California Official’s $800,000 Salary in City of 38,000 Triggers Protests

Hundreds of residents of one of the poorest municipalities in Los Angeles County shouted in protest last night as tensions rose over a report that the city’s manager earns an annual salary of almost $800,000.

An overflow crowd packed a City Council meeting in Bell, a mostly Hispanic city of 38,000 about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles, to call for the resignation of Mayor Oscar Hernandez and other city officials. Residents left standing outside the chamber banged on the doors and shouted “fuera,” or “get out” in Spanish.

It was the first council meeting since the Los Angeles Times reported July 15 that Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo earns $787,637 — with annual 12 percent raises — and that Bell pays its police chief $457,000, more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck makes in a city of 3.8 million people. Bell council members earn almost $100,000 for part-time work. (Read more from bloomberg.com)

Red-Light Cameras Spark Debate in Texas Cities

“There is a backlash, for sure,” said state Rep. Solomon Ortiz Jr., D-Corpus Christi, who co-sponsored the anti-camera push. “City budgeters are counting on these fines as a revenue stream and simply using the argument of safety as cover.”

Safety claims

That sentiment clashes with the opinion of many engineers and city officials who say the cameras have, unequivocally, improved intersection safety.

The cameras capture images, and sometimes video, of drivers running red lights. The images are vetted by the camera company and, ultimately, by police. Most Texas cities charge civil fines of between $75 and $100 per violation. More studies than not suggest the cameras work, at least to some degree.

“They’ve performed much better than I ever imagined,” said Elizabeth Ramirez, chief traffic engineer for Dallas. The city has witnessed declines in red-light accidents at nearly every one of its 59 camera-equipped intersections since the first wave launched in January 2007, she said.

While camera critics dispute the safety data, the money generated has raised even more questions and intrigue, especially as collections have pushed into the tens of millions. A 2007 state law requires cities to set aside half of all profits to help fund regional trauma care centers. Most cities use their share for traffic safety and enforcement efforts.

Houston police Sgt. Michael Muench, who oversees that city’s red-light camera program, said his department has plowed all revenues into crash-scene investigation equipment, extra traffic patrols, radar guns and other traffic-related improvements. “So far, it’s working,” Muench said. Critics point to large disparities in the profits cities generate as evidence that some are just out to make a buck.

“In College Station, cameras were not put at the most dangerous intersections, but the most profitable ones,” said Jim Ash, a sales representative who began the petition drive to take down the cameras there. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

US says Wikileaks could ‘threaten national security’

The US has condemned as “irresponsible” the leak of 90,000 classified military records, saying their publication could threaten national security.

The documents released by the Wikileaks website include details of killings of Afghan civilians unreported until now.

The records also show Nato concerns that Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency is helping the Taliban in Afghanistan, an accusation Islamabad has denied.

The Pentagon said it might take weeks to ascertain what damage had been done. (Read more from www.bbc.co.uk)

The Real U.S. Government

The Washington Post’s Dana Priest demonstrates once again why she’s easily one of the best investigative journalists in the nation — if not the best — with the publication of Part I of her series, co-written with William Arkin, detailing the sprawling, unaccountable, inexorably growing secret U.S. Government: what the article calls “Top Secret America.” To the extent the series receives much substantive attention (and I doubt it will), the focus will likely be on the bureaucratic problems it documents: the massive redundancies, overlap, waste, and inefficiencies which plague this “hidden world, growing beyond control” — as though everything would better if Top Secret America just functioned a bit more effectively. But the far more significant fact so compellingly illustrated by this first installment is the one I described last week when writing about the Obama administration’s escalating war on whistle blowers:

Most of what the U.S. Government does of any significance — literally — occurs behind a vast wall of secrecy, completely unknown to the citizenry. . . . Secrecy is the religion of the political class, and the prime enabler of its corruption. That’s why whistle blowers are among the most hated heretics. They’re one of the very few classes of people able to shed a small amount of light on what actually takes place.

(Read more from salon.com)

On Free Immigration and Forced Integration

This is a wonderful essay I recently discovered by Hans Hermann Hoppe. It demonstrates the anarcho-capitalist point of view.

If the government excludes a person while even one domestic resident wants to admit this very person onto his property, the result is forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist under private property anarchism). Furthermore, if the government admits a person while there is not even one domestic resident who wants to have this person on his property, the result is forced integration (also non-existent under private property anarchism).

Examining Black Loyalty to Democrats

This video offers a strongly dissenting view of the relationship between Democrats and black people. The most interesting part to me comes at 14:15 when he talks about the 3/5th clause of the Constitution.

Here is the text of article 1 section 2 paragraph 3:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Like the narrator of this video, I don’t see this as a statement about the value of human life.

Without independently verifying the claims in the video, here are some of them:
* KKK founded by Democratic Party.
* Martin Luther King was a Republican.
* History is being rewritten. “Democrat” being replaced by “conservative” in historical accounts.
* Truman (D) ended discrimination in public schools on paper for political reasons.
* Eisenhower (R) actually desegregated schools.
* Kennedys helped MLK get out of jail to break black support for Republicans.
* Woodrow Wilson (D) segregated military, hosted KKK film at White House.
* Teddy Roosevelt’s (R) friend Booker T. Washington.
* 3/5 clause hurt slave owners, because they gave them less representation.

Ron Paul to Ben Bernanke: It’s not fair to destroy the dollar and cheat responsible savers!

* Recent government spending = recent increase in debt = 3.7 trillion dollars = $400k per unemployed person

* Ron Paul hopes some day government becomes willing to speak with the free market economists who’ve been right over and over and over.

* Questioning about morality of inflation.

* Questioning about excess reserves.

* Businessmen need to be able to project their costs.