The City of Los Angeles: Just Whistling Past The Graveyard?

For the City of Los Angeles, the parallels to the financial woes of Greece, are just too analogous to be ignored. Like Greece, the debt is almost insurmountable. And, like Greece that debt is primarily being driven by lavish union retirement pensions and benefits. And, like Greece, every attempt to cut jobs or reduce retirement spending is blocked in the courts by lawsuits brought by, yes, the unions.

The city is literally at the brink of bankruptcy with a budget deficit of over a half-billion dollars (Click to See Full Story: Is The L.A. City Council In Denial Over Budget Mess?). Yet, the City Council is happily debating anything but the budget woes that could result in the potential collapse of every service that the citizenry of Los Angeles expects from their government.

A case in point was yesterday's City Council vote to boycott $56 million in spending activity with the state of Arizona as punishment for Arizona's supposed "racist" crackdown on illegal immigration. Besides the fact that the City Council hasn't taken the time to either read or understand the Arizona law, it just shows why Los Angeles, and so many other cities in California, are in such trouble. Further, the action by the City Council is pure stupidity because it is totally politically motivated and it actually may hurt those that their actions pretend to protect.

The illegal immigration of today is a vicious business. It truly borders on slavery. The coyotes who guide the immigrants through the deserts to cross our borders are demanding higher and higher pay for their services; with that pay often being in flesh or sexual favors when the cash isn't forthcoming. All too often, the lives of family members, either in Mexico or in the United States, are in jeopardy for failing to pay the coyotes. For this reason and because of, too, the drug trade from Mexico, Phoenix is rampant with kidnapping activity; second only in the world to Mexico City. Yet, resolutions by City Councils, like those in Los Angeles, are misplaced in that their actions will continue this every increasing abuse of human rights and will do absolutely nothing to solve the problem of illegal immigration.

Then, too, the attempts to hurt Arizona by boycotting business activity is probably going to hurt the illegals more than anyone else. When there is a decline in business activity, its always those lowest on the totem pole of employment who suffer the most.

As readers of this blog know, I believe that illegal immigration has done more to suppress good pay in America than help it. As long as there are those who are willing to work at lower-than-low wages and employers willing to hire, there won't be wage pressure from the bottom; as would otherwise be the case in an environment where there isn't 10% of the workforce who is in the country illegally.