Editor's Note: This article was written for Nina Royal's North Valley Reporter and was published this week.
After three decades of rising poverty levels and a shrinking middle class, the time has come to declare L.A.'s experiment is municipal socialism a failure and to get to work creating a healthy economic climate that attracts and retains good-paying jobs and expands opportunity.
But the opposite is happening, an acceleration of efforts to chase away middle class residents and jobs and subsidize the lives of the poor and working poor.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the failure of trying to defy the laws of a free enterprise economy, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council are more committed than ever to artificially raising the incomes of minimum wage workers with living wage legislation and to guarantee anyone who lives here a decent home whether they can afford it or not.
Just look at a few of City Hall's actions in recent days: Requirements that new Home Depot stores like the one being fought against in Sunland-Tujunga to provide toilet and other comfort facilities to day laborers, that all new developments provide homes for the poor under "inclusionary zoning" rules, that foreclosed homes be bought up with federal money for resale to lower income families.
The result is the flight of good-paying jobs and people who can afford to live in L.A. to the suburbs and beyond.
These policies and other like the refusal to crack down on illegal immigrant gangsters and criminals while cracking down on fast food and plastic garbage bags are not just a coincidence.
What's going on is a deliberate policy that can only be stopped by building a mass organization of concerned citizens like the Saving L.A. Project is launching in an effort to change the city's agenda and change the city's leadership.
Take a look at the extraordinary vision for L.A.'s economy that the mayor articulated six months ago that went virtually unnoticed at the time and received little or no critical comment. It's available at http://mayor.lacity.org/stellent/groups/electedofficials/@myr_ch_contributor/documents/contributor_web_content/lacity_004661.pdf .
The length of the web address tells you something about how visible they want this document to be.
After three decades of rising poverty levels and a shrinking middle class, the time has come to declare L.A.'s experiment is municipal socialism a failure and to get to work creating a healthy economic climate that attracts and retains good-paying jobs and expands opportunity.
But the opposite is happening, an acceleration of efforts to chase away middle class residents and jobs and subsidize the lives of the poor and working poor.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the failure of trying to defy the laws of a free enterprise economy, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council are more committed than ever to artificially raising the incomes of minimum wage workers with living wage legislation and to guarantee anyone who lives here a decent home whether they can afford it or not.
Just look at a few of City Hall's actions in recent days: Requirements that new Home Depot stores like the one being fought against in Sunland-Tujunga to provide toilet and other comfort facilities to day laborers, that all new developments provide homes for the poor under "inclusionary zoning" rules, that foreclosed homes be bought up with federal money for resale to lower income families.
The result is the flight of good-paying jobs and people who can afford to live in L.A. to the suburbs and beyond.
These policies and other like the refusal to crack down on illegal immigrant gangsters and criminals while cracking down on fast food and plastic garbage bags are not just a coincidence.
What's going on is a deliberate policy that can only be stopped by building a mass organization of concerned citizens like the Saving L.A. Project is launching in an effort to change the city's agenda and change the city's leadership.
Take a look at the extraordinary vision for L.A.'s economy that the mayor articulated six months ago that went virtually unnoticed at the time and received little or no critical comment. It's available at http://mayor.lacity.org/
The length of the web address tells you something about how visible they want this document to be.
As tax, rate and fee hikes imposed by the city soar - and will soar
higher if the mayor's salesmanship backed by millions of dollars from
special interests and the complicity of the press fool voters once
again -- it's worth examining exactly what they mayor of the L.A. and
wannabe governor believes is the path to out economic well-being
Then he gets down to the real agenda of his six-point plan.starting with efforts to "leverage public sector hiring and contracting," specifically to "create living wage job opportunities in the public sector."
There is the program to connect young people to jobs with "special emphasis on the young adults striving to secure living wage employment and begin their careers" and the commitment to have the public sector take "the lead in moving low wage workers into living wage jobs."
