Local Action

Former Angeleño Harold Meyerson, from safety on the wrong coast, notes institutional decline at home in the big city, & of course lays blame & points fingers at those responsible, two assholes (One a MAsshole, ha ha! Fuck you, Frankie-poo!) from the real estate game, a "profession" best described by the late J.D. Morrison:

"What have they done to the Earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences
And dragged her down"

From AlterNet, analysis of the box-office, aesthetic & moral failure of Atlas Shrugged, w/ a note about parasites like Sam Zell of the Tribune Company he bankrupted, & Frank McCourt, the Parking Lot Attendant* who is probably going to be in jail for tax evasion one of these days:

Ironically, a key theme of the book and the film is the rejection of society by the wealthy business class who mysteriously disappear. There is a correlation to that plot point in contemporary America as we have already witnessed the disappearance of business luminaries like Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff, Dennis Kozlowski, Bernard Ebbers, and John Rigas†, to name a few. It doesn’t appear that society has suffered from their absence. Yet there is another industrial titan who not only hasn’t vanished, he is masquerading across the airwaves as a presidential candidate. I’m not sure Ayn Rand would approve of this, however, the popularity of Donald Trump at Tea Parties is perfectly understandable. He is the ultimate manifestation of Randian politics: a greedy, conceited, selfish bully. But for every Tea Party supporter there are probably twenty other Americans who wish that Trump would “go Galt.”

*Stolen w/o shame from T.J. Simers of the local Times.

†The shitheel who effed up cable television in L.A. for many yrs. by running Adelphia Cable as his & his sons' personal cash-box.