Thanks all for your support yesterday on my virgin Brief. Jeff makes this look so easy…
Roy E. Disney accepts the Jules Verne Nature award in 2008
- Roy E. Disney, Walt Disney nephew, died yesterday at 79. He was an active supporter of CalArts (founded by his father and uncle) and served on its Board of Trustees. To the Gen-X and Gen-Yers among us, this was Walt-incarnate. RIP, Roy. AP (wiki has more if you want some inside baseball.)
- Profiles in [SCV] Altruism:
- Former homeless father of four falls on hard times, lands on his feet, gives back. SIGNAL
- Mr. Hill volunteers with seniors to make sense of and maximize Medicare benefits. SIGNAL
- Postman Santa leads 20 trucks full of toys to troubled families; tradition was started by one of our own. SIGNAL
- Skip the boos cruise: Pardee Homes SCV forgoes its holiday party, gives $2500 to local charities instead. SIGNAL
- Bring home “Marley”: the Castaic Animal Shelter will reduce adoption fees to a flat $30 through Christmas Eve. LATIMES
- Just don’t tell him about his “security deposit”: Castaic man in jail for threatening his landlord with a knife after being asked for the rent. SIGNAL
- More on Tuesday’s strapped, bare-chested, Prius-driving, tatooed road-rager arrested in Newhall: he installed red emergency lights on his fuel-efficient ride (the kind used on chase vehicles for oversized trucks) and rammed big rigs because “he believed (they) were CHP officers, trying to take him back to the Mexican Mafia.” NBCLA also covers the hybrid stereotype angle with aplomb.
- It takes the ‘constructive’ out of ‘constructive destruction’: Gary Horton says of the Castaic High intiative: shut it down. Shut it ALL down. OY VEY
- Lynne Plambeck makes a passionate plea to ignore the Climategate scandal, look at the facts on CO2, and take personal responsibility for your carbon footprint. SIGNAL Meanwhile, at Copenhagen, Mr. Chavez gets a standing O. O BOY
- It’s official: SoCal roads really do suck. Money, that is, an average of $2500 per driver per year. The 405 was given honorable mention for “really, really sucking eggs” (okay, I made that last part up, but it was #7 on the list) CONTRA COSTA TIMES
- Assemblyman Cameron Smyth delivered a crescendo of bad budget news to a small PTSA gathering at Valencia Meadows Elementary yesterday. The state needs to shore up an additional $20B shortfall in the next 18 months, and we’re going to feel it. Sadly, I don’t think closing a couple of schools is going to be the endgame on this one. SIGNAL
- “Mr. Anderson, that is the sound of inevitability…”: CalPERS set to fire geniuses who invested so much of our public employees’ money in sure-fire real estate assets, including Newhall Land/LandSource. SFGATE
- Play in the snow, have some cocoa, buy a truck this Sunday at Valencia Chevy SCVRAW
- Straight Outta the Onion: Santa Clarita resident Jermaine Snowden says “I’m not a drinker” but this NYE, he is “getting drunk and partying with my buddies in Hollywood.” He’s “bummed” Metro isn’t running 24/7 on New Year’s Eve. Jermaine, please stay off the roads that night. Please ? CONTRA COSTA TIMES
- Finally, in the “so bad, it’s good” file, Woods paramour #4 does a crap-tastic pitch video for ebay-wannabe bidhere.com HUFFPO
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So far I like your briefs better. You have more ummph written in them.
Please tell me the Prius driver was our own Spineflower. Please, oh please, oh please…
Why are people taking the opportunity of Jeff’s generosity and trust to bag on him? Can’t folks give NickleDime a compliment without insulting Jeff? Geeze. ‘Tis the Season.
Nice job, ND! A snappy style and different sources make for good reading.
Smyth was telling the parents they better be prepared for even more drastic ‘cuts’ in spending toward public schools . . . a position that Smyth has endorsed with his ‘vow’ not to raise taxes for any reason.
Even if that reason is the protection of students in our public schools.
Whether the parents in the meeting know that Smyth is a outspoken critic of taxes and government in general per his ideology positions, that he dislikes the teacher union politically or whether he informed them that he personally supported the multi-billion dollar cuts to k-12, he could have nevertheless given the parent some choices.
First off, he could have said that if you really wanted to protect your kid’s education from harm during the recession, we through him could create ‘temporary’ taxes to protect the students.
Thus, the question to the parents: would you consider not buying a new tv this year and using the same money in temporary taxes to protect your kid’s education?
I would have had the courage to do that . . .
Likewise, if he countered his own remarks using the ‘job killers’ slogan (see the CA Chamber of Commerce website), why wouldn’t he have explained that the loss of tax revenues is ‘job killing’ the jobs of teachers who teach their kids?
This is the problem with having ‘safe seats’ for legislators. They only present their ideology based views and won’t tell the public the ‘other half’ of the discussion . . . in this case the cost of the loss of taxes and what options exist like the temporary taxes.
