MY TAKE - Moral pollution suffocates our lives, as Corruption and Incompetence have become so common that most of us do not notice how they taint everything around us. Hollywood is an example.
Since 2000, Hollywood has had a population exodus rate of 6% as people sought to escape the deteriorating physical and moral environment.
A Persistent Scam, TOD’s and the Subway
TOD = Transit Oriented Districts where corrupt politicians tell us it is good to have extra dense concentration of population. Garcetti, LaBonge, and the now dead CRA/LA lectured us on how we needed to construct the subway to handle the hordes of people who were flooding into Hollywood. Then, we’re told that we need super-high density projects like the Metro Building on the southeastern corner of Hollywood and Western to house the new residents.
Density does not attract new residents; it cause people to leave. That is the scam behind TOD’s. The thieves on City Council pretend that people will flock to live in highly dense projects near the subways and they used Kelo eminent domain to move out the landowners. But, people refuse to move into these areas. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink poison.
For over a decade, Hollywood has been taking properties off the incremental tax rolls, giving cash to developers, who take more properties off the tax rolls so that the city council can give them more money all based on the lie that they are helping the people who need affordable housing. This process is one way that wealth is systematically transferred from the 99% to the 1%.
Same Old, Same Old
This scam on the poor and the taxpayer is not new, but we have short memories. When one reads about the horrendous disaster of similar Redevelopment in St. Louis with the Pruitt-Igoe “Affordable Housing” projects, one sees that both councilmember Garcetti and Mayor Villaraigosa take the same positions which led to disaster in St. Louis. The Project will “revitalize neighborhoods.” (link)
The same occurred in Chicago. (link) And, we thought Chicago was corrupt!?! Garcetti followed the same path that led to the disasters in St. Louis and Chicago. The horrified, former Director of Planning, Gail Goldberg, warned Garcetti in 2006 that his ways were “disastrous.”
Director Goldberg said: "In every city in this country, the zone on the land establishes the value of the land. In Los Angeles, that's not true. The value of the land is not based on what the zone says ... It's based on what [the] developer believes he can change the zone to. This is disastrous for the city. Disastrous. Zoning has to mean something in this city." (link)
The New Poor is the average citizen, whose money has financed the deterioration of Hollywood. People cling to their homes and struggle to send their kids to private schools as the LAUSD descends into a moral abyss. All the public services are degraded as billions of tax dollars are diverted to the ultra-superduper-mega wealthy. But, it gets far worse.
The Hollywood Sign Fraud!
People never like to look at their own role in the moral degeneration of their society. Looking at how parents teach their children to be dishonest is a task from which we all shrink.
Shortly after 9/11 in 2002, Councilman LaBonge allowed the 138 Cahuenga Peak to be sold to a Chicago developer, Fox River Financial, for $1.675 Million. His predecessor Councilman Ferraro had kept the Peak off the market. Perhaps due to his 13 years on the City Police Commission, Ferraro understood the national security importance of Cahuenga Peak, which is 140 feet taller than neighboring Mt. Lee where the LAPD’s vital emergency communications center is located. As Hollywoodians know, the Hollywood Sign is on the south slope of Mr. Lee just below the telecommunications. If you don’t know, then you should look at the H Sign again.
After 9/11, Mt. Lee became a Homeland Security Site, which meant claiming the 140 foot taller Cahuenga Peak as a matter of national security. Thus, it is perplexing how a developer was able to persuade councilmember LaBonge to free up the Peak for sale to a private party.
When the developer wanted to sell the peak to the City for $12.5 M in 2010, LaBonge arranged for the funds to be raised. That’s a pretty good deal. Eight years after buying the property and two years after the largest real estate crash since the Great Depression, the City agrees that the property value has increased over 700%.
Unable to raise the cash to pay such an outlandish sum, councilmember LaBonge and the Trust for Public Land hit upon a fraud to dupe people from around the world into donating money to save the Hollywood Sign. The SAVE the PEAK campaign was a fraud since the Hollywood Sign was in no danger. No one was selling Mr. Lee or proposing to build a single home on Mt. Lee. Nonetheless the banner across the Webpage declared: “Cahuenga Peak Home of the Hollywood Sign”
Stars were enlisted to perpetuate the fraud. Elizabeth Taylor posted a message on a Web site run by the Trust for Public Land: "The Hollywood Sign is a universal representation of the magic of our cinematic tradition and the romance of the film and entertainment communities." March 20, 2010, WSJ.com
LaBonge enlisted the Hollywood High School students in an April 20, 2010 rally to raise money for the SAVE the PEAK campaign. And, the people were pleased and they called it “Good.” Yes, their children had learned that if you really want something badly enough, it’s OK to lie.
There were public celebrations where children saw their parents rejoice at deceiving foreigners out of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Governor Schwarzenegger re-enforced the value of lying to get what you want.
Schwarzenegger told the crowd the Hollywood sign was his inspiration as a young bodybuilder in Austria, calling it "the most recognizable iconic symbol in the world."
"When I heard that it was 130 acres around the Hollywood sign needed to be protected I did what The Terminator was supposed to do, which is to jump into action," Schwarzenegger said.
"There were even donations from 50 different states -- think about that -- 50 different states, and 10 different countries," Schwarzenegger added, citing the "fantastic teamwork" that made the land purchase possible. (KTLA News 7:24 p.m. PDT, April 26, 2010)
Yeah, just think about that, a worldwide fraud through fantastic teamwork! Now that’s an education your kid can’t get just anywhere. We may not have taught our little Hollywoodians much, but we’ve shown them how living off tax dollars and lying are the good ways to make a buck.
That’s how billionaires abuse Hollywood, while teaching our children how to become thieves.
(Richard Lee Abrams is an attorney in Los Angeles. He can be reached at: [email protected] ) –cw
