedging on the effectiveness of this WPA-lite stuff. In the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson reports on that and why it hasn’t been possible to use public works to counter massive unemployment in construction, and wouldn’t have been possible even had more funds been appropriated:

What happened? Big government – spending, that is – ran into good government – regulation, competitive bidding, environmental safeguards, the works. “To be shovel-ready is much more complicated now than it was in 1933,” says Laura Chick, the former Los Angeles city controller (and a liberal Democrat) whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed as the state’s inspector general of stimulus spending. “Environmental-impact reviews, historic-preservation safeguards, unionization of government workers – these are good things, but they’ve changed the way government can operate. Plus which, the federal government said, ‘We’ll give you a ton of money, and we want you to spend it faster – and better.’ There are no exemptions from regulations that came with the stimulus funds. They didn’t waive the requirement for competitive bidding; they stressed competitive bidding.”

She continues, “You can’t just build a new bridge. You’ve got to do environmental-impact reports, you have to open up the decision to community input, you face potential lawsuits. I’m not saying concern for environmental impacts should go away, but it makes it harder to deal with an economic crisis.”

And Matthew Yglesias says there are two lessons to learn from this:

One is that I think we need some more real talk about environment-impact reports and community input – it’s good that we no longer do infrastructure projects with a total disregard for these things, but there’s a real need to transform these processes into something more streamlined that takes a finite and knowable amount of time.

The other is that we need to work much better on our automatic stabilizers. The paradox of ARRA is that even though the stimulus package was sort of enormous, in the aggregate there’s been no net public sector stimulus whatsoever once you take state and local government into account.

Ah, we don’t bail out the states, so even when we build things, eventually, the net gain is next to nothing, as they go broke:

What’s needed for future downturns is some kind of fairly automatic mechanism to prevent this state and local contractionary impact. Recall that this was also actually the big problem with the Roosevelt administration’s policy – for all the WPA-nostalgia that exists in some quarters there was almost no aggregate public sector stimulus until the World War II defense buildup.

Duncan Black, from Philadelphia, also comments:

Yes certain kinds of projects were never going to happen with stimulus money, but there are plenty of on the shelf projects that could have happened if the money showed up. My local transit authority has plenty – not new SUPERTRAINS, just years of deferred maintenance projects (stations, bridges) – as does my local water authority. My local transit authority did get some stimulus money for projects, of course, but it could have gotten more. Maybe the money can’t get out the door quite as fast as we would like, but it can get out there fast enough.

But, regarding Yglesias saying let’s streamline things, see Dennis the Peasant here:

Isn’t it fun to watch a liberal weenie squirm when he is inconvenienced by the chewy goodness that is “good government.” Hey, Matty! You wanted this, and now you’re getting it. How’s that working out?

Yep, get rid of government. Then there’d be no problem. Yes, we’re in that part of the cycle when the golly-gosh cheerleaders for pure private enterprise are popping up all over.

But it’s all in how you see what will fix things. Steve Benen reports:

It’s been a little under the radar this week, but a key policy dispute is unfolding over federal aid to prevent teacher layoffs.

As states and municipalities continue to struggle with budget shortfalls, schools are being forced to let teachers go. Last year’s stimulus bill saved over 400,000 teaching jobs, but it’s a new year, and it will take another effort to prevent a massive number of teacher layoffs.

Estimates vary, but … we’re talking about 100,000 to 300,000 job losses in public schools nationwide.

Democratic policymakers are trying to prevent that – Benen notes Tom Harkin, and oddly, a Republican congressman from out here, George Miller, with the White House, all touting the Keep Our Educators Working Act – twenty-three billion in emergency support to preserve these jobs.

But House Minority Leader John Boehner will have none of that nonsense:

The American people recognize that Washington’s out-of-control spending is hurting our economy and stifling job creation, and they’re asking their elected leaders to make tough choices on fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately, the Administration’s call for another $23 billion to pad the education bureaucracy will only make state governments more dependent on the federal government and more vulnerable when the federal funding explosion disappears. …

Giving states another $23 billion in federal education money simply throws more money into taxpayer-funded bailouts when we should be discussing why we aren’t seeing the results we need from the billions in federal dollars that are already being spent.

Benen is not impressed:

Whether Boehner actually believes his own press releases is a matter worthy of debate, but either way, his arguments seem oddly detached from reality. Spending is “hurting our economy and stifling job creation”? In Grown-Up Land, spending rescued the economy and generated the strongest job creation in years.

Just as importantly, what does Boehner think the economic impact will be if 300,000 school teachers are forced from their jobs nationwide?

Well, at least none of them will be teaching evolution to anyone.

But something else is going on. Boehner’s emphasis is on this being a “bailout.” That’s the line Fox News is running with. Benen summarizes – “As Republicans see it, emergency aid to prevent teacher layoffs must necessarily be connected in the public’s mind with rescuing Wall Street with TARP.”

