LOS ANGELES DOES NOT REFLECT AMERICA

It's a truism that will come as a surprise to few.

Los Angeles doesn't really reflect the rest of America. Sure, this is the United States. We are Americans (most of us, anyway). And L.A. is Hollywood's perpetual stand-in for Anytown, U.S.A.

But personal-finance website WalletHub confirmed that Los Angeles is in a league of its own compared with the rest of the nation. The site looked at metrics such as age, gender, income, household demographics and housing tenure to determine "2015's Metro Areas That Most and Least Resemble the U.S."

In housing demographics, which include how long people have lived in their homes, median home price and vacancy rate, we ranked a sad 379th — almost the bottom.

But you already know about the city's nation-topping housing crisis.

Among big metro areas, L.A. still ranked fairly low — 49th out of 166. A WalletHub spokeswoman broke out some other data for L.A:

330th – Race

152nd – Household Makeup

295th – % of Population with Health Insurance Coverage Housing

380th – Tenure (Renter-to-Owner Ratio)

105th – Household Income

144th – Wealth Gap

311th – % of Households Receiving Food Stamps

200th – Educational Attainment

This is a city where minorities outnumber whites and the gap between rich and poor is huge. But some of the stats are startling. The home of Caltech, considered by some to be the best university in the world, is 200th in educational attainment?

We need to elevate our game.

The city that most reflects America, by the way, is Indianapolis. 

Via: LA Weekly

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[VIDEO] Trump Holds Presser with Family Members of People Killed by Illegal Immigrants

Donald Trump held a press conference in Los Angeles tonight, joined by family members of individuals killed by illegal immigrants. Trump met with them in private earlier today before holding the presser.

Trump started things out by again insisting that his remarks about immigrants were absolutely on-point, saying that Mexico is deliberately sending less than its best into the United States.

He touted how he’s the only candidate talking about this, dismissed the “very few” protesters gathered nearby to stand against up, and ripped the media for being “dishonest” in its coverage of him.

Trump then handed things over to the aforementioned family members to share their personal, heartfelt stories and why they’re standing with Trump on this issue.

Via: Mediaite

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L.A. Is Not Designed to Work

The City of Los Angeles is a sprawling enterprise with 32,000 employees and an annual budget of $8.6 billion. But according to Rick Cole, the City’s former Deputy Mayor for Budget and Innovation, “LA is not designed to work.”

Our City’s operations are relatively simple compared to Los Angeles County and other large cities such as New York and Chicago.  City Hall is not responsible for education, healthcare and hospitals, social services and welfare, and criminal justice and jails, all open ended services that are burdened by rivers of red ink, adverse court decisions, and controversial political and social issues that do not have simple solutions.

City Hall is responsible for every day services such as public safety (police and fire); our streets and sidewalks; our parks and libraries; and trash collection, wastewater, sewers, and stormwater.  It is also responsible for planning, zoning, building and safety, and the enforcement of the related rules and regulations.

But Angelenos are not happy campers.

Our streets are a mess, but there is no well thought out plan to repair and maintain our roadways.  Our sidewalks are subject to a $1.4 billion consent decree, but residential sidewalks are last in line to receive funds.  Recreation and Parks’ programs for our youth and seniors have been eviscerated while its putrid public restrooms are a constant source of ridicule.  And our neighborhoods are under siege by real estate developers and traffic congestion.

The City’s finances are also in shambles.  This year, the budget was balanced by diverting $150 million from the Reserve Fund despite the fact that revenues increased by $150 million more than projected.  The City has long term obligations of over $25 billion for its unfunded pension liabilities, deferred maintenance on its infrastructure, and existing long term debt.  But there is no long term plan to balance the budget, fund our pension plans, and repair our streets and sidewalks.

Underlying the chaos at City Hall is the reality that it is impossible to hold any of our elected officials accountable for the failure of City Hall to balance its books and provide adequate services to its constituents.  According to the well respected and occasionally controversial Cole (photo right), the City charter was designed to prevent corruption and the abuse of power.  But today, this has resulted in an inefficient government because we are unable to hold our individual elected officials accountable for their collective failures.

Unfortunately, our City is dominated by special interests, whether they are the campaign funding union leaders that represent our City’s workers or the generous real estate developers who have complete disregard for our residential neighborhoods.

