Twenty-Six City Council Candidates And You

Twenty-six candidates have each obtained the 500 signatures needed to get their names on the ballot for the March 2011 election in which seven City Council seats are up for grabs.

Six incumbents -- six of the people responsible for the mess that is City Hall -- hope to hang onto their positions of power.  They are:  Tony Cardenas, Jose Huizar, Herb Wesson, Bernard Parks, Tom LaBonge and Paul Krekorian.

These six City Council members have been part of the Spring Street Gang that brought you the following:

• Obscene waste of your hard-earned tax dollars (e.g., by giving money to Cardenas's brother-in-law to take low-rider cars to Mexico);
• Welfare for the rich (e.g., hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies per year to billionaire developers) even as they closed libraries;
• Unemployment far above the national, state, and county rates (i.e., 13.7% here vs. 9.6% nation-wide and in Orange County), which translates into over 264,000 of our neighbors desperate to find jobs, while these local career politicians pose for photo-ops and pretend all is well;
• Highest-ever DWP rates, which are used not to fund water and power, but instead cash transfers to the general fund, because City Council does not want to bother getting the voter approval required under the California Constitution for a formal tax hike;
• Highest-ever tax rates and fees, which is just frikkin' ideal, especially during in a recession;
• Brink of bankruptcy, despite the fact that revenues are near all-time highs, an achievement they managed by increasing spending over 30% over the past few years; and
• Dumb-ass resolutions galore on topics having nothing to do with serving you, the taxpayer (e.g., condemning African nations and butting into Latin American murder investigations).

Will L.A.'s voters be oblivious and/or stupid enough to return any of the six incumbents to office? Almost certainly, yes. Why? Because the special interests feeding at the public trough will fund their campaigns.

What can you do about it?  Plenty: 

First of all, use your email super-powers to tell your friends -- both of them -- to vote AGAINST any incumbent. Most people ignore "local politics," and don't even realize the damage these career politicians are doing. Wake them up. No one else is going to do so.

Second, send whatever you can -- even $20 -- to any candidates you support, regardless of what district they're in.  Yours truly has contributed, albeit modestly, because we're on recession lock-down, to David Barron and Rudy Martinez, and will soon contribute to Althea Shaw. 

Third, if you're up for it, contact one or more of the campaigns to ask how you can help. It could be something as simple as walking from house to house, leaving flyers on doors. Or maybe just put a yard sign in your yard. Little acts can have big effects. Metaphorically speaking, you can let the air out of the tires of the bad guys' get-away car.

And here's the thing:  If you don't lift a finger to help improve our city, then pretty much you have to shut the hell up when the bad guys continue to ruin it.  And I know you don't want to shut the hell up.

So DO SOMETHING, would you? You live here. Your job's here. All your stuff is here. Don't just sit by and let the city go further down the drain. Voters have the opportunity to replace nearly HALF the City Council in March. Don't blow this opportunity.