{"id":2331,"date":"2011-03-13T13:17:42","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T17:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/vernon-california-they-only-cared-about-jobs.html"},"modified":"2011-03-13T13:17:42","modified_gmt":"2011-03-13T17:17:42","slug":"vernon-california-they-only-cared-about-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/vernon-california-they-only-cared-about-jobs.html","title":{"rendered":"Vernon, California: they only cared about jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"What can happen to a town that really doesn’t care about anything\nbut jobs.\n

\nAdam Nagourney writes in the NY Times 1 March 2011:\n\nPlan Would Erase All-Business Town<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nVERNON, Calif. \u2014 Vernon is a bleak, 5.2-square-mile sprawl of\nwarehouses, factories, toxic chemical plants and meat processors that\nlooks like the backdrop for “Eraserhead,” the David Lynch movie\nset in an industrial wasteland. It has a population of 95 — and 1,800\nbusinesses, drawn by low taxes, lax regulations and cheap municipal power.\n

\nIt also has a history of corruption and public malfeasance going back\nnearly 50 years.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe rest of the story is mostly about how it’s gotten so bad\n\n\nthe state\nis trying to abolish the city of Vernon and make it part of Los Angeles County.\n

\nJohn A. P\u00e9rez,\nthe Democratic speaker of the State Assembly, is the chief sponsor of\nlegislation to disincorporate Vernon. He described it as a shell city\ncreated to enrich municipal officials and businesses at the expense of\nthe struggling, lower-middle-class communities that surround it.\n

\n“I have been frustrated with Vernon for a long time,” Mr. P\u00e9rez said,\nwhile driving the streets of this city, which is in his district. “How\nbad a neighbor it’s been. How shady its practices have been. And the\nmore I looked at it, the more I realized this was really the center of\ntremendous corruption.”\n<\/blockquote>\nNaturally, Vernon boosters fought back, with this, for example:\n

\nA slick two-minute advertisement promoting Vernon as a bastion of\nblue-collar employment will be shown in theaters in working-class\nneighborhoods with the opening of a new movie, “Battle: Los Angeles.”\nThe commercial follows a $65,000-a-week television advertising campaign\nthat began last week.\n<\/blockquote>\nMore tax money going to benefit corporations at the expense of people.\n

\nThe story goes on and on about fraud convictions, lawsuits, advertising\ncampaigns pro and con, and so forth.\nObviously it’s not that bad here.\nBut Vernon might be considered a cautionary tale about\n\n“jobs, jobs, jobs”.<\/a>\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What can happen to a town that really doesn’t care about anything but jobs. Adam Nagourney writes in the NY Times 1 March 2011: Plan Would Erase All-Business Town VERNON, Calif. \u2014 Vernon is a bleak, 5.2-square-mile sprawl of warehouses, factories, toxic chemical plants and meat processors that looks like the backdrop for “Eraserhead,” the […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[48,14,49,2,21,178],"tags":[339,8720,1153,8704,8721,847,4956],"class_list":["post-2331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code-enforcement","category-economy","category-elections","category-government","category-planning","category-vlcia","tag-california","tag-code-enforcement","tag-corruption","tag-economy","tag-elections","tag-jobs","tag-vernon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-BB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}