Let me be the first to congratulate Timothy Geithner, our new Treasury secretary, the latest member of the “too big to fail” club.

Geithner, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, admitted to Congress that he had failed to pay his Social Security and Medicare taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund, even though the IRS had sent him a letter informing him he was in violation, even though his employer gave him the money to pay the bill as part of his compensation.

None of this disqualified Golden Timmy. The Senate handed him the keys to the Mint – literally. Golden Timmy is now our top tax collector because the IRS is part of the Treasury Department’s bailiwick.

While a handful of senators objected, it was nearly universally agreed that Golden Timmy’s talents were so exceptional, President Obama and the nation simply has to have him. There are more than 300 million Americans but, apparently, Geithner is the only person who can lead us out of this “crisis of confidence.” I’m confident Golden Timmy will do nothing of the sort.

Because the Tim Geithner’s of the world are the reason we’re in this mess to begin with. Geithner may be a financial genius.

But he’s also a tax cheat and the latest example of the royal prerogatives of government, corporate and church officials who pass laws and impose regulations on the people while exempting themselves from the very same laws and regulations. Thefeds have deemed some companies “too big to fail,” and I guess that makes Geithner “too talented to be honest.” The rest of us are cannon fodder.

While the California governor tries to figure out how to triple the car tax – the very same tripled car tax that got Gray Davis tarred and feathered – and while you now need 16 quarters to feed the meter for one hour of parking, it’s comforting to know L.A. Mayor Tony V’s office alone has 13 take-home cars. City Attorney Rocky “my wife was driving” Delgadillo’s office has 10 cars, and the 15 L.A. City Council members and their staffs have between seven and nine cars each. That’s 1,131 take-home cars, according to City Controller Laura Chick’s audit of city’s vehicles, not counting the 900 police and fire employees who have a car perk. Crisis of confidence anyone?

From the White House to Wall Street, from Spring Street to your unpaved street, America has fattened up on easy credit and zero accountability. The tragic-comic last days of the Bush administration would be easier to swallow if the same stench isn’t following President Obama into his 100-day honeymoon: His former Senate seat was for sale in Illinois, his designated Commerce secretary, Bill Richardson, the current governor of New Mexico, had to step down because of his own pay-for-play problems, followed by Golden Timmy’s exploits. It’s not encouraging.

Closer to home, the Sacramento Passion Play has degenerated into political slapstick. There isn’t a statesman within 500 miles of the 916 area code.

Here in L.A., Measure B, the so-called solar initiative, was written by the labor unions for the labor unions at the expense of Department of Water and Power ratepayers, meaning all of us. It’s a stupendously cynical cash grab at a time when Angelenos are really hurting.

And here’s the salt to rub in the wound: The authors of this governmental malpractice and theft are nearly certain to win on March 3. Can anyone with a straight face make the case that Councilman Jack Weiss is too big to fail in his campaign as L.A.’s city attorney?

But America, California and Los Angeles are not too big to fail. History is littered with the bones of fallen empires. The cause of death is always the same – hubris, greed, isolation from and contempt for the people.

I’ve never been good at predictions or mathematics, but I’ll go out on a limb here: The road we’re on is coming to a rapid dead end. Bills must be paid. We can’t succeed by punishing the productive and rewarding the destructive.

We can’t keep voting ourselves stupid.

America had great slogans right from the start: “Live Free or Die,” “Give me liberty or Give me Death!,” “No Taxation without Representation,” “We the People,” and let’s not forget “E Pluribus Unum” and “In God We Trust.”

But it wasn’t just the Federalists who had all the good slogans. Repeat after me: “I (heart) NY,” “You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania” and “Virginia is for Lovers.” These slogans are forever etched into our collective memory, which is why it’s so galling that a city as dynamic and creative as Los Angeles can’t come up with a catchy slogan of its own.

We’ve tried “L.A.’s the Place” and gave “See My L.A.” five years to worm its way into our hearts, but neither slogan made the grade. Recently, the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau and L.A. Inc. proudly introduced a new contender – drum roll, spotlight, ta da! … “It’s so L.A.!”

That’s “so L.A.” as in, “My 78-year-old mother looks great in a bikini.” Or, “I live on a futon with five roommates and sell faux-Roman coins on eBay, but drive a leased Maserati to impress chicks.” Or, “I’m the mayor of America’s second-largest city but I only work about 11 percent of the time and no one seems to care!” A good slogan is like a good deodorant; applied liberally, it can hide some very uncomfortable truths.

It’s easy to forget how popular our town is as a tourist destination. At 14 billion visitors every year, tourism is right up there with porn as one of L.A.’s most vitalindustries. A quarter-million jobs depend on the world stopping by, only to discover that Gary Cooper had tiny feet.
Those of you born here probably can’t appreciate how seductive and fascinating L.A. is to those of us who came out by car, train, covered wagon or frequent-flier miles – especially refugees from the snow-tire states.

