To employ a carelessly chosen verb, the following essay was inspired by yesterday’s sarcastic lead editorial in the Los Angeles Times, which should have been headlined “Take Your Richly Deserved Medicine, Shut up and Die” instead of “Facing the budget music.”
Through the first weeks of Gov. Brown’s guns-ablazing attempt to kill all redevelopment agencies throughout the state, the Times has been his most voluble ally.
The hard left newspaper’s furious, unrequited fealty to Mr. Brown has been so stunningly muscular since his election 2½ months ago that if he said climate change was bogus, the Times would ardently agree. They would throw out what has been their First Commandment since the fad first descended, in a whooping cough cloud, from heaven, whose air the AQMD has declined to rate — possibly on the grounds they aren’t going there anyway.
Before turning to the opinions of City Manager John Nachbar, here is a spot of context on the unusually long and meaner-spirited-than-usual editorial love letter defending the recycled new governor.
Redevelopment agencies not only need to die to save the state a billion-dollar annual bundle, the Times argues, but they deserve to die on their own abysmal merits.
If only the Times used such sturdy language against Hamas and Hezbollah and the Smiling Dwarf not to mention the latter-day Charlie Chaplin lookalike, our U.S. Attorney General, the first A.G. in history to play his job for laughs instead of catching bad guys.
Turn ‘em Against Each Other
Convening its daily session in class warfare, the Times contended that every state agency except redevelopment agencies is worth rescuing. Continuing in that mode, the Times suggested that while the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency may have a barely detectable shortcoming, the authentic culprits are “small-city agencies,” which are packed with bumblers.
Redevelopment is a faulty concept that has poisoned California communities from Yreka to the Mexican border, the newspaper suggested.
If the rest of us are to survive, even modestly, the Times said, Mr. Brown, obviously a fine fellow of faultless fetter, has no choice but to kill off the lone bad seed in the checkerboard of government agencies.
The newspaper’s shrieking venom drowned out its weak stab at reasoning.
I digress.
The Times says a pox on all redevelopment agencies from Culver City to Sacramento because they are peopled by foul-thinking shady types who have been unfair to the poor while cuddling up with developers (ugh), the worst villains of this imperfect society next to Wall Street financiers, well, maybe also next to Republicans in general and specifically Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin.
They Have Cheated the Poor
Not only have agencies performed like serial killers in uniformly failing statewide to build sufficient affordable housing to cover the poor and the wannabe-poors, agencies have committed an even worse sin, and here I quote:
“Their highest-profile projects always seem to be commercial developments.”
Land’s sakes. Imagine that, Murgatroyd.
When smaller towns the length of the state are trying to attract businesses and families, says the Times, they should scotch plans for commercial buildings. Instead, make those peasants erect high-tech huts for deadbeats that glow in the dark (the deadbeats or the huts?). By golly, that will attract new residents in droves — if they are mute, deaf and freshly dead. Perhaps cemeteries should be shifted to the town square, too.
For a Different View
Much more calmly, Mr. Nachbar, the City Manager, surveys the War Against Redevelopment Agencies zone and says:
“Redevelopment is a critical, extremely useful tool for cities, and especially for portions of cities that are aging. We have so many useful examples of the usefulness and wisdom of redevelopment in Culver City — Westfield Culver City, Downtown, improvements that are under way and bearing fruit on West Washington.”
Mr. Nachbar was asked if it was fair to cast this fight as either-or, as redevelopment agencies against schools and social services.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “To me, I don’t think any one function should be pitted against another.”
And then, in a pretty remarkable surprise, Mr. Nachbar produced an alternative solution.
“The bulk of government spending is with public employees,” said the man who is the best-paid employee in city history.
“I don’t know how you are going to solve serious, serious fiscal structural problems public unions. I don’t know what percent of state expenditures are public employee salaries, but it must be significant.”
Mr. Nachbar was asked what he would tell Gov. Brown in a private meeting.
“I would urge him to have the courage to confront the public employees. If that constitutes the single largest expenditure in the budget, I don’t know how he can ignore it.”
