NFL Football in LA next season?
In June, I wrote about Los Angeles developer Ed Roski’s effort to lure an NFL team to Los Angeles, centered around a plan to build a state-of-the-art, 75,000 seat outdoor stadium in the City of Industry.
The promise of the NFL’s return to the Los Angeles market has been fleeting since the tandem departure of the Rams and Raiders in 1994 (coincidentally, due to the fact that neither team was able to secure a proper venue in the Los Angeles area at the time despite assurances to the contrary),
In 1999, Los Angeles even managed to fumble away the rights to an expansion team that had been promised to them by the NFL, due in no small part to that same inability to construct a suitable stadium – that expansion team was quickly lost to Houston, who jumped at the chance to steal away the would-be LA franchise and quickly built Reliant Stadium, one of the world’s finest sports venues, for the team that would become the Houston Texans.
In my earlier post, I wrote that “Several proposals for new football stadiums in the greater Los Angleles area have come and gone over the past twenty years, but none has appeared to be quite as refined or thought out as that put forth by Roski.”
They have some ‘splainin to do
The Education Establishment has announced their intent to sue the State Board of Education for adopting an 8th grade Algebra 1 requirement.
I say bring it on! It’s about time that the state’s school leaders – school board members and administrators – go on the record in sworn testimony as to why they cannot and should not teach algebra to 8th graders.
In 2007, California’s eighth graders ranked 44th in the nation in mathematics achievement. Internationally, eighth graders in the United States are outperformed in mathematics by their counterparts in Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, as well as Belgium, the Netherlands, Estonia and Hungary.
More Taxes Are Not The Answer
Small business has been watching the budget debate for the past 70 plus days – just like everyone else. The big difference is that time and time again, they are the ones in the cross hairs of our legislative leaders.
Some were surprised that Cal-Tax supported the Governor’s current budget plan, including a tax increase. The reality is that the majority of Cal-Tax members are larger corporations that can easily absorb the cost of any new tax. It is disappointing that they chose to support an onerous new cost to California’s largest job creator, small and independent business.
The small businesses that the National Federation of Independent Business represents don’t adjust as easily to new taxes. They face consequences that the big guys don’t – laying off workers, cutting benefits, increasing prices or closing their doors forever. But beyond that, time and time again when polled, NFIB members stand firm in their chorus of no more taxes. California is one of the worst places to do business in the country – why would our state leaders want to add to an already heavy tax burden?