ORIGINALLY POSTED ON Navel Gazing, THE WORLD FAMOUS OC WEEKLY STAFF BLOG, ON JANUARY 25 2008
TCA Begs For Help From Lackeys
Posted by Alex Brant-Zawadzki in 241 Toll Road
January 25, 2008 10:17 PM
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The Coastal Commission has had to change its February meeting venue to accommodate the expected 2,000-odd attendees. This is bad news for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, who already sent out an email to their contractors begging for support. The issue is the 241 (Foothill-South) toll road extension; the Governor's recent letter to the Commission in support of the project has reinvigorated both the supporters and opponents of the project. Ergo the new venue, Wyland Hall at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, which can hold up to 3,000 people. That’s a whole lot of subcontractors.
From the letter to contractors:
In an effort to fill the room with supporters of the FTC-S [Foothill-South] project; the goal is to bring 250 people to the event from the Design Build team member firms; 50 of whom are willing to speak. Kleinfelder has committed to having at least fifteen people attend the meeting, with five willing to speak on the importance and value of completing the SR-241 extension.
The previous venue, the Oceanside City Hall, can hold 150 people. Kleinfelder Geotechnical Engineers is a “design sub-consultant” for Saddleback Constructors, who hold the design-build contract for the 241 extension.
Coastal Commission Staff Analyst Mark Delaplaine told the North County Times the meeting will now be held at Wyland Hall at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, which can accommodate 3,000. The estimate at this point is for about 2,100 attendees.
"We've never had probably more than 500 in 30 years," Delaplaine said.
"It would certainly smash all existing records."
In addition to the 250 sponsored supporters of the toll road, there will certainly be at least as much opposition. The Surfrider Foundation in particular has taken umbrage at the governor’s short-sighted support of the toll road. In a recent press release, Foundation CEO Jim Moriarty said, “We had hoped that Governor Schwarzenegger was insincere in his threat to close state parks and beaches. It now appears that he is absolutely intent on sacrificing our state park system and natural resources for his political objectives.”
Would there be a point, do you think, in having the Commissioners ask speakers to state whether or not they work for a company that stands to benefit from the construction of the extension?
Su update your calendars: the hearing is still on Wednesday, Feb. 6 starting at 9 am (and probably going all day), but now it will be at Wyland Hall, Del Mar Fairgrounds, 2260 Jimmy Durante Blvd., Del Mar, CA 92014
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Aw, Shucks
From The Sunlight Foundation's press center:
Seeking Online Exposure
Publication: The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Charity devises Web tools for keeping tabs on Congress
Suzanne Perry
January 10, 2008
Washington - When the Sunlight Foundation, an organization here that uses Web technology to expose the workings of Congress, decided it wanted to know how many members of the House of Representatives had used campaign money to hire their spouses, it turned to its phalanx of researchers - the American public.
The organization issued a call for help on its blog at 5 p.m. on a Friday - "which of course is absurd," says Ellen Miller, the group's co-founder and executive director. But Sunlight was behind schedule in announcing the project, she recalls, "so we said, Let's just put it out for the weekend."
Ms. Miller, a veteran open-government activist, was delighted at what happened next. "By Sunday, it was all done. All 435 members of Congress had been investigated." People from across the country had filed online reports - uncovering 19 Congressional spouses who had earned a total of more than $630,000 from campaign money during the 2006 election cycle.
As that 2006 project demonstrates, the digital age has given charities and advocacy groups powerful new tools to connect to and mobilize their supporters. And Sunlight plans to make full use of those tools this year as it marshals forces across the country to keep tabs on the 2008 Congressional candidates.
Collecting Data
Started two years ago by Ms. Miller and Michael Klein, a wealthy Washington lawyer and business entrepreneur - and advised by several Internet-industry leaders, including the founders of Craigslist and Wikipedia - the Sunlight Foundation has become a leading force in developing and using new technologies to make government more open. Since its start, it has spent more than $6-million on a wide array of projects to collect massive amounts of data about Congress, lawmakers, their staff members, and lobbyists.
Members of Congress are under growing pressure to disclose more about how they spend their time, especially their involvement with companies and trade groups that hope to influence legislation. Bills passed last year, for example, require lawmakers to attach their names to "earmarks," or money they slip into bills for pet projects, something they previously could do anonymously. The House and Senate must also now set up a public database of reports members file about their travel and personal finances, and lobbyists must file reports about their activities electronically. The Sunlight Foundation has pushed for those changes, and has devised projects that make existing information easier for the public to find.
