THE PROMISE OF 2015-This has been a big year--a year full of change, a year full of economic recovery but also a year full of suffering and pain. Yet there's also hope for Angelenos, and for all Americans--not certainty, but hope--as we march towards a new year filled with promise for a better future:
1) LAX will finally have an upgrade that includes a connection to the expanding countywide MetroRail system.
After Metro threw hundreds of millions of dollars into a new station at 96th/Aviation that was meant to be a link to the LAX central airline terminals, the LA Board of Airport Commissioners unanimously approved moving forward with a $4 billion plan that includes a new automated LAX People Mover train to prove that (like Metyro) it was putting its money where its mouth is.
A remote check-in facility and a consolidated rental car center, to say nothing of a better road/freeway connection to LAX, means that the human spirit of cooperation overcame decades of the human tendency to fight and resist change. It also means that--with the opening of both this LAX/Metro connection and the Downtown Connector in 2022, LA has a better shot than ever at a 2024 Olympics.
Los Angeles is one of the few cities that has truly profited by hosting an Olympics, but even without it the city and county of LA stands to benefit by a booming tourism trade that is growing with each passing year. Let's just hope that Sacramento and Washington, D.C. recognizes its own role in promoting economic growth through enhanced mobility.
2) Achieving Moral Clarity, Part 1--Civil Rights vs. Uncivil Rioters
After the recent assassinations of two police officers in New York, it's fair to assume that our leaders at the city, state and federal level have to do better, apologize, and clarify that police overreach is a reasonable and honorable issue to confront without demonizing the police as racists and tyrants.
Both conservative and liberal pundits have weighed in on concerns about police oversight and tactics, but they've also weighed in on the evils of lawlessness. All sides agree that the residents of Ferguson, MO were infinitely hurt more by the riots and destruction than by the event (the shooting death of 18 year-old Michael Brown by a police officer) that triggered the riots.
All sides also appear to agree that the death of Eric Garner in New York City is one where greater debate and discussion is in order--with the behavior of Garner's family contrasting sharply with that of Brown. Garner's family did not want his death to be a race issue, while Brown's family (whose failure to raise young Michael helped turn him into a thug) had no problem with spawning race riots that tore Ferguson apart.
Neither New York Mayor De Blasio nor Attorney General Holder had any business demonizing our nation's police...but they did. Their credibility has been destroyed, and the deaths of the NY police officers will stain their reputation--history will not treat them kindly, and if President Obama has any hope of retaining his own credibility, then he will have to distance himself from Al Sharpton and reconnect with the American People.
Los Angeles showed that improving officer conduct and enhancing police-community cooperation could both uphold civil rights and reduce crime in ways that the obnoxious, uncouth, criminal and problematic rioters and freeway-blockers ever could. We need more leaders, and fewer freeway blockers--everybody needs to get a job, get a life and get a grip on fixing their own lives while improving the lives of their communities.
3) Achieving Moral Clarity, Part 2--Civil Service vs. Self-Service
The recent LA Times articles exposing the abuse of sick leave and other policies by L.A. City and other civil servants only underlines what increasing numbers of analysts have been pointing out. We cannot build our cities and nation if those who purport to dedicate their careers to helping us choose instead to financially abuse and tyrannize us.
We cannot build or repair our infrastructure if the funds dedicated to those endeavors are spent instead on a budgetary hole that can never be filled by inappropriate abuse of benefits, pensions and other measures of those civil servants who are supposed to make our lives better.
Just as we can all be pro-police but yet limit-set with the "bad apples", we can also be pro-civil service and yet recognize that there are bad apples who need limit-setting in all forms of municipal government. Just because there are reasonable protections in place to protect civil servants doesn't mean we have to protect and tolerate the misbehaving of those civil servants who have earned the right to be demoted (if not fired).
4) America United vs. America Divided
Inasmuch as the President, the Governor, the Mayor and our leaders at the local level have claimed to represent and uphold the rights and dignity of the average American...have they?
Is the rich-poor divide better or worse on their watch? We now have a Congress on its way to being united under Republican leadership, and a President who will either finish his term in office poking his finger in the eyes of large groups of Americans while enriching a few connected individuals, or will work with his political opponents as fellow Americans, not as enemy combatants (ditto for the new Congressional leaders).
While it's easy (perhaps appropriate) to blame the past President for getting us into a Great Recession, it's also easy (perhaps appropriate) to blame our current President for allowing a Great Recession to become the Second Great Depression.
Americans are still hurting after years of economic misery, and they're not seeing government as anything but an obstacle towards the one thing that should have been confronted in 2009--employment, and by that I mean QUALITY FULL-TIME JOBS WITH BENEFITS--that the middle class needs more than ever.
Perhaps it's prima facie ridiculous to presume that our national, state and city leaders will get past their politicking and ego-centric ways, and reach out to all groups of Americans, but a top-down government that proclaims and enforces winners and losers is not the answer ... and never has been.
I wish you all a delightful Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Season, and join you all in praying for a better future, with the lessons learned from 2014 that can and will lead to a wonderful 2015.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] He also does regular commentary on the MarkIsler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
-CW3
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 103
Pub: Dec 23, 2014