I thought Nancy Pelosi was thinking of the children. She had a profound statement regarding just that when seeking reelection - "I am running for the children". I say that with a huge dose of sarcasm.
It's interesting isn't it....the Great Noticing. For the last ten years most people have decried the internet, saying it is poisoning people's minds and making them *fight* more. I don't know about that. Narratives can be destroyed by a 47 second clip and in a split second a million people will see the lie come apart. Thanks for the trip down memory lane Chris, had no idea about 2008. I lived in Santa Monica\PP in the early 2000's - we stayed away from most of Venice Beach and MacArthur Park back then...whole swathes of LA were no go zones. I got out in late '04, so it sounds like I missed them trying to turn it around...to no avail, of course.
“And he presents what sure looks like smoking gun evidence that a DWP employee tried to change city records to hide the failure to turn off the electricity in the fire zone, as poles burned and lines fell into dry brush or sent out showers of sparks:”
Well, in DWP’s defense, apparently they had a plan to replace the very flammable wooden poles, and had started construction. The environmental lobby, not only stopped the project, but required that DWP de-construct the new access roads because it destroyed the ‘habitat’ of an ‘endangered’ weed. Lots of stupidity at play in those fires.
I should also bring up the 'fell into dry brush' issue. Clearing brush is another thing that the environmental lobby doesn't like to see done, because it isn't 'natural'. Especially in years following higher than normal rainfall, and in the runup to the annual Santa Ana winds season, fire crews should be working on using controlled burns to make sure that there is no dry brush for sparks to fall into. Instead, the powers that be want to rely on multi-million-dollar aviation fleets to drop fire retardant in an effort to control fires once they start. The problem is that those planes and helicopters cannot be used in high wind conditions. It boggles the mind how many catastrophic fires in California have happened and those in control still don't understand that limitation.
The "compassionate" liberal policies of the 1960's-1970's turned our nation's cities into blighted, crime-infested hellscapes. Flight from inner cities resembled a donut shape. The inner cities empty holes of dilapidated drug houses, dangerous parks, nowhere anyone with any sense wanted to be. The flight to suburbia was the outer donut that surrounded the empty holes.
By the time the 1980's-1990's came around city planners and leaders had a new vision. Gentrification of the old city centers that residents who were able to flee fled from. Massive investments - subsidized by local and federal taxpayers - to clean up the blighted neighborhoods and make downtowns desirable to live in again were made. Crime was aggressively fought, zero tolerance, "broken windows" policing combined with upscale developments including vibrant night life options and family-friendly events brought new residents back into the center, filling in the empty hole with life. Hipsters and the affluent chose to live in the "middle of everything," was where all the cool, rich people wanted to live. It wasn't long before those old drug dens, rat-infested formerly dilapidated buildings were selling at a premium. New life was breathed into the "donut hole" center. Because safety, civic pride finally kicked the dangerous and wrong-headed "compassionate" liberal ideas of local governance to the curb.
This was all going well for nearly two decades. Until visionary no-nonsense Mayors like Giuliani were considered unnecessary, cities were back under control, didn't need the mean law-and-order types of leadership anymore, the "compassionate" 'progressives' (rebranded, more militant 'liberals) were hired to maintain the prosperity and safety more 'humanely.' But that doesn't work. And just as surely as the same policies led to unlivable cities in the 1960's-1970's the same cycle was set into motion. Flight from cities by those who can afford to move. The many wealthy residents who bought housing at premiums to live in the "middle of everything" now come and go from their homes, locking deadbolts behind them, hiding behind gates and guards. No longer able to go out and enjoy their vibrant night life options. Families don't dare visit. The businesses that opened to serve the affluent hipsters are barely able to stay in business, if not outright close up shop.
City planners and leaders knew this. I know. I worked with them, attended the Zoning and Planning committee meetings, knew my local government officials, the large real estate investors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars - much of it tax subsidized so public taxpayers have a stake in it - into redeveloping the "donut hole" centers of cities are now watching the donut hole grow again. Flight to suburbia has gained steam again.
The pandemic policies were an accelerant on the already self-destructing notions of city planners and leaders who *chose* to forget the lessons of the previous half-century. Conscious choice. They believed themselves immune to the laws of healthy communities and sociology, they knew better than their predecessors who were heavy-handed and mean people to fix their broken cities. They were going to 'be better' and fix cities with "compassionate progressive" public policies and policing.
