https://www.ocregister.com/2023/05/13/the-long-decay-of-van-nuys-boulevard/ IMO, it is time for America to to change the way it does business. America was most prosperous when it was sweating from hard work. We have hundreds of ghettos and neighborhoods largely abandoned crime, homeless head cases, and sketchy squatters. They are useless wrecking yards of prosperous eons of the past that still get junk mail delivered to empty storefronts. We need to buy up entire neighborhoods and strip them down to dirt, and start over - orchards or homes. I don't care. But you don't need many police in orchards. (Except avocados!) The geniuses will need to figure out how to keep everyone happy. They sure as hell how to make everyone unhappy!
Good post. The media could help with this if they put pressure on our leaders. But the liberal media's policies actually supports such filth in our cities.
Yes, California is the best example of how liberal policies and government have failed in these last 5 years. Such a pity.
America was its most prosperous when it still enforced anti-monopoly and fair trade laws against chain stores and strictly regulated banks after WW II up into the 1960's.
I agree mostly, but we have this problem of unions being about the only way to get a raise. The latest illegal workforce coming in further insulates businesses from having to compete for workers by offering higher pay than the other guy. Trump created a labor shortage, and lots of people who had never worked were greeted with open arms. And pay was going up. So there us that.
The Watergate Babies like Biden and Clinton joined up with the right wingers and Carter to do away with all that 'prosperity' for uppity proles and small and medium sized businesses for the next 50 odd years. . They all agreed big was better and they were going to be these genius technocrats and dump all those old fogies like Wright Patman and let Wall Street run amuck. They did indeed accomplish economic 'miracles'; they achieved massive inflation during recessions, a singular historical achievement, and of course by bailing out those 'Too Big To Fail' conglomerates ever since. There was no 'labor shortage'; Japanese imports and out-sourcing to Red China took care of that. Democrats loved that, as well as all the criminal illegal aliens their ally Reagan loved. There is no 'labor shortage' now, that's just a myth.
What a load of crap. I used to live in Van Nuys, so I'm quite familiar with the area, and having the OC Register, which is RW leaning of course, have a write up about Van Nuys is a joke. Van Nuys has its problems, but it has been that way for decades. There is actual gentrification going on, it's just that we do have a homeless problem that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, but the city is working on it.
That's a subjective opinion. More people today have equal opportunity chances than 50 yrs ago. Many don't see that as a negative direction.
Sounds like the gov't needs to go after illegal companies hiring illegal workers. But they don't. No matter who is in power.
The OP is referring to a stretch of Van Nuys Blvd which has been in dire straits since the 1980's. In fact, the main businesses from Sherman Way North all the way to the intersection at Roscoe have always been auto recyclers, pawn shops, industrial supply warehouses and low budget strip malls. It looked beat down when I first moved to California. The so called "cruising" that took place back in the Fifties was defacto segregated by culture and in that part of VNB you encountered Chicano cruisers and the "405" was State Road 7 and Sepulveda Blvd carried the bulk of traffic instead. The biggest business on that part of VNB today is Kaiser Permanente Hospital, and you can bet that the doctors do not live there, but plenty of hospital janitors, nursing assistants and orderlies do. At least back then one could pay off all your bills on minimum wage. Not possible today but here you are whining about your First World Problems of not having nice scenery to cruise your imported rice burner cars instead of the dignified lead sleds that used to be assembled within earshot of Van Nuys. East of that you find the rail yards that point toward Pacoima and the 170 Fwy industrial parks. It is not a "pretty area"...if you want that, hit the NoHo arts district. Everything else was frozen in time the moment the COVID emergency began and now you're expecting already marginalized businesses to snap back in a year. Sorry, it doesn't happen that way by PFM, it takes real work and real investment, and time. Once you cross the 210 into Lopez Canyon you're in landfill territory. Are you expecting the Valley to be Palos Verdes or something?
I think there is a simple principle that many of our leaders refuse to acknowledge. For any collective thing to be good- the things you make it out of have to be good. That applies to ball teams. Houses. Soup. Armies. If you want a safe, sound society, it has to embrace the qualities that make it so, and reject those that don't. That means it needs honest people, productive people, civil and friendly people. It does not need criminals, social parasites, problem people- and the ideology that destroys all the qualities that society needs to be safe and sound. If you want what you build to work well- you have to exclude those things. There are people who are in great need through no fault of their own- but in truth, they are the exceptions. The majority of those who prey on and endanger society are in that condition as a result of their own bad decisions, and the rest of us cannot change that tendency for them. It's a bit like computers. The identical machinery will operate in vastly different ways depending on it's programming. People all have the same basic hardware in terms of brains, but the variations resulting from how they think and the parameters they chose to allow can produce huge variables. The point is that these behavioral issues are products of their choices; even those that result from childhood environments were the choices of their parents- with bad values being passed along like an inheritance.... and the child choosing to keep them. Sometimes they seem limited by some previous event- which also related to their choices. Can't get a job because you lack an HS diploma? You chose to drop out. Or you chose to do drugs. Or commit crimes. Multiple times along the way, they had the chance to make the right choices, but instead took the easy one, chose to reject responsibility, chose to justify by blaming others, etc. Like it or not, we are animals, and nature writes the rules for animals. In nature, if you don't follow the rules- you will soon be out of the game. If you don't hunt, you don't eat. While many think that's unjust, the fact is that nature has produced millions of species that have thrived for millions of years- with a few basic principles. And, done that without poisoning the planet, causing unnatural extinctions, or using up the natural resources... and without governments, religions, or any of the things we use to try to keep ourselves from destroying ourselves, with obviously limited success. Our society can only be healthy when it rewards the builders and contributors and excludes the takers and destroyers. Everyone has the opportunity to chose which to be. I say everyone is responsible for themselves- and if they will not contribute to their society, they are not entitled to benefit from it or participate in it.
Your well thought out post will certainly be saved in my "resource vault" when I need to shake an idea loose! Sadly, my thread has not created and discussion on the concept of razing square miles of blighted real estate and starting over...
I remember Van Nuys Bl in the 70s. It was safe to walk to the public library near Oxnard. Its sad to see my old stomping grounds turn to crap.
