Giant squid are roaming the Pacific, and they’re not just wiping out fish stocks; they’re eating fishermen.
Honestly, I take this entire article with a grain of salt. However, any time I have a chance to link to a story about giant man-eating squid, I can’t pass it up.
(Hattip: Dinosaur Comics. Really.)
So the city of Bell hired a guy named Randy Adams to be their chief of police. Mr. Adams used to be the chief in Glendale; I can’t find exact figures, but according to the LAT, the Glendale force is much larger than the Bell force. Looking over Glendale’s Wikipedia page, it appears their cops are a pretty active bunch.
In spite of Bell’s force being smaller than Glendale’s, and Bell having a smaller population, the city of Bell decided to pay Chief Adams $457,000 a year, which the LAT describes as being more than twice what he was making in Glendale.
Sleazy enough for you? But wait, there’s more!
At the same time Chief Adams was being hired for the post in Bell, he was also filing an application for a disability pension from the city of Bell.
Yes, you read that right. At the same time the city was hiring him, they were also approving his application for disability payments (without any waiting or vesting period), which would have amounted to $411,000 a year. Of that, the first $205,500 would have been tax-free.
In the words of TJIC, “Rope”.
The LAT apparently would like for you to feel sorry for someone in the city of Bell.
The question is, who?
Not Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and his cronies. They’re under arrest and facing a recall election. If that doesn’t work, Jerry Brown’s going to try to get them kicked out of office anyway.
Should we feel sorry for the citizens of Bell? According to the LAT, they were literally dancing in the streets when the arrests went down.
(Edited to add: Here’s a second article from the LAT about the street celebrations in Bell. Unlike the first, it does not mention dancing, but the guy playing “Another One Bites The Dust” is a nice touch. Of course, the LAT had to find the one moron in the crowd…
“They were making a lot of money, but I don’t have an issue with it because they were taking care of us,” she said. “We have a clean city, good parks, no graffiti. It’s very safe…. I’m not saying the salaries and other things that were going on were fair, because they weren’t, but it’s not like they were getting paid a lot and not doing a good job.”
See also Mussolini and the trains running on time. Of course they were doing a good job. Except for those illegal taxes. And the towing scandal. And the illegal sewer fees. And the fake meetings.)
Even better for the citizens of Bell,
The state controller’s office has found that Bell collected about $5.6 million in illegally imposed tax increases and business-license fees — and now must refund an amount equal to more than one-third of its $13.5-million general fund.
Of course, having to cough up that much money means there isn’t enough left to spend on essential city services, like Rizzo’s million-dollar salary. Perhaps the city could sell bonds to fill the gap? Except that Bell’s bond status, according to Standard and Poor’s, is “junk”.
So what next? Cut city services? Place the city into receivership? The LAT article seems to view these as last-resort options. We would suggest that these should be first resort options. Does the city really need 47 police officers? Couldn’t they contract out services to LA County?
Here’s the City of Bell website. Perhaps our loyal readers could explore that and propose some cuts in order to meet the budget.
In no particular order:
If you send invitations, please mark clearly if there will be any sort of clown in attendance. If there is, we will NOT be able to cover your event.
Robert “Ratso” Rizzo and eight other officials and former officials of the city of Bell have been arrested and charged with 53 counts of “misappropriation of public funds and conflict of interest”.
Also among the arrested: Angela Spaccia, former assistant city manager for Bell, and former Maywood city manager.
The Liberace Museum is closing.
I’ve actually toured that museum twice, and had a great deal of fun both times. I find it just a bit surprising that they employed 30 people, but with all the clothes, the cars, the musical instruments, and what not, as well as staffing the museum, I guess I shouldn’t be that shocked.
The mention that they also hired a professional curator from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (who lasted a year) is also kind of interesting. I know Mike the Musicologist had some thoughts on curation and the Liberace Museum after our first visit, but I’ll let him post those if he wishes.
(Thanks to Bill Crider for the tip on this.)
Edited to add: Here are links to two stories from the Las Vegas Sun: link 1 and link 2. I do not believe the Sun is associated with the Las Vegas Review-Journal or Righthaven, but if I’m wrong about that, please let me know.
We previously noted that the White House was considering awarding the Medal of Honor to a living recipient, for the first time since the Vietnam War.
The decision has been made.
US Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta will be awarded the Medal of Honor for charging into the middle of a Taliban ambush and rescuing three wounded members of his platoon.
(Hattip: Ace of Spades.)
Two interesting stories I’ve run across in the past few days.
Story #1 is the guy in Long Island who held off a street gang with “an AK-47“, fired several “warning shots” in the process…and was arrested for “reckless endangerment“. This has been getting a lot of buzz on the gun blogs; some good takes on this story are Lawrence’s, Jay G’s, and SayUncle’s. SayUncle and Jay G. make the point I’d want to make on this; warning shots are generally not a good idea. If you’re justified in shooting, put your rounds into the SOB. Plus, those warning shots are going to go somewhere, and it may not be where you’d like.
