| (Nov. 18, 2021, 5:50 a.) -- A bankruptcy judge is angry at two principals in the company to which Long Beach's Mayor/City Council (Council 6-1 vote) leased the Queen Mary and adjacent property. He's called them "fraudsters" and can jail them for snubbing his orders (read it here) but they haven't been charged with any crimes.
As former Senator Howard Baker (a Republican) noted in Watergate hearings, the real question was what did Nixon administration higher ups know and when did they know it?" We know that Long Beach city management was told -- for months -- by its hired QM inspector of unattended worsening ship maintenance issues under the City's lessee. City management responded to the whistleblowing inspector by terminating his contract on pretextual grounds and Mayor Garcia responded by offering the public a glowing State of the City presentation for the City lessee's plans. In our view, City Hall's behavior isn't consistent with the narrative that it was trying hard but was misled by the City's lessee. To us, it's more indicative of City Hall's chronic inclination to fog major problems. That has now largely collapsed at the QM but we don't know how high that behavior went. It's bad enough that the City's lessee may have conned credulous city officials, but City officialdom then apparently tried to con constituents. Who's responsible for that? Opinions expressed by LBREPORT.com, our contributors and/or our readers are not necessarily those of our advertisers. We welcome our readers' comments/opinions 24/7 via Facebook and moderate length letters and longer-form op-ed pieces submitted to us at mail@LBReport.com. |      |
