From CBS Los Angeles:

City agencies have been ordered to calculate what was spent on the Occupy LA protests.

Repairs to City Hall’s lawn where the Occupy group set up camp on Oct. 1 will require an estimated $400,000. The police action to clear out the encampment on Nov. 30 cost more than $700,000.

Additional expenses are attributed to hauling away debris from the camp, and cleaning up graffiti that defaced City Hall marble walls and trees.

Read the rest of the story here.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) – Anti-Wall Street protesters up and down the West Coast are joining an effort to blockade some of the nation’s busiest ports fromAnchorage to San Diego.

Demonstrators are scheduled to gather at 5:30 a.m. to march on the Port of Oakland, which Occupy protesters successfully shut down in November. Marchers expect to descend even earlier on the sprawling port complex spanning Los Angeles and Long Beach as the work day begins. In Portland, Ore., the protest will get under way at 6 a.m.

Occupy groups in Seattle, Tacoma and the Canadian city of Vancouver are also planning blockades.

The protests being billed as action against “Wall Street on the waterfront” are perhaps the Occupy movement’s most dramatic gesture since police raids sent most remaining camps scattering last month. Demonstrators began forming those camps around the country about two months ago to protest what they call corporate greed and economic inequality.

Organizers hope to draw thousands Monday to stand in solidarity with longshoremen and port truckers they say are being exploited.

“Taking on and blocking the 1 percent at the port is also taking on the global issue of exploitation by capitalism,” said Occupy Oakland blockade organizer Barucha Peller.

Read more here.

More than 1,400 police officers, some in riot gear, cleared the Occupy Los Angeles camp early Wednesday, driving protesters from a park around City Hall and arresting more than 200 who defied orders to leave. Similar raids in Philadelphia led to 50 arrests, but the scene in both cities was relatively peaceful.

Police in Los Angeles and Philadelphia moved in on Occupy Wall Street encampments under darkness in an effort to clear out some of the longest-lasting protest sites since crackdowns ended similar occupations across the country.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck praised the officers and the protesters for their restraint and the peaceful way the eviction was carried out.

Officers flooded down the steps of City Hall just after midnight and started dismantling the two-month-old camp two days after a deadline passed for campers to leave the park. Officers in helmets and wielding batons and guns with rubber bullets converged on the park from all directions with military precision and began making arrests after several orders were given to leave.

There were no injuries and no drugs or weapons were found during a search of the emptied camp, which was strewn with trash after the raid. City workers put up concrete barriers to wall off the park while it is restored. As of 5:10 a.m. PST, the park was clear of protesters, said LAPD officer Cleon Joseph.

Read more here.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Police have arrested three people after ordering Occupy Los Angeles protesters to leave a downtown intersection.

The arrests came after hundreds of people gathered in the street after a deadline passed to vacate a City Hall park encampment.

Water bottles were thrown at officers as officers in riot gear started clearing 1st and Main streets just after 5 a.m. Monday.

The police department has been on tactical alert, meaning the late night watch was held over, since midnight.

At 4:50 a.m., police on loudspeakers declared an unlawful assembly and protesters were told to get out of the street within five minutes.

Commanders corralled demonstrations beck to the City Hall park, telling them they won’t be arrested there.

Many tents were dismantled as the deadline loomed.

Read more here.

The one and only Patricia McAllister. Thankfully.

An organizer for #OccupyLA was standing within earshot when McAllister spoke and refused to denounce her remarks. Is it now safe to assume that the Occupy protesters have adopted an anti-Jewish platform?

Of course McAllister isn’t satisfied with the outrage she provoked with her racist remarks.  Now she has targeted the Los Angeles school board:

LomaLindaPatch reports:

“Patricia McAllister, a teacher from the Los Angeles Unified School District, held a sign by the road as drivers honked in solidarity. She was concerned with some of the political issues she had seen on the school board. McAllister has noticed that many of the board members are elected, and as a result they receive campaign donations from charter schools and construction firms, who they steer business towards.

“’This is a conflict of interest,’ McAllister said. ‘They (board members) need to be appointed, not elected.’”

That’s a strange position for her to take, because typically unions prefer elections over appointments because elections are easier to manipulate.  The amount of teachers union campaign cash flowing to current school board members is astounding.

KCET reported in February 2011:

“UTLA’s Political Action Council of Educators (PACE) has spent about $341,000 in the Board of Education race. Nearly 80 percent of the PAC’s money has gone to support incumbent Marguerite LaMotte in the 1st District race. AJ Duffy, president of UTLA, said the union supports LaMotte because ‘she is a true friend of public education and understands that teachers do work hard.’”

Translation: LaMotte supports union interests.  McAllister probably lets LaMotte off the hook because, despite her conflict of interest with the teachers union, at least she’s not a “Zionist Jew!”

McAllister is also going after the dreaded “teacher killers.” She’s been photographed holding a sign that says “Don’t Kill Our Teachers! Who will teach our children?  Pimps & Drug Dealers.”  Another part of the sign reads, “Wall Street is killing America’s teachers.”

So one is left to conclude that the Jews on Wall Street are killing America’s teachers.  You would think we would have heard about that on the news.

Are Los Angeles school officials really so desperate for substitute teachers that they had to hire this hate-filled lowlife?  How many more like her exist in the teaching ranks of Los Angeles and around the country?

Concerned parents and taxpayers everywhere would like to know.

America’s Second City is now first in traffic congestion.

Recently, the Texas Transportation Institute named Chicago the nation’s most congested city, booting perennial congestion king Los Angeles from the dreaded top slot.

And if you think gridlock is bad now, just wait. Turns out Chicago’s official 25-year transportation plan will spend billions, but traffic congestion will get even worse.

Everyone knows that gridlock leads to wasted time and increased stress, but the effects of degraded mobility are worse than most people realize. Traffic congestion deprives job-seekers of opportunities, robs businesses of customers, and hastens the exodus of residents from the central city to the suburbs.

And although mounting gridlock may seem like the unavoidable result of increased population and strained budgets, the experience of nations from France to Australia proves otherwise. Reason Foundation draws on what’s worked worldwide and recommends a three-part plan:

1. Expand roads with underground tunnels and elevated structures.
2. Use pricing to keep traffic flowing.
3. Pay for new projects with private-sector financing instead of taxes.

That plan can help Chicago or any other city bust congestion and boost economic growth.

Approximately 4.30 minutes

Written and produced by Ted Balaker. Field producer: Paul Detrick, Camera: Jim Epstein and Alex Manning.

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Did you hear about Carmageddon? It turns out the apocalyptic shutdown of the nation’s busiest freeway, the 405, wasn’t apocalyptic at all.

Media hyped the billion dollar construction project for weeks, claiming it could “back up traffic as much as 64 miles,” and politicians blunted told constituents, “Stay the hell away from the 405.” But none of the predictions about a Carmageddon came true.

Instead we found politicians ready to sing the praises of the newly added carpool lane and tear down of the Mulholland Bridge. We also found Angelinos skeptical that the project would actually alleviate traffic.

Written and Produced by Paul Detrick.

About 3:30 minutes.

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