John_Schwada's Blog

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After a couple of hours hanging around LA school district headquarters on Tuesday I came away with a deep sadness....but confident that ex-U.S. Navy admiral David Brewer's career as superintendent at LA Unified is taking on water faster than the Titanic.

Unlike the Titanic tale/legend, however, in which Capt. Edw. Smith went down with his ship, Brewer is unlikely to go down with LAUSD. No. He'll probably get a bail-out package. As he sails into the sunset, in his taxpayer-funded lifeboat, we will - if we're lucky - get one last picture-perfect view of him waving amiably to us and the children on board...the Titanic.

It's easy to bag on LA Unified...consider the following exhibits gathered while cruising the school district hallways.

Exhibit #1:
A woman, nearly tearful, approaches me outside the locked doors of the LA School Board meeting room. She's holding a drawing of a horse, part of an assignment given to her daughter, a kindergarten student. Her daughter's assignment, the woman told me, was to color the horse. The child colored the body of the horse brown, the mane, tail and hooves blue. Next to the brightly-colored horse (the child dutifully did not color outside the lines) was the teacher's comment in red ink. "Use realistic colors."

Apparently there's a problem in LA Unified-Land with five-year-old girls coloring the tails, manes and hooves of their horses blue. A problem with imagination? With having fun?

The mother was livid over the teacher's remark. It was, she told me, thoughtless, unhelpful, even cruel. But there's more. When she confronted the teacher about this, she was escorted out to the playground for a little heart-to-heart. 'You're not going to win this one,' the veteran teacher told the mother. And, by the way, the teacher advised, 'If I were in your shoes I wouldn't have my own children in any school in LA Unified unless it's a magnet school.'

Great. Let's hire this teacher 1) to do sensitivity-training and 2) to handle district public relations. On the other hand, should we really expect more from teachers who are basically caste-less creatures in our society, looked down upon and ill-paid, battered by mandates....we could go on forever playing this screeching violin of misery, of pity....of bathos?

Exhibit #2:
Also while loitering at the school board headquarters, I ran into a hundred plus folks protesting...their leader Caprice Young, a former school board member who is now trying to reform LA Unified from the outside (perhaps after having despaired of being able to accomplish much working inside the "belly of the beast" to quote Jose Marti). Young is now the president of the California Charter Schools Assn., a group hell-bent on "subverting" our traditional public school system by setting up charter schools organized around the principle of self-governance....

This group of protesters - according to Young - was upset that the school district had reneged on an agreement to provide classroom space to a half-dozen charter schools in existing, unusedLA Unified facilities.

"These are teachers, parents and some students who are protesting because they have been refused facilities," Caprice said. "The law is that LA Unified is required to provide facilities for all public school students - and charter students are public school students. So we're here today to remind the board that they agreed to provide us with facilities, they offered them to us on April 1 (2008), and now these offers were rescinded. We know they have the space. Our (charter school) principals have walked the space, seen the classrooms. And now our kids are told they have to stay on the street. That's not fair."

On the street?

"Well," Young continued, "several hundred (of 2000 affected, 'homeless' charter school students) have no space and the ones that do have had to lease space (at something approaching market rate rents), paying for it out of the money that's supposed to go for books, instruction and teachers."

To add insult to injury, Young said, the school board was NOT going to let the charter school community tell its story at the board meeting.

Exhibit #3:
I asked Brewer, as he walked into the board meeting, if he still believed the school district was manageable after a year and half at the helm. Brewer insisted he is getting a grip on things now that he has finally hired Ray Cortines, the septugenarian educational Duracell Bunny Rabbit. Cortines was brought on board a month ago as Brewer's top lieutenant, apparently to keep the Visigoths from the school district's doors, plug up the sex scandals, tamp down the interracial riots, fix the screw-ups, foul-ups and missteps...perhaps even educate the kids.

Here's what Brewer told me, on camera:

"I was struggling trying to get results, and so I brought in Ray Cortines as my number two - and a strong number two to get results. And he's shaking things up and I'm sure he's making some people mad, because that's what I want...."

Should we be relieved to learn that t's taken Brewer, by his own admission, nearly a year and half to figure out that he wasn't in control of the district? That Cortines has now got us covered, got our back, that we can all breath a sigh of relief? Why do we need Brewer if that's the case?

And really what evidence is there - after a mere month of Cortin-ization - that Cortines is going to turn this giant district around, pump out the seawater that's rushing in, plug the holes, fix leaks, repair the shattered bulkhead, etc.? Who says Cortines is a miracle-worker?

Doesn't everyone know by now that just about the only miracles happening in LA Unified are the hopeful five-year-old girls who color their horses' tails, manes and hooves blue?

Is it possible our nation's longest running political soap-opera is over? Tell me it ain't so!

What are we going to do with our lives if the Barack and Hillary show is really over. Take up knitting, kick-boxing? Join the ladies auxiliary club or an Irish drinking society? Stop e-mailing the latest dish on Hillary or Barack? Go cold turkey on surfing the web for the latest You-Tube video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Noooooo! We want our conflict, deceit, explosive revelations, videos from the past, constant do-or-die moments, hail-Mary passes, the possibilities for endless speculation and rumination, blogging and flogging the blogs!

But let's face it. The time for kindly fortune or hoary providence to come sailing in from the sky to save the day for Hillary is over...North Carolina and Indiana ended it. It's been great folks - now it's time to return to earth. There is no saving deus ex machina to pull her irons out of the fire.

Even Democrats, after all this agony, excitement, ecstasy must be having post-partum blues after Tuesday's results that left the cyborg Hillary with an impossible mission of trying to patch her political fortunes back together again.

Of course, you must guess my secret ploy here.

