Priorities Redux
I guess we have to ask again. What are the priorities of the Council and the Mayor? Banning plastic bags? Paternalistic protection of poor people who Jan Perry feels are too stupid to cut down their consumption of Big Macs without government intervention? Gladhanding for Barack Obama? Keeping hosebag Britney Spears safe from paparazzi?In the meantime the real problems continue and yet another child is murdered as a result of gang violence. Crime and violence is getting worse in this city and it's time to do something about it. Without a safe city, no other issues can be succesfully addressed.
Ron Kaye, stop fighting duplexes and take a look how violence is ruining this city especially in places far from your disturbed suburban bliss. It's time to pass Jamiel's Law (as a start) and it's time for the leadership in this city to stop burying their head in the sand and get serious and honest about crime.
Labels: Barack Obama, britney spears, crime, fast food, gangs, Jamiel's Law, jan perry, Los Angeles City Council, mayor antonio villaraigosa, Ron Kaye
Posted by Michael Higby @ 7/25/2008 04:00:00 AM
16 Comments:
Jay Babock says its best. Babcock has long since mentally checked out from the City of Angels.
What prompted the move to Brooklyn?
New York is just a more hospitable environment than L.A. ever has been or will be. L.A. is devolving quickly, and I think I got out in the nick of time. The L.A. Times is imploding, our public radio is terrible, the [L.A.] Weekly’s been devolving for years. Local media’s being run into the ground and I don’t think anybody cares. The public’s dumbed down and poorly educated. L.A. is a psychic death hole to me, and I don’t want a part of that. There are so many impending crises — the political structure, the traffic, the educational system. L.A. is failing worse than ever, and I felt that if I can get out, I should. I found a way out. For a long time now I’ve been going back and forth between L.A. and New York, and every time I got off the plane in L.A. I felt dumber.
http://theguide.latimes.com/blogs/soundboard//2008/07/23/jay-babcock-talks-arthur-magazines-brooklyn-move-la-as-a-psychic-death-hole
When you disembark at LAX and hear Tony Villar welcoming you to "Al-Ay" in his native Choloese dialect, it isn't exactly reassuring.
STILL no mention of the SF Santuary City murderer at the LATimes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/
Who CARES if public radio is terrible? The CONCEPT of public radio is terrible. Babcock is right about the LAT but dead wrong about the Weekly. LA Weekly is making moves y'all!
Moving to Brooklyn for culture? LOL == even if it has made strides in recent years, like Park Slope being more like Brooklyn Hts. But those two areas are striving to be more like Silver Lake or Echo Park meets Hancock Park, hipsters remodeling old homes, gentrifying a former hood.
Michael:
What Ron Kaye is arguing that our elected leaders don't respond to the things that are important to those who live in the city, such as violence. But if people were to ban together they could force a political force that could force solutions to problems to be addressed and elect better politicians in the process.
Regarding the issue of violence in the city, the fast food ban or the plastic bag laws that you don't like, what have, as an NC board member done, to get your NC on record as supporting your position and then getting more NCs and more poeople lined up behind you?
Between the people on NC boards, the people they know, and your blog, you could get something done.
LA as a concept no longer works (if it ever did)
Let's break it down to about 5-6 smaller cities that can run more efficiently and have government more representative of the diversity (not just ethnic diversity) that lives there.
Nothing wrong with LA being Phoenix, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston and Miami.
You're talking about secession. We just tried that and it didn't work. One of it's failures, I believe, is that the proponents were not able to convince voters that the people elected to run the smaller cities would be any more responsive or honest.
New Orleans, Jersey City, or any city in New Jersey for that matter, Detroit, etc. are hardly good arguments that cities of 1,000,000 necessarily run better.
Perhaps you might want to introduce your readers and your NC to the boroughs concept. David Fleming made a strong pitch for it during charter reform, and there is lots of material available on it.
Greuel and LaBong proposed it for half a second about a year or two ago, but the concept was way beyond Tom's ability to understand and promote it.
I think people realize now more than ever that LA is not a city anymore. It's okay, it never really was a good idea to begin with. It was built on greed and greed is killing it.
And please - LA has the MOST corrupt politicians EVER. They just figured out one thing that Tammany Hall couldn't: how to do it under the radar.
I almost fell off my chair when I read Higby's stupid comment urging Ron Kaye to abandon his "suburban bliss" and join the misguided attempt to pass Jamiel's Law. For more than 20 years, Kaye has been a player in LA politics and continues to hold that position in retirement. Higby, on the other hand, is a wanna be pundit who creams in his pants because a radio station lets him sit his fat ass in the green room before he's interviewed at a time when absolutely nobody is listening to the radio. If Kaye is smart, and he is, he'll have nothing to do with passing this dumb proposal.
LA's politicians are no angels. But let's be honest, some of them aren't smart enough to be world class corrupt. That takes the kind of skills that are learned over the generations, usually back east.
If you're going to argue that LA is the most corrupt city, but they don't get caught as often as the others, this requires us to believe that you have some magical insight, or perhaps a very narrow perspective.
LA had its earthquake. New Orleans had its hurricane. They kicked our butts in the corruption skills events.
A better measure would be to talk to people who do business in LA and other cities. Like the cable TV people, the trash collection firms, and the big construction and design firms.
But again, what guarantees that the leaders of your 4 or 5 new cities won't be just as corrupt as you say the LA politicos are?
The only argument you have is that for some reason, smaller cities have less corrupt officials.
It's simple: When you can't keep the ship from sinking, you move the deck chairs around and change the muzak - hoping no one will notice.
If the KNEW what to do, they'd do it.
If you told them WHAT to do, they would be able to make it work.
If you explained to them HOW to keep the ship from sinking, they wouldn't have the intellect to follow the instructions.
- 1.7 GPA
- Failed the bar 4 times
- Better at photo ops and strategic ops, any day.
3:11: "Smaller cities have less corrupt officials," you say.
You mean like Cudahy, Vernon, Bell Gardens and all those other corrupt South of LA cities literally run by the Mexican Mafia through their homies? The cities that DA Steve Cooley promised to clean up when he ran against Gil Garcetti as "too soft on crime," but hasn't done a damn thing? (The same Steve Cooley whose detectives let Jamiel Shaw out of prison along with Baca's Sheriff's dept., but they blame the understaffed and much sharper LAPD.)
Or what about San Fernando, whose government has totally imploded?
But generally, small towns might be less corrupt just because they have less money.
Yeah, I cringe every time I hear that Homie in Chief say "al-lay"!
These corrupt officials wouldn't be getting away with all this if the LA Antonio Times was doing its job.
Instead of trying to be another NY Times, they should focus on local issues. There's plenty to report.
Unfortunately, it doesn't. It persists with a heavy left-wing slant on national and world events.
The result: It continues to lose circulation, ads, and prestige. More job cuts are coming--don't kid yourself.
Sam Zell will cut staffing as far as he can, before selling it to a local billionaire who thinks he'll get some power. Then that sucker, I mean, businessman, will realize that the Times is destined for oblivion.
Look at what happened to the SF Examiner, the former Hearst flagship paper. It was sold to the Fang family in 1999, as a requirement for Hearst buying the Chronicle (run by the former Mr. Sharon Stone). The Fangs cut lots of staff, turned it into a giveaway paper (like the Weekly), then sold it to Phil Anshultz.
What a sad end for a glorious paper. I'm afraid that's where the LA Times is headed.
10:31
Understandably you are pissed at the Times, but you can't blame them for all the ills of the city. We the voters are the ones who elect and re-elect the corrupt officials. The Times can't fix that single-handedly. The problem is so complex that there isn't just one guilty party.
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