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Invisible in Blue: When Protection Forgets to Serve Written by Hank Miller 05/04/2025 I sit writing this on day five of my self-imposed confinement at home, an unintended consequence of my reporting on the Mission Row bombing. The threat that now shadows me extends also to Mayor Hank Preston, a public death threat, motive, unknown, impact to me at least, huge. After witnessing the sacrifice of Officer Vincent Glass last week, it's never been clearer: those in law enforcement have a true desire to protect this city. Yet on Tuesday afternoon, as I stood alone under the harsh, sterile glow of the police department's lobby, each passing second amplified a disquieting sense of my own invisibility. It struck me then that perhaps, in the rush to protect, serving is no longer a focus. I had arrived at the headquarters to report the threat, naively believing that the involvement of the mayor would provoke immediate action. Instead, I encountered bureaucratic lethargy. Four uniformed officers moved briskly past me, eyes distant, their attention expertly diverted. Not a single glance my way, no acknowledgment of the solitary, increasingly frustrated citizen who sat waiting, in their own lobby. At that moment, a bitter truth crystallized, one I'd previously dismissed as overly cynical: The police department may still protect, but serving the public, I am not so sure anymore. This wasn’t a sudden epiphany born of impatience or irritation or simply the result of this one time event. As a journalist who's covered politics and power for decades, I've documented how institutions meant for the public good become insular, resistant to scrutiny, and detached from those they’re meant to serve. That being said, the job of police officers is undeniably perilous, and their courage merits our deepest respect. But courage under fire doesn't absolve public servants from the fundamental responsibilities of care, attention, and responsiveness to the communities they pledged to serve. The path back to accountability starts with transparency and oversight. Solutions lie in bolstering genuine community outreach, appointing police commissioners whose roles hold tangible significance, balanced against maintaining the independent operational command of the Chief of Police, and ensuring that every budgeted cent aligns explicitly with both verbs of their promise: "Protect and Serve." If officers can walk past a citizen inside their own precinct without a second glance, what occurs in our neighbourhoods and streets, far from scrutiny? The department must rediscover its foundational purpose: service rooted in empathy, responsiveness, and genuine compassion. Restoring public trust means recognizing that protection without service is incomplete, a hollow promise. We owe it to ourselves and to those dedicated officers who still honor their oath. Protecting without serving isn't just insufficient, it's unacceptable and it is time it changed. The information contained within "OPINION" publications represent the views and opinions of the original creators, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Los Santos Insider. The publication by Los Santos Insider does not constitute an endorsement or affiliation with this content. This content has been made available for informational purposes only and Los Santos Insider does not make any representation or claim to the accuracy or completeness of "OPINION" content. © 2025 Insider Media Group. All Rights Reserved. -
Los Santos City Council: Asleep at the Wheel Written by Hank Miller 21/03/2025 Let’s not sugar coat it: The Los Santos City Council isn’t just asleep at the wheel—they’ve locked the doors, tossed the keys into the river, and curled up in the backseat for a nap. And I’m not talking about a light doze. No, this is a full-blown hibernation. Since January, City Hall has been eerily silent, the legislative process stalled, and the people of Los Santos left to wonder if their elected officials have mistaken public service for a spectator sport. Seven resolutions sit untouched, collecting dust while the city’s economy drifts dangerously toward uncertainty. I’ve covered Los Santos politics for a long time. I’ve seen the infighting, the grandstanding, the bureaucratic red tape so thick you could package and sell it. But this? This is different. This isn’t just government inefficiency; it’s negligence, plain and simple. It’s civic malpractice. Governance by absence. Neglect wrapped in apathy and served with a side of arrogance. Nothing has moved. No debate. No votes. Just…nothing. And that nothing has consequences. Let’s talk about the bills stuck in purgatory, the ones that could actually make a difference. C.B 006 - Los Santos County Economic Stimulus Program—a plan to inject much-needed support into local businesses—remains an idea rather than a reality. C.B 014 - Digital Inclusion & Equity Act of 2024, a bill designed to ensure low-income households have access to technology, sits ignored while the city’s digital divide grows wider. C.B 012 - Personal Information Protection Act of 2024, a bill meant to safeguard residents from data exploitation, gathers dust. And then there’s C.B 011 - Private Investigator Licensing Act of 2024, C.B 010 - The Medical Event Safety and Assurance Act, C.B 008 - Los Santos Community Re-entry and Education Program, and C.B 005 - Los Santos County Better Business Initiative—each a policy with the potential to improve lives, each stalled in an endless bureaucratic limbo. And while the council fumbles around in the dark, it’s the people of Los Santos who pay the price. I don’t need to look at a spreadsheet to know what’s happening. I see it every day. I see it in the struggling business owners who wonder how much longer they can keep the lights on, lack of staff and lack of customers to name the two glaring