New Geography

Author: Jerry Sullivan

  • Stimulus Alert Stretches From the Center of L.A. to Suburban Atlanta

    The hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus money are working their way through various systems, en route to a city near you.

    Give President Barack Obama credit for acting boldly to pump the funds into the economy – or take him to task for printing up money on the cuff.

    Either way, the time has come to shift your focus from Washington, D.C., and onto State Houses and City Halls throughout our land.

    You’ll need to keep an eye on your local government officials because our civic culture has grown corrupt, and it’s a cancer that’s widespread. Politicians still don’t quite understand that this is now an open secret – although they’ve at least begun to stir in the wake of the recent and resounding “no” that California voters gave to the latest request for a bailout of a sick system of government.

    Meanwhile, the stimulus money is beginning to flow as pundits slice and dice the results from the Golden State, and the federal funds offer the potential to allow local governments to ignore the clear message from voters who are fed up with corruption and waste. Consider that most local governments across the nation have enjoyed a long run of a strong economy with only a few, brief interruptions over the past 25 years. They’re out of shape, all balled up with bad habits. The stimulus money could serve to finance another year or two of bad behavior if the people don’t watch local government like hawks. And another year or two of bad habits will be too much for all of us.

    Any doubts that these bad habits exist can be dispelled by taking a look at a recent deal that had city officials in Los Angeles ready to spend $5.6 million for a small parcel of land to be turned into a park on the 400 block of S. Spring Street. They eventually cut the offer to $5.1 million – a savings of $500,000 that came only after ongoing coverage by the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen – a weekly community newspaper that covers the Downtown area of the city and surrounding districts – shed light on a number of questionable factors in the deal.

    Those questionable factors indicate that it’s time for everyone who is not a city official – the people, in other words – to take a second look at the situation. The recent coverage amounted to more than stories about a park, or even the price of the land. The stories pointed to systemic corruption in the process that city officials use in spending large sums of the public’s money.

    There are no individuals to single out here – not at this point, anyway. No one got caught with a hand in the cookie jar. That’s the main problem – the corruption of our civic culture is pervasive to the point that it’s tough to catch anyone with their hand in the cookie jar. We don’t even keep our cookies in a jar in Los Angeles anymore – they’re left out around City Hall for the taking by politicians and special interests.

    New rules and ethical standards are needed in Los Angeles – and it’s a safe bet that the same is in order for cities across the country. A good place to start would be a new rule to ensure that taxpayers never again see city officials offer to pay millions of dollars based on an appraisal commissioned on behalf of the seller of a piece of land—the very process originally used in the park deal in Los Angeles. There should be some standard that requires city officials to conduct their own appraisals on major purchases. Many cities have such expertise among their employees. If not, it is surely worth a few thousand dollars to hire an appraiser to work for the city’s interests on deals where a 0.1% savings would cover such extra costs, as was the case on the park land.

    The Garment & Citizen’s recent reporting also shed light on the fact that bureaucrats in City Hall currently have great leeway in such matters. Sometimes they order their own appraisal on land purchases—and sometimes they don’t. The decision seems to be left entirely to the discretion of unelected bureaucrats.

    The problem here is basic because the current set-up begs for abuse. Bureaucrats are human beings, after all, and subject to all of the problems and temptations that life brings. It’s also well known that the career bureaucrats in Los Angeles are subject to political pressure from any number of sources. That includes the 15 members of the Los Angeles City Council, who operate their districts much like personal fiefdoms. The City Council members tend to stay out of one another’s business in a pretense of some sort of legislative courtesy. What they’re really doing is withholding their best efforts at internal oversight, a failure that has helped send the people on a sorrowful journey from engaged participants in our democracy to cynics who don’t even bother to vote.

    The lack of standards on appraisals is only one of the problems that cropped up on the recent park deal. There are many more specific to real estate dealings – and you can just imagine how many additional pitfalls can be found in the way the city purchases motor vehicles, or paper products, or telecommunications services. And so on, and so on.
    It’s enough to make you wonder how many city deals could be trimmed by a half-million here or a couple of million there?

    We’re guessing plenty – and that tightening up on these sweetheart deals would go a long way toward solving the current budget crunch while maintaining many of the jobs and services that might be cut to close a looming $500 million deficit in the city’s budget in Los Angeles.

