how to show the limits of your humanity in one easy step
Over the last year, the Los Angeles Times has reported a long investigative series on abused children who died while under the protection of the LA County Department of Child Protective Services. On Wednesday, the county Board of Supervisors voted to open an investigation…
…to catch the county employees who are leaking documents to the Los [...]
the empire has a glitch
I left one thing out of my post on Todd Purdum’s empire worship, yesterday: the main point. I got distracted by the glorious awfulness of Purdum’s ponderous paragraphs, and lost track of the indescribable blindness that he shares with the subjects of his worshipful journalism.
Purdum argues that Washington is “broken,” that procedural disfunction prevents the [...]
let’s just eat the whole thing (II)
Between 2000 and 2010, the cost of living went up by about 30%.
In the same period in the city where I live — West Hollywood, California — government salaries went up by rates that, in many instances, come remarkably close to 100%. (The city manager’s salary growth actually topped 100%, as I’ve already noted.)
The proof [...]
and a pony, too
Below, overwhelming the page as a jpeg that I can’t seem to wrestle under control because I’m an idiot, the standard package of benefits for the city manager and assistant city manager at the City of Rosemead, a not terribly large contract city in suburban Los Angeles. No employee contribution to CalPERS retirement. Eight hundred [...]
words that don’t work: how to calculate local government pay, part two
Following up on yesterday’s post regarding city manager pay, let’s keep looking at retired Indio City Manager Glenn Southard’s $300,000 salary. Yesterday, going through Southard’s contract, I showed how his real potential earnings were closer to $400,000+ a year. But his contract still doesn’t tell the whole story.
Here’s a report from the local newspaper, the [...]
words that don’t work: how to figure out how much money a local government manager makes
In the wake of the scandal over Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo’s $800,000 in annual pay, journalists are reporting that, hey, don’t worry, other city managers make more reasonable salaries. And it’s a fair bet that people are calling their own local governments to ask about their city manager’s salary, while some cities work to [...]
and again
Further proof of the need for pink slips in the public sector:
…20 agents arrived bearing a search warrant at her Ventura County farmhouse door…the third time she was being raided in 18 months…problem over labeling of her goat cheese…
you couldn’t come up with government this pathetic and absurd if you actively set out to create it
At least five government agencies…
Agencies that participated in the raid on Rawesome included the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
…raided a Venice Beach raw food co-op, with guns drawn, to do this:
Investigators [...]
if you plan to be murdered in los angeles, make sure you die while smoking marijuana
The Los Angeles Times, July 5 (“Clearing away the pot stores, one raid at a time”), with emphasis added:
As dusk settled on busy Colorado Boulevard, a squad of minivans and SUVs pulled to the curb outside a drab stucco rental that houses one of Eagle Rock’s medical marijuana dispensaries.
Plainclothes narcotics officers fanned out. One disarmed [...]
retail manager resigns after admitting that stores try to make money
The president of Germany resigned in shame after saying, in a speech delivered in Afghanistan, that his country was engaged in military action there in the service of its national economic interests.
It’s a scandal to openly say things that are merely and prosaically true in the very most obvious sense. The pageantry of the state [...]