You want to win next time around, you call everything a bailout. People are dumb. They’ll say gee, we shouldn’t have bailed out those banks, but it’s too late to do anything about that now, but, to make up for that mistake, at least we can refuse to bail out these teachers. Screw ‘em. The teachers are as bad as the bankers, somehow.

Are people that dumb? Of course they are. Boehner and the Republicans depend on it.

Are people that dumb? Ron Brownstein this week offered something that is hard to believe, and thus no one will believe:

If the economy produces jobs over the next eight months at the same pace as it did over the past four months, the nation will have created more jobs in 2010 alone than it did over the entire eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

What? Benen runs the facts and figures, with charts and all that, and says this:

Indeed, it went largely ignored at the time, but the Republican Bush/Cheney ticket sought a second term in 2004 despite the fact that it was the first administration in the modern era to go four years with a net job growth of zero. The campaign was largely about national security, so voters overlooked this painful detail.

And so it creates the dynamic that Brownstein describes. If job growth holds steady the rest of this year – by no means a certainty, of course – the U.S. economy will create a net gain of about 1.7 million jobs. From start to finish, the net gain under Bush was about 1 million.

But Obama did talk about that car in the ditch, and Benen adds this about the Obama administration:

It inherited an economy in freefall, and over 4 million jobs were lost in 2009 alone. Making up that kind of lost ground will take quite a long time, though the stimulus has obviously helped get us back on track.

But in some ways, that only helps make the Bush comparison worse – he inherited an economy with a 4% unemployment rate, a huge surplus, and sunny skies ahead. Worse, Bush/Cheney and congressional Republicans got exactly what they wanted in terms of huge tax cuts, but the economic benefits they promised never materialized.

Oddly enough, these same Republicans think the economy will soar if we just return to Bush-era policies and repeat the same mistakes they already made. Why anyone who hasn’t suffered trauma would find this credible remains a mystery.

And of course that loops back to what started all this. There are not many alive who remember the thirties and the Great Depression. Not many can tell us how it felt and how it really looked and even of how it smelled and sounded to live through those hard times day to day, year after year. Such folks would be useful now, to chat with Boehner and this crew of golly-gosh cheerleaders for pure private enterprise. All they have to do is shut up, sit down, and listen.

““The city attorney has gone back on his word. He is not a man of his word, to me, and I have told him this to his face. I told him that HE LIED in order to get my support. I know that there are politicians who think that the public is stupid and they can manipulate their public and come out with these little soundbites and campaign promises. But, I believe that the public sees through these things. And that they are going to see that what they’ve got in this city attorney is a demagogue. Is a man who will say anything to get elected and he will go out and make empty speeches. But when you look behind the words, it’s not just empty…it’s lies.” – Laura Chick (Inspector General of California’s Federal Stimulus Money)

Click here for audio.

WOW…Looks like Laura feels a little burnt and lied to by Nuch. Hmmm. I’m still a fan of what I am seeing from Nuch, so far, inside council chambers; even though ZD ain’t exactly being embraced the way he was when his mouth was needed during the campaign. But Chick…She’s SMOKIN’ pissed! AND, hate to say it…NUCH is turning himself into an island quicker than even ZD has ever been able to, himself.

Hope people don’t turn on ZD for pushing Nuch so hard. Hey…the other guy was “Jack Weiss.” REMEMBER THAT PEOPLE! But Nuch, maybe you need to put on a ski cap and sun glasses and walk around the city a little WITHOUT your advisers and get filled up with a little of that community spirit that keeps one feet on the ground.

ANONYMOUS QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Maybe if you changed your voice, I would listen to you.” [A big, swell, THANKS A LOT to YOU, mi amigo! OUCH!]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has hired the Los Angeles city controller to act as an independent auditor overseeing California’s share of federal stimulus funding.

Schwarzenegger named Laura Chick to the newly created job of inspector general on Friday.

The Republican governor says California is the first state to appoint an inspector general to oversee its share of the $787 billion from the stimulus package. That amount is expected to be about $50 billion when money from competitive grants is included.

Schwarzenegger already named a task force of top advisers to oversee the state portion of the money.

The governor’s office says Chick will be paid $175,000 a year.

Los Angeles gadfly, Zuma Dogg, who touts himself as L.A.’s Bamboozle-buster, shining light on political shadiness notes, “without the implementation and practice of any type of methods for management of quality and productivity, you may as well let Edward Scissorhands handle and oversee the money. Either that, or just throw it all into a giant money shredding machine.” Whichever is a more efficient way to waste the money. But at least with Laura Chick we will know what programs have squandered it all. So I at least feel good about that.”

