How hilarious to see Talking Points Memo and other bloggers track down that interesting "mansion" used as a set piece behind John McCain last night at the RNC. McCain must be trying to match, in his own way, the fake, creepy Greek columns chosen as Barack Obama's backdrop by some real idiots in the Obama camp, earning them endless ridicule.

Turns out the McCain backdrop is an image of a troubled high school in Los Angeles Unified School District (well, most of them are troubled in some way). Apparently McCain's folks used a free image of Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, when what they really wanted was a shot of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It would have been a lot more fun if McCain had flashed a shot of Obama's multimillion-dollar pad, or one of McCain's own luxury homes or investment properties, of which there are seven.

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Anti-billboard activists are breathing a sigh of relief. Yesterday, Clear Channel decided to withdraw its application to install a hyper-bright electronic billboard on Ventura Boulevard in Encino.

Clear Channel's attorney sent a letter to city planners withdrawing its application for a 14 foot by 48 foot Clear Channel digital billboard at 15826 W. Ventura Blvd. No reason was given in the letter.

Last year, Clear Channel applied for a permit to change the static billboard into a digital display. Planning Director Gail Goldberg approved the digital conversion. However, the planning department required that the digital images change no faster than once an hour.

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Anti-clutter, anti-billboard activists are gearing up for a fight tomorrow when a hearing will be held on a proposed, hyper-bright electronic billboard on Ventura Boulevard in Encino.

The Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight has been fighting to stop the bright billboard on Ventura Boulevard since last year. Digital billboards have been quietly approved all over the city since City Hall settled its disastrous lawsuit with Clear Channel Outdoor, CBS Outdoor and Regency Outdoor. Although the city supposedly won its legal arguments, for unknown reasons they buckled to the billboard giants.

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Over the weekend, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa flew into Denver for several days and nights of glad-handing and back-slapping at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. It'll be a good time for Villaraigosa to make new friends, assure old ones, and work on his status as a rising star in national politics.

But if the mayor wants to do some research for the city of Los Angeles, he should visit Eli Broad, one of the most civic-minded billionaires in the country who also happens to live in LA, at the 2008 Philanthropy Roundtable in Denver on Monday afternoon. It may be the kind of thing that'll inspire Villaraigosa to reach out to the rich and powerful for more than big campaign contributions.

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The mayoral primary election is six months away, and other candidates like developer Rick Caruso may still jump into the race, but a coalition of downtown business owners has decided not to hold out any longer. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Central City Association has concluded, is its man.

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The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that San Francisco-based FBI agents have begun a criminal investigation of Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. The newspaper quoted sources familiar with the FBI investigation as saying that agents recently went to Los Angeles to conduct interviews. The investigation was spurred on by criticism over Delgadillo allegedly using city resources for personal benefit.

Delgadillo's office told the Weekly that the city attorney has yet to be informed about the investigation or interviewed by agents.

“This garbage is being shuffled by the city attorney's political opponents hiding behind a cloak of anonymity,” says Delgadillo spokesperson Nick Velasquez. “They have already seen reports of the city attorney running for attorney general and are engaging in a classic political assassination. The city attorney has not been contacted by any agency regarding this matter. Any allegation of any wrongdoing is garbage.”

According to news reports, City Controller Laura Chick was interviewed by agents in the last few weeks.

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The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that San Francisco-based FBI agents have begun a criminal investigation of Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo. The newspaper quoted sources familiar with the FBI investigation as saying that agents recently went to Los Angeles to conduct interviews. The investigation was spurred on by criticism over Delgadillo allegedly using city resources for personal benefit.

Delgadillo's office told the City News Service that the city attorney has yet to be informed about the investigation, or interviewed by agents. According to local news reports, City Controller Laura Chick was interviewed by agents in the last few weeks.

“I can't confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” says FBI spokesperson Joseph Schadler.

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Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, according to the LA Times, may be the "Latino point man" for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, but when he arrives in Denver late this week for the Democratic National Convention, he will not have a prominent TV slot as a speaker.