If Los Angeles wants to be a “world class” city, it cannot continue with the status quo.  It cannot continue to kick the budget can down the road and ignore the Structural Deficit, inefficient operations, our infrastructure, and the underfunded pension plans.  It can no longer afford to thumb its nose at investors and employers if it wants its economy to flourish through the creation of good jobs.  It can no longer allow unfettered development that impinges on our quality of life.

Change and reform that are designed to make our City work are politically risky with the real possibility of failure.  It may also alienate the special interests who finance political campaigns.  But this is the challenge that our leaders must face if they want to win the hearts, minds, and wallets of the voters.

Is Back to Basics Mayor Eric Garcetti willing to be that leader?

 Originally posted on CityWatch LA.

Via: California Political Review

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American Workers Subsidizing Unions With Tax Dollars

In St. Charles, IL, a teacher is paid $141,105 not to teach. In Philadelphia, “ghost employees” who don’t do work for the state collect benefits from the state. In Kalamazoo, MI a former teacher is collecting a government pension of $85,903 a year even though he didn’t teach his last 14 years, but instead worked as a union employee.

Called “release time,” or “official time” at the federal level, it’s a practice that allows public employees to conduct union business during working hours without loss of pay. These activities include negotiating contracts, lobbying, processing grievances, and attending union meetings and conferences.

According to Trey Kovacs, a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, this racket has cost the federal government about $1 billion since 1998. Between 2008 and 2011, the fraud has increased from 2.9 million hours at a cost of $121 million to 3.4 million hours at a cost of $155 million.

School boards, which frequently consist of members bought and paid for by the teachers unions, are particularly guilty of this crime against the taxpayer. In CA, where the California Teachers Association wields great power, the situation is particularly egregious. Typically this scam is written into collective bargaining contracts and comes in different flavors. Sometimes the school district will pay for the cost of a sub if the teacher/union employee needs to do work for the union. In Los Angeles, page 6 of the teacher contract states that the United Teachers of Los Angeles “may request the release of designated employees from their regular duties with no loss of pay for the purpose of attending to UTLA matters, with the expense of the substitute or replacement to be borne by UTLA.”

Sounds fair, right? But it’s not.

The substitute invariably makes a lot less than the teacher/union employee and the taxpayer is sucking up the difference in pay. The teacher is also racking up pension time, (which is taxpayer-subsidized), while doing union work. And of course the students lose out by having frequent subs, who often are nothing more than placeholders.

In other districts, the union gets a completely free pass. Page 15 of Orange County’s Fountain Valley School District contract reads, “The Association (union) President or designee may utilize one (1) day per week for Association business. The District shall bear the cost of the substitutes.” So a classroom teacher of 15 years, who doubles as union president, makes an$89,731 yearly salary, or $485 a day. The taxpayer is also paying $100 a day for a sub which brings the total to $585 for one day of union business per week. Repeated over the 38 week teaching year, the taxpayer is on the hook for $22,230. And that amount does not include the thousands of dollars the employer (ultimately the taxpayer) has to pay for contributions to the teacher/union leader’s retirement fund, health benefits, unemployment insurance and workers compensation.

With over a thousand school districts in the state doing business like Los Angeles and Fountain Valley, we are talking about serious larceny.

Via: California Political Review

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Sotomayor's 4th Amendment Time Bomb

A painfully slim 5 – 4 ruling this week by the Supreme Court in City of Los Angeles v. Patel is being greeted by many privacy advocates almost with the ebullience of Gene Kelly’s heel-clicking dance in Singin’ in the Rain.

The court struck down a Los Angeles ordinance that allowed police officers to inspect hotel guest registries for any or even no reason, and without a warrant. The ruling that the Fourth Amendment applies to businesses and that statutes may be declared unconstitutional on their face is consistent with principles as old as, and even older than, the Constitution.

Privacy advocates seem to be suffering from a bit of Stockholm Syndrome. Joyful about the court’s barely holding the line on two issues, most have yet to acknowledge how Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s majority opinion is also a blueprint for a major power grab for the administrative police state.

