Posted on 12/01/2005 4:27:07 PM PST by Dan Nunn
When one little company like Nissan North America pulls out of a great big city like Los Angeles, does anyone even notice?
They do when Nissan is the 80th corporation to do so since 2002.
The automaker's announcement that it will leave L.A. for Nashville, Tenn., may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
Just days after the announcement, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. fired off a letter to California's legislators, urging them to appoint a task force to consider changes in state tax and employment laws to help reduce business costs.
The 80 departing corporations are taking 13,000 jobs with them, the group says. And in an alarming shift, it warns that the corporate departures no longer are moving just midlevel jobs; they are claiming headquarters and r&d jobs, too.
Kind of takes me back to the days when the town was called "Des Moines by the bay." The civic light opera (Starlight Opera) had to cancel its production of Westside Story because of citizen outrage over the bedroom scene. Yep.. it was a little different town then.
You sound like a country club California Republican.
And what charming part of the US do you live in?
BTW, stocks that go up ... are you in the market (like I am?)
I ain't too worried, once those SM moonbats see Williamson and Rutherford County, they're going to be crying in their mocha lattes.
The beach?? Great restaurants? A dozen+ states have that. The mountains? So. Cal mountains suck!! Just a bunch of brush and sickly trees!!
No sabe inglesis. Nada. No way.
You know what, I let you have the parting shot AND said good night to you, and you not only didn't have the class to reciprocate but you had to take one more shot.
If you want to act blissfully ignorant whether you are or not, that's fine by me, but don't attack me when I'm addressing some of the problems in our area.
I get up at five o'clock so that I won't have to take anywhere from forty-five minutes to two hours to drive 17 miles to work. Have you even driven across the San Fernando Valley in the last decade? You don't see middle income people out there much. You see people who are clearly struggling just go get by. This isn't the San Fernando valley of the 1970s or 1980s. It's in many places very run down, with iron bars surrounding the homes. The streets are filthy, the cars are run down and in a number of places the sineage is in Spanish. The business infrastructure is crumbling. Drive down Van Nuy's boulevard. Drive down Victory. Take a good look.
What used to be the best drivers in the nation, have now become the worst drivers in the nation. If you travel at all on the freeway during busy times, you'll note how bad it's gotten. This morning I came up behind some guy going 45 miles per hour in clear traffic, everyone else going 70. He was hunched over the steering wheel like an old man, only he wasn't.
With few exceptions the freeways haven't been upgraded since the 1970s. Even those are beginning to crack. What used to be some of the safest roads around, are now narrow laned accidents waiting to happen, with walls surrounding them on both sides and no center median. When cars go down, traffic stops.
We have some of the worst gangs in the nation here in L.A. Let's not talk about it okay. When people were getting shot dead on the freeway last year, the media was loathe to admit most of the shooters were desribed in terms that left little doubt they were gang bangers. Just days before the whole thing kicked off, that El Salvadoran gang was thought to have been responsible for several killings on the west side of LA, killings of people who were not in gangs and were totally innocent. They were killed at random. Let's not talk about this okay.
Los Angeles has the second largest construction project in the United States right now. That construction project is designed to put 50 more schools online by 2006, so that we can have a classroom all the children of illegal aliens in the southland. Even if successful, those schools won't be enough by the time they are online.
Our infrastructure is crumbling. Even when it is addressed, the job that is done, is sub-par. Try driving down the 134 / 101 freeway. It was resurfaced about five years ago. When they did it, they scraped the surface or something. Now the road is several inches below the bridges. Each time you drive across one the car is jostled as you first go up several inches, then down several inches. This happens at every overpass and every storm channel crossing.
The federal government has been more than happy to help things along. We now get our mail somewhere between 3:00 p.m and 6:30 p.m. And on the occasional day when the mailman feels like it, or doesn't, we don't get any mail.
We pay an incredible sum of tax on gasoline in the state. There are around 12 million cars zooming around in southern California filling up with gas, each paying dollars at a shot in gas tax. This goes on week after week after week, yet there isn't any money for massive overhauls of our roads.
The MTA or whatever the hell it's name is now, has just put a new Orange line bus system into operation in the valley. The things look pretty nice as they zoom along empty. LA chose to purchases tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars worth of buses, spend tens if not hundreds of millions to set up a special roadway just for them. Now they're mostly empty unless it's around rush hour. Even then they are nowhere near full or even half-full, and in between rush hour their's hardly anyone on board.
We have a subway to nowhere in LA. It starts in LA and dumps into San Fernando valley. Eh, what's a few billion among friends.
Over 50% of adult males in Los Angeles are not proficient in reading or writing english.
Fully one third if not more by now, of the children in the LAUSD are the children of illegal immigrants. Our hospitals have had to cut survices to the bone so they wouldn't go belly up from treating those unable to pay. Other healthcare services are in the same boat. No, they haven't just gotten worse for the non-citizen, they've gotten worse across the board.
The Los Angeles city council doesn't speak for me, but it's disgusting rulings affect many people who do not live in Los Angeles. It is one of the worst ruling bodies in this nation.
There's only one thing worse than all this. It's simpletons that claim that nobody should mention any of this.
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But not only did you say "good night" and then get up to blast me!
Bottom line, you're a pessimist ... I'm an optimist. There are problems. I'm active in politics to fix them.
But, at the same time be safe and secure that you are on a "bashing L.A." thread where you and yours can grind on about the drive across the valley for cripes sake.
I like L.A! I'm not ashamed to say it. You don't ... no pessimist would. You'll live here til you die and can't find one thing to like about it.
What a bitter unhappen citizen of this city you are!
Yeah, like a mugging, a rape, a car jacking, a drive by, a gang shoot out, a few murders, a couple beatings, an earth quake, a wild fire, a mudslide, a queer parade, eco freaks blocking the bridges, etc., etc.,
Keep California.(away from the rest of us)
Well I'm sure glad to hear about this "mass exodus". I keep hearing about it, but the stores, businesses, freeways, parking lots are packed. I went to a Starbucks the other day, and was lucky to find a single seat.
Mass exodus? That is pretty funny.
Maybe Nissan figured out that their workers literally could not afford to live in the city? How much is a home? 600K?
As a matter of fact I'm a positive person. I'm not too adled to recognize what's going on. I'm not too ashamed of what's going on to face it like a grown-up.
What do you go out and do politically, if you think things are peachy? I'm curious to know.
In this blissful environment, I'm just shocked you'd see any need to participate.
You're losing it. Your "good night" was at 6:23:11 My cheap parting shot was LESS THAN A MINUTE later at 6:24:07 It's time to hit the sack, Bub. There is no way I composed that shot in seconds. Or ... maybe you're paranoid.
What "blissful environment", DO? You live in hell.
Whether you are aware of it or not, there is a pretty well documented record of people leaving. It's just that many more are coming. You must have read earlier in the thread where 80 corporations have decide to pick up and leave in the last 2.5 years. At a time when we need more, not less of them, this isn't a good sign.
There have been a lot of lousy decisions at the local, state and federal levels that have impacted the southland negatively. Just acting like there's nothing wrong isn't a way to address that IMO.
That's why I voted for Arnold. He seemed, at the time to understand the problem. I have serious reservations about him anymore.
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