I don't know if Antonio Villaraigosa is a liar, or even a crook -- though I've got my suspicions about some of his cronies.
But I do know he has a hard time taking responsibility for his actions, living up to his promises and facing the truth head-on.
That's why I put up his 2009 State of the City speech and highlighted the phrases that leap off the page to me, phrases that show he deflected all responsibility for the city's financial condition, pandered politically to segments of the population and quoted a Japanese proverb (Adversity is the foundation of virtue) as if to give moral weight to his commitment to fix what he had broken.
He might better have had his speechwriter dig out the Zen koan: If you do the right thing for the wrong reason, or the wrong thing for the right reason, what if you die?
The right reason that the mayor outlined was his committment to take the drastic steps needed skillfully scale the city work force and spending down to a level in line with falling revenue.
The heart of his plan to deal with the fiscal crisis was that he was not going to "take a meat cleaver to essential services -- threatening
meals for the poor, housing for the homeless, libraries for our
students, job assistance for the unemployed and police patrols in our
neighborhoods."
Instead, he was going to surgically remove the "deadwood" as he told Times editors days later.
Of course, that isn't what he -- or the City Council -- did.
He took a shotgun to the city work force and blew it to pieces with a sweetened retirement package that is getting rid of the talented and invaluable senior staff along with whatever "deadwood" has volunteered for it.
Huge gaps in managerial skill and experience are left in every department. There was nothing targeted about the ERIP, nothing strategic. It was open to just about anyone who wanted so a lot of the people who grabbed it could afford to retire with five extra years of service credit and $15,000 in cash to buy more.
Why would any capable person stay aboard a sinking ship if they didn't have to?
And now he's taking the mess he made of city government and grinding it into mush with 1,000 layoffs that will only buy a few months before the city can no longer pay its bills, time enough to sell off airports, golf courses, parking structures and meters, the zoo and Convention Center and buy a little more before the city has to file for bankruptcy.
By then there will be nothing much of value left to sell, except maybe the DWP, LAX, the parks and vast open spaces like Chatsworth Reservoir.
Nine months after his State of the City speech, what he has done to make matters so much worse, turned a crisis into a catastrophe.
He didn't do what he said he was going to do. He hasn't even had the courage to speak to the public about the budget catastrophe in all that time, preferring to flit from photo op to photo op boosting achievements in small things while the city falls apart and dreams of a better tomorrow turn into a nightmarish vision of a city without hope.
There was nothing mysterious about the city's worsening financial condition. Year after year, city bureaucrats warned of the deepening deficit.
As Walter Moore noted during his campaign for mayor, the City Administrative warned at least five times from 2005 to 2007 that the city was running more than $200 million in the red and needed to act prudently.
Instead of dealing with the problem, the mayor kept on hiring and hiring thousands of more city workers, kept on raisiing fees, taxes and rates and then spending more, most of it on poverty programs instead of basic services and infrastructure, kept on cutting sweetheart deals with unions, developers and contractors.
And now he wants to gut the Parks, Library, Planning, Neighborhood Empowerment, Building and Safety and other departments that do provide services citywide.
Even worse, he and the Council want to slam these cuts through without allowing any time for analysis or public debate.
They are seven months into this fiscal year and still have a $200 million deficit. They borrowed more than $1 billion to be able to pay their bills and don't have enough cash to pay the bills, in no small part because only a few hundred of the ERIP volunteers have actually left their jobs and will still be in them for many months more.
Today, they are raiding dozens of special funds of millions of dollars because they are out of cash. Next week, they will start ordering layoffs without regard to the functioning of departments, layoffs of the youngest workers, just like the ERIP got rid of the oldest.
Nothing they have done or are doing has anything to do with running the city for the benefit of the public. They are chasing the numbers of falling revenue downhill without a plan.
City unions are in an uproar after having been dragged to the bargaining table with a gun at their heads three times in less than a year. Their own positive ideas for reducing spending have been largely ignored, their members are as furious at their leadership as they are at city officials.
The activist community has awakened and begun to mobilize into a force to be reckoned with.
Council members, few with any experience beyond serving in government staff jobs before being elected to positions as the nation's highest paid city elected officials, see the danger to themselves and are looking for whatever deceit and subterfuge will protect them from the wrath of the people.
