CommentsTHE VIEW FROM HERE - When something breaks, people look for the cause, believing that if they find out what caused the problem, then they know how to fix it.
In politics, we think that the people whom we elected to political office should be held responsible. The problem with this analysis is that it ignores who put the crooks and incompetent fools into office. Yes, Los Angeles Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has been a horrible councilmember, but as Garcetti’s Mini Me, voters in CD 13 have voted for Hollywood’s deterioration since 2001, when they first elected Eric Garcetti. In 2001, no one foresaw that Garcetti would be a gonif Gadol – a big crook. As Hollywood deteriorated, Garcetti’s corruptionism was finally noted by Judge Allan Goodman in 2014, when he rejected Garcetti’s Update to the Hollywood Community Plan on the ground that the data was intentionally fatally flawed and based on wishful thinking to the extent it subverted the law.
Two years earlier, the corruption was documented in March 1, 2012, CityWatch, Hollywood Becomes Fraudywood. In fact, on June 19, 2012 when Councilmember Richard Alarcon asked City Planning during the council session about Garcetti’s Hywd Com Plan whether the Plan and the other plans to follow could be re-done to use accurate data from the 2010 census, Planning replied Yes. Nonetheless, Garcetti demanded that the defective Plan be unanimously approved. Under the illegal vote trading system, every councilmember was required to vote Yes, since all projects must receive unanimous approval. Councilmember Jan Perry, however, did not vote Yes. She had committed to residents that if the data were false, she would “not vote Yes.” She chose to be absent that day. The only way Councilmember Perry could keep her word was to stay away.
Yet, here we are a decade later and nothing has changed except everyone now agrees that the city council is fatally corrupt. Rick Caruso, who was one of the corruptors who gave Garcetti’s charity $125,000 to get one project approved, agrees that city council is corrupt, but he makes no proposal to stop the corruption.
Councilmember Monica Rodriguez Must be Loca
After Councilmember Richard Alarcon asked City Planning the verboten questions about the false data in Garcetti’s Hywd Com Plan update during the June 19, 2012 council session, he was re-prosecuted and removed from office on the absurd pretext that he lived in the wrong house in the San Fernando Valley. Eventually all the faux charges were dropped, but councilmembers got the message – don’t mess with the Vote Trading System at city council. Jose Huizar did not heed that message and the FBI indicated him. November 10, 2018, CityWatch, The FBI Seeks…But Will Not Find.
So, what does Councilmember Monica Rodriguez do on Friday, October 28, 2022? When the city council proposes a motion to further cover-up city hall’s decades of corruption, she has the gall to say that the city council itself is not the entity to propose remedies for its own wrongdoing. Rather, some independent entity should be given the task to stop corruption. That was far worse than Councilmember Alarcon’s merely asking if the city could redo planning documents to use accurate data. Then, CM Rodriguez committed what looks like political suicide. She voted “No!” Even CM Alarcon had voted Yes on the fatally flawed Garcetti Hywd Com Plan.
Who’s to Blame for Los Angeles’s Being a Crimogenic City?
The voters! The voters have watched the city deteriorate from the nation’s most desirable destination city in 2001 to the least desirable in 2010 and have seen the city council destroy poor people homes to make developers vastly more wealthy and thereby create the housing crisis. Thousands of people have needlessly died on the streets to satisfy developer greed, while developers like Rick Caruso brag about their “donations” to Garcetti as if giving to a charity is not a bribe. What upsets voters? Homeless people in their neighborhoods. When voters say, “Homelessness is the number one problem,” they do not mean the pain and suffering and deaths of the homeless; they mean the inconvenience that the homeless cause them.
What had been an inconvenience a few years ago of blocked sidewalks and trash has become murders and other wanton attacks by the criminally insane homeless. As corrupt developers destroyed more rent controlled units, the homeless population grew, but worse yet is the fact that when a mentally ill person is evicted, he/she cannot find a new apartment. Even if they have Section 8 vouchers, no sane landlord will rent to a paranoid schizophrenic. Many of the dangerous mentally ill who are roaming our streets decompensated after they were wrongfully evicted. The added stress of being evicted overwhelmed their already deficient coping skills. Thus, the criminally insane became an increasingly larger portion of the homeless. Then, the Los Angeles Times, which has probably been complicit in every Los Angeles scandal since December 1881, promoted the big lie that mental illness caused the homeless crisis. No! Corrupt destruction of poor people’s home caused the dumping of mentally ill onto the streets.
Voters Believe Every Outlandish Lie
Politicos lie because voters want lies. Lies can be tailored to the voters’ biases and his hates. Telling the truth is seldom politically astute. Voters have only themselves for getting two types of political messages: Lies and Platitudes. And this brings us again to Rick Caruso and Karen Bass.
Caruso Has No Shame; His Ads Run the Gamut from Pandering to Gargantuan Lies to Religious Bigotry
Voters are so in love with hearing lies which re-enforce their prejudices that they have disengaged their minds. Rick Caruso promises 500,000 affordable units! “Affordable” means tax supported. These affordable units are costing more than $800,000 each right now. Let’s assume that the per unit price should drop to only $500,000 rather than rising to $1 M per unit. That’s $250 Billion more in taxes! Since the price of everything is increasing, $1 M per unit is more likely which means $500 Billion in taxes. The city budget is only $11 Billion.
The Big Lie is that we have a housing shortage. We do not! We have a glut of vacant housing and the city lost over 200,000 people last year due to excessive densification. Why do voters fall for such obvious falsehoods? Without bothering to think, they believe that massive construction will get the homeless out of their neighborhoods.
Nothing which Rick Caruso promises is within the mayor’s power. The mayor cannot increase the police department. The mayor cannot increase street cleaners. The mayor cannot make 30,000 beds. This is a double scam. The court ruling does not say that homeless can be arrested if they reject a bed in a warehouse. There must actually be housing. The claim he can have them arrested is a triple scam, since the jail is under an order to reduce the jail population. If Caruso could have even 1,000 homeless arrested, where will he put them? The reality is that most voters do not care if LA rounded up all the homeless and dumped them in the desert, but the courts have ruled against that.
Religious Prejudice
One rule that very few politicos will violate is introducing religious bigotry into political campaigns. Rick Caruso is now re-running his vile anti-Scientology ads. His polling has shown that bigotry against a small religious group brings votes. Why not ads against Catholic priests who sodomize underage boys? Why not release the USC report on the grooming and sexual abuse of USC’s female students? Probably for the same reason Donald Trump will not release his tax returns. The parallels between Caruso and Trump are remarkable.
Now We Turn to Karen Bass and her Non-Campaign
It should not fall to CityWatch to debunk Caruso’s lies. Bass’s campaign so far as amounted to smiling and being photographed with Dem politicos including California’s former Attorney General, the Queen of the Lying Jailhouse Informants. In her favor, Bass has not lied to us, but that omission is impotent in face of Caruso’s non-stop prevarications.
Democracy’s Big Flaw
Voters love pandering, lies and bigotry.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected]. The opinions expressed by Mr. Abrams are solely his and not necessarily those of CityWatch.)
