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THE VIEW FROM HERE - Malinche has various meanings. Within our context, malinche refers to a person who betrays his people. Kapo in Yiddish is similar.
Vendido is the traditional sell out. The person who betrays his own people for personal gain.
Garcetti 2.0 means the intentional use of lies and deceit to cause mass homelessness and death to thousands of innocent people to advance oneself.
As the media is reporting today (May 13, 2023), the death rate among LA’s homeless spiked by 55% last year. While Garcettism placed the homeless in harm’s way, a major cause of the spike in deaths has been the US government’s war on mild prescription opioids like hydrocodone, aka, Vicodin, which pose no risk. The Fed’s attack on MD’s who prescribe safe opioids has shoved patients towards the narco drug traffickers where people encounter Fentanyl, which is a lethal threat. Thus, the Fentanyl death rate skyrockets, while the Feds still force doctors who prescribe Vicodin-Norco out of business. July, 19, 2021 American Council on Science and Health, 2020 Drug Deaths Spiked 30%. And Pain Pills Had NOTHING to Do With It, By Josh Bloom.
No one should be surprised that a crimogenic society is rife with predatory criminal abuse. Let’s look at new councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez.
(1) He is still the number one suspect behind the False Narrative that three LA city councilmembers were anti-Black. Brief recap of what the tape really showed: all three Mexican councilmembers supported all the Black councilmembers and attempted to help them. They never disparaged Councilmember Mike Bonin’s adopted Black son due (to) his race, but they intensely disliked Bonin with good reason. Having meritorious grounds to dislike a particular white person is not anti-Black racism.
(2) Whoever was involved with the release of the audio tape played the most odious anti-Mexican race card since the LA Times’ “Zoot Suit Riots” slander in 1943. May 13, 2023, Press Telegram, LA County Supervisors to mark 80th anniversary of LA’s Zoot Suit Riots, by Steve Scauzillo. Here we are eighty (80) years later and the LA Times is reprising its role as Los Angeles’ leading anti-Mexican publication. It is even proud that its perfidy won a Pulitzer. The false accusations against the Mexican councilmembers have directly led to political violence, but Mayor Bass and the LAPD refuse to finger the culprit(s) who released the tape. Oh yeah, in gangland culture “snitches get stitches;” so the LAPD and Mayor Bass aren’t going to snitch on Soto-Martinez or whoever was behind playing the race card.
(3) Soto-Martinez plans to keep the poor, many of whom are Hispanic, poor. Not only does he plan to continue Garcetti’s destruction of modest single family homes but plans to keep them renters and he plans to interfere with the poor having cars. These anti-poor ploys make Wall Street wealthier.
For generations, a main route for immigrants to join the middle class has been homeownership, but after WW II, car ownership became crucial, and it still is. As studies have documented, owning a car and not having to rely on mass transit is the best way to get out of poverty. Sept 9, 2020, Subsidizing Car Ownership for Low-Income Individuals and Households. The reason is simple. With a car one can drive to wherever the job is located, but with the subway, fixed rail, or even the bus, one can only go where Metro wants to go and only go when Metro wants to go. While a car reaches 100% of metropolitan Los Angeles anytime, the subways and fixed rail reach about 10% at scheduled times. If nothing else, one has to walk to the station, wait for the subway, and then, after exiting, walk to the destination.
Wall Street shills like Soto-Martinez, however, oppose poor people having cars as poor people with cars do not use mass transit. Wall Street makes billions of dollars financing these major construction projects. Soto-Martinez wants no off-street parking in Affordable Housing near public transit. “[T]he City can no longer require parking with in a 3/4 mile of public transportation as defined in the bill.” Soto-Martinez April 21, 2023 Letter to amend HCP2. With no parking, tenants cannot have cars. When one builds 100 apartments with zero off street parking, there will be no on-street parking available. Lack of car ownership locks people into poverty.
Soto-Martinez tries to make his destruction of poor people’s homes sound as if he is helping. “Prevent building demolitions before replacement projects are approved.” CD 13 website April 29, 2023 This means poor people’s homes are being destroyed or else no one would talk about “replacement projects.” Notice that the poor people’s homes are demolished as soon as the replacement project is “approved,” but it will be more than 1,400 days before a project is built, if ever. If Soto-Martinez wanted to assist the poor rather than Wall Street, he would have demanded a moratorium on the destruction of all RSO units!
Still more financially harmful to poor people is the mass destruction of thousands of older, modest single-family homes. Walk around between Franklin Ave south to Beverly Boulevard from Vermont over to Highland Avenue and notice all the detached single-family homes – which are gone and instead there are apartment complexes. Look on Wilton south of Melrose, where there used to be blocks of small homes. These homes allowed generations of poor to enter the home ownership class, accumulate equity and build a financially secure middle-class life.
Hugo The Ego is worse than a horrible farce when he speaks about equity while he is making certain that LA’s poor can never gain financial equity. Hugo’s equity means preventing poor Hispanics from having cars and it means excluding them from homeownership by destroying entry-level detached homes. Hugo’s equity means all the poor are equally poor.
What does Hugo, “El Garcetti 2.0," have for poor Hispanics – to be renters for life and never ever gain equity in their own homes?
Like Garcetti before him, Hugo is turning Los Angeles into a renters’ society where wealth flows only upward to Wall Street.
Why does Hugo insist on more construction when Los Angeles has a glut of vacant housing and densification has made LA life so bad Millennials and Gen Zers are fleeing? May 9, 2023, NewGeography, Los Angeles Slips Below 2010 Population: New State of California Estimates by Wendell Cox.
Just because Garcetti is gone does not mean Garcettism is dead.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The opinions expressed are his alone. You may email him at [email protected].)