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Though it seems that City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and City Controller Laura Chick have buried the hatchet and agreed to leave their squabbles to voters next year, the Weekly decided to take a peek at the City Attorney’s lengthy legal complaint.

The legal spat focuses on Chick’s decision to audit the work of other elected officials. Chick says the City Charter gives her the right to audit City Attorney Delgadillo to see how he's handling a workers’ compensation program. Delgadillo says Chick only has the power to do financial audits, not performance audits.

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Most Angelenos still don't realize that the "$4.2 million" DWP/Fleishman-Hillard scandal that led to Mayor Jimmy Hahn's defeat by Antonio Villaraigosa ended in a whimper in court last summer, raising serious questions about Hahns' key accusers -- City Controller Laura Chick and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo.

It's delicious to now see Delgadillo and Chick slamming, sliming and hammering one another.

Chick, who has major political aspirations, wants to use her City Controller office to audit her political enemies in other elected City Hall offices. This uberpower could make her more powerful than her close ally Villaraigosa -- or any future mayor. Delgadillo, another political climber just like Chick, sued in court on Monday to stop her.

This could be wonderful fun.

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Has Antonio Villaraigosa fallen so far back in the 2010 race for California governor that his former consultant and negative research hound Ace Smith, who dug dirt on Villaraigosa's mayoral rivals, is migrating over to help Attorney General Jerry Brown become governor?

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting today that Ace Smith joined a "Jerry Brown for Governor" Facebook page, and that Smith responded to the Chron that his joining doesn't mean anything -- he signs up for lots of stuff.

But what a slap it was at Villaraigosa, as was the furtive Malibu meeting last week between top California Democratic hatchet man Garry South and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Relentlessly persistent and increasingly noticed blogger Zuma Dogg got that scoop -- and the video to prove it.

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Billboard activists are happy to learn that a Kentucky governor is on their side – at least for now.

Last month, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Kentucky governor Steve Beshear ordered that a major proposed change in billboard regulations be withdrawn because of safety fears. The bill would have allowed electronic billboards with changing messages along interstates and major highways.

Kentucky’s Transportation Cabinet submitted the bill for legislative review. According to the Courier-Journal, the Governor stepped in after he learned from the director of the Kentucky Resources Council that “available credible evidence suggests that multi-message electronic billboards are a safety risk.”

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In January, the LA Weekly published a cover story about how City Hall's dream of recruiting more women firefighters turned into a multimillion-dollar disaster. So it wasn’t too surprising to learn that not much has changed. The fire department is still trying and failing to recruit women.

Over the years, politicians and fire commissioners have called for more women in the fire department ranks. In the 1990’s, then- council member Jackie Goldberg espoused the popular but untested view that fire departments should be 20 percent female. More recently, fire commissioner Genethia Hudley-Hayes called for women to represent at least five percent of the department.

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In April, LA Weekly published a cover story about the city’s 4,000 illegal billboards and the newspaper’s legal struggle to get a simple list of billboards owned by Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor. It seems that our “Billboards Gone Wild” headline made quite the impression on other media folks. The Daily News used our exact same headline on July 5, and now “Insider Exclusive” is doing the same, and here’s the clip.

“Insider Exclusive” is definitely worth watching, because it gets to the heart of why the city is doing nothing to stop the billboard-clutter crisis that has turned Los Angeles into the illegal billboard capital of the nation.

One of the more entertaining moments includes a 2006 clip of Los Angeles Councilmember Eric Garcetti blasting the press at a city council meeting for beating up on City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s settlement deal between the city and Visa Media, CBS Outdoor, Clear Channel Outdoor and Regency Outdoor.

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Los Angeles City Councilmember Jack Weiss introduced a motion yesterday that would address and fix the colossal problems that have been raised in court cases challenging the city's sign ordinance. The motion calls for the city's planning department, Department of Building and Safety and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office to revise and toughen the 2002 ban on billboards.