    You can bet there are plenty of similar savings to be had in State Houses and City Halls across the nation, too. Indicators abound in Gwinnett County, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. Taxpayers in Gwinnett who want to avoid getting fleeced will apparently have to go a step further than a clear standard on appraisals for land deals. That seems to be the only lesson to take from a recent report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which found that elected officials in Gwinnett County commissioned their own appraisal on a piece of land and still voted to pay twice the price.

    Some of the county commissioners in Gwinnett said that they approved the higher price because land appraisals are “all over the board” these days.

    Commissioner Mike Beaudreau opposed the deal, saying that the wide range of appraisals indicated that the matter should be given more study. He stood alone in his opposition, and the people of Gwinnett County are now set up to pay twice the appraised value for the land.

    So here’s the key question to consider: Will stimulus money paper over such deals in State Houses, County Commissions, and City Halls throughout our land?

    Only the people can say for certain.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Lenny Mills to Urban America: Clock Is Ticking for Ranks of ‘New Homeless’

    I always do my best to make time for Lenny Mills because he’s earned that sort of consideration.

    Mills is the fellow who wrote several pieces under the banner of his trademark “7 Rules” outline, where he applies the tricks he learned as a telemarketer to analyses of real estate development, politics, and other matters.

    Mills did an especially fine job on the “7 Rules of Downtown Gentrification,” which appeared in the Garment & Citizen’s issue of April 21, 2006. He laid out a number of reasons – seven, to be exact –to consider the possibility that the residential real estate boom ringing through Downtown Los Angeles back then would eventually turn into a busted bubble.

    Events have certainly borne out Mills’ prediction, so he brought credibility with him on his latest visit to my office.

    Mills waved a recent copy of USA Today at me, saying that he’s worried about the sort of folks who were featured in a recent front-page story in the national publication, a piece that described the circumstances of some of “the new homeless.” These are individuals who worked steadily their whole lives before hitting the skids and losing their homes in the current economic downturn. It’s a trend that has become familiar these days, with homeless encampments cropping up in all sorts of places, including Los Angeles.

    Mills has some added credibility when he speaks about homelessness – he spent a number of years living on the streets. He knows what it means to go through life with a weather-beaten face, watching opportunities slip away for lack of a telephone number to leave behind when seeking work.

    Mills has a place to live now, but he remains determined to inject his warnings about the new homeless into the public debate. The clock it ticking, he says, and the deterioration that comes with life on the streets will make it harder and harder for folks to climb back into mainstream lives. Once the wardrobe starts to fray, he says, the odds against getting back on track grow longer. Once the teeth start to go, he adds, homeless individuals can just about write off any return to the life they once knew. Each bit of deterioration makes it tougher for the homeless individuals – and more likely that they will become permanent burdens to the rest of us in one way or the other.

    Mills is remarkable in a number of ways, including the ability he mustered to retain his social skills during his time on the streets – something that many individuals quickly lose. I disagree with him on some things, but I can’t fault his ability to make fine use of the language to get his points across.

    Mills used such skill during our recent talk, driving home a couple of points about the new homeless: Our society has a narrow window of opportunity to pay for programs to reverse the trend – and a failure to act soon will mean far greater costs in terms of human lives and the public purse.

    Mills can spout chapter and verse on what he sees as the causes of the increases in homelessness over the past 40 years. He can cite demographic trends, economic patterns, and public policies to make a compelling case that a lot of folks were swept into life on the streets by causes beyond their control. He firmly believes that we as a society could have prevented most of the homelessness we have seen over the years had we not lacked the will to do so.

    I wouldn’t describe Mills as a fun guy. He’s a valuable fellow, though, because he’s willing to tell you what you’d rather not hear – and he’s capable of doing so in reasoned tones.

    Give Mills his due for hitting upon something of vital importance now. It’s clear that all the talk we’ve heard about addressing the old homelessness has led to no great progress over the course of decades. What did that latest Blue-Ribbon Public-Private Committee to End Homelessness Forever accomplish besides a photo opportunity, anyway?

    Someone wake the Blue Ribbon brigade and fire all of them.