"That's been our first goal, to get that information out of the basements and put it online," Ms. Miller says.
With the help of a group of technology experts it calls the Sunlight Labs, the group has developed Web sites that allow people to search government records, track legislation, and view Congressional correspondence to federal agencies.
It also offers grants to other organizations for digital open-government projects. For example, it provided almost $235,000 to OMB Watch, a government watchdog group, to create FedSpending.org, a database that tracks recipients of all federal grants and contracts. The project was so successful - the database has been searched more than six million times, Sunlight says - that when the White House budget office was required by Congress to develop a similar site, unveiled last month, it worked with OMB Watch to model the technology on FedSpending.org.
Call to Action
In addition to ferreting out information, Sunlight works to get citizens more involved in monitoring Congress. It issues calls for help through news releases, e-mail messages, its blog, and a network of friendly outside blogs. Hundreds of people have responded, taking advantage of the Internet-era ability to do research any time of day or night from home.
Sunlight points the researchers to databases where they can find the relevant information. For example, for the investigation of Congressional spouses, it referred them to biographical information posted on VoteSmart.org, and then to campaign-expenditure information posted on OpenSecrets.org, operated by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sunlight knows little about many of the researchers, as they are not required to identify themselves in detail (though it double-checks much of the information they supply). But some do so much work that their monikers become household names.
When Sunlight asked for help on the Congressional spouses project, about 40 people responded - including one known as "Beezling," who alone investigated 116 representatives. While that was impressive enough, Beezling topped his own performance the next time Sunlight asked for help - to find out whether any campaigns had hired businesses that were owned by or employed a Congressional spouse. That time, he researched 319 members of Congress, again over a weekend.
"Beezling," it turns out, is Alex Brant-Zawadzki, a law-school student who at the time was a reporter for the Orange County Weekly in California. Mr. Brant-Zawadzki says he was motivated by the same instincts that drove his reporting: "If I can supply enough information, maybe the right people can do something about it."
While it is not illegal for members of Congress to hire family members for their campaigns, Sunlight argues that it allows "special-interest cash to enter their family budgets." Its investigation found that Patricia McKeon, the wife of Rep. Howard McKeon,☼ Republican of California, earned the most money from 2006 campaign funds during an 18-month period - $78,287. Mr. McKeon defends the payment. "Patricia is paid for the work she does on the campaign and that's the right thing to do," he said in an e-mail message.
After Sunlight and other groups publicized such activities, the House passed a bill last July to ban campaign committees from making payments to spouses, either directly or by hiring a company they are involved with. The Senate has not yet voted on it.
Not all of the citizen researchers spend enormous amounts of time on their projects. Elaine Nelson, a Web designer in Olympia, Wash., for example, reviewed the Web site of one member of Congress - Brian Baird, a Democrat who represents her district - for a Sunlight project to rate how much information Congressional Web sites provide. She says she heard about the project through one of the blogs she reads regularly.
"It took me less than a half-hour," she says. "It's nice to be able to help out on something like that where you're not doing a lot but you're doing something useful."
'Electric Light'
The seeds of the Sunlight Foundation were planted in summer 2005, when Mr. Klein read an article in The Washington Post that infuriated him. It described a provision tucked into the 2005 energy bill that relaxed export controls on weapons-grade uranium to benefit a Canadian importer - following a campaign by Washington lobbyists who had contributed money to House and Senate energy-committee members.
Mr. Klein began exploring ways to entice the news media to probe more into Congressional activities.
A mutual friend put him in touch with Ms. Miller - then head of a Congressional-accountability project for the Campaign for America's Future, a group that advocates liberal economic policies - and they met for lunch. Ms. Miller recalls Mr. Klein telling her he liked former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis's quote: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."
She responded: "And I'm one of five people in this town who can finish the quote for you, because no one knows that: '...electric light, the most efficient policeman.'" (The quote gave the Sunlight Foundation both its name and its motto.)
Ms. Miller and Mr. Klein began consulting seasoned reporters about ways to promote more investigative journalism. Mr. Klein drew on his experience as co-founder of CoStar Group, a company that gives customers access to a database with information about commercial real-estate properties. He agreed to put up $3.5-million for a new organization to collect and post online information about Congress for journalists, bloggers, and everyday citizens.