“I was very proud of the moratorium we passed a few years ago and very proud of the inspection program,” said Weiss. “I want to find a way to preserve the city's ability to protect our neighborhoods that is consistent with the court decisions that have been issued.”

The July 29 motion is the city’s latest effort to control the public’s airspace from obnoxious building-sized ads and billboards that have popped up after the city opened the door to it, setting precedent by allowing certain hand-picked companies to slather the city with advertising.

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The LA Weekly was taking a peek at court papers when we came across an interesting tidbit by a federal district judge who issued a preliminary injunction in June barring the city of Los Angeles from enforcing its sign ordinance against those huge, tacky, building-sized ads now slathering much of LA.

You may hate them but the judge ruled that Philadelphia based “supergraphics” company World Wide Rush could ignore the city ban, at least for now, because the city itself is putting up advertising all over town and it can’t have it both ways.

Judge Audrey Collins – in court papers filed on May 8 - seemed a tad miffed that World Wide Rush attorney Rex Heinke didn’t disclose his affiliation with the “supergraphics” company at a law conference the two attended on May 2 and 3.

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Last week, attorneys for World Wide Rush filed a motion in federal court asking a judge to permanently block the city from prosecuting building owners who allow “supergraphics” signs on their buildings.

The motion was filed after the city began enforcing its sign ordinance against the owners of seven of World Wide Rush’s 34 “supergraphics” sites located at 6801 W. Center Drive, 3415 Sepulveda Blvd., 10680 W. Pico Blvd., 8801 W. Pico Blvd., 1089 W. National Blvd., 6200 Wilshire Blvd., and 169 N. La Brea Ave. The city also filed charges against a building owner for the sign located at 6081 Center Drive, and threatened to issue an arrest warrant based on the building owners refusal to remove the sign.

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Two Los Angeles court rulings in favor of outdoor advertising companies are playing strong roles in a recent court filing in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Metro Fuel, which is owned by New York based Fuel Outdoor Holdings, which specializes in mini billboards or “Metro Lights” panels, is hoping that a federal court judge will issue a preliminary injunction blocking San Francisco from prosecuting building owners who allow illegal billboards on their property.

Lawyers for the outdoor advertising company are citing two billboard victories in Los Angeles where district court judges have granted injunctive relief barring the city of Los Angeles from enforcing its billboard laws against outdoor advertising companies Metro Lights and World Wide Rush.

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Last Friday, Metro Fuel filed a motion in United States District Court for the Northern District of California to prevent the city of San Francisco from enforcing its laws against illegal billboards.

The outdoor advertising company, which is owned by New York based Fuel Outdoor Holdings, which specializes in mini billboards or “Metro Lights” panels, is hoping that a federal court judge will issue a preliminary injunction blocking San Francisco from prosecuting building owners who allow illegal billboards on their property.

San Francisco banned all new billboards in 2002. It also has strict zoning regulations that prohibit billboards in residential areas, near schools and parks. Recently, the city began issuing “notices of violations” against Fuel’s panel sign lessors. The city has argued that the ban and restrictive zoning is necessary to preserve and protect “traffic safety” and “aesthetics.”

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British Columbia resident Wayne Coulson says he has the tool that will save hundreds of homes threatened by California fires annually. It is called the Martin Mars water bomber.

Owned by the Canadian company, Coulson Flying Tankers, the 162,000-pound Martin Mars can drop 7,200 gallons of water and fire-dousing gel compared to 1,620 gallons for the “Super Scoopers.” It spreads its load over 3.5 acres and can drop as low as 150 feet.

It is one of the world’s largest scooping water bombers.

President George Bush and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fly over the mighty Martin Mars in Shasta Lake

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Is it wrong to chuckle over the latest U.S. Census numbers reminding us, in this strange town run by City Hall density hawks wedded to "compact housing" and the "construction crane as the official city bird," that L.A. population growth has stagnated?