What’s lost in the celebration is that Justice Sotomayor’s majority opinion recommends the use of judge-less “administrative subpoenas” for these searches. That will shift costs and burdens of proof from government onto unwitting or intimidated small business owners under judicial standards that give nearly complete deference to the government, and with no need to show probable cause for searches. Her majority opinion even seems to suggest that police departments may be given power to approve their own searches using administrative subpoenas instead of going to judges to obtain warrants.

Sotomayor’s opinion starts out promisingly well. She refers to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling below that “’[t]he business records covered by [the city ordinance] are the hotel’s private property’ and the hotel therefore ‘has the right to exclude others from prying into the[ir] contents.’” She then notes that “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by [a] judge or magistrate . . . are per se unreasonable . . . subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Those time-honored exceptions include consent of the property owner, or “exigent,” meaning “emergency,” circumstances.

Justice Sotomayor’s promising start then goes south with dicta promoting the use of “administrative subpoenas,” which are issued by bureaucrats, not judges, and absent probable cause required by the Fourth Amendment. Even if small business owners are not intimidated or know they can obtain hearings to suppress these search demands, that is, if they can afford going to court, the judicial standard of deference to these judge-less warrants makes it nearly impossible for citizens or businesses to block such searches.

 Via: American Thinker

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California: 5 Ways to Outsmart LA Traffic

The good news about Los Angeles is that you'll never get bored. With everything from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood to the picturesque coastline, the City of Angels rarely disappoints. The downside of a city with such allure is that millions are drawn to it, resulting in major traffic snarls. However, with a little luck, a little planning and a little technology, you might be able to beat the gridlock. 

Travel at Off-Peak Times:

While nothing in life is guaranteed, you can bet L.A. freeways are going to be jammed during the morning and evening rush hours. With Los Angeles County’s population topping 10 million, lots of people are heading to work between 7 and 9 a.m., and the same workers drive home in the late afternoon. If you set your own hours, if you're traveling for pleasure or if you're simply running errands, you can choose to avoid peak-impact times. Tinker with your departure times if you work a more traditional 9-to-5 job to see if there are any seams in the traffic. If you normally leave for work at 8 a.m., try 7:45 or 8:15 a.m. instead to see if the traffic flow is better.

 Learn the Most Congested Routes: 

One of the best ways to avoid traffic is to know where it is most likely to be and to plan a route around it. Los Angeles is filled with heavily traveled segments, and learning the times and places where congestion is likely to occur is critical to avoiding it. The 405, between the 105 Freeway and the Getty Museum, is considered the nation's most congested route. Another heavily traveled stretch is the 10 Freeway heading west to the beach on a beautiful day. If you need to go in that direction, know that it will be packed and search for alternative options, such as Venice Boulevard. The Southland’s freeway system is extensive, but there are also lots of ways to get around without using it. Many surface streets are well known to Angelenos as being great alternatives to sitting on bumper-to-bumper freeways.

Via: National Review

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Pelosi-Obama Cold Front Moving Into California

On Friday, one of the Democratic Party’s most generous supporters may view up close what “climate change” looks like. That's when President Obama and Nancy Pelosi will be among those gathered at his home near San Francisco in support of House Democrats.

By anyone’s definition, putting Obama and Pelosi together under one roof to sing House Democrats’ praises a week after a messy intraparty rift over trade policy should be interesting.

Tom Steyer, a billionaire former hedge fund founder whose passion is combating climate change, is scheduled along with wife Kat Taylor to host a top-dollar fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at their home, where the president and the minority leader have replenished Democratic coffers many times before. 

But on Tuesday, it was unclear whether the president and the liberal congresswoman from San Francisco were on speaking terms. 

Scrambling to rescue his administration’s Asia-focused trade agenda, which Pelosi’s opposition helped torpedo on June 12, Obama spoke by phone several times with House Speaker John Boehner on Monday, but by Tuesday he had not touched base with Pelosi, according to White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.  

“President Obama and Leader Pelosi have demonstrated that they have a strong enough personal and professional relationship to withstand a difference even on an important issue like this,” Earnest said.

Pelosi, in an interview with CNBC Tuesday, declined to describe her conversation with Obama before the climactic House votes tangled the trade trajectory. She spoke like a San Francisco congresswoman more than as a House Democratic leader when she said she wanted to “slow down” fast-track legislation that would have granted U.S. negotiators leverage to get a massive trans-Pacific trade pact completed. 

