The Show Pony and The Pilotfish,
How Eric Garcetti and Mike Bonin Made Most of LA Hate Them.
*Any views expressed in this article are the writers and the writers alone, any quotes or passages attributed to other people or sources are denoted in quotations and are stand-alone only used by the author in this specific context to illustrate his assertions. Medium bears no responsibility for the content therein.*
When it was announced Eric Garcetti had been tapped to be the next ambassador of India, Los Angeles erupted with joy. It was like if your birthday was on the day prohibition ended, and that day randomly fell on a Lakers three-peat (again).
But not everyone was so happy. Three groups of people were very unhappy. The developers, large corporate lobbyists and Mike (the pilotfish) Bonin.
The Corporate interests and developers are unhappy because they have been throwing money at Garcetti via the designer slush fund Garcetti created (The Mayors Fund) to finance ‘off book’ projects. Garcetti thought it would help build his political reputation and satisfy his ambitions. But his exile to India means all of the bribes….er….donations and the favors owed to the individuals and corporations who made them, aren’t of much value.
And I use the word “exile” because someone on the fast track to the presidency 5 years earlier, then being “appointed” by your boss (President Biden) to a different hemisphere, isn’t so he can get foreign affairs experience. It’s to hide him.
No ones goes to India for an extended trip to increase their US visibility.
DNC was so unhappy with him they sent him to tomorrow.
Mike Bonin has a different problem. He had gone all-in on Garcetti and when Garcetti was given an “opportunity” to go to a different hemisphere, Bonin became a man without a country. So to speak.
“Who’s Mike Bonin and why do I care?”
Glad you asked…..
Mike Bonin is the LA City Council member who oversees the 11th district. The 11th is what is known as West Los Angeles, Brentwood, Venice, Topanga Canyon, LAX, etc, are all in his domain.
There are many, many problems with Mike’s work as a councilman but no one wants this to be as long as it could be, so I will only highlight a few.
But first, let me get a couple of things out of the way and get you up to speed;
- Mike Bonin the Councilman is not related to William Bonin the serial killer.
- The July 13th, 2021 recall to remove Bonin was the 2nd such attempt this term. The first attempt was for totally different reasons. He’s clearly having an impact on his district to motivate people for change. I don’t think our wanting to change him out for an empty chair was his goal, but so be it.
- Mike took over for beloved City Councilman Bill Rosendahl. Mike was his #2, when it was found out Bill had a terminal illness. Bill was so popular, Mike was going to win by association.
In 2017 he won a 5 and half year term. Due to a change in schedule, he got an extra year in office for the price of 1 election. And he hit the ground running……Running to his boy, Mayor Eric Garcetti to see if he needed anything…A foot rub, a latte or maybe a place to house twice the homeless people any other district was accepting.
Although Garcetti is a democrat, Bonin is technically bi-partisan. And I’d say he truly is a mix of both parties. He pushes whatever democratic agenda point the Mayor or any other DNC type wants, yet he completely ignores the people who voted for him, working tirelessly to undermine their wants as the current republican party does. He is involved in some financial shenanigans but that really is both parties to a certain degree.
When he won this 5.5 year super term he immediately started to implement what I call, the…..
MIKE BONIN TRIPLE “A” PLAN FOR LONG TERM SUCCESS
5 years ago Garcetti was a hot up and comer in the democratic party. People weren’t talking “Governor”, they weren’t saying, “Senator”, they were thinking, “President Garcetti”. And Mike is a solid behind-the-scenes guy who really does not care about the people or what the voters want. IE he’s a great fixer/#2/henchman, and unlike Garcetti, he can’t fake it.
At a Venice town hall I was at a couple of years ago, Bonin was boo’d mercilessly when the disheveled councilman had the mic and the floor. He handled the horrible reception like a pissy child who didnt understand that his actions and those of his office caused the reaction we gave him. Garcetti grabbed the mic from Mike and in a perfectly tailored suit smiled and lied through his teeth. But he was smooth.
