Quick Hits

It is getting to crunch time for Greece. Greece is scheduled to get an $11 billion injection, and Greece has scheduled a 30,000 government employee layoff to sweeten the issue, but…

Germany is still balking, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is saying that it needs more funds if it is to continue to participate in bailing out European nations.

The Europeans are in deep trouble and we are in no shape to help out. In fact the EU mess  will drag us down even further if we let it..

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There are demonstrations on Wall Street, with scruffy young people — you know the left Anarchy crowd — and there is pepper spray in the air, with arrests daily.

it is the usual “hate the rich” crowd, now on steroids since they have the president they want, and they had hoped for an Arab Spring sort of weekend of several thousand riotous leftists, but only hundreds appeared.

One of the Wall Street workers remarked at the proliferation of iPODS, iPHONES and iPADS among the demonstrators and wondered if the leftists knew that Apple was the richest of the rich corporations and that no one had made more jobs — in Asia!

Bouncing From Crises to Crises In Sunny California

Willie Brown, former Speaker of the California Assembly and former Mayor of San Fran notes in his column for the S. F. Chronicle that the State of California will run out of money by Thanksgiving.

Brown says he fears that Governor Brown may not recognize the problem the state is facing because the governor vastly overestimated the revenues coming into the coffers, and planned on stealing a lot more money from local government redevelopment agencies — which as thwarted by courts.

The results are, ahhhh, not good….we are talking  serious cuts coming to education, the largest money pot in the state.

The Governors’ good ratings will suffer.

So will California.

This is one hell of a pickle that took a lot of mis-management to achieve.

Rogue Cop In Jail, Still Being Paid

Manuel Ramos is a Fullerton City policeman sitting in jail charged with Second Degree murder for the videotaped (and audio taped) killing of a homeless schizophrenic, Kelley Thomas. It was an act participated in by six policemen, of which two were charged

Manny may be in jail, but he is still being paid and will be until the city finishes it’s investigation. So how long does it take to investigate an audio and videotaped beating that was witnessed by about 50 people — all of whom have been interviewed?

Obviously, longer than you think. A lot longer than I think…I mean if the city has done enough investigation to charge two policemen, and one is held in jail, how much more do you need to be sure of before you stop his salary?  It took more than 60 days to charge the rogue cop even with audio/video and witnesses.

One of the problems is a law passed in the good old Gray Davis days called the “Police Officers Bill of Rights.” That bill urges investigations to be completed within a YEAR, and investigations that are completed much earlier than that can be challenged by the police officers union. (Yes, I know, police officers are not permitted to have a union…they have “associations,” that are otherwise indistinguishable from a “union.”)

Some of the other parts of the police officers bill of rights says that if a police officer is not charged with a crime but his actions are such as to warrant disciplinary action, that disciplinary action must be kept secret from the public.

How’s that for a lack of transparency? The taxpayers who pay his or her salaries are not permitted to know if we have a serially rogue cop on the beat!