The pair recruited several technology heavyweights to the group's board of directors (Craig Newmark, who created Craigslist, the online classified-advertising service, and Esther Dyson, a prominent Internet commentator and investor) and advisory board (Kim Scott, director of Google's online advertising sales, and Jimmy Wales, the head of Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia).
They raised more than $4-million in additional money, including $2-million from the Omidyar Network - the foundation in Redwood City, Calif., set up by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam - and $1.9-million from the Rockefeller Family Fund, in New York.
With a $4-million budget and 18 staff members, the Sunlight Foundation is now nurturing projects that include:
Congresspedia, a joint project with the Center for Media and Democracy that is billed as: "the citizen's encyclopedia on Congress that you can edit." The Web site displays information about every senator and representative and about legislation and issues before Congress. Using the "wiki" software that was pioneered by Wikipedia, Congresspedia allows anyone to contribute and edit the entries, backed up by professional editors.
A related project, "Wiki the Vote," asks people to submit information about the 2008 Congressional elections. Users can click on any state on a digital map to find (or submit) background and articles on its senators and representatives, potential or announced challengers, and lists of local political blogs.
Earmark Watch, a joint project with Taxpayers for Common Sense, which asks citizens to help Sunlight uncover information about more than 3,000 pet projects that members of Congress have inserted into spending bills. More than 560 people have signed up to help and so far have completed questionnaires and shared comments about the sponsors and recipients of 128 earmarks.
Among the more enthusiastic researchers on earmarks has been "Mrs. Panstreppon" - in real life, an accountant on Long Island, N.Y., who prefers to remain anonymous. In an earlier Sunlight project to analyze 2007 Congressional spending bills, she highlighted three earmarks worth more than $1-million for the Friends of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus Foundation, in Lake Success, N.Y.
Brian Quinn, vice president for grants and communications at the Glaucoma foundation, agrees the public should know more about how earmarks are allocated. But he faults Sunlight for failing to offer a "thorough" report.
"They never went back and said, This foundation that was blogged and attacked for use of federal money also screened 53,000 people [for glaucoma] during the past year," and always got good marks in annual audits, he says. The Glaucoma group never actually got the earmarks that were unearthed by Sunlight because negative publicity about such spending prompted Congress to remove all earmarks from its 2007 budget - forcing the charity to cut back on glaucoma screenings, Mr. Quinn says.
Making Corrections
So far, Sunlight has not been burned by anyone providing bogus information, says Bill Allison, a senior fellow who supervises the citizen researchers. The closest call came after 300 researchers graded Congressional Web sites on a 100-point scale, based on whether they provided information about the member's legislative activities, disclosure forms, and daily schedules.
After the group issued its report, which gave the average score as just 29, Congressional staff members began calling to complain that their sites included information that Sunlight researchers had overlooked.
The group ended up issuing a corrected press release, lowering the number of sites that got "failing" grades from 499 to 374. While in some cases, the information on the Web sites was hard to find, the researchers were simply wrong in the case of Rep. Jane Harman,☼ Democrat of California, Mr. Allison said.
One person who called to complain, Matt Dinkel, press secretary of Rep. Mike Doyle,☼ Democrat of Pennsylvania, says he has no hard feelings. Sunlight immediately changed his boss's grade once he pointed out where to find information about the congressman's committee assignments, he says.
Sunlight's efforts have also prompted members of Congress to make changes. A lobbying effort by the group's advocacy branch, the Sunlight Network, has so far persuaded eight members of Congress - including the entire Montana delegation - to start posting their daily calendars online.
"That may seem small," Ms. Miller says. But in the halls of Congress, she adds, it's a "sea change."
Seeking Online Exposure
Publication: The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Charity devises Web tools for keeping tabs on Congress
Suzanne Perry
January 10, 2008
Washington - When the Sunlight Foundation, an organization here that uses Web technology to expose the workings of Congress, decided it wanted to know how many members of the House of Representatives had used campaign money to hire their spouses, it turned to its phalanx of researchers - the American public.
The organization issued a call for help on its blog at 5 p.m. on a Friday - "which of course is absurd," says Ellen Miller, the group's co-founder and executive director. But Sunlight was behind schedule in announcing the project, she recalls, "so we said, Let's just put it out for the weekend."
Ms. Miller, a veteran open-government activist, was delighted at what happened next. "By Sunday, it was all done. All 435 members of Congress had been investigated." People from across the country had filed online reports - uncovering 19 Congressional spouses who had earned a total of more than $630,000 from campaign money during the 2006 election cycle.