Every time the pundits, the bloggers, the guy slumped at the bar, the editorialist and the guy next door have pronounced this contest over, it has acted like a contrarian tonic, an elixir of life, that has caused the dying patient, the flagging contest, to sit up and amaze us with his, her or its latest irrepressible, miraculous sign of vigor...or flirtation with disaster. And how much better is this than Lindsey and Brittney, Oprah and Mylie? How much better is this food - for our brains, our civic muscles?

So let us all join hands and pronounce our dearly beloved dead, with a wink, knowing it will only jinx the inevitable, humiliate our predictions, confound the gods.

“They’ve got the best corn beef in LA,” a beaming Bill Bratton told a handful of reporters, moments after he stepped out of Langer’s Deli next to MacArthur Park and surveyed the peaceful progress of Thursday's May Day march.

Besides the corn beef lunch, LA’s chief of police had reason to be happy: after all, Thursday's May Day march was – by mid-afternoon - beginning to shape up as an event that would, in Bratton’s words, “correct the department’s image.”

A year ago, at the 2007 May Day event, some of the LAPD’s Metro Squad officers lost their heads and swept through MacArthur Park, roughing up a few radical troublemakers but also plenty of non-combatants. It was a black eye for the LAPD, and for Bratton who - while some of his finest were striking, shoving, tear-gassing, shooting (with rubber bullets) scores of marchers – was caught napping; the chief was at a fund-raising event when the mess began….

But this time around, the chastened LAPD brass were all over the march….cellphones to their ears, many fitted with hands-free devices, looking like air-traffic controllers and probably just as wired-in. The object was to identify any problem protestors quickly – and then surgically (that was the big word of the day) remove them so, in the words of Capt. Bob Green, the “peaceful marchers could enjoy their First Amendment rights.”

I met Green, a strapping cop in wrap-around sunglasses, as he talked amiably with civil rights attorney Carol Sobel, who was sporting a florescent green “National Lawyers Guild” cap. Sobel, who represents many of those who allege their rights were violated by the cops a year ago, was singing the praises of Green and Deputy Chief Michael Hillman, telling me she just wanted to “take their DNA and plant it in the rest of the department – these guys have got it right” about how to do crowd control.

I ran into Hillman an hour later. Like the chief, he was also beaming, a bullhorn, attached to his tactical belt, slapping at his side as he joined the procession. “Looking good,” he said.

Hillman - with about four decades of cop-work under his belt - is the guy who got the job of making sure the 2007 May Day mess was not repeated.

Hillman's fix meant flooding the area with senior LAPD leadership; this time around, decisions were not going to made by anyone who didn’t have a lot of brass on their shirt collars.

Coordination and communication were also at a premium. In the MacArthur leg of the march, the lead organizer had a captain assigned to him. Whenever organizer Victor Narro, of the UCLA Downtown Labor Center, slowed down, talked to anyone, “his” minder,
Capt. Rigoberto Romero, was at his side. Like a shadow. Nothing left to chance.

There were also a few new gadgets. Last year, the LAPD’s efforts to tell the protestors to disperse were, at best, garbled….and when people did not obey, the cops on the line used too much muscle to make it happen. This year, the cops had a handful of golf-carts-on-steroids, equipped with loudspeakers and “phrase-o-laters.” These communication systems were programmed with dozens of crowd-control commands, in four languages. Punch up a phrase in Spanish, and the automated system could bark out a very audible set of directions for the crowd to follow. No more guesswork.

By early evening, the march had petered out - only the stragglers, the kids who didn't want to go home. It looked like the LAPD and the city had good reason to be very satisfied.

So, eat another corn beef sandwich, chief. It's on us.

Urban legend or what? A friend tells me the word around the water-cooler is that taxpayers are getting automated, telemarketing phone calls from President Bush. About the tax rebates. It’s a pretty sophisticated campaign. According to my sources, you get a recorded message from Bush that goes something like this:

“Hey pardner. How’s it hanging. Hehehe. So listen, I just wanted to have a word with you about that tax rebate that’s headed you way, comin’ in the mail any day now. Now, I know you’re not over in Iraq, fighting the Taliban – or is that Afghanistan? Whatever.

“But you too can be a soldier of sorts – fighting the economic slow-down - by taking that rebate check right down to the mall and going on a little buying spree. You know, if your wife is anything like Laura, my little first lady, she could probably use a few more useless gadgets and dust-gatherers – made of shoddy materials built by child-labor in some third world country.

“And if your really strapped for ideas – check out the Sky-Mall catalogue, you know the ones on the airplanes. They got some great products: you know that device that translates your dog’s barks into English, or that radio that works in the shower. Or how about that tool for zapping spiders with an electric beam? Jesus H. Christ, son. Get out there and buy.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have enough room in your house to squeeze in one more flat-screen TV. And I sure as hell don’t want to hear you bellyaching that you can’t fit any more gadgets in your bathroom. It don’t matter! That hasn’t stopped millions and gazillions of good solid, law-abiding, God-fearing Americans from going the public storage route. Hell, Laura and I own a whole damned public storage facility to hold our junk. On a rainy winter afternoon, the two of us go over to public storage and visit our stuff – it’s all in numbered boxes. I mean, it’s heartwarming to sit there and pull out, say, box 410, and find six ceramic cows that the Malaysian ambassador gave us or a ceremonial sword or two that I picked up on a trip to Moldovia. Kind of like Christmas. A surprise in every storage box.

“Think of it this way, pardner. You’re being an Al Quada suck-up if you put that treasury check in a sock and hide it under your bed. Spend it for God’s sakes! It’s your patriotic duty.

“And listen if you like what I’ve been doin’ over the last eight years then here’s another little idea – invest in John McCain! Buy a little piece of a good Republican. Send him a contribution. I understand he’s having trouble raising money. Unlike those Democrats, Obama and Hillary. He could sure use your help.