Garcetti either didnt realize or care we all had a LA Times printout discussing how his Bridge Housing Plan was $50 million over budget. Garcetti smiled and talked about the $20 million the city had allocated and how proud he was. It was jaw-dropping. Ironically, he was still better received than Bonin.
A normal person in that situation stops and says to himself, “Maybe I need to do a better job or at least not try to bulldoze and bullshit these people”. “Maybe I should tone down my quest to rent a room on Garcetti’s coattails”. A “plan B” if you will. Or at least pretend to care and not react like a petulant victim.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I voted for this weasel and within a few months I heard grumblings of friends having an issue here, being ignored there, then the Venice Bike Lanes happened.
*If you would like great detail on the bike lanes to a granular level, read my piece on Garcetti linked at the bottom of this*
For less than a mile in the middle of Venice Blvd’s corridor (artery serving 50k cars a day) these assholes decided to reduce traffic to 2 lanes from 3 and put in a bike lane. Bike lanes are fine, but you don’t increase greenhouse gases (the reduction in lanes caused an avg. of 2 minutes added, each way, to commute times) by reducing a lane that is necessary for commuters. Also, you generally don’t put them on a road that has 50,000 cars a day either. Maybe the few bicyclists who use the path are a little safer for the less than a mile it extends, but the bottleneck and air quality alone makes riding a block over a better idea.
Bike lanes require a few things to be useful.
#1 Bicyclists who want to go where the path goes.
#2 A safety advantage vs other possible bike routes.
Is the actual lane area now safer? Well, if you factor in you have to get to it, maybe slightly but you still have to get to Venice blvd and it’s just not a bike-friendly area. I think the speed limit is 45MPH but it’s not unusual to see cars reach 55MPH or 60MPH under normal circumstances.
It also made going to the locally owned shops along that stretch far more difficult. This was why the RECALL BONIN chant started the first time. I still have my RECALL BONIN shirt. Did I mention earlier that was the 2nd recall movement this term? And the two recalls were formed for completely different reasons, by completely different groups? It’s basically impossible to recall a city councilman.
Let me explain…
You need 15% of the district’s registered voters to sign a petition. The 11th district has 174k voters so we needed 26k (or so) to force a recall vote. But this isn’t Trump vs Biden, it’s an attempt to recall someone who won with only 31k votes, to begin with. He was only able to generate 31k votes and spent $432k to get those votes. Or $13 a vote.
I dont remember the exact number but some polling company offered to get the 26k signatures necessary to have the special election, for an amount exceeding $100k. Then they have to march someone out to run against him for probably another $400k and because he’s Garcetti’s bitch and Garcetti has also sold out LA to corporate interest, fundraising would be difficult. Also, Garcetti wasn’t getting real scrutiny at that point. He was popular enough that getting his Pilotfish thrown out was going to be a tough deal.
As I said, recalls are near impossible under the most obvious of circumstances and this one died. Coincidently, so has over half of the businesses along the stretch where the bike lanes are. Then some other new businesses opened, then closed.
Bonin had the nuts to put out a self-congratulatory promo email talking about the great success and “all the new businesses in the corridor”.
And no one uses the bike lanes. Never have, most likely never will.
Of course, the first recall was early. He hadn’t gone all-in on destroying the westside yet. That would come when Garcetti’s worst mistake, The Bridge Housing Disaster would be forced upon an unwilling city.
It’s hard not to write 2000 words (again) when discussing something so initially idiotic, so filled with incompetence and lies all wrapped in execution reminiscent of 9 big clowns trying to change a tire. Garcetti’s plan to fix the homeless situation in LA, the Bridge Housing plan will be considered as one the biggest political mistakes in modern politics.
*If you would like great detail on Bridge Housing to a granular level, read my piece in Garcetti linked at the bottom of this*
I’ll cut to the chase, it didnt work and they spent $200,000,000. Which is a tidy sum for the situation to have gotten worse, not better. And I don’t think anyone would say otherwise.
BONIN’S RISE
He was already all up in the mayor’s world, in 2014 Mayor Eric Garcetti actually performed marriage services for Bonin and his (now) husband Sean Arian. Not be his best man, he actually had him perform the ceremony. So there was a relationship in place.
