Calling Michael Shane Ellis a good-for-nothing, drinking-and-driving, hitting-and-running, all-around no account member of the Long Beach school board is simply not right. Not anymore. Not the good-for-nothing part, anyway.
A month after the re-election of two school board incumbents supported by the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, the organization’s CEO and president acknowledges that Ellis’s [...]

A Press-Telegram editorial reveals that the paper’s editorial board supports the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce effort to recall troubled and controversial school board member Michael Shane Ellis. No surprise there.
But with a simple, parenthetical sentence the P-T also acknowledges that a member of its editorial board, publisher Dave Kuta, is also a Chamber board [...]

Josh Lowenthal, a thus-far-private citizen from Long Beach’s most-prominent political family, has been contacted by top officials of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce about running for the Board of Education seat that may soon be vacated by the Chamber’s effort to recall Michael Shane Ellis.
Altogether now: “What th–?!?”
“We sat down with Josh,” confirms Randy Gordon, [...]

FROM LBREPORT.COM:Robert Garcia, who has been positioning himself for a likely run for the Long Beach City Council since he lost his job as an aide to former council member and failed mayoral candidate Frank Colonna in 2006, has been operating a local news website for nearly a year without a Long Beach business license, [...]

Breaking with its history of official neutrality, the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce will endorse and fund candidates in 2008 races for seats on the School Board — and may do so in City Council campaigns, too.
Randy Gordon, the Chamber’s president and CEO, confirmed the organization’s change in philosophy Tuesday night while speaking at the Beer [...]

PUBLISHER DAVE KUTA SITS ON PAPER’S EDITORIAL BOARD AND CHAMBER’S BOARD OF DIRECTORS
In the latest in a series of editorials supporting the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce’s battles to overturn two ordinances intended to protect working people, the Press-Telegram today celebrates the City Council’s decision to repeal them. Nothing surprising there–the Press-Telegram editorials almost [...]