“Well, that’s about it from me. I’ll let you go. I know you’re probably working ten-hour days to pay for $4 gas, the kid’s kidney bypass operation and your subprime house loan from Countrywide…So carry on and enjoy. God bless you.”

Now I haven't got that call yet from the President but I have been thinking about his message and trying to figure out what to do with my rebate.

So what are you going to spend yours on?

More ulcers for the Democratic Party’s superdelegates. A new calculation shows that Clinton, after Pennsylvania’s primary results, has received more votes (as opposed to delegates) than Barack Obama in both the caucuses and primaries. So much for Obama’s popular vote bragging rights – at least for the time being (he still leads Clinton by about 125 delegates). 

According to veteran political analyst Michael Barone, reporting Saturday in his Rasmussen Reports column, Clinton now has:

“won the votes, in primaries and caucuses, of 15,112,000 Americans, compared to 14,993,000 for Obama (Schwada’s note: roughly a lead of 120,000 votes, or 4/10ths of one percent of all votes cast). If you add in the votes, as estimated by the folks at realclearpolitics.com, in the Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine caucuses, where state Democratic parties did not count the number of caucus-attenders, Clinton still has a lead of 12,000 votes (Schwada’s note: or a lead of 4/100ths of one percent)."

News like this only prolongs the agony for undecided Democratic superdelegates, desperately looking for some sign, fact, index, trend (have they tried chicken entrails and tarot cards?) to guide them out of the party’s political maze. Imagine the soul-searching too among any Democrats, from the Obama camp, who might have claimed George Bush’s 2000 election victory was a joke – in part because he lost the popular vote. What are they to say now? That the popular vote doesn’t matter?

The super-delegates must also be keeping an eye on the polls….in fact, the pollsters could become the 800-lb gorillas in the Democratic Party’s nomination-kitchen.

For example, what if the polls started to consistently show that one candidate would do a much better job in a matchup against McCain? That’s an electability question that the super-delegates have got to consider.

At this time, by this measure, Obama and McCain are running neck-and-neck. When realpolitics.com looked at six separate polls, the average showed showed Obama doing BETTER against McCain than Clinton - at this point in time. Obama, on average, is currently enjoying a 1.6 percentage point advantage over McCain. In a Clinton vs. McCain matchup, the spread is 1.2 percentage points, in favor of Clinton. But the differences here are unremarkable, statistically insignificant. These kinds of numbers don't provide much help tor the super-delegates.

Another polling measure for the super-delegates to consider: how Democrats nationwide view the two candidatesl, Over time, these polls have seen Obama overcome and then surpass Clinton. Currently, by this measure (again I’m relying on realpolitics.com’s average of six polls), the spread between Obama and Clinton is 6.2% - advantage Obama.. But the latest numbers also hint at a closing of the gap; the spread was nearly 10% a few weeks ago.

There are plenty of other factors to consider – but the polls, delegate totals and popular vote are key to the nomination math, and as of today, the lead changed hands in the popular vote totals. Advantage Clinton.

John McCain’s got a problem: No one knows he exists. No media. No attention. No debates. No one to talk to but blue-haired ladies in Dubuque. It's like the old philosophy puzzle: If a McCain falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?

Do you really think the Fourth Estate’s sharpest, toughest newshounds are dogging McCain’s footsteps, double-checking his every claim, mussing up his hair, poking him in the ribs? No way. That’s a JV-media job – at least for now. So McCain is playing against the second team, in the wilderness.

Okay, maybe it’s not that bad. After all, McCain’s poll numbers are holding up, in a one-on-one with either Democrat. But what’s going to happen when the Dems finally settle their family feud?

McCain will be facing a very battle-tested rival – whether it’s Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. The Arizona senator is going to be fumbling over his notes or reading a script, badly, while his Democratic opponent will be looking right in the camera eye and smoothly delivering a rap – on just about any topic, in neat digestible sound-bites.

Practice makes perfect. Playing against the varsity-media helps. Obama and Clinton are getting a huge amount of practice selling themselves, defending themselves, getting their message across, in all sorts of formats. After 21 debates and countless news conferences, interviews and rallies, they’ve got it together.

Like it or not, if you can’t hold the public’s attention or the media’s then you slip into the Bob Dole syndrome…you may be likeable but who wants to listen to your tired legislative gobbledygook?

And that situation is particularly troublesome for McCain, who has admitted he can’t come anywhere near matching the fund-raising prowess of Clinton or Obama. Without a competitive paid-advertizing strategy, the McCain team is talking about having to get its message across through the news media – that means standing on a stage somewhere, making news….Good luck.

Did you hear the one about the Democratic Party suicide bomber who walked into a bar to have a final drink with his fellow Democrats, got so drunk he forgot to turn off the timer?

Sounds like Jimmy Carter, our former president.

A lot of people see Carter as a ticking time bomb of incompetence and gullibility, masquerading as idealism. Kind of a Neville “Hitler’s Not-so-bad” Chamberlain, without the bowler hat and umbrella.

And that’s exactly why both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were trying Monday to keep their distance from Carter’s latest, awkward peace-making foray in the Middle East - this being his meetings with Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza strip, is allied with Iran and has pledged to destroy Israel.

Carter, who helped grease the skids for the rise of Aytollah Khomeni in Iran and oversaw the U.S. humiliation over the Iranian hostage crisis, returned from his meetings with Hamas full of optimism about the group’s reasonableness. Hamas, Carter asserted, was ready to accept a Palestinian state, with pre-1967 borders, if the deal were approved by Palestinian voters, in a referendum.

One problem: the same people who Carter found to be so reasonable, only hours later disavowed much of what they allegedly told the former president. Were they just humoring Carter, playing him for an old fool?

You’ve got to hand it to Carter – his timing is impeccable for reminding some key voting blocs why they are suspicious of Democrats, especially Obama-style Democrats.

