FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
Sweden welcomes Los Angeles to the biggest Swedish party ever outside of Swedish borders! Join us for the Stockholm, CA festival at the Shrine Expo Hall and Grounds in Los Angeles on October 15th, featuring Little Dragon, Icona Pop,Veronica Maggio, Rebecca & Fiona, Otto Knows etc. The festival site will also offer photo- and art exhibits, Pripps Blå Swedish Beer for the first time in LA, food trucks, Swedish baked goods and more. Come hang out at the Shrine, make new friends and enjoy some of the best artists Sweden has to offer!
Veronica Maggio - Måndagsbarn
It was eight years ago that I first "discovered" and went gag-ga for super-talented Veronica Maggio, so beloved and written about on this blog now.
#OpenGov, #OpenData and meaningful government reform finally hits Los Angeles via Control Panel L.A., a powerful website that opens city finances to quick, easy online public scrutiny, with extensive detail on how City Hall collects and spends billions of tax dollars; Plus, there's an expanded version of CompStat to track neighborhood problems online; Dear Santa... I want THAT!
Fun fact from #ControlPanelLA: 622 City of Los Angeles employees make more than @ericgarcetti's annual salary of $200,568.58 as Mayor.
— Highland Park (@HLP90042) October 23, 2013
"This isn't just about transparency, it's about revolutionizing the way our city does it's financial reporting." - @RonGalperin@atvn
— Tara Campbell (@tarapcampbell) October 23, 2013
Los Angeles Times L.A. controller unveils website to make city finances more transparent The website gives the public access to a huge volume of data on taxpayer expenditures for police, sanitation, street repairs and other services. By Michael Finnegan and Ben Welsh October 24, 2013
Los Angeles' new controller moved Wednesday to open city finances to quick and easy public scrutiny online, unveiling a website with extensive detail on how City Hall collects and spends billions of dollars.
The website, Control Panel L.A., gives users access to a huge volume of data on taxpayer expenditures for police, sanitation, street repairs and other services — information that previously would have taken weeks or months to get through formal requests for records.
While Los Angeles slowly marches forward towards the digital future via their Control Panel L.A.,https://controllerdata.lacity.org/we in South Florida can only look longingly at this sort of practical and common sense tool from a great distance and sigh wistfully...
And here's another transparency effort, building upon the successful use of CompStat by LAPD that will be the first major initiative of Mayor Eric Garcetti, who took office in June, which will track progress on goals from neighborhood concerns like pot hole to streetlight repair, on a computer system that residents can check online.
Mayor Garcetti Unveils First Major Initiative: Online Accountability Plan September 26, 2013 10:41 PM
More on the effort to gets the facts and figures into the hands of taxpayers..
caforward YouTube Channel video: L.A. City Controller's plans for a more efficient, accessible city hall
"Los Angeles is one of the oldest cities in California. The City is rich with history. A lot of that history lays within City hall, with the data and information to tell a story. The City of Angels is also the most populous city in the state, with more than 3.7 million people. You'd think a city this large and this old would be at the forefront of technology. Well it's just the opposite. California Forward had the opportunity to sit down with the newly elected L.A. City Controller, Ron Galperin. He took office on July 1, 2013, as the 20th Controller. With less than two months under his belt, the Contoller explains his big plans to transform city hall."
The ambitious Latina teen has plans for superstardom, a goal she sings about in her debut, 'Becky From the Block.'
By Reed Johnson
August 19, 2013
At the time, her family had been forced to move into her grandparents' Inglewood garage after losing its Riverside County home. Money was tight. Her dad was stressing out. And her mom was "really scared."
Becky G vividly remembers what she calls "my little mini midlife crisis." It happened seven years ago, when she was 9.
That's when Becky had an epiphany.
"I did have this moment of realization of, 'Oh, my God, what am I going to do with my life?'" she says. "Just feeling like I had to get my act together, even though there was really nothing to put together yet."
This is a slightly-edited version of an email I sent out Monday night to a friend in Europe who is a very smart and savvy music producer and talent manager, whose reaction to this Los Angeles Times article I could well imagine even before I hit "Send."
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August 19, 2013
7:55 p.m.
After reading this article above, I think we both know that most discerning people of a certain age, educational background and open-eyed observer of Western pop culture history will be of one mind with you and me on it, and I think we both know, implicitly, something that we can't actually prove empirically.
Why? Well, in my case, I'm smart, pop savvy and have an excellent memory and an even better intuition!
As for you, well, you know those reasons better than me.
Here's what that intuition tells me today.
