- Like virtually all major cities across America, Los
Angeles could use some extra spending cash these days. Departments are asked to
tighten their belts financially, workers see their hours and benefits cut,
folks are laid off…all in the name of keeping a city from going bankrupt and
being unable to pay its bills. Try to imagine all of that going on, only to
later learn that said city has been sitting on over $42 million accumulated over the last 17 years,
left unspent during the worst recession in modern times. Rich people forgetting
how much money they have in the change tray of their Bentley or in their Swiss
bank account is one thing, but a city that has been laying off firefighters and
teachers and pulling cops off the street not realizing it has a sweet stash o’
cash waiting to be found and used is something else entirely. The $42.6 million
is ready for the city to transfer into its general fund and to be used to pay
all kinds of bills. It was finally transferred this week after sitting in a
special transportation fund where the money accumulated for over a decade and a
half. The City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation confirmed the
oversight and placed the blame on that old standby, accounting errors. Oddly
enough, the budget committee chairman of the city council wasn’t super pumped
to hear about that oversight. I just find is shocking that for a decade and a
half an accounting error could happen every year without anyone ever picking it
up,” Paul Krekorian said. “These past few years have been some of the worst
years in the history of the city in terms of providing services to our
constituents in the wake of the Great Recession, and it sure would have been
much easier if we had this $42 million.” Easier? Maybe, but think of it not as
a colossal bureaucratic crew-up and more of a survivalist challenge for the
city. Oh, and City Controller Wendy Greuel insists the blame really should be
ascribed to the council, which she claims dropped the ball when her audits
identified problems with the Transportation Department’s Special Fund. “As
Controller, I have been concerned about the lack of accountability in the
city’s Special Revenue Funds and have raised this issue repeatedly,” Greuel
said. As always, it’s good to see government officials stepping up to own their
mistakes……..
- Major League Baseball umpires are not having a good
week. First, crew chief Angel Hernandez and his crew absolutely blew a call
that turned what should have been a game-tying, ninth-inning home run by
Oakland A’s Adam Rosales into
a double that the umpiring crew refused to change to a home run even after reviewing
multiple replays of the ball striking the railing above the left-field wall at
Progressive Field in Cleveland. The next day, MLB executive vice president Joe Torre said the judgment call by
Hernandez and his crew "stands as final.” No sooner than the angry outcries
from fans and media members began to die down, the crew working Thursday's
Angels-Astros game in Houston did its own hatchet job on the rule book. The
Angels played the game under protest before going on to win 6-5, but their beef
stemmed from a dispute that occurred with two outs in the seventh when Astros
reliever Wesley Wright ran onto the mound and threw several warm-up pitches
before rookie manager Bo Porter raced onto the field between the mound and home
plate to stop him from throwing more. After Porter’s visit, reliever Hector
Ambriz jogged out of the bullpen and onto the mound and Wright headed to the
dugout. Angels manager Mike Scioscia – who seemed to actually know the rules,
unlike the umpires - ran onto the field and argued that Ambriz shouldn't be
able to enter the game because Wright did not face a batter. The umpires
huddled, discussed the situation and allowed Ambriz to remain in the game. The
Angels ended up burning through pinch hitter Luis Jimenez, who was in the
on-deck circle when Wright went to the mound, but was replaced by Scott Cousins
when Ambriz came on. "My contention was that the pitcher came in, had to
face one batter," Scioscia said. "I protested, and we're happy we won
[the game]." Like Hernandez two days prior, crew chief Fieldin Culbreth
said little about his crew’s f**k-up. "Well, the only thing I can tell you
is that all matters concerning protests are handled through the league
office," he said. MLB spokesman Pat Courtney said Friday that the rule
covering pitching changes was not applied correctly by Culbreth’s crew in the
seventh inning and added that the matter is under review……..
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! This overview of socia dissidence
the whole world over is a bit different in that it precedes, rather than
follows, an uprising. Thank Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for that one because he’s
the person who has called a protest tour over elections he says the ruling
regime stole. Foreign governments have called on the powers that be in the
Asian nation to address the concerns over voter fraud, but Anwas isn’t waiting.
