Man, what a fucked up little town this Vernon, California is:
It began in January, when eight people took up residence in a boxy commercial building. Within days, three of the newcomers filed petitions to run for City Council, challenging incumbents who have been in office for up to 50 years.
Almost immediately, the challengers began to be followed by private investigators, and utility crews turned off their power. The building they shared was red-tagged by inspectors. Eventually, police and other officials drilled holes in the locks of the property and evicted the office-seekers.
The city accused the newcomers of being part of a takeover plot by Albert Robles, a convicted felon who as treasurer of nearby South Gate nearly bankrupted that city. The eight residents’ voter registrations were rescinded, and the incumbents voted to cancel the election and reelect themselves. But a judge ruled that officials had acted illegally and reinstated the election.
Since then, both sides have accused the other of misconduct. Vernon has fewer than 100 residents, but it has seen a 50% surge in its election rolls in recent weeks. Both sides accuse the other of bringing in ringers to vote in Tuesday’s election.
On election night, the city clerk abruptly decided not to count the ballots until various legal challenges were settled.
I’ve read some previous articles about Vernon (population: 91), and it sounds like something out of Dukes of Hazzard or something. The mayor, the whole city council, and all the city jobs in the town are controlled by a single family, the family that founded the town over a hundred years ago. This has led to rampant corruption as a mafia-style government grew up and began looking at outsiders as enemies. From it’s founding early last century the town has been a magnet for controversy and corruption:
Its founder, a charismatic Basque immigrant named John Baptiste Leonis, had seen the rapid development of land north and west of downtown Los Angeles. But he saw money to be made in the other direction, on land then held by Chinese and Mexican farmers.
The area had a dirt road running to Los Angeles Harbor and multiple rail lines. So, in 1905, Leonis and two local ranchers incorporated the “exclusively industrial” city, characterized as the first town west of the Mississippi devoted to manufacturing. This remains almost literally true: The city currently has fewer than 100 residents.
A powerful voice on the town’s Board of Trustees, Leonis initially promoted activities that other jurisdictions spurned: gambling, prizefighting and drinking. He leased land to a saloon owner who opened the “longest bar in the world.” On one side was a boxing stadium; on the other, a baseball stadium.
In the 1920s, thousands of workers began streaming in to work at new factories built by Bethlehem and U.S. Steel, Alcoa Aluminum and at the kill plants along Meat Packers Row.
Leonis was at the center of the financial action, operating the town bank, a large stockyard and a feed mill, and he was already drawing flak from critics who complained that he acted like the king of Vernon.
In 1925, The Times did its first front-page expose of Vernon. The paper quoted one foe as saying of Leonis: “In that town, you do not file papers at the City Hall. You simply hand them to John and he puts them in his pocket. If he is in favor of the proposition, it goes through; if he is opposed, that’s the last you hear of it.”
Two decades later, a county grand jury launched a wide-ranging corruption probe that led to Leonis, who by then had become mayor, and five other top officials being indicted on charges of voter fraud.
Prosecutors called Leonis a “boss” who ruled like a feudal lord. They also alleged that he lived not in Vernon but in a spacious home in Hancock Park. Charges against Leonis were dropped, but four other people were convicted, including the police and fire chiefs.
By the time Leonis died in 1953, he had amassed an estate reportedly worth $8 million. The inheritance went to his grandson, Leonis Malburg, who as a boy hunted doves with a BB gun at the family stockyards and took his first job as a messenger at his grandfather’s bank.
For the last 50 years, Malburg has served on the City Council of Vernon, frequently as mayor.
“Vernon is arguably the oldest continuous political machine in the country,” said Mike Davis, a professor of history at UC Irvine and author of several books about Southern California. “There is a continuity of power and rule in this private city that I’m not sure you’ll find anywhere else you go in the United States.”
This is really amazing. I’ve seen a lot of movies about “company towns” or towns utterly controlled by a corrupt mayor and they’ve stayed somewhere back in my subconscious all these years. Isn’t it nice to know that it’s based in reality? I suppose it’s comforting to know I was learning something.
At any rate, it’s not a huge deal nationally. It’s just a little podunk town with a shitty government and nothing to offer anybody. But I think it’s useful as a microcosm for corruption, and the nature of human greed. It seems to evolve naturally, almost inevitably. It grows to a certain size, but after a certain point it starts driving people away. Vernon used to be a lot larger than it is today. If you don’t buy into the oligarchy, then you’re gonna find life very tough in town. But look at what they rule over: a shitty old town with less than a hundred residents with no geographic or political significance (except corruption) to anyone. Does that bother the lords of the town? Not one bit. They’d rather be master of Vernon than a peasant in Los Angeles.
Looking at how these assholes fight over a shitty nothing-town like Vernon, you’ve gotta wonder about how desperately people crave the real power of Washington, D.C. The pigs fight over the tax-dollar-trough with an inhuman tenacity, and that should come as no surprise to any of us. It’s human nature, or so it seems.
I think it’s time to take a look at what we’ve learned about the human lust for power and remake our government in that image. We need additional controls in place to ensure that another crew like the Bush cabal never rises to power.
…Assuming we can ever manage to get rid of them. I imagine it’ll be something like running for mayor of Vernon.
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Jul.17,2006
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This is a decent article, but Krugman has to recognize that inflation is basically government theft. The Fed controls how much inflation there is by printing cash and making loans. The fact that there’s usually money to be had keeps us out of trouble, but political and economic forces can also cause inflation (oil prices, for example). Even the moderate amount (small by Fed standards) of inflation we’ve experienced lately is too much because it’s so continuous. A few deflationary periods ever now and then wouldn’t hurt. There would be less money in circulation, but the cash you did have would become more valuable.
The Fed’s insistance of constant boom times has created a boom-bust cycle when we should have a normal up and down cycle. I think it’s time we take a look at where the Fed is leading us and ask whether they have people’s interest at heart. After all, they are not elected, yet they control our encomony, which is arguably even more important (read: more powerful) than our democracy (such as it is). I think we need to take a long, hard look at the Fed and wonder if we really need it.
Some quotes about the Federal Reserve System:
“From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.” — Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. , 1913
“The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people’s money” — Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923
“When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money.” — Boston Federal Reserve Bank
“I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs….I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected.” — John Danforth (R-Mo)
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” — Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President.
“If Congress has the right [it doesn’t] to issue paper money [currency], it was given to them to be used by…[the government] and not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.” — President Andrew Jackson, Vetoed Bank Bill of 1836
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it’s issuance.” — James Madison
“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it’s profits or so dependant on it’s favors, that there will be no opposition from that class.” — Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863
“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.” — Sen. Barry Goldwater (Rep. AR)
“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.” — James A. Garfield, President of the United States
“Banks lend by creating credit. (ledger-entry credit, monetized debt) They create the means of payment out of nothing.” — Ralph M. Hawtrey, Secretary of the British Treasury
“To expose a 15 trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last 100 years will be a tall order of business.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Every Congressman, every Senator knows precisely what causes inflation…but can’t, [won’t] support the drastic reforms to stop it [repeal of the Federal Reserve Act] because it could cost him his job.” — Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe
“It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” — Henry Ford
“The regional Federal Reserve banks are not government agencies. …but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations.” — Lewis vs. United States, 680 F. 2d 1239 9th Circuit 1982
“We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.” — Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932 (Rep. Pa)
“The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International bankers.” — Congressman Louis T. McFadden (Rep. Pa)