They will do anything except face the truth and find the courage to lead the city out of the darkness.
There is no light at the end of this tunnel.
The only hope is that a new civic culture will arise out of the ashes of City Hall's failure.
Somehow the unions must come to realize the commitments from city officials are worthless. Business leaders must see the city can't deliver on promises to create thousands of jobs and revive the economy. And ordinary citizens must look beyond their grievances and their anger and seize the moment to find common ground with each other and with these other interests that are more powerful and better organized.
We cry out for a leader who can bring us together and save us from disaster. We thought Antonio Villaraigosa might that leader five years ago. We were wrong. He has betrayed our hopes and dreams.
Worst of all, he has betrayed himself -- and for that there is no redemption.
But I do know he has a hard time taking responsibility for his actions, living up to his promises and facing the truth head-on.
That's why I put up his 2009 State of the City speech and highlighted the phrases that leap off the page to me, phrases that show he deflected all responsibility for the city's financial condition, pandered politically to segments of the population and quoted a Japanese proverb (Adversity is the foundation of virtue) as if to give moral weight to his commitment to fix what he had broken.
He might better have had his speechwriter dig out the Zen koan: If you do the right thing for the wrong reason, or the wrong thing for the right reason, what if you die?
The right reason that the mayor outlined was his committment to take the drastic steps needed skillfully scale the city work force and spending down to a level in line with falling revenue.
The heart of his plan to deal with the fiscal crisis was that he was not going to "take a meat cleaver to essential services -- threatening
meals for the poor, housing for the homeless, libraries for our
students, job assistance for the unemployed and police patrols in our
neighborhoods."Instead, he was going to surgically remove the "deadwood" as he told Times editors days later.
Of course, that isn't what he -- or the City Council -- did.
He took a shotgun to the city work force and blew it to pieces with a sweetened retirement package that is getting rid of the talented and invaluable senior staff along with whatever "deadwood" has volunteered for it.
Huge gaps in managerial skill and experience are left in every department. There was nothing targeted about the ERIP, nothing strategic. It was open to just about anyone who wanted so a lot of the people who grabbed it could afford to retire with five extra years of service credit and $15,000 in cash to buy more.
Why would any capable person stay aboard a sinking ship if they didn't have to?
And now he's taking the mess he made of city government and grinding it into mush with 1,000 layoffs that will only buy a few months before the city can no longer pay its bills, time enough to sell off airports, golf courses, parking structures and meters, the zoo and Convention Center and buy a little more before the city has to file for bankruptcy.
By then there will be nothing much of value left to sell, except maybe the DWP, LAX, the parks and vast open spaces like Chatsworth Reservoir.
Nine months after his State of the City speech, what he has done to make matters so much worse, turned a crisis into a catastrophe.
He didn't do what he said he was going to do. He hasn't even had the courage to speak to the public about the budget catastrophe in all that time, preferring to flit from photo op to photo op boosting achievements in small things while the city falls apart and dreams of a better tomorrow turn into a nightmarish vision of a city without hope.
There was nothing mysterious about the city's worsening financial condition. Year after year, city bureaucrats warned of the deepening deficit.
As Walter Moore noted during his campaign for mayor, the City Administrative warned at least five times from 2005 to 2007 that the city was running more than $200 million in the red and needed to act prudently.
Instead of dealing with the problem, the mayor kept on hiring and hiring thousands of more city workers, kept on raisiing fees, taxes and rates and then spending more, most of it on poverty programs instead of basic services and infrastructure, kept on cutting sweetheart deals with unions, developers and contractors.And now he wants to gut the Parks, Library, Planning, Neighborhood Empowerment, Building and Safety and other departments that do provide services citywide.
Even worse, he and the Council want to slam these cuts through without allowing any time for analysis or public debate.
They are seven months into this fiscal year and still have a $200 million deficit. They borrowed more than $1 billion to be able to pay their bills and don't have enough cash to pay the bills, in no small part because only a few hundred of the ERIP volunteers have actually left their jobs and will still be in them for many months more.
Today, they are raiding dozens of special funds of millions of dollars because they are out of cash. Next week, they will start ordering layoffs without regard to the functioning of departments, layoffs of the youngest workers, just like the ERIP got rid of the oldest.
Nothing they have done or are doing has anything to do with running the city for the benefit of the public. They are chasing the numbers of falling revenue downhill without a plan.