Thing is, the only thing they ended up doing different than the "compassionate liberals" who came before them was enlist the help of the media to coverup and hide the true crime rates that were/are happening in the cities. Countless stories from around the nation where crime statistics are scrubbed, violent acts aren't reported - at the behest of local business owners who don't want the bad PR from keeping customers away. When the real information makes its way out as victims FOIA documents showing internal communications revealing the deceit and complicity of the media the victims sue the city for hiding information that led to them becoming victims. Censorship with a complicit media hiding the crime and blight only works for so long. The truth eventually catches up. And when the flight from city centers follows ALL of those major investors who gentrified the downtowns end up losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Including the taxpayers who subsidized the investments only to see their tax dollars evaporate into the same empty donut hole they paid to fill in.
The great relearning. Hasn't even really started yet. The Marxists like Bass and the soon-to-be NY mayor are doubling down. At some point the wise person realizes it's not a mistake; it's the plan.
Sorry to be THAT GUY, but I wrote an article yesterday I think you'll appreciate -- it dovetails into the MacArthur park story (and features TWO links to Chris Bray, so....)
But our state media over here has said that the fires were due to climate change!
Surely, state media wouldn't lie?
On the other hand, this is the same state media who is telling us that 1-3 bombs going off per day, and 12-year olds shooting at each other is normal for Sweden - that it has in fact always been that way.
Oh, and things are so good over here, that from July 1st this year, insulting a state official in the execution of their duty has been made a crime warranting up to three years in prison.
As an Englishman of a certain age, what MacArthur Park means to me is the brilliant song by Jimmy Webb that was a huge hit for actor Richard Harris in the 1960s. So much so that I put it in my Self-Portrait in Song https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/a-self-portrait-in-song
......MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh no....etc
Chris, thanks a million times for both links you provided --- MacArthur Park (with voice-over) and the Palisades Fire truth film. From comments here I know I am not the only one who is deep into this stuff at the moment.
I just can’t stop thinking about Atlas Shrugged these days. I read AS and the Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, between the eighth and ninth grades as summer reading.
Our teacher wanted us to read political polemics from both socialist and libertarian authors.
He told us that Sinclair wanted to spark a socialist revolution, with his ghastly descriptions of dirty, unsafe conditions in slaughterhouses and the depredations of rapist robber barons, but that public opinion was mainly focused on food sanitation and thus, the USDA was born.
I don’t recall much of what he had to say about Rand, except that he and I got into an argument about the true identity of the cigarette vendor that Dagny Taggert encountered in a train station.
My teacher insisted he was John Galt in disguise. I argued it didn’t make sense, though I can’t recall why. I haven’t felt compelled enough to investigate by rereading the book.
Ayn Rand isn’t much of a writer. Her characters are wooden, mannequins, who she has to constantly reposition through repetitive, and therefore, tedious prose.
However, her observations of the pitfalls of socialism have proven rather on point.
I recall one passage describing that trains would become unreliable and even dangerous. That has been so true, that many people probably don’t think it’s possible to have fast, efficient and safe trains, not in the US anyway.
Scandal after scandal has rocked the de facto US government plane manufacturer, Boeing, for safety problems, corruption and even alleged contract killings of whistleblowers. Their new planes literally just fall out of the sky.
She also said that the general population would begin spying on each other and ratting each other out, as they all vied for a bigger piece of the handout pie, while contributing less and less.
If you see something, say something seems unnecessarily paranoid, as people already know to report actual crimes. Our government has been insidiously using the threat of terrorism to cultivate a culture of suspicion for each other, but not of them.
Is corrupt, crony capitalism any better? No, but its negatives are not a justification for centrally planned corruption.
It’s likely that we will never have a perfect system. However, I think many people are now seeing the capture of our courts, meant to be the primary arbiters of disputes and the bodies for meting out justice, in a free market, limited government system, according to libertarian philosophy.
Regulations have proven ineffective at preventing harms to the environment and consumers.
If anything, they facilitate tyranny, as can be seen in the example of forced vaccinations that have proven ineffective at preventing illness, at best, while often delivering only harmful ‘side’ effects. Many corporations consider the fines they pay for violating environmental regulations part of the cost of doing business, because they are not significant enough to be deterrents.