That there are tens of thousands of people all over Los Angeles in the entertainment industry who woke-up this morning, opened their front door and grabbed today's LA Times off their porch or lawn and started scanning the headlines as they walked back to their house, condo or apartment, still half-asleep.
Somewhere by the time they got into their kitchen, they'd pulled the plastic bag off and had popped the whole paper open on their table and were scanning and scanning and scanning and then...they stopped when they saw the headline below the fold:"Becky G. dreams of being the next Jennifer Lopez."
At that point, more than a few of them said to themselves, "WTF? Who is this girl and why is SHE getting front page coverage by the Times when there are so many more-talented singers out there I know who deserve attention and who've already paid their dues?"
So, this morning, all over LA, people who don't know each other already have something in common: their day started off bad and was only going to get worse once they got behind their steering wheel and within minutes, found themselves in traffic. And as they wait at the long red light, they think back to the carefully-orchestrated photos which seemed more like they belong on Becky G.'s official website, not a reputable first-class newspaper, and they mutter,"All this for a 16-year old Latina rapper? Really?"
And you know what?
The LA Times could care less about how much this story upsets and antagonizes the real professionals within the LA-area recording industry, even if they are subscribers. The people who are below-the-radar but who are the backbone of the industry: sound engineers, techs, the receptionists at the studios, the A&R types in their shiny glass office buildings with nice views of the mountains, as well as the mountains of newspapers and magazines they get to let them have a Sixth Sense know about the Next Big Thing.
The reason the Times doesn't care what those industry people think about this article is because in their own minds, they're taking the larger, long-term view. The Times knows that because they orchestrated this with the complete help and cooperation of the record company, complete with two record company "minders" in tow, to prevent her from saying something the record company wouldn't like -a condition which many reputable journalists would NOT accept.
In large part they did so because they consciously want to be known in history as the first major Anglo news media outlet in the U.S. to "discover" Gomezfor a national audience.
The fact that she's Hispanic helps them ward off the ever-present criticism in LA that the Times
ignores Hispanics in their pages except when they get arrested or are crooked politicians.
But it's hard to say that you "discovered" someone when they already have roughly 48 separate citations on Univision, the leading Spanish-language TV network in the U.S. -and already have a contract with Cover Girlcosmetics as one of their "faces."
To me, she seems more like a carefully-constructed "Disney" media star than a real singer with something to say, and you know I don't mean that positively:
Then I look at what someone I'm more familiar with, 15-year old Cecilia Nilsson tweets and writes about on her Facebook page in Gavle, and to me, she seems so much more grounded. A real teenager with her ups and downs, and while ambitious, of course, in her particular case, someone whom you know I personally believe has an amazing talent, and someone that's preternaturally mature musically. An ability that she's honed and made better thru lots of very hard work and learning from experience.
Andreas Jismark YouTube Channel video: See See (Presentation). Uploaded September 5, 2012. http://youtu.be/0syxcoAblN8
As it happens, this presentation video is in Swedish, but I still think you'll enjoy it as she speaks about herself and her music interests and desire to write songs that are honest and that will connect with people.
It was recorded mostly at her home in Gävle, a very middle-class Swedish city in the best possible sense of the word, and a city that I've written about here on the blog a few times in the past, which has not always had the easiest go of things.
To me, at least, that means that any songsCecilia writes and sings about will be much more in-tune with the average listener's personal experiences than if she'd been born or raised in
a beautiful place Södermalm, one of my favorite places in all the world, and had affluent parents. The sort who'd push her around in one of those amazing $800-plus German prams they sell atNordiska Kompaniet, which I spent some time eye-balling on my last day in Stockholm, surprised that that there was even a little department for them at a store, even one that large, since I'd never seen anything like that in the U.S., not even in Macy's or Nordstrom's.
Cecilia Nilsson - In My Room (Complete Song)
Cecilia Nilsson YouTube Channel: Cecilia Nilsson -In My Room. This is Cecilia's debut single. Uploaded May 13, 2013. http://youtu.be/r3MUHpMTAaoWritten by Cecilia Nilsson & Andreas Mattsson. Cissi's new single is available on both iTunes and Spotify.
