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# Big Brother just isn’t looking out for us This past week, Q-line asked
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/big-brother-just-isnt-looking-out-for-us-this-past-week-q-line-asked/
- Published: 2004-02-14T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:48:20.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Pier, #archive-import, Homeless

“What should be done to solve our local economic crisis?” Here are your responses: ■ “The only way we can solve our economic crisis is to impeach President Bush. He is doing the worst job ever of any president regarding our economic crisis. We should never have had this recall of Gov. Davis. We put in a bodybuilder as governor and all he’s doing is nothing but screwing up this state. What I think we should do is have nothing but Democratic administrations, we always do well economically with them in office.” ■ “The school district should completely divest itself from owning the Doubletree hotel and any other nonessential school property it owns to completely balance its own budget, rather than to constantly threaten and further in-debt the community. The City Council made a terrible mistake in gifting them millions. The local businesses in the community itself would prosper more if the City Council would require that 10 percent of all labor used on the $75 million Main library project and all city contracted labor be performed by homeless people through the Ocean Park Community Center.” ■ “We need to rebuild the boat dock at the breakwater. This will allow access to the pier for commercial fishing, tour boats, scuba diving boats, pleasure boats. This will bring in more tourists and more revenue.” ■ “There is so much dead wood on all levels. An honest look at cutting redundant jobs would be a start. Locally, we need a new mayor and a new City Council, one that will act on the will of the people and not their own money squandering agendas. They are totally inept when it comes to the real issues that impact our everyday life.” ■ “First, you need to vote out everyone that runs this town, get somebody that actually cares about profit organization, loves this city and has lived here for more than 10 years. Get rid of these stupid examples like this $75 million library that the bums are gonna sleep in. The bum home over on Cloverfield and the $120 million low-income housing where the Rand Corporation is gonna be. This will solve a lot of your problems. Accountability is the No. 1 issue. Our leaders are not accountable. Next start with the school district, bring the state in. They will lop off the top percentage of the overpaid dead wood in the schools, get the PTA out of any kind of decision making. All they seem to be good for is wasting money and telling us what time Oprah is on. Make the teachers work 12 months instead of eight.” ■ “I think you just can’t have services without taxes, contrary to what he Republicans seem to think. I mean, who is going to pay for the schools and the roads and the firemen and police? These are public services we have come to expect as a civilized society. They cost money. The only way to get the money is through taxes. If you never pay taxes, you never get any new income and your services languish. There is another factor, the federal government which spent $87 billion in Iraq. Imagine what that money could have done for all the states that are broke, all the cities that are broke, the schools that are broke, and the children that are going hungry here in our country. It is truly astonishing.” ■ “I have to tell you, the only way to turn around the economy in this country is to make sure this President Bush does not get re-elected. We have gone from a major surplus to a horrific deficit in four years. Not to mention the millions this war will end up costing, let alone the millions we have already spent. Blood is too expensive to be spilled so carelessly and I suppose the oil is too precious not to die for. So while the Bush administration and that sneaky Vice President Dick Cheney are lining their pockets, who do you suppose is paying the cost? Have a look in the mirror! Locally, as much as I would like to be proud of my very own City Council, it would be dishonest of me to say I support a single solitary move they’ve made. Talk about a special interest group. I suppose all we can hope for is to be united as a community and recognize that the regime change should begin right here, in our own backyard.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 14, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/021404.pdf?ref=smdp.com)