As in, we're barely adding any new population despite huge projections embraced by the often-wrong Southern California Association of Governments? I heard from Joel Kotkin (whose New Geography blog site is pissing off Southern California political VIPs because his hard facts make their anecdotes look so silly), that L.A. gained only a teacup's worth of new residents in 2007.

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Ron Kaye, the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, looked happy. It had been only two months or so since he left the San Fernando Valley newspaper, and now he stood on the steps of City Hall in downtown and was surrounded by environmentalists, homeowner association members, and a whole bunch of other community activists. It was Bastille Day, and they wanted to take back Los Angeles.

"The political institution of LA is corrupt," Kaye told a sizable crowd yesterday afternoon. "We've got to take them down and be the boss."

The crowd, which was mostly white and middle-aged, clapped, cheered, and egged Kaye on to say some more. It was the first public rally for the former editor's brainchild called The Saving LA Project, and it showed, at the very least, that a groundswell of frustrated citizens were now willing to speak up, organize, and hit the streets. The politicians will be watching Kaye's follow through.

Ron Kaye, former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, speaks at the Bastille Day rally for The Saving LA Project in downtown.

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As I write this from my wife's apartment, from a fifth floor bedroom window in Moscow's Ismailovo district, north east of central Moscow, a crane is dropping slabs of concrete in what used to be the building's back yard. It was a wooded patch with a pigeon coop, a playground and a nursery school that my 25-year-old stepdaughter, Sasha, attended when she was 4. That's all gone now. In their place are rows of corroded pipes that will be used in the construction of what's to be a 17-story luxury condo complex. This will entomb my wife's apartment in darkness. Keep in mind, she owns her apartment. She bought it from the city during perestroika. It's an investment, or is supposed to be.

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Los Angeles’ illegal billboard issue is clearly heating up in the press and cyberspace -- again. The Daily News recently published an editorial about the city’s botched 2002 billboard ban and the need for a list of billboard locations and owners.

Today, Los Angeles Times reporter Veronique de Turenne picked up on the Weekly’s blog posting about a new searchable billboard database started by Jim Bursch, publisher of West LA Online, who created a database after reading the Weekly’s cover story about the city’s 4,000 illegal billboards and our struggle to get a list of billboards owned by Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor.

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It's amazing what can happen in a year. Around this time last summer, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa admitted to an extra-marital affair, political allies distanced themselves from the East LA Golden Boy, and talk about the mayor becoming the next governor of California completely and utterly ceased...and it was almost exactly a year ago when he was loudly booed by soccer fans, many of whom were Latino, at a David Beckham media event. Then everything changed this presidential campaign season.

According to the LA Times, Villaraigosa is now the "Latino point man" for the Democratic party to capture the Hispanic vote for Senator Barack Obama. This is no small feat completed by the mayor, especially when you consider that Villaraigosa isn't the only Latino politician in the country. As Don King, the wily boxing promoter, loves to say, "Only in America!"

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama stands with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in Washington D.C. yesterday. (photo courtesy of Obama for America)

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You can tell it's going to be The Silly Season in Los Angeles, from now to November, when Antonio Villaraigosa, whose growth-at-any-cost development beliefs have added tens of thousands of crowded new apartments to this overbuilt city, blames L.A.'s attention-getting traffic on the War in Iraq.

Yep. He actually told Steve Hymon, that highly readable guy over at the L.A. Times, that voters need to approve a big, fat sales tax increase in November to build more mass transit, particularly since the White House isn't investing in infrastructure because "we're a nation at war."

The mayor's dissembling and buck-passing was bizarre for two reasons.

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I’d never tell Mayor V the real reason I jump at the chance to ride the rails with him. I want to be there when the Big One brings the Red Line to a halt, stranding the mayor and me hundreds of feet underground for days. Under those conditions, I’ll offer him a bottle of water from my emergency stash for every question he answers honestly and completely.

