CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-“Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.” -- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Like the ancient mariners becalmed in the salty ocean, Angelenos are surrounded by unsavory politicos. The sailors’ drinking of saltwater would lead to death, and likewise Los Angeles is dying from imbibing the lies and myths of its politicos. But there are differences between the mariners and Angelenos.
The mariners were not the ones who filled the seas with saltwater, and they knew the deadly results of it. We Angelenos, however, are co-creators of our own slow demise by habitually electing liars, thieves and crooks, as we continually gulp down their lies and myths.
There are other differences between mariners and Angelenos. The mariners could not banish saltwater, but Angelenos can exile politicos. The sailors steered their ship to clear, clean water when the winds came upon them, but most Angelenos are content to be flotsam and jetsam bouncing about on stormy political seas.
Hide the Homeless - A Deception in the Making
Prince Garcetti, with the propaganda help of Pravda West (LA Times) and the rest of the LA media, has his solution to the rats, trash, and disease on the streets: Hide the Homeless. Here’s his plan:
(1) Continue to tear down rent-controlled housing and use fraud to hype rents, which then increases the number of homeless. A sane response to an alleged housing shortage would be to stop destroying poor people’s homes, but Garcetti and his media whores do not propose this solution.
(2) Hide the homeless in shelters. We the People fail to foresee that shoving the disabled, the elderly and single mothers with their children onto the streets and then later relegating them to shelters where they get six to ten feet and a cot is not acceptable. A homeless shelter is not a moral trade-off for one’s own apartment, but it hides them from public sight. Our myopia is no different from Trump’s not thinking about what will happen to kids who are separated from their parents at the border and stuffed into trains. Where are those trains going and what will the conditions be on arrival? What will the living conditions be for the 60,000 poor people whose homes Garcetti’s Manhattanization has destroyed?
(3) Continue to pretend that the homeless are not decent people like you and me. Instead, the media paints them as drug addicts, criminals, and the mentally ill. Thus, they don’t deserve a real home. That propaganda shifts the focus away from how We the People treat others to protecting of us from dangers that prowl our streets. As we’ve shown previously, Garcetti’s ploy is to create problems and then anoint Himself as the Savior.
(4) Garcetti is not a fool. He knows that once he has shoved the homeless off the streets into inadequate shelters, then We the People will cease to care. Out of sight, out of mind – problem solved!
The Destruction of Poor People’s Homes Will Continue
The city will tear down not only RSO units but also modest single-family homes, which limits the supply of homes while swelling the demand. Most people prefer a detached home, so Garcetti’s Manhattanization also targets small single-family homes for destruction. As always, the homes of the poorest are the first to be destroyed.
We the People Co-Create Society
Whether we like it or not, We the People are the co-creators of our society. Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution recognize our individual inalienable rights to govern ourselves. With rights, however, come duties. If we abdicate our rights, We the People abdicate our duty to be the co-creators of a better Los Angeles for everyone.
We the People have taken some small steps to construct a better society. Voting down Measure EE expressed our awareness that our tax money has not been used to increase the Quality of Life or to enhance the Quality of Education but rather to aggrandize the wealth of the 1%.
But we need to smarten up. Garcetti does not give up. He’s off to Sacramento and Washington D.C. to rake in billions of dollars for his developer buddies under the guise of helping the homeless. Garcetti’s first objective is to hide the homeless so that reporters like Joel Grover will stop embarrassing him on TV. His more important objective is to gain billions of dollars for his developer cronies to continue the Manhattanization of Los Angeles.
Of course, the Manhattanization of LA lies at the root of our vast corruptionism, the worst traffic in the world (at least we’re better than China at one thing), the escalation of housing costs which transfers hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth to Wall Street via absurdly high mortgages on homes and apartments, etc.
So cast your gaze over the sea of waving politicos and you ne’er find a one who’s worth his salt. Ask not for whom the homeless bell tolls; it tolls for me and thee. (I call this a gaggle of mixed metaphors). To be blunt: we cannot treat poor people like human refuse and expect to escape the consequences.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