First all the quality businesses that provided quality jobs left the city; then the middle class left; then Richard Alarcon returned; and NOW Laura Chick is leaving! Maybe Zuma Dogg should just move to Sacramento with her and be Arnold’s new watch dogg. (Wait! But then I would have to move back to L.A. again.)

http://ZumaTIMES.com

SUPPORT ZUMA DOGG ON HIS THREE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF CITY HALL ACTIVISM: Three miserable years ago today, April 4, 2006, was the first day Zuma Dogg went to city hall for his first public comment. It’s 4:24 in the morning, and this is the ONLY time I could get in front of a free computer. So check this blog cause I tried to catch up on some stuff. I am completely broke and when I wake up, it will be BIG problems, because I am still on the streets without gas to drive around and am shaking from hunger now, which is why I am awake…and in the morning will be REALLY starving and I am actually in physical pain from hunger, right now. So beware any emails or voice mails you may get when I wake up this morning.

If you have never donated to support the efforts and have thought about it, today would be the best day, cause I’ve never been more in need; and it’s my three year anniversary of being a stupid dummy who cannot stop this watchdogg non-sense..

If I don’t get some PayPal love today, this morning, real soon, like when I wake up…I’ll probably just put the blog on private and resign from all of this activism.

So most likely we are looking at the scenario of “Zuma Dogg at City Hall (4/4/06-4/4/09).” I gotta do everything to try and kill off the Zuma Dogg character so Dave can live.

ZUMA DOGG (2000-2009)

From Zuma’s PayPal inbox:

Message: Hey ZD, just a little something, I hope it helps.  I've been following your
work since the election and I appreciate the things that you do for the residents of
the City of Los Angeles.  Please keep up the good work. I can only imagine how
hard it is for you to keep pushing forward but just know that as long as you are doing
what is right, Light (Good) always defeats darkness (evil). 

May the Lord Bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you, be
gracious to and grant you peace  Amen.

I'll be praying for you.

[Thank you! I like the combination of prayers and paypal! ZD]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has hired the Los Angeles city controller to act as an independent auditor overseeing California’s share of federal stimulus funding.

Schwarzenegger named Laura Chick to the newly created job of inspector general on Friday.

The Republican governor says California is the first state to appoint an inspector general to oversee its share of the $787 billion from the stimulus package. That amount is expected to be about $50 billion when money from competitive grants is included.

Schwarzenegger already named a task force of top advisers to oversee the state portion of the money.

The governor’s office says Chick will be paid $175,000 a year.

Los Angeles gadfly, Zuma Dogg, who touts himself as L.A.’s Bamboozle-buster, shining light on political shadiness notes, “without the implementation and practice of any type of methods for management of quality and productivity, you may as well let Edward Scissorhands handle and oversee the money. Either that, or just throw it all into a giant money shredding machine.” Whichever is a more efficient way to waste the money. But at least with Laura Chick we will know what programs have squandered it all. So I at least feel good about that.”

First all the quality businesses that provided quality jobs left the city; then the middle class left; then Richard Alarcon returned; and NOW Laura Chick is leaving! Maybe Zuma Dogg should just move to Sacramento with her and be Arnold’s new watch dogg. (Wait! But then I would have to move back to L.A. again.)

http://ZumaTIMES.com

SUPPORT ZUMA DOGG ON HIS THREE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF CITY HALL ACTIVISM: Three miserable years ago today, April 4, 2006, was the first day Zuma Dogg went to city hall for his first public comment. It’s 4:24 in the morning, and this is the ONLY time I could get in front of a free computer. So check this blog cause I tried to catch up on some stuff. I am completely broke and when I wake up, it will be BIG problems, because I am still on the streets without gas to drive around and am shaking from hunger now, which is why I am awake…and in the morning will be REALLY starving and I am actually in physical pain from hunger, right now. So beware any emails or voice mails you may get when I wake up this morning.

If you have never donated to support the efforts and have thought about it, today would be the best day, cause I’ve never been more in need; and it’s my three year anniversary of being a stupid dummy who cannot stop this watchdogg non-sense..

If I don’t get some PayPal love today, this morning, real soon, like when I wake up…I’ll probably just put the blog on private and resign from all of this activism.

So most likely we are looking at the scenario of “Zuma Dogg at City Hall (4/4/06-4/4/09).” I gotta do everything to try and kill off the Zuma Dogg character so Dave can live.

ZUMA DOGG (2000-2009)

From Zuma’s PayPal inbox:

Message: Hey ZD, just a little something, I hope it helps.  I've been following your
work since the election and I appreciate the things that you do for the residents of
the City of Los Angeles.  Please keep up the good work. I can only imagine how
hard it is for you to keep pushing forward but just know that as long as you are doing
what is right, Light (Good) always defeats darkness (evil). 

May the Lord Bless you and keep you and make his face to shine upon you, be
gracious to and grant you peace  Amen.

I'll be praying for you.