And finally, we learn why taxpayers have given away hundreds of millions of dollars to billionaires to subsidize L.A. Live and Grand Avenue Project and why we have to trash the Studio City area with the oversized NBC-Universal project:
"The city will provide direct and indirect financing, technical assistance and tax incentives to businesses that offer living wage jobs..(and) to ensure that projects generating the greatest revenue and most excitement also create middle class job," the plan concludes.
So how is Antonio's blueprint for municipal socialism where middle class is $10 an hour jobs, or less with health benefits?
Not very well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The L.A. economy has lost 30,000 jobs since the mayor announced his plan.
Perhaps, that has something to do with sucking money out of the public's pockets at a time when people are losing their jobs and their homes, paying exorbitant prices for gas and afraid to buy anything for fear of what tomorrow will bring.
Of course, that should be obvious to anyone who's studied American Economics 101.
After squandering the biggest revenue increase in
the city's history during his three years, the mayor declared his
Economic Action Plan was launched to "confront a slowing economy,
help
families and businesses in
need, and move thousands of Angelenos into living wage jobs."
"Jobs
create financial
security, safe streets and bright futures for working families in our
City," he said. "The health of our economy depends on a steady supply
of good jobs for
local residents. With this six-point plan, we are on track to move 100,000 Angelenos into
high quality jobs by July 2010."
Then he gets down to the real agenda of his six-point plan.starting with efforts to "leverage public sector hiring and contracting," specifically to "create living wage job opportunities in the public sector."
There is the program to connect young people to jobs with "special emphasis on the young adults striving to secure living wage employment and begin their careers" and the commitment to have the public sector take "the lead in moving low wage workers into living wage jobs."
And finally, we learn why taxpayers have given away hundreds of millions of dollars to billionaires to subsidize L.A. Live and Grand Avenue Project and why we have to trash the Studio City area with the oversized NBC-Universal project:
"The city will provide direct and indirect financing, technical assistance and tax incentives to businesses that offer living wage jobs..(and) to ensure that projects generating the greatest revenue and most excitement also create middle class job," the plan concludes.
So how is Antonio's blueprint for municipal socialism where middle class is $10 an hour jobs, or less with health benefits?
Not very well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The L.A. economy has lost 30,000 jobs since the mayor announced his plan.
Perhaps, that has something to do with sucking money out of the public's pockets at a time when people are losing their jobs and their homes, paying exorbitant prices for gas and afraid to buy anything for fear of what tomorrow will bring.
Of course, that should be obvious to anyone who's studied American Economics 101.
Ron Kaye
Excellent analysis as usual.
I've been looking at the latest census data, which likewise confirm that the City of L.A. is doing worse than both the state and county on average.
I'll write it up soon. The facts just don't support Villaraigosa's endless hype.
Are we seriously only speaking for the middle class - and blaming the working poor - on this blog? I was really excited about what you had to say regarding the movement to "take back LA," but I see a lot of hard-working, impoverished folks in this city - legal citizens...
I seem to remember reading that gangbangers were going to be included in Villar's Grand Scheme to create all of those jobs!
I truly hope that all of the wealthy Libs in this city are happy with the havoc they have wrought! They will be the last ones standing in L.A. because the middle and upper middle classes are leaving in droves!
Only a masochist would hand over their hard earned money to support millions of third world Mexicans who have no right to be in this country to begin with! Our kids can't even attend the schools that we built and paid for! We can't even use our own ER rooms without waiting 10 hours to be treated! We can't even walk freely on our own neighborhood streets without fear of being mugged by gangbangers. And we are certainly not going to learn Spanish to accomodate the unwashed masses!
There IS life after leaving L.A.! I just wonder how the ruling Elites are going to enjoy life in L.A. when they are the ONLY ones left to support the millions of Mexico's best and brightest! Maybe they will get some help financially when the ruling Elites of Mexico start re-locating to L.A.! That should prove to be very interesting!
The ruling elites of Mexico are relocating mostly to the suburbs of San Diego, the tonier beach towns in gated enclaves. They wouldn't want to live in a city where their lowest-class peon exiles are now a majority, and 78% of the public schools. While the just-opened Belmont and most everything being built are still for this demographic; even blacks just make up 12.7%, Asians 3.8% and whites a mere 7.8% -- mostly in the west valley schools like Woodland Hills or Thousand Oaks, so considering that, the miniscule number of whites elsewhere is staggering.
