Technically, I suppose, a contract is not a scam when both parties enter into even a ludicrous agreement in a state of sobriety.
For two years I have had the creeping feeling that the nifty little arrangement between the often adventurous city of Santa Monica and an aging holdup man Ed Edelman, the supposedly retired County Supervisor, is a joke.
One of them should be sued for impersonating a responsible grownup.
Knowing that liberals are such fun-loving pranksters, I kept holding my breath. When would the Mayor of the Moment, Pam O’Connor or Richard Bloom, deliver the punch line so all of us could exhale?
Never came.
Drat.
After two years as the Homeless Czar of Santa Monica, Ed Edelman, unable to believe his good fortune — not to mention the most recent chubby addition to his personal fortune — is slinking back into “retirement.” Until the next dopey City Council comes calling.
$200,000 Plus $200,000
For each of the past two years, Mr. Edelman has been drawing a salary of $200,000 to cure Santa Monica’s homeless problem — you know, the way liberals say they are going to solve global poverty by Tuesday and global warming by Friday at the latest.
Mr. Edelman — who sounds like a student of the prestigious W. Sutton School of Bank-Robbing — really stiffed Santa Monica, from the way I read it.
Hearing Mr. Edelman strain to recite his accomplishments last week was on the order of listening to your ex-wife trying to remember your strong points in Divorce Court.
A Straight Face?
I swear I detected stains from tears of laughter on my computer screen last week when I read his 1300-word Letter to the Editor last at surfsantamonica.com. He was trying to remember and then inflate his accomplishments during his term as, nudge, nudge, “Santa Monica’s Special Representative for Homeless Initiatives.”
I promise that if your Aunt Sadie has laid in bed the last two years, moaning, calling out vaguely, “Where am I?” she has done as much for City Hall as Mer. Edelman.
This is one gag-me script that did not suffer from the puffed-up writers strike.
Even with all of the dishonest politicians on the Westside, the Edelman Caper surely is the political knee-slapper of the decade.
Mr. Edelman cannot believe that all of those self-promoting, sharp-minded liberals in Santa Monica have not figured out how he held up the city for two years, in the daylight, without ever being charged.
If Mr. Edelman had been black, he probably would have been thrown into such a remote hole in a dank prison that his body would not have been found until after the boobs at City Hall got religion and re-converted to the city’s onetime sensible, conservative ways.
How Did You Find Him?
I thought a cache of gold had been discovered beneath City Hall on Dec. 6, ’05 given the way the city of Santa Monica trumpeted the slightly unbelievable news that they had lured Mr. Edelman out of retirement.
It felt like New Boobs Day in Santa Monica.
Perhaps the Messiah had just galloped into town, and City Hall did not trust the city’s newspapers with the news.
Where Have You Been?
Mr. Edelman has been in town all his life, and on the dole throughout his adult life. From 1965 to ’74, he was on the Los Angeles City Council. The next 20 years, he went where all good, scam-minded Los Angeles politicians go to hide out and get rich at the same time — the CountyBoard of Supervisors.
With a dull putty knife, Mr. Edelman had carved 40 years of an undistinguished career. And Santa Monica acted as if it had just discovered a secret talent he had kept stuffed in his moldy watch pocket since 1965.
In his farewell written address to the city, Mr. Edelman listed the three accomplishments of his regime:
1. He succeeded in getting all of the outdoors homeless-feeding programs shifted indoors.
2. He copied and enlarged on an East Coast model of a homeless court, which has blossomed into a hefty $1.7 million pilot program. Since “unhoused” offenders of the law were not showing up in regular court anyway, after a junket to New York, Mr. Edelman brought the court to them. He helped to establish a monthly Homeless Court in Council Chambers where offenders get the charges dropped if they agree to participate in a treatment program.
3. He aided in the search for an executive director for the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Unbelievable? You Bet
Those are honorable achievements.
But to call them cost-effective is wildly hyperbolic.
When Mr. Edelman said he was skating out of town, Councilman Bobby Shriver told surfsantamonica.com editor Jorge Casuso, “I think he did an unbelievable job.”
Who could disagree? Mr. E. should take his act to the Third Street Promenade on weekends.
As Ms. Goldberg would say, Whoopi.
Mr. Edelman could redeem himself by forwarding his $400,000 to charities of his choice.