“What you saw on the floor on Friday was an expression of concern of the American people. We are representatives. That is our title, and that is our job description. These are our constituents,” she told CNBC’s John Harwood.

“I'll take you with me to my district, we'll go to church, we'll go to a parade, any place, the dry cleaners. And you will be very surprised at how everyday people who are not connected to any organized organizations, who come up and say, ‘Don't vote for that.’”

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Most Americans Expect a Long, Hot Summer of Racial Unrest. Moynihan Would Not Be Surprised.

It’s hard to get 96 percent of people to agree on anything, but last month’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that 96 percent of those surveyed believe we are in for a summer of racial unrest. In the wake of Ferguson and Baltimore, it’s time for some reflection on how we got here.

This year marks two significant anniversaries. In August 1965, the Watts riots broke out in Los Angeles, leading to 34 deaths and $300 million in property damage. Coming after the passage of well-intentioned Great Society welfare programs, the riots made clear that government spending wasn’t going to solve all the problems of urban America. 

Indeed, another 50th anniversary we mark this year is that of a seminal work that helped explain why government would be no panacea: Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family: A Call for National Action.” Published in 1965 and known as “the Moynihan Report,” it burst many bubbles of liberal thinking. 

RELATED: Poverty, Despair, and Big Government After analyzing reams of relevant social-science research, Moynihan concluded that the decline of the two-parent family was fueling the growth of poverty and unemployment, and leading to rising crime rates in black neighborhoods and schools without discipline. 

“At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time,” Moynihan argued. Families that consisted solely of single female parents weakened the role of black men as authority figures in the lives of children. Moynihan also warned: “The steady expansion of welfare programs, as of public assistance programs in general, can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.”

Via: National Review

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Home Free: Female Veterans Find Fresh Start in Los Angeles Housing Community

Army veteran Danielle Chavez stands in front of her new home. (Photo: Billy Glading/The Daily Signal)

 SAN PEDRO, Calif. — Thirty minutes south of Los Angeles, nestled into a drought-dry San Pedro hillside, sits the small townhome community of Blue Butterfly Village. Named for sharing land with a preserve for the endangered Palos Verdes blue butterfly, it’s the sort of place you’d never know was there unless you were looking for it. Even then, you may have some trouble.

The women who call Blue Butterfly Village home don’t mind the quiet. They have a noisy past: All are female veterans who have dealt with poverty and homelessness, oftentimes alongside domestic violence, sexual assault, or mental health issues, making up part of what the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs calls the fastest-growing segment of the country’s homeless population.

“Being here is a really humbling experience,” says Danielle Chavez, an army veteran whose five years of service included stints in Iraq, Germany, and Fort Bragg. “This is like, only in your wildest dreams. You look around and you think, ‘Is this really my backyard?’”

After returning from Iraq, Chavez lost her mother and faced the dissolution of her marriage around the same time. She became homeless before a VA worker mentioned Blue Butterfly Village, which is owned and operated by the Volunteers of America. She now lives in a bright corner unit on a freshly paved cul-de-sac with her two young daughters, flown in from a relative’s home in Arizona by Volunteers of America.

Chavez, who suffers from PTSD, is one of four women veterans who moved into the 73-unit community last month, representing a small pilot lease group. A ribbon cutting ceremony drew city councilmen, the Los Angeles mayor, and the U.S secretary of Veteran Affairs.

It was an emotional celebration for the trailblazing, female-focused community — one of the first of its kind in the nation.

Via: The Daily Signal

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Los Angeles, California: Mayor Garcetti Makes Minimum Wage Law Official at Signing in South L.A.

Update:

Mayor Eric Garcetti signed into law Saturday afternoon a measure that will increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2020, according to a news release from the city of Los Angeles.

Original post:

Mayor Eric Garcetti will formally sign into law Los Angeles’ landmark ordinance boosting the city’s minimum wage at a ceremony Saturday in South Los Angeles.

The signing will take place at Martin Luther King Jr. Park, a symbolic nod to the civil rights leader’s campaign to improve economic conditions for low-wage workers.