Bonin went to Harvard, he’s not dumb. Garcetti was the Show Pony and the DNC was looking at him to help the party going forward. Bonin was the grifter-y guy in the shadows doing the dirty work to keep the face clean. Not sure thats how he self-identifies but it feels pretty obvious. And his actions confirm it with every decision.
From the moment he won the council seat he turned his back on his district only to focus on all things Garcetti. And there is a laundry list, but the big one was the Bridge Housing situation.
Now before you start saying we are “NIMBY’s”, let me point out a few things.
Venice has a history of counter-culture acceptance and of taking care of our own backyard. In the 90’s when gangs turned the VENICE BOARDWALK onto a crime-filled drug store every night, a group went to the picnic tables where the gangs hung out and destroyed them with sledgehammers. The “vandalism” prompted the area to be cleaned up and sent a crystal clear message to those causing the problems.
Venice is an actual community and over my 30 years in the area, I’ve seen the residents organize formally and informally to fix or react to things hurting the area. It’s one of the only parts of LA where you’ll see people hanging out and talking despite economic or social class.
It isn’t just Garcetti that has created the illegal campground/drug supermarket/rat sanctuary we now have. A civil rights attorney (I used to think they were the good guys) Carol Sobel who lined her pockets by suing the city is also partially to blame for a lack of policing. The police don’t enforce long-standing campground laws because they have been told to “back off”. One policeman, I asked about the lack of arrests and tents under the “NO CAMPING” signs said, “message to Back Off comes from the top”.
Garcetti has held up a very (unrealistically so) sympathetic version of the homeless. In my Garcetti piece, I outline the LA City data that speaks to (by %) the homeless population as mostly drug addicts or sufferers of mental illness and less than 20% being the “mom with 2 kids” who need help.
These things were said over and over to Garcetti and Bonin’s offices. I said them to both Bonin’s and Garcetti’s offices personally. I would leave a phone message with Garcetti’s every morning while driving to work for a period of months at one point. Garcetti was getting so many complaints he added a person to just answer that phone and listen to people bitch.
But Bonin’s office, unlike Rosendahl’s, was indifferent and annoyed I had an opinion. They wanted me to go away. They would argue, act smug and like Mike Bonin himself, exert a generally petulant attitude to the voters THEY SERVED.
They could have that attitude as Bonin wasn’t running anymore. He was going to ride the SHOW PONY to the white house. Becoming his Karl Rove of sorts. That was his future, that was his plan.
When Bonin (native of Massachusetts) started offering the LA Beaches (a treasured part of LA for Californians) up as a homeless shelter for the aforementioned camping and drug sales, we were pretty pissed.
Then when he wanted to offer us up to take more homeless than any other district with a larger capacity Bridge Housing Shelter (of course we also have some of the least accessible public transit making getting a job outside of the area nearly impossible — way to think it out assholes) he was effectively driving his political career in his district off a cliff.
You also have the economic damage done by Bonin and the influx of crime, reduced safety. Taking an important tourist area (Venice Beach is a tourist area, brings in millions every year) and making it less safe for residents, tourists, and the homeless.
A few bullet points from the Venice Chamber of Commerce report.
- Venice Beach is the 2nd-largest tourist attraction in Southern California after Disneyland
- There were 10 million visitors in 2015; the largest proportion of visitors were between the ages of 25 and 34
- 62% of visitors have an average income over $50,000
- 43.8% of visitors are from areas outside of Los Angeles County and Southern California
- The first documented surfing demonstration in California was held off Venice Beach by George Freeth in 1907
- Venice is the birthplace of modern progressive skateboarding, as celebrated in the documentary film “Dogtown and Z-Boys” and Sony Pictures’ “The Lords of Dogtown.”
Pretty cool right? Oh, wait, allowing the entire boardwalk to stink of bum urine is actually bad for tourism. Ever seen a 40-year-old man with 8 teeth wearing a Heal The Bay t-shirt drink a gallon of mouthwash?
