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THE VIEW FROM HERE - Here’s LA’s dilemma. In order to function, a government needs to have power to coerce people to do things. Power, however, tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, Lord Acton 1887. One way The Founding Fathers tried to restrain the corruption by balancing power against power.
For the most part, they rejected the Pollyanna notion that putting good, honest people into office would result in good government. Remember the power is what corrupts the men; not the men who corrupt the government.
One example is how Supreme Court justice were to be chosen. First, since they loathed a democracy. Thus, they shunned the idea that voters should elect Justices. They gave Supreme Court Justices tenure for life, unless impeached, in order to insulate them from the power of mobs who may be displeased with their decisions. They figured that the President would nominate a qualified person, but the Senate would have to confirm the nomination. This was a relatively sound way to balance Presidential power with Congressional power and to insulate the process from voters. That’s why the House played no role in choosing justices; the House was too close to the myopic emotionality of the masses. Although the Founding Fathers knew the pernicious evil of “factions,” when the Constitution was written, America had scant experience with a “Two Party System,” and thus, they could not take into account its deleterious impact on this complicated balance of powers. As a result of the two-party system, Presidents are pressured to nominate justices who please their party and the Senate confirmation process often turns into a political war between the parties. We have not been nominating the most ethical and most mentally stable people to the Supreme Court.
The Constitution has no provision for likes of Scalia, Ginsburg, and Alito and for those justices who authored the Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) decision which denied Blacks had the inalienable right of liberty; Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) which refused to admit that Blacks the inalienable right of liberty and invented the absurd notion of equality of outcome based on group membership; Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022) which denied that women had the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Control over one’s body includes all three of the enumerated rights. Rather, state voters now decide what a woman may and may not do.
Because the Supreme Court has no financial or military powers, its decisions are enforced by a mythology around the court that Americans must adhere to even nefarious rulings, as Al Gore did after the Bush vs. Gore Decision, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). That is why Nixon turned over the Watergate tapes. The alternative is political violence on a huge scale.
The purpose of this stroll down Constitutional lane is to recall that one genius of our system has been to balance power with another power – imperfect as that may be. That is why we are not a democracy, but rather a Republic where the law and not the voters are the supreme law of the land. (Trump’s claim that everyone wanted to send Roe v Wade to the states for the state voters to decide abortion laws reveals the depths of his vast ignorance. A woman’s inalienable right to control her body may not be voted upon, just as the states may not vote on whether we should make John Legend a slave.)
Now We Turn to Los Angeles
What kind of government do we Angelenos have? Yes, it is a government filled goniffs, knaves, and malinches, but what is its form? Kleptocracy seems the best name.
“Kleptocracy – (from Greek κλέπτης kléptēs, "thief", . . . , and . . . κράτος krátos, "power, rule"), also referred to as thievocracy, is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to expropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population.” Wiki
LA’s Problem is Not A Few Rotten Apples
The core of Los Angeles’ vast never-ending corruption is structural due to the fact that each councilmember is the Lord or Lady of his/her district. One facet of our having 15 fiefdoms, where each is ruled by one prince or princess, is that the overall city is not ripe for take-over. One-third of the councilmembers are elected each election cycle which means a takeover by Reformers would require 12 years. At the end of the 12 years, LA would still be a kleptocracy. Why? Because the system corrupts the councilmembers. There is no balance on the power of a councilmember. The other councilmembers may not vote down his projects. The City Attorneys never take any action, because they the City’s attorney, not the People’s attorney. The County DA’s are likewise impotent in that they are beholden to the same financial backers who benefit from city corruption.
Proposed Solutions
(1) Increase size of city council. That’s like Mickey Mouse in Sorcerer’s Apprentice Dance of the Brooms. LA Corruption has nothing to do with whether we have 10, 15, or 50 city councilmembers. It’s the structure of the city council itself allows each councilmember to have unlimited power. We’d merely have more Lords and Ladies drunk on developer dollars.
(2) Transparency Commissions. Who would control such commissions? The same people who are making billions of dollars from the present set up. Transparency Commissions would have their own police force to investigate and their own prosecutors to bring criminal charges. When could they bring these charges? Years after some corruption has occurred. Talk about closing the barn door after all the horses have been stolen.
Yes, the 3/15/45 City Council
If we try something, it should address the structural problem of LA government. There is no feasible way to stop a councilmember from exercising total control over his fiefdom except for each district to have three separate councilpersons who are elected in the same election. Each will have one vote at city council. Because they are elected at the same time, the top three vote getters become one of the three councilpersons at large. This way no councilperson could exercise total control over a development project. Since each councilmember will have his/her own constituency with their own interests, the councilmembers will not kowtow to the developers. If they did, they’d have to answer to their voters – maybe their voters would be only 25% of the district voters, but when the top three vote getters become the next councilpersons, each one has to pay attention his/her supporters. It won’t take that many votes for them to lose the next election.
With the 3/15/45 System, no councilperson can invoke the One and Done Rule, where one councilmember can guarantee a developer unanimous approval of some horrid project. For example, if CD #13's Hugo Soto-Martinez wants to destroy more historic homes, one or both of the other CD 13 councilpersons will vote No. When the other councilpersons vote No on a project in CD13, all the other city councilpersons will be free to vote No or Yes.
The power of three councilpersons elected in the same election balance each other and that will kill the city council’s criminal Vote Trading System on which the One and Done rule is based. One pillar of the System is the ability to retaliate against a dissenting councilmember. In fact, in order to avoid retaliation when Cedillo and Koretz dissented from the Mobility Plan 2030, they had to get a special dispensation for Pope Wesson. Cedillo invoked the Vote Trading System, saying that since MP 2030 impacted his district, he had the right as lord of fiefdom #1 to vote No. Koretz said, “me too.” They worked out a compromise – if they would Vote Yes, then there would be amendments addressing only their concerns. That preserved the Vote Trading System – which was acknowledged, discussed and implemented for everyone to see including the FBI. (Council President Wesson kept his word and both got their amendments.)
The only hope to have a halfway honest government is to balance one power interest with another power interest.
(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].)
