Wednesday Hotsheet at 3 a.m.
Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email
The former fishwrap of record would rather not publish a story about the density bonus, which will bring more crippling growth to the City, but it will somewhat take note when LAUSD teachers are subordinated to pushing shopping carts around all day. Howard Blume states pluses of minuses of the plan that is all minus for a District that already strips its finest employees of dignity.
There's also something about the property below the Hollywood sign in there, but I'm not even going to link; it's too dumb and too much of a set-up for an expensive City takeover. After Tom LaBonge's Master Plan, he has a lot of nerve talking about protecting Griffith Park. Most of the attitude at Rec and Parks is, "Let's just wait crazy Tom out."
Banks don't want to own your home; that's what everyone seems to forget in the adjustable-rate crisis (btw, my opinion remains that this crisis is being deliberately overblown to give predatory lenders the best possible out, but you're welcome to yours). And sure enough, foreclosure sales are jumping up everywhere as banks spurn holding property altogether or flip and ditch it at the earliest convenience. "In California, the [foreclosure] number jumped to 11.3 percent from 3.7 percent" of the total home sales market.
In the three-card-monte game of a County that Gail GPS Goldberg's San Diego has become, there are some really awful numbers, among the worst in the State in fact: 31 percent of all sales are foreclosures. (Sacto is even higher). If you like what's happened there, get ready for it to happen to LA in a five years. This is what happens when you plan the City at the expense of the region, and don't shape your policy along with the County to control development on the suburban fringes: the banks are obliged to get people into all the unliveable homes your stupid policies have built.
[The reason banks don't want to hold property, in case you were wondering, is simply that money is worth more than property. It seems like a no-brainer when you put it that way, but there it is. Money buys property; property does not buy money. Get out of your SoCal speculator's mindset and think about it for a minute. Most of the problem ARMs have "Power of Sale" clauses written into them, as California is a "non-judicial state"---meaning that it's possible to foreclose without having to go through a Court.]
For about two weeks, I've been skimming blogging.la to read Jason Burns. He gets it---he's responding to the screwed-up City he actually sees, not the imaginary one the local pols and former fishwrap of record insists we're living in, and he's anxious to hold the pols themselves responsible. Among the City's larger blogs that score younger readerships, blogging.la is distinguishing itself on civic issues with eco-friendly Mack Reed, neighborhood guy Will Campbell (both of them are cyclists and also especially good on transportation and Metro issues), and especially with outraged Angeleno Jason Burns.
Posted by Joseph F. Mailander @ 2/13/2008 03:52:00 AM
16 Comments:
"LAUSD teachers reduced to pushing about shopping carts all day." WHAT A BRAINDEAD AND UTTERLY MISLEADING COMMENT.
Finally Charater schools will be "allowed" to move into vacant or underutilized spaces that we've paid for - at a time of declining enrollment and schools having been built in areas with declining enrollment. Meanwhile, charters, which are far more effective and that's why people want them, dummy, have been operating in "storefronts, warehouses, plopped down in parking lots..." GREAT.
That beehive hairdo fellow braindead has-been leftie Julie Korenstein is of course upset about this, saying that "charters can operate out of storefronts," as they have been forced to, not using space in "our" schools.'
The schools belong to TAXPAYERS who want a better education than they've gotten from the teacher- oriented UTLA and blowhards like Korenstein.
It's a state law to make room for charters where available -- so far, teachers' union has refused to do so, acting like they own the schools, and when they designed to let in a charter, it was for a ONE year lease. Great stability for the KIDS of the charters, who are the primary CLIENTS of LAUSD, NOT the teachers.
What a totally backwards commentary that I'd except from the dogg or sam, but expected better from you.
I do however agree that "predatory lenders are being given an easy out," when they made fistfuls of money on this and what did they do with it, blow it like the federal, city and state governments?
We taxpayers shouldn't be made to bail out those who suffered, and now that "suffered" group is being made to include anyone who's in over their heads as part of the natural risks you take when you buy a house.
Where the banks were misleading, THEY should eat their mistakes. IF they go out of business, hey, that's their cost of doing shady busines, like with anything else.
But then, just when you almost made sense about the banks being responsible for their own lending problems, you go and somehow blame it on City government (not coordinating with the County on where to build, which makes no sense, since builders not governmens decide where to build.)
So you start out like a Republican on the banking issue -- what Romney said -- then become a confused Democrat who assumes everything is the fault and brainchild of the local government.
Your first grenade is a total strikeout, the second one so-so, and I'm not even going to tackle the other stuff you lobbed in.
Not enough coffee in that latte so early in the morning?
I always sorta wondered why foreclosure is considered terrible and a last resort for banks.
"Money is worth more than property" makes perfect sense. Now I get it.
Thanks!
That beehive hairdo fellow braindead has-been leftie Julie Korenstein is of course upset about this, saying that "charters can operate out of storefronts," as they have been forced to, not using space in "our" schools.'
Having a beehive hairdo has about the same impact on the truth of an argument as being a lesbian or being born in LA to Mexican parents. My, how easily the righties here would love to deny civil rights.
What are you babbling, moron? If anyone is "denying civil rights" it's the Korensteins of the board, who want kids to study in a storefront because the teachers "own" the schools. READ the post, stupid.
The Charters are actually settling too easily; in other states and cities, the school districts are much more forthcoming about trying to work with them to find space.
As required by law.
But if you want to make a point of it, the beehive hairdo DOES reflect how outdated her lib-fascist views are: neither her hairdo nor the view that teachers own the schools and kids and parents who pay their salaries be damned, have changed since the 70s. And even then, both were hopelessly off.
