In the wake of attacks against Hemet police officers, the City Council will consider a resolution next week to take emergency measures to "harden" city buildings against violence.
A council resolution cites law enforcement intelligence indicating that city buildings are the likely targets of attacks. A primary target is the Police Department headquarters, according to city documents.
"Intelligence reports indicate that the police facility is the likely focus of future criminal acts," Capt. Dave Brown wrote in a memo to council members. "Immediate action is required to harden these facilities."
No specific suspects have been named. But last month, authorities led raids on the Vagos outlaw motorcycle gang, which was described as an "extreme threat" to law enforcement. The group has a large presence in Hemet. Thirty people were arrested on charges that included possession of drugs and weapons.
In recent months, the attacks have involved booby traps set up at the headquarters of the Hemet-San Jacinto Gang Task Force, officials said. In December, a gas utility line was redirected to fill the offices with gas. Officials said a spark could have triggered a devastating explosion.
In February, a modified handgun was hidden by the gate to the task force office and rigged to fire. When a gang officer opened the gate, the weapon went off, narrowly missing him.
Then in early March, police said, a "dangerous" device was found near the unmarked car of a task force member. That was followed the arson of several city trucks on March 23.
The council will take up the matter Tuesday at its regularly scheduled meeting. If approved, city officials could immediately begin awarding non-bid contracts to fortify areas such as public lobbies in city buildings.
–Robert J. Lopez
Photo: Investigators at the scene where several Hemet city trucks were set ablaze last month. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
One of the universal signs of businesses going bankrupt is that they don’t know how much money is coming in or going out and their future projections miss the mark by double-digit percentages. The reason is obvious: Bumbling boobs are in charge, or in the case of LA, bobblehead bums.
During four straight quarters, city financial analysts missed their revenue estimates by more than 10 percent.
Even so, they warned over and over that this year was going to be bad and the next year worse and far worse in the years following.
But the man who likes to see himself as courageous and a bubbling brook of brand-new ideas went against their advice — and his own public and private statements — to reject the folly of a sweetened early retirement package that is only now nearly complete in sending 2,400 senior employees off on pensions averaging $55,000 while mostly still in their 50s.
The City Council was no better so nine months later we are mistreated to last week’s theatrical war over DWP rates — a spectacular tragi-comedy that seemed impossible to top — but somehow the magical world of Main Street did it this week.
On Monday, Out-of-Controller Wendy Greuel issued a proclamation so dark and dire it caused panic in the city and credit rating agencies to downgrade LA once again: “This is the most urgent fiscal crisis that the City has faced in recent
history, and it is imperative that you act now.”
The mayor acted quickly and pulled the strings on the windbag David Freeman to send the city reeling with his declaration that the DWP with a billion dollars in cash lying around in desks and drawers would not deliver the $73.5 million it promised: “We have deficits, not surplus…There is no surplus money to transfer at this time.”
That was Tuesday. The next day the mayor came out fighting and announced he was shutting down city government unless he got the massive DWP rate hikes he wants for purposes that are far from clear: “There are no easy decisions or simple ways to solve this budget
crisis. But as the CEO of this great city, it is
my responsibility to make these difficult but necessary decisions to
steer the city out of this crisis and onto solid financial ground.”
Of course, he was just blowing hot air like his order to lay off 1,000 city workers or was it 2,000 or 4,000 — only 33 have actually been axed two months later. It took only one minute Wednesday for the Council to show the mayor once again was trying to be an autocrat without authority when he ordered two-day-a-week furloughs for most of the workers who actually provide services directly to the public.
The only power he does have to act unilaterally is to bludgeon commissioners and bureaucrats into submission to his will, compromising their integrity and soiling their reputations — a power he and his minions are using mercilessly, which goes a long way toward explaining why the city is falling apart.
So Thursday morning, a slightly chastened mayor deigned to meet behind closed doors with Council leaders. It took two hours to find a fig leaf to cover his naked posturing — a $30 million windfall that arrived overnight we can only presume in a brown paper bag.
