Karen Bass, Assembly Speaker, Approves Huge Raises to Staff in Cash Strapped Economy

As a review of the past week's "bad judgment" example by an elected state legislator, I bring to you Karen Bass, Assembly Speaker. Karen Bass is the successor to Fabian Nunez as assembly speaker who was termed out of office last fall after living a lavish life on other people's money during the time he was supposed to have "our" best interests at heart. Nunez's son was recently indicted for the stabbing murder in October of a San Diego student while the younger Nunez was visiting the area with friends from Sacramento. They are also charged with the murder.

But that's all another story and Karen Bass has another kind of problem. Bass really stepped into a big pile of her own doing by approving over half a billion dollars in pay raises to 136 staff members. Bass maybe had a mental blackout for that period of time, enough cause her to forget that the State is a bit short on cash, while it furloughed workers and has approved the largest tax increase in the history of California- and presenting more taxes for approval to the voters on the May 19th election.

The L.A. Times, in case you missed it, captures the lurid details of a cash grab. The story presents us with the inescapable conclusion that the elected officials believe that they are ruled by some other form of laws than the rest of us, and that they are ENTITLED to raises, large ones, no matter what financial chaos the rest of the state or the world is experiencing. "State Assembly leaders hand out staff raises; Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and minority leader Michael Villines (R-Clovis) give 136 staffers increases totaling $551,000," By Patrick McGreevy, April 22, 2009 Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-govt-payraise22-2009apr22,0,3407994.story Mike Villines, Republican minority leader was right up there with Bass in making what surely would qualify as a "politically incorrect" move if ever there was one.

Bass, besides approving the raises, made some idiotic comments besides by which she tried to justify the raises.

Bass said the raises would be more than offset by a $15-million reduction
in the Assembly's operating budget that included the elimination of 20
jobs.

"I'm trying to streamline my operations," Bass said. "That allows me to
give a 5% raise to staff who haven't had a raise in three years."

This is one of those situations where, when somebody who finds themeself in a hole, needs to stop digging. By her very statement, she acknowledges losses of jobs. I don't need to make any analogies at this point, but the situation is ripe for some. Mike Villines did not want to be left out of the "Let's make a stupid statement" competition as the L.A. Times story reports more,

Villines similarly said the raises would be paid for by "significant spending reductions to our budget."

In this case, the inability on the part of LEADERS of the legislature to grasp the hypocrisy while displaying utterly selfish greed at taxpayer expense makes this action all the more outrageous. If they are unable to see the picture in front of their face, what other things are they fouling up? And maybe they aren't "lying" about the reasons for the raises, but lying would probably have made them look less absurd in the positions taken on the matter.

The story was the beginning of the escapade into financially irresponsible behavior. Like many talk show hosts come to realize in reporting on politics and the unbelievable things that people do, "You can't make this stuff up." The next part of this story comes almost immediately in some very lame attempt to make stupid moves sound reasonable. Standby for part 2.

Filling in more on Cedillo Campaign- A SGV Tribune story with readers' (displeased) comments

Here's an article on the San Gabriel Valley Tribune blog, "Leftovers from City Hall," about the March campaign kick-off event in El Monte by State Senator Gil Cedillo. "Cedillo hits the SGV pavement," By Jennifer McLain on March 9, 2009.
http://www.insidesocal.com/sgvgov/2009/03/cedillo-hits-the-sgv-pavement.html

It's all about running for office, this time it's the congressional election coming up to fill the seat vacated by the appointment of Hilda Solis to the Obama cabinet position in Labor. The readers have some opinionated views and you can take them with a grain of salt since a lot is opinion. The trend in the postings looks to be negative for Cedillo, however. His main opponent is Judy Chu, currently serving as the head of the State Board of Equalization.

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The full San Gabriel Valley Tribune news story is here, "Democrat Cedillo kicks off congressional campaign," By Rebecca Kimitch, Staff Writer. Posted: 03/07/2009 , http://www.sgvtribune.com/elections/ci_11862243, with more details.

The reader comments on the blog still are more colorful than the story, but since there's a lot of opinion with those comments, the facts they mention may or may not be accurate, but they certainly have their opinions, many bluntly stated.

"Presidents Day"- LHS gets day off for which President?

Today's holiday is called "President's Day" and LHS along with other schools, federal, state and local government offices are closed, along with the banks. Your L.A. City trash pickup is unchanged, so don't forget to put that out on the curb if today is your day. What do we have to think about on this holiday? And what is this holiday supposed to be, anyway?