Andreas Jismark YouTube Channel video: Cecilia Nilsson "Never Let You Go" -LIVE at Babar in Tranås, Sweden. April 5, 2013. Uploaded April 6, 2013. http://youtu.be/xVmsUZCpJqI
These videos first appeared here on the blog in my May 14, 2013 blog post titled, "On Wednesday you'll be thanking me for introducing you to ANOTHER amazing singer from Sweden: Cecilia Nilsson, a.k.a Cissi or "See See"; Cecilia will sing two songs LIVE on Radio P4 Gavleborg on Friday at 15:30; @CissiNilsson, @andreasjismark, #inmyroom"
Now getting back to Becky G., to me, the LA Times clearly wanted to be the first Anglo media organization to write about this singer -that 99.99% of the U.S. has never heard of- in such an over-the-top way that all future reporters who ever write about anything about her, will reflexively have to read this Times article first, to see what her answers and attitude were like, way back in 2013.
Becky Gomezseems like a nice kid and maybe she's talented.
Or maybe she's not.
Her music isn't my thing and never will be, that's certainly not going to change, but if some people like it, it doesn't bother me, per se, though as you know, I hate rap music, since I like harmony and melody.
But to me, after reading this, what bothers me the most, and what no doubt bothered the vast majority of the people in the music industry I described at the top of this email who also read it, is that it all seems so very contrived.
That Gomez is merely the shiny new face of corporate music trying to find an audience niche amongst the influential and affluent teen market In North America, especially of teenage girls who are perhaps overly-indulged by their well-meaning parents that finds her palatable if not very original.
Not the good part of corporate music, like a certain consistency in the quality of the recording studios or the knowledge and experience of the sound engineers you might work with, or even the quality of the hotels you stay at, but the negative things that we are all in agreement on.
After reading this article, I thought back to the interview with Full of Keys (Anni Bernhard)
on Channel 4 early last year -as seen above in a screenshot of my first blog post on her from February 4th, 2012.
I was so impressed by what she said and how sincere she was in saying it.
That is, to the extent that I could fully understand what she was saying and hinting at to the hosts! :)
Still, the reason I sent this article to you today is because this is a great snapshot of a major American media company, which, because it's located in the world's entertainment capital, and has been losing lots of longtime readers, advertisers and money (and fired lots of reporters), is trying quite desperately to be seen as still relevant.
Which is why they were fully-prepared to swallow whole a pre-digested corporate music advertisement and pretend that it was really journalism.
In the late 1970's and most of the '80's, the Times' ad-filled Sunday paper were famous for
their weight, often coming in at well over eight pounds during the pre-holidays, the largest in America in those pre-Internet days.
Back when they had among the best group of foreign correspondents that had ever been assembled, plus really great political and sports columnists who could tell a story in original and compelling ways, which is why so many of them were syndicated nationally in other U.S. papers, like the ones in Miami that I grew-up reading.
Like Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist Jim Murray, whom I read in the Miami News, the afternoon paper that I preferred to the Miami Herald in part because I knew so many of the reporters, columnists and editors who worked there when I was in high school, but spent lots of time there in the Herald building on Biscayne Bay.
I think within a few days, the reader comments at the LAT website will not be quite so friendly and positive about Becky G., with lots of people asking why the editors are putting something so lightweight on their front page that seems to almost be more like an advertisement than a genuine news article.
So with all this in mind, perhaps next week, rather than do some things I already have planned, I should fly off to Stockholm again, except this time, stay at some crazy expensive hotel in Stureplan, rather than the much more reasonably-priced Omena Stockholm on Torsgatan that I stayed at the last five days of my nine-day trip in January.
Then, sometime after lunch, perhaps before going over to Fotografiska, I will suddenly "discover" Zara Larsson, Ha! Ha! Ha!
Yes, the amazing 15-year old dynamo with that powerful voice whom I've only been following for nearly four years or so, and wanted to write about on my blog for years. I've followed the ups-and-downs of Zara since she was one of the handful of very talented kids profiled on TV4's very compelling Tuesday night documentary series from 2009-2010 that I wrote about here on the blog at the time, "Jag ska bli stjärna (I'll be a star). Except, of course, Zara's already signed a contract with Sony.
poriel2 YouTube Channel video: Zara Larsson - Uncover - Live on SVT's 'Allsång på Skansen' in Stockholm. June 25, 2013, the first show of the summer. Uploaded on August 2, 2013. http://youtu.be/undi-9G68Hc
"I don't have more pockets for you guys to dip into to get more money for rate increases..."
Los Angeles Times Angry about the money spigot at L.A.'s Department of Water and Power City officials get an earful from residents upset about proposed new contract under which employees still won't have to contribute toward healthcare costs. By Steve Lopez August 17, 2013, 12:00 p.m.
Ordinarily, I don't spend more than an hour or so at a time in Los Angeles City Hall. I get in and out of there, quick as a burglar, to avoid having my judgment impaired.