“To all of our surprise, we’ve gotten an increase in revenues of $30
million more from property tax than we expected…We might not be out of
cash after all,” Villaraigosa said Thursday, conditionally
surrendering to the will of the now renegade Council just two days after
announcing his government closure plan to keep the city from running
out of money.
With alarm bells still ringing across the city and attracting
national attention for the mayor’s campaign of self-promotion, Greuel
unashamedly backtracked insisting she was pleased that she was so
helpful in finding a solution to the crisis even if it meant reducing
the emergency reserve fund of 5 percent of revenue to next to nothing. “It
is never good to have to use that money,” Greuel said submissively
as she got in line in support of the mayor’s latest flip-flop position
as usual.
For his part, Council President Eric Garcetti was
ebullient as if he had just achieved his ambition to be mayor or
Congressman or who knows what.
“There’s
no scenario, unless something catastrophic happens, where we
are going to be in the red,” he said.
Not in the red? How else
do you explain the $200 million, or $300 million or whatever it is,
deficit 10 months into the fiscal year? Or the $500 million or whatever
it is next year or the $800 million or $1 billion deficits looming in
the years ahead?
Not to worry. Today, we are supposed to get
an update on the latest financial data but how useful can that be if
their numbers are always wrong.
Scientists develop environmentally friendly way to produce propylene oxide using silver nanoclusters
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have identified a new class of silver-based catalysts for the production of the industrially useful chemical propylene oxide that is both environmentally friendly and less expensive.
“The production of propylene oxide has a significant amount of by-products that are harmful to the environment, including chlorinated or peroxycarboxylic waste,” said chemist Stefan Vajda of Argonne’s Materials Science Division and Center for Nanoscale Materials. “We have identified nanoclusters of silver as a catalyst that produce this chemical with few by-products at low temperatures.”
Propylene oxide is commonly used in the creation of plastics and propylene glycols for paints, household detergents and automotive brake fluids.
The study is a result of a highly collaborative team that involved five Argonne Divisions and collaborators from the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin and from the University of Illinois in Chicago, including a collaboration between the experimental effort led by Stefan Vajda and the theoretical analysis led by materials chemist Larry Curtiss and nanoscientist Jeff Greeley.
Large silver particles have been used to produce propylene oxide from propylene, but have suffered from a low selectivity or low conversion to propylene oxide, creating a large amount of carbon dioxide. Vajda discovered that nanoscale clusters of silver, consisting of both three atoms as well as larger clusters of 3.5 nanometers in size, are highly active and selective catalysts for the production of propylene oxide.
Curtiss and Greeley then modeled the underlying mechanism behind why these ultrasmall nanoparticles of silver were so effective in creating propylene oxide. They discovered that the open shell electronic structure of the silver catalysts was the impetus behind the nanoclusters selectivity.
“Propylene oxide is a building block in the creation of several other industrially relevant chemicals, but the current methods of creating it are not efficient,” Curtiss said.
“This is basically a holy grail reaction,” remarked Greeley. “The work opens a new chapter in the field of silver as a catalyst for propene epoxidation,” added Curtiss.
###
Funding for this project was from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. A paper on this work will be published in the April 9 issue of the journal Science.
The Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers (NSRCs), premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale, supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge and Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit http://nano.energy.gov.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
Assuming we are on our way to a resolution of the China currency dispute, what caused the situation to improve so rapidly, when not long ago the rhetoric was getting quite heated? Dan Drezner sets out some possibilities, along with his view:
If China's shift is a real one, there appear to be three possible sources of change:
1) Domestic factors and actors convinced China's leadership that diminishing marginal returns for keeping the yuan fixed and masively undervalued had kicked in;
3) China responded to threats of unilateral U.S. action, such as being named as a currency manipulator, and/orcalls for a trade war;
These are not mutually exclusive arguments, and we might never know exactly what caused China's [change]. But for the record, I think (1) and (2) mattered a hell of a lot more than (3). That said, I can't rule out the possiblity that their antics helped scare China into action.