*he may have had more than 8 teeth, but the rest was real*
That’s not really funny but neither is a 50-year-old woman walking around covered in filth, (doubt she has showered in years, wish that was a joke) yelling random shit at a merciless god instead of being stabilized with medication she desperately needs. She is not dangerous as far as I can tell. She is so filthy she could be 28 or 58 I have no idea. She needs real help, Garcetti and Bonin have spent $200million on the homeless and I’m sure she’s screaming at a duck in the canals right now. If the god she is yelling at were merciful, Garcetti would be taking tickets at a carnival in Fresno and Mike Bonin would be cleaning bear cages.
That woman is very real, totally unapproachable, and a million miles from rational. She needs help. It’s horribly sad. When you hear people say, “a society is judged by how they treat those in the greatest need”, I think of the Bonin petulance, Garcetti’s lies and the $200,000,000.00 they spent and that woman wandering around.
WHEN THE PLAN FAILS
When Garcetti was officially cast-off to the other side of the world, Bonin had a huge problem. Attache to the Ambassador to India doesn’t pay like City Councilman so Mike started raising money.
Because he thinks he can win again.
Within a week the 2nd RECALL BONIN campaign popped up. Yeah, there is only a little over a year left, but impeaching Trump with a month left made sense, and so does this.
If nothing else the district will be littered with RECALL BONIN stands and those who don’t know can be brought up to speed so they don’t flip a coin or just “vote for the incumbent”.
THE FINAL STRAW
I had been vacillating as to whether I should do this story or not. I already took a look at Garcetti that seemed helpful to compile the information into 1 document, and you can see the overlap.
But then my boy Bonin gave me this little bit of encouragement.
Mike’s statement after hearing about the 2nd recall.
“This latest attempt at a recall campaign is an extravagant waste of taxpayer money, a thinly disguised attempt to derail my efforts to provide real solutions to our homelessness crisis, and the latest in a series of recall attempts to silence strong progressive voices.
A recall election held right before regularly scheduled city elections would be a waste of millions of dollars of taxpayer money — dollars that could be better invested in addressing our homelessness crisis and providing essential services to help families and improve neighborhoods.
This effort is encouraged, backed and fueled by people who have repeatedly fought to stop housing, shelter, and services, perpetuating a crisis that is hurting our neighborhoods and leaving people to die on the streets.
And make no mistake — this recall has been championed and promoted by the same right-wing forces that are trying to erode the democratic process and take down progressive officials around the state.
No matter what they throw at me, I will not be deterred in my efforts to tackle our toughest problems, and will keep pushing for the big and progressive change that LA needs and deserves.”
My response,
You gaslighting piece of shit. The reason we (the rank and file voters of your district) are organizing to throw your ass out of LA (hopefully out of the state) is because of the morally incompetent effort you have done on our behalf.
You are so horrible that we would rather have an empty chair at the city council meetings than you working against our interests.
What the fuck do you know about wasting money? You and the Show Pony are now spending $200,000,000 annually on the homeless and accomplishing less than nothing as it has gotten worse. Crime is worse, the tourist economy has taken a beating, and we log more hours in our cars destroying the environment directly because of your fucking “road diets”.
When you lose the election and are cleaning out your office, feel free to hit me up on Twitter as I will happily carry boxes to the U-Haul taking you away from my city.
Love,
LDE
There are “Anyone but Bonin” signs everywhere, and it’s not Charles Koch or Peter Thiel printing them, it’s the predominantly democratic people who have paid attention to his bullshit for 8 years.
THEN WE HAVE THIS
I maybe should put the disclaimer in again before this next part.
*Any views expressed in this article are the writers and the writers alone, any quotes or passages attributed to other people or sources are denoted in quotations and are stand-alone only used by the author in this specific context to illustrate his assertions. Medium bears no responsibility for the content therein.*
……..LASTLY……. I have something else I stumbled across. And there are dots here that I can not connect without some additional info I just can’t access. And I have to say, part of the following actions I’m going to talk about I support unequivocally. So I’m just going to put the info I have on the table and you can do more research, piece together whatever you like. Because I’m not passing judgment. I will provide a theory but I stress IT IS JUST A THEORY ONLY SUPPORTED BY CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE at best.