    We have a whole new homeless problem – and we’re in desperate need of new ideas.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Mr. Cloghessy Deserves Better – And So Do the Rest of Us

    The role of politicians in the corruption of our civic spirit – a national problem that has led us to the current economic mess – has me thinking a lot about Joe Cloghessy.

    Mr. Cloghessy lived in my childhood neighborhood. He was big and strong and worked hard for a living, like most of the men in the neighborhood. He might have had more money than his neighbors, but that never came up. He did have a pool in his backyard – he built it himself – and that made his house a rarity in those parts.

    Mr. Cloghessy was just as rare as his house. He let every kid on our block swim in his pool between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. from the day school let out for summer until we went back to classes in the fall.

    Mr. Cloghessy was good with woodworking, too, and the nooks and crannies around his pool were filled with small bridges through garden plots adorned with wind chimes and figurines. It was as close to a country club as I was going to get, and that was just fine with me.

    Then one day I was playing around, doing the sorts of tricks that kids do, and I broke a railing on one of the bridges. I propped up the broken wood so it might pass for undamaged just long enough for me to slink away from the scene.

    Later that day one of my sisters mentioned the mishap, and my mother overheard. She immediately gave me a stern reminder that someone could have gotten hurt if they had counted on that railing to support them as they walked over Mr. Cloghessy’s backyard bridge. She told me that Mr. Cloghessy worked hard for a living – and nearly as hard to craft the handiworks that made his backyard such a special place. She made it clear that our fine neighbor was under no obligation to let every little kid on the block into his yard – into his life – every day of every summer.

    My mother also made it clear to me that it’s wrong to break something and not own up to the damage – especially when it’s something that belongs to someone who’s been good to you. Then she made me walk down the block and tell Mr. Cloghessy about the broken rail. She told me to apologize for breaking the rail – and for having lacked the courage to be forthcoming about the damage I had done.

    I was embarrassed and scared as I approached Mr. Cloghessy in the workshop of his garage that evening. He nearly gave me a pass right off the bat, just because he was that sort of guy. I think he figured out that my mother had sent me down for a lesson, though, so he got serious, telling me to come right to him if it ever happens again. Someone could have gotten hurt on that busted rail, he said.

    All of this makes me think of our current crop of politicians, who have busted more than a few rails but have yet to own up to the damage. It’s almost as though they are children who have misbehaved for a long time. It seems that nobody ever told them that fellows like Joe Cloghessy work hard and deserve better than to see their contributions to the common good left broken by someone who doesn’t even have the courage to admit to the damage.

    This immaturity in our political system has been a long time in coming. Voters helped make the problem – we haven’t done much to hold our child-pols accountable for many years.

    Now is the time for a fresh start – time to tell the politicians that they’ve disappointed us and must face some discipline.

    Many of the politicians will survive – there are some sincere ones out there, after all, and others who have a sufficient store of good deeds to ride out their missteps.

    Some shouldn’t get a pass because they’ve simply gone too far with the pay-for-play and other selfishness.

    In any case, it’s time to realize that the world has changed dramatically in just the last few months. It’s quite clear that none of us are going to get anywhere until our politicians own up to their mistakes and start mending their ways.

    It’s now up to everyone who’s concerned about our country and its civic spirit to call our politicians to account. We’re the only ones who can demand that they stop breaking things – starting with the public trust.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Talkin’ Baseball – and Sub-Prime Mortgages

    I was thoroughly enjoying the broadcast of the March 23 final game of the recent World Baseball Classic at Dodger Stadium when I thought about steroids and sub-prime mortgages.

    A seemingly odd leap, I’ll grant you – but hang in there on this one.

    The thoughts had first stirred when I attended a semi-final game the prior Saturday, watching a South Korean team that counted just one player who’s on a big league roster here in the U.S. make hash of the Venezuelan squad. The Venezuelan team boasted plenty of players who make in living in the big leagues, including a number of All-Stars.

    Then I tuned in the next night to watch Japan do a similar number on Team USA. More of Japan’s ballplayers have made a mark in our big leagues compared to the South Korean squad, but their team still paled in comparison to the star power of the Americans.

    The Venezuelans and Americans didn’t just get beat in their semi-final games, by the way – they looked slow, lacking in the fundamentals of the game. The South Koreans and Japanese, on the other hand, looked quick and ever-alert. They pitched with heart, hit smartly, and fielded their positions with nimble dedication.