Obama was quick to spot Carter as an unexploded bomb and told reporters Monday he did NOT approve of the ex-president’s talks with Hamas, saying instead he favored talks – like those now endorsed by the Bush administration – between Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president, and Israel.

For her part, Clinton feigned not to know anything about Carter’s trip.

It would not be surprising for Clinton to soon draw some cheap parallels between Carter and Obama, a comparison made easier because Obama once said he wanted to sit down and reason with the leaders of nations like Iran, Korea, Cuba, etc. about their differences with the U.S. Clinton has already condemned Obama’s ideas as soft-headed.

In her election night victory speech in Pennsylvania, one of Clinton’s biggest applause lines was that Americans aren’t quitters and they deserve a president who is not a quitter – but a fighter. Her final TV ad also hammered home the point that she had what it takes to deal with Osama bin Laden and other national security threats.

Obama Democrats continue to be surprised Clinton is still not only standing but also moving – forward.

But what they forget is that Clinton, in her pursuit of voters and superdelegates, is playing a strong card when she lets everyone know she’s not going to be a Democrat who can be pushed around by tough guys, whether they’re Republican presumptive nominee John McCain or Hamas.

Clinton is on to something when she distances herself from Michael “Milquetoast” Dukakis, John Kerry or Jimmy Carter. These three failed to bond with blue-collar, lunch-pail Democrats, the Reagan Democrats, who were – and are - looking for a candidate with spine.

It was just those voters that exit polls showed gave Clinton her double-digit victory Tuesday in Pennsylvania. Now the questions are: will these same voters continue to make their voices heard in the remaining half-dozen primaries and will the superdelegates be listening?

Pete Noyes today walked out of his last newsroom, at age 77, saying goodbye to several generations of colleagues and admirers, here at Fox 11 News.

It was a sad day, losing a living legend, a raconteur, a keeper of the flame, an encyclopedia of journalism lore. Pete won innumerable prizes and awards over his distinguished career; I won’t attempt to catalogue them. Suffice it to say, there are few – if any - in the TV-journalism business in Los Angeles these days who can match his achievements (below, a photo of Pete with his wife, Grace).

Despite his years, Pete’s love of journalism, energy in pursuit of a story, resourcefulness in digging up sources and documents, and enthusiasm for beating the competition was never dulled by age. Pete was a breath of fresh air in a business that too often has taken the easy route to getting a story, too often been content to follow the pack, too often exalted the pretty-face and the live-shot, and too often cared too little about underdogs, government corruption and official abuses.

I’d heard about Pete Noyes for years in Los Angeles. But our paths didn’t cross until a few years ago when his station, UPN/KCOP Channel 13, merged with Fox 11 News. It was a great pleasure to come to know him and a great honor to actually work with him on several stories, including a series about real estate fraud.

Pete was often heard before he was seen.

“Godddammnnnit! I’ve been in this business 46 years, and that’s a lot of nonsense!” Something like that would often rip through the newsroom just as I was trying to down my first cup of morning coffee. It was like sugar in my Java to hear Pete, on the phone or in the house, giving some stubborn bureaucrat or wet-behind-the-ears city desk assistant a piece of his mind.

Pete was the horror of the modern-day, corporate human resources department manager, who would rather have employees high on horse-tranquilizers, sedated and content, than hot on the trail of a good story, full of grit and indignation, breathing fire.

And there were the Pete stories. Hundreds of them.

Over a farewell lunch with him today, Pete told me about the time in the 1960’s
when he worked for the NY Daily News and got a call from his editor that Barbara Graham – a murderess who’d been executed at San Quentin – had cast a curse on all of her accusers, jailers and prosecutors and, as a result, they were dropping like flies. The sensational story of this wrathful curse was published in the Herald-Examiner, and Pete’s boss told him to go down and get that story – at any cost.

“So, I drove over to the Examiner, talked to the city editor, and he told me the reporter could be found in the 11/11 bar. Sure enough there was this guy – who wrote the story – slumped over the bar. I politely tapped him on the shoulder and told him I was following up on his story. ‘Was it true? The Graham curse?’ The guy was three sheets into the wind, sloppy drunk and looked at me through big, sleepy eyes and said – ‘Nahhh. I made the whole damned thing up!’”

At this point, Pete began cackling over the beauty, the craziness of the whole goddamnnned story.

And then came Pete's second punch-line: “I called up the Daily News editor up and told her it was hoax. She didn’t want to believe it! Said I wasn’t being a team-player! Fired me on the spot!” More peals of laughter from Pete – who then revealed that the same editor re-hired him six months later.

Of course Pete was rehired - because he was indispensable….because he was the rare producer/reporter/investigative impressario who could – and did – break the story that Charles Manson had been arrested for the Sharon Tate murder, who dug up the dirt on Mayor Sam Yorty helping Occidental Petroleum founder Armand Hammer position himself to get a lucrative oil drilling lease in the Pacific Palisades, who won a prestigious Peabody Award, in 1975, for an investigative story about a notorious confidence scheme (“The Dale Car: A Dream or a Nightmare?”) that resulted in a 39-count indictment against the perpetrator. The list of his accomplishments, the stories Pete broke, could fill dozens of pages. But I’m on deadline and have stories of my own to do – I'm sure Pete will understand.

One last thing. One of Pete’s trademark expressions came from World War II when Navy Admiral Charles Lockwood messaged one of his youthful submarine commanders, then engaged in a deadly struggle with a Japanese warship: “Good luck. God bless you. Your picture is on my piano.”

In good humor, with a week’s worth of solid journalism under his belt, Pete would frequently swing through the newsroom on a Friday, telling his colleagues: “Okay
kid. Good work this week. We kicked some ass. Your picture is on my piano."

Well Pete, goodbye and good luck.....and you can be sure your picture will always be on our piano.

What’s John McCain smoking? Let’s give everyone a federal gas-tax holiday this summer? What’s that all about?

