Smart, experienced, rich but self-effacing and very humorous — poor Austin Beutner still can’t get no respect from the MSM, the MainStreamMedia.
His speech Thursday launching Town Hall L.A.’s program for mayoral candidates outlined how he would get “Los Angeles back to work” — trade, education/technology, tourism, manufacturing, transportation and small business — six ideas that earned him no more than a short story at the bottom of page three of the second section of the LA Times, a sarcastic put people “to sleep” angle in the LA Weekly and a predictable “talks jobs” headline at LA Observed. (Read the test here, listen to the whole speech here austin-1.mp3 Austin-2.mp3 austin-3.mp3)
The MSM disses Beutner, a $1-a-year jobs czar and deputy mayor brought in by Villaraigosa when his stock hit bottom, as lacking in charisma as if any of the other candidates were any more exciting, as if we aren’t all disappointed and angry over what happened to the city and our neighbohoods and our economy because we let Antonio sweep us off our feet and take us partying seven years ago.
Beutner dealt with the charisma question at the start of his 45-minute speech by saying how happy he was to see the Golden Globes honor “The Artist,” a silent film.
“I’m often not the loudest in the room so it’s encouraging for a guy like me,” he quipped to laughter from the audience.
“But more importantly in the context of Los Angeles, it stands in stark contrast to a city where we hear a lot, we hear about the problems but we don’t see them getting fixed. We hear about failing schools, broken streets, budget deficits, and people out of work. It’s time we started hearing about solutions. It’s time for our government to start solving these problems.”
Beutner offered a lot examples of how to fix a lot of the problems and others showing how lack of leadership at City Hall, lack of urgency, lack of imagination, lack of respect for the public, lack of a commitment to public service have left the city far behind others and chased away the middle class.
In his speech and afterwards fielding questions from the audience and at a press conference, he ducked questions about a lot of specifics on how he would deal with some of the thorniest and most controversial issues like reducing the cost of city pensions and eliminating the budget deficit.
The election is still 14 months away and the City Hall insider candidates revered so highly in the MSM — Garcetti, Greuel and Perry — have had years in office to deal with those issue and failed miserably.
Personally, I’ve got an open mind about Beutner as mayor just as I do my friend talk show host Kevin James, who also is dissed by the MSM as if it is unthinkable that an outsider could win the election against the political hacks.
I didn’t believe it. In the summer of 2008 when Controller Laura Chick thought it impossible to beat Villaraigosa but he wound up getting only 54 percent of the vote nine months later against Walter Moore and Zuma Dogg
Things are changing quickly and these are volatile times that demand real leaders and a citizenry that pays attention and insists on a government that works and works for them.
Getting Los Angeles back to work starts with getting City Hall back to work and anyone who thinks any of the insiders can do that is clearly uninformed or part of the 1 percent who is reaping the benefits of a weak and failing political machine.