Those first few intoxicating glimpses of Los Angeles were enough to entice me to head west, as millions of others have come before and after. For nearly a century, the idea of Los Angeles has attracted the attractive in search of stardom, and the ugly in search of 10 percent. It’s as far as you can go and still be on the continent, and the dream of going as far as you can is one of America’s most attractive qualities.

Making fun of puffy Germans in shorts and black socks posing at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with semi-lucid “actors” moonlighting in Batman and Robin costumes is an Angeleno’s birthright. We’ll know the jig is really up for L.A. when the world no longer points in confusion at Delores Del Rio’s star on Hollywood Boulevard, wondering, “Who is Delores Del Rio?” In any language, fame is fleeting.

As a general rule, tourists see a city the way family photo albums capture actual family life. Tourists see the best of L.A., the fun stuff: the Sunset Strip at night, the Pacific Ocean at sunset, the Hollywood Bowl or the Dodgers on a sunny Sunday afternoon. There are no pictures in the family album of Uncle Carl with his teeth out or your sister pitching another fit because her fourth husband split with the baby sitter. We’re all required to do a little bit of faking it when guests come over.

For most of the planet, L.A. is dreamland, which is harmless fun and good for business. Sadly, L.A.’s government is more of a nightmare, which is tragic for the 4million who have to live with the consequences of a city dressed in its Sunday best, smiling for the camera, captioned with slogans, but crumbling from within.

With just a tiny bit of attention from “We the People” on election day the dream version of L.A. could be reality. Then when people think of the best of the best, they’ll say, “It’s so L.A.!”

Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa

Mayor V is hopping mad. While thumbing through his “in” box he discovered the September issue of the LA Weekly, which claimed the mayor only spends 11 percent of his time on actual city business. The other 89 percent was frittered away on fundraising, on campaigning for Hillary (whoops, make that Obama), and on self-aggrandizing photo ops. You may think it’s odd the mayor is just now getting around to complaining about a story published in September, but when you only work 11 percent of the time, you have to prioritize.

In a remarkably revealing interview with the Daily News’ Rick Orlov in December, Mayor V defended himself and, perhaps unintentionally, explained himself. “All my energies, as they have been all four years,” said the mayor, “are focused 24-7 on my job.” The problem is there’s a significant difference between the mayor’s job and his career. I don’t think he understands that difference.

Most successful politicians are ambitious and have their eye on the next rung up the ladder, so Mayor Villaraigosa can hardly be faulted there. Everybody knows he wants to run for governor once he gets past this pesky little re-election nonsense in March, and then, who knows? Can you say Casa Blanca? Somebody has to be the first Hispanic-American president.

One office leads to the next office in an upward arc toward fame and glory and history. That’s Tony V’s career. But while all this planning and plotting takes place, who’s minding the store on SpringStreet? Who’s doing the job of mayor of America’s second largest city?
“Look at this city. You see cranes everywhere. People want to do business here,” says the mayor, and he’s right. But when you ask why all the cranes? Why all the billboards? Why all the tax breaks for the developers while the rest of us have taxes and fees hiked through bait-and-switch elections? The picture doesn’t look quite so rosy.

The view from my window includes junked cars parked up and down the block and an illegal garage conversion turning a single-family home into an apartment building housing the occasional rapist. The view from your window may include chickens running on broken sidewalks that will take 88 years for the city to repair.

Los Angeles is not as awful as its worst detractors paint it, nor as dynamic as the mayor and his media machine pretend. It’s a complex city of 4 million people with 10 million shades of gray. While the photo ops and press releases and high-profile visits with the Clintons and Obamas may play well nationally, they don’t fool the folks at home. We live in Los Angeles, California, not La La Land.

Crime is down, boasts the mayor. And when it comes to the worst crime, murder, that is an absolute truth and a very good thing. But he can’t leave it at that. It’s not dramatic enough. So the lily gets gilded and now we’re told not only is crime down, L.A. is as safe today as it was when Eisenhower was president. Really? I don’t remember Wally and the Beaver carjacking anyone, and Opie had a fishin’ pole not a Mac-9.

The mayor puts tinsel on the dead Christmas tree and the press buys it.

“Here’s the mayor in his fireman’s costume!” “There’s the mayor filling potholes!” “Look at the mayor plant a tree!” “Isn’t that Antonio shagging fly balls with the Hollywood Stars at Dodger Stadium?” Of course, it is. Jim Hahn was the invisible mayor; Tony V was born ready for his close-up.

And that’s my complaint. The mayor of Los Angeles is playing the role of mayor of Los Angeles. He says just what needs to be said, and does dynamic, active, photogenic things that will look great in a campaign commercial or as part of his bio-pic documentary when he runs for the ultimate political prize. He has abandoned the job of mayor to the City Council or special interests while he works 24-7 on his career.

Ambition is a good thing and a little pizazz doesn’t hurt either. But the mayor’s first term has been the political equivalent of a doughnut diet – easy to swallow, but just a bunch of hollow calories surrounding an empty hole.