Wednesday, June 27, 2012

LA Mayor candidate Kevin James blasts Greuel, Garcetti and Perry for LA's fiscal woes

I wanted to post this from Los Angeles County Mayoral candidate Kevin James. Great read. LA needs an outsider as the next mayor. This isn't about "political parties," or "political philosophy," this is about fixing Los Angeles from the top down to the bowels of the bottom of the basement at City Hall. This was in Huffington Post today. Randy Economy

10-Year-Old Fire Audit Ignored by Controller and City Council -- Public Safety Crisis in L.A. Continues

How many opportunities to lead will Controller Greuel allow to pass by?

Ten years ago, back in January 2002, then-Controller Laura Chick audited the Los Angeles Fire Department and sounded the alarm around LAFD response times.

Unfortunately, our elected officials who are responsible for providing a safe community were not listening in 2002, and for the next 10 years ignored continuing signs of a crisis until the close proximity of the 2013 mayor's election forced them to respond.

Council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry were recently criticized for voting for budget cuts to the LAFD which caused LAFD response times to grow making Los Angeles a more dangerous city.

Common sense says that if you close fire stations and move engines away from neighborhoods the chances of harm to residents increases.

While the irresponsible actions of Garcetti and Perry warranted their criticism, it is the more recent inaction by Controller Wendy Greuel that should leave Angelenos outraged and concerned for their safety.

It is well-known that an article written by Austin Beutner, a former mayoral candidate, and a "citizen's audit" conducted by Cary Brazeman, who is running for Controller, exposed the fact that the LAFD responds to emergencies in under five minutes less than 60 percent of the time. National standards call for response times of under five minutes 90 percent of the time. Making the response time scandal worse was the fact that LAFD data was discovered to be faulty and misleading.

Read the rest here.

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Meet Randy Economy

You may know me from my role as the Senior Advisor and Official Media Spokesman for the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign that established a worldwide blitz of interviews. I conducted more than 2,200 media interviews on behalf of “The People’s Recall” during a 10-month period from November 2020 to September 2021. The iconic magazine Mother Jones in a dramatic feature article called me “A ‘Superhero Pirate’ Radio Host, (and) Gavin Newsom’s Strangest—and Most Dangerous—Threat. Meet Randy Economy, the man behind the effort to recall California’s governor.” I appeared on more than 330 media outlets around the world in my capacity with RecallGavin2020. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax, NBC Nightly News, ABC News, as well as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and dozens of other media outlets aired featured reports on my work on behalf of “The People’s Recall.” I am and will always consider myself to be a journalist. Sometimes I think I bleed ink. My talents as an Investigative Journalists in California earned me FIVE top awards from the prestigious Los Angeles Press Club in 2013, 2014, and 2016. I am tenacious. My reporting over the years has led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California. While working for a tiny community newspaper in Southeast Los Angeles County, I worked doggedly to expose the biggest public corruption case in Los Angeles County history when I unearthed a massive pay to play scheme inside the Assessor’s Office that led to the arrest of then Assessor John R. Noguez and four others. However, politics has been in my DNA since I was a child. I have worked on more than 300 political campaigns as a consultant and advisor since 1982 for candidates from all sides of the political spectrum including Democrats and Republicans, and even Libertarians. I am also a small business owner, serving as the President and CEO of Hot Water Studio & Production, LLC. My company works with media outlets across the state, nation, and world exposing public corruption via several new media platforms. I have also overcome personal challenges. I am legally blind with zero vision in my right eye and only 40 percent vision remaining in my left eye. I sometimes wear an eyepatch due to my failed vision. (Hence the nickname of “America’s Political Pirate.”