Some odd stuff I came across.
Garcetti’s Mayor’s fund is explained in detail in the Garcetti piece, but it’s a sketchy, off-the-books “philanthropic” slush fund.
The fund gives money to a lot of programs around LA but they don’t make a comprehensive list of how the money is spent available for public consumption. Nor do they disclose who (what large corporate interest) donated the money completely.
If you were a negative person you could say it’s a “Philanthropic bribery network assembled by Garcetti designed to circumvent ethics laws”.
Remember this? From Mike Bonin’s Wikipedia:
Bonin lives in Mar Vista with his husband, Sean Arian, whom he married in the summer of 2014. Mayor Eric Garcetti performed the wedding ceremony.
I think it’s safe to say Bonin, Arian, and Garcetti have a personal relationship as I mentioned earlier.
I can’t find out to what extent though. They are friends and that aspect of public life should be private, I support that. However, the obvious relationship can raise suspicions when you read some associated financials of Mike’s husband’s non-profit.
https://LA-tech.org is a non-profit that works in concert with Garcetti’s agenda. Mike Bonin’s husband is its Executive Director.
This is their 990 financial statement form 2019.
https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2019/364/855/2019-364855596-202023219349323042-9.pdf
A FEW HIGHLIGHTS
Part 1, LINE 8
CONTRIBUTIONS AND GRANTS — $230,000
PART 1, LINE 15
TOTAL COMPENSATION AND SALARIES — $94,800
PART 3, 4e
TOTAL PROGRAM SERVICE EXPENSES — $12,189
SCHEDULE B, PART 1
CONTRIBUTORS — RESTRICTED
PART 7, SECTION A
Lines 1 through 8 have a name on them then where it says “COMPENSATION” there is a zero.
PART 7, SECTION A, Line #9
SEAN ARIAN, “COMPENSATION” = $94,800.
Ex-fucking-scuse me!!!!!???
Maybe he’s just that much better than the people on lines 1–8 that he deserves almost $100,000 a year and no one else makes a disclosable amount.
The best part, gross donations are $230,000.
He made 41% of what they brought in in 2019. The entire expenses that year were $107,169.00.
Or 88% of the total expenses that year went to Arian’s household. Arian’s spouse is of course, Mike Bonin. Maybe that’s normal for a 501ce charity, I’ll admit I don’t comb charity disclosures for a living, but it feels excessive.
What is the core of the charity you ask? What do they do to help the city? They get internships at tech companies for underprivileged kids. Mike Bonin’s husband makes almost $95k for operating a bulletin board. And it’s a bulletin board that a more established organization, (UNITE-LA) which has been around much longer and is better funded, was already doing.
UNITE-LA (which has been around since the late 90’s) has a more comprehensive focus with a broader reach to facilitate more assistance to the community. They are also better funded.
LA-tech.org glorifies the relationship with the larger organization with UNITE’s logo prominently displayed on their website. As well as ERIC GARCETTI’s logo. While Unite-LA has almost no mention of the partnership with LA-Tech.org. I would call it a “passing reference” deep in a paragraph about “LA-Tech.org assists with internships”. I paraphrased, but that’s pretty close.
Both however have the MAYOR GARCETTI stamp on their site.
***** BEGIN RANT
I do want to point out that last year one of the adjustments LATECH.org made was to support local food dispersal organizations. I know they gave $100,000.00 to HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES.
You may not be aware of HOMEBOY but it is truly a jewel of Los Angeles. A restaurant and catering company staffed entirely by former prisoners and former gang members.
If you are reading this for free, please send them $2 or more right now, I give credit where credit is due and if Mike Bonin said he was giving 100% of his matching campaign funds to HOMEBOY I’d pull this down and burn it.
HOMEBOY makes LA better.
https://homeboyindustries.org/
I applaud this donation no matter how it came about.