City unions are in an uproar after having been dragged to the bargaining table with a gun at their heads three times in less than a year. Their own positive ideas for reducing spending have been largely ignored, their members are as furious at their leadership as they are at city officials.
The activist community has awakened and begun to mobilize into a force to be reckoned with.
Council members, few with any experience beyond serving in government staff jobs before being elected to positions as the nation's highest paid city elected officials, see the danger to themselves and are looking for whatever deceit and subterfuge will protect them from the wrath of the people.
They will do anything except face the truth and find the courage to lead the city out of the darkness.
There is no light at the end of this tunnel.
The only hope is that a new civic culture will arise out of the ashes of City Hall's failure.
Somehow the unions must come to realize the commitments from city officials are worthless. Business leaders must see the city can't deliver on promises to create thousands of jobs and revive the economy. And ordinary citizens must look beyond their grievances and their anger and seize the moment to find common ground with each other and with these other interests that are more powerful and better organized.
We cry out for a leader who can bring us together and save us from disaster. We thought Antonio Villaraigosa might that leader five years ago. We were wrong. He has betrayed our hopes and dreams.Worst of all, he has betrayed himself -- and for that there is no redemption.
Ron Kaye
Adversity is the foundation of virtue Huh, not coming from Villaraigosa. NO NO NO
He shoulda said Never let a crisis go to waste. SNICKER SNICKER SNICKER And, I think that I invented the internet.
Well, Antonio will leave as a legacy, he not only sold the City figuratively, but also literally.
He should resign -- you know, to spend more time with his family.
Psychopath?
Which version of "self" has the mayor betrayed??
A. Antonio Ramon Villar
B. Tony Villar
C. Antonio Villar
D. Antonio Villar-Raigosa
E. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
....and the soon to be Mayor Antonio Villar- (Parker when photo ops need some beautification)
The guy has no "true" center of self.
Scott Johnson in CD 14.
The punk, he just realized "let some city services be performed by cheaper, private contractors." Another ally,the unions who got him elected, thrown under the bus! What`s new.
I heard today that the best part of the ERIP program is that it was offered to people like DWP employees whose salary does not come out of the general fund and thus, the savings from the retirement of 1200-1300 people will have NO EFFECT on the budget deficient AT all. Is this true?
I heard today that the best part of the ERIP program is that it was offered to people like DWP employees whose salary does not come out of the general fund and thus, the savings from the retirement of 1200-1300 people will have NO EFFECT on the budget deficient AT all. Is this true?
DWP employees were not offered ERIP because they are in a separate pension system. They were offered early retirement a few years back and were offered extremely lucrative benefits that were taken by over 3,000 employees who were then hired at even more lucrative salaries. DWP employees salary comes from your inflated water and power bills. They just keep raising it, and being a monopoly, you have no choice but to pay the bill. DWP is a rip-off agency that most people don't even know about. Pay attention. Those employees along with Fire & Police are not worth the wages they are paid.
Then what about harbors and airports? Different pension system there as well? So, what I heard is not true?
Ron, this is so nice of you to say that
"Nine months after his State of the City speech, what he has done to make matters so much worse, turned a crisis into a catastrophe."
But have you warned people last year that *maybe* Villar shouldn't be re-elected because he's not competent to manage the city? You are as responsible for this "catastrophe" as everybody who voted for that turd.
Again why were you silent & not raising the alarm? Were you afraid of Villar & his clique?
None of us could possibly imagine that there were people like Villar who were so stupid. We have now been warned and should not repeat this mistake.
Yeah your inflated DWP bills are actually lower than private industry, genius. And because DWP runs its own transmission, LA is one of the only cities in CA that doesn't have to deal with BS outages caused by Cal-ISO screwing up. Which is why they're ranked by JD Power and Associates and have a better average of SAIFI, SAIDI, and CAIDI ratings than other local utilities, private or municipal.
If you think DWP employees are worthless, you have no clue what you're talking about. Here's reality for you. If DWP ever gets sold, it will most likely get sold to Edison. When it does, your rates will increase even more, your infrastructure will degrade even further (some of Edison's substations have some ancient crap in there), you will have more outages due to Cal ISO, and Edison wouldn't care what you think because they also have the rest of Southern California to manage. DWP workers and the work they do is what is keeping that from happening.
