In Idaho’s graceful, striated-marble Capitol, home to one of the more ardent and adamant state legislatures in the nation in standing up for the Second Amendment, lawmakers from both parties say that a torrent of public passion, even panic, about new proposed federal gun rules is pushing in only one direction: toward more guns, not fewer.
Hurrah Idaho!
First, they came for the owners of modern sporting rifles, and I didn’t speak out because I hate guns and want everyone to live in peace and harmony. Then they came to shut down the raves…
A concert company featured in a Times report Sunday detailing the drug-related deaths of 14 people who attended raves denounced the story in an online statement and took to social media to urge fans to speak out.
More:
Many of the concerts were staged with the blessing of local governments hungry for the revenue they brought in.
James Penman, the San Bernardino city attorney, said economics should never be a justification for raves. He long has urged officials to disallow the events at the National Orange Show Events Center there. Coroners’ reports show that two people have fatally overdosed at National Orange Show raves.
“The city should have zero tolerance for any activity where drugs are an integral part,” Penman said. “A rave without drugs is like a rodeo without horses. They don’t happen.”
Yesterday’s update from the Bell trial: Craig Rhudy of the “L.A. County district attorney’s office’s public integrity division” is on the stand now. So far, he’s testified that “former council members drew most of their nearly $100,000 salaries from panels that seldom met.”
Rhudy has charts.
The chart for 2006, for instance, showed that out of 20 City Council meetings, the Solid Waste and Recycling Authority met just once; the Community Housing and Public Finance Authorities each met five times, and the Surplus Property Authority had four meetings.
All of the defendants, except [Luis] Artiga, who was appointed in 2008, were paid $12,857 for each authority served in 2006.
In 2007, the Finance Authority met once, while the Housing Authority met twice. “By 2009, in spite of the fact that the panels continued to meet only sporadically, the pay for serving on each had jumped to $18,368, according to Rhudy’s chart.” In 2010, the Housing Authority was the only one that had a meeting.
And why does this matter? “In total, the defendants drew more than $1.3 million of their salaries from the authorities in question, Rhudy confirmed.”
I missed noting this over the weekend, but the LAT also ran a story on the “mountain of lawsuits” Bell is dealing with.
Former city leaders are suing the city. Bell is suing the former leaders. The city is suing its former lawyers. A European bank is suing Bell.
And the SEC and IRS are both investigating Bell’s bond sales. Here’s a great story:
Bell’s biggest concern is a lawsuit filed by Dexia Credit Local, part of a European banking group, over the city’s default on $35 million in bonds. The case involves 25 acres of undeveloped land near the 710 Freeway that Bell bought from the federal government with plans to lease it to a railroad.
Dexia bought all the lease revenue bonds the city issued to pay for the deal, which came to more than twice the city’s annual budget.
The deal went bad when an environmental group sued, arguing the city had failed to conduct the required environmental review. The judge agreed. Unable to lease the property — now worth far less than the bonds — Bell had no income to pay back Dexia.
The Richard III story has been reported everywhere, but I want to throw in a link to the Richard III Society, another group that deserves your support. And if you haven’t read it, I commend to your attention Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2013 at 9:25 am and is filed under Books, Clippings, Guns, History, Law, Sarcasm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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