The University of California Board of
Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) is at it again, attempting to
slowly erode the high academic standards required for admission to this most
prestigious network of public universities.  

For some reason, BOARS is recommending to
the Board of Regents that the school "signal" to applicants to not take the new
SAT test for admission to the UC system. This comes less than two years after
the Board of Regents lowered the admission requirements for UC schools
by eliminating the use of the SAT II Subject Tests and just eight
years after using scarce university resources to help create the new SAT in the
first place.

The available evidence shows
a significant correlation between an applicant’s success on the SAT
and success in the university environment, and since this correlation is
recognized by BOARS, it is unclear why some wish to no longer use it as a
screening tool.  If the desired effect was an effort to increase the
number of eligible applicants to the UC system, it is certainly
unnecessary. Applications are already at historic highs.

Once, long ago, we had the Great Depression, which our history books tell us started with the crash of Wall Street in Fall 1929.  Many of us either still remember what the 1930’s were like in this country, or grew up hearing about them from parents and grandparents, at times ad nauseum. 

Few in our 24/7, fully-connected, 21stC Media, have either been brave, or honest, enough to call what we’ve been living through since late 2007, (first fully impacting in late Summer 2008 and now coming up on it’s second full year since them) with that name starting with the dreaded D-word: "Depression;" yet, as I have said here repeatedly since Fall 2008, that’s what this is in reality.

Pundits (not pundints, as we hear the word mispronounced too often lately) have stuck a toe in the water by calling our own economic agonies this time around, the Great Recession, but not further.  Yet.

A Global Forum on direct democracy will hold its U.S. conference July 30 to August 4 in San Francisco. The conference is free to the public. Nearly 300 participants have signed up so far representing 30 countries and 27 U. S. states.

While the conference features numerous panels on issues that run the gamut from direct democracy in the digital age to the question of creating a national initiative to international perspectives on the I&R process, there are many California centric events. Included is a Saturday morning panel that asks the question: Is California’s Initiative Process Ruining the State, Or Saving It?

Speakers from around the country include Ralph Nader, John Fund, and Grover Norquist along with California political figures Bob Hertzberg, Ward Connerly, Jon Coupal, Tom Hayden, Peter Schrag, Bob Stern and many others.

If
you’re a business person in Los Angeles, you’ve got plenty to worry
about. Your sales may be poky, your taxes may go up, and in just a few
short weeks, Lindsay Lohan will be released from jail and driving on
our streets again.

But here’s something you don’t have to worry about: the international trade deficit.

In fact, I’ll go further: You might even take some comfort in our deepening trade deficit.

The heat is coming.

The fallout from the reports of the disgracefully high-paid Bell city employees is mounting.

Reporters
are digging. They want to know every detail of every dollar and any
crooked numbers will be exposed. They’re looking for corruption.

I’m no supporter of Barbara Boxer, never have been and am not now, but I don’t object, as Carly Fiorina does, that Boxer has authored only five measures that became law in her time in the U. S. Senate. We have too many laws already.

The San Jose Mercury News ran articles focusing on the number of bills sponsored by lobbyists in Sacramento. The paper reported that there were 1,883 sponsored bills in the 2007-2008 two-year legislative session on top of 2,982 bills with no sponsors offered by legislators.

That’s 4,865 bills that were introduced in one session of which about 1500 became law. Fifteen-hundred new laws in one legislative session! Each session the law books get fatter and fatter and no one can know all the laws in those books and how they interact with each other.

The story of $800,000.00 per year city officials and $100,000.00 per year elected officials in the small Los Angeles-area city of Bell has become news from California to China. While legitimate scorn has been heaped on these 6-figure "public servants", and both the Los Angeles County DA’s office as well as the Attorney General, Jerry Brown, have ordered investigations into possible illegalities, initial reviews of how things got so bad in Bell reveal an inconvenient truth: it’s the citizens’ fault.

As the head of the LA district attorney’s Public Integrity Division, David Demerjian recently told the Los Angeles Times,?"We deal with the crime. What people consider corruption may not be a crime. I tell them, ‘Any dysfunction within the government has to be handled by you.’ The residents have a lot of power."??

It was that great chronicler of the American democratic republic, Alexis De Tocqueville, who once noted, "in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve", but reading some of the reports and opinion pieces about the current fiasco, one is left to wonder whether this long-accepted axiom is still true. Within days of the Los Angeles Time’s cover story blowing the lid off of Bell’s City Hall, defenders arose to protect the civic virtue of its residents for reasons both self-serving and condescending.

Who says money and politics don’t mix? (Well, nobody).

On this week’s episode of Off
The Presses radio program, we spoke with Bob Stern of the Center for
Governmental Studies who commented on the organization’s new report, Money &
Power in the City of Angels. Among its findings is that L.A. city
incumbents were all easily reelected and outraised their opponents, 19-1, and
that 99.993% of L.A. City Council votes were unanimous last year.

We also chatted with PR guru and political pundit Michael
Levine who publishes the LBNElert and
explained why we’re fascinated with Lindsay Lohan’s and Mel
Gibson’s troubles and how he’s leading a boycott of Scotland over
its role in releasing convicted Lockarbie terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and
if BP had any influence in return for new oil agreements in Libya. Michael also
revealed who won’t be the next GOP nominee for president.

At
a time when local government must reinvent its approach to job
creation, the City of Los Angeles made two major strides last week. The
L.A. City Council unanimously approved the L.A. Area Chamber’s proposed Office of Economic Analysis and also endorsed the L.A. County Strategic Plan for Economic Development. Both are important opportunities to make good policies that incentivize business growth in our City.

The Office of
Economic Analysis will finally give City officials the information they
need to evaluate whether a proposed policy will drive businesses away
or encourage them to invest even more in Los Angeles. Under the new
program, the City will contract with respected, independent economists
to study how proposed legislation would affect the business climate,
job creation and overall economy.

Championed by City
Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilmember Greig Smith, the City
approved $250,000 in initial funding and will begin compiling a bullpen
of respected economists to contract with on an as-needed basis. The
Chamber’s ultimate goal is to make this office a permanent part of our
city government to provide this type of evaluation on a wide-range of
city policies and programs. In the meantime, the Chamber will be
working with City Council members to make sure that policies deserving
of this review are studied.