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MY POV - Never admit failure, never admit fault, do not under any circumstances accept responsibility, deny, obscure, or obfuscate the truth. This is the rallying cry of our smiley-faced Mayor, the City Council, and the five fallen angels of femininity at the Board of Supervisors.
The phrase "if you have nothing good to say, don't say anything at all” is highly suggestive of what our elected leaders in the City of LA continuously do. They are very cognizant of choosing words and phrases that shine the most favorable light on themselves, so we might not have negative thoughts and opinions of them. You can't have enough negative thoughts about the jobs and the results they have foisted upon Los Angeles. Whether it comes to crime, safety, homelessness, fire protection, livability, or affordability, the City Council and the Board of Supervisors have continuously failed us. Prove me wrong.
They say nothing when they make mistakes, make bad decisions, or just get caught. For example, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO at the Los Angeles Housing Service Authority, practices nepotism by sending $4 million to her husband's company and suffers no consequences. When half the City burns down, they will navel-gaze, stare at the walls, and even peer into the camera or microphone, blaming it on unforeseen forces, such as climate change, but certainly not their own inability to act prudently. A reporter may be offered the word salad of indecipherable non-sequiturs on a good day. Or if you dare to call their offices, you get voicemail, no return call is ever made, or the email(s) you sent go unanswered. By taking no responsibility, they believe we will not notice that there are abject failures in keeping the City livable.
When was the last time you saw a newspaper do a hit piece? What about our TV News Channels? Can you imagine on the 6:00, 10:00, or 11:00 local news an exposé about the corruption, the graft, or how much of our squandered money they squander? What about the fentanyl body count, the deaths that County and City Officials have through their polices voted for, overseen, and tacitly blessed? Have they ever called anybody on the rug for doing an excrement-filled job? No, they haven't. That's because they have an agenda to remake LA with all the charm of East Berlin under communist Russia's thumb.
Our City Council wants to remake LA with apartment buildings sprouting up all over residential neighborhoods, six-story high apartments with no parking, but they're close to a transit-rich environment, which means access to a bus stop half a mile away. They take joy in playing whack-a-mole with homeless encampments. Why do they insist on ruining perfectly good residential neighborhoods to build more crappy apartments when the landlord, should he be foolish enough to build or buy one, is in jeopardy of never collecting his rent due to restrictions placed on landlords and liberties given to tenants that would not stand in any law-abiding red state city.
The City Council wants to place low-income apartments next to your house. They intend to use any available hotel rooms to warehouse drug addicts, alcoholics, and untreated patients with mental health issues. They aim to force you out of your car through road diets, lack of parking, and unaffordable gas prices, compelling you to risk your life on public transportation. The Department of Transportation seemingly worships at the altar of perpetual gridlock. It's time we recognize that our elected leaders hate us. Prove me wrong.
Our city officials do not want bucolic residential neighborhoods. They are fine with flooding of residential areas with cars trying to get to work six hours a day, and in some cases, it is so extreme that you can't even get out of your driveway so that you can transport yourself in this endless urban crawl. The LA traffic department's new equity, diversity, and inclusion is that if the 405 and 101 are gridlocked, your street should be gridlocked, too. Did I get that wrong?
Building back better in Los Angeles means destroying everything that once made our City desirable and livable, for this dystopian landscape of homeless encampments, which create toxic superfund sites on a block near you. LA has let the roads go to the pot. Our boulevards are more akin to gravely dirt roads and donkey trails. Our roads are not suitable for 21st-century transport. Regarding LA Schools, one wonders when the educational system will produce students who can read and cipher at grade level, let alone be fluent in English.
Can you point to one success that has made Los Angeles better? Please exclude Rick Caruso, who should have been our mayor, which brings me to the point that elections in Los Angeles are as seemingly fraudulent as a politician's campaign promises. Why does it take weeks to count votes when it is all being done electronically? I guess it takes time to print the ballots you need for the outcome our Lords and Masters want. The City is morally bankrupt, and fiscal insolvency is looming. Most of the people in LA are great; it's our bureaucrats, apparatchiks, and elected officials who have dragged the City into the swamp. It is time for competency over ideology.
(Eliot Cohen has been on the Neighborhood Council, serves on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico.)
