I believe it is a fair summation that the consensus on the Los Angeles Times is that it is a liberal newspaper; with a liberal worldview, or a progressive worldview, or a left of center world view.
Which is why I found it more than curious, bizarre even,that they commingled two articles about Latinos in Los Angeles in the same edition, on the same day. My question is, did this juxtaposition have an agenda?
In the Los Angeles Times, Cathleen Decker wrote an article about the rise of Latino power;
“Once there was only Edward Roybal in a position of power. Today, as it did long ago, authority rests in many Latino hands.
The announcement last week that Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio will replace Cardinal Roger Mahony as head of the local Catholic diocese capped an assertion of power on the part of Latinos in Los Angeles that is remarkable in its seeming speed.
For decades, only one Latino held unquestioned public power: Edward R. Roybal, the first Latino to win a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. He spent 13 years there, then moved to Congress to serve 30 years, most of that time as the region’s only Latino representative.
Now the power positions held by Latinos in the Los Angeles area are multiple and manifest. Besides the Mexico-born archbishop, who is in line to become the first U.S. prelate of Latino heritage to become a cardinal, there is the mayor. The speaker of the Assembly. The sheriff. A county supervisor. Several members of the City Council, of Congress, of the Legislature, of the Los Angeles school board. The head of the most influential civic entity, organized labor.”
Her column inspired the hell out of my multicultural soul,until, I read in the same newspaper, on the same day, Steve Lopez’ column, the city of Los Angeles under the new Latino power.
“…If only the politicians running Los Angeles lived in the same world the rest of us inhabit.
“There’s no way you can avoid blaming those that are in charge,” admitted City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, a fiscal conservative who has been a little more responsible than others, but agrees that both the council and mayor deserve some good licks.
OK, here goes.
Sure, every level of government in the country has been hit hard. But L.A.’s financial fiasco didn’t creep up on us. City leaders have been warned for several years about the recklessness of running up deficits of $200 million to $250 million year after year. But the dunderheads kept hiring, adding a few thousand more employees and promising them the kind of benefits and pensions that no longer exist outside the bubble of government work.
Then, in 2007, even as private-sector workers were losing their jobs, city leaders gave a coalition of public employee unions a nice raise. And it gets worse.
Just four months ago — at a time when toddlers, chimps and even some invertebrates were worrying about the dire economic outlook — the mayor and council UNANIMOUSLY approved a five-year package of bonuses and raises for Department of Water and Power employees, represented by an all-powerful union, even though their salaries were already 20% to 30% higher than workers in other city departments.
Yep, that’s the same DWP that operates as if it were a sovereign nation and is now refusing to turn $73.5 million over to the general fund, even though the utility hasn’t exactly been transparent, and even though that $73.5 million is not its money.
It’s ours.
And our problems go way beyond the DWP.
One day we’re told by the mayor that we’re on the verge of bankruptcy and he’s going to shut down some city departments two days a week. The next day he says hey, never mind, he just found $26 million he wasn’t expecting to see.
One week we’re told the workforce will be cut by 1,000, a few weeks later it’s up to 4,000.
Meanwhile, the city’s chief administrative officer has ended up in rehab, a former DWP board member is suing the DWP for the withheld $73.5 million, the mayor and City Council are feuding over terms of a DWP rate increase, a Wall Street firm has lowered the city’s bond rating because of the childish politics, and a former mayoral candidate who was defeated by Villaraigosa is threatening to sign a mayoral recall petition.
There are chief administrative officer “reports going back to Oct. 17, 2005, three months after Villaraigosa takes office and has been on City Council a couple of years . . . that we’re going to have a shortfall of $240 million,” said attorney Walter Moore, one of the candidates Villaraigosa beat with a humbling 55% of the vote in the last election.
…If you ask me, the mayor’s pattern is to under-react to problems for too long, and then clumsily try to push through fixes before he’s worked out the details.
Laura Chick, the state inspector general and former L.A. city controller who warned of financial disaster in 2007, said the mayor and council have artificially slapped budgets together annually with no regard for the structural deficit or long-term consequences.
“Wow. Just, wow. I keep looking, I keep reading and shaking my head in wonderment, amazement and dismay,” Chick said.
Her advice to the Cirque du L.A. ringmasters?
“Do your jobs,” Chick said. “Balance the budget. Figure out how to live within your means. Figure out the top priority services you must continue to do and find better ways to do it.
“Do your jobs.”
Just asking…..
Was that coupling of those two articles meant to suggest that the Los Angeles Times believes that the decline of Los Angeles is a direct result of the rise of Latino Power?
Let this blog put that question to rest; no, the decline of Los Angeles has nothing to do with the rise of Latino Power; what it has to do with is the rise of a certain brand of Latino politican, exemplified by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his cousin, HIS COUSIN, California Speaker John Perez The decline of Los Angeles can be directly traced to the cousins practicing the poltical techniques honed in Mexico by the PRI.
We are being run by cousins who believe that the greatest politician in the history of the world was President Carlos Salinas of Mexico.
It is not Latino Power which is catapulting Los Angeles and California to ruin but the cousins, those PRI acolytes.
SIDEBAR i
THE PRI OF MEXICO
The PRI, Mexico’s “official” party, was the country’s preeminent political organization from 1929 until the early 1990s. Until the early 1980s, the PRI’s position in the Mexican political system was hegemonic, with opposition parties posing little or no threat to its power base or its near monopoly of public office.
SIDEBAR II
CARLOS SALINAS, Former President of Mexico
“On December 6, 2004, Salinas’s youngest brother, Enrique, was found dead in Huixquilucan, Estado de México, inside his car with a plastic bag strapped around his head. At first authorities were reluctant to talk of homicide, but later admitted it was, while denying any political implications. As days passed, authorities believed it was either an accidental killing in an extortion attempt by a close friend or associate, or a passion crime involving a member of his family. In either case, it probably was either improvised or carried out by inexperienced criminals. Enrique’s body was abandoned in his car in a zone with surveillance cameras. The tapes show confusion and disorientation by the people who drove Enrique’s car to the place and left in another vehicle. Enrique’s cell phone was used after his death, and left in the car. Unknown fingerprints were left in the car, and human hairs were found in Enrique’s fist. It was determined he was knocked unconscious and killed by suffocation, but not by the plastic bag found with his body.
.. Enrique was suspected of being financial cover for his elder brothers Raúl and Carlos and had an account in a Swiss bank frozen,
In January 2005, authorities confirmed the media leak that there was the possibility Enrique was killed by agents of the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (AFI) (Mexico’s federal criminal police force)] According to this hypothesis, he had financial problems with his ex-wife and was advised by his lawyer to hire some AFI agents the lawyer knew to fix the problem. Enrique contacted them but later reached an agreement with his ex-wife and tried to forget the matter, but the agents blackmailed and ultimately murdered him.
In May 2009 former Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid, accused Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his family of stealing millions of dollars from public spending. He went on to say the Salinas Family had close links with the drug-cartels and mafia. De la Madrid later withdrew his comments. Salinas now lives in London.”
The Cousins In Power