The law would raise the minimum wage in Los Angeles to $15 an hour by 2020, improving the financial outlook for hundreds of thousands of workers and making L.A. the largest city in the country to mandate higher pay for workers at the bottom of the income ladder.

Backers predicted its passage here could reverberate across the nation, ultimately aiding millions of Americans.

Via: KTLA5

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Labor Unions’ Minimum Wage Push: A Shameless Scheme to Fatten Their Own Coffers

Protesters calling for pay of 5 an hour and a union march toward McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., Wednesday, May 20, 2015. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford)

Utterly shameless. There really is no other way to describe what some unions are trying to pull when it comes to the minimum wage.

The issue, of course, has been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Los Angeles, with supposedly incensed workers waving their “Fight for 15” placards. It’s all perfectly packaged for the media, an alleged David versus Goliath fight. Will those mean ol’ fast-food joints and other stingy employers finally start paying a “living wage”? Tune in for the dramatic video.

Never mind that a substantial hike in the minimum wage would price many unskilled workers right out of the market. Goodbye, entry-level jobs for men and women who will later become workers making a much better wage at a job with more responsibilities.

And never mind how this minimum wage hike would make the price of fast food soar. A huge part of the draw for fast food, after all, is the fact that it’s relatively cheap. Take that away, and now it’s goodbye to the industry, which, of course, will hardly help the workers who are supposed to benefit from the wage increase.

Employers, after all, don’t have a bottomless safe in the backroom from which to pull vast reserves of cash for these salaries. They’ll react by cutting hours, for one thing. Labor expert James Sherk, for example, found that raising the minimum wage to $15 would cause a 36 percent drop in hours worked in fast food.

Think of what such a hike would mean for a major city such as Los Angeles. “If the effects are the same for all low-wage food-service occupations,” writes economist Salim Furth, “the ‘Fight for 15’ will cost more than 20,000 Angelenos their jobs in those occupations alone.” We can expect the same type of effect everywhere if such a drastic hike is enacted.

Of course, we don’t hear about any negative effects from much of the media or from breathless proponents of such “wage equality.” Or if we do, the effects are shrugged off as the scaremongering tactics of employers who just don’t want to pay up.

Via: CNS News

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Unions Are Utterly Shameless. Here’s the Real Story Behind Their Minimum Wage Campaign.

Utterly shameless. There really is no other way to describe what some unions are trying to pull when it comes to the minimum wage.

The issue, of course, has been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Los Angeles, with supposedly incensed workers waving their “Fight for 15” placards. It’s all perfectly packaged for the media, an alleged David versus Goliath fight. Will those mean ol’ fast-food joints and other stingy employers finally start paying a “living wage”? Tune in for the dramatic video.

Never mind that a substantial hike in the minimum wage would price many unskilled workers right out of the market. Goodbye, entry-level jobs for men and women who will later become workers making a much better wage at a job with more responsibilities.

And never mind how this minimum wage hike would make the price of fast food soar. A huge part of the draw for fast food, after all, is the fact that it’s relatively cheap. Take that away, and now it’s goodbye to the industry, which, of course, will hardly help the workers who are supposed to benefit from the wage increase.

Employers, after all, don’t have a bottomless safe in the backroom from which to pull vast reserves of cash for these salaries. They’ll react by cutting hours, for one thing. Labor expert James Sherk, for example, found that raising the minimum wage to $15 would cause a 36 percent drop in hours worked in fast food.

Think of what such a hike would mean for a major city such as Los Angeles. “If the effects are the same for all low-wage food-service occupations,” writes economist Salim Furth, “the ‘Fight for 15’ will cost more than 20,000 Angelenos their jobs in those occupations alone.” We can expect the same type of effect everywhere if such a drastic hike is enacted.

Of course, we don’t hear about any negative effects from much of the media or from breathless proponents of such “wage equality.” Or if we do, the effects are shrugged off as the scaremongering tactics of employers who just don’t want to pay up.

But it’s harder to ignore the fact that the same Los Angeles unions who campaigned so hard and so successfully for a $15 minimum wage want unionized companies to be exempted from the new requirement.

