I have to nominate anyone associated with the real estate meltdown and subprime loans…. for obvious reasons.

Carmen Trutanich for getting Don Duncan and his pro medical cannabis crowd to campaign for him and now not only vowing to shut down any shops where any money changes hands but has got Duncan under some sort of criminal investigation according to the L A Weekly. The anti-all pot crowd claims that he has too much influence over the city council especially members like Reyes, Koretz and Garcetti (who seem quite capable of having their own minds). In what has to be the Grinch Move of the year, Duncan went from an ecstatic blog entry on May 20th the day after about the huge victory of their “good friend” Carmen Trutanich to now facing the new year with prospect of jail, and his name tarnished.
(his blog is aboutmedicalcannabis.com)

I’m all for prosecuting the guilty but not for chilling the right to express your opinion so it’s important to keep an eye on what develops.

A close second is the entire leadership of this city who let us get into this budget crisis, spending like drunken sailors and keeping too little in reserve, but now caught “unaware” and trying desperately to make up for the lack of foresight by raising fees big and small.

From hiking parking meter rates as the “gold in the gutter” brainstorm of Bill Rosendahl, to tripling our trash fees at private homes with a promise to hire 1000 cops but instead, now claiming it was always meant just to offset the “real cost of trash pickup.” (Thanks Bernard Parks, Greig Smith.) To trying to make AEG pay millions for the Jackson Memorial retroactively, even though Trutanich had to admit there’s no legal basis for this, it has to be what Perry calls a “donation.” In the process making L A look unfriendly to business even as the city is desperate for business to come and create jobs and revenue. (Thanks Dennis Zine too.)

Thanks to all those who want to overdevelop everywhere, and to those homeowner groups who fight every development until there’s expanded infrastructure and water to maintain it, but not adding 2 + 2 to see that they’re freezing all the sources of revenue that could maintain the infrastructure, so these two extremes have left us in a worse budget crisis. Meanwhile neighboring cities like Glendale, Burbank, West Hollywood and Culver City have been building and taking away our revenue base and just left us with their drive-through traffic. If other cities have their way L A won’t even get the subway it’s needed for decades.

Special honorary Grinch status to those homeowner groups who persuaded our leadership to turn away federal money for this for decades, while they were giving it away to other cities. These folks are still at it, and joined by the crowd yelling “environmental racism” if MTA doesn’t built the most-expensive overhead or underground intersection options. This has meant another delay or years and added millions, with the build date uncertain. Meanwhile our surface traffic gets worse and worse.

The mayor for running off to Africa on holiday the day after he got inauguarated, after promising to roll up his sleeves and hit the tarmac running (we thought it was in this city), leaving the keys to the city in the hands of Perry and Zine. Sure he gets too much flack for whatever he does (at least he takes it in stride, seems a pretty good sports about it) but true or not he’s created a flighty perception.

But then the mayor gets all the negative attention already, so it seemed only fair to spread it around! They’ve all robbed us of getting our streets paved or even holes fixed in our sidewalks and roads, with fewer cops, with shorter library hours, and we don’t know what is yet to come.

All this local stuff is magnified at the state level, where furloughs have closed offices and laid off people, hurt our schools and means the release of tens of thousands of prisoners onto our streets even as we can’t afford to hire cops. So they’re even reaching into our local gas and other taxes to try to plug up their holes. Too many Grinches who stole this Christmas’s cheer to count.