the whole damn city is under arrest

a rash of investigations and indictments have thrown LA government on its head. when a political party has monopoly power, that's when corruption happens.

Sooo what the fuck is happening in Los Angeles? Everyone is either under investigation by the federal government, getting indicted, or copping a plea deal. In a year and a half, three local leaders have been indicted by the FBI, and another has been under investigation. And there’s more.

The late stage rot of the city’s Democratic Party was on full display last week, when the LA city council moved to oust their recently indicted colleague, Mark Ridley-Thomas. Ridley-Thomas, a nice, corrupt old man who likes helping the homeless, was indicted on federal bribery charges of funneling money to USC so his son could get a full ride. It was no surprise. People don’t even care anymore.

But the moment really came to a head when Ridley-Thomas doubled down, and started fighting in court the move by the city council to get rid of him. The one to defend the city’s actions in removing him was of course our boy, City Attorney Mike Feuer. I mean, his own office is also under criminal investigation by the feds. Pretty terrible. The whole family is crooked, and it’s time to just say it: The Democratic Party is a monopoly and needs to be broken up.

LA is run by Democrats, just like the whole state of California. No Republicans represent the LA area at the state level. Overall, Dems hold a supermajority. Everyone on the 15-seat LA city council, except one (an independent), is a Democrat. As for the LA County Board of Supervisors, all but one are Democrats. And of course, the mayor is a Democrat. Everyone is a Democrat. It’s creepy.

But it wasn’t always like this. Back in the day you at least had some Republicans in power, like Pete Wilson, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. In LA, Dick Riordan was mayor. I’m not saying we need more Republicans. We know they’re trash. I’m just saying we need less Democrats. The Democratic Party has become a giant blob of dysfunction, slowly eating itself for decades now.

I’m saying: any situation where you have a monopoly, like in tech now, for example, is very bad. The more power an entity gets, the lazier it gets, and consumers end up getting shittier products. And history shows monopolies are bad for society. For example, if IBM was never broken up through antitrust in the 70s, we’d probably never have gotten home computers. The company stopped evolving. Imagine that timeline change. Facebook is a worse product because it is a monopoly. It bought Instagram not because it liked its services and wanted to improve it, but because it was afraid of it and wanted to dilute it. Now IG is a really bad product because Facebook turned it into a mass marketing surveillance app.

The same thing has happened with the modern Democratic Party. If what it is selling is representation of regular people, it’s failed. None of us should be buying it. Now these city Dems that roll off the assembly line just keep getting shittier and shittier. They aren’t selling you anything. In LA, the party basically represents developers and the donor class.

Monopoly power leads to corruption. We went from Jose Huizar taking construction bribes and building us stuff that we didn’t need to Mike Feuer presiding over the potential defrauding of thousands and thousands of DWP customers, to Ridley-Thomas allegedly steering contracts to the most corrupt university in the world. Mitch Englander was literally taking bags of cash bribes, and even though he was a Republican, what’s the difference anymore?

Look at what the city council is doing with gerrymandering. They are redrawing council districts with almost no public oversight. As Knock LA mentioned, the last time this happened, it was a mess. Huizar took advantage of this after the 2012 census when he was carved out a portion of downtown LA’s powerful real estate market. That was a direct pipeline to corruption. He ended up getting arrested for reportedly taking around $1.5 million in bribes from the industry.

And it keeps going.

Entrenched Board of Supervisor Sheila Kuehl has also been investigated for pay-to-play involving a friend of hers at a nonprofit. Granted it was by the the LA County Sheriff, literally a state-sanctioned gang unit that has also been beefing with Kuehl, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something there.

The story involves an LA metro sexual harassment hotline that is costing taxpayers about $8k per call, according to a recent Fox LA investigation. It was set up via a no-bid contract that went to Keuhl’s good friend and donor.

And this is according to a story this summer by Los Cerritos News:

According to sources close to the investigation, there are several other high-profile officials under scrutiny including L. A. County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl, Hilda Solis, Kathryn Barger, former Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, L.A. City Councilman Gil Cedillo, Inglewood Mayor James Butts, and former DA  Jackie Lacey. 

Damn that’s the whole team! Why is the mayor, Eric Garcetti, bouncing to India? Are the sexual harassment charges levied at his good friend and advisor by a former bodyguard just the tip of something larger?

If there is a situation where shady shit is happening—pay for play, taking bribes or defrauding people, Dems aren’t gonna hold each other accountable, especially if there is no real political opposition. Maybe the true left must break off from the corporate wing of the party and start something new. For all the talk members of the Democratic Party make about breaking up institutions and regulation, maybe they are really talking about themselves. They are the ones who need to be broken up.