As Rusty Hicks, head of the Los Angeles Federation of Labor, told the Los Angeles Times: “With a collective bargaining agreement, a business owner and the employees negotiate an agreement that works for them both. The agreement allows each party to prioritize what is important to them. This provision gives the parties the option, the freedom, to negotiate that agreement. And that is a good thing.”

A new low in hypocrisy? Oh, no. It’s even worse than that.

Via: The Daily Signal

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LAPD Anti-Terror Cops Arrest Suspect Dawud Abdulwali In Massive Downtown Fire

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has arrested a suspect, Dawud Abdulwali, 56, on arson charges connected with the massive downtown fire last December that consumed the Da Vinci apartment complex. The Los Angeles Times reports that Abdulwali was arrested Tuesday morning during a traffic stop, and after a lengthy investigation.

Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the arrest Wednesday, saying: “This arrest illustrates that crime will not be tolerated in Los Angeles.”

Abdulwadi’s alleged motive has not been revealed. He was arrested by the LAPD’s anti-terrorism unit, though officials say that there is no reason to suspect terrorism, according to KTLA local news. Police have not clarified whether Abdulwadi was filmed on surveillance video, though two other people were seen on video and are considered witnesses, the Times reports.

Via: Breitbart

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Few major films shot in California, study shows

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A report shows that despite California acting as the backdrop for blockbusters this year, very few were filmed in the state.

Only 22 of 106 films released by the major studios in 2014 were actually filmed in California. The rest of the movies were shot in New York, Britain, Canada, Georgia, Louisiana, Australia and a dozen other states and countries, according to a feature film study by

FilmL.A. Inc., the nonprofit group that handles film permits for the city and county, the Los Angeles Times reports ((http://lat.ms/1FRo1iH).

Only two films with budgets above $100 million were filmed primarily in California: Marvel's "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and Paramount's "Interstellar."

In 1997 64 percent of the top 25 movies at the box office were filmed in California, compared to 16 percent last year.

Several box office hits set in California were filmed outside of the state, including Warner Bros.' "Godzilla," which was shot mainly in Vancouver, Canada; 20th Century Fox's "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," which was filmed in Louisiana; and Disney's "Million Dollar Arm," which was shot mainly in Georgia.

Even this weekend's "San Andreas," which depicts the destruction of California from a massive earthquake was filmed mainly in Australia.

State lawmakers last year approved an expansion of the film and TV tax credit program tripling annual funding to $330 million a year to try to keep production in state. The new program also allows big budget films to apply for incentives for the first time.

Studios will apply for feature film tax credits under the new program in July.

Via: Times-Standard Entertainment

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The New Nationwide Crime Wave

The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor.

The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.

By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.

The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.

Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.

Via: Wall Street Journal

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Los Angeles Will Spend Over $70 Million Implementing ‘Ethnic Studies’ In Schools

Los Angeles plans to implement a district-wide ethnic studies curriculum, but it has run into a massive $70 million road block.

Last fall, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) took the almost-unprecedented step of requiring every student in the district to pass a course in “ethnic studies” in order to graduate high school. When the school board approved the measure, however, it did so without any clear price tag. An initial estimate suggested the price of implementing the decree would be only $3.4 million.

It turns out that estimate was off by a factor of 20. A recently completed analysis by the district’s Ethnic Studies Committee concluded that the price to implement the new program will be a staggering $72.7 million over four years, with most of the price coming from the need to buy thousands of new textbooks and train instructors in the new curriculum. That’s about $105 for each student in the district.

That’s a hefty chunk of change for a district whose annual budget is about $6.8 billion. LAUSD is already struggling with its finances; its deficit for the 2015-16 school year is expected to be over $150 million.

The huge price tag vindicates those who criticized the district for rushing into adopting the ethnic studies requirement without much study beforehand. Board member Tamar Galatzan, the only person to vote against the proposal, warned in an editorial last November the district was acting without any real research on how the requirement would impact hiring decisions and the financial bottom line.

Activists insisted that ethnic studies was an urgent need for LAUSD and pushed for a quick adoption of the requirement. Board member Steve Zimmer argued that ethnic studies were a pressing need to keep kids in school and on the path towards success.

“In some places, there is resistance , but what we do here today will bring down the walls of resistance,” Zimmer said at the time. “We are losing kids because we are not connecting to their story.”

Via: California Political Review

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