Yeah genius, some of us live in cities with city owned utilities and none of them gouge the residents like DWP. And no pipe bursts or power outages either.
Quote: Then what about harbors and airports? Different pension system there as well? So, what I heard is not true?
Yes, it is true. ERIP was open to everyone who was in the LACERS pension system, and that includes Airports, Harbor, and other non-General-Funded positions. The original idea was that the Gen Funded ERIP applicants would be processed first, and only if there were spaces left over in the original 2400 would the special fund applicants be processed. That didn't happen, apparently, as the CAO sent a memo yesterday to LACERS instructing them, from this point forward, to process Gen Funded positions first. Just one stupid bureaucratic mess after another!
Really 8:31. What city do you live in with a public utility? Burbank? Glendale? Pasadena? They've got like 5 stations total and about 10 engineers.
Go look up SAIFI and the other indices I mentioned and compare them between DWP and whatever city you live in. Those indices are what the utilities industry uses to catalog power outages and reliability. The utilities industry, not some keyboard jockey like yourself trying to act like he knows something
Why don't you post the price per KWH of DWP electricity vs other utilties. Price gouging, my ass
The emperor has no clothes.
I can only say, who would have thought a few years ago that the City would be in such a predicament. It`s a sad day for Los Angeles and it hurts.
Think about it. We elected showmen with charisma, great communicators, who dazzled us with words like
"hope", "dream", "change". And look what`s happening in the nation, state, and city. Yeah, competence and real world experience count, not on the job training.
They taxed us to build libraries. Now they want to close them down after they built them. Isn`t this a fraud?
They taxed us to build libraries. Now they want to close them down after they built them. Isn`t this a fraud?
My comment:
As long as we remain connected to each other (over 400 square miles) we cannot
keep wanting more, more, more and expect someone else to pay for it. The needs
in San Pedro differ widely from those in my space (West San Fernando Valley).
We must secure our borders so that cheap labor from Mexico (and drugs and sex slaves) cannot come through - this is essential. Farmers need help but they will have to pay
for local labor even if it will cost more for them (and for us) we have to recognize that.
The gangs are a price we simply cannot afford. The cost of prisons, murders, the threats against small businesses who must pay "protection" or get burned out - this is all
the result of the society we have managed to create in Los Angeles. It is not Stuart, Iowa.
Many have recognized that and are leaving not only LA but California as well.
That is my opinion and comment. Teddy Howell
My comment:
As long as we remain connected to each other (over 400 square miles) we cannot
keep wanting more, more, more and expect someone else to pay for it. The needs
in San Pedro differ widely from those in my space (West San Fernando Valley).
We must secure our borders so that cheap labor from Mexico (and drugs and sex slaves) cannot come through - this is essential. Farmers need help but they will have to pay
for local labor even if it will cost more for them (and for us) we have to recognize that.
The gangs are a price we simply cannot afford. The cost of prisons, murders, the threats against small businesses who must pay "protection" or get burned out - this is all
the result of the society we have managed to create in Los Angeles. It is not Stuart, Iowa.
Many have recognized that and are leaving not only LA but California as well.
That is my opinion and comment. Teddy Howell
The problem is, the issues with overextending ourselves is not just an L.A. issue. City councils all over the nation are faced with severe cuts in hiring and services.
I think what makes it worse in L.A. is that in Los Angeles we live in a culture of excess. Our civic leaders could be poster children for our culture of excess. They are prime examples of the people, and there are thousands of them here, who live pretty high on the hog. As a result, they have designed a city system that is inefficient, and also lives richly.
Now, when they have to deal with real life like the rest of us do, when they have to give up their Neiman Marcus lifestyle and settle for a
K-Mart lifestyle, all of a sudden they are shocked---shocked that they can't afford their old city culture anymore.
I shrug at all this news of budget cuts and layoffs. I really do. People have warned them and they still don't get it. So if they won't or can't listen to the experts who tell them that the local economy can no longer support their champagne tastes, why would they listen to the bloggers, reporters, and everyday citizens who tell them the same tale of woe?
They have to cut down to a beer budget? That's a big deal for them? Could they cope with a pay cut themselves? Why can't they? All the rest of us are!
Suffering millionaires. Gosh. I feel so sorry for them.
