CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-Query: What is wrong with Los Angeles? Answer: Angelenos. “The fault rests, dear Brutus, not in the stars but in ourselves.” -- Cassius, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
Los Angeles Is No Different than Any Other Human Population on Earth
Throughout history, every society is a product of its members -- from Sodom and Gomorrah, to ancient Rome (referenced in the above quote), to wars that have always plagued Europe, to the genocide of Native Americans, to separating families and loading toddlers onto the trains housed in cages at our borders, to the intentional destruction of poor people’s homes in LA (shoving thousands of children and the elderly onto the streets).
When the Nuremberg Trials rejected the “Just Following Orders” defense, the international community asserted the same principle. Individuals do not escape moral responsibility by blaming the higher ups. The structure of a society reflects the nature of its people. If anyone wishes to reject the immoral nature of his or her society, he or she needs to speak up and refuse to obey. Likewise, Los Angeles is a criminogenic society because We the People have constructed a system that glorifies and kowtows to the powerful. Our judicial branch exemplifies Lord Acton’s warning: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Decades ago, when Californians became concerned about the increasing lawlessness of judges in the courts, the response was to create the Commission of Judicial Performance.
“The commission was established by voter approval of a legislative constitutional amendment in the November 1960 election. The provisions establishing the commission were part of a package of judicial administration reforms, heralded as ‘real protection against incompetency, misconduct or non-performance of duty on the Bench.’ The commission office was established and the commission began its work in 1961.” -- CJP webpage, July 14, 2019.
From its inception, the CJP perverted its mission by protecting the wrongdoers. The reality is that the CJP became a cadre of disreputable power mongers who “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil” when it comes to unmasking their own evil. As the State Auditor’s April 2019 report revealed, the intentional structural flaw in the CJP is that a three-judge panel first determines what evidence may be presented. Incriminating evidence is cleansed in advance of any hearing. Of course, it is ludicrous that the CJP’s structure allows the accused’s buddies decide what evidence may be presented.
We’ve had this absurd organization since 1961. We the People have so abrogated our duty of self-government that it is only now, in 2019, that this fact been brought to light. In the meantime, thousands of Californians have had their lives torn apart by a corrupt judiciary. We have a State Supreme Court which holds that arbitrations whose determinations are “wrong on their face” and work a “substantial injustice” to the victims must be enforced. (Moncharsh v. Heily & Blase (1992) 3 Cal.4th 1.)
The same court holds that executives who wish to hire criminals to help them embezzle their company’s funds may fire employees who object to the criminal activity. (Foley v. Interactive Data Corp., (1988) 47 Cal.3d 65.) More recently, the State Supreme Court supported the appellate court decision that Cal. Const. Art VI Sec 10 allows judges to exclude troublemaker Jews who would “refuse Jesus Christ” from side bars and hearings and may alter evidence offered by Jews. HELP v City of Los Angeles (the city did not promote this idea; it came 100% from the court system itself).
One could continue for thousands of pages citing examples of the judicial nightmares which have been and continue to be visited upon Angelenos. The cause of this is not that judges are immoral villains (although many of them are) but more because We the People allow this structure to continue.
The Criminogenic Nature of the City of Los Angeles
The way We the People respond to the rapid “Third-Worldization” of Los Angeles highlights that the fault is not in the stars and not even in the criminals who dominate our society, but in ourselves. We the People are the ones who permit the city to continue as a criminal enterprise. Not surprisingly, the judiciary fully supports this.
For the few who still do not know the city’s operating principle -- which virtually guarantees that the City Hall is a criminal enterprise -- here’s a recap:
(1) Penal Code § 86 codifies Vote Trading as a form of bribery where votes are purchased by return votes rather than by cash.
(2) The City Council operates on the basis of a Vote Trading Agreement in direct violation of Penal Code § 86, which is why 100% of the projects the Council votes on are unanimously approved. If a councilmember puts a project on the City Council agenda, it absolutely, positively must receive a “Yes” vote from each councilmember. Thus, each one of them knows his votes are given in return for return votes by all the other councilmembers.
This Vote Trading Agreement allows each councilmember to take bribes and guarantee a developer that he will get “what he paid for.” It doesn’t matter if the project will destroy the homes of thirty poor families in rent-controlled apartments as long as developer gets his “spot zoning” approved. That is the origin of the homeless crisis – the destruction of the rent-controlled apartments of more than 60,000 poor people based on the city council’s criminal vote trading agreement.
We Angelenos Have Known about this Vote Trading for Decades
The state legislature expressly added city councils to Penal Code § 86 in 2006, but We the People have ignored this reform. The corrupt District Attorney’s office has always looked the other way and allowed this criminal enterprise to continue unchallenged. When SaveValleyVillage brought this conduct to the court’s attention, however, Judge Richard Fruin ruled in December 2016 that LA City Council’s criminal behavior was “non-justiciable,” i.e. the city’s criminal enterprise is above the law.
Had the DA brought the lawsuit, as should have been done more than a decade ago, perhaps Judge Fruin might not have sanctified criminality, but we shall never know. Let’s be real. The same people who fund our corrupt city council fund the elections of all District Attorneys and are the gatekeepers of their political advancement.
We know that We the American People are the root cause of our ills as we see the Citizens United case from the U.S. Supreme Court (Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission 588 U.S. 50 (2010)), which likewise sanctifies criminals’ secretly funding political campaigns. Sure, a few malcontents who still naively believe in Truth, Justice and the American way complain, but overall,We the People are content to allow criminals to control our government from Washington D.C. right down to CD 13.
If you want to know who’s to blame for LA being a criminogenic city, where corruption is always the soup du jour, look no further than We the People.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