    That set up a South Korea-Japan final that proved to be one of the best ballgames I’ve ever seen, going all the way to extra innings in a performance that highlighted how the game should be played.

    None of the South Korean or Japanese ballplayers looked overly bulky. There were a few big fellas out there – but they were big like Babe Ruth or Frank Howard. They looked like naturally big guys who had learned to play baseball. No forearms that made you think of Popeye. No necklines from ears to shoulders.

    I thought about how the big leagues of the U.S. have only begun to admit to the recent steroid binge. It reminded me how obvious the trend had been. Anyone who couldn’t see the physical indicators in the players should have been able to get a good idea just by looking at the statistics piled up during the Steroid Era.

    Baseball fans looked past all of that, for the most part. So did players and team owners. Home runs are sure fun, after all.

    That’s where my thoughts turned to sub-prime mortgages – because we as a society did pretty much the same thing to our economy. We shot some concocted substance into our economic bloodstream, getting a short-term boost that didn’t require any real dedication to owning a home or building communities. We went for the shortcut – just like those big league ballplayers who decided to get their power from a syringe instead of dedication to the game.

    Folks all over the world joined us by directly or indirectly flexing the fake economic muscles engendered by the sub-prime mortgage mess. Yet a look at the World Baseball Classic shows that not everyone fell for the shortcut offered by steroids. Not everyone turned their backs on sportsmanship and fundamentals at the ball yard.

    So put love of the game alongside genuine community building on the back-to-basics list for our American Culture.

    We might as well make it a thorough housecleaning.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Obama’s Other History

    The coverage of President Barack Obama’s first days in office has been intense, to say the least. Yet it has still managed to overlook an historical comparison that is worthy of our consideration.

    Obama took office just a few months after a stock market crash that left no doubt about the rugged shape of our economy. The ensuing decline has been swift and scary, leading some to talk about a possible fall into an outright depression.

    Now consider Herbert Hoover, the president who took office just a few months before a stock market crash that signaled the Great Depression in 1929. Hoover remains a figure of historical disfavor to this day because of what he did — and particularly what he didn’t do — after the crash. He served nearly four years in the Oval Office as the Great Depression raged, continuing to view government’s role in the economy as largely limited. He offered no enormous economic stimulus plans or social programs. Clusters of tent cities occupied by the dispossessed of our land became known as “Hoovervilles.”

    Then came Franklin Roosevelt, who immediately put enormous economic stimulus plans into action and launched a whole host of social programs.

    Timing can be everything — in politics, economic matters, and life in general.

    Our timing might be just right with Obama because our economy’s nose-dive came just a month or so before the presidential election. Obama came to the job at a moment when he has a chance to move on our problems before they settle in to another Great Depression. What if Roosevelt had gotten a shot a few months after the stock market crash in 1929 instead of nearly four years into the mess?

    Here’s another historical comparison worth noting: Hoover won election as a Republican in 1928 in part because of widespread prejudice against Roman Catholics, a sentiment that worked against New York Governor Al Smith, who ran as the Democratic nominee in the race.

    There’s true irony in this piece of history, because Smith had recognized the shaky nature of the economy well before the crash that signaled the start of the Great Depression. The actions he took in New York during the 1920s could be viewed as a state version of what would become Roosevelt’s famous New Deal package of economic stimulus and social programs.

    Bigotry ravaged Smith’s campaign, though. He might not have won in any case, but the anti-Catholic emotions that took wing in large parts of the populace, media and other parts of the power structure left him without a fighting chance.

    Smith’s loss spelled a wait of nearly four years before the federal government became fully engaged in putting its might against the Great Depression. It was just a few months ago that Americans could have again allowed prejudice — this time against African/Americans — to override a presidential campaign. That might have led to another slow response to an economic crisis. It’s not a perfect comparison to match recent Republican nominee John McCain to Hoover, but the Arizona Senator has long favored smaller government, which is nowhere near what we saw from Roosevelt or are seeing from Obama.