[Thank you! I like the combination of prayers and paypal! ZD]

Wow! Laura Chick no fan of Janice Hahn. But the facts speak for themselves. I’m really, really shocked to hear of this. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling ZD that wasn’t really Santa Claus I took a picture with last week at the shopping mall.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

City Controller Laura N. Chick

Last week the Los Angeles City Council voted to refuse hiring outside legal counsel to defend me against a suit brought by City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. The suit, City of Los Angeles vs. City Controller Laura Chick, is attempting to block me from conducting a performance audit of Delgadillo’s multi-million dollar workers compensation program.

During the debate, Councilmember Janice Hahn, a member of the 1999 elected City Charter Commission spoke out against allowing the City Controller to conduct performance audits of programs housed in elected official’s offices.

Councilmember Hahn’s views were a major influence on the discussion since she was part of the Commission which wrote the Charter. The City Attorney has been circulating Councilmember Hahn’s statement to back his position.

However, just eight months ago. Councilmember Hahn spoke at a public hearing of the City Council’s Ad-Hoc on Gang Violence and Youth Development and supported having the City Controller conduct performance audits of programs no matter where they are housed. .

I have included the transcripts and audio clips of Councilmember Hahn’s statements.” (See below.)

Councilmember Janice Hahn
City Council Meeting
Wednesday, December 10, 2008

I was on the charter Commission, I think I know what we wanted it to be and I think what you’re seeing here is exactly what we wanted to avoid. One political, um, office, you know, having an opportunity to um, you know, investigate another political office for, um, you know,
whatever reason but we’ve seen it in the past how that has happened and I think we on the City Charter, and I think Erwin Chemerinsky might disagree with me but, I think we wanted the City Controller to do performance audits of departments to find out, uh, ya know, how we could do a better job. We never intended one political office to investigate another political office.

Councilmember Janice Hahn
City Council’s Ad-Hoc on Gang Violence and Youth Development
March 14, 2008

I think what everybody here is wanting, particularly me, is this accountability, this transparency, this accountability that everyone in the City knows for a fact as we move forward, which programs are working. How tax dollars are being used and we can see this in an open process.

And I want to tell you, I’m probably the only one sitting around here who wrote this City Charter. I was elected to the Charter Commission and I will tell you in the intent in this section 261, the intent of the elected Charter Commission which represented the people, no offense to the appointed Charter Commission. It was our intent that programs and offices would be, you know, audited by the City Controller. And I will tell you, the public, we sold this City Charter to the public saying that while we gave the Mayor more accountability, we also gave the City Controller, really we wanted the City Controller to regularly audit,
financial and performances of offices.

There never was in my opinion, an intent that if a program was somehow housed in a City official’s office that it would not be under this intent. I would challenge you to, you know survey other Charter Commissioners, because I believe we have the same–and even if you look at our campaign material when we tried to get this City Charter passed by the people, this was one of the key things that the Controller would be able to audit programs inside the City of Los Angeles.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

COUNCILMEMBER HAHN’S STATEMENTS CLIP

from Photo Basement

Two L.A. City Councilmembers are publicly butting heads over how to handle gang intervention funding – Tony Cardenas is vehemently against Laura Chick’s plan to pass control from Council to the Mayor’s office. [LA Times]

The City of Paramount relaunches its brand new $20,ooo website with a high tech feature unavailable since it first launched in 2001: email links to city council members. The site also has a searchable database of city laws, event listings, and news items. [Long Beach Press Telegram]

Most of the students at Pasadena’s Wilson IB Middle School are pro-Obama and are ‘”antagonistic’ toward the Bush administration.” [Pasadena Star News]

Gov. Bill Richardson keynotes and Gen. Wesley Clark headlines Tuesday’s conference “on how the U.S. should act toward ‘rogue states’” at UCLA’s Ron Burkle Center for International Relations. Other speakers include Former Foreign Minister to Thailand Kantathi Suphamongkhon, Kal Raustiala, director of the Burkle Center; Henry T. Wooster, and deputy director of the Office of Iranian Affairs at the U.S. State Department. [event info]

SAN DIEGO

The ACLU has filed a complaint against San Diego Mayor Jerry Sander, saying a Feb. 25th report on last October’s wildfire failed to address the need of minorities who didn’t understand warnings that were only sent out in the English language. [SignOn San Diego]

The controversial private military outfit Blackwater Worldwide has dropped plans to build a training base in east San Diego County after discovering gunfire tests exceeded county noise limits. [SignOn San Diego]

SAN FRANCISCO

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is hoping Mayor Newsom will veto a plan to “place human-shaped bronze markers” at the site of every homeless death in the city. [LA Times]

Speaking of Mayor Newson, he’s considering a run for governor in 2010, joining an anticipated race between “Attorney General and former Gov. Jerry Brown, former state Controller Steve Westly and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.” [San Francisco Chronicle]