8:48, a great post. There is another angle to this disaster that LA has become and it's pathetic, lazy, naive idiotic voters. It was obvious even 5 years ago that Villar is a failure but that he got re-elected last year -- that defies reason. Let's see, his qualifications to run a large city:
a mecha organizer -- check
1.4 GPA in chicano studies -- check
fuzzy jobs as a stooge for teachers unions and developers like Broad -- check, check
But wait, he's got a great smile and women love him. Sure vote him in!
Spiffy, did you happen to see an article in the LA Times about a year ago, that told the tale of woe being suffered by some woman in Northern California? Her example of her penury -- "Now I can't have wine with dinner every night." Your words reminded me of the sentiments I had when I read that article.
Yes, they are on a beer budget, but not quite. One of the problems the City management is going to have with the labor unions is that they've been saying one thing while doing another. On the one hand, they wring their hands and pay lip service to the "hard decisions" they have to make -- on the other, they give raises to DWP (different fund, but it doesn't matter, money is money). They continue to pay for cars for their staff; they continue to pay mileage to people who don't qualify; they continue to keep large staffs to do things the 1980's way instead of the 2010 way. They do all these things, all the while lamenting that there's no money and that the service to the public will be gutted. Thank God they'll still be there with their bloated staff to set a good example. *snort*
Having met the Mayor's and Council staff, they perform no additional service which the many departments already do. They are superflous and can be eliminated at savings of millions of dollars. Additionally, the CAO is in the pocket of the Mayor just as the Chief Legislative Analyst is in the Council's pocket. Fine, if both the Mayor and Council already have these two huge bureacracies at their disposal, why do they need the staff they do. There is a lot of fat that needs to be cut. Lay-off of 1,000 or 2,000 employees is only the tip of the iceberg. It has to be slash and burn everywhere.
To January 30, 2010 6:08 PM: Yes the City can and should be run more efficiently, however the Council staff does serve a function that is not redundant in the individual Departments. It fields calls and issues from constituents and works with various Departments to address issues in their districts.
I have attended more meetings then I care to with people sitting for hours and complaining. There is no outrage and this is why City Hall continues to crap on the people. Where is the OUTRAGE because none of the city council offices or the Mayor's huge over 100 staffers are being laid off???? Where is the OUTRAGE no one is talking about the corruption within DWP and the raise they received and no one is laying them off?????? Can you imagine if over 400 people stormed city hall outraged at the state of this city? I've been hearing a lot of talk but no action whatsoever. The people whining and complaining are no better then the politicians
James
Are you working for the Mayor or a CM?
Probably another public employee who works sooooooooo hard!
Excesses is correct. Although, from experience having lived here forever, and having grown up when DWP was doing fine, I'd say the core business of DWP is not bad at all--the problem is Prop S, which tagged on a large amount of added, billed, money which is then funneled into the Gen Fund morass, which is illegal, per legal opinion of radio host Kevin James (Esq.). Many LA citizens know this, so now even the DWP, which generally got only moderate debate, is inviting much concern.
The true 800 lb. gorilla of problems, is the basic managerial (mis-managerial) style and the incentives built into the management of this city. Once we elected Union-driven leadership, who ALSO have no technical ability whatsoever, we moved AWAY from infrastructure, protection, basic services and into the wacky world of:
LA City Employees "Club"
Lactation Rooms / Lactation training
Endless waste in depts. such as LAUSD
Seemingly endless junkets to South America, Copenhagen and Berlin, etc. etc.
Bloated and, distressingly, growing staffs for Mayor and Council--(this needs to go ASAP; get rid of 'em; everyone added in last five years)
The cars mentioned above, as well as the miles
Annual payment for Uniforms (do policemen trash one every year?), tools (do we lose so many?), and so forth-(these are actually disguised bonuses)
Unfortunately for the city workers, and there are many, who DO work hard, they will likely suffer as Chapter 9 breaks the Union contracts, and substantial reduction in wage rate is instituted, as well as reductions in numbers of positions, and credited values in their retirement funds.
The Unions would be well advised to develop an aggressive plan right now, which does this, because a Federal judge in Ch. 9, will not have their interests anywhere in sight.
Remember, there is very little in the budget other than capital costs, and costs of people-salary, wages, pension funding, and so on. The only way to fix it is to reduce people costs.