    Now here’s the hard part of this history lesson: There’s still plenty of debate among scholars and economists on whether Roosevelt’s massive government programs worked. The New Deal brought immediate relief to millions in dire straits, an invaluable record in its own right. But there is data to indicate that the programs ultimately failed to put the economy back on track. Indeed, the Great Depression didn’t really end until World War II led factories and farms to crank up production. Some would argue that the New Deal amounted to short-term fixes that did more harm than good over the long haul.

    That leaves us to wonder whether the current plans to spend $700 billion to bail out banks and automakers — and hundreds of billions more on roads and bridges — will bring improvements that make such outlays worthwhile.

    The effort will be made sooner rather than later, though, and that’s because Americans didn’t hold a fellow back from the highest office in the land based on prejudice this time around.

    That’s real progress — even if it’s the only progress we can claim for certain as we fight through our tough economy.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • A Little Genius for the City’s So-Called ‘Art World’

    There’s a little girl – maybe 10 or 12 years old – whose family owns a store just a couple of miles from Downtown Los Angeles. She spends a lot of time at the place after her nearby school lets out for the day, sort of helping out but mostly just hanging around where her older relatives can see her.

    I call her “Little Genius” because she’s always reading a book or busy at a computer or making paper dolls or working on some other challenge.

    Little Genius is Asian/American, the daughter of immigrants, and I think the flavor of academic prowess that comes with the nickname makes her happy in part because it makes her elders happy.

    It’s not just a nickname, though. I don’t know if Little Genius will grow up to be a great scientist or legal scholar or fill some other lofty role in our society. I do know, however, that she has the soul of an artist. Her paper dolls are much more intricate than the typical cut-outs. She recently put some craft clay and left-over cardboard from around the store together to make a scaled-down village occupied by little pigs. “The Pig Empire” went on display at the store for a few days, and plenty of customers enjoyed the work. Count me among them – it interested me, drew me close. I wondered about her motive and the inspiration for her little village.

    I thought about Little Genius when 13th District Los Angeles City Councilmember Eric Garcetti recently spoke of using $2.8 million in city funds to forge greater links between the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in the gleaming Bunker Hill district of Downtown and the many ethnic and immigrant and blue-collar folks who live in nearby areas.

    Garcetti pulled off a different sort of art – for a politician, anyway. He plainly spoke some truths that seldom get much of a genuine airing in our city. His brush strokes were bold, but applied with enough finesse to avoid offending anyone but the unduly sensitive. He said he’d like to see MOCA draw more visitors “who have never interacted with art in the visceral, provocative way that contemporary art can serve.” He called MOCA an institution with the potential to “set in motion a civic dialogue that’s been lacking in Los Angeles,” adding that that he hopes to see a variety of efforts focused on linking the museum to local schools, senior citizen’s centers, and everyday working folks by offering programs that appeal to them, and which they can readily attend.

    Perhaps this seems a mild triumph of rhetoric, but art in our city is in such a state of withdrawal that Garcetti’s comments amounted to some useful provocation of his own. Hundreds of thousands of persons live within a short distance of MOCA. Many of them labor hard – for some it’s a downright struggle – to maintain themselves in the city. Not many of them, or their children, are getting to MOCA.

    Garcetti’s comments also gave a reminder that museums and galleries might serve as reflections or repositories of art, but they should not be the exclusive province of what many refer to as the “art world.” I will go a step further – making clear that these are my thoughts and not Garcetti’s – and say that the moment artists, their patrons, and institutions such as MOCA come to believe that there is a distinct “art world” they lose touch with art itself.

    Art is a reflection of culture. Our culture is all of us, all mixed up. Great art engages all of us and helps us understand this culture of ours. How can anyone claim to be an artist while carving off a separate “art world” of limited membership?

    They can’t.

    That’s the best reason for all of us to take seriously Garcetti’s recent comments. It’s time to call on MOCA to make new and stronger efforts to reach Little Genius and the teeming mass of others who might not be members of the so-called “art world” but nevertheless serve as the heart and soul of our culture – also known as the real world.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Tough Budget Math for City Politicians: Bad Economy + Human Nature = More Cops

    Our economy is going to get better some day, step by step. But it’s bad right now, with a full recovery likely a matter of years rather than months away. Public officials should plan accordingly, keeping in mind how the vicious cycle of a bad economy turns typical decision making on its head.

