EXCLUSIVE: San Diego Mayor Filner, called prickly, not so caustic with ordinary folks

Find more videos like this on GSDBA

JOBS PLAN: Obama's Golden Opportunity Could Spark a New Era of FDR-style American Greatness

A giant freighter passes through the Maeslantkering sea gate in the Netherlands.
The Dutch can literally turn off the sea when their homeland is threatened by oceanic flooding.  

...But only with a bold vision of greatness, beginning in New Orleans.

President Barack Obama will make what could be the most important speech of his presidency next Thursday.  Next Thursday falls within the sixth anniversary of the castration of American greatness that was the response to Hurricane Katrina.  Pictured Above is what the Dutch do when the Netherlands is threatened by flooding from the sea:  Since they built the Maeslantkering sea gate, Holland can protect itself by simply TURNING OFF THE SEA!  

The American solution for New Orleans:  And it's already leaking.  

During the Bush administration, the American solution to "preventing" another Katrina was to rebuild and increase the height of a stack of rocks, dirt and mortar; and, in some cases with a cement wall.  


In RoLA's opinion, the the president's opportunity to reset the U.S. standing as a nation of greatness and  innovation couldn't be more obvious:  begin work on what could be called the "Great Gulf Coast Sea Gate," or "Great Gulf Gate."  Or, because we love abbreviations in this country, the shorthand for the multi-thousand job project could be (drum roll) "G3."  


Not only would this be good for the economy, our image abroad (not to mention our own self-image), such a bold move would reassert Obama's "Yes We Can" mantra--you know; the one that got him elected as the nation's first African American president.  The Great Gulf Gate, however, should not, in our opinion be the only project in Obama's plan.  Projects of similar significance, with equally bold vision, should populate the his new jobs program.  But, please Mr. President; make New Orleans the center point--the foundation--of your plan

Glitz, Glamour Find Unlikely New Home in the Wilshire District

Los Angeles' New Ambassadors   

Six Schools on a Campus Like  no  Other

   a RoLA                          S                   e               r          i       e   s   

The Architecturally Acclaimed Auditorium at

Ambassador/RFK Campus' Los Angeles High School for the Arts (LAHSA): 

Witness:  A reinterpretation of the aesthetic of  the iconic nightlife venue that helped define what was probably Hollywood's most glamorous period--from the 1920s to the early 1950s, when Harlow, Hughes and Hepburn graced the Ambassador Hotel's own Cocoanut Grove night club.  

One neighbor of RFK Community Schools said the auditorium by itself is the best thing that's happened to youth in this inner-city part of Southern California in decades, and that it shows.  The woman, who lives within visual distance of the RFK campus, says she raised two of her own now grown and "very successful" children in L.A.'s pulbic school system.  She also said, after years of apathy and neglect regarding public schools in Los Angeles, she can now sees students who seem proud of where they go to school.  When walking her dog some mornings, the longtime Wilshire District resident has recently noted a new excitement in the eyes of the students she sees walking to toward the six RFK schools located at the former Ambassador Hotel site.    (Watch for video of RoLA's interview with the neighbor and others with school officials and students--all in coming installmentsot of our special series on the Ambassador/RFK site.  Meantime, here are some interior shots of the schools' auditorium inspired by, and built at the former site of the old Cocoanut Grove.)

Though not all who lamented, and still mourn, the demolition of the Ambassador in 2005 are completely satisfied with the outcome of their failed battle to completely  preserve the property, some concede that the new schools' auditorium (which actually retains much Cocoanut Grove building's construction in its last incarnation before the closure of the Ambassador for good in 1989); succeeds in some measure invoking the spirit of the original Grove.

The faculty-staff-and their-guests-only lounge at RFK Community Schools is a faithfully restored original 1950s diner designed by Paul R. Williams, a pioneering African-American architect whose work (Beverly Wilshire Hotel [major redesign]; Saks Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills; Chasens Restaurant; Theme building at LAX (the sweeping, swoopy structure at the center of the airport's terminals area);  helped define the classical Los Angeles architecture asthetic. 



   

I Predict a Riot!

Did Kaiser Chiefs' 2004 Indie Track Foresee week of Hollywood's Hyper-tweeting DJ Debacle, Washington's Budget Battle?

Probably not.  But sometimes the corny headline gene won't rest until it's satisfied...

So much can happen in a week:  Since our last post, the Hollywood district of Los Angeles has had a "riot," while the nation's credit rating, which has stayed unblemished with "AAA" as our score ever since credit ratings have existed, even throughout the Great Depression, has come perilously close to being sacrificed voluntarily by congressional Republicans who, it appears, would be willing to see it downgraded--thereby causing what economists almost unanimously agree will be catastrophic consequences, if not a sparking a Great Depression II--in order to appease the always-angry Tea Party cult.   

I mention the Hollywood & Highland "riot" in quotes, because, in the final analysis, MUCH was overhyped in news reports.  Yes:  somewhere between five and 8 youths jumped onto a police car.  But whereas when the "melee" (if you can call hundreds of people talking loudly and yelling, but mostly texting and tweeting, a melee) first began, radio reports said police patrol cars had been lit ablaze.  Even though it appears that didn't happen (RoLA is seeking clarification regarding the reports from some Internet and braodcast reports that, patrol cars were set on fire), the impression that Crown Victorias up and down Hollywood Blvd. were burning set the stage for a lot of innacurate portrayals of the event.  Certainly, something was terribly wrong with the way things went in terms of one DJs apparently wreckless social-networking misuse, plus poor crowd control planning by event organizers, and, to some degree, the police response.  However, I do give LAPD some props for their overall handling of the un-riot.  