Thus, Drezner's view seems to be that the more strident unilateral approach of people such as Chuck Schumer and Paul Krugman was probably not the main reason for the recent positive developments. That sounds reasonable and may be right. Nevertheless, I wonder if this piece from the Economist offers some insights:
Mr Geithner also tried to shift the terms of the debate away from bilateral threats, by making clear that forthcoming multilateral meetings, especially those of the G20, are the right places to discuss China’s currency. And his willingness to stand up to domestic political pressure (130 congressmen had sent him a letter demanding immediate action), set a good example to policymakers in Beijing.
Note the part about Geithner's "willingness to stand up to domestic political pressure (130 congressmen had sent him a letter demanding immediate action)". I wonder if this was a kind of "good cop, bad cop" exercise, in which the Krugmans and Schumers (the bad cops) of the world argue strenuously for strong unilateral action; then, the good cop (Geithner) can step in and reassure everyone that 25% tariffs, etc., will never happen, and that cooler heads will prevail as long as China shows some progress. All along, Schumer and Krugman knew they were playing this role; that their proposals would not be followed; and that by making these demands they were setting the stage for a more moderate solution. Somebody had to play that role, and they were happy to be the ones to do it.
On the other hand, maybe I'm reading way too much into all of this. Perhaps they were simply arguing for what they thought was needed, and it was just that the moderate view won out.
Production of the 77 limited-production run of the Aston Martin One-77 is underway and while we still don’t know for sure how many Aston has sold (it was reportedly sold out last year), one customer in the Middle East has purchased ten units. Yes, you read that right – 10 units at a price of $1.5 million for each One-77.
Why so many? According to reports from European media, the Middle East buyer want to purchase 10 units for his family. However, he gave Aston Martin one major condition – they have to have all 10 units completed by September 2010 and even though the production schedule has been set, Aston will abide by his stipulation. Why? Well, he transferred a total of $17 million to Aston as an incentive.
Of course, by now a lot of you are wishing that you were a part of his family.
Refresher: Power for the Aston Martin One-77 comes from a 7.3L V12 producing more than 700-hp. The engine is mated to a new 6-speed gearbox that allows the One-77 to go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds with a top speed of over 200 mph. Only 77 units of the One-77 will be made.
“Injury Update: Andrew Bynum” is a title you’ll likely see a few more times before the regular season is over.
The latest version, from Denver, found Bynum saying that he might not risk returning to action before the playoffs begin on his still tender left Achilles, saying that playing too early could bring “another possibility to go back a couple steps.”
Bynum did not, however, rule out returning for the final two regular season contests on April 13 and 14 against Sacramento and the L.A. Clippers.
“I told both Andrew and Kobe that it’s more important that they go into the playoffs with a good set of legs, and we’re really positive about that,” said Phil Jackson. “Andrew coming back in the last two games was just not feasible, it’s better to rest him until the playoffs start or even into the playoffs before he plays.”
While Bynum’s initial comments were in line with Jackson’s statement, the 22-year-old center went on to say that he definitely planned on playing in L.A.’s first playoff game, no matter what.
“I’m going to play in the first playoff game,” he said. “Have to.”
Bynum Learning Spanish
Even while being interviewed about his potential return to action, Bynum had his laptop resting on his knees and special headphones around his neck. They weren’t there, however, to listen to music or watch movies, but instead to learn Spanish. Bynum, both smart and curious (it’s rare that you’ll find him without a book), is on a mission to learn Spanish, having purchased Rosetta Stone’s Spanish package.
Bynum said that living in Southern California is an impetus towards learning the language, in addition to his general desire to learn new things.
Are American investors freaked out about Greece or not?
Yes. Well, no.
Well, it depends on what time of day it is.