I thought longingly about that approach on Friday, when I attended a windy public hearing on a proposed new contract for employees of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. For the first two hours, public officials explained the contract, in mostly rosy terms.
It's the "bonus for working in inclement weather" that gets me in this story about LA Water & Power pay excesses. http://t.co/6CPslcKdWB — Robin Abcarian (@robinabcarian) August 16, 2013
Los Angeles Times Costly perk forces DWP to shell out extra if it gives work to outside contractors Overtime clause hikes the department's costs for hiring contractors. By Jack Dolan August 15, 2013, 6:44 p.m.
It's no secret Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employees are paid well. But a little-known clause in their union contract ensures they can work extra hours and collect even higher wages when private contractors are hired to help them get the job done.
The so-called "outsourcing bonus" traces back to a single sentence inserted into the city-owned utility's labor contract nearly two decades ago. Intended partly to discourage use of private companies with lower labor costs, the contract provision requires DWP managers to offer overtime to any employee who could have performed tasks assigned to a contractor — such as engineering, construction or clerical work.
Wait, is there a columnist buried under that new sidewalk? is Jimmy Hoffa in there with him?
http://t.co/IcYIrG0TOU — Steve Lopez LA Times (@LATstevelopez) August 8, 2013
Los Angeles Times DWP's unlimited sick pay policy costs millions The L.A. utility has paid $35.5 million since 2010 for extra days off that aren't covered by the agency's 10-day cap. By Jack Dolan July 26, 2013, 5:00 a.m.
Los Angeles' Department of Water and Power has paid thousands of employees a total of $35.5 million since 2010 in extra sick days under an unusual program that the utility's top executive acknowledges has been vulnerable to abuse.
DWP employees benefit from a 32-year-old policy that allows them to take paid days off well beyond the agency's 10-day-a-year cap on sick days. Last year, 10% of the department's roughly 10,000 employees took at least 10 extra days off, the data show. More than 220 took an extra 20 working days off, or about a month, according to a Times examination of data obtained under the California Public Records Act.
This report, which I originally saw cited via Breitbart News, does not comes as news to me. I'd heard this from well-informed and reasonably well-connected friends in the Los Angeles area for years. Frankly, they always wondered why nobody ever tried to get ahold of the mayor's schedule to connect-the-dots via a Public Records request that wasn't geared towards finding out who he was dating -like a TV reporter or anchor. Well, someone did -the LA Weekly. Right, as if his more well-known personal tics, problems and hang-ups weren't enough... LA Weekly
How L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa Spent His 12-Hour Days in 2012
By Patrick Range McDonald
May 22 2013 at 3:52 PM
In 2008, L.A. Weekly obtained Mayor Villaraigosa's official work schedule and discovered that he spent only 11 percent of his time on direct mayoral work. Critics dubbed him "the 11 percent mayor." Four years later, as he leaves office, we revisited his calendar. We found that Villaraigosa is deeply devoted to photo ops, ceremonies and travel, spending just 15 percent of his day on core duties such as deciding upon policy or weighing laws. He spends 42 percent of his working hours traveling outside Los Angeles.
KCAL news video: Latest USC Price/LA Times poll shows Eric Garcetti with seven point lead over Wendy Gruel in LA Mayoral race, with 11 percent of voters still undecided.
As Election Day in the U.S.'s second-largest city looms tomorrow, and Los Angeles voters getting either its first woman or first elected Jewish mayor, Eric Garcetti and Wendy Gruel have spent the last days of their hard-fought campaign battling for Black voters and for the favor of fickle Undecideds, who like being fussed over, but who find it hard to commit. Just like Hollywood's central casting. It all makes me wonder if any of the middle-class Los Angeles neighborhoods where my SoCal friends live have someone like Hallandale Beach's Dr. Deborah Brown living amongst them. Someone with strong connection to the City Hall teat and powers-that-be, in her case, to mayor Joy Cooper, and who has no qualms about showing up at polling sites and boldly walking up to volunteer election workers of candidates she doesn't support, and just a few inches from these campaign workers faces, loudly proclaim that their preferred candidate is "the devil."
You know, like she did repeatedly in Hallandale Beach last year at the city's Ingalls Park precincts on the city's SW side, to volunteer supporters of HB mayoral candidate Keith London? Yes, that would be the same Dr. Brown I've written about here on the blog before with the curious -and which some in the community would say borders on fictitious- loan and grant applications that give the appearance that her group was/is a non-profit when the IRS says differently. The very same Dr. Brown whom the Office of the Broward Inspector General wrote about in their damning final report a few short weeks ago. Allegations she used money her group was given by the city for purposes for which it was NOT intended, like, well, let's just say unethical conduct and let you read it yourself.
