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Monday, March 16, 2009
Economies of Scale:
George Cole in League
with Cudahy
&
The Cudahy Booze
Cruise
"American Democracy looks a
whole lot different in Cudahy"

H OME

The California First
Amendment Coalition
salutes
WATCHOURCITY.COM
with its
2004
B EACON AWARD

See the L.A. Times
Report on
WatchOurCity.com

T erms of Use

A new collection of original short
stories from the editor of
WatchOurCity.com that revives the
Noir Pulp Fiction genre, with a Latino
twist, based on real-life shenanigans at
small-time local city halls where the
public record is stranger than fiction.

The intrigue, the corruption, the
comedy, the incompetence and every
policeman's ultimate fantasy of sex in a
donut shop.

CUT ME IN is a series of riveting stories
of bumbling and deeply flawed
characters - mobsters, fringe players,
petty thieves turned politicians turned
petty thieves - with dark agendas who
betray their honor, and the public's
trust, on a dime's turn; at times
humorous and tragic; redemption is
always around the corner but flees
when tempted by small ambition; rare
moments of truth are discarded like
chump change, all played out over the
background both bleak and colorfully
gritty of a blue-collar immigrant town
in the shadows of the big city, a town
of second chancers, forgotten and
abused, but aching for a comeback...
tales with no moral lessons to
uncover, only everyday political dirty
dealings with the help of one lone
hero, Chucho* and his beloved
low-rider.

The Editor presents:

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California First Amendment Coalition

Monday, March 16, 2009

WatchOurCity

"El Freakaso", Mariachi Vazquez from Denver, Colorado.

WatchOurCity turned 5 years
old on March 13. Gracias.

The L.A. City Beat's Mathew Fleischer got
an education on election day in the city
of Cudahy on how elections are won.
Photo courtesy of L.A. City Beat.

Huntington Park, CA - Winning is everything in politics. How you win doesn't matter. Or
even who you win with, as George Cole clearly demonstrates.

The L.A. Times and L.A. City Beat both report on election shenanigans in the cities of Bell
and Cudahy.

Both the Times and the City Beat, including the L.A. Weekly, have done a fairly good job of
exposing the dirty politics and campaigns as played out in Southeast cities of Bell, Bell
Gardens, Cudahy, Huntington Park, and Maywood.

The Times and City Beat fail to connect the dots on both stories. In the most recent
coverage of Bell and Cudahy elections, both stories make clear the dirty politics played out
in public, but lack the missing link.

By now everyone is keenly aware, from the local Assemblyman's office to the Feds, that
Cudahy is a very special case. The term "official corruption" is too clinically mild a term and
lacks the true depth and breadth of the many tentacled scope of the problem.

"Official corruption" as understood in Cudahy somehow seems like a quaint term. The term
is already fast becoming a norm, a standard baseline and basic reference point.

There is official corruption, then, there is the really hard stuff. It's like the story you would
hear from a drug addict in rehab who starts with beer to get buzzed. Hard liquor follows,
combined with a joint or two. Then that's not enough to get high. So the next step is mild
recreational drugs, ending up totally hooked on cocaine, crack, or crystal meth.

Cudahy is at the crystal meth stage.

Bell, Huntington Park, Maywood and Bell Gardens are at the cocaine level.

These cities are addicts, but have not lost their jobs or their teeth yet; their hygiene is
questionable, and are hooked at the point of no return.

The Times reports that "The region's small cities have repeatedly been the focus of political
corruption prosecutions. Before being cleaned up in the early 2000s, South Gate was
perhaps the most notorious, but politicians have been convicted of misdeeds in Huntington
Park, Lynwood and Bell Gardens. Vernon officials await public corruption trials."

In other words, South Gate is in rehab, but is in danger of relapse due to the close seedy
company it keeps.

The term "official corruption" has lost its shock value. Tragically, it has become the norm.
Everyone operates under the assumption that corruption is rampant. Just some get caught
and some don't, like drug addicts.

So if the baseline in southeast cities is "official corruption", and Cudahy is the crystal meth
of corruption, we'll call it hyper-corruption, then what is George Cole when he partners with
Cudahy to orchestrate one of the dirtiest political campaigns in local history?