As observed by Mike O’Rourke this evening, US markets rallied today precisely when they turned off the machines in London at 11:30 AM ET, temporarily putting Europe’s Greek question to bed.
It seems we’re freaked out about Greece, but then when Europe is out of site, it’s out of mind as well.
Some think animals who live without oxygen are proof of alien existence, but how about little creatures who can be dried out, frozen, and boiled only to be resurrected with a few drops of water? Are those our next overlords? More »
Humanity’s hallowed words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are to be removed from birth certificates in the UK in order to permit homosexual couples to be named as ‘parents’ of surrogate children. This means that the true, biological parents will no longer be identified on the documents that provide the legal record of a child’s birth. That is because same-sex couples are now considered the legal parents of children born through surrogacy or IVF treatment, a move applauded by the gay rights activists who have been fighting for the change.
To falsify birth records knowingly is an evil that has been reached by the small increments of skewed thinking by the social engineers trying to make a place for same sex couples where there is no place. Instead they have displaced altogether the rightful parents. Even lawyers and fertility experts are questioning this development because the provision can be used mischievously to exclude a father with whom the mother is angry. The government issued birth certificate is no longer an objective document with a statement of biological fact but a contested document shaped by political players and the contemporary needs of homosexual adults clamouring for their rights above all others’ rights.
The homosexual view is that the reality of homosexuals’ family lives are being recognised at last, and that male and female same-sex couples no longer have to go through the hard work of an adoption procedure. The law means that from next week, two men who have a child by a surrogate mother will be able to apply to a family court for an order making them the legal parents. The court will rule on whether they are fit to bring up the child. In such a case an original birth certificate naming the mother will exist at the start, but then be replaced by a new document naming the two men as parents if the judge grants a parental order. Theoretically the child will be able to trace the original birth certificate once he or she turns 18, unless the needs of the adult homosexuals has changed again by then and barred them from that, as well.
The rules governing birth certificates have been strictly upheld since they were established in 1837 so a change of this magnitude is unprecedented. Family lawyers said the new rule allowing two parents of the same sex to appear on birth certificates was a worry. In their eagerness to be fair to homosexuals the social engineers have perpetrated a great injustice on the established order of mothers, fathers, and children. And they are not finished yet with their work. With a sense of foreboding I wonder what they will come up with next?
According to a report by Wheels of The New York Times, the Golf R hatchback is still in question for the U.S. market.
The performance-oriented Golf R is “still up in the air,” said Volkswagen spokesman Steve Keyes. “We’d love to have it, but it’s a question now of euros versus dollars,” Keyes said.
Yes – we’re really disappointed.
Refresher: The 2010 Volkswagen Golf R is powered by a 2.0L TSI direct-injected and turbocharged 4-cylinder making 266-hp and 258 lb-ft of torque. Mated to a DSG dual-clutch (6-speed manual as standard), the Golf R goes from 0-62 mph in 5.5 seconds with a top speed that is electronically-governed at 155 mph.
When things change, especially if they change dramatically, we often yield to the temptation to hail this alteration as permanent. That change is particularly obvious when we regard our technology. But things that change, sometimes change back, or at least alter further, in ways we can’t anticipate.
You may recall, a few weeks back, that the Cleveland Plain Dealer revealed that a regular commenter on the site was actually a local judge (who had recently threatened to jail a Plain Dealer reporter for not giving up his source on a story). While revealing the real identity of an anonymous commenter seems pretty sleazy, we did wonder about the boundaries for a news organization. If it’s newsworthy who an anonymous commenter is, then at what point should a publication reveal that info? A judge making snide comments about a case she’s involved with may, in fact, be newsworthy, and part of an investigative report might reveal that info. So could a newspaper claim that revealing who made the comments was newsworthy?
What’s interesting is that she uses multiple comments from articles and columns written in the Plain Dealer about this debate after she was revealed. I’m not sure that’s compelling. The columnists and reporters may have their own opinions separate from that of the newspaper itself. However, the defamation claims may have a bit more heft to them, as she claims that many of the statements made by the Plain Dealer were false and not verified. Still, $50 million seems extreme no matter how you look at it.