    Start with a look at a virtuous cycle – the opposite of a vicious cycle – for a point of reference. Look back to the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton got a tax increase through the U.S. Congress. A lot of folks were genuinely concerned about our federal budget deficits and national debt back then. The tax hike signaled that the federal government had grown serious about getting its finances in line. That quelled fears about inflation, and sent interest rates lower.

    The relatively low cost of borrowing benefited businesses just as new strides in technology were reshaping our lives and helping keep inflation in check. The tech sector’s growth sparked other segments of the economy, leading to more payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. The federal budget came into balance, and then went into surplus. Public officials had plenty to divvy up from the virtuous cycle.

    Now we face a vicious cycle. Tapped-out consumers stop spending. Companies cut back on orders and production and payrolls. Weakness leads to more weakness. Jobs keep disappearing. Government revenues decline at every level. Budget deficits abound.

    Elected officials in Los Angeles should beware as they seek to meet those deficits with budget cuts, however. The vicious cycle is in full swing. Plenty of folks are desperate to hang on to their house, make their rent, or just get their next meal. Desperate individuals sometimes take desperate actions. Some of them lie, cheat, steal – and worse.

    This trend holds the potential to tear apart our social fabric. Examine past periods of economic hardship and you’ll see that some folks fall into cynicism, looking beyond government institutions for leadership. Some are drawn to what appears to be strong leadership but is really a criminal element sophisticated enough to exploit stress points in our societal sense of right and wrong. Yesterday’s gangsters could quickly become today’s folk heroes in a tough economy.

    That’s a particularly vicious cycle, and it will take an increased commitment to public safety to head off any such erosion to our social compact amid the current downturn.

    Now is the time for elected officials to trade across-the-board mentalities on budget cuts for a sharpened sense of priorities. They should heed the vicious cycle and find money for more cops to help keep the cynics and criminals at bay while the rest of us make an honest effort to slug our way through tough times.

    The everyday working folks and business owners who will ultimately pull us out of this mess deserve that much cover.

    The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), meanwhile, has earned the assumption that properly trained and appropriately deployed cops can do more than simply react to crimes once they have occurred. The LAPD’s recent record has earned a place for the notion that good police work can not only prevent crimes but also dispel any atmosphere of lawlessness that might otherwise take hold – with safeguards on civil liberties in place all the while.

    Indeed, it’s true that the rugged economy is pushing some of our people a rung or two down the socio-economic ladder, and it’s inevitable that some of them will resort to crime. Yet that still doesn’t mean that socio-economic factors trump cops on the beat – or that we must accept lawlessness as a natural and unavoidable by-product of a bad economy. The economic downturn means that the pool of potential criminals will grow, to be sure, but that presents a question of math rather than sociology – and the answer is more cops.

    Just in case that’s not enough, we urge our politicians to consider the bonus that’s in it for them. They should understand just how disappointed voters are with elected officials at every level. They should know that perhaps the best chance for them to recover their standing with the public is to make courageous decisions when it comes to public safety.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • Obama’s First Touchdown: Blue States Take Lead in Bowl Games

    What does college football’s schedule of bowl games tell us about American politics?

    Here are some unscientific musings on what it all means — figure any football or political point spreads on your own.

    Let’s start with this fact: The bowl season would have remained an overwhelming “Red State” affair if Barack Obama had not pulled off his successful raids on Republican territory during the recent presidential election.

    Several key college football states flipped from traditional spots in the Red column and went blue November. Indeed, a majority of the bowl games that are set for locales around the U.S. between December 20 and January 8 will be played in Blue states — the first time that’s happened since the color-coded terminology became a popular point of reference for Democrats and Republicans.

    It’s a narrow advantage for the Democrats, with Blue states hosting 17 bowl games to 16 for the Red states, and one in Canada. That’s just under 52% of the contests scheduled in states that went to Obama, about a percentage point less than his share of the popular vote in the general election.

    Obama’s electoral breakthroughs in several previously Red states accounted for a shift in the landscape of bowl games that appears similar to the shakeup he brought to the Electoral College. A big reason for the shift on bowl games can be traced to Obama’s win in Florida — sound familiar? That’s because the Sunshine State hosts the most bowl games, with seven on the schedule from Miami to Jacksonville this year.

