They say a picture's worth a thousand words. This one is worth a million.
One of the worst areas in Los Angeles is the largely Hispanic ghetto just south of Downtown Los Angeles. It's a heavily gang infested area, a memorial to decades of failed social policy.
It's also the area serviced by the Santee Education Complex.
Kids who are unfortunate enough to be students there have problems just getting to school safely.
Students making the two-block walk from the local MTA bus stop to the campus have been targets of gang activity, and were being harassed or robbed — including one who was held up at gunpoint.
Even the new Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. David L. Brewer calls it "one of the worst blocks" in the area.
Rather than, heaven forbid, go after the gangs, Brewer and LA's Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa came up with a new tactic...moving the bus stop up two blocks so that it's directly behind the school. Even getting that much done took months, and involved four separate bureaucracies.
To celebrate this brilliant achievement, the Mayor, Brewer and a whole slew of educrats, officials and press took a bus to the new stop for a photo-op..one that turned out to be more than they bargained for.
While the bus was stopped, the kid in the picture above brazenly ran up and tagged it, scrawling graffiti on a side window...and the LA Times' Anne Cusack took this shot from right inside the bus.
The Mayor travels with a detachment of LAPD security, but apparently they felt it was better not to create an incident by arresting him then and there, so the perp walked away scot free. He'll be immense on the streets tonight,I'm sure.
"It's a cry out for help," said Vince Carbino, Santee's principal. He said he will meet with the youth, together with one of the school's social workers, to "help the student and get him on the right track."
There once was a time when our public schools taught basic citizenship and socialization along with the 3R's, believe it or not.Those days pretty much ended with political correctness, the boomer's entry into education and the rise in political power of the teacher's unions.
Another factor,of course is the widespread tolerance for illegal immigration and the failure to assimilate it. After all, when citizenship itself has no value, why bother teaching it?
Add politicians like Villaraigosa who are willing to cater to the teacher's unions and unwilling to risk any flak by turning the LAPD loose on the gangs and you pretty much end up with the scenario you see here.
Even worse is the enabling of what amounts to a government funded monopoly on education that allows the status quo to keep on truckin'.
If working parents had the ability to send their kids to private schools the way many politicians do, schools like Santee would have to compete by teaching basic values
and scholarship and provide a quality educational environment or go empty and lose out on all those lovely tax dollars.
As it is, the only incentive the LAUSD and their complaisant politicians have now is to perpetuate the system, with the ultimate benefit of consumers - the kids and their parents - coming second.
Like I said, this picture says a lot.
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