Now that “Taxpayers for a Livable Community” (TLC) have prevailed, temporarily, in their suit to keep Malibu from holding its referendum, Malibu might do well to take a closer look at this group. Like most of the special interests that continually rise up in opposition to local control (e.g. Access for All), it appears that they’re more well-funded than attended. With an attorney from Sherman Oaks as its only visible member, TLC exposes a sadly unsurprising hypocrisy in Mal-ibu-that those who most seek to control what happens in the city either A) don’t live here, B) live here only part of the time or C) live here but own no property in the city. And in view of what their aggressively retrogressive agenda would entail for the city, one could well say that “Taxpayers for a Livable Community” is comprised of people who are neither taxpayers nor “for a livable community.”
Don Henley of the Eagles fame is known to be a key supporter of the group, if not its only supporter. Yet Henley keeps his primary residence in Texas, enjoying part-time privileges on his 60-acre Malibu property that our full-time residents will never be able to enjoy on their humble little single-family parcels should the LCP stand. Another key figure, Jay Liebig, was named as the plaintiff in the suit against the referendum even though he moved to New York some two years ago.
So for which “taxpayers” is Don Henley helping make the community “livable” by allying with the Coastal Commission and suing to take away our most basic right to vote and live in a democracy? Other than Henley himself-who gets to enjoy the privilege of keeping the luxurious home, gardens, barn and pastures that he is denying the rest of us-that would likely be Jerry Perenchio for whom the LCP would be a wonderful boon, effectively allowing him to double his commercial development in the Civic Center without having to provide the “amenities” that would be required if the city’s code were to prevail instead.
But we can’t be too hard on Don Henley. After all, it’s hard to keep up with the facts when you’re living in Texas.
Wade Major
Look to Iraq, not poor
It has been with great interest that I have read editorials and lots of the letters for and against Measure S. I was quite shocked to read the letter from Marshall Thompson who blamed dirt-poor illegal immigrants for draining tax dollars in health care costs, overcrowded freeways, hospital emergency rooms, packed housing, chocked full courts and jails. According to him, because I hire undocumented day laborers, I am actively taking cash out of the pockets of every taxpayer in Malibu. I would hire any Malibu kid to clear the ice plant, split the wood, dig the ditch for $6 an hour. I just can’t find one with this kind of experience who is willing to do the work.
What really galls me is that no one has mentioned that our government has committed $400 billion for Iraq freedom. Would this be any reason that our schools do not have enough money for our children’s education? Wouldn’t some of this money help with the problems that are conveniently blamed on the dirt poor. The fact that there were 37,000 undocu-mented men and women that were sent to Iraq to fight this war, with many dying and injured, should earn them some kind of respect.
In these times when our government’s central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich Iraq, the search for weapons of mass destruction, is found to be fraudulent, and in reality the United States and Britain’s use of hundred of thousands of depleted uranium bullets (a soldier holding his finger to the trigger would release 3,000 a minute) are the real weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has ruled that because the chemical and radioactive toxicity of these weapons continues to kill non-combatants (and ex-military) long after use, depleted uranium is a crime against humanity and a war crime.
Let us think about the world we are leaving for our children. Can we take positive steps toward freeing the world of oppression and environmental suicide. Why are the vast majority of my contemporaries so smug, complacent, uncaring, uninvolved when the degradation of creation is all but complete? We cannot damage the earth without damaging ourselves and all of life with whom we share it. Open your eyes.
Valerie Sklarevsky