CommentsVIEW FROM HERE--The Forward, a Jewish newspaper in NYC since 1897, published its November 17, 2020 article, Does Eric Garcetti Deserve a Biden Administration Job?
Depends Whom You Ask, by Danielle Berrin, posted elsewhere in this issue of CityWatch. Ms. Berrin is based in Los Angeles and writes the blog, Hollywood Jew.
Ms, Berrin may know something about Jews, but she appears to know nothing about Los Angeles. If Dems in general accept her portrayal of Garcetti as reliable, the Dems are headed for political disaster. Garcetti is Los Angeles’ longest serving elected official and as city councilmember for CD 3, then as city council president and then as mayor, he has presided over feudal style, horribly corrupt city which has trashed the American dream.
(1) LA City’s Government is from the 1300's
Due to the city council’s vote trading system which California Penal Code § 86 criminalized in 2006, each councilmember is required to vote Yes on each project which another councilmember places on the city council agenda. That is the definition of Vote Trading. That is why each project during Garcetti’s tenure received unanimous approval. Each councilmember can make whatever corrupt development deal he wants as he can guaranteed unanimous approval.
(2) Garcetti Has Manufactured the Homeless Crisis
Garcetti turned homelessness into a Los Angeles crisis. Garcetti’s Manhattanization is based on the destruction of the rent-controlled apartments. In LA once a person loses his rent-controlled unit, he has to rent at market rate. The elderly, the mentally challenged or the single mother may be able to get by with $500/month rent, but not at the market rate of $1,500. Developers prefer to buy rent-controlled apartments as they are cheap to purchase and fit very well into the Buy Low Sell High economic model. Virtually, every project which destroyed rent-controlled units required city council approval and they got it unanimously 100% of the time. What rabbi called for the destruction of poor people homes to make billionaires wealthier? Is that some new tenet of some progressive form of Jewish tradition? I think not. Last I looked, it was still “Justice, Justice Thou shall pursue” and not “support a criminal enterprise which victimizes the poor.”
Years before the Covid-19 pandemic, the death rate from homelessness, independent of other factors, had reached pandemic portions. Although the city deliberately won’t collect proper data, it seems that about 30% of the 1,000 homeless who die each year would not have died if they had had a home. No one cared! Certainly not Garcetti or the Los Angeles Times.
(3) Mafiazation of Rubbish Collections, Rats, and Typhus
Garcetti presided over Los Angeles’ Mafiazation of Trash. August 10, 2017, City Watch, Is ‘Mafiazation’ of Trash Hauling Coming to LA?, by Richard Lee Abrams As a result, the trash haulers jacked up the rates so high, that downtown businesses started dumping trash to avoid being ripped off by another Garcetti scam. Since each councilmember gets to decide who will get the rash monopoly for his fiefdom, people should stop pretending bribery is not rampant. Since homeless people have no city hall clout, the businesses dumped the rash near homeless encampments, who were inundated with rats, fleas, and diseases while people blamed the homeless for the trash. Of course, Garcetti would not pay for more trash clearance near the homeless – and the typhus entered city hall and the downtown police station.
(4) Under Garcetti Traffic Went from Bad, to Terrible to Worse in Nation to Worst in the World
Traffic congestion is not a new phenomenon but by 2016 Garcetti raised LA’s traffic congestion to worst in the world. The reason is no mystery. Garcetti’s Manhattanization not only created homelessness but extreme density. The more cars which are attracted to DTLA, Bunker Hill, Hollywood, Century City, the more traffic congestion. In 2015, Judge James Chalfant rejected the huge Millennium Earthquake Towers in Hollywood as they would attract so much new traffic that cars would not be able to get downtown in the morning rush hour, and Hollywood would have gridlock by the freeway on and off ramps. The year prior in 2014 Judge Allan Goodman ruled that Garcetti’s Hollywood Community Plan Update was based on fatally flawed data and wishful thinking to the extent it subverted the law. Garcetti’s construction and transportation polices are based on Lies and Myths.
(5) Mass Transit Disaster
As Judges Chalfant and Goodman foretold, Garcetti’s transportation policies became a nightmare. Garcetti’s plan was that if he cut down on the number of car lanes in favor of bicycles, he could create such a horrendous traffic nightmare, people would abandon their cars and use the hated subways. The Westside broke out into open revolt and the road diet had to be removed.
Mass transit has been steadily abandoned. It is slow, dirty, and dangerous. When undocumented aliens were allowed to have driver’s licenses, there was a significant drop in ridership. When Uber and Lyft arrived, ridership dropped more. Angelenos knew that it was Big Lie that mass transit helped poor people get to work. To the contrary, studies showed that owning a car was the best way to secure a job. Now with Covid-19, mass transit has become a pariah. While we still have thousands unemployed and many more thousands telecommuting, LA traffic has become unbearable. If LA were fully open, the entire city would be at gridlock.
(6) The City Is Losing Population
Not only has the criminal vote trading system created the homeless crisis and squandered billions of dollars on mass transit which people refuse to use, but Los Angeles is experiencing an exodus, especially of family millennials. Garcetti still pushes the false narrative that LA needs more high-rise apartments. When there is an exodus and the main contributor to new population is babies, there is no increased demand for housing. Each family who moves away leaves a vacant house or apartment.
Garcetti and other progressive loons like State Senator Scott Weiner think declaring war on the single-family home will make Los Angeles a desirable place to live. In fact, Los Angeles has already tipped over the brink into disaster.
CityWatch alone must have well over 100 articles spanning ten years, explaining the nature and extent of Garcetti’s malfeasance and corruption. If Joe Biden does not pay attention to this documentation now, he will have to deal with it later.
(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.)
-cw
