"Mayor Villaraigosa calls for pay cuts for all city workers
He says the action would reduce the need to cut 4,000 jobs. He also plans to eliminate Environmental Services and Human Services departments and transfer some duties to other agencies." By Phil Willon, February 20, 2010, L.A. Times.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/la-me-la-budget20-2010feb20,0,2380036.story?track=rss
Here's a story from Saturday that gives some more information on what the Mayor's plans are to allow you to fill in that information with the big picture. The pay cuts request is another thing that you can add to the Mayor's dreams for L.A. and that's about how close this will ever become a reality because no one's taking a cut without anyone else going first. They have to put in some bigtime trust into the city's management for that to work out, but I think it's safe to say it will never happen. They were supposed to lay off after the agreement with the coalition of unions that gave that groups some layoff protection for the rest of the fiscal year and that delay was worth about $350,000 a day in expenses exceeding the revenues, or "income" as we regular folks call it.
So much dishonesty in the making of the mess and now it's reached proportions that make them scramble to throw everything overboard to lighten the load of the sinking ship, but keeping the employees in other NON-general funds jobs. It's kind of like that ship needs to be lightend up but all the weighty things favored by some are "untouchables" and so, aren't tossed overboard. What happens now? Simple, now the whole ship goes down with all aboard. And that's what we see at City Hall as they try to dream up more taxes and fees to extract more cash from the rest of the people in the city.
All that money they get in City Hall and in State government is like dope to a junkie. They want more money and they wind up in the same condition, well, actually, in worse condition, than they were in before. And that gives you a good picture of why you have to resist any taxes. Now in the State government, a tax on sodas, 1 cent for every teaspoon of sugar as they describe it. And it's all in the name of health (always a good approach for cover to sneak in what they really want to do) and it's supposed to address obesity. I guess diet sodas won't be touched if there's not any sugar content. I want to see the way the politicians will try to grab that, too.
If they wanted to address obesity, think about video games, internet access, texting and all kinds of other things that keep young people from getting into any actual physical exercise as part of their daily routines. You used to have kids walk to and from school all the time. Now nearly everyone gets a ride. It's not safe on the streets out there you know. They may be right to a large extent. Gangs are a threat and really that has not been addressed well by anyone in Los Angeles. The state really just looks to what they find to sell the public on a justification that will cause the resistance to the tax to disappear.
Remember that the true welfare of anyone is rarely the motivation for doing anything by politicians. They respond to pressure, be it from special interests or citizen groups. That converts to votes if they play it well. But they thrive on handling money, your money. And do not be so accepting of things like this tax on sodas. It will continue next time on other products and finally there will be nothing protected from these junkies.
We really need different kinds of office holders who don't have that traditional money grubbing training in their histories and instead put in people who see what we need to do for improving the mess left by the current crop of politicians, politicians that you and your neighbors and friends put into office either by voting FOR them or by NOT coming out to vote for OTHER challengers and letting them take an easy ride to re-election. They have had their chance at city hall and they did not come up to the task.
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