I was elected [to the Cudahy City Council] with overwhelming public support in 2013, following one of the highest-profile corruption scandals in the history of the region. It was my duty at the time to restore public trust from the ground up, and usher a new culture of honest and responsible government.
Immediately upon installation, I was appointed mayor of my city, and used my professional background in finance and economics (including my status as a certified public accountant) to initiate a forensic examination of the city’s internal financial and administrative controls. My preliminary findings were alarming, and I subsequently demanded a consequential, authoritative audit from the California State Controller and other government agencies.
The state audit I secured provided the credible bill of health I needed to launch the most sweeping management overhaul in our city’s history and the most extensive government reform measures in the entire region. I am proud of this early chapter in my tenure, and the application of my technical, forensic background to profoundly alter the culture and internal control environment of my city. I continue to serve as the city’s watchdog, and I wish to bring the same discipline to state government.
Separately, I would highlight my passion for education justice, as corroborated by my conduct as mayor, when I did the unthinkable: I held public hearings on the quality of education in local public schools! I successfully advocated for local school reform, organized parents, and secured change in one school’s administration. My efforts at school reform were covered in local papers, including the Los Angeles Times. Education overhaul statewide remains one of my top priorities.
As an anti-corruption activist, I have long demanded honesty in government contracts, reform of campaign finance disclosure rules, prosecution of corruption, term limits, and reasonable compensation.
On fiscal discipline, I have long championed balanced budgets, public bidding on contracts, lower taxes, efficiency in government operations, pension reform, audits of internal controls, and removal of administrative red-tape. These are “conservative” policy prescriptions, but they are also topics that ordinary people of goodwill and reasonable disposition can easily coalesce around. I will also continue to fight for education justice, including greater school choice and competition, student vouchers so that parents can send their children to better performing schools, and overhaul of teacher tenure rules so that educators can be evaluated and rewarded based on performance. These issues truly resonate with blue-collar families in the bluest region of the bluest state, and I intend to educate constituents on similar topics.
I believe transparency in all aspects of government can serve to enhance the public trust and advance justice, especially during the evaluation of police conduct. Statewide, I believe we need better initiatives to forge improved working relationships between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve—particularly in working class and historically underserved regions of the state. I am also an advocate for community policing initiatives and informational citizen academies to increase public understanding between stakeholders.
I support all aspects of Proposition 13, and will fight to protect homeowners and property owners against bloated government efforts to overtax our communities. I also oppose efforts to split the rolls, based on deleterious consequences and immediate externalities affecting consumers, commercial activity, private sector jobs, and local and regional gross domestic product.
Every major survey consistently ranks California dead-last in terms of business climate, and this regrettable evaluation is due largely to the overtaxed and over-regulated conditions which plague our state’s business climate, and in the process, subvert business activity, private sector jobs growth, and quality of life for ordinary people.
With respect to homelessness, I believe government agencies that already deal with the at-risk population (foster programs, jails, hospitals, etc.) should coordinate more proactively with each other to ease transitions between their respective programs and to track rehabilitation efforts. I also believe that any direct services to the at-risk population should require mandatory education and drug rehabilitation participation.
We must focus our transitional resources on those who wish to help themselves and those who aspire to improve their lot in life. We should never create programs of perpetual dependency which only serve the long-term consequence of creating a permanent underclass. Finally, local programs should be considerate of the needs, limitations, and preferences of local communities.
I believe all local transportation projects should be considerate of the local communities impacted by these programs. I support informational programs and transparency in all aspect of government planning.
I believe the long-term solution to alleviating rent increases is the infusion of additional housing stock through reform of land-use regulation to facilitate the permitting process. This is a long-term solution that can begin now with regulatory reform. I also support education programs for tenants so that they understand their rights and obligations, and [are able to] more effectively negotiate lease agreements.
I believe the Lower River Revitalization Plan should include a buy-in [for] local communities. As Senator, I would work to facilitate educational outreach to impacted communities.
The [California] High-Speed Rail project should be de-railed immediately and completely. This massive government flop is among the most expensive disasters in recent state history. The perpetual cost overruns and gross mismanagement of the project are alarming on so many levels. At greater than $100 billion dollars, we cannot reasonably afford this project, given our budgetary status, low credit rating, and massive debt levels (including an unfunded pension liability that approximates a trillion dollars, according to the Stanford University Economics Research Institute). It is simply unconscionable to support this project.
People should aspire to be who they want to be and this also All violent crime, by its very nature, is hateful. I support prosecution of violent crimes in all circumstances. I also believe in community policing efforts to facilitate understanding and working relationships between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve.
Copyright © 2024 FORTHE.org. All rights reserved.
[1] Militarily demobilized. Since WWII—which was both the death knell of European colonial empires as well as the starting shot of the American neocolonial era—Europe has had notoriously scant standing armies, and has been able to consistently slash government military spending domestically and as a percentage of their contributions to international diplomatic bodies such as the UN. This is because nowadays European nations very rarely find themselves in situations where they need to independently send their militaries abroad in order to secure trade routes, foreign resources, or privileges within markets overseas; the U.S. has been fulfilling that hard-power obligation for them for over half a century. The social results of Western Europe’s decreased militarization are striking, especially when contrasted with the U.S.: there is not a single country in Western Europe without universal healthcare, labor rights and welfare systems are strong, value is placed on corporate and financial regulation, environmental policy is lightyears ahead, and, not least of all, there is a robust governmental approach to curbing digital surveillance and reining in tech monopolies. Japan enjoys a similar arrangement with the U.S. in which it, too, is militarily demobilized yet is given full access to, and prominence in, the global economy. In the last decade there has been a reversing trend of remilitarization in some of these nations. That trend was hastened during the last four years as a result of Trump’s ultranationalist politics, but is likely to continue even after his departure in large part due to the growing bipolar geopolitical climate of competition between superpowers.
The “owner” bit of home-“owner” appears in scare quotes throughout the text for reasons that will shortly become apparent.
Nothing signals trouble quite like consensus.
More on them later.
And, anyways, what exactly remains “obvious” in an era “post-truth”?
I take as my starting position that even the “obvious” must be won.
It’s like Lenin said, you know…
Whether directly, or through a chain of investments, or through the wider speculative market in real estate.
I use “banks” in this piece as a stand-in for several sources of income that derive partly through the mortgaging of property and/or investment in institutions that have the power to mortgage property.
That is just its “ideology.”
The Ricardian “law of rent” explains that any location with an advantage over another location, can accrue an economic value, called “rent,” to the owner.
This happens without the owner needing to pitch in to create the advantage.
If the owner does pitch in, then the value accrued from that advantage cannot be called “rent.”
“Rent,” in economic terms, is only, precisely, the value accrued from that portion of the advantage for which the owner is not responsible. That is what we mean when we say, “Rent is theft.”
This does not mean places with lower property taxes ipso facto have higher property prices—and that is because the property tax is only one of the contributing factors. You could have zero taxes on land in Antarctica, for instance, and it would still sell for $0. This is why the introduction to the analogy controls for such variables.
This is the logical conclusion of believing two premises:
(1) All humans have an equal right to the Earth.
(2) Vaginal birth is a lottery system
Prop 13 is rent control for home-“owners.” You can learn more about its history and impact here.
“Hamlet” by William Shakespeare. Act 4, Scene 5
This is why the lobbyists who spend the most money to support the mortgage interest deduction are bankers, mortgagers, and realtors.
Definition