LAPD is not exempt from budget cuts; officers increasingly deskbound as city cuts civilian workforce
Drastic cuts to the LAPD civilian workforce are forcing LAPD officers to increasingly fill civilian jobs instead of patrolling the city’s streets and neighborhoods, the president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League said today. These widespread cuts – in combination with forced time off for overtime worked – are resulting in significantly reduced police deployments throughout the city that threaten to create a public safety crisis this summer. "It is a myth that the LAPD has been exempt from budget cuts due to the city’s financial crisis," said Paul M. Weber. "The impacts are very real, as officers are forced to stay at home because of overtime concerns and fill in for furloughed civilians or vacant civilian jobs. City officials need to carefully consider the impacts of budget cuts and realize the consequences to public safety of any actions that increase police response time and decrease patrols in our city." Press Release
On March 16, the Australian Education Union released two new reports which revealed the extent of the underfunding of TAFE and the consequences for thousands of people who are missing out on training and education as a result.
The reports are a national survey of over 2,600 TAFE teachers and managers, and a research paper prepared by the Centre for the Economics of Education and Training (CEET) at Monash University.
The “State of our TAFEs Survey” revealed that in NSW:
– 76 per cent of teachers and managers said their TAFE did not have enough resources to meet industry needs, particularly in the local community; – 58 per cent of teachers and managers said they had been forced to turn away students in the last two years; – 46 per cent said there were student waiting lists in their TAFE; – 62.4 per cent responded that the overall budget for their department had decreased in the last two years; and – 88.5 per cent believed that their workload had increased since the start of 2008.
Teachers and managers nominated the main industry areas in NSW from which students were turned away as: engineering and related technologies (15.9 per cent), information technology (15.7 per cent), education (15.1 per cent), and language, literacy and numeracy (12.2 per cent).
According to the Australian Education Union, this survey reveals that TAFEs are unable to meet the growing demand from students or industry because they are so starved of funds. Mr Angelo Gavrielatos, President of the AEU, said “Students are being turned away or forced to wait in trade areas like engineering where there are critical national skills shortages.”
The CEET report revealed that in NSW, real recurrent government expenditure per hour of public vocational education and training had declined by 15.7 per cent since 2003. Both the State and Federal Governments need to invest more in TAFE to ensure that the NSW public is able to access quality vocational educating and training.
TAFE’s funding would have been $624 million (or 17 per cent) higher in 2008 than it actually was if both the spending per hour and its share of the money allocated by governments had been maintained at 2003 levels. The report also showed that to reach the ambitious COAG targets set for increased qualifications, an additional $200 million must be spent on average every year between 2009 and 2020.
Mr Gavrielatos continued, “TAFE is recognised as one of the highest quality providers of training and education anywhere in the world and our prosperity as a nation is directly linked to it. There will be no education revolution in Australia unless we invest substantially more in TAFE.”
As the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has pointed out, some of the things that will not be possible without TAFE in the next decade include the national broadband network, cleaner power generation, hybrid and electric vehicles, more efficient houses and buildings and capturing carbon. It is a worthy goal to have the best-trained and educated workforce in the world. But only by investing in our high-quality TAFEs can we achieve it.
Bessemer, Mich. – The Tea Party Express bus caravan barreled into the Wolverine State late Thursday with a single purpose in mind: to unseat Rep. Bart Stupak for his “betrayal” in voting for President Obama’s health care legislation.
The tea party group, which is in the middle of a 42-city cross-country bus tour, has launched an aggressive ad campaign targeting Stupak – with the group’s political action committee, Our Country Deserves Better, pledging $250,000 in radio and T.V. ads aimed at ousting him from office.