Is this incompetence or malevolence? Who knows? How can we tell, when we are not allowed to sue manufacturers protected by the regulations supposedly meant to restrain them?
Courts instead seem obsessed with blocking legitimate EOs meant to trim waste and get men out of women’s sports.
Capitalism may have its ills and it’s unlikely we will ever have completely free markets, but can’t we go back to at least striving for freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness, instead of wallowing in drug-induced misery, resentment and economic stagnation?
The founders seem vindicated on that front. You can’t pursue those things without freedom.
Maybe there is danger inherent in liberty, but our major cities can no longer be described as safe or even functional, so what are we getting for giving it up?
Ben Franklin’s prescient statement, that ‘Those who would give up liberty for safety, deserve neither’, could be updated to ‘Those who give up liberty for safety, can have neither’?
The deporter champion, Obama, managed to deport those people without a peep from the media. In fact the media kept people distracted by Obama's false promises of his 'dreamer' plans. One more reminder that we are controlled by propaganda from one side even as some claim the MSM is dead. Less profitable maybe, but still powerful.
Sometimes I think we give too much credit to the current crop of “progressives “running California . They don’t have a plan, they are just eye watering stupid and are propped up by an even more ignorant press and electorate.
To quote a famous philosopher, “You can’t fix stupid.”
Never gets old:
https://x.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1944776453394219239
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN
I thought Nancy Pelosi was thinking of the children. She had a profound statement regarding just that when seeking reelection - "I am running for the children". I say that with a huge dose of sarcasm.
It's interesting isn't it....the Great Noticing. For the last ten years most people have decried the internet, saying it is poisoning people's minds and making them *fight* more. I don't know about that. Narratives can be destroyed by a 47 second clip and in a split second a million people will see the lie come apart. Thanks for the trip down memory lane Chris, had no idea about 2008. I lived in Santa Monica\PP in the early 2000's - we stayed away from most of Venice Beach and MacArthur Park back then...whole swathes of LA were no go zones. I got out in late '04, so it sounds like I missed them trying to turn it around...to no avail, of course.
It was their summer day camp? Any parent that would allow a child to go into that park shown on the video should be arrested for child abuse.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
—Ecclesiastes 1:9
“And he presents what sure looks like smoking gun evidence that a DWP employee tried to change city records to hide the failure to turn off the electricity in the fire zone, as poles burned and lines fell into dry brush or sent out showers of sparks:”
Well, in DWP’s defense, apparently they had a plan to replace the very flammable wooden poles, and had started construction. The environmental lobby, not only stopped the project, but required that DWP de-construct the new access roads because it destroyed the ‘habitat’ of an ‘endangered’ weed. Lots of stupidity at play in those fires.
I’m sure the endangered weed was fire resistant.
They usually are.
I should also bring up the 'fell into dry brush' issue. Clearing brush is another thing that the environmental lobby doesn't like to see done, because it isn't 'natural'. Especially in years following higher than normal rainfall, and in the runup to the annual Santa Ana winds season, fire crews should be working on using controlled burns to make sure that there is no dry brush for sparks to fall into. Instead, the powers that be want to rely on multi-million-dollar aviation fleets to drop fire retardant in an effort to control fires once they start. The problem is that those planes and helicopters cannot be used in high wind conditions. It boggles the mind how many catastrophic fires in California have happened and those in control still don't understand that limitation.
City planners and leaders had learned the lesson.
The "compassionate" liberal policies of the 1960's-1970's turned our nation's cities into blighted, crime-infested hellscapes. Flight from inner cities resembled a donut shape. The inner cities empty holes of dilapidated drug houses, dangerous parks, nowhere anyone with any sense wanted to be. The flight to suburbia was the outer donut that surrounded the empty holes.