What we need is a presidential candidate driving a moped, to and from the White House, up and down Pennsylvania Avenue. A president who rides a bike, walks. A presidential candidate who waters his or her own lawn, cleans up after their kids, takes out the trash (that would include, big boy, separating the banana peels from the beer bottles ) spends less time hobnobbing with hedge fund campaign contributors and oil industry executives…

I’m doing the math on how to pick a candidate for president. It’s called Schwada algebra. The first formula is this: 4 minus 3 = 1. Four is the number of people who will be hot-bedding in our house this summer: my wife, myself (if I’m lucky after writing this blog) and two strapping boys – each capable of knocking off a small steer for dinner each evening (both wrestling it to the ground and eating it). Each of them, hopefully, will be employed this summer and out of the house for at least ten hours a day.

Okay, now three is the number of cars in the house. So we got this deficit of one car.

The consensus among the voters in my household is that I should buy a 4th car.

Good luck! I’m getting a Vespa – you know one of those little motor scooters so popular with Euro-bohemian-wanna-be’s. No more large hunks of metal in my driveway.

Every time I look at my rather modest Passat VW 2005 (is this ruining your image of high-flying TV newscasters racing around in little Porsches and do you think I really give a damn?) and I see large numbers of half-naked third-world men (don’t get any ideas!) clambering around in a mining pit digging steel out of the earth with their bare-hands, breaking their fingernails in the effort….(sorry that last clause was meant to be sarcastic). Anyway, the whole scene is like something out of Pieter Breughels (the Elder of course), Hieronymus Bosch or a photo by Sebastio Salgado Jr. (see below - Breughels painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels).
Anyway, the whole damned image is very exotic and interesting but morally depressing. It makes you want to start eating your own flesh.

So it’s a Vespa for me. My wife says I’m crazy. She has evidence too, and it’s not Joe McCarthy-Swiss cheese evidence. It’s Irrefutable. Perry Mason couldn’t bust her case. The last time I road a two-wheeled vehicle was on an island off the Washington coast. That was like two years ago. Within minutes, I was pinned under this defiant little machine, looking sheepish and sullen. The time before that was on Jimmy Fields’ Yamaha. Again the outcome lacked grace and finesse. But it made up for these missing ingredients with hilarity. Like how funny is it to crash-land in your girl-friend’s front-yard when you’re trying to convince her mom you’re a safe 16-year-old driver?

Unfortunately, I shared this mishap misadventure story with my wife, and women, as you know, are like elephants - they never forget.

But I’m ready for the naysayers. Ready to take a few lessons on two-wheeled driving. Ready to take a DMV test to get the M2 license, get another insurance policy, a helmet…maybe a suit made of bubble wrap.

Now all I need are presidential candidates who’ll get out of their Lincoln Towncars, their Cadillac Escalades, stop talking about gas-tax holidays and start preaching two-wheelers, self-denial, self-reliance…conservation? Who'll get my family off my back - make my Vespa decision look politically-inspired not hare-brained. Am I crazy?

LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, on April 4th, told a largely African-American audience in Compton that when Latino gangs are at war with black gangs over drugs and turf they are sometimes satisfied to kill any young black living in their rival’s territory in order to flex their criminal muscle. In other words, Baca asserted innocents are being targeted for death by gangs just because of their race. Sounds like a hate-crime to most of us.

Fox 11 News obtained a videotape of the remarks Baca made to the National Association for Equal Justice in America; those remarks, taped by Lonzo Williams, a cable TV talk-show host, were included in a Fox 11 story that aired Friday (April 10) as part of our continuing coverage of the murder of Jamiel Shaw, a promising LA High School football player, allegedly killed by an 18th Street gang member on March 2.

Shaw lived in a neighborhood identified as the turf of the Black P-Stones (BPS), an African-American gang that has had a long, deadly feud with the predominantly Latino 18th Street gang. But Shaw was not a member of BPS, and the evening he was murdered Shaw was not wearing attire that might have caused him to be mistakenly identified as a gang member. Immigration and police officials say Shaw's accused murderer, Pedro Espinoza, 19, is an illegal alien who has been an 18th Street gang member since he was 12 years old.

Here is exactly what Baca told the African-American audience in Compton: “I don’t say it’s all but there is a percent of these Latino kids killing blacks because of a race-related motivation. That is my opinion.”

Pretty explosive stuff. And then Baca went a step further, claiming his deputies had overheard jailed Latino gang bosses (so-called “shot-callers”) telling their followers on the outside that, in a feud with a black gang, it was okay to kill any blacks to make their point. “We’ve heard when the person out there can’t find African-American gang member to shoot, the shot-caller says: ‘Then shoot any African-American you see.’” (Jamiel Shaw's father was in the audience that day and Baca looked him straight in the eye when he made these remarks; but the sheriff did NOT specifically say if he believed Shaw’s murder was racially-motivated).

Baca’s observations put him at odds with LAPD chief Bill Bratton.

In recent days Bratton has taken a lot of heat from African-Americans over the Shaw murder. They say he has buried his head in the sand and refused to acknowledge  hate-crimes against them committed by Latino gang members. Wave newspaper editor Betty Pleasant recently blasted the chief on this issue at a community meeting; afterward the chief sounded a little contrite, acknowledging he needed to be more sensitive to the perceptions of the black community – while apparently still refusing to acknowledge that there was much evidence to support their claims.

In February 2007, Fox 11 News did a story about a series of black-on-Latino, Latino-on-black murders along Central Avenue in the LAPD’s Newton Division. The killings had to do with a war between an African-American gang, the Rollin’ 30’s (and their Rollin' 20's allies), and the East Side Treces, a Latino gang. Some of those killed were recognized gang members but others were innocents – NOT killed by stray bullets but essentially executed. The brutal murder of three young Latinos, including a 10-year-old, on 49rd Street on June 30, 2006 was a landmark event in this savagery. (Almost a year later several Rollin’ 30’s members were arrested for these murders).