issues. Low income households aplenty, young people failing to get a decent education resorting to gangs, organised crime and criminality everywhere, resulting in a police force that is overstretched and underappreciated. And what’s the response from City Hall? A symphony of silence. Not a single council member has stepped forward to explain why these bills have been left to rot. No official statements, no press briefings—just a collective shrug. And yet, in a few months, these same officials will come knocking for your vote, promising bold vision, swift action, and a government that works for you. How convenient. Let’s be clear: This isn’t politics. This is abandonment. If they don’t want to do their jobs, they should make way for someone who will. If there was ever a moment for the council to wake up, it’s now. Not when election season is in full swing, not when public outrage reaches a boiling point, not when the media has exhausted every synonym for “inaction.” Now. Instead of standing around blinking at each other, why aren’t our elected representatives fixing the very system that keeps them from doing their jobs? Because if the council won’t act, the voters will. And when that reckoning comes, it won’t be a polite wake-up call. It’ll be an earthquake. The information contained within "OPINION" publications represent the views and opinions of the original creators, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Los Santos Insider. The publication by Los Santos Insider does not constitute an endorsement or affiliation with this content. This content has been made available for informational purposes only and Los Santos Insider does not make any representation or claim to the accuracy or completeness of "OPINION" content. © 2025 Insider Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
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Paging the Governor: Your Election’s Overdue Written by Hank Miller 23/03/2025 Let me be clear I’m not in the habit of applauding government overreach. I believe in rules, I believe in process. I believe that power, when left unchecked, tends to rot from the inside. But I also believe in common sense, and there wasn’t a single ounce of that in the City Council chambers this week mostly because there wasn’t anyone in them. So, when Mayor Hank Preston stepped in and signed the budget without a quorum, I didn’t flinch. I exhaled. He didn’t throw a tantrum. He didn’t give a speech. He didn’t grand stand. He found the clause in the charter, the emergency line in the rulebook, and he pulled it like a fire alarm. Because it was a fire. The kind that burns through city services, police salaries, paramedic support, and fire department funding. And while I can already hear the howling from the procedural purists, spare me. This wasn’t a power grab. This was a hand on the wheel when the rest of the crew abandoned the bridge. But let’s not get too comfortable patting backs. Because when I opened the appropriations report, what stared back at me wasn’t a city on the brink, it was a city already knee-deep in broken priorities. Davis High School received over $31 million in payroll. That’s not me rounding up, that’s the math: thirty million in salaries, one and a half in overtime, two hundred grand for extra hires. And for what? Show me the positive educational outcomes. Because the only thing I see is kids fighting outside the school and a rise in gang recruitment that’s starting to feel systemic. Do you want a future for Los Santos? It starts in the classroom. And if this is what we’re paying for, we need to seriously rethink the invoice. Meanwhile, down in the Southern and Central Districts, the places that are usually last to get paved and first to get policed, the budget handed them nothing. Zilch. Payroll: zero. Investment: zero. Hope: dwindling. These are neighbourhoods with potential, but potential doesn’t pay for streetlights, encourage small business, or put support services where they need to be. This budget was a copy and paste job, no development, no progress, stagnation. You want to be tough on crime? Try providing actual solutions to parts of the city where crime breeds, not with speeches, but with actual dollars and practical ideas. And here’s where I take off my journalist hat, just for a moment. Because if I’ve learned anything in the years I’ve spent sitting through city council meetings and wading through campaign promises both in Los Santos and Chicago, it’s this: being a spectator to civic failure starts to feel like complicity. I care about this city. I care about safety, I care about jobs, and I care about education that does more than checkboxes. I want a city that works for everyone. Maybe it’s time to stop shouting from the sidelines and start thinking about how I help to change the playbook. Here’s the thing, democracy doesn’t just vanish because it’s inconvenient. You don’t get to freeze the process and still call it governance. Preston held the line, but a city can’t be run indefinitely by one man with a pen and a charter clause. We need a City Council, not someday, not eventually, but now. Debate, dissent, compromise, remember those? That’s how the job gets done. So if the Governor’s waiting for the perfect moment to call the election, let me help: it was yesterday. Do the right thing. Call the vote. Let the people speak. The information contained within "OPINION" publications represent the views and opinions of the original creators, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Los Santos Insider. The publication by Los Santos Insider does not constitute an endorsement or affiliation with this content. This content has been made available for informational purposes only and Los Santos Insider does not make any representation or claim to the accuracy or completeness of "OPINION" content. © 2025 Insider Media Group. All Rights Reserved.