Lawrence also tipped me to a story I haven’t seen elsewhere: the city of Carrollton, up near Dallas, is debating a proposition that would ban gun stores within a certain (unspecified) distance of liquor stores “and certain other (also unspecified -DB) retail establishments”.
As Lawrence puts it, “Somehow, I’m not seeing the sort of person who shotguns a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 in a parking lot as being the same sort of person who has either a few hundred dollars burning a hole in their pocket, or a valid credit card.”
I don’t have anything to add to that, so instead I’ll link to the Hobo With a Shotgun trailer.
I’ve been trying to find a way into this for the past couple of days now, which is why I’m a little behind.
Paul Conrad, former cartoonist for the LAT.
Robert Schimmel, stand-up comic.
Larry Ashmead, prominent book editor. Ashmead edited books by a lot of people I like, including some well-known mystery writers.
Joe Domenici, local Austin thriller writer (Bringing Back the Dead
Lawrence and Bill Crider both have posts up at their sites about Joe. I’m not going to pretend I knew Joe real well; both Mike the Musicologist and Lawrence knew him better than I did. I basically just saw Joe every year at Armadillocon, and the occasional convention in between. But he was always happy to see me, and I was glad to see him around. When Bringing Back the Dead came out, I thought it was a pretty spiffy book, and I’m glad I had a chance to tell Joe that. I don’t know why he seemed stunned by that; after all, the truth is the truth. You can’t have opinions about the truth.
Mike and I both got email from Joe quite a while back asking for permission to Tuckerize us in the next book. I’m not sure what Mike’s response was; mine was basically, “F- yeah!”. I was enormously pleased and honored that Joe would do something like that. Joe emailed us both back in early May to let us know the next book, The Death Factory, was tentatively scheduled for “Sping/Summer 2011”. I’m hoping it comes out and doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. Joe deserves better than that.
The Cardiff Botanical Society, in Cardiff-By-The-Sea, California, spent $120,000 to put up a 16-foot statue of a “surfer”. That is, for values of “surfer” that look a lot like…well, maybe, me on a surfboard.
Hilarity ensues, complete with people using the “Cardiff Kook” (as the statue is known) as a jumping off point to create their own works of art.
(Hattip: Reason’s “Hit and Run“.)
Obit watch: Laurent Fignon, two-time winner of the Tour de France, and the man who lost the Tour to Greg LeMond by eight seconds in 1989.
Is it just me, or do Tour winners tend to die relatively young? (Yes, I read the obit. Yes, I’m aware Fignon blames his drug use. I’m trying to avoid painting all the Tour winners with the same broad brush.)
Kim Severson profiles Roger Ebert, rice cooker chef.
I wanted to blog this yesterday, but didn’t get a chance: the Barnes and Noble across from Lincoln Center is closing. People are sad, though it sounds like many of them were getting their books elsewhere. Remember when people were indignant that Barnes and Noble and Borders were destroying the little bookstores?
Patrick over at Popehat links to a NYT article I noted late last week, but didn’t have time to read until yesterday.
Guy Deutscher’s article is basically (as I see it) a call for reconsideration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that our language determines how we think. I encountered Sapir-Whorf for the first time many, many years ago, in the pages of the late lamented Dr. Dobb’s Journal, and it blew me away at the time. I figured, “Well, if language influences how we think, then I need to learn FORTH. And C. And LISP. And…” Later on, of course, I read the various arguments against Sapir-Whorf, and don’t completely buy into the strong version of it any more, but I still retain some affection for Sapir-Whorf.
The Deutscher article is an excerpt from his (forthcoming? It looks like it comes out today) book Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
In other notes, sorry about the blogging slowdown; I spent the weekend at ArmadilloCon, and am now somewhat tanned, rested, and relaxed. I spent some time yesterday bumming around various Half-Price Books in a futile search for A Short History of the French Revolution
, which looks like a lot of fun. I read her chapter on The Great Kosher Duck Scandal last night.
. I haven’t been disappointed in a Standage book
yet.
. I blame Calvin Trillin for this.
. I admired Bill Mauldin greatly (the HouChron used to run his editorial cartoons, and they were among the few I agreed with in that paper) but I wasn’t even aware this book existed until I saw it on the Austin Books sale table. By the way, for those of you in Austin, Austin Books has a big sale coming up this weekend.The peak of Western Civilization has been reached, and it has been reached by the great State of Texas.
We have figured out a way to fry salad. And beer, too! The deep-fried “frozen margarita” also sounds interesting.
(Hattip: Bill Crider.)
Marcel Albert, French ace, with 24 victories to his credit on the Eastern front. In his honor, I’m declaring a temporary moratorium on French military jokes.
Since this was sent to me, I’ll also note the death of “Howdy Doody” head writer Edward Kean.