ALPERN AT LARGE -As the old expression goes, when you're stuck in a hole ... stop digging. Of course, it's particularly difficult to do that if you don't even realize you're stuck in a hole, and if you don't even realize what that shovel in your hand is doing.
Our City of the Angels and our Golden State is digging one unnecessary, problematic hole after another, and the only actions being taken appear to be to squelch and/or belittle and/or denigrate those commenting that these holes are being dug. False narratives are the perfect way to force us to continue our hole-digging and to shut up those who complain about our penchant for hole-digging.
1) As fellow CityWatch contributor and long-time columnist Joel Kotkin raises, California is in decline by choice, starting with unemployment.
Those doing well financially are notably mute (if not downright insensitive) about those who are NOT doing well in our state, and are ignoring the true unemployment rate (the U-6 figure) of over 15%, not the bandied-about figure of 7.8% (which is the most cruel and obnoxious false narrative of them all).
Hence it is not hard to understand why voter turnout in our last election was so low--it's not that it's difficult to vote, as ACLU Voting Rights Project Director Lori Shellenberger reported recently in CityWatch. Voter turnout in California was much higher during the November 2012 elections, but now voters are understandably throwing up their hands and hunkering down for a seemingly interminable economic downturn.
2) The next hole, and next false narrative to be raised: Education. The voters want to help the students, but the various education lobbies don't appear to prioritize the students as much as they often claim to do.
The recent California court ruling that confirmed that teacher tenure hurt the education of minority children was a golden opportunity for the Golden State to focus its educational finances on improved public school education. This was a ruling stemming from an ACLU lawsuit and not a taxpayer rights lawsuit, in case anyone was paying attention.
Yet efforts to expand tenure--which is being used NOT to protect whistleblowing teachers but to protect teachers in need of a sabbatical, if not downright termination--is being expanded by a Democratic Legislature that appears to hate Republicans and disempower the taxpayers more than it is willing to defend the rights of all children to receive a first-rate education.
Furthermore, the ability of school districts to budget appropriately was stripped in favor of the teachers unions empowerment to get a raise whenever and wherever they could get away with it. And these unions, which have put in quite an investment to the Sacramento powers that be, expect their investment to pay off big.
Aaaaaand here come the false narratives: those wanting to limit-set the teachers and other educational unions/lobbies hate children, hate minorities, hate teachers, don't understand the lack of support teachers get from the parents and their local creepy politically-climbing principals, etc.
Been there ... done that! It's as if the UTLA and other teachers unions want to follow the dangerous lead of Brian D'Arcy and the IBEW in Los Angeles. Do they really want to go there? Do they really want to become such an easy political target for politicians and the voters to resent and hate?
After all, the voters agree with teachers' and other educational advocates' growing fury (from both liberals and conservatives) surrounding Common Core and the $1 billion decision of the LAUSD Board to spend construction funds on iPads for all students. Whistleblower Stuart Magruder (a prominent critic of the ill-advised and ill-fated iPad decision) has been reinstated because of this fury.
3) On to my favorite subject: Transportation.
First, a hearty congratulations to Seleta Reynolds for being nominated as new head of the LADOT. As most Angelenos recognize, we need to have Complete Streets for motorists, bicyclists, pedestrians, transit riders, etc., and its hoped that her experience in San Francisco can help Los Angeles improve its mobility and quality of life.
Yet it's also hoped that Ms. Reynolds can recognize that San Francisco is relatively smaller than the more widespread and poorly-planned Los Angeles. Creating a bicycle network does not, and should not, mean disenfranchising motorists who need to get to work and other locations that aren't always realistically accessible by transit or bicycle.
Focusing on parking and transit centers as a way for both motorists and non-motorist commuters to access the growing bus/rail system of Los Angeles isn't favoring cars over mobility--it's a necessary expense to help mobility.
Similarly, asking the Planning Department and large developers to appropriately mitigate for their transportation and other impacts isn't hurting job creation or hurting affordable housing efforts...it's just common sense and common decency.
