"So Now What Hotshot..."

A fictional description of the next stage after the Mahan deluge. Last of the series from the weekend. Hope you enjoyed.

The Consultant woke up the holiday morning feeling better than he had all weekend. The fog was starting to recede. Friday was difficult. He needed an answer. Saturday he read the piece from “Altadena,” as he now called him. By Sunday, a Plan was taking shape.

Now, he needed to get his intel. Who is Altadena? Friend? Foe? Something else? In politics, you are always skeptical. He had good information, he was effective it seems based on the Substack, but how much of it is true, or the typical “stealing someone else’s success” as is common in politics.

He had it, finally. The e-mail arrived this morning.

He asked his connections in DC and LA whether “Altadena,” was legit.

Before he made the call, he needed to know what was available. He was ready to go Tuesday and discuss his “Plan,” or the thumbnails, but “Altadena” might be a part of it. He needed to understand him more before putting his faith in these ideas resonating from down there.

The background was promising.

DC fights. Legal precedents set. Opposition to a very politically connected group, one which lived in the “Second Dimension” as Altadena called it, and won. It was the first time in 80 years anyone beat them, no small feat. He led counter attacks to keep pressure on them. He went after them so differently than anyone had in the past.

Fits with what he had seen in the Substack.

“First time anyone hit them the way he did,” with a “pragmatic alternative to their way of doing business,” was what he was told.

The opposition in his case got legislation through to undermine the win he worked for, but not without a lot of heart ache and “a carve out” for Altadena’s clients.

He knows the knife fights which is good.

“Altadena” had, “bipartisan respect too in House and Senate,” from what his sources said. So, he knows the Game and speaks from experience.

The e-mail continued.

“Altadena” was asked to “look into” the West LA VA Homeless Housing project.

The Consultant knew about it from his days with Feinstein and in the Obama Administration. That project has been around forever.

He knew it was a deal for LIHTCs.

“Altadena” asked, allegedly, “why not use an economic development play to ‘enhance’ the scope of the project and employ the people being housed with workforce development?” Interesting take.

Once again, people were “rocked back-” a theme he recognized.

Then Workforce Development and the CJF Program. He researched and wrote up the “financial strategies” for the LA region, looking at how to capture Community Reinvestment Act dollars in a security to “invest” instead of “loan.”

“Smart shift,” he thought, “a missing middle.”

“Loans are much more expensive than policy people realize,” regardless of the interest rate, he knew.

The summary, Altadena is not a “one trick pony,” as they say.

Disruptive in the right ways.

He continued down the e-mail.

When the fires hit, Altadena got involved with finding the “new way to finance the rebuild” considering there were going to be changes with Trump II.

Money was needed. He worked with his Assemblyman to get AB 797 drafted. They wanted to “stabilize the land values, and flatten the ‘U’.”

The Governor vetoed it. Egos.

“He wanted to stick it to Trump,” thought the Consultant.

Still, he wrote legislation that got to Gavin’s desk, not a small feat.

It fit.

Bipartisan support. Pragmatic solutions. Democratic Donor. What was he missing?

He is a bit of a “wild card” it was said, but right now, we need something different.

Now comes the hard part- should he reach out to Altadena?

He saw his Plan shaping up.

Combine “Altadena’s” ideas with our resources and access.

“Altadena” sees the Game different.

His CDBG-DR push shows how he thinks the process could be done better, bypassing the usual “groups.” His EDA solution did in fact “rock people back,” and made them think, from his sources.

His “triangulation” moreover, with the Labor/Education/Healthcare push for solving the BTA was “intriguing.”

What are the “unknown unknowns” at this point?

His bosses need something different. Altadena was different.

He thought about his clients and “The Group” as well.

They are the “Masters of the Universe.”

They unleash tremendous disruptive forces with their changes.

The 1990s and the Internet. Now AI.

He thought of that scene from the movie the Social Network where Sean Parker was leaving that sushi restaurant after meeting Zuckerberg. Commenting on the change Napster brought- “have you walked into a Tower Records lately?”

It encapsulated the arrogance of the industry perfectly in one quippy line. Change is uncomfortable for the masses, but these guys lived on the edge of change, they felt it was their job, their destiny.

They needed to understand the emotions they unleashed and think differently. With great power comes great responsibility, he thought. They understood the first part, not the second.

They tried though.

They tried to buy the penance with their social causes, culminating in “effective altruism.”

He sighed at the term.

What they did was create a “Frankenstein,” as “Altadena” called it. True.

The causes they seeded are now lined up against what their funders stood for- one of life’s ironies. Altadena understood it. “A revolution” as “Altadena” wrote.

Lurie worked but “scaling him” has been harder than expected. We thought he was the beginning. Instead of momentum, we ran into those walls we had throughout.

The rules were seemingly stacked against them, something they could not handle. They “blew up the rules” in their minds, yet things are immovable here.

They just cannot get there.

He was thinking it is the roots of the success of Silicon Valley. They needed to marry those successes with politics, but how?

There is “a pressure” needed, forcing a level of creativity nobody can script.

Is it money? The hunger can leave when money is introduced. Risk is “mitigated.” Advocacy becomes a cause needing its own lifeblood to continue.

Creating something from nothing, doing the impossible, is different when you have more money than you need.

Does the same rule applies to politics? Politics likes to see it as more money creates success, but is it true when making change?

Creative forces are not usually unleashed when you can “buy it.” Look at Steyer? Spending money and what has he gotten for it? The latest in a long line.

A re-creation of the pressure environs were crucial to success now.

“Altadena” seems to function in that world. He seems to see the “new.” He seems to get it.

He, allegedly, “looks for angles and does what nobody else sees.”

We need that now for politics.

The Consultant was smart enough to know the old politician’s trick- do not give them your desired result because, as he has seen with this guy, “you have no idea where he is going to go.”

Let people do their job.

Give them the freedom to see if they can sink or swim.

The Consultant had pulled the New New Thing off his shelf last night.

He was thumbing through it last night. He saw a section he pencil notated years ago.

He loved the description and it aptly fit now.

Lewis wrote in the Preface:

”It is easier to say what the new new thing is not than what it is.”

He continued.

“It is not necessarily a new invention. It is not even necessarily a new idea- most everything has been considered by someone, at some point. The new new thing is a notion that is poised to be taken seriously in the marketplace.”

And then the part which resonated most with the Consultant.

“It’s the idea that is a tiny push away from general acceptance and, when it gets that push, will change the world.”

He was not sure if he was finding the political equivalent of what Lewis was describing, but it felt like that.

Maybe Altadena’s ideas are that “new new thing” for the politics? It is definitely time to do it different.

He did not know what exactly, but he knew he had to satisfy the urge of finding out.

He picked up the phone.

It rang.

“So, now what hotshot,” he thought…