LA Stimulates Few Jobs
How’s that stimulus package working out for Los Angeles? Not too well when you look at the audit report issued by LA City Controller Wendy Gruel yesterday.
The city controller’s report revealed that $111 million dollars in federal stimulus money sent to Public Works and Transportation departments has resulted in a total of 55 jobs created or retained. Well, not 55 exactly, since the audit tests work hours, that’s 54.46 jobs created or retained.
And, while it is good for the individual workers that their jobs were retained, that means many fewer than 55 jobs were created for the $111 million. With two million Californians out of work, many in the most populous city in the state, we need to create jobs. What is going on here?
Good Move, Gavin: Mayor Vows To Veto SF Alcohol Tax
Gavin Newsom is a smart man. Yes, I said it.
I’ve
used this forum before to discuss San Francisco’s brain-dead alcohol
tax idea and exposed the fallacious rallying cries behind the proposed
tax.
The feel good idea by San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos
to place a tax on alcohol in an effort to cover city costs resulting
from alcohol abuse was preliminary approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
A National Referendum Idea on Constitution Day
Today is the 223rd anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution.
Many headlines have been generated recently about proposals to change the Constitution. A lot of heat has been generated over the idea of changing the 14th amendment to alter birthright citizenship and even the futile notion to take voting power away from the people by changing the 17th amendment’s right to directly elect U.S. Senators.
What caught my eye was a proposal reported in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal’s opinion page that would create a "Repeal Amendment" in the constitution in which two-thirds of the states could vote to overturn an act of congress.
Friday Culture Piece: Chicklit from the Block
What’s a nice suburban dude doing writing Chicano-chicklit?
Something right, apparently, because Mike Padilla’s second book and first novel, The Girls From the Revolutionary Cantina (after the short story collection Hard Language) is finding fans among readers of the genre. This from ChicklitClub.com: "I did not want to put this page-turner down, there is so much happening at once yet it all ties in brilliantly."
"Initially, when people started applying the ‘chicklit’ to my novel, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it," he says. "I didn’t want to be pegged in a specific category."