By Clark Baker
Retired LAPD Officer
Fatal blow to reform? Are you kidding? NCs were doomed from the start and only delayed opportunities to reform.
I was an LAPD officer during the 1990s when NC’s were first introduced. As one of five “complaint officers” I was assigned to handle councilmanic complaints throughout the San Fernando Valley and worked with nascent NCs as they popped up. Like “senior lead officers” (SLO), our real job was to keep the phones from ringing in the council and mayor offices. As long as we appeased angry constituents with lies and excuses, we could keep our assignments and extra 5%. But if we were honest and the phones started ringing before we promoted out, we were demoted and transferred.
NC’s operated in much the same way for the same reason. Gadflies and neighborhood advocates formed NC’s thinking they would finally have a real voice, but I knew they were nothing more than a variation of SLOs – self-important groups that were promised a pittance and a real voice in government as long as they kept the heat off of the local council and mayor. Except for a few moments of success, NC’s are little more than a way to make people think they had a real voice in government.
So now, after a little more than a decade, you’re upset that their political placebo didn’t work?
The problem is that Democrats have enjoyed a stranglehold in LA politics since the 1950s. The symbiotic relationship between the wasteful bloated unions that fund Democrats who protect the unions has resulted in the worst gangs, crime, pollution, traffic, public schools and taxes in the nation. The UTLA has been doing to our children what the UAW has done to the American auto industry. Look at what the unionists have done to our film industry. Even the LAPD union can be blamed, endorsing corrupt liberals who return the favor with undeserved high wages. LA cops then take their income to conservative communities outside of LA, far from the influence of LA’s pro-union/anti-community politicians.
Of LAUSD’s 80,000 union employees, 20,000 actually teach our 650,000 students while the rest pretty much generate $8 million in union dues each month. Compared to LA’s $7 billion city budget, LAUSD takes in $12 billion a year. But instead of generating $18,400 per child per year, barely $9000 actually gets to the child and the classroom – usually much less.
Have you heard the joke about the editor who boasts of diversity at the New York Times: “We have white liberals, black liberals, Jewish liberals, handicapped liberals, Asian liberals…”
So in a city where liberals have promoted a lie for my entire life (I’m now 51), what do you expect? As long as voters keep electing Democrats who rely on wasted tax dollars that translate into union dues that fund their campaigns, nothing will change. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.
Clark Baker can blame liberals all he wants; conservatives deserve just as much blame. Under our Republican governor things have gotten worse.
We had a Republican/conservative administration in D.C. for eight long horrific years, and they just about destroyed the country and obliterated the middle class.
This anti-liberal diatribe is bogus; both are to blame, but the bulk of the problem is with the system that allows them to steamroller us.
Voters are also a major part of the problem; we keep voting for these miscreants. And if the rare new bird gets elected to office, who is honest and has the highest principles, he is soon corrupted by the system.
Until the system changes, nothing will change and there’s a better chance of a comet hitting the Earth in the next decade than there is of that happening.
“We had a Republican/conservative administration in D.C. for eight long horrific years, and they just about destroyed the country and obliterated the middle class.”
Oh, Sandy, you are brainwashed, aren’t you?
We were ruined before President Bush was elected.
You know that is true. But the mantra for liberal is “damage what cannot be destroyed.” I wish for all liberals a trip to Solhenitzen country for a period of 2 years in order to experience the joys of living in a government-issued life. Do it soon. Why be miserable?
You cannot possibly blame the UAW for the failure of the auto industry. If the Big 3 had ever hunkered down and built a hybrid car to rival the Prius they’d be surviving now, just as Toyota is. Instead the American auto makers, who sleep with the oil companies, built bigger and bigger cars, ignoring the young adult market. The Big 3 have committed corporate suicide at the hands of the CEOs.
As for L.A. unions…I think it is a sad commentary that a union sanitiation worker can make the same wages as a union teacher. The sanitation worker didn’t have to go to college for 5+ years. So I agree with you there.
This screed in ill-informed and ignorant. The NCs were systematically strangled by the City Attorney’s office (thanks Rocky, don’t let the door hit your fat ass on the way out) which proclaimed that NCs had to be structured in a way to to enable the Mayor’s office to have a thumb on them. The NCs could have been independent grant recipients with an officially designated status without the necessity of the Brown Act, Public Records Act, and more bureaucracy.
But the “Plan” of the BONC and DONE purposely kept the NCs under the City’s control. Believe me, it was on purpose. Nelson oversaw it.
This is not a conservative/liberal issue. It is just plain City bureaucratic need to create the public “impression of democracy” when, in fact, it is manipulated by regulations and “interpretations” by DONE and BONC. The City is a joke.
Clarkie has ZERO credibility:
http://exliberalhollywood.blogspot.com/
Clarkie has ZERO credibility:
http://exliberalhollywood.blogspot.com/
The state and federal governments were led by both Dems and Republicans during the past 50 years and, yes, mistakes were made by both parties.
In California, the governator was hampered by an entirely leftist legislature. But in Los Angeles, Democrats have had complete control – PERIOD.
Los Angeles is the petri dish for a liberal utopia. It’s up to voters to decide if and when they’ve had enough. Don’t get mad at me – I’m just reporting on the party I worked for since 1975.