What was the point of blacks murdering these young Latinos? Had the interracial gang warfare reached such a debased point of tribalism that killing anyone of the rival race was okay? That was the question we asked….

Bratton’s reply to Fox 11’s questions started out at one end of the spectrum and, over time, moved toward the other end. On Feb. 7, 2007, Bratton told me the following about the Central Avenue killings: “There are several incidents that we feel in that area were the direct result of targeting because of race (my emphasis). There’s been speculation about other incidents – and that has not been the case, proven to be the case.”

In December, 2007, Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old black teenager, was killed in the Harbor Gateway area, allegedly by members of the Latino 204th Street gang. It was almost immediately decried as a racially-motivated crime by LA city officials who noted that blacks in the area had been harassed by 204th Street for years; the LAPD flooded the area with cops. Before this, few people had ever heard of the 204th Street gang, which operated in a very limited part of the city.

Then, on March 17, 2007, 16-year-old Nelly Rodriguez and a Latino male companion – neither affiliated with gangs - were executed in front of her house, in the Central Avenue corridor, by a young man on a bike. A Rollin’ 30’s member is now charged with those murders.

A month after Nelly’s murder, on April 4, 2007, Bratton and Mayor Villaraigosa held a news conference to proudly trumpet a 12 percent city-wide decline in gang-related crime.

But when I reminded the pair gang crime was up 20.5 percent in Newton Division (the precinct that includes the Central Avenue area beleaguered by the Rollin’ 30’s-East Side Treces feud), their mood turned sour. Bratton acknowledged that “certain areas of the city are struggling. Newton is one of those.” However, he snapped: “Are we engaged in a race war down there? Certainly not.” (In fact, this statement badly misrepresented our story – which simply suggested some of the victims might have been killed not because of their gang affiliation but because of their race).

And there was more rancor when I pressed the chief about why city officials and the LAPD were wringing their hands, labeling as racially motivated, the reign of terror of the 204th Street gang when a much uglier and more lethal situation was exploding along Central Avenue? Why was one situation labeled a hate-crime, the other was not? What was the difference between the murder of Cheryl Green and Nelly Rodriquez?

The chief smirked and turned to the audience of cops and reporters and smugly informed them that I was just trying to promote my stories about the Central Avenue murders (the murders had hit about a dozen by then) and thus, he suggested, my questions should really be dismissed as so much grandstanding nonsense.

Now Sheriff Baca is adding fuel to this debate.

Gosh, I just don't know how to vote. Hillary, Barack, maybe McCain. I can barely get to sleep thinking about it.

Last night, I was tossing and turning as I tried to review their respective positions on Iraq and doing a little mental calculus on super-delegate strategies. And then I thought about Obama girl. Anyway, I couldn't get to sleep so I got up, and nearly broke my neck stumbling over the duvet.

What's wrong," my wife muttered from under the covers. Can't sleep, I mumbled. "Just don't wake Jack. Or the dog," she mumbled back. Yes, dear. Too late, the dog growled at me as I tiptoed past his cozy little bed, custom-made for him at Le Canny-Canine Shoppe there on Montana Avenue. Oh well, maybe he's still a little cranky after that $1,500 operation to have his bladder stones removed.

In the family room, the youngest son was watching Spike TV. Uh, couldn't sleep, I said by way of announcing my presence to #2 son who was sprawled across the sofa, baggy jeans and no shirt. He looked up from taking a swig from a soda, and said: "Don't just stand there, you're making me nervous." Okay, okay. I thought I'd try to catch up on my reading, maybe watch a little news. "Hey," #2 son said. "I got dibs on the TV - you got to see Suspenders Man (editor's note: that would be the venerable Larry King) interview that antique (editor's note: Harrison Ford, a fellow Boomer) so don't get any ideas."

Don't you have some studying to do, I ask. "Nahh," says #2. "Got community service tomorrow. Going to make phone calls for Obama during my free periods. By the way, did you pay my cell phone bill? I'm getting text messages from Sprint saying I'm overdue. Get on it will you, Dad." I thought I paid the bill last week, I said, as I poked around in the bookcase looking for a "sleeper" novel.

That's when the phone rang: I rushed to pick it up before it awakened my wife or the dog (both are very temperamental sleepers).

"Dad, glad you're up." It was son #1 calling from school. Everything alright, I ask. "Yeah," he said. "I was just up talking to friends about the election. We're going to Philly tomorrow - hook up with some girls from Bryn Mawr and protest a Hillary event." Hmmmm. "Did you see the latest Obama You-Tube spot?" No.

"Take a look," said #1 son. "He's so cool. Like a movie-star or something. And the war sucks, and so does Hillary. She's like a librarian or something. A lying librarian. Me and Brent and Greg are going to the multi-media lab Thursday and work on our own You-Tube ad for Obama. It'd be like "Family Guy" with Stewie going to the library to check out a book on sex and Hillary is the librarian. You know what I mean?" Hmmmm. I have no idea what he means. Isn't Stewie that guy that looks like a Frisbee with legs? "Uhhh, you got it Dad."

"Dad, get on board with Obama," son #1 continues. "Don't be an old fogy. He's young, he's cool, he's not bi-partisan." Not partisan, I correct him. (Is this what I get after paying a fortune for this kid to go to an elite private school back East?). "Right. But Dad, grammar, punctuation and syntax aside, the guy's going to end the war and clean up that sewer in Washington. He's got integrity. Don't be old school, Dad." Okay, I promise. I'll think about it.

"It'd be cool to have a black man in the White House, instead of that stupid Texan or the dinosaur from Arizona. Sort of like Miles Davis." Miles Davis? "Hey, gotta go. A couple guys coming over now." But isn't it 2 in the morning there? "Yeah, and your point is?" Nothing, I sighed. "We're just so up for this Obama thing, can't sleep. So long." Click.