As the article noted: Santa Clarita Valley school districts have increased class sizes (read ‘reduced the number of teachers’), laid off support staff positions and issued pay cuts to deal with the funding setbacks.
How can you have ‘quality education’ promisted by Smyth in his campaign brochures yet go to a meeting to ‘inform’ parents that they have no options when in reality they do!
Until we get actual ‘leadership’ in Sacramento to clearly spell out options beyond ideology positions, our state and our kids are doomed . . . consider the 30% drop out rates in our state’s k-12 public school system over the last 30 yearsa . . . victims of partisan politics that only benefits the politicians and not the citizens.
Is this the kind of guy you want over looking your kid’s future at the state level? Not for me . . .
Indy
Gary Horton can go f*** himself.
TWO bond measures PROMISING Castaic High as the FIRST priority… and you want to back out of the deal barely a year later?
Do that, and kiss ALL future bond measures GOODBYE!
Personally, I have already made the jump. Not one tax increase, not one bond measure, not one more dime until that High School is teaming with teens.
Half a billion promised and nothing to show… how big a fool does he think we are?
ND, first off, I appreciate your response. Here are several comments.
As somebody who has been watching public education for some 30 years, I find it disturbing as you do, that over the last three decades, neither party in Sacramento and taken your concerns to heart and done anything about it with respect to the accountability you seek.
If there’s a doubt, what are these folks waiting for? Isn’t it ‘their’ job to address this type of concern? Why have 30 years gone by?
That’s why it’s important that citizen activism on boards like this play a role . . . lets let the politicians understand that non-action is no longer and has never been acceptable.
As far as state salaries are concerned, we get a lot of band standing about them but politicians again, regardless of their ideology, rather want to alienate any voter . . . even people who work for the state. So politicians do a lot of political positioning just enough to give you the belief that they are doing something when in fact, they’ve done nothing.
And as frightening as this may sound to you, if you don’t fund the public school system per the enrollment realizing for example, that over the last 12 years or so, the k-12 enrollment has grown by about 800,000 net kids to a total k-12 enrollment of 6.3 million, the kids will be the one suffering!
Starving public school funding even with the issues you note only creates even more chaos not less, and again, the kids just get ‘stuffed’ even more into overcrowded classrooms even with all the issues you note.
I know that’s a tough pill to swallow but this is the ‘real world’ . . . and you again would think, that politicians, knowing your concerns, well, why wouldn’t they resolve this 30 years ago?
What are they waiting for? If quality education is so important on their campaign brochures, why not actually address the concerns you note?
Sadly, many just ‘wait you out’ . . . realize that you get frustrated then simply drop your efforts. Is this the type of leadership we want in Sacramento? Yet, as we see in voting results, the same politicians get elected over and over and over and over for lack of performance mainly because their slogans, focus group tested to your neighbors, like “I’m 110% behind quality education’ are merely said during elections to get votes . . . then they just fall back to not doing anything realizing most voters won’t think about them till the next election and then the process repeats, slogans, votes, non-performance.
This is why CA schools have had 30% drop out rates for over 30 years I’m personally aware of. I’ve written hundreds of letters to legislators for decades and realize that they just ‘round file them’ . . . since they know I’m one out of say 100,000 that even has clue what going on like you do!
If you go to Jeff’s other site: http://scvtalk.com/forum2/index.php
I’ve got a thread about ‘normalized budgeting’ . . . something you may with to discuss since it’s very important that before you can start holding politicians accountable, the public has to get a grip, even if it’s a small number of us, as to how to gain control of what appears to be complicated, the state budgeting process, but in fact, it’s very simple.
And remember, it’s not the ‘state’, it’s Runner or Smyth. They are the state leaders we’ve elected to address the concerns you’ve noted. They should be doing this work, this is ‘their’ job . . . why they aren’t is why I’m debating on these boards although as you’ll see, I’m quickly labeled a ‘partisan hack’ for ‘daring’ hold them to the duties of ‘their jobs’ there.
Finally, as somebody who has run a private company for 20 years plus an additional 20 years in the corporate environment with the ‘book learning’ MBA with me, any organization including public ones can be run effectively ‘provided’ the will to do so is present.
Does it sound like over the last 30 years . . . has the political will be present or have we just got in the ‘blame game’ in play . . . it’s the ‘other party’s’ fault . . . if the public buys this nonsense, our kids are going to continue to suffer.
Suggestion: write Runner and Smyth. Send them the letter and copy it into Jeff’s other board as a thread . . . so we can all ‘watch’ if anything happens . . . and let the reporter at the Signal know that wrote the story on the recent Smyth visit to the PTA. Let’s get the media and ourselves geared up to get action . . . since as you note, nothing happening . . . and the people we’ve elected to lead us do little more than recite ideology . . . I’m done with that.
Indy