Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, May 08, 2007 6:45:51 PM
Let’s check in on the Opinion section of the
Los Angeles Times, shall we?
First, letters from people attempting to support “hate crime” legislation.
Michael Witmer from Pomona chimed in, trying to link 9/11 to hate crimes, but not in the way you might think.
After the attacks of 9/11, I thought that the propriety of hate crime legislation would have become obvious.
Like any hate crime, the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon did not target only the persons directly affected but also the much larger group they represented in the minds of the attackers.
Ooookay.
Within our society, hate crimes can be thought of as acts of war on a particular segment of the population, identifiable by the history of hostile treatment they received from the empowered majority.
When the empowered majority recognizes a population as having been victimized in such a manner, it is appropriate to grant it protection.
We already have laws that protect the groups. Property owners are protected against property crimes. Members of the human species are protected against crimes against their persons.
President Bush's veto threat speaks volumes about how serious he is when he renounces violence against gays and lesbians.
Ooooh, I see. You think “gays and lesbians” are more worthy of protection than everyone else. I wonder if you’d support hate crime prosecution against gays and lesbians who commit domestic violence against other gays and lesbians?
Dean Buckley of Los Angeles offered his thoughts.
I was struck by the irony of reading the front-page story about the White House vowing a veto on the hate crime bill, saying that it's "unnecessary," and then the next day finding in the California section that swastikas were pasted on the office doors of L.A. Councilman Jack Weiss ("Man arrested in swastika posting on official's door," May 5).
Uh, isn’t that already illegal?
Finally, Wendy Averill of Culver City wrote in.
Despite 212 Democrats and 25 Republicans voting in favor of the hate crime bill, it seems that 166 Republicans and 14 Democrats in the House feel there should be only selected groups protected by federal legislation: national origin, religion, race and ethnicity.
Sexual orientation, gender, disability or gender identity should not be protected.
They already ARE protected - by existing laws against property and persons. Hate crime laws are superfluous, punish thoughts, and provide
unequal protection.
Moving on to a commentary, Scott Darrell, executive director of a “housing advocacy group,”
writes about the fight between Disney and other owners of tourism-related businesses in Anaheim against a zone change that would favor a housing developer over tourism.
Disney has sued the city - for the first time - to block a mixed-income housing development, and it is leading efforts to get two measures on the ballot that would determine the future development of sites near its Disneyland resort.
“Mixed income” housing? Hardly. Mobile homes are there currently. The development would only have a small percentage of its units designated as “affordable”.
While most of the coverage and commentary have focused on Disney's heavy-handed response,
Democracy is heavy-handed?
the underlying story is one of greater significance to many California communities: the lack of affordable housing.
All housing is affordable to someone. If it wasn’t it could never have been built in the first place.
More than 200 workers and residents attended the April 24 Anaheim City Council meeting during which the project was approved. Many people shared their stories of raising children in overcrowded and substandard apartments, mobile homes and motel rooms. Their message was clear: If we're good enough to work here, then we should be able to live here in high-quality, affordable homes.
Uh, these people
choose to work in the jobs that they do. It is up to them to negotiate their wages. Many of them have unions who are paid to do that. Nobody is entitled to anything at someone else’s expense, unless it is by consent. We’re supposed to have a system of voluntary exchanges of goods, services, money, and property.
At the meeting, Councilwoman Lorri Galloway captured the reality of Anaheim's resort-area neighborhoods with some startling statistics: 6,000 low-wage jobs (with wages averaging less than $15 an hour) were added in the resort district since 2000, but no new homes affordable to those workers were developed. The rental vacancy rate is less than 4%, and a worker must earn about $29 an hour to afford the typical two-bedroom apartment.
Why don’t YOU buy some land and build some housing for these people using your own money? 95% of the land in Anaheim is NOT in the Resort District.
Many workers must double and triple up in overcrowded homes, and about 850 homes near the resort are categorized as "extremely substandard" and lack basic plumbing and kitchen facilities.
I see. Did the property owners or previous property owners grab these people at gunpoint and force them to move in to these places? You know, Anaheim would be a lot less crowded if all of the illegal aliens went back home.
Proposition 13 limitations on commercial and residential property tax increases have made local governments dependent on sales and hotel "bed" taxes to pay for community services.
And so comes the requisite attack on Proposition 13, a voter-approved law that kept the retired, widowed and disabled from being kicked out of their homes due to rising property taxes. You never see these people saying “Hmm, maybe income and property taxes are a bad idea, and we should reduce the size of government and pay for the remaining government services with user fees and value-added taxes.”
Others in the community have argued that Disney and the city have no role in "subsidizing" housing for low-wage workers. But this "let the market prevail" argument ignores more than 70 years of federal, state and local involvement in the housing market. Generations of families have achieved homeownership through federally subsidized and guaranteed loans.
Yes, and that’s a problem. Did you ever stop to think that such government involvement raises housing prices?
If the resort area is to be reserved for sales-tax generating uses, then housing development sites in every other neighborhood in the city should be identified. The city should provide incentives to developers to build mixed-income rental and homeownership communities on underutilized commercial and residential sites. An impact fee to help pay for housing construction should be attached to all large-scale commercial development that generates low-wage jobs. The city should require that a portion of all new housing be affordable to low-wage workers.
Yes, the answer is always MORE government involvement, MORE regulations, MORE restrictions on property owners, isn’t it? How about something more simple? Let people find and pay for housing without any government involvement. Groups like yours can assist, family can assist, friends can assist, businesses can assist, churches can assist – but all on a VOLUNTARY basis. Frankly, I don’t want to live next to someone who I’m subsidizing
against my will. Let employers and employees negotiate compensation between themselves. If housing isn’t part of the employment agreement, the employer doesn’t owe the employee any help with housing. Why not let property owners do what they want? That way, the housing developer can build permanent housing across the street from Disney property, and people can buy it,
but then Disney can build another theme park on that property across the street
and those people will not be able to block it. How about that?