Do you get it yet? Or are you too numb and defeated to react to anything except the latest ball score or smutty sitcom?
You are being robbed blind in broad daylight by people who would steal the last morsel off your table without a qualm, people you elected to serve you who are so venal they have no qualms or are so weak and stupid they convince themselves you are willingly sharing a feast.
Watch CBS2 David Goldstein’s shocking report showing six-figure DWP workers going to strip clubs, drinking on the job, driving giant trucks while drinking beers wrapped in paper towels. Do you think those are isolated scenes of the few miscreants or a window into widespread abuses by a workforce that has total immunity from discipline as long as they don’t cross their union?
See the mayor’s “boys will be boys” smirk as he promises to investigate as if it’s a teenage son and his buddies getting in trouble for stealing booze from the liquor cabinet and making fools of themselves.
Is it any wonder that Austin Beutner — Jobs Czar, First Deputy Mayor and Interim DWP General Manager — is turning the DWP Headquarters into a fortress to keep the public from seeing how little is really going on inside a rogue agency that claims it’s losing money even as it jacks up rates, gives out big pay raises and has been hiring nearly 100 extra workers a month for the last two years?
That’s right when everybody else is losing their jobs and getting no raises or pay cuts, the DWP is hiring madly, giving 6 percent raises followed by five years of raises of up to 4 percent and wanting 20 to 30 percent rate hikes. Does anybody know what the 1,400 extra bodies at the DWP are doing for the public benefit?
What passes for Beutner’s and the mayor’s economic development and green energy policies is becoming clearer by the day — China gets the jobs and our green and we get the bills.
They are trampling on DWP bidding procedures in a mad rush to buy solar panels made in China and cutting deals with an “upstart Chinese electric car company — best known for making cellphone batteries” — to buy their vehicles with city money, reduce port fees and provide $1 million in subsidies to create 150 jobs in LA and thousands in China.
“Villaraigosa is basically bribing a Chinese car company to come to Los
Angeles — and he’s using your money to do it…It illustrates that L.A. is such a
hostile place for businesses that the only way they’ll move employees
here is if City Hall gives them taxpayers’ money,” Walter Moore writes.
“Do you understand, now, why Villaraigosa wants so desperately to raise
your DWP rates? It has nothing to do with ‘green power’ — unless by
‘green’ you mean ‘money,’ and by ‘power’ you mean ‘political power.’
Day after day, City Council members, as they have for a year, go through every department eliminating services that make life better for the people of the city and create healthier neighborhoods even as they look for ways to squeeze more money out of you every which way they can.
All this is done in the name of cost-cutting when in reality it is service cutting, and revenue generating.
A quarter of the city’s working population is unemployed or under-employed and nearly everyone’s income and wealth have decreased but the budget for next year with its $484 million deficit, papered down to $80 million, takes an optimistic view that recovery is just around the corner.
Their fantasy is your nightmare. But keep pretending it’s all just a terrible dream and the morning will be bright and filled with optimism when you wake up.
It is business as usual at City Hall. Nothing has changed or will change until you open your eyes and see the truth of what is happening.
This isn’t a make-believe movie, it’s real and it’s your life and your city.