But then again, having received money for years from City Hall, including many large grants just under $25,000 from former HB City Manager Mike Good, she already knew from experience that city officials would never check on what she did with CRA funds, that since as the IG report says, they DIDN'T. Yes, no double-checking information or accountability from the city before the vote and zero after the money is dispensed.
The final report will recommend to the county that it look over its legal options “to prevent the ongoing abuse of the CRA process and recover those funds that may have been misspent,” the preliminary report says.
In Hallandale, there was an apparent lack of regular monitoring by the CRA of who got its funds and how that money was spent.
In one case, the report says, a nonprofit grant recipient spent nearly $5,000 in funds to make a payment on her time-share at the Westgate Resort in Orlando, make payroll payments to herself and her brother and on other things.
“We found probable cause to believe that Dr. Deborah Brown, the founder and director of the Palms Center for the Arts (PCA), engaged in criminal misconduct in the handling of a $5,000 award the PCA received from the CRA,” the report says.
Brown could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.
The matter has been referred to the sheriff’s office and the Broward State Attorney for prosecution.
The reason I ask is because I've been closely following the back-and-forth of the Garcetti-Gruel campaigns the past few weeks via videos on various LA TV station websites and the LA Times and... well, there's a lot that needs fixing in LA no matter who actually wins, because many voters have just about reached their limit on govt. waste and inefficiency and cronyism. I ask because I had breakfast on Sunday morning yesterday with a friend of mine who, like me, had supported Hb City Commissioner Keith London against longtime incumbent mayor Joy Cooper. But unlike me, he's a longtime HB resident, so someone with even more perspective than my nine years of living here and seeing the chaos and dysfunction up-close.
While I was flitting about with materials and messages from one election site throughout Hallandale Beach to another on Election Day for Keith, and my friend Csaba Kulin and Michele Lazarow, who were running for the City Commission, my Sunday morning tablemate was working the crowds of HB residents arriving to vote at Ingalls Park in southwest HB, just one block south of Hallandale Beach Blvd. (Yes, as some of you long-time readers of the blog may recall, that also the place where the City of Hallandale Beach used to have its recycling site. The one that had no directional signs on nearby streets, much less, on main drag HBB, letting people know exactly where it was. Now the city foolishly has no central recycling site for residents to use even while much of the city lives in places where recycling something other than newspapers simply doesn't take place, due to the city's apathy, like smaller condos and apts. As usual, the city seems clueless what to do to capture that market, despite how obvious it is. For starters, you make it as easy as possible.)
If any of my friends in LA know who Dr. Brown's counterpart in LA might be, or even have seen media reports about the activities of such a doppelgänger, please drop me a line and share the 411.
Garcetti: "Enthusiasm" High Day Before Election. NBC4 new video: reporter Toni Guinyard speaks with mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti on NBC4's "Today in LA" May 20, 2013.
Greuel, Garcetti court black voters on final weekend
By James Rainey and Seema Mehta
May 19, 2013 8:09 p.m.
Polls show Garcetti ahead but Greuel favored among African Americans. The winner will be either the first woman or the first elected Jewish leader in the mayor's office.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mayor-daily-20130520,0,2746694.story The LA Times endorsement of Eric Garcetti from February 17th, for the primary, was leagues ahead of the sort of thing you ever read in South Florida newspapers, both in terms of length and in gravitas. Titled, Eric Garcetti for mayor He's the candidate with the most potential to rise to the occasion and lead Los Angeles out of its current malaise and into a more sustainable and confident future," it concluded with this:
Voters at first embraced Villaraigosa because they saw in him the power to inspire. Garcetti has that too, but in a different, quieter fashion, and he backs it up with experience in City Hall, a share of troublesome mistakes and 12 years of achievement. If he avoids a tendency to be glib when he should motivate, and if he avoids the tendency to allow his finesse to give way to a desire to be all things to all people, he could be just what Los Angeles needs. At this time, out of this field, he's the best choice for mayor.
But perhaps Garcetti’s most ambitious goal is to tackle the city’s notorious traffic problems. “We have to reduce our traffic in Los Angeles. And I want to see five different rail finished or well underway by the time I leave office,” he said. “It’s the only way we will be able to get enough people out of cars to be able to really make a dent in the traffic that is choking our lives.”