************end rant
“Why are you going on about Bonin’s husband’s job, why do I care?
The LA MAYOR’S FUND, the philanthropic fund of money extorted by the mayor from large corporations (primarily) that is outside the scrutiny of the ethics laws and standards, also uses the laws and employs extreme secrecy to do god knows what.
FROM THE LA TIMES
May 21st, 2021
In required filings with the city’s Ethics Commission, Garcetti’s office reported that a $3-million donation requested by the mayor came into the Mayor’s Fund in December. An undisclosed account holder made the gift through a donor-advised fund overseen by Bessemer Trust, a wealth management firm.
It’s a legalized circumvention of every law we have ever passed to prevent bribery. They take money from companies the Mayor “solicits” through a legal process called “Behest payments”. Some of these have pending deals with the city so sticky they COULD NOT DONATE TO GARCETTI’S CAMPAIGN.
Given they cycled through over fifty million dollars in 2020 ($50,000,000.00) and the ‘Show Pony’ was all about attacking corruption during his last election, you’d think a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity (he established, generates donations for and bears his title) would be extra, extra transparent if run by Mr. Anti-big Business Mayor…..but nope.
AGAIN, WHERE ARE YOU GOING WITH ALL THIS?
Here are the organization’s financials from 2014 to 2010.
https://mayorsfundla.org/financials/
You’ll notice an absence of Donor information. They are audited “independently” but the results don’t shed a ton of light on things. If a donor doesn’t want their name out there, I get that. Unless the charity is closely associated with an elected official. Then it’s shady. Whether intentionally shady or not, giving money to an elected official off books is bad.
This is all compounded by a Koch Financial Network style (I did a piece on this as well, I’ll link it at the bottom) labyrinth with multiple charities and sub charities that filter all kinds of money, all kinds of places.
I have called and emailed as of now, no response from the Mayor’s fund or Latech.org.
I want to ask either or both one question:
How much of the operating budget of the charity that brought $94,800 into the household of Mike Bonin comes directly or indirectly through the LA Mayor’s fund?
And if the answer is, ZERO. Then I will put a gigantic ASTRIX on this piece as fast as I can, at the very top.
They have a series off shooting organizations they seem to have established or funded significantly over the last few years. Because of the political dark money disclosure laws Charles Koch destroyed in 2012, all these networks of money flow unimpeded by scrutiny.
They call the relationships “partnerships”, or “programs” and they don’t take full responsibility over the money once the sub charity or organization gets their hands on it. But there is nothing stopping the Mayor’s fund from dictating how part or all of the money is subcontracted, again just like the Koch Fund.
For all I know la-tech.org ground away selling t-shirts and washing cars to generate the $230k they took in in 2019.
I’m not saying anything illegal, immoral or inappropriate has happened. However, it’s hard to raise money and latech.org is missing one thing I saw on every other charity website I looked at. And doing the research for this I looked at least 50….. the absence has perplexed me.
A “donate” button.
The only reason you don’t have a donations button is you aren’t that concerned with donations. I hate to have to envoke Occams razor, but what charity in the history of tax-exempt status isn’t perpetually worried about donations?
For instance, at the top of the home page for the LA MAYOR’S FUND.
Lastly, if I am wrong, have made a research mistake or blew any aspect of this story, please correct me. I will wait patiently to add Astrix’s and accept the humiliation of posting something with inaccurate info. Just put it in the comments.
FOOTNOTES and LINKS
The Garcetti piece
(note sighting my own work to verify accusations, it offers more in-depth explanations and I footnote important points made in the story)
Koch Brothers Piece
(note sighting my own work to verify accusations, it offers more in-depth explanations and I footnote important points made in the story)
LA Times article referenced
https://la-tech.org/ourmission
https://ballotpedia.org/Mike_Bonin
Cal matters
https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/07/california-nonprofits-politicians-disclose/
https://mayorsfundla.org/programs/
990 for LA-tech.org (2019)
https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2019/364/855/2019-364855596-202023219349323042-9.pdf
990 for UNITE-LA (2019)
