Greenery

Matt Welch | May 9, 2005

Speaking of People's Republics, David Mamet had a funny two-act op-ed in the Sunday L.A. Times about Santa Monica, where lawmakers are trying to make cash-cows out of hedgerows.

Comments

|5.9.05 @ 12:33PM|#

Somebody take Mamet to Detroit!

Anon

|5.9.05 @ 12:36PM|#

Didn't we learn anything from WWII? The Krauts nearly slaughtered us in the bobcage country!

|5.9.05 @ 12:40PM|#

Do not harm our shrubbery or we will say NEE!

|5.9.05 @ 12:57PM|#

Act III: screw that. Who cares about the council members "saving face"? Just run the idiots out of office. Problem solved.

|5.9.05 @ 1:04PM|#

Notice that while the premise of the whole hedge-fund is questioned, the concept of needing to raise more funds is never questioned?

|5.9.05 @ 1:08PM|#

If people are allowed to have tall hedges, the terrorists will have won.

|5.9.05 @ 1:49PM|#

Is there a better case for taxation as theft?

|5.9.05 @ 1:59PM|#

Dead Elvis --

agreed. It stood out that Mamet essentially accepts the need to raise the revenue, and only begins his disagreement with the manner of it.

*sigh* when will the world listen? ;)

|5.9.05 @ 2:24PM|#

Don't be alarmed now. It's just a spring clean for the May queen.

|5.9.05 @ 2:31PM|#

No stairway.

|5.9.05 @ 2:40PM|#

"Tears and screams and pleas at the meeting. Now, to this point the Council was acting in a legitimate, understandable, if regrettably blunt, fashion. Its duty was to administer the city, the city was going broke, it endeavored to raise revenue."

Legitimate? Understandable? What in the hell is legitimate or understandable about scraping the bottom of ye olde legislative barrels to scrounge up some dusty old ordinance with which to rob the public, all so they can pay for their red-tape mazes. That is rediculously NON-understandable. Legitimate, well, that's a stretch. Going purely by the letter of the law, sure. But is that the standard by which to measure these creeps?

I love how Mamet expresses such disdain for these idiots concocting their little story to justify their treachery, but completely accepts the premise of the treachery itself. Oh, sorry, they were a little too "blunt". Yes, they should have been more nuanced in their treachery. That's their problem!

|5.9.05 @ 2:52PM|#

Akira,

"Bocage" country.

Not sure what a "bobcage" is.

|5.9.05 @ 3:06PM|#

Statists are always trying to expand their hedgemony.

|5.9.05 @ 3:31PM|#

Nicely done, Stevo!

|5.9.05 @ 4:15PM|#

Thanks! Although maybe I should have spelled it "hedgemoney." ("where lawmakers are trying to make cash-cows out of hedgerows.")

|5.9.05 @ 5:15PM|#

Imagine their reaction when this thing comes to life and terrorizes a city council meeting.

I for one welcome our new hedge-man overlords.

|5.9.05 @ 5:47PM|#

It's the suburbs' answer to Swamp Thing!

|5.9.05 @ 8:43PM|#

"Statists are always trying to expand their hedgemony."

You know sometimes words have two meanings.

|5.9.05 @ 9:46PM|#

Then the piper will lead us to reason.

|5.10.05 @ 3:43AM|#

Last year I returned to Santa Monica after a 6 year hiatus living in Oakland/working in Berkeley. I can honestly say that I can tell no difference between the governments in each city. In Oakland/Berkeley the constant threat was the closure of libraries (homeless shelters) but there was always enough money to hire politically connected consultants to the tune of several million dollars a year to reach foregone conclusions on policy matters that had already been decided.

In Santa Monica, the most current threat I've read about is smoking in outdoor patios of restaurants (probably needs a city task force to address the issue). From the urgent projects the city has been spending money on (replacing functional streetlights with stylized sculptured streetlights, hiring a "regional homeless coordinator" for $200,000 a year salary to publicize the homeless crisis etc...) I would say that Santa Monica can survive without the hedge money.

Disclosure: I have a 9 foot hedge that keeps out traffic noise, absorbs bum piss and affords a pleasant amount of privacy. I guess if I keep this hedge, the terrorists have already won.

|5.10.05 @ 7:07AM|#

Is Santa Monica still the home of the homeless?

And who the hell was Santa Monica, anyway?

|5.10.05 @ 11:40AM|#

Saint Monica, I'm guessing.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10482a.htm

|5.10.05 @ 11:44AM|#

And a new day will dawn, for those who stand long...

... brought to you by ENZYTE!

|5.10.05 @ 1:03PM|#

Any lawyers out there, doesn't the long-time non-use of a statute by a government somehow call it into question on constitutional or other grounds? I'm thinking of situations when defendants argue selective prosecution, and courts pitch the case because arbitrary enforcement violates equity, or something. (No, IANAL)

What is amazing is that I read an entire piece by David Mamet that didn't have one Anglo-Saxon reference to copulation!

Kevin