Not Corrupt!

The other day I typed “Los Angeles Second Most…” into Google, and Google, as is Google’s wont, finished my sentence for me.

Now Los Angeles might well be the second most populous, the second most affluent. Los Angeles has the second largest school district. Perhaps LA County is the second most prone to earthquake. 

No! Google says that the Los Angeles area is the second most…CORRUPT!

Ours has been named the second most corrupt area in the country, second only to Chicago.

Actually Google didn’t say that; University of Illinois at Chicago Political Science professor Dick Simpson and colleagues released a report that said so, back in February of 2012. The fallout continues twenty-one months later. Google presented me with hundreds of articles on the subject, far more than I choose to count. Some articles call out the City of Los Angeles, others the county of Los Angeles, and still others seem to indict practically all of southern California.

Is that true?! Well, then, no wonder honest public officials are not beating a path to our neighborhood. Could it be that there aren’t any straight-arrows in office?

I do not want to believe it! I do not want to believe that Michael D. Antonovich is out to collect all the loot he can. I do not want to believe that he is scheming to displace neighborhoods just to put his name up all over the region as a creator of green space.

I want to believe that the California Department of Fish and Game, Oasis Park, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA) just happened to close off our passage in the same year, just by coincidence. See, if I can believe that, then I can believe that they are compassionate and reasonable people, who, as soon as they realize the great inconvenience and losses they have caused, will act immediately to restore our right-of-way.

So NO! Don’t say CORRUPT, because then I can never convince any of them to move to the side of justice, no matter how carefully I write! If corruption was their motivation, then I would have to be fearful of my own government representatives.

Please somebody convince me that nobody has done squat to open our historical access to the world only because somebody made a mistake, somebody didn’t know, somebody is working on it.

Well, here, this feels good: Norm Hickling, deputy to Michael D. Antonovich, is working on it. Norm has been working on it for nine long years; but oh dear, Norm has not found a single correctible mistake.

Well, thanks for trying.

Here, let me try a logical argument on the railroad. Norm says the railroad is key.

A US Department of Transportation Secretary’s Action Plan (May 2004) advocates closure or consolidation of unneeded railroad crossings.  The emphasis is on “redundant” and/or “particularly hazardous crossings.”  The crossing in question is neither.  The report suggests closures “with no other adjustments to the road network,” or, “in other cases short extensions of access roads.”  Neither is the case for this closure.

 In 1994, the report states, there were 110,000 private highway-rail crossings, and “most private crossing accidents occur at industrial/business crossings.”  According to information in the report, the probability of an accidental death in any one year at a rural crossing is miniscule.   

In a logical discussion, then, we would assure SCRRA officials that we understood their desire to comply with that action plan, but that our crossing was not unneeded, not redundant, and not particularly hazardous. We need it, there is no other crossing we can use, and the crossing has been accident free since anybody can remember, except (to be fair) for one lady on foot who attempted to flag down a freight train fifty years ago.

The railroad guys say, “We have looked at that crossing and the curves are so tight you can’t see very far.”

Then we say, “And yet there have been no accidents. You see,” we say, “in the canyons, trains are forced to travel at a very slow rate, and the chance of an accident is correspondingly reduced. We may not be able to see far down the line, but we have more than enough time to see the train coming.”

And the railroad guys say, “Hmm. We see your point. It still makes us nervous, though.”

And we say, in the spirit of compromise, “Maybe there is a way to put up a flashing light. Would you like a flashing light?”

But apparently the railroad guys don’t want to talk to us. Michael D. Antonovich, who sits on the rail authority board, could, in light of the argument above, be extremely persuasive. We are beginning to face up to the fact that he will not do that, and we will need someone to persuade him.

But we still hold out hope. So don’t tell us anyone is beyond reach. Don’t tell us any of these people are corrupt!