Furthermore, the need to establish affordable housing should be thoughtful and strategic--we want to keep seniors, students and workers able to access their destinations in cost-effective, operational manners, and the ability to promote commercial corridors shouldn't be mutually exclusive from preserving single-family neighborhoods.
Transportation yes, and false narratives no. There's a good reason why the L.A. City Council backed down from its half-cent road/sidewalk sales tax: credibility. The Council did NOT back down because the City taxpayers are unwilling to pay for their necessary infrastructure.
And on a state level, it's a sad shame indeed, that California is not following the Obama Administration's urgings to procure joint train manufacturing with the more successful Northeastern Acela Amtrak corridor. At this point, Governor Brown is so obsessed with his high speed train legacy, and to have trains compete with planes, that he is abandoning the more realistic goal of having trains compete with cars.
4) The problems involving homelessness suffers from its own problems and false narratives, perhaps more so than most issues.
As I've stated before in CityWatch, there are three major groups of the homeless:
There are those who are fiscally down on their luck (who can usually be helped), those who are mentally ill (and who usually can be helped, provided society recognizes both the need to pay for and to enforce mental health laws that confronts the high recidivist rate and the neverending need to monitor the therapy of the mentally ill), and those that just want to "live free" without any burdens or obligations.
Most of the homeless need a helping hand and a place to go--whether it's the private sector or governmental services--and LA City Councilmember Mike Bonin's efforts to create safe havens for those forced to live in their cars is a necessary step in the right direction. Health, financial and employment services can be directed to these safe havens, and we can end homelessness for many who desire a better life.
However, the recent 9th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel's decision to strike down LA’ s ban on using parked vehicles as living quarters is both a problematic but potentially necessary step needed to confront homelessness once and for all.
Helping the homeless is a venerable effort that isn't just about compassion--it's about medical reality and the need to balance rights versus responsibility. The homeless deserve our help, but if they don't want it then we don't have the responsibility to enable or reward any dysfunctional behavior--a lesson that the otherwise liberal cities of Santa Monica and Berkeley have learned the hard way.
Creating places for the homeless to go, and for the mentally ill to live--and FUNDING those efforts--isn't just morally correct but it's also a plan to get the homeless off the streets. Yet saying that panhandlers and the homeless have a right to free speech and avoid being harassed isn't mutually exclusive from saying that the rest of us have a right to feel safe and not be assailed and/or intimidated, either.
The collection of RV's and campers on Sepulveda Blvd. near the future Expo Line, for example, and the decision of those owners to squat at those locations and intimidate pedestrian passers-by, is one that mirrors the dangers of turning transit corridors into "transient corridors"--which does anything but promote usage of transit.
Inasmuch as former President Reagan pulled the plug on federal inpatient mental health centers, he also wanted to encourage states to pay more for outpatient mental health centers. So we can blame either "evil Republicans" who we believe don't care about the homeless or blame "stupid Democrats" for empowering the homeless to not take their necessary medications, but neither form of blame is either truthful or helpful.
We have to pay for both inpatient and outpatient mental illness facilities, demand that those mentally ill with high recidivist rates take their medications for the good of both themselves and for society in general, and establish more street signs on major thoroughfares that prevent that third, homeless-by-choice group from squatting on thoroughfares, blocking mobility and creating both urban blight and encouragement of criminal activity.
Because the homeless--all three groups of them--have the right to be homeless and/or right to live in their cars, but they DO deserve our help and MUST accept our help if we are/they are to accept their role as members of our society.
... but back to the hole-digging and our city's and state's penchant for papering over these blatant, treacherous holes with false narratives.
Talk is cheap, and action is necessary, to restore this state's ability to draw the best and the brightest and prevent our ongoing decline. Creating a sincere, credible narrative that isn't so much for political points as it is to fix our problems.
Perhaps it's because I am a physician, and not a politician, that I adhere to the truth and the problem-solving, but I doubt I'm the only one who wants to drop the shovel and start doing whatever it takes to climb our way out of the holes we've previously chosen to dig, and from which we now must hasten to escape.
(Kenneth Alpern, M.D. is a Westside Village Zone Director and Boardmember of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . He also does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us . The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 51
Pub: June 24, 2014