In the local town of Calabasas, California, the yahoos on the city council are considering banning smoking in one's own condominium or townhouse. Their goal is to have a "smoke free city" according to the locals.

In much larger cities, city councils such as the one found in Los Angeles, are no longer serving the citizens -- but are pandering to the special interests. They are exceedingly wasteful of our hard-earned money. Consider Los Angeles where millions of dollars are spent settling spurious lawsuits instead of  protecting the citizens from such egregious claims.

In this instance a six foot-five inch firefighter, known by his nickname "big dog"  was fed a few tablespoons of dog food by a much smaller man whom he continually taunted. Oh did I mention, the firefighter was black and filed what many believe was a meritless racial discrimination suit. The City attorney proposed a settlement of $2.7 million after rejecting a much larger claim. Under pressure from a local talk show, the Mayor claimed he would refuse to honor any settlement over $1 million and sent the matter back to the City Attorney. The City Attorney decided that they did not want to handle the matter and assigned it to be settled by a private law firm acting as a consultant to the City Attorney's office. The settlement was for approximately $1.4 million. And the law firm fee was approximately $1.4 million. So the city got hosed because the city attorney and others were afraid that the citizens in the downtown Los Angeles area could not be trusted on a jury and were likely to award millions more of the city's money. Go figure.

There are no real watchdogs left. The media has been emasculated lest they be denied access to a newsmaker or be snubbed by the special interests. One egregious example is that the anchor reporter who announced that the Los Angeles Mayor had separated from his wife -- was, in fact, the philandering Mayor's lover.

What can YOU do?

First, say a little prayer for Bo Ward and all of the other decent, law-abiding citizens who are screwed over by the petty bureaucrats on city councils everywhere in this nation.

Second, participate in the process by attending city council meetings and monitoring the actions of your elected officials. Let them know that the citizens are watching their behavior.

Third, vote the turkeys out of office. It doesn't matter which party they belong to, they are still turkeys.

And fourth, let your local media know when they are doing an inadequate job. Write letters to the editor. Provide a spokesperson for an on-air rebuttal to an editorial. Cancel your subscription or stop watching that channel.

I know it is almost impossible to monitor a city as large as Los Angeles, but you can join and participate in one of the many fine consumer watchdog groups.

It is your city and your fellow citizens at risk from these petty tyrants. In some cases they serve the public good. In others, they are bought and paid for by the special interests. But when their actions go over the line and cause an upstanding citizen to lose everything -- to take their life -- something is radically wrong and needs to be addressed by the citizens who elected these so-called city officials. 

-- steve

A reminder from OneCitizenSpeaking.com: a large improvement can result from a small change…

The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius

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