Anyway, I did get to sleep last night. Awakened at 3:17 am, in the armchair, the TV still going. I picked up the empty soda cans, potato chip bags, fluffed the pillows on the couch and stumbled back to bed. Now the dog was curled up on the bed. He growled as I tried to ease myself under the covers.

The next morning there's a front-page story in the New York Times. It says young Obama-ites are successfully lobbying their Boomer-Parents to vote for Obama. "Obama's Young Backers Get Chance to Twist Parents' Arms" is the headline. There's a photo of Sen. Bob Casey's four daughters with Obama on the jump page. Casey, from Pennsylvania, last week endorsed Obama, virtually saying his kids made him do it. This United States senator was unashamed that he bowed to the kids-lobby. I guess, I thought, I'll be in good company if I join the Obama Children's Crusade. Maybe pick up a few "cool merit badge" from my kids...

Gee, who said picking a president is so hard?

"You can't get to Pennsylvania Avenue without going through Pennsylvania." That's from Hillary Clinton, on the tarmac at Burbank Airport this morning, where the only bullets she was dodging were the incoming questions from reporters.

One of the media refrains during the Q and A: How can you, Ms. Clinton, possibly win the nomination even if you win Pennsylvania?

Clinton's answer: the situation is extremely fluid and everything is on the table; that the loyalty and affiliation of all the Democratic delegates are mutable and changeable, not just the loyalties and affiliations of the superdelegates but also those of the pledged delegates - who are commonly believed to have been elected to simply rubberstamp the results of a primary or a caucus.

In Burbank, Clinton - without skipping a beat or blinking an eye - reminded reporters: "There is no such thing as a pledged delegate. That is a misnomer.....The whole point is delegates, however they are chosen, really need to ask themselves who would be the best president and who would be our best nominee against Senator McCain, and I think that process goes all the way to the convention."

In fact, she's right: the "elected" delegates are not bound by law to vote for the candidate they initially pledged to support...

Getting back to reality: there is no evidence any of Obama's pledged delegates have deserted him or, for that matter, are waffling...Now that would be an extraordinary story.

The arguments Hillary Clinton probably would make to an Obama pledged delegate (or to an uncommitted superdelegate) to get them to switch loyalties or simply join the Clinton team:

- Clinton has won the big, electoral-vote rich states (including New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Ohio, California and, arguably Florida) that are important to winning the general election;
- WHAT IF Clinton wins Pennsylvania and Indiana, picks up a few more states downstream and generally shows she has momentum on her side as the election season progresses;
- WHAT IF polls were to show Hillary doing a better job in a matchup against John McCain than Obama;
- And WHAT IF the polls were to show Obama supporters in earlier primaries, for whatever reason, were having "buyer remorse"?

That's a lot of WHAT IF's. But the Democratic convention is five long months away. Remember: who was the inevitable candidate five months ago, in December, 2007?

On the other hand, the question I would have liked to have asked Clinton if I had been on the tarmac in Burbank this morning (traffic conspired to prevent that): How many superdelegates have committed to your candidacy since your victories in Ohio and Texas and wouldn't you expect those hallmark victories to have already produced some movement toward you?

Undoubtedly her answer would've been: It's still too early. Let the process continue, up to the convention, and then let all the delegates make up their minds based on their best judgment of who would have the best chance of defeating McCain. (I'm still trying to find out how many - if any - superdelegates have joined the Clinton team since the March 4 Ohio-Texas primaries.)

Obviously, Hillary's fortunes could go south (for example, Clinton could lose Pennsylvania) and that would probably deliver the coup de grace to her campaign. But don't count on it. The Clinton's are like the cyborgs in the Terminator series - they are relentless and virtually indestructible.

What do you think:

- Can Clinton still pull it off?
- Can Democrats bury their axes and unite around one candidate (some polls suggest that Obama-ites are loathe to vote for Clinton if she's the nominee and vice-versa)?
- Will disappointed Democrats sit out the election?
- Doesn't this whole situation lend itself to deals in "smoke-filled rooms"?

Pennsylvania is the center of the political universe now, and I'm here, totally preoccupied with a college tour for son #2. How's that for timing? But in between campus visits, I've watched a little TV and the striking thing is how Obama is outspending Hillary in political ads. Nearly 3:1. And Obama's ads emphasize his ability to stretch across the aisle and, in at least one of them, the Illinois senator chastises Republicans and Democrats for failing to get the nation off its addiction to foreign oil. Obama has also been trying to get independents to join the Democratic party and vote for him (Pennsylvania's Democratic primary is a club; you gotta be a Dem to vote in it).

With his pitch to independents and posturing to show that he's an aisle crosser (which is, by the way, very debatable), it would seem that Obama is Mr. Reasonable.

But wait until the Clinton's get going in this race. Remember it's still 3 weeks from April 22, the primary election day, and we haven't heard a peep from the Clinton folks on the TV or radio airwaves regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. With Obama creeping up in the polls (some show him narrowing Hillary's lead to five or six points) and Pennsylvania being a do-or-die state for Hillary, you can bet your bottom dollar we'll hear a lot about Jeremiah's intemperate rantings in the coming days.

Hillary is just waiting until she can see the white's of Obama's eyes before she pulls the trigger or has her surrogates do it for her.

Will the Democratic party be able to survive any more torture in this regard? Who knows. There are polls here in Pennsylvania of local Democrats that show that waters are so poisoned already that very sizeable numbers of Hillary voters would not vote for Obama if he were the nominee and vice versa.

If you're a Democrat, supporting one of the candidates, could you vote for the other one? Do you see a way out of this mess?

The murder of Jamiel Shaw, the LA High School football phenom, on March 2 was a huge tragedy.