Under treacherous conditions for the whole truth Wednesday morning – the train kept moving – I did my best to help the mayor plot his political future and solve the city’s traffic horrors.

On the subway ride back downtown after the news conference at the North Hollywood station, where he sat in the driver’s seat and honked the horn on one of the new RapidBus Lines, I chided Mayor V for giving his usual, flippant, I-love-my-job response to a radio reporter who had asked if is running for governor in 2010.

“But I really do love my job.”

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The Mayor's office is denying to the Weekly reports on other local
websites that he has a long-concealed tattoo reading “Born To Raise Hell.” Antonio got slammed on Tuesday by the Mayor Sam blog over a controversy boiling up in the Los Angeles Fire Department, first reported right here, in which firefighters are being ordered to wear long sleeves or even bandages to cover their tattoos.

After the Daily News wrote about the controversy on Tuesday, Mayor Sam went to town slamming the LAFD’s “no show” tattoo policy, then wrote:

"And it's amazing to consider, when we have a mayor who reportedly never is seen without his shirt off nor wearing short sleeves because he sports gang tattoos from his youth."

Gang tattoos? If only! The allegation stems from a website called Bruin Alumni Association, which insists the mayor got his tattoo while a radical student at UCLA.

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You can't rely on the official media to learn much of what's going on in Russia. The government owns all Russian TV stations, on which never is heard a discouraging word. Jon Stewart-style political satire has disappeared from the airwaves. Those pundits who dared to challenge government policy haven't been banned, because this is an open democratic society. For some inexplicable reason, they've simply all chosen to stay off the air. Call it a mystery of the East.

For real intel, you have to go street Blogs, i.e. cab drivers. The guy shuttling me this week from Sheremetyevo Airport to the northeast suburb of Ismailovsky Park said he didn't vote in the last presidential election on March 2, which put Vladimir Putin's young, appointed heir, Dmitry Medvedev, in the president's throne. The cabby said he didn't know anybody who bothered to vote.

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Sacramento's politicians created a fat budget deficit. Then, local bureaucrats misspent state funds meant for foster kids. Now, foster kids might pay dearly.

By D. Heimpel

When wealthy philanthropist Daphna Ziman, wife of real estate magnate Richard S. Ziman, walked into the meeting room of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors the other day, the assembled bureaucrats -- there to discuss budget cuts that affect L.A.’s most troubled foster care kids -- knew she could rant and rave.

As founder of Children Uniting Nations, Ziman held in her hand a letter from new Assembly Speaker Karen Bass promising that the the state would not cut mentoring programs for foster kids. Ziman also carried with her Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's personal promise to spare foster care.

But now, the Department of Children and Family Services is warning that $25 million must be cut -- and the mentoring program is on the table. Ziman’s fury is aimed at saving a mentoring program praised nationally, but also racked by recent controversy, that aims to match tens of thousands of foster kids in Los Angeles County with a mentor by 2010.

“The idea that this money will be put on hold is absolutely unconscionable,” Ziman told the Supes' advisors in a quaking, angry voice. Some aides to the five, powerful, elected board members pursed their lips. How dare she?

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Describing himself as a guy who was "you could say, like a head of state," departing California Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez gave a bizarre interview to Spanish language Univision in which he claimed that slams on his lush lifestyle were based on his ethnicity.

The Sacramento Bee broke the story today, quoting Nunez as telling the Univision program Voz y Voto: "Because of the fact I am Mexican, they think I have to sleep under a cactus and eat from taco stands."

No word yet on who this awful bunch of "theys" are. Nunez' "woe-is-me" victim scenario was set off by last year's coverage of his spending practices in the Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other media outlets, based on an investigation by Nancy Vogel at the L.A. Times, which revealed that Nunez spent thousands on "office expenses" at posh Louis Vuitton in Paris, and thousands on a "meeting" at a pricey wine purveyor's in Bordeaux.

The interview shows that Nunez suffers from extraordinarily thin skin, and has been silently simmering about his perceived ethnic victimhood.

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