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The hottest tea, the spiciest gossip, the fiercest commentary and no fucking censorship. We are the Los Santos VIXEN. Hope you've been doing your kegels, babe. Letter from the editor: Sis, stop reading the story and BE the story. Submit your gossip to our handy and under-fucking-utilized gossip submission form. Chop chop. Also Like, Subscribe, Share, is this your first time online? Click HERE ! LSVIXEN XOXO ❤️ A Vixen's Guide: To Communicating Clearly Without Fucking Up (Totally real people with real communication skills /s) Hiya cuties! So I've been flourishing in a golden age for the Vixen and I thought long and hard about what brought me to where I am today. Clear. Direct. Empathetic. Communication. It's more than just saying shit when you think about it. Human nature is a delicate balance of give and take and there are intricacies to our language, our posture, and the timing we use when approaching moments of true and honest communication. I'm not going to pretend this is a golden guide to all your communication issues, that'd be like... a whole ass book. But, I do think if you poke around the few points I mention below, you might be able to at least be a little more mindful of how you approach talking to friends, bosses, dates, and even strangers! Let's dig in! Who the HELL do you think you're talking to? 😲 Woah there, subtitle, you're coming in a little hot there. But you make a good point. Who are you trying to communicate with? Knowing who you're talking to and why is the first step, babes. A cardinal rule of thumb for me is that not every conversational topic is for every person. I had a friend named Tina back on the East Coast and given her spate of four divorces she wasn't great at being supportive of me when I tried to date these twin Albino underwear models. From the start, the topic was colored by her own life experiences and perception of love as necessarily leading to heart-ache and grief. Know your audience. Tina was one of the best people to talk to about work stuff and even trouble with my family. She was a phenomenal friend and just because I wasn't interested in talking about boys with her, doesn't mean I didn't cherish our friendship. Scan your friend groups for a second and notice if certain topics bring up the most trouble in those relationships and decide whether that topic ever really has to come up with them or not. What are their strengths and how meaningful is their support in those areas of your life? Finally, there is no one-stop shop. As much as we want to believe there is one person in the entire world we can confide our everything into, human beings deal with their own stuff and if you put all your eggs in one bastard- well. It can burn them out, babe! This is just to say having a diverse and varied group of lovely humans that you truly adore can lead to a mutual support network that is strong and lasting. And I want to emphasize here, there is zero shame in hiring a shrink and putting some of the pressure onto them, it's literally their job and it gives you the vocabulary and perspective to know who to talk to about what for the best quality communication! Defense Mechanism LIMBO!!! 💃 Shake. Shake. Shake. Senora. Shake your body right under the defense mechanisms for the best results. Difficult topics happen, we're not always going to be able to avoid them and avoiding them usually only makes them worse if you want to keep that lovey-dovey human in your sphere. In this household, we appreciate productive confrontation. It's non-aggressive, empathetic, assertive. and most of all solutions oriented. Yes, it can be all of those things at once. When you're talking with people, you've got to understand that different things can put up emotional and mental walls that make people stop listening and start rabidly defending themselves. This can be as subtle as a raised voice creating a sense of anxiety in the other person, an environment that isn't suitable for conversation due to noise or chaos (Lol. I know. Los Santos. But I mean an immediate environment.), and most importantly the words we choose and the timing we use in saying them. Everyone you know has defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms. It's how we survive in Trauma City without completely breaking down. If you're still reading this, I want you to think about the last few times you spoke with your closest friends. Did you vibe any sort of topics that get them anxious or tense? Did they clam up about particular points of discussion when approached about them? Those are prime defense mechanism territory and the best way to slip under them to address the underlying topics they 'protect' is to approach calmly, in a safe place, checking in with them before talking about it to see if there in a good mental place to do so, and to probably have a hot tea or a stiff drink with them. B-but Vixen, how can I go from being a Stumbling-Lad... to being a Smooth-Talking Chad?! 