By the time the 1980's-1990's came around city planners and leaders had a new vision. Gentrification of the old city centers that residents who were able to flee fled from. Massive investments - subsidized by local and federal taxpayers - to clean up the blighted neighborhoods and make downtowns desirable to live in again were made. Crime was aggressively fought, zero tolerance, "broken windows" policing combined with upscale developments including vibrant night life options and family-friendly events brought new residents back into the center, filling in the empty hole with life. Hipsters and the affluent chose to live in the "middle of everything," was where all the cool, rich people wanted to live. It wasn't long before those old drug dens, rat-infested formerly dilapidated buildings were selling at a premium. New life was breathed into the "donut hole" center. Because safety, civic pride finally kicked the dangerous and wrong-headed "compassionate" liberal ideas of local governance to the curb.
This was all going well for nearly two decades. Until visionary no-nonsense Mayors like Giuliani were considered unnecessary, cities were back under control, didn't need the mean law-and-order types of leadership anymore, the "compassionate" 'progressives' (rebranded, more militant 'liberals) were hired to maintain the prosperity and safety more 'humanely.' But that doesn't work. And just as surely as the same policies led to unlivable cities in the 1960's-1970's the same cycle was set into motion. Flight from cities by those who can afford to move. The many wealthy residents who bought housing at premiums to live in the "middle of everything" now come and go from their homes, locking deadbolts behind them, hiding behind gates and guards. No longer able to go out and enjoy their vibrant night life options. Families don't dare visit. The businesses that opened to serve the affluent hipsters are barely able to stay in business, if not outright close up shop.
City planners and leaders knew this. I know. I worked with them, attended the Zoning and Planning committee meetings, knew my local government officials, the large real estate investors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars - much of it tax subsidized so public taxpayers have a stake in it - into redeveloping the "donut hole" centers of cities are now watching the donut hole grow again. Flight to suburbia has gained steam again.
The pandemic policies were an accelerant on the already self-destructing notions of city planners and leaders who *chose* to forget the lessons of the previous half-century. Conscious choice. They believed themselves immune to the laws of healthy communities and sociology, they knew better than their predecessors who were heavy-handed and mean people to fix their broken cities. They were going to 'be better' and fix cities with "compassionate progressive" public policies and policing.
Thing is, the only thing they ended up doing different than the "compassionate liberals" who came before them was enlist the help of the media to coverup and hide the true crime rates that were/are happening in the cities. Countless stories from around the nation where crime statistics are scrubbed, violent acts aren't reported - at the behest of local business owners who don't want the bad PR from keeping customers away. When the real information makes its way out as victims FOIA documents showing internal communications revealing the deceit and complicity of the media the victims sue the city for hiding information that led to them becoming victims. Censorship with a complicit media hiding the crime and blight only works for so long. The truth eventually catches up. And when the flight from city centers follows ALL of those major investors who gentrified the downtowns end up losing hundreds of millions of dollars. Including the taxpayers who subsidized the investments only to see their tax dollars evaporate into the same empty donut hole they paid to fill in.
The great relearning. Hasn't even really started yet. The Marxists like Bass and the soon-to-be NY mayor are doubling down. At some point the wise person realizes it's not a mistake; it's the plan.
Sorry to be THAT GUY, but I wrote an article yesterday I think you'll appreciate -- it dovetails into the MacArthur park story (and features TWO links to Chris Bray, so....)
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/macarthur-park-redux
☝️ oh man, it's that guy again😂
Going to hi-jack/coat-tail ride a bit here:
But our state media over here has said that the fires were due to climate change!
Surely, state media wouldn't lie?
On the other hand, this is the same state media who is telling us that 1-3 bombs going off per day, and 12-year olds shooting at each other is normal for Sweden - that it has in fact always been that way.
Oh, and things are so good over here, that from July 1st this year, insulting a state official in the execution of their duty has been made a crime warranting up to three years in prison.
That's how good it's going!
Yeah, it's normal for all big cities...
But the rebuilding, Chris! Pacific Palisades must look like the barnraising scene in Witness, right?
Oh, so much...energy...and....
https://x.com/westcoast_lyfe/status/1942761345390137483
As an Englishman of a certain age, what MacArthur Park means to me is the brilliant song by Jimmy Webb that was a huge hit for actor Richard Harris in the 1960s. So much so that I put it in my Self-Portrait in Song https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/a-self-portrait-in-song
......MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh no....etc
My apologies for being so off-topic!
I loved that song. Still do.
Thanks for sharing!
You're welcome. There's a great Youtube of Harris performing it on stage....worth a look .
I was going to mention that song but you beat me to it!