    Obama also turned New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina from Red to Blue, picking up much-needed electoral votes in November, along with one bowl game in each of those states. It turns out that Red states would have held a bowl-game advantage of 23-10 if John McCain had just held Florida. GOP wins in New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina would have given the Red States a 26-7 advantage.

    A review of the participants in this year’s bowl schedule shows again that Obama’s 50-state electoral strategy is playing out on the field, too. Blue states hold a 38-30 edge among the 68 college teams that will play in everything from the San Diego County Poinsettia Bowl to the FedEx BCS National Championship Game. It’s clear, too, that those numbers also would have gone to the Red states in dramatic fashion — 47-21 — without Obama’s success in flipping Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Those states represent a shift of 17 teams from Red to Blue. Florida once again leads the way, with five college squads making bowl appearances, followed by four schools in North Carolina; two each from Colorado, Indiana and Ohio; and one apiece in Nevada and Virginia.

    The schedule offers a clear warning for any Republican honchos who are still thinking about Sarah Palin as red meat for hungry Red Staters: The Blue state advantage in this year’s football fiestas should put all the emphasis needed on Obama’s success in poking holes in GOP’s traditional stronghold in the Sun Belt, where warm weather has always been a big draw for bowl-game promoters.

    GOP elders should also keep in mind that the bowl-game landscape is quite astonishing in light of campaign critiques of Obama as “too urban,” “too cosmopolitan,” and “too-exotic” — or any of the rest of the terms many commentators used when they wished to avoid the subject of race. Republicans should recall that Obama — who is set to become the first genuine urbanite to occupy the White House in 100 years or so — brought the Blue states to the bowl-game lead without any heavy advantage from the coastal metropolitan centers deemed central the Democratic Party’s success.

    The fact is that the roster of 68 teams playing in bowl games includes few schools that can be assigned to either the Atlantic or Pacific — only 15 or 20 out of the 68 bowl participants are near the coasts, with the rest from inland areas or southern sections with political kinship to the interior. There are some judgment calls in that count, counting a number of campuses as inland even though they’re in states that do have a coastline. Take North Carolina State, whose Wolfpack made the Meineke Car Care Bowl. Yes, the Atlantic Ocean laps at North Carolina’s land, but North Carolina State is located in Raleigh, more than 100 miles from saltwater’s edge. This analysis also puts schools near the Gulf Coast in the inland category as a matter of spirit rather than geography. The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg is only about 70 miles from the Gulf Coast, but the political climate there is closer to the inland regions that have made big portions of the middle of the country Red on a consistent basis. In other words, Hattiesburg is still more like Hannibal than Haight-Ashbury, regardless of its proximity to the Gulf Coast.

    Large metropolitan areas don’t hold much sway in terms of the bowl-game landscape, either. There are some judgment calls here, too. How do you consider the University of Wisconsin, located in the Dairy State’s capital city of Madison? Not exactly a big city, but it’s a good-sized metropolitan area in a mid-sized state, and plenty vibrant to boot. A number of the bowl-game participants come from similar territory, and with a little give and take for such circumstances you’ll see that roughly half of the schools are located in major metropolitan areas and approximately half reside in secondary markets or exurban locations.

    Take a look, have some fun, use the Red State-Blue State breakdown to guide your picks for the office pool.

    All we can know for certain is that Obama’s campaign proved to be a game-changer in more ways than one — and just 12 days after the last bowl game is finished we’ll see if our new president can play defense.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • A Holiday Tale for All

    A few nights before Christmas
    The middle of Hanukkah
    Los Angeles is stirring
    A City Symphonica

    Shoppers on Broadway
    Like peas in a pod
    Wishing each other
    Feliz Navidad

    Crowds keep an eye out
    For gifts that will thrill
    On Pico and Central
    On Sunset and Hill

    When down Santee Alley
    Who should appear
    But Hanukkah Harry
    And a team of reindeer

    He pulls up his sleigh
    Steps down to the street
    He smiles and he waves
    To all those he meets

    He cannot stay long
    He just stopped to say
    That Santa and he
    Are working away

    “There’s trouble around
    all through our world
    Enough to be frightful
    for each boy and girl

    So Santa and I
    Must share this year’s load
    For only one person
    It’s too long of a road

