LA’s New Crack Epidemic
This is The City. And it’s falling apart.
Linking to the above video from Reason TV, Glenn Reynolds writes, “Have you noticed that the more time and energy cities put into things like banning big sodas or plastic grocery bags, the worse jobs they do at things that used to be considered basic functions of government?”
Two years ago, when a mayor on the other side of the country was much more focused on eliminating transfats and “global warming,” rather than bedbugs and local snow removal in the midst of a massive blizzard, Victor Davis Hanson dubbed that sort of mystical worldview “The Bloomberg Syndrome:”
It is a human trait to focus on cheap and lofty rhetoric rather than costly, earthy reality. It is a bureaucratic characteristic to rail against the trifling misdemeanor rather than address the often-dangerous felony. And it is political habit to mask one’s own failures by lecturing others on their supposed shortcomings. Ambitious elected officials often manage to do all three.
The result in these hard times is that our elected sheriffs, mayors, and governors are loudly weighing in on national and global challenges that are quite often out of their own jurisdiction, while ignoring or failing to solve the very problems that they were elected to address.
Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.
As Walter Olson of the CATO Institute recently noted, there’s been some talk that L.A.’s Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa might be replacing Ray LaHood as President Obama’s transportation secretary. If tapped, I’m sure Villaraigosa would toil diligently to implement the same conditions nationwide that have made Los Angeles the city it is today.
Update: And speaking of the Bloomberg Syndrome, no sooner do I drop the hammer on this post, than I come across this item, currently atop Hot Air: “Loathsome nanny-state mayor now considering banning styrofoam.” At the end of 2006, the New York Post rounded up what is very likely a partial list of items the New York City Council banned or considered banning. The newspaper viewed it as a warning to its readers; Mayor Mike sees it as a checklist to be completed before leaving office.
Mundane stuff like filling potholes, cleaning streets, processing your legally required paperwork before the next vernal equinox…none of that makes proggs go to bed feeling all affirmed and completed inside. “The plans differ, the planners are all alike.”
To actually manage a municipality or gov’t is to strike liberalism down. How more effectively to affirm the past’s legitimacy than to maintain the Eco-killing ‘built-by slaves’ infrastructures and social systems that brought so much prosperity.
The left damns all that is traditional & proper in America. Plus, patching potholes don’t make the nightly-slightly news cycles like a proclamation based upon a ‘concern’ however specious for others.
My city just made sidewalk maintenance the homeowner’s responsibility. Thankfully we moved out of the city and have no sidewalks on our acre and a half lot.
Hey, who wants to do something that benefits ALL the people, when you can do something that benefits lobbyists, or your base?
This may be oversimplifying things — but only a bit: We now have too many Crackademics, former Crackademics, or former students of Crackademics, involved in policy decisions. And, lest we forget: they’re all too well paid for their non-essential, non-work. IOW, talk is cheap, and talk about irrelevancies still cheaper. But, guess who voted them in?
It might also be worth noting, as much as state and local officials veer outside their narrow lane of responsibility, Obama has often stuck his nose into narrow local issues, e.g. Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge PD, or Trayvon Martin shooting in FL, et al.