Compton Becomes 4th California City to Face Bankruptcy

Compton Becomes 4th California City to Face Bankruptcy

I have extensive knowledge of this derelict municipality located at south end of LA city. The tawdry south LA ghettos merge quite seamlessly with the Compton ghettos. Compton is one of the older inner city LA county burgs, as evident by it's abundant 2500-3000 sq ft teeny home lots with equally puny 900-1000 sq ft homes, most put up prior to World War 2, and many as far back as early 20th century.

Drive thru the Compton's inner core along Compton Blvd or Wilmington avenue, and you see endless rows of bland tenement apt blocks, bleak corner mini-malls, storefront churches, barbers, and a slew of liquor stores with locals and ghetto youth hanging out.  I worked in this hood in 80's and early 90s and there is no more depressing city in CA. Every shop in Compton  has iron-grated windows and wrought-ironwork burglar-proof storefront gratings.  The Compton population back in 80s-90's was almost evenly split between Hispanics and blacks but has trended since then into being a densely-packed latino immigrant zone. Hispanics,mostly recent and older immigrants, now account for 65% of Compton's population.
   The tiny lots and homes of Compton, abundant  in Willowbrook and the area north of Compton Airport, are packed with recently-arrived Hispanic immigrant illegals, as well as older established Hispanic residents. But the cities ruling power structure was long dominated by black politicians, ruling thru nepotism and favoritism, greased by grafts for families and friends of the Compton ruling elite.

COMPTON CRIME STATS:

"Although the U.S. News & World Report does not even list Compton in the "The 11 Most Dangerous Cities" for overall crime rates in the United States,^[35] it contrasts the CQ Press, using data from the FBI's annual report of crime statistics "Crime in the United States 2010," ranked Compton as the 8th most dangerous city in the country.^[36] Statistics will vary depending on how property crimes and violent crimes are weighted in each statistical survey. See Statistical variability."
(wikipedia).

 During the  rein of Mayor Omar Bradley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Bradley_(California_politician), the city was a cesspit of vice and corruption. It got so bad that the state of CA put Compton's schools in receivership, and the tiny, grossly corrupt gang-like Compton Police Force was disbanded in 2000 and the city's policing was contracted out to the LA County Sheriffs Department.
    I once went into the puny Compton City hall bldg to deliver an item and was able to go direct to the 2nd floor Compton City Attorneys Office without a single security guard checking me. The entire Compton City Hall seemed almost empty and deserted.

COMPTON lies within a dense semi-industrialized hub of south LA County and is astride several major freeways, has direct links to major LA metro rail connections, and is right next to the nationally strategic Alameda Transportation Corridor,  which makes Compton's impoverished, corrupt BK status all the more baffling.  There are large modern corporate parks along the 91 freeway, which marks Comptons south boundary, and in the Rancho Dominguez Industrial District which adjoins Compton at the southeast.

At the western margin of Compton abutting Gardena and the 110 freeway there is the older somewhat rust-belt sem-industrial district running thru the LA old imdustrial strip/corridor- old shops, factories, processing plants, warehouses. ect
Compton, being centrally located amid a south LA semi-industrail hub district and astride the Alameda corrdor to the east, doesn't lack jobs for it's 100k residents, especially in warehouse work and small workshops & factories. Problem is Compton city administration and civic culture is extremely corrupt. The level of civic corrution in Compton reduces it to a 3rd wld cesspit.
   During the nascent RE boom in early- to- mid 2000's LA Times was touting Compton as an emerging LA inner city boomtown, with newly built splashy retail malls & shops along Wilmington Ave/ Santa Fe Avenues, and in Willowbrook . However, when the economy went bust in 2008 Compton's fortunes quicky returned to what they were prior to the 2000 decade, a ragged ghettoized hi- crime zone where blacks and hispanic gangs regularly war against each other.

2016 The Movie, a personal review

      I went to watch the movie '2016 the Movie.', dealing with Obama's early  background and how it may affect his presidential decision-making process. It is not possible to get a thorough review of Obama's presidency in a 1.5 hr movie but I will attempt to provide my own admittedly inadequate impressions from viewing the movie.

I get the impression that Obama seems more aligned with the third world and the world's impoverished 3rd world nations than with the USA and the Western European nations. He appears to be some kind of anti-colonial figure straight from the 50's/ early 60's like Nehru, Nassar, Sukarno, et al, not a President who cherishes deep ingrained American historical traditions and values. I do not think he is very grounded in American patriotic values, or wears them on his sleeve. He was not raised in a  pure American apple pie mileus, being born in Hawaii, which was an American territorial outpost till shortly before he was born there. His father was a Kenyan national, his stepfather was Indonesian, and his mom seemed to be a white anti-colonialist America-hating radical.

     He basically grew up without a steady father authority, and his alcoholic, abusive Kenyan father was a poor father figure with numerous wives & multiple offspring spread over several continents.
      Getting away from Obama's personal life, i got the impression from the movie that he seems quite anti-US military and wants US military presence reduced and US role in world reduced. Not in an isolationist sense but in pegging US downward and more on an even plane with the rest of the world. He does not believe in American military might and USA being the paramount world power- that was one of the movies themes.

   Also from the movie there is no evidence that he has one iota of business training nor background, and though he has his roots in 3rd world slums he grew up in sheltered academia with radical anti-US, anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist college mates and mentors, and never mixed into the real world of ordinary working people.
Scary thought but his background seems like Lenin, wholly absorbed in theory and law books. No real world roll-up-your-sleeves type experience, and not one bit of real world grounded business experience.
 
    The most damaging revelation in the movie is his known ties and long  association with Frank Marshall Davis, a dedicated Hawaiwian-based communist.

   I think that Obama really views American from an anti-colonialist, anti-european slant. Certainly Western European 19th and early 20th century colonialism  has it's detractors and is a controversal subject today but cannot be seen entirely in black & white.  Obama may actually see it in black & white, and view USA as just another corrupt colonial power, no better than the old Soviet Russia, Red China and even WW2 Germany and Japan. Shocking but may be true. That is why he has packed his administration with pro-illegal alien open borders apologists( which is not treated in the movie), in keeping with his conviction that America needs to be a more tolerant society to minorities & recent immigrants, which he may actually view as oppressed by the US/ white European neo-colonial capitalist yoke.

 I gleaned from the movie a view of Obama as a firm believer in radical wealth re-distribution, and the movie gives some evidence that Obama means to tax the US wealthy and middle classes to the hilt in his second term, to not only re-distribute to the nations poor but also to the world's poor.

    The movie's treatment of Obama's actual presidential decisions is given short rather simplistic snapshots( acompanied with graphs) but are fairly damaging revelations.

   All in all a 1.5 hr movie cannot provide much details on a big complex subject like the Obama Presidency but the movie's painstaking research and ample documenting of  Obama's early family background, and especially his patriarcial side, may provide clues as to his drift.

  I was already confirmed in my view of POTUS as a leftist radical long before the movie so i picked up no new revelations. The movie may provide startling revelations for those less sophisticated politically or who have never delved deeply into politics/history via internet or deep reading.