💋 Practice, babe! What you want to do when talking to people you care about is to establish common ground. If I were to bring up a conflict with my boyfriend, there's a solid way I tend to approach it. First off, before this imaginary conflict, I establish at the beginning of any true relationship, friendship, or even work relationship, that I love honesty and communication. I make sure they know they can come to me with any issues that might crop up from the often messy human dynamics that go into being friends with the LS Vixen. By setting that up ahead of time, it makes them more likely to welcome me when I bring up issues, especially given the fact that I re-establish common ground before every tough discussion. Trouble with a lover? If you tell them that you love them deeply, that you know they love you deeply, and that you're both in this for the same goals, it can eliminate the "US VERSUS THEM" mentality that happens when people feel threatened or attacked. Boss calls you in for a review? Reiterate your commitment, own up to mistakes, be humble but own your victories, and you can both leave the meeting feeling like you're on the same team and on the same page. If you find the common ground isn't so common any more and that the person just sees you as a hostile outsider, well there unfortunately isn't much you can do through communication. One of the big lessons is that we can only change the way we express our feelings, we cannot change the feelings and emotions of others ourselves. We can offer opportunities, support, and space, but the minds, opinions, feelings, and dreams of others are in their wheelhouse. Knowing your lane and knowing what is beyond your control can allow you to forgive yourself for things you've inadvertently blamed on yourself and grief that clings even years later. Woah. You went deep there, Vix. 🥺 Fuck off. I can do what I want, me-from-two-seconds-ago. Seriously though, the journey towards clear communication with the people you love can amp up your sex life, your work life, and generally speaking make you someone people want to talk to. I can say from personal experience that I love those in my life who make me feel like I can truly talk to them and be seen and heard. If more people in Los Santos committed themselves to clear communication, it's not silly to imagine we might have a little less division, hatred, anger, and violence. It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd give us a chance to see each other as allies rather than enemies. God, that was fuckin' sappy. I'm gonna go get laid. VIX OUT! XOXO, DISCLAIMER >Comments are enabled! -
Bernie Sanders, US Senator from Vermont, Presidential Candidate, and Vocal Proponent of "Medicare for All" [New York Times] Opinion: Is "Medicare for All" A Good Idea? Ryan D Price Vermont is one of the wealthiest (per capita) and smallest states in the Union. It’s also the state that Democratic Socialist darling Bernie Sanders has represented in Congress for the past twenty-eight years. In the small, wealthy state of Vermont, a bill was passed by its State Legislature in 2011. It was called H 202, or “Single-Payer and Unified Health System”. This law, which was enacted in the state, creating “Green Mountain Care”. This taxpayer-funded healthcare pool was meant to provide universal healthcare coverage for all of Vermont’s citizens. The kicker was that it was also expected to reduce healthcare costs. It all sounded wonderful. Fast forward to 2013. Under the provisions of the law, Vermont was supposed to have, by this time, figured out how to fund the thing. They hadn’t. An 11% payroll tax hike was proposed, but this was - naturally - determined to be unfair and even crippling to small businesses in the state. By 2014 the state had still not figured out how to fund the law with the $2 billion in additional state spending it required. The law was abandoned by the state. What happened? Two-thirds of Vermont’s citizens agreed that even if it meant a tax-hike, they wanted universal healthcare. The people felt ready to pay up for the collective good of their state. Reality set in though. That’s what happened. A line touted by opponents of single-payer healthcare is simple - nothing is actually free. This is important, especially today, as we hear the terms “free healthcare” and “free college” being thrown around. It’s easy to say that we can tax the rich to Hell to pay for these things. It feels good. It feels like the right thing to do. However, it’s just not how things work. A national “Medicare for all” plan, like the plans touted by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, would establish a costly and ineffective government bureaucracy overseeing all aspects of our healthcare system. Let’s take a second to think about that. The Federal Government, along with its low approval ratings and generally accepted inability to govern effectively, would be in full control of the entirety of our healthcare system. That doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, and you can take a quick look at the failures of the Veteran’s Affair’s healthcare system for reference. Then comes the other issue. How do we fund this? “Medicare for all” would cost the Fed over $32 trillion in its first ten years. Let’s take a shot in the dark here. Let’s say we doubled the corporate tax rate as well as the individual income tax rate. Obviously a 100% increase in taxing would cover this, right? No. It’d fail to cover the expense of this program. These programs don’t work on the state level once the invoice hits the desk. They’re great to think about, and well-intentioned. But the reality of the situation is that they can’t feasibly be funded in the United States - whether it be at the State or Federal level - without crippling our economy. If a doubling of corporate and individual income tax - something I think most voters would not get behind - can’t cover something, then the writing is on the wall. “Medicare for all” is a dud that would never be enacted even if it passed in the house and senate and was signed into law. Just like Vermont, the cost would come in, and the plan would fail. Focusing on other common sense ways to reduce already existing healthcare costs is the way to go here - not a wholesale handover to the Federal Government with all of us expected to foot the bill. The opinions expressed in this piece do not reflect those of Saints News as a whole, but those of its author Ryan D. Price. Saints News
