Welcome to a new year, a new decade and a new me. From this day forward there will be no more Ms. Nice Soulvine because I’ve had it with being taken for a fool by people whom I am forced to pay large (and increasing larger) sums of money to work for me, to provide services to me, to address my needs and attend to my general welfare. I’m not talking about my cleaning lady, my gardener or my mechanic. I hired them. I pay them and they work out just fine. I’m talking about all those other people whom I did not hire and who, nonetheless, are siphoning off my money and giving me nothing in return.

I’m talking about politicians, elected officials and government and commercial entities of every type which are supposed to be giving me something in return for what I give them. But as the new year rang in and I looked at all the newly imposed and/or increased taxes and fees that appeared in my January bills, I became enraged and set about turning over a new leaf by declaring that the DWP and the DMV need to die! DirectTV can go to hell and take Citibank and Capital One with it!!

I was a raging maniac until my neighbor, a retired teacher, informed me that her monthly disability payment had been cut in December and her Medicare premium had increased in January! This is one of my neighbors who can’t sleep because the DWP has a spotlight shining on her house every night. We’ve complained to the DWP, who we pay for services, about the grave disservice it is providing to our neighborhood, but our employees — the DWP — have ignored us. We went to our other employee, Councilman Dennis Zine, whom I regard as the foreman of my public employee workforce, to get the lights turned off, but he has done nothing about them either.

We also told our foreman, Zine, that we need speed bumps on our street, but other employees of yours — the city Department of Transportation — told him and us that no, we don’t need speed bumps, that it’s OK for the street next to ours to have speed bumps, but not for us. And foreman Zine accepted that. If Zine were my cleaning woman, I would have fired him a long time ago. But no, I have to keep paying him, the DOT and the DWP for doing nothing for me. It’s enough to make my head explode.

Which leads me to that other persistent bugaboo of mine: District Attorney Steve Cooley, another public employee who is not delivering the goods. Following up on a previous Soulvine item, I asked Inglewood Treasurer Wanda Brown if she’d received a response to her November complaint alleging that Inglewood Councilwoman Judy Dunlap does not now and has not lived in Inglewood for many years. Brown requested a D.A.’s investigation into the flagrant violation of the residency law by Dunlap. Brown said she received a letter from Cooley that was written by David Demerjian, the head deputy of the D.A.’s Public Integrity Division. Demerjian wrote that her complaint had been given a case number (09-0781) and assigned to a deputy D.A. for a preliminary review. Demerjian also disputes Brown’s contention that Inglewood residents have filed several complaints with the D.A. regarding the residency of Dunlap.

Demerjian insists that Brown’s is the only complaint his office has received on this subject. Oh, come on! Dunlap’s foes have been lambasting her and the public about the councilwoman’s nonresidency for years. They’ve publicly stated that they’ve complained, to no avail, to the D.A.’s office about her. I recall hearing one of Inglewood’s mouthiest residents tell the City Council one night that she not only complained to the D.A. about Dunlap, but that she received a reply from his office informing her that she was wrong — that Dunlap does live in Inglewood!! So, who are you going to believe? An irate citizen or the D.A.? The irate citizen, naturally.

Which brings me to the point I’m trying to make about us not getting what we’re paying for. I’ve always held that Cooley, Demerjian, et al. have their own agenda and are highly subjective as to what crimes they want to combat and who they want to prosecute. I contend that their “preliminary review” of Dunlap’s residency is a charade which will go nowhere because the D.A. has no more interest in Dunlap’s activities than he does in the activities of our employees of the Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment — the agency with the biggest chunk of mismanaged public funds in the city and one of several agencies on which I am working with a public interest attorney to expose.

The D.A. and Councilman Bernard Parks made a big deal in July of arresting and releasing on a $1 million bond James Harris, treasurer of the Southwest Neighborhood Council, for allegedly misusing public funds. I mentioned at the time that a Valley neighborhood council treasurer had bought himself a horse with council money and had not been treated as harshly by the D.A. as Harris. But then, I recall a couple of years ago writing about Frank Pratter, who had been appointed by Parks to a Neighborhood Council Review Commission, and had allegedly misused his council’s public funds in the amount of $30,000 and never went to trial. Pratter died a year ago and not a penny of that money was ever recovered.

According to court documents, the former treasurer of North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council was convicted of using his NC’s cash card for household expenses, including his cable bill. He was ordered to make restitution — like the Valley man who bought the horse — and placed on probation. The treasurer of the Central Alameda Neighborhood Council, pled guilty and is awaiting sentencing for having gone on a $5,000 wig-buying shopping spree with her NC’s credit card, and it took city officials forever to finally suspend the treasurer of the Olympic Park Neighborhood Council for allegedly using $15,000 of her council’s money to rent cars and travel around the region.

Reports indicate that officials of the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council are “old grove” harvesters who have allegedly been plucking money off public trees for a long time, while the spending activities of the Mid City West Community Council and eight other neighborhood councils have recently come under scrutiny.

Where is the district attorney in all of this? Where is the city attorney? Where is the city controller? Where are the cops? What are we paying these people for? It’s 2010 and I refuse to just pay and pay and pay and shrug my shoulders when I get nothing in return. I’m not supposed to be paying the government to let people steal my money, to let the D.A. throw the book at one or two hapless criminals while ignoring the equally and often more egregious criminal acts of hundreds of other people, and to let municipal departments’ arbitrarily provide services to everybody except me. Somebody is supposed to be responsible for my money and for the delivery of the goods and services for which I am paying. I’m going to sue a bunch of people this year.