And the story took on more tragic overtones Friday when Fox 11 News learned that the alleged shooter, Pedro Espinoza, 19, was in this country illegally; that Espinoza, an 18th Street gangmember since he was 12-years-old,  has spent almost all of the last four years in either LA county jail or in the custody of the California Youth Authority; and, finally, that it was only in the last week that authorities discovered that Espinoza - with his pretty extensive record of violent behavior - is an illegal alien who has been sitting in various lockups, under the very noses of the authorities for years.

A lot of "what if's" in this case. The most explosive one: Shaw might still be alive today if immigration authorities had a more air-tight system of detecting illegal aliens in the jails.

The chronology goes like this: On Nov. 18, 2007, Espinoza and two of his buddies from the notorious 18th Street gang (the largest criminal street gang in the U.S. if not the world) were - according to one witness - striding through the Syd Kronenthal Park in Culver City, throwing up gang signs; the park is only about ten blocks away from Alsace Street, homefield for the so-called Alsace clique of 18th Street to which Espinoza belonged.

The trio from  18th Street were trying to intimidate park visitors, a typical way for gangbangers to start trying to mark off their turf.

But before the trio could get too obnoxious the police arrived. The gangbangers scattered and Espinoza dumped a .380 Browning semi-automatic into some nearby bushes. Espinoza was arrested and charged with two felonies and one misdemeanor: carrying a loaded firearm; obstructing a police officer (at the police station, Espinoza got into an altercation with the cops) and exhibiting a gun in an angry, threatening manner (Espinoza pulled out a pistol during a brief confrontation with a jogger in the park).

Espinoza did not make bail and was convicted in January on two of the counts and sentenced to 180 days in LA County jail.

On March 1,  Espinoza was released. On March 2, less than 28 hours after being released, he allegedly gunned down Shaw, only steps away from the football star's own house.

Only days after being jailed for Shaw's murder, Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE) put a "hold" on Espinoza after determining he was illegally in the U.S.  This meant that if Espinoza ever beat the Shaw rap, ICE would immediately take him into custody and deport him.

To repeat: if ICE had been at the jailhouse door on March 1 when Espinoza finished serving his time for his Kornenthal Park antics, Jamiel Shaw might be alive today.

What happened? ICE has a "criminal alien program" meant to scoop up deportable aliens when they're being released from jail and promptly ship back to their homelands. When I asked an ICE spokeswoman how this program could have missed Espinoza, she said: "I don't know. The system is not 100 percent."

The failure to spot Espinoza was particularly troubling because of his extensive history of criminal activity. In May 2004 he was arrested for burglary and given a three-year term in a CYA facility. While in CYA, Espinoza was convicted twice of attacking CYA staff and a third time of assaulting a fellow inmate at the Eastlake Juvenile Center. Authorities also heard testimony late last year, in the Kronenthal Park matter, that Espinoza had been an 18th Street gangmember since he was 12.

A copy of the story I did on this angle to the Jamiel Shaw tragedy can be seen on this same website; it aired Friday night, 3/21/08.

The phrase “dance of the lemons” got some air-time this week. It was used by an attorney for the 13-year-old girl, allegedly raped by Steve Rooney, 39, the assistant principal at Markham Middle School in Watts where the girl attended school.

The phrase refers to the alleged tendency of LA school district brass to rotate (“dance”) their most questionable human resources into the district’s toughest schools.

Not to toot my horn too much but it was Fox 11 News (producer Dan Leighton View Blogand myself) that broke the story that Rooney was also investigated in 2007 in connection with allegations he had sexual relations with another underage girl – this one a student Foshay Learning Center. Rooney met this girl at Foshay where he taught health and life skills classes. Their alleged affair did not begin – Fox 11 News was told – until later, when was promoted to an assistant principal job at Fremont High School.

When his alleged affair with the Foshay student was discovered and investigated by the LAPD, Rooney’s employer, the LA Unified School District, placed him on administrative leave. But when the girl ultimately refused to cooperate with police (who were investigating Rooney for statutory rape) and no charges were filed against him, Rooney was put back to work and transferred from Fremont to Markham.

It was at Markham that Rooney met the 2nd girl – a recent immigrant from El Salvador; during a court hearing this week, on the rape charges, I reported that the charges included allegations Rooney sexually fondled the same 13-year-old girl in his office, at school, during school hours just days before the incident where he allegedly raped her.

 Now Markham is a struggling school, in the heart of Watts, where rival gangs like the Grape St. Crips and Bounty Hunters fester in local public housing projects. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo a year ago took the unusual step of assigning prosecutors to work at the Markham campus with parents and school officials to break the cycle of gang violence and the recruitment of 12- and 13-year-old kids into the local gangs.

The “lemons” issue is this: critics claim LAUSD puts its most damaged resources – teachers, administrators, etc. – in its toughest schools where they won't upset the "good" kids and families. Another way of looking at it, the district puts the employees it can’t fire  into the toughest schools in order to get them to quit.

If this is what's happening,  the real losers are the kids.

By the way, don't try to get LA Unified to explain what's going on. It steadfastly blocks questions about its handling of Rooney over the past year, citing confidentiality rules.

When I started looking into this story I went to school district headquarters, signed in at the security desk (with my cameraman, with his large camera) and went to the 24th floor to meet – unannounced – with the district’s spokesperson. When we found the right office, the receptionist was irritated as heck that we’d managed to get by security. In fact, in our presence she called security at the front desk to reprimand them for letting us into the building without an appointment. I think we made it clear we’d make a stink if she tried to throw us out so we stayed until a PR person finally arrived to tell us – no comment.

LA Unified is a public agency, using billions of tax dollars, its bosses elected by the public, its affairs governed by the Brown Act (open meeting act), its records subject to the state Public Records Act. But it doesn’t always act like it.