Capital costs are where our city does its basic, legally SWORN, duty--the duty to the citizens!! (i.e. build a library, fix the streets, the streetlights, the dams and so forth). So to reduce anything other than people costs is to infuriate the citizens of Los Angeles!
What did you expect from a 1.4 GPA in Chicano Studies who probably only got into UCLA because he was a Latino from a poor background and raised his mother with no daddy role model as he keeps telling us. That and charm only went so far, he's unable to think on his feet and formulate policy. He and Trutanich both similar dimbulbs went to an anyone-gets-in night law school, the one couldn't pass the bar after 4 tries the other's law school had to close after a few years because it never gained full accreditation by the bar or lost it.
Both showman and fancy talkers with clever campaign managers, both pretended to get past race and political party, both pretending to be all about the humble folk and not themselves convincing even experienced and cynical politicians and media types, both huge disappointments. One from the Latino left, the other from the racist whites of Moore-Berger and old folks' angry right of the militant suburban homeowner associations who mostly pay very litle in taxes for homes they've owned for decades but fight like hell and sue the broke city over every single development that could pay for the upkeep and improvements the city needs. While the cities all around L A continue to do so and create traffic and congestion and smog for us, have better services and schools, and leave us with the burdens of the poor because they won't build "affordable housing" for their low-wage workers. Rosendahl rails against Santa Monica, others at West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, even at Burbank which is thriving from its tacky and featureless megamalls with acres of parking.
Meanwhile he's waging a hugely expensive war on all medical cannabis dispensaries just as they've turned in 700,000 to get it on the ballot to legalize it all for his master Cooley's campaign. Forgetting he works for the council and mayor and the people, threatening to sue and jail everyone who doesn't submit to his bullying, giving self-serving advice, egged on by his fanatical fans waving pom poms praying to line the streets watching Perry lead the parade to jail whatever he costs the city, leaving our council and mayor and controller more rudderless than before, even though the most of them couldn't get a job as a bank teller let alone be qualified to run the city's finances or its legal affairs.
So now they want to cut the cops and firefighters and forget about potholes, charge citizens to fix the sidewalks in front of their homes and soon, they'll give us tickets for pulling out of our driveways and raise our taxes anyway just because. As they blame each other, Parks pointing at the rest as though he hadn't been head of the budget committee, Zine the clown wants to be Controller, Perry wants to be mayor and Rosendahl and Hahn want to move up to statewide or national office to do more harm. What a city.
I am hoping for bankruptcy. It is the only thing that will wake up the sleeping populace and bring change. Bring on the bankruptcy.
The only thing that will wake up the sleeping populace is to recall every member of Council and the Mayor. Enough of wishful thinking with no action.
To the DWP fan.
Screw DWP. I work for the city and have close friends that work for DWP as well. I've trained to be a lineman and an electric station operator. Ive compared my bill to friends that live in Edison areas. SAME PRICE PER KILLOWATT HOUR!! 12 cents up to 5000 KWH, 14 cents after 5000 KWH's. The same exact price as Edison. I know because I just compared bills.
As far as infrastructure, DWP isn't doing a damn thing with their rate increases to aid this. Same water lines. Same power grid. Same B.S. The rate increase was just to pad their coffers. Its high time the DWP goes under a major audit by our CAO's office. Its totally long overdue.
SHARED SACRAFICE – L.A. MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA, CITY CONTROLLER WENDY GREUEL, OR L.A. BUDGET COMMITTEE INFORM ANGELENOS HOW MUCH WASTED MONEY IS SPENT ON THE MAYOR’S 24/7 POLICE SECURITY SERVICES INCLUDING THEIR YEARLY SALARIES AND OVERTIME PAY.
L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa needs to eliminate his 24/7 police security detail that is a waste of taxpayers’ money. These police officers can better serve the communities by enhancing public safety. This would allow stakeholders to observe the DIVIDENDS for their money.
L.A. Mayor should learn from former Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who did NOT have a security detail, as Brown would even walk to work from his residence.
In a 2007, 20/20 ABC NEWS interview with Dubai Prince, Mohammed bin Rashid, Prince Mohammed said he did NOT have a security detail following him and drove alone.
The police detail is there to impress people about his importance without which he is just a short, insignificant man.