You can read some of the details here and/or  here.  But it's hard to argue that this was a riot when you realize that a) no one was injured; and b) three arrests were made out of a total of five people who were momentarily detained, according to the L.A. Times; c) there are countless images and many videos of people standing; people walking; people running away from police anti-riot personnel--as well as ample footage of people jumping onto police cars; yet you won't find any of police cars burning from that afternoon, as has been widely reported.   At least we haven't been able to find any such video.  

What's most interesting to me is the police-car-set-on-fire aspect of this story.  It appears that nearly all headlines and copy written about the alleged arson since the day the near-riot (as the occurence was dubbed by the L.A. Times and other well established media outlets) is cited as "according to multiple news reports."  That's what RoLA found on websites ranging from pop-politics destination, Firedoglake (lafiga.firedoglake.com) to MSNBC.com.  In fact, our Web search found no attribution of the burning squad car report that could be immediately confirmed as an original, credible source; nor could we locate any imagery.  

That doesn't mean vandal-arsonists didn't burn LAPD vehicles on Hollywood Blvd. last Thursday (28 July, 2011) didn't happen. It does mean that there is confusion about important details of the "riot."   Check back next week, after RoLA has an answer (or non-answer) from the LAPD, and/or the District Attorney's office.  Meantime, not the L.A. Times piece does not mention a police car set ablaze by "near-rioters."  

★TUESDAY CONTINUES OUR SERIES ABOUT LAUSD'S NEW SCHOOLS at the SITE OF THE FORMER AMBASSADOR HOTEL, WHERE ROBERT KENNEDY WAS ASSASINATED BY SIRHAN SIRHAN IN 1968. 

Rob't. Kennedy's Knowing Smile Shines at the Gateway to L.A.'s Best Investment in Decades: RFK Community Schools at the Ambassador Site

   a RoLA                          S                   e               r          i       e   s   

Los Angeles' New Ambassadors   
Six Schools on a Campus Like  no  Other   

R

R

Thom Senzee, dwarfed by the shadow of RFK.

Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, slain brother of also-assasinated Pres. John F. Kennedy, understood that government is supposed to be the common ground where human beings meet solve problems, share costs for the big things civilizations need in order to survive and thrive, and to band together against enemies as they come and go.

❝ each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. 

❞

We hear so many throw-away assertions, nowadays, about how our government is the least of what makes the United States of America great and what makes this country's people so unique.  It's a very popular and, dare I say, fashionable point of view.  And so is has been for the past 30 or more years.  That's all of my adult life.  

The problem with the assumption that Americans have been and remain more free, more prosperous and more inventive than any other society in human history in spite of how we govern ourselves, is that it is absolutely wrong.  In fact, that perspective represents the epitome of missing the forest for the trees.  It is in fact our government's ability to be simultaneously run by those who decry its general "badness," 

Ask anyone from a country mired in endless civil wars, wretched poverty and hunger, sytemic corrutpion, violent oppression of women and minorities, institutional exploitation of certain classes if they believe the U.S. government with its strengths and weaknesses; its cost and size; or its very public vulnerabilities and shortcomings have anything to do with what makes ours the land toward which longing eyes point from lands with governments that are often (to borrow one of the revered business buzz phrases of all time) "lean and mean."

Business.  Business' goal is to profit.  Does anyone want a government looking to make a profit?  I didn't think so.  So, given that making money is not the reason we want our governments--federal, state and local--to exist; why do so many politicians keep acting like government should be run like a business?  The gossimer-thin considerations that lead some to the misconception that the U.S. Congress should act as savvy board members of a Fortune 500 company and that the president of the United States should behave like the CEO of the same firm must have to start lickety-split ticking of exceptions to that philosophical model of government.  

Take something as seemingly mundane as buildings for an example of what I mean:  Run the government like a Fortune 500 company, and you'd expect training campuses, i.e., public schools, to gleam be gleaming, luxurious towers, like the shimmering edifices that house their corporate counterparts.  Well?  If you want to run a successful business, you've got to look the part, right?  Can't have clients get the idea we're second rate.  Who are the government's clients by the way?  Taxpayers?  Well, no. We're the investors, I believe.  We don't want our own company selling us stuff; so, we're certainly not the customers...I digress.

Schools--public schools, that is, have mostly fallen into disrepair or at least just ugliness and bare-minimum upkeep during most of the past 25 years or so.  Meanwhile, banks, public corporations, media megalopolies and private companies have continued to be the beneficiaries of generous investment in their own infrastructures in the form of state-of-the-art technology and impressive headquarters across the nation.  

But, here in Los Angeles, there's a new story to be told about investment in public education, and perhaps surprisingly to some, the excitement among students that seems unmistakable to just about anyone who encounters students at any of the six schools of the Ambassador campus on Wilshire Blvd. , which sits on the site of, and uses some of the original construction of, the old Ambassador Hotel, where 1968 presidential candidate was shot dead.  The place is a temple to optimism and youth--just as Bobbie would have wanted it.  

Stay tuned as RoLA takes you to a the seat of public K-12 education's special new paradigm now open in the heart of the City of Angels.  

-Thom Senzee

Give me a lead, I'll pursue the story...

At its best, American journalism can correct a nation's course when the ship of state threatens to run aground, as it is now doing. At its worst, all-in-line scribes allow for leaders to lead a nation into shedding liberty and sleepwalking into war.

But it all starts when a community news reporter wonders why an elementary school is getting a new fence when the existing one is only a year old. Any school officials with relatives in the fence business?

Tell me L.A., what do you think needs a little questioning.