KAYE ON LA POLITICS - According to the Daily News, Kevin James “is not merely a vessel for protest against the ways of City Hall but a credible candidate for the office in his own right …he knows LA government and has been the most effective communicator on the stage at this year’s long series of mayoral debates.” But no, he’s not good enough.
Jan Perry “has brought to the campaign some much-needed blunt talk and an instinct for improving business conditions. City Hall would be better with more elected officials like her.’’ But no, she’s not good enough.
Emanuel Pleitez has earned an ardent following with calls to lift underserved L.A. communities.” But no, not now, he’s too young. Not good enough.
Eric Garcetti is “too nice for the task of running LA – too cautious, too easily pushed around, too eager to please,” so definitely not good enough.
“The same suspicion could have applied to Greuel,” opined the Daily News in its editorial endorsement for mayor, but in a meeting with editorial board, she showed her mettle by “lightly pounding the table to emphasize key points … responded to criticisms with polite ferocity … and left little doubt she is sharp enough” to be mayor.
After, Wendy is a woman and a Val supported by public employee unions and the business interests that feed at taxpayer expense at City Hall – who could ask for anything more?
It’s time for newspaper endorsements in the city election with the Times’ still to come in the mayor’s race.
It promises to be the last election that will ever need to be held in Los Angeles what with the likelihood that failed politicians who pushed the city into fiscal quicksand without a rope and drove California into a fiscal hole it may never escape will hold all three citywide offices and eight City Council seats where they will be joined by five City Hall staffers and two ex-cops.
If LA was a publicly traded stock, I would suggest shorting it because it only can get worse as City Hall’s own financial experts have been saying for the last five years.
What I hear all over town from long-time residents is that it’s time to cash out and move on like so many middle class people have been doing for the last 30 years.
Nothing good can come from Greuel/Garcetti, Feuer, Zine, and the 99.44 percent pure oily Wesson City Council – yet civic, business, labor interests are lined up to persuade you to elect people who don’t give a damn about your values, needs, interests, people whose only virtue is how easy they are to manipulate for the advantage of those who profit at the public’s expense.
And you the voters — unthinking, uninformed, apathetic, indifferent and worst of all almost invisible on city election days – cast your ballots on the basis of name recognition, ads paid for with dirty money, symbolic language that panders to your prejudices.
You deserve the city you got and it you don’t come out of your coma in the next three weeks and reject the politics and politicians who have failed you over and you, then you will suffer the consequences.
(Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Daily News, founder of Save LA Project and blogs at ronkayela.com where this column was first posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 15
Pub: Feb 19, 2013