    It’s a good thing we’re pals
    Old Santa and I
    Although our faiths differ
    He’s still a good guy

    So we’re splitting the load
    All through the city
    We’ll visit all homes
    The gorgeous and gritty

    Whether Christmas or Kwanzaa
    Hanukkah or New Year’s
    We want to bring hope
    And ease some of your fears

    So if you see Santa or me
    Or perhaps another fellow
    Dressed in red or white
    Or green or yellow

    Remember that different
    Doesn’t mean wrong
    We all have our customs
    Faith, feast and song

    So be like Santa and me
    As we’re dashing around
    Look past the difference
    And find common ground”

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)

  • L.A.’s Big-Bucks Plan for Upper Floors on Broadway Overlooks Facts at Ground Level

    City officials and private business owners recently gathered to celebrate the extended holiday hours of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Metro Red Line train service between Hollywood and Downtown. Private businesses put up $50,000 or so to pay for the Red Line to run an extra two hours — until 3 a.m. — on weekends through December 27. The local business community also came up with private funds for free service on city-operated DASH buses that will offer connections to late-night Red Line riders and others.

    There’s room to question the timing of those moves amid an economic slide. Yet there’s just as much reason to see good sense and courage behind efforts to kick-start economic activity in the face of the frozen confidence of consumers. The effort falls within the realm of a privately financed gamble, too, so that’s fair enough.

    It’s another thing altogether for our city officials to take such chances on an economic stimulus program, as they apparently intend to do with a plan to make $150 million a year available for loans to property owners along the Downtown stretch of Broadway.

    The plan, as stated by 14th District Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar, is to provide incentives for property owners to renovate some of the long-empty upper floors of buildings along the thoroughfare, where many of the structures have few tenants besides ground-floor retailers.

    Huizar has noted that the empty spaces provide no jobs and little tax revenue, and that he hopes to reverse that by lending money to property owners from a pool of federal funds. The funds would finance renovations in hopes of drawing commercial tenants and jobs to the upper floors on Broadway.

    It remains unclear why any of the property owners who didn’t see incentives to renovate their properties during Downtown’s recent boom years would find reasons to do so now. It’s also unclear what sort of tenants would fill the empty spaces. It could be several years before we see anything resembling a hot economy in these parts.

    Again, there is always room for bold ideas that are counter-intuitive. Fortune magazine launched in 1930 — just four months after the stock market crash that signaled the Great Depression — and the publication has done just fine all these years. There’s also room to figure that renovations take awhile, and such work along Broadway might be ready just as the economy picks up.

    This economic mess of ours is big and immediate, though, causing extreme difficulties for folks everywhere. There’s some irony here, because you can get a picture of the pain by walking along Broadway. Don’t bother looking at those empty spaces on the upper floor. Take a gander at the ground floors, where many of the retail shops that buzzed with customers just a short while ago have closed, and those that remain face uncertain prospects.

    It’s enough to make you wonder whether $150 million might be better spent on something other than loans to property owners on the hopes that renovations will someday bring jobs from somewhere to the upper floors along Broadway.

    Meanwhile, there’s never been a better chance of getting a change on the rules that come with federal funds. That should be enough for Huizar and other city officials to re-think their plans. They should consider that Broadway — while it’s not everybody’s cup of tea — has been one of the busiest commercial streets in the city for years. It’s a place where merchants sell, workers earn, and shoppers spend.

    Maybe the action is mostly bargain retail on the ground floor, but Broadway is a working street — and we need all of those we can get right now.

    So why not focus ways to help retailers hang on, and draw more to fill the new gaps at street level? How about renovations for storefronts, with merchants allowed a voice in the process? Or more cops for the area to help improve the atmosphere for shoppers? Or aggressive promotions of the retail scene? All of that might even entice a few more mid- and upper-scale merchants to set up shop on Broadway, sparking some organic changes in the marketplace.

    Pick a program, but keep in mind that this is no time to overlook — quite literally — Broadway’s long-standing role as a street-level heartbeat of our city.

    Jerry Sullivan is the Editor & Publisher of the Los Angeles Garment & Citizen, a weekly community newspaper that covers Downtown Los Angeles and surrounding districts (www.garmentandcitizen.com)