But….Donald Trump is a fascist…..
Chris, thanks a million times for both links you provided --- MacArthur Park (with voice-over) and the Palisades Fire truth film. From comments here I know I am not the only one who is deep into this stuff at the moment.
All hail Mayor Camacho! Spray the fields with Brawndo!
I just can’t stop thinking about Atlas Shrugged these days. I read AS and the Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, between the eighth and ninth grades as summer reading.
Our teacher wanted us to read political polemics from both socialist and libertarian authors.
He told us that Sinclair wanted to spark a socialist revolution, with his ghastly descriptions of dirty, unsafe conditions in slaughterhouses and the depredations of rapist robber barons, but that public opinion was mainly focused on food sanitation and thus, the USDA was born.
I don’t recall much of what he had to say about Rand, except that he and I got into an argument about the true identity of the cigarette vendor that Dagny Taggert encountered in a train station.
My teacher insisted he was John Galt in disguise. I argued it didn’t make sense, though I can’t recall why. I haven’t felt compelled enough to investigate by rereading the book.
Ayn Rand isn’t much of a writer. Her characters are wooden, mannequins, who she has to constantly reposition through repetitive, and therefore, tedious prose.
However, her observations of the pitfalls of socialism have proven rather on point.
I recall one passage describing that trains would become unreliable and even dangerous. That has been so true, that many people probably don’t think it’s possible to have fast, efficient and safe trains, not in the US anyway.
Scandal after scandal has rocked the de facto US government plane manufacturer, Boeing, for safety problems, corruption and even alleged contract killings of whistleblowers. Their new planes literally just fall out of the sky.
She also said that the general population would begin spying on each other and ratting each other out, as they all vied for a bigger piece of the handout pie, while contributing less and less.
If you see something, say something seems unnecessarily paranoid, as people already know to report actual crimes. Our government has been insidiously using the threat of terrorism to cultivate a culture of suspicion for each other, but not of them.
Is corrupt, crony capitalism any better? No, but its negatives are not a justification for centrally planned corruption.
It’s likely that we will never have a perfect system. However, I think many people are now seeing the capture of our courts, meant to be the primary arbiters of disputes and the bodies for meting out justice, in a free market, limited government system, according to libertarian philosophy.
Regulations have proven ineffective at preventing harms to the environment and consumers.
If anything, they facilitate tyranny, as can be seen in the example of forced vaccinations that have proven ineffective at preventing illness, at best, while often delivering only harmful ‘side’ effects. Many corporations consider the fines they pay for violating environmental regulations part of the cost of doing business, because they are not significant enough to be deterrents.
Is this incompetence or malevolence? Who knows? How can we tell, when we are not allowed to sue manufacturers protected by the regulations supposedly meant to restrain them?
Courts instead seem obsessed with blocking legitimate EOs meant to trim waste and get men out of women’s sports.
Capitalism may have its ills and it’s unlikely we will ever have completely free markets, but can’t we go back to at least striving for freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness, instead of wallowing in drug-induced misery, resentment and economic stagnation?
The founders seem vindicated on that front. You can’t pursue those things without freedom.
Maybe there is danger inherent in liberty, but our major cities can no longer be described as safe or even functional, so what are we getting for giving it up?
Ben Franklin’s prescient statement, that ‘Those who would give up liberty for safety, deserve neither’, could be updated to ‘Those who give up liberty for safety, can have neither’?
Party reality never has to relearn.
party "unburdened by what has been" is constantly surprised.
(or pretends to because it knows that its captured audience will clap and play along with anything it says)
Our rulers won't stop until they've herded all of us into camps, I mean "cities."
That's why wolves and other predators are being released, to make the countryside uninhabitable.
The deporter champion, Obama, managed to deport those people without a peep from the media. In fact the media kept people distracted by Obama's false promises of his 'dreamer' plans. One more reminder that we are controlled by propaganda from one side even as some claim the MSM is dead. Less profitable maybe, but still powerful.
Sometimes I think we give too much credit to the current crop of “progressives “running California . They don’t have a plan, they are just eye watering stupid and are propped up by an even more ignorant press and electorate.
To quote a famous philosopher, “You can’t fix stupid.”
Those you described would be the so called useful idiots - useful only to whoever is pulling the strings.