The hands are wringing and the tears flowing.
How, oh how, could a pipsqueak city of 36,000 let things get so far out of hand? An $800,000 mayor. A $457,000 police chief. A $376,000 assistant city manager. Five city council members at $100,000 each.
The guy who digs my ditches knew years ago, even though he, like the rest of us, never heard of Bell before the Los Angeles Times made it a poster child for avaricious politicians and bureaucrats run amok. He's a thoughtful guy who likes to read and to discuss "why things are so f----d up." His answer one cold morning over post-excavation coffee: "Because we need better people." Not better politicians; he and you and I know that is a fool's dream.
No little group of elected and appointed thieves steals $5.5 million from a small city unless the population is composed of docile apes, too dumb or lazy or complacent to give a damn.
That kind of theft can't be hidden. Any junior-college trained bookkeeper with a four-buck pocket calculator can identify it. Any reporter good enough to hold down a job with an Arkansas weekly can make it an issue.
Where in perdition was the Bell electorate on Nov. 29, 2005, when the thugs pushed through a charter municipal government system with a total turnout of 400, including, according to Wiki, 200 dubious absentee ballots? Where has that same electorate been in the five ensuing years.
To Hell with Bell and its inhabitants. You deserved no better, and unless you're willing to begin acting like United States citizens, you will get no better. You'll go back to Dancing with the Stars and the latest from Fox on Lindsey Lohan, and two years from today the carnivorous monkeys will be back, eating what ever is left of your undead faces.
Rule 1 of making a republic work is, "Pay attention." Fail and you deserve every thing you get.
1 comment:
Perhaps we deserve everything we get.
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