"Let's Fight Corruption in '24" by Daniel Guss
"Let's Fight Corruption in '24" by Daniel Guss
Because LA politicians, governments and most media put their agenda before your needs
Hello, happy new year and welcome back.
It is Year 3 on DanielGuss.Substack.com, a multi-award-winning publication which evolved after a dare from then-LA City Council president Herb Wesson, after a meeting in his office on January 3, 2014.
In order to provide guidance on how to deal with a chaotic, corrupt Los Angeles in 2024, let’s review how we got here.
At that 2014 meeting, I witnessed government corruption up close.
Wesson feigned concern about the only issue about which we spoke.
(Poor conditions at LA Animal Services (LAAS) pounds; reduced hours; no more than one officer in the field for the entire city at any time; the critical lack of free and widely available spay/neuter; and lies about killing healthy, adoptable animals while shilling the delusion of “No Kill” to advance the political aspirations of then-Mayor Eric Garcetti.)
Wesson laid out how he would call for an audit and that he would have then-Councilmember Paul Koretz second his motion, explaining that Koretz couldn’t make the motion because “he needed political cover,” and that then-City Controller Ron Galperin would do the audit.
Wesson instructed me to provide a detailed list of the most important things that needed auditing. Notably, Wesson instructed that my recommendations reference neither his name nor the meeting.
There’s political courage for you!
Later, I discovered that my recommendations were not used to conduct an honest, transparent audit, but rather as a cheat sheet to undermine one.
When Galperin’s bogus and rigged audit was disingenuously exploited by Garcetti as proof that his hiring a dog breeder named Brenda Barnette to run LAAS, and that teaming with Best Friends Animal Society (which refused to acknowledge that it employed Barnette’s daughter) was a success, the local media dutifully celebrated its untruthful, unchecked claims, which later led to the disingenuous claim that Garcetti’s LAAS is “No Kill,” and, hey, Eric Garcetti for presidente!
Wesson later denied what he had promised, which I documented in real time as he promised those things. The date was especially easy to remember because it was a relative’s 50th birthday.
He then made a dare he has probably regretted each day since then.
“Can’t you write about something other than humane issues?”
My reply, “if I do, you’ll probably wind up regretting it.”
Wesson’s response was a self-assured, “don’t worry, Dan. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.”
Here is what Wesson apparently anticipated:
What Wesson wound up getting was this column’s raw and unflinching focus on exposing and amplifying City Hall miscreants, its offshoots, partners and enablers who stack the deck against the rest of us, whether we walk on two, three or four legs, on subjects that now, far more often than not, are not about humane issues.
Wesson, who subsequently lost his race for one of the five LA County Supervisor offices, probably regrets making that dare, as do most in his sphere, including the LAPD, LAFD, City Attorney’s office and, in particular, the Los Angeles Times.
But especially LA City Councilmember Curren Price.
Welcome to 2024
On Monday, Price was arraigned on ten corruption charges filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Unit last June, when the story even made its way to the New York Times.
Demurrer Denied
Before Price entered his long-delayed Not Guilty plea, his lawyers had previously filed a demurrer, or a legal pleading that objects to what the other side is pursuing. Price’s demurrer attempted to persuade the judge to dismiss the DA’s charges. The DA filed its response, a People’s Opposition To the Defendant’s Demurrer.
In the DA’s Opposition, the first two references cited are some of this column’s exclusive (and Herb Wesson-encouraged) reporting from 2017 and 2018 on Price’s alleged crimes, six years before criminal charges were filed, predating citations of the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Daily News, by years.
Price’s demurrer was denied and the DA’s case against him moves forward.
In fact, even after the Times finally wrote about Price’s activities, it continued to give him a highly visible platform to deny them and get re-elected, while this column continued to pore over records in the basements of obscure government buildings to get to the verifiable truth.
That is exactly what the District Attorney’s office did after I explained to it what I had discovered, some of which is identified in the DA’s Opposition document.
As I wrote back in August, “Curren Price is Already in Big Legal Trouble. He Should Be Investigated (Much) Further.”
If not by the District Attorney, then by the IRS, for starters.
If only City Hall had been transparent on humane issues and made a good faith effort to save more lives, prevent more births and improve pound conditions, which are far worse now, as I reported on September 25th, 2023, than they were a decade ago.
About that September 25th story.
As soon as I published the above-linked story back on September 25th, about the DA’s office investigating criminally cruel conditions and a squandered $1 million in donations at LAAS, LA Times reporter Dakota Smith allegedly called a former LAAS veterinarian — for the first time in a year, after she allegedly undid their social media connections — and asked, “are you mad at me?”
Why would a prominent City Hall reporter ask that?
Perhaps because the highly credible veterinarian had allegedly told her — and others — about those hideous conditions long before I wrote about them.
Smith ignored the worst of the worst pound conditions.
She and an LA Times spokesperson did not respond to my inquiries about her alleged question, and the Times subsequent watering-down of the story, largely limiting it to each animal not getting out of their cages on a daily basis for cleaning, recreation and care.
Imagine enabling such a system…
***
As well-documented in this column, other LA agencies have gone out of their way to threaten, interfere with and retaliate for these and other investigations by this column, for which I have repeatedly and successfully sued, and held other wrongdoers accountable, including with the State Bar of California. In fact, more than one former elected official has asked me to get together, where their goal was clear: charm their way to finding out what other corrupt matters may have been discovered.
That’s literally how this endeavor evolved; a bad misjudgment by a powerful politician who protected his own rather than doing the job he was elected, sworn and paid handsomely to do, which was to act solely in the public’s best interest.
Suffering and squander was just their cost of doing business.
So let’s do this to fight LA corruption, abuse and failure in 2024
These efforts aren’t about Curren Price per se, rather against a corrupt system. Fact is, I don’t know him and, in the past seven years, have had just two very brief, polite conversations with him several years apart, totaling perhaps 90-seconds, dotted with courteous hellos and good mornings when we pass one another from time-to-time.
But LA’s corrupt, abusive and retaliatory political / media sphere, with a few exceptions, has resulted in a deadlier, more diseased and worsening Los Angeles.
So if you are privy to undiscovered corruption impacting a great number of Angelenos — that is documented and provable — reach out through this column by subscribing (it’s free) and tell me in fewer than a hundred words (1) what is going on; (2) how to prove it and (3) what proof you have ALREADY documented.
Not every inquiry will result in a column, but much depends on your responses to these three questions, again, in fewer than 100 words. While your anonymity is assured, any story that this column might pursue will then require us to meet.
If you’re not ready to do that, that is okay, but wait until you are ready.
If “Google it,” is your documentation, you’re still not ready.
But you now have someone willing to listen.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)