On Wednesday, he addressed a rally of supporters dressed in black to protest
Sunday's polls and these angry people filled a stadium and spilled out into
surrounding areas. Their gathering left the capital, Kuala Lumpur, in
hours-long gridlock. In a wonderfully melodramatic moment, Anwar denounced the
elections as the "death of democracy" and called for sustained
campaign of uprisings against electoral bias and cheating that he says props up
an "arrogant, racist regime.” "We will go to every corner of this
country," Anwar thundered as the multi-racial crowd roared its approval. "We
will continue to struggle and we will never surrender!" He and his followers
now face the immense challenge of unseating a regime that has ruled Malaysia
for 56 years and (allegedly) just stole an election. Anwar has promised to produce
evidence to prove the elections were riddled with fraud by the “illegitimate” Barisan
Nasional (National Front) government headed by Prime Minister Najib.
Predictably, Najib's government has denied the allegations and instructed its
opponents to accept the result gracefully. Najib claimed that Wednesday's rally
was "calculated to create unrest.” Anwar’s anger is logical given his
ouster from Barisan s in 1998 and jailed for six years on sex and corruption
charges widely seen as trumped-up. He plans to wage a long war of attrition to
get what he believes he rightfully won and at Wednesday’s shindig, called for
another rally in his northern home state of Penang on Saturday, with more to
follow around Malaysia. Riot on, Malaysia, riot on…….
- The next evolution of smartphones is on the way and none
other than Amazon wants to lead the way. Yes, THAT Amazon. The online retail
giant is reportedly developing a handset – possibly called the Kindle Phone – with a
next-generation holographic display. Sources have painted a picture of an
Amazon smartphone that would not require special glasses to use and would
instead relay on a retina-tracker that would follow the movement of the user's
eyeballs and render images on the display as "three-dimensional at all
angles." As expected, Amazon isn't commenting on the rumors. No
comment is needed because anyone in the tech business who does not currently
offer their own smartphone would love to do so and is almost certainly looking
for the best way to do so before making their plans official. Amazon has
expanded its offerings of late and its Kindle Fire line of tablets has been
relatively successful in competing with the iPad by undercutting Apple’s
popular tablet on its price point. The concept of a three-dimensional
smartphone certainly seems cool, but one has to imagine that the normal bugs
that plague any new product would be magnified tenfold or more when a
revolutionary new idea like a 3-D smartphone is invovled. Oh, and there’s also
the fact that 3-D technology y isn't yet good enough to produce something that
functions well enough to be viewed as anything other than a gimmick. Throw in
app developers trying to create a bunch of
stereoscopic-capable software and the privacy issues that would result
from projecting images off a phone’s screen and into the air and the potential
for headaches is immense. Chalk this one up in the category of flashy ideas
that need more fine tuning….....
- The ax is being wielded with impunity at the Peacock. With
the current TV season coming to an end soon, NBC is delivering pink slips to
shows both new and old, sending them shuffling off into TV retirement to make
way for pilots of new shows that will likely fail as well. So far, five shows
have been guillotined. “Up All Night” is gone despite its ill-fated efforts to reinvent
itself as
a multi-camera comedy. Viewers never latched on to the concept of a
behind-the-scenes look at a struggling television series. Lorne Michaels’
presence as executive produce wasn’t enough to bolster the show and the
departure of star Christina Applegate
obviously played a part in the show ending after just two seasons. The most
predictable series failure, not just for NBC but for all of network television
as well, has to be the ass-hattedly stupid “Guys With Kids” from executive
producer Jimmy Fallon. An ill-conceived
attempt to bring the horrifically bad feature film “Daddy Day Care” to TV
failed miserably on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. and little help from lead-in
show “Animal Practice” (also canceled) didn’t help. “Guys With Kids” received a
limited four-episode back-order in November and averaged a 1.3 in the key 18-49
demo and just under 4 million total viewers. The cancellation of Whitney
Cummings’ self-titled series was equally unsurprising, as it flopped like a
beached marlin after taking over the time slot previously occupied by “Animal
Practice.” Its abbreviated run ended in March and no one even noticed. Another
showed that seemed genetically engineered to crash and burn after one season, “1600
Penn,” is also going away. Despite luring President Obama's former speechwriter
Jon Lovett to be part of its creative
team and enlisting the services of Josh Gad, fresh off his acclaimed run
in Broadway's Book of Mormon, the political comedy was a failure from
the start. It began with a mere 1.6 in the adult demo and 3.9 million viewers,
then went downhill to an average of 1.1 in the demo and less than 3 million
total viewers by the time it wrapped its 13-episode run in March. The last of
the canceled quintet is “Deception,” NBC’s shameless attempt to rip off the
success of ABC’s primetime soap opera “Revenge.” Instead of parlaying the drama
into ratings, “Deception” started strong but declined steadily throughout its
11-episode run and several of its stars have already found new projects………
No comments:
Post a Comment