L A City Council Votes to Raise Wages to $15.00 an Hour

This wasn't a snow ball interview but it sure was a softball interview- - and it was the viewing audience that got snowed - in this Bob Sheefer interview of Jeb Bush

Today the LA City Council voted 13 to 1 to raise the minimum wage to fifteen dollars, and there are no exceptions.  There was talk about perhaps exceptions for teenagers or for workers in non profit organizations.  There was an LA business group that was supporting a thirteen percent raise but they withdrew their support when it was raised to fifteen sometime last September.  The LA City Council has to vote one more time to make it official because the first vote wasn’t unanimous.  But then Mayor Garsetti will sign the bill into law.   Two of the three study groups they had said the raise would do more good than harm, but not the third.  The raise will be implemented gradually over the next several years.  Some states - not California have actually passed a law saying that a municipality may not raise the minimum wage on its own.

According to Bill Carol of KFI – a tsunami could strike the southern California area at any time along our coasts, and people are advised that whenever there is an earthquake on the beach, you aren’t as safe as you think but to seek higher ground.  They say that a seven or eight point earthquake could generate a six or seven foot wave at full strength.  The type of faults off our shores are the vertical upward thrust faults and not the strike slip type like the San Andreas fault is.  Because there is a sharp kink in the San Andreas fault there is a “log jam of little faults” trying to relieve the pressure and “get past” the slippage of the big fault.  It is funny the things you learn you suddenly learn were dangers in Southern California.

On Monday we all were introduced to Kateland Jennings on the “Vanity Fair” cover.  They say she looks like Jessica Lang.  Apparently all of the reviews of the “coming out” are positive, but of course this is LA where stories like this assume importance.  Rush Limbaugh mentioned (not without a sympathetic ear in me) that it seems we are making weird behavior to  be the Norm, and also marginalizing traditional, normal behavior to be somehow “no longer the Norm – or worse yet, uninformed and bigoted.   Of course what we really want to know is whether Bruce Jenner would date Kateland Jenner if he met her on the street.  Bill Carol let it slip that this whole trans-gender thing may be just a horrible publicity stunt and that he / she will switch back as soon as all the controversy has died down and the point has been made.

Yesterday apparently the US Senate passed the Freedom Bill which paves the way for extending the Patriot Act which has been changed in only minor cosmetic ways.  It’s pointed out that most likely – government surveillance hasn’t been slowed down or stopped for so much as a second.  President Obama of course is going to sign the bill because he is as big a fan of this mass surveillance as anyone.  The author of the Patriot Act himself never foresaw that the measure would be taken liberties with in the way that it has.  Of course I had the feeling back last week and the week before that virtually nothing could be done to stop the extension of the Patriot Act no matter how momentarily bleak the prospect for its extension once looked.

Some laws are just too liberal for me.  I think this whole trans-sexual stuff being peddled off on school children who have young, impressionable minds- - is dangerous and damaging to the psyches of the children.  This whole idea of boys claiming they’re really girls just so they can shower with then in gym is a little sick.  Of course apparently a whole generation of young people, the milenials - - have been brainwashed that the gay lifestyle is OK.  Now California is reviving the moter-voter law.  I am unsure about this one since I don’t want voter registration to be some so “automatic” that you don’t even have to think about it.  I believe registering to Vote should be a specific and deliberate mental act- - a major decision of one’s life.   Also California is passing more welfare programs for illegal immigrants.  I don’t see why these illegals should be entitled to one penny with so many people who are American citizens being squeezed for cash by the cutbacks that took place in this state in 2008 and we still haven’t recovered from.  I see no reason on God’s green earth why illegal aliens should receive free college tuition. 

There is a guy named Bill Hicks who was a left wing Comedian who died of cancer in 1994 who read this poetry which was spoken in the style which Jim Morrison used to read poetry.   This guy is an interesting fellow.  He reminds me of a composite of Mike Meloy, John Fugelsang, Jim Morrison, and most of all George Carlen.  Two of these people are dead.  I also watched his comedy bit on the Kennedy assassination, and also with another comedian.  He died at age 32 on February 26^th 1994 a date I remember because I started a new tape drinking white wine before noon.  I ranted about two topics in particular.  Mal Evans reminds me that February 25th fell on a Friday so it was Saturday the guy died.   I have wondered whether I've had "contact with him on the other side" and didn't know it.  Mal Evans would not answer that question, but I think he knows the answer.  He also said the stuff I was thinking about writing down and posting was classified information.  (I'm not sure how something which may not even exist can be classified)  Bill Hicks was born in the south on December 16th 1961 and was a maverick from the git go.  I'm not sure what even impelled one of the authors of Washington's blog to even bring up his name yesterday.

If we had to summarize the sickness of our economy and society, we could start by noting that liberation is unprofitable, and whatever is not profitable to vested interests is marginalized, outlawed, proscribed or ridiculed. Examples of this abound.

Liberation from digital communication servitude is not profitable. Don’t have a smart phone on 18 hours a day, every day? Loser! Luddite! Liberation from digital communication servitude is not profitable, therefore it is ridiculed.

Liberation from debt is not profitable.Only the wealthy can afford to buy a vehicle without debt, a home without debt or a university education without debt. For everyone else, liberation from debt is not an option, because debt is highly profitable to our financial Overlords and the politicos they buy/own.

Liberation from the staged, soap-opera political drama of elections is not profitable.Election advertising generates staggering profits for media companies, and the ceaseless nurturing of fear, resentment and indignation fuels acceptance of centralized power and control.

Liberation from the tyranny of central banks is not profitable. Our entire financial system is built on the simple dynamic that everyone is forced to use money issued by the central bank (Federal Reserve) to its member banks and their financier cronies.  Money that is decentralized and not issued by central banks is not profitable.

Common-sense, minimal regulations are not profitable. Regulations feed government fiefdoms and the revolving-door spoils system between the state and private industry, and erect formidable barriers to new competitors. As a result, over-regulation is immensely profitable.

Regulation Run Amok—And How to Fight Back

The ability to think independently is not profitable. The control mechanisms that keep the various classes of serfs in permanent servitude all depend on a dumbed-down populace that has been stripped of the ability to think independently by propaganda, group-think, medications, the education industry and lifelong dependency on the state.