Joe Muratore Elected - With Your Taxes

Helped elected with your cash.

District 4 rep Joe Muratore won his seat by only a few hundred votes, but enough to beat challenger Robert Stanford (who with Sheriff's helped shut down the Modesto Needle Exchange program in the Airport District). For those that read this blog regularly, Joe Muratore's name comes up quite often, as he was one of those responsible for the shutting down of Paperboy Park in 2010, and has helped push a 'tough on homeless stance' that will lay the ground work for gentrification in Modesto and money in the pockets of Muratore and all his developer friends.

Regular readers will also be aware that Muratore is a big player in the La Loma Association, a 'non-profit' that exists in the largely up scale neighborhood by Dry Creek. It's home to some of Modesto's biggest Mansions, and for years has waged a war on the homeless that travel through it in order to get between downtown and the Gospel Mission, and also camp along Dry Creek. The LLA has been around since 1995, according to the Voice of Modesto blog, and still claims 'start up status.'

However recently the LLA has landed in hot water because as a non-profit they do not have the ability to endorse a political candidate - yet at the same time during Muratore's bid for District 4 for they, surprise!, backed him all the way. So while the city of Modesto was funneling tax dollars from citizens into the La Loma Association (which was spending that money on putting in surveillance cameras to catch homeless veterans sleeping and pushing for heftier fines for dumpster diving), the LLA association was turning right around and putting that money right into Muratore's campaign. According to the VOM: "The question was then put to him “If the LNA isn’t a non-profit then isn’t it a for profit enterprise?  Muratore’s response was murky at best saying [LLA President Mike] Moradian had explained to him about the LNA having some tax problems."  

Class war.

That's what makes the recent actions of Muratore that much more hard to stomach. Here's a guy that takes your tax money and then turns around and uses it to shut down something that your taxes paid for - like a park. Now, Muratore is rounding up his buddies and plans to do more of the same, whether it's buying up farmland for development or closing down more parks. What we can learn from this situation though is that the upper class in this city are very well organized. They have their own organizations, their own politicians, and their own police force. They back each other up every step of the way. We have to start getting organized around our class interests as well - pushing back against these people that see us simply as dollar signs and passive sheep.