Fanning the Flames

Imagine this. You lost your job last Friday, all your bills are past due, you have no groceries, your power got turned off on Monday, your car got repossessed on Wednesday, and your women told you she was pregnant and left you 20 minutes ago. Sounds like the blues huh? Now imagine if, in the midst of this crisis you take out a “payday loan” so you can buy out the bar at your favorite local hotspot. You’d have to be crazy or just have the budgeting sense of the city of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles has no money, at least that’s what they said when they CANCELLED summer school. “The cut will save the LAUSD $34 million” claimed LA Unified School District Superintendent Raymond Cortines. Summer school isn’t the only city program that will suffer either; women, children and mental healthcare programs are facing serious cutbacks, while city employees are being forced to take furloughs. This is all very confusing to me because I always assumed the inflated cost of living in Cali was necessary to support the stress on the system, but we won’t even go there. The point is the city is broke. To borrow the mantra of city officials, “we haven’t seen this kind of fiscal emergency since the great depression”. I suppose in the face of such crisis cutback are appropriate. What I find wholly inappropriate is senseless opulence in the face of poverty.

Woohoo! The Lakers won the NBA championship for the 15^th time! The world will be a better place now, right? This is the end of poverty, starvation, hatred, and oppression, right? The Messiah will come down from the heavens to personally congratulate them, take Kobe into his arms and ascend back from which they came, right? No? None of that? Then why in the world is the city of Los Angeles spending millions of dollars in cash and resources on a damned celebratory parade?

The night the Lakers won, I couldn't sleep. Not because of the sheer joy and excitement, it was the sirens. The Police sirens were unrelenting. I can’t remember a single moment during the night when it was quite outside. The fans took to the streets, rioting, stealing, and destroying property. I say they have had enough fun. A parade encouraging the behavior we witnessed on Sunday night would just be stupid. And it will cost 2 million dollars, half of which the city of Los Angeles will be responsible for.

The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, claimed that much of the money the city will contribute will come from donations from the private sector. This makes the parade no less ridiculous. Shouldn’t all fund raising efforts be focused on more important causes? I guess Villaraigosa wants to “buy out the bar” so he can forget about all the problems Los Angeles is facing. LA is going to have a hell of a hangover in the morning.