As that 2006 project demonstrates, the digital age has given charities and advocacy groups powerful new tools to connect to and mobilize their supporters. And Sunlight plans to make full use of those tools this year as it marshals forces across the country to keep tabs on the 2008 Congressional candidates.
Collecting Data
Started two years ago by Ms. Miller and Michael Klein, a wealthy Washington lawyer and business entrepreneur - and advised by several Internet-industry leaders, including the founders of Craigslist and Wikipedia - the Sunlight Foundation has become a leading force in developing and using new technologies to make government more open. Since its start, it has spent more than $6-million on a wide array of projects to collect massive amounts of data about Congress, lawmakers, their staff members, and lobbyists.
Members of Congress are under growing pressure to disclose more about how they spend their time, especially their involvement with companies and trade groups that hope to influence legislation. Bills passed last year, for example, require lawmakers to attach their names to "earmarks," or money they slip into bills for pet projects, something they previously could do anonymously. The House and Senate must also now set up a public database of reports members file about their travel and personal finances, and lobbyists must file reports about their activities electronically. The Sunlight Foundation has pushed for those changes, and has devised projects that make existing information easier for the public to find.
"That's been our first goal, to get that information out of the basements and put it online," Ms. Miller says.
With the help of a group of technology experts it calls the Sunlight Labs, the group has developed Web sites that allow people to search government records, track legislation, and view Congressional correspondence to federal agencies.
It also offers grants to other organizations for digital open-government projects. For example, it provided almost $235,000 to OMB Watch, a government watchdog group, to create FedSpending.org, a database that tracks recipients of all federal grants and contracts. The project was so successful - the database has been searched more than six million times, Sunlight says - that when the White House budget office was required by Congress to develop a similar site, unveiled last month, it worked with OMB Watch to model the technology on FedSpending.org.
Call to Action
In addition to ferreting out information, Sunlight works to get citizens more involved in monitoring Congress. It issues calls for help through news releases, e-mail messages, its blog, and a network of friendly outside blogs. Hundreds of people have responded, taking advantage of the Internet-era ability to do research any time of day or night from home.
Sunlight points the researchers to databases where they can find the relevant information. For example, for the investigation of Congressional spouses, it referred them to biographical information posted on VoteSmart.org, and then to campaign-expenditure information posted on OpenSecrets.org, operated by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Sunlight knows little about many of the researchers, as they are not required to identify themselves in detail (though it double-checks much of the information they supply). But some do so much work that their monikers become household names.
When Sunlight asked for help on the Congressional spouses project, about 40 people responded - including one known as "Beezling," who alone investigated 116 representatives. While that was impressive enough, Beezling topped his own performance the next time Sunlight asked for help - to find out whether any campaigns had hired businesses that were owned by or employed a Congressional spouse. That time, he researched 319 members of Congress, again over a weekend.
"Beezling," it turns out, is Alex Brant-Zawadzki, a law-school student who at the time was a reporter for the Orange County Weekly in California. Mr. Brant-Zawadzki says he was motivated by the same instincts that drove his reporting: "If I can supply enough information, maybe the right people can do something about it."
While it is not illegal for members of Congress to hire family members for their campaigns, Sunlight argues that it allows "special-interest cash to enter their family budgets." Its investigation found that Patricia McKeon, the wife of Rep. Howard McKeon,☼ Republican of California, earned the most money from 2006 campaign funds during an 18-month period - $78,287. Mr. McKeon defends the payment. "Patricia is paid for the work she does on the campaign and that's the right thing to do," he said in an e-mail message.
After Sunlight and other groups publicized such activities, the House passed a bill last July to ban campaign committees from making payments to spouses, either directly or by hiring a company they are involved with. The Senate has not yet voted on it.
Not all of the citizen researchers spend enormous amounts of time on their projects. Elaine Nelson, a Web designer in Olympia, Wash., for example, reviewed the Web site of one member of Congress - Brian Baird, a Democrat who represents her district - for a Sunlight project to rate how much information Congressional Web sites provide. She says she heard about the project through one of the blogs she reads regularly.
"It took me less than a half-hour," she says. "It's nice to be able to help out on something like that where you're not doing a lot but you're doing something useful."
'Electric Light'
The seeds of the Sunlight Foundation were planted in summer 2005, when Mr. Klein read an article in The Washington Post that infuriated him. It described a provision tucked into the 2005 energy bill that relaxed export controls on weapons-grade uranium to benefit a Canadian importer - following a campaign by Washington lobbyists who had contributed money to House and Senate energy-committee members.
