Sometimes in endless reveries spent mulling the state of things, I hit a mind block where I can’t make heads or tails of what is going on, or where it leads.
That’s when I ask myself, “What if….”
What if there really was a man in the moon, or it were made of green cheese? What if everybody’s dreams could come true if only we believed enough? 
What if we got down to work together and actually tried to identify our communal problems and to solve them, or at least make things better, with mutual respect and a genuine desire to balance the competing needs, values and interests that each of us brings to the table?
I bring this up in the context of the rush by Los Angeles city officials to make a historic decision on the future of downtown and the whole Southern California region that will continue to impact us for decades to come.
Football — that’s all it’s about. How truly L.A. is that?
Anschutz Entertainment Group sees a chance to get rich by bringing professional football back to L.A. two decades after the National Football League abandoned us and pulled theRaiders and Rams out for the financial advantages of the teams’ owners in St. Louis and Oakland.
This double desertion of the nation’s second largest media market ought to have set in motion a lot of introspective navel-gazing among the rich and powerful. But it didn’t.
With the tearing down of a wing of that white elephant, the L.A. Convention Center, and rebuilding it, along with Farmers Field stadium for AEG to run for its own advantage as part of its Staples Center/LA Live/hotel-condo complex, Los Angeles is committing itself to transforming downtown into a Times Square-like entertainment zone. This zone will contain luxury hotels, restaurants and bars in an artificial environment lit 24/7 by dozens of digital billboards. And it will be graced by traffic that at times will convert what is so often merely a time-consuming effort to drive through downtown into an impossible journey.
In theory, the convention center will spawn new hotels with 5,000 more rooms. That would take L.A. from 15th place in the hierarchy of convention-friendly cities, competing against Sacramento, to the first rung of desirable cities like New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco — even San Diego.
But independent experts call that theory a fantasy.
Maybe they should tear down the convention center for a People’s Park. All this open space would cost less than the convention center.
…and it would bring some much needed fresh air into the fetid atmosphere of the city’s center of corruption!
I agree, we have a serious problem here in Los Angeles. Lust for
power and money seems to rule those elected to help. 2013 is
when we all need to vote for change. Out with the “in-group”,
elect new people from Mayor down to City Council, comptroller
and whatever else is on the ballot.
I like my home and would like to be able to stay here, but not
possible anymore with this leadership.
Chicago is going to settle the Teacher’s strike, thus L.A. is again the most corrupt City in all of human history.
As for that stupid NFL stadium–they are hell bent to build it and find out what I already know–it will play to HALF EMPTY CROWDS!!! We’ll most likely get a loser of a team (or two) which will make it more to the worse. Then we have the excessive cost of PARKING and BEER AND FOOD. People in L.A. aren’t going to pay for this luxery and foreign tourists wont make season ticket holders too.
AEG has been plotting this stadium deal for its LA Live City-State that it’s built up since 1996 or so. They could of build the stadium on it’s parking lots back in 2000 but was just too damn GREEDY and instead used its land to build LA Live and these crappy Hotels and relied on the Corruptopia-Clowncil to give it the Convention Center to tear down and build the Stadium. But AEG has lost alot of clout with it’s bought and paid for officeholders. Even these fools Downtown see the DANGER of having the team or teams FAIL and LEAVE L.A. WITH A VACANT STADIUM! Council Clown Rosen-Dumb saw this, but recently fighting cancer has alot more on his mind right now (and justly so.) Thus the Clowcil will approve this FARCE. It WILL FAIL, AND WILL LEAVE CORRUPTOPIA BILLIONS MORE IN THE HOLE.
But they will never learn and never listen.
with ego-crazed-amoral-idiots in power
AEG knows it can bamboozle LA…
remember Joel Wachs…?
courage, intelligence, integrity…
just what we need in city hall…
how quickly LA forgets…