Thanks for showing how stupid your side is on this on multiple levels.
"In California, the foreclosure number jumped to 11.3 percent from 3.7 percent"
The market is priced for 100% odds of a 50 basis-point cut occurring at the Fed's _March 18 meeting_ and for 32% odds of a 75 basis-point cut, up from Thursday's 24%, according to Miller Tabak's Crescenzi, which has long put emphasis on the macro factors influencing the financial markets.
The Charters are actually settling too easily; in other states and cities, the school districts are much more forthcoming about trying to work with them to find space.
What a Great Society! Pay rent that could go to teachers' salaries in order to put the kids and the teacher in a warehouse or a trailer, and call it "No child left behind"!
I'd say you could put a lot of the teachers into warehouses and trailers instead of the kids who deserve to get the education they're paying for.
You can't seem to grasp the fact that it's the parents of the kids who are paying for the schools, AND the teachers and they've been denied a choice by the tentacles of the UTLA.
The teachers WORK FOR the parents who are the taxpayers. Much of their resistance to Charters, whether Green Dot or not, has been about their salaries, benefits, etc. and nothing to do with the fact that the charters have proved to be much more successful for the kids. Again, because you seem to forget about them in the equation: The kids and parents. Who the teachers are supposed to work for.
Good post JM, but how about this scenario for an international conspiracy concoction.
Since every smooth hand made their taste along the way in the sub prime mortgage scams, and untold numbers of these shaky ass "loans" were sold off in masse to foreign banks or investors (the suckers!), then as you state correctly, the banks don't want the property's they want the jack.
So the foreign investors, who also don't want the house but the long green, pawn off thousands? millions? of homes and property's to other foreign nationals on the cheap (cause the dollar exchange against foreign currency's is so weak) and we have a scenario where a deal is made under pressure from foreign banks and investors in collusion with our current robber baron govt to allow anyone owning USA property to get a pass on a US visa or papers and we end up with all the foreclosures bought up and then lived in by Kuwaiti's or Koreans or rich Iraqi's or Pakistanti's who forclose on the homes and property's
Just a thought and probably not a well thought out one at that but I thought I'd warn you anyhow.
PS: don't show this to Z Dogg I don't want to upset him.
You can't seem to grasp the fact that it's the parents of the kids who are paying for the schools, AND the teachers and they've been denied a choice by the tentacles of the UTLA.
I would agree that the UTLA is the worst organization in the LAUSD---except for all the others.
I can see what happens to charter schools elsewhere: some make a sweetheart deal with a district for underutilized space, and the others have to pay rent. Without a strong union presence, morale erodes. The ones that pay rent soon become worse than public schools.
What a big shell game in the name of nothing---but it makes a few Republicans feel like the invisible hand of the market is at work even while making a few teachers slaves to kids and parents, rather than giving them the dignity they need to accomplish their mission.
Education should not fill a bucket, but light a fire. You don't light fires in trailers and storefronts; you'll burn those cheap places down. Good education has always been part and parcel of turning people into ladies and gentlemen---something that can't happen in a trailer.
LaBonge's karma for the Autry Museum Expansion.
SOME PEOPLE IN L.A. ARE LOSING MORE THAN THEIR HOMES, SOME ARE LOSING THEIR CATALYTIC CONVERTERS AS WELL, as prices of precious metals skyrocket and thieves start targeting an obscure component of automotive exhaust systems in lightning thefts that can be accomplished in less than a minute. Peering inside a used catalytic converter, nothing looks salvageable, much less valuable. But some of the gray gunk in there hides the three expensive precious metals. Converters have only small traces of the platinum, palladium and rhodium — but there’s enough in them for a thief to resell stolen units for up to $200 apiece. Rhodium is among the most expensive metals on Earth, commanding as much as $6,000 an ounce on the open market. Scrap dealers are paying top dollar and they’re getting top dollar. My five o'clock Manhattan...is coming up!
LAUSD spending 100s of millions of our tax dollars trying to educate illegal aliens from mexico and failing miserably. I have an idea; let’s spend our tax money on schools for American citizens and their children
Wouldn't that be a novel idea?
Does the LAUSD actaully know the percentage of LAUSD students who are illegal aliens, is it 40%, 50%, 60%.
Joe,
Another great post. let's get together for sunday brunch and enjoy a bowl of menudo.
Joe, I'm not sure I can follow your last comment about charters and why it's bad for teachers or good for students, but if you look back just a couple of days in the same L A Times section you quote today, you'll find "Secure in Their Studies," about how Markham Middle in Watts has made major strides in safety.
Major strides from a place where of the 1600 population, last year some 300 were suspended for violence and threats to the safety of students or teachers, another 200 for serious insubordination... That's about 1/3 of the whole population. Of KIDS ages 11-14. Even now, if you read the article, many kids feel anything but safe. Despite a major expenditure in the school, hundreds of thousands of dollars for an after-school program, etc.
This doesn't count the educational apathy, truancy and general failure to educate.
And you're blaming parents for not wanting to send their kids to these hellholes? Schools in "better" areas are only marginally better by the middle school level, largely because they're all heavily busing in these kinds of kids, who bring their battle-zone mentalities with them.
Look at even Oxnard -- the shooting in that middle school.
If I were a teacher, I'd seriously consider a little inconvenience or cut in pay if it meant teaching in a safer school, where parents care and give you support and help.
But again, the bottom line is what's best for the kids, and hands down, that's smaller, safer charter schools. (Not in warehouses, but if the Korensteins want to keep the kids there, how could you side with the status quo Board and union?)
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