Mr. Klein began exploring ways to entice the news media to probe more into Congressional activities.
A mutual friend put him in touch with Ms. Miller - then head of a Congressional-accountability project for the Campaign for America's Future, a group that advocates liberal economic policies - and they met for lunch. Ms. Miller recalls Mr. Klein telling her he liked former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis's quote: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."
She responded: "And I'm one of five people in this town who can finish the quote for you, because no one knows that: '...electric light, the most efficient policeman.'" (The quote gave the Sunlight Foundation both its name and its motto.)
Ms. Miller and Mr. Klein began consulting seasoned reporters about ways to promote more investigative journalism. Mr. Klein drew on his experience as co-founder of CoStar Group, a company that gives customers access to a database with information about commercial real-estate properties. He agreed to put up $3.5-million for a new organization to collect and post online information about Congress for journalists, bloggers, and everyday citizens.
The pair recruited several technology heavyweights to the group's board of directors (Craig Newmark, who created Craigslist, the online classified-advertising service, and Esther Dyson, a prominent Internet commentator and investor) and advisory board (Kim Scott, director of Google's online advertising sales, and Jimmy Wales, the head of Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia).
They raised more than $4-million in additional money, including $2-million from the Omidyar Network - the foundation in Redwood City, Calif., set up by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam - and $1.9-million from the Rockefeller Family Fund, in New York.
With a $4-million budget and 18 staff members, the Sunlight Foundation is now nurturing projects that include:
Congresspedia, a joint project with the Center for Media and Democracy that is billed as: "the citizen's encyclopedia on Congress that you can edit." The Web site displays information about every senator and representative and about legislation and issues before Congress. Using the "wiki" software that was pioneered by Wikipedia, Congresspedia allows anyone to contribute and edit the entries, backed up by professional editors.
A related project, "Wiki the Vote," asks people to submit information about the 2008 Congressional elections. Users can click on any state on a digital map to find (or submit) background and articles on its senators and representatives, potential or announced challengers, and lists of local political blogs.
Earmark Watch, a joint project with Taxpayers for Common Sense, which asks citizens to help Sunlight uncover information about more than 3,000 pet projects that members of Congress have inserted into spending bills. More than 560 people have signed up to help and so far have completed questionnaires and shared comments about the sponsors and recipients of 128 earmarks.
Among the more enthusiastic researchers on earmarks has been "Mrs. Panstreppon" - in real life, an accountant on Long Island, N.Y., who prefers to remain anonymous. In an earlier Sunlight project to analyze 2007 Congressional spending bills, she highlighted three earmarks worth more than $1-million for the Friends of the Congressional Glaucoma Caucus Foundation, in Lake Success, N.Y.
Brian Quinn, vice president for grants and communications at the Glaucoma foundation, agrees the public should know more about how earmarks are allocated. But he faults Sunlight for failing to offer a "thorough" report.
"They never went back and said, This foundation that was blogged and attacked for use of federal money also screened 53,000 people [for glaucoma] during the past year," and always got good marks in annual audits, he says. The Glaucoma group never actually got the earmarks that were unearthed by Sunlight because negative publicity about such spending prompted Congress to remove all earmarks from its 2007 budget - forcing the charity to cut back on glaucoma screenings, Mr. Quinn says.
Making Corrections
So far, Sunlight has not been burned by anyone providing bogus information, says Bill Allison, a senior fellow who supervises the citizen researchers. The closest call came after 300 researchers graded Congressional Web sites on a 100-point scale, based on whether they provided information about the member's legislative activities, disclosure forms, and daily schedules.
After the group issued its report, which gave the average score as just 29, Congressional staff members began calling to complain that their sites included information that Sunlight researchers had overlooked.
The group ended up issuing a corrected press release, lowering the number of sites that got "failing" grades from 499 to 374. While in some cases, the information on the Web sites was hard to find, the researchers were simply wrong in the case of Rep. Jane Harman,☼ Democrat of California, Mr. Allison said.
One person who called to complain, Matt Dinkel, press secretary of Rep. Mike Doyle,☼ Democrat of Pennsylvania, says he has no hard feelings. Sunlight immediately changed his boss's grade once he pointed out where to find information about the congressman's committee assignments, he says.