Yet to listen to Yolie Flores or Monica Garcia on schools, or the Mexican leaders from Alarcon/Reyes/Cardenas, even Garcetti and Hahn/Rosendahl, to Cedillo/Padilla/Fuentes on schools and everything else, they're still operating in the mindset of the 40's-50's. They actually bring up those times as the basis for their current policies, as though they're remotely relevant to today.
And yes, I totally agree that enacting policies of "inclusionary housing" are in sync with this group's expressed philosophy that "everyone has a right to live anywhere they want in Los Angeles," by virtue of the government creating "affordable housing" for them from Brentwood to Encino. If that's not racial socialism, nothing is. No other city has leaders who claim something so wild, certainly not Mexico City.
But other parts of your this article's repeated screed, and SLAP's, like the war against the westside and "rich" (as by Anon. 12:05) and the westside subway that allegedly "benefits" them somehow by depriving the S F/S G Valleys, Eastside and everyone else, totally turns off many from your platform altogether.
You're buying into the Latinos' class and geography war, trying to pit the middle class against both "extremes." That's just a socio-economic-geographical Valley xenophobia. You people think you have a "right" to drive into the westside/mid-town corridor in your single-occupancy cars, clogging every single canyon, boulevard and freeway (which you believe must stay free), creating the greatest congestion in the entire western U.S., but then cry that YOU are being taken advantage of when it comes to "fair share" of mass transit. Boo-hoo. I for one would gladly keep all those people bottled up in the valleys instead, but that is sadly not going to happen -- best to hope for, is that with a good, fast subway/light rail system like every other city in the world, many will want to save gas money and realize how much easier it is to commute that way.
And then you've attracted the radical NIMBYs who've fought the westside subway for decades, hoping that if they keep mass transit out there will be no development, and are fighting it and Expo and EVERY development now. As epitomized by Mike Eveloff's "article" in CityWatch devoted to blasting CD5 candidate Robin Witter-Simon's of last week -- clearly, the only development Eveloff thinks is acceptable is Zero, and his hostility to her leaps off the page. He and his kind will never find a candidate acceptable to them -- they don't have the right to claim to speak for the whole district, 99% of whom have never heard of him and his little group or don't support them, but by making so much noise and refusing to be reasonable about anything, they've actually played into the hands of those who can now say: "See, 'those people' on the westside are unreasonable about everything, so they may win a battle or two here and there, but they've lost the war by having no allies in City Hall or outside their narrow little group." And that's hurt ALL of us.
Between groups like these claiming to rep the westside, your group painting the westside as the enemy of the middle class and rest of the city, and "your candidate" Walter Moore proving to be a primitive hick (and alienating even SLAP's one potential ally, Valley outsider/wanna-be-cool celeb groupie Zine), your valid points are doomed because you've all created too many enemies on too many fronts. And that's a shame.
By Anonymous on September 4, 2008 2:06 PM
Open comment to the above: Excuse me, why
are you turning the SLAP effort into a class-warfare, racist attack on LA City? You are soaking wet! And you are sooooo obvious!
We sure do not need you and your ilk here.
3:10, you clearly can't read, neither Ron's comment, which is about the racial/class socialism going on in the city, nor the one above, any more than you can think clearly or articulate anything coherent resembling a platform or base -- would you like to try?
Anon. 2:06 pm
]
What in the bleep are you talking about??? You need a translator!
Evidently the west siders need a subway to take them to their jobs and the beaches. And evidently, the Valley folks are the problem because we don't want to pay for it.
OK. What is it worth to you? You want a subway, you pay for it. When the Valley needs something, we would be glad to pay for it. But we don't have the where-with-all because it is carefully siphoned away to give to all you "needy" west-siders, as well as to City Hall, developers, dwp, parks and recreation, subways, you name it. But none of that stuff benefits us. We need to secede so that all our traffic can get out of your way. Is that a deal or what? Glad I thought of it.