One missing link the Times and City Beat missed in their recent reports is that George Cole,
in fact, did orchestrate a political campaign with Cudahy city officials.

Here's how.

On March 3, 2009, WatchOurCity.com posts a report about the Bell elections. On March 4,
the L.A. Times posts a report referencing one particular incident in Bell, the same incident
reported one day before by WatchOurCity.com.

WatchOurCity.com noted:
"Last week Nestor was singled out in a political mailer hit piece sent to voters in Bell. The
negative campaign mailer stated "Stop a corrupt politician", implying that Nestor was a
corrupt politician. Nestor has never held elected office before. Next, the mailer stated "Who
is paying for Nestor Valencia?" and "Nestor Valencia is
supported by big money" of developers.

"The curious thing, exactly the same mailer was sent to voters in Cudahy, same
color scheme, same accusations, even the same pictures of a bulldozer moving
earth, but with candidate pictures swapped out to show pictures instead of Daniel
Cota and Luis Garcia, both council candidates opposing incumbents with shady
histories. Cota and Garcia have had death threats against them, including
published reports in the L.A. Times about harassment and intimidation against
Cota and Garcia by gangsters and thugs, literally, and Molotov cocktails thrown
through windows. Both pieces end with the same quote: "You can't trust Nestor
Valencia" and "You can't trust Cota and Garcia".

"The reasonable conclusion is that the same campaign manager used the same
graphic design template to produce both hit pieces in Bell and Cudahy."

Hector Becerra of the L.A. Times interviews George Cole the day of elections to ask about
hit piece sent against Nestor Valencia.

Dirty is too clean a term to characterize how George Cole ran the elections here.

Becerra's L.A. Times report is titled "Campaigns in Bell and Cudahy Get Ugly - Candidates in
Southeast L.A. County cities are smeared as terrorists and have had their homes and cars
vandalized."

The Times notes that the hit piece against Nestor "...had his picture and big red letters that
read: "Stop a corrupt politician. The ad accused Valencia of failing to file campaign reports
and to disclose campaign contributions, and used a picture of a bulldozer claiming Valencia
was "supported by big money developers who want to take away our homes."

Now here is the kicker. George Cole brazenly admits to the Times that "he paid for that ad,
adding, "I have nothing to hide. I'm proud of it."

The ad in question, the Bell political mailer hit piece against Nestor Valencia is exactly the
same hit piece sent out in Cudahy. The only difference was Nestor's name and picture was
swapped out for two candidates running against the Cudahy machinery. See the hit pieces
here.

The campaign in Bell was the Cocaine addict version, and the one in Cudahy the crystal
meth version.

The drug pusher was the same one in both cases. George Cole, the missing link. George
Cole and George Perez, Cudahy's city manager, are brothers in arms.

Like any Fortune 500 company, or drug cartel, economies of scale also yield bountiful
benefits for local politicos, in the worst kind of way for the public benefit.

George Cole's campaign in City of Bell was combined with Cudahy's to crush any opposition.
If principles of Economics 101 apply to politics, we have complete monopolies here, of the
most brutal kind.

This new status quo baseline permits "locally stable equilibrium corruption levels"*, as in
Bell, Huntington Park and Maywood. Hyper-corruption, as in Cudahy, or previously in South
Gate, could ultimately lead to stifling economic activity, rendering all but dead any public
benefit. The thesis of a equilibrium corruption levels was published in 2001 by professor
Rajesh Chakcrabarti from the Indian School of Business who holds a Ph.D. in Management
from UCLA and Post Graduate Diploma from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management.

WatchOurCity.com has been making the case and demonstrating for the past five years in
report after report that such stable equilibrium in corruption levels is actually the norm in
Southeast cities. The good professor's theory is proven correct without even breaking a
sweat in hard data collection.

This evening, Cole is scheduled to be honored for his many years of public service by the
Huntington Park City Council led by Councilman John Noguez, Rosario Marin's star protege.

*Chakrabarti, Rajesh, Corruption: A General Equilibrium Approach(July 2001). Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=296859 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.296859
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