Sunlight's efforts have also prompted members of Congress to make changes. A lobbying effort by the group's advocacy branch, the Sunlight Network, has so far persuaded eight members of Congress - including the entire Montana delegation - to start posting their daily calendars online.
"That may seem small," Ms. Miller says. But in the halls of Congress, she adds, it's a "sea change."
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Help my OC Weekly Top Ten List!
Hey everyone, please visit OC Weekly's blog and leave comments on my post; ideally the comments should suggest individuals or groups OC Weekly kicked in the nuts at some point in 2007.
I thank you.
With love,
Alex
CROSS-POSTED ON NAVELGAZING AND JOMOBLOG
Top Ten Kicks In The Sack
Posted by Alex Brant-Zawadzki in Main
January 2, 2008 9:13 PM
Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm spending some time planting trees in the Sonoran Desert next week. Why? Because I fucking hate trees, man. So we're gonna plant 'em in the desert. Screw with 'em.
I kid. The Environmental Law Caucus is working with the Sonoran Institute (pals of WildCOAST, and thus vicarious pals of the Weekly), and thus I needed work-boots. So I FOUND work-boots - real shit-kickers, too. Black, steel-toed, lace-up, soles made from recycled monster truck tires (maybe) ... I dig them muy mucho. But they are having a strange effect on me...
See, as soon as I walked out of the store, I became conscious that I was wearing weapons. Every footfall was that much heavier; every step expended that much more energy. At the same time, I almost unconsciously started contemplating the various scenarios in which I would be required to use my new steel toes to ball-kick opposition into submission. I'm not saying I was looking for balls to kick - but if the situation arose, I was prepared to kick balls.
This got me thinking - just how many people did OC Weekly kick in the balls last year? Let's put together a top 10. I'll start off with some obvious ones; we'll see how you degenerates manage at coming up with the rest on your own. Leave it to me and you'll be sorry.
Read on...
I thank you.
With love,
Alex
CROSS-POSTED ON NAVELGAZING AND JOMOBLOG
Top Ten Kicks In The Sack
Posted by Alex Brant-Zawadzki in Main
January 2, 2008 9:13 PM
Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm spending some time planting trees in the Sonoran Desert next week. Why? Because I fucking hate trees, man. So we're gonna plant 'em in the desert. Screw with 'em.
I kid. The Environmental Law Caucus is working with the Sonoran Institute (pals of WildCOAST, and thus vicarious pals of the Weekly), and thus I needed work-boots. So I FOUND work-boots - real shit-kickers, too. Black, steel-toed, lace-up, soles made from recycled monster truck tires (maybe) ... I dig them muy mucho. But they are having a strange effect on me...
See, as soon as I walked out of the store, I became conscious that I was wearing weapons. Every footfall was that much heavier; every step expended that much more energy. At the same time, I almost unconsciously started contemplating the various scenarios in which I would be required to use my new steel toes to ball-kick opposition into submission. I'm not saying I was looking for balls to kick - but if the situation arose, I was prepared to kick balls.
This got me thinking - just how many people did OC Weekly kick in the balls last year? Let's put together a top 10. I'll start off with some obvious ones; we'll see how you degenerates manage at coming up with the rest on your own. Leave it to me and you'll be sorry.
Read on...
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Mechanics Are Crooked?
Cross-posted on NAVEL GAZING, OC Weekly's World-Famous Staff Blog, and JoMoBlog
NEWSFLASH: Mechanics are crooked
Posted by Alex Brant-Zawadzki
January 1, 2008 1:53 PM
Permalink | Comments (0)
As dutifully chronicled by the unoverestimatable R. Scott Moxley (A Tale of Two Tapes), 2007 saw a nail driven into the coffin of Sheriff Michael Carona's political career, not to mention his testicles. When the LA Times is publishing pictures of your wife and your mistress, calling them the Two Debbies, you just know the country club won't renew your membership for love, money or even political favors.
Two Tapes. Two Debbies. Two convicted Haidls (father Don and son Greg). Two convicted associates (Cavallo and Jaramillo). Truly this story explores the duality of man, for we also have two imbeclies - Mike Carona and Tony "Dumb As A" Rackauckus, our ever-vigilant District Attorney. While he left the boring busywork of nabbing one of America's more prominent and well-funded lawmen to federal law enforcement, Tony Rock was busy with far more sophisticated police work.
Which is to say, they popped EZ Lube for overestimating the amount of repairs cars needed.
Read on...
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