Los Angeles To Subsidize Royal Family of Dubai with Grand Avenue Project

Grand Idea: Don't Make L.A. Taxpayers Subsidize Royal Families
By Walter Moore, Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, www.WalterMooreForMayor.com

You already know City Hall has agreed to give away hundreds of millions of dollars of your money and public land to downtown developers for the Grand Avenue project.

You also know that the housing market is down. Way down -- as in sales hit 20-year low in six Southern California counties.

Here's the new part: because the housing market is down so much, the original investors are bailing out of Grand Avenue. Specifically, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS) is no longer willing to gamble state employees' life savings on this project.

Guess who wants to step into their shoes? The Royal Family of Dubai. They're willing to put $75 million into the project. (Then again, the exchange rate being what it is, $75 million isn't what it used to be: a real dollar now sells for just one Canadian dollar.)

Now, I'm all for foreign investment in our country. As far as I'm concerned, people from the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the Klingon Federation or wherever are welcome to pour their euros, yen or pounds into our economy.

What does not work for me, however, is paying taxes to provide subsidies to the Royal Family of Dubai, the Queen of England, or other multi-millionaires, foreign or domestic, with or without sceptres.

According to the L.A. Times, joint city-county board overseeing the development must approve the substitution before construction can begin. The Los Angeles Downtown News says the approval process should take six weeks.

The City and County should take this opportunity to pull out of the deal -- just as CALPERS has done, on the advice of its San Francisco- based advisor, investment management McFarlane Partners.

You and I should not have to pay taxes to subsidize people who make more money than we do. If the Related Companies and the Royal Family of Dubai want us to invest in their project, they should offer to sell us stock in the project, not get our tax dollars for free. They should treat us like any other prospective investors, not like serfs.

At a time when the City wants to charge us extra to repair the sidewalk in front of our homes -- something our tax dollars should already cover -- we should not also have to shell out money for people whose family jewels are actually family jewels.

AWESOME TAKE WALTER...More on Grand Avenue Project including analysis of subsidies and the whole enchilada here.

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