On Local Government: Regarding Fracking
While it sounds like something you used to get slapped in the face for uttering, this word has become the cry of outrage from environmentalists regarding natural gas drilling.
While it sounds like something you used to get slapped in the face for uttering, this word has become the cry of outrage from environmentalists regarding natural gas drilling.
Every election tells a tale. Last week’s in Redondo Beach was no different.
In the post-mortems from the Presidential election, the biggest news was how President Obama’s team used technology to win and how Nate Silver used technology to analyze.
“First…, kill all the lawyers.”
Shakespeare had it right in “Henry VI.”
No matter which way you turn, some lawyer is bilking a City by either charging too much for the simplest of opinions, providing overwrought advice or, particularly in the case of those cities dumb enough to elect these people, relying on people who are better at soliciting votes than performing the legal tasks they were allegedly hired to do.
These past few weeks have given us many opportunities to shake our heads in bemusement at the activities of others.
In February, 2009, then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (you remember him?) was looking for one more vote in the California State Senate to get a compromise budget approved.
Six years ago, the Legal Establishment in Los Angeles County was horrified to find that someone had upset their well-planned apple cart.
A different Jobs plan
Much ink and many electrons have been spilled following the untimely death of Steve Jobs.
The political war over whether or not sales promulgated on the Internet should be taxed the same as those from “brick and mortar” stores has been around for a while.
I liked Les Guthrie.
That is not a phrase you would necessarily find emanating from the lips of elected or appointed officials in Redondo Beach.
Over the last few weeks, I have spent much of the time on the East Coast.
A story in the Los Angeles Times caught my eye as I was reviewing the spate of anti-immigrant bills making their way through state legislatures across the country.
It was ten years ago this week that I attended my last meeting as a Redondo Beach City Councilman and filed my first “On Local Government” column for this newspaper.
The post-Egypt chest thumping has begun. Some pundits claim that the rise of the seeking of democracy in totalitarian states (which we, by the way, have long supported) is the long term result of the foreign policies initiated by the newly beatified St. Ronald of Reagan. Others say it is a vindication of the George W. Bush Iraq policy. Still others laud President Obama for a skillful navigation of a very precarious situation.
Cities are becoming more and more creative about ways to provide revenue for their coffers. In the light of end run after end run by the state to disrupt their structural revenue base, such as the latest hit, redevelopment money, cities need to find ways to obtain more direct fees for services.