Stupak, a pro-life Democrat representing Michigan’s 1st congressional district, was roundly criticized by the tea party movement and other conservative groups when he voted in favor of Obama’s health care legislation last month. Stupak and other Democrats ultimately backed the overhaul after objecting to abortion language in the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., became the Tea Party Express’ primary target when the grassroots group launched its bus tour two weeks ago from Reid’s hometown of Searchlight. Organizers say Stupak ranks a close second on their list of incumbent lawmakers whom they’d like to see leave office.
“Congressman Bart Stupak, you betrayed our Constitution,” reads the announcer in the group’s 30-second television ad. “You sold us out on the health-care vote. And now it’s time for you to pay the political price. Join the Tea Party Express as we send Bart Stupak packing for early retirement.”
The Tea Party Express, which claims it does not campaign on “social issues,” said its opposition to Stupak is based more on his “failure to uphold principle” than on policy.
“He said he was going to stand on his principles and then he caved in,” said Sal Russo, chief strategist of the Tea Party Express. “This isn’t so much about abortion than it is about breaking faith with what he promised.”
Stupak voted for the health care legislation after Obama pledged to sign an executive order upholding the ban on federal funding of abortions. Obama signed the order March 24, but some conservative groups, like the Tea Party Express, say they are skeptical of its effectiveness.
The bus caravan rolled into Bessemer for a rally late Thursday, greeting a crowd of 350 activists gathered outside a Veterans of Foreign War post – one holding a sign reading “Let’s Stick it to Stupak.”
About 20 Stupak supporters, meanwhile, staged a counter protest across the street from the rally, carrying signs like “Bart, You Betcha” and “Progressives for Stupak” and chanting “We love Bart!”
“He’s been a good representative for us and he’s stood by his constituents,” Dan Obradovich of Wakefield, Mich., a Stupak supporter, told FoxNews.com. “If the Republicans don’t like moderate Democrats than where are they? Where is their alternative plan for health care?”
The Tea Party Express is expected to hold 11 rallies in Michigan over the next few days – more than any other state in its cross-country tour — and concludes in Washington, D.C., on April 15, Tax Day.
Glenn Beck Show: Big Labor’s Unfunded Pensions Will Bankrupt America
Last week, National Right to Work President Mark Mix appeared on Glenn Beck with guest host Judge Andrew Napolitano to discuss the looming fiscal threat of government sector unions’ under-funded pension plans.
As Mix notes, even FDR understood the dangers of giving union bosses monopoly bargaining power at the expense of public sector workers and the taxpayers. Cities like Vallejo, California, have even declared bankruptcy as a result of their budget nightmares.
Unfortunately, union bigwigs are likely to exploit states’ and cities’ fiscal woes by lobbying for expansions of their power. One toxic example is the Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, which would impose union boss control on all first responders across the country by federal fiat.
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Noise in images is generally held to be a bad thing, but engineers from Princeton University have used a nonlinear material to steal energy from image noise to reveal hidden or obscured objects. The engineers see the technology as potentially paving the way for improvements to radar systems, sonograms and stenography offering the possibility of allowing pilots to see through fog and doctors to look inside the human body without surgery..
A 25-year-old man fatally shot his 1-year-old son and a woman Thursday morning at an Alhambra home and then took his own life, authorities said.
Alhambra police said that, based on the crime scene, they believe the deaths were the result of a double-murder suicide.
Police officers had received a call of a possible suicide at the home in the 800 block of South Sierra Vista Avenue about 4:30 a.m. When officers entered the home, they found three bodies, Alhambra police Lt. Edith Lopez said.
Lopez said several other family members were inside the four-bedroom house at the time of the shooting, but they were unharmed. They alerted authorities to the shooting.
Coroner’s officials identified the apparent gunman as Angel Berrios Jr. The victims were Natasha Katherine Cobian, 23, and 1-year-old Angel Joseph Berrios.
When things change, especially if they change dramatically, we often yield to the temptation to hail this alteration as permanent. That change is particularly obvious when we regard our technology. But things that change, sometimes change back, or at least alter further, in ways we can’t anticipate. 