Presidents Day is what the Abraham Lincoln's Birthday of February 12 holiday and the George Washington's Birthday of February 22 holiday have become- not really for Abe and not really for George- it doesn't fall on the same date either because it's a "Monday" holiday for your convenience, which mean that it's a watered-down holiday that has lost most of it's meaning.

The "Monday" holidays that give you a 3-day weekend really turn into a day off, a day for a barbecue or some other enjoyment. This year in L.A. it's turning out to really be a "watered-down" holiday if you have been outside- pouring rain that's predicted to be the heaviest of the year so far for the whole day.

The only thing really unaffected for this holiday by the rain is the "Presidents Day" sales for all the stores that have survived bankruptcy filings of the last few months. At least we can expect that street crime will be lower today with less people out on the streets for both sides- the criminal's and the victim's- but like the change from Lincoln and Washington actually being honored by the holiday that I remembered from my LAUSD days, it's different now.

The Mayor- Tony Villaraigosa, just a bit younger than me- still says, "L.A. safer than it's been since the 1950's," and brags about the crime rate being down. I tend to disagree since I don't rememember that we had street shootings happening so often like today when those events don't even really rate much of a news story anymore.

When my friends and I went to Lincoln, we did not really worry about drive-bys and all that stuff when walking around Lincoln Heights to school. Going to the L.A. Times Boys Club or to the Lincoln Park gym at night did not have that life-and-death shadow that you have now at night- or even during the day. That was the 60's, maybe less safe than the 50's, but if a shooting happened, it was for sure a news story. Today it's sadly too common. My students more recently at Lincoln were so used to shootings happening and even having family members or themselves shot and shot at. I can't even compare that attitude of acceptance with our school-age experiences that differ from mine just a bit, Mr. Mayor.

The Mayor says you need more cops and so he jacks up the fees for trash to do so, and we still don't get the extra 1,000 cops hired, so you get MORE fees and taxes created. It's not even for OUR safety, but for TONY to have HIS dream happen. That dream? Becoming the "Governor of California in 2010" but AFTER Tony wins the mayor's race on March 3. And if there's a runoff-election that's very strong possiblity with a few more voters coming out, you will really see all stops pulled out by TONY to win-

And you know politics on a local level affects this all the time these days. Our Mayor has let this happen and has made L.A. life worse for most people other than developers and the unions that pay his campaign funds. BUT NO DEBATES FOR TONY. He's got nothing good to say and too much that can come out without being defensible by him and he knows that. TONY doesn't deserve to inflict another terrible term on us, especially with so many lies, big and small, that he's told like the simple one where walking around at night now IS a much riskier proposition that in my high school days. Can you see HIM walking around the streets at night without his police bodyguards? Of course, some places are very dangerous and some are pretty safe, but the idea is that overall, violent crime happens everywhere and is too common.

City life in L.A. is getting to be, more and more, a different experience than you or I remember. Even if you are of the "younger" generation, you have to see those changes, too. If you moved away from "the Heights" and haven't been around for a few years or longer, maybe the changes are more eye-opening. The "improvements" from advances in technology have come along to bring things we could not even imagine as high school students.

Another change that is noticed for high school students is about the level of basic skills students have attained in school. More of our students are ill-prepared, continuing to struggle to pass CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOL EXIT exams in math and English, written at an 8th grade level- and that, my friends is what we called, "Jr. High" level. It should be able to be done and done early in high school, not coming up every year to make a student wonder if he or she will be able to joing classmates graduating in June. Performance at "grade level" is not the norm, and when you see that many have fallen behind several years, you have to wonder what was done to let it get ONE year behind grade level. This kind of weak attention to even-handed attention to students' progress just makes them to become weaker, and for many, to be attracted into criminal activity where they can be accepted and succeed with a different group.

A holiday should be enjoyable and the basic reason for its creation should be understood. Presidents Day has become as dissoved as the dirt on the streets in today's rainstorm and neither Lincoln nor Washington really are honored or remembered. Our schools have changed with simple historical items remaining a mystery, even to those at school bearing the same name. Every little bit of education helps round out the knowledge base and make more learning more able to happen.

A lot of basic things we older alumni have experienced in learning just don't happen anymore, even with all the changes in technology and information. And it doesn't have to be like that. Education is affected by things in the school and in the community and we need to pay attention to changing what needs to be changed to equip the students for life success.