Thursday, April 30, 2009

Quick Links for April 30th

Sorry about the impromptu day off. BlogSpot/Blogger changed a few things with their site that hinders our regular posting ability. We're back for today, so let's knock out some Quick Links! While I contemplate a switch to WordPress.

Somewhere, Alan Pettet is channeling his inner Mr. Burns and letting out an "Exxxcellent"

So it's April 30th, which means it's the City Council's self-imposed soft deadline to have a deal in place with the Stockton Police Officers Association so they can get their budget in on time. So naturally there's still no deal in place and labor talks have ended. And, as with any milestone in this debacle, the number of planned layoffs has jumped again! This time it's jumped up 9 more officers bringing the grand total of the most optimistic budget plan to 52. The city is presumably waiting until those 9 cops have knocked up their wives or at a loved one's funeral (or in the hospital after injuring themselves disposing of that dangerous looking bag of lawn clippings) before dropping off layoff notices in their mailboxes. Of course, that number will shrink once the city offers retirement incentives to some of the older cops who have higher seniority and the resulting higher paychecks. So really, even though we're just a month away from the hard budget deadline, we're still playing the same posturing game we were playing 6 months ago. Now that's progress.

Fuck, it's always something with Tracy

Well, that Swine Flu pandemic that's claimed one whole life in the US (Note: it could be more by now, but well, I don't care) has finally (maybe) hit SJ County. Where? Tracy of course. Was there really any doubt? God's latest dumping ground takes another hit, and just as they gained a false sense of security after the Cantu case! We assume Tracy resident and one time fill-in poster BaconBabe is devastated by this news. Mostly because she hates media overkill as much as we do. Not to mention everybody hates uppity parents bitching about the safety of their children. Hey, speaking of...

This all makes a lot more sense when you realized the SUSD board of trustees is actually the student government

Ok, well at least they're acting like they have the maturity level of the students they have power over. We'd tackle each of these stories individually but frankly, we don't care. We don't have kids and it looks like all of this is just petty, political posturing. There's the guy (Anthony Silva) who's bitter that he lost reelection by one vote, and he just happened to show up the day another guy presents his case to recall the trustee that beat him out. Yeah, Silva's not bitter/petty at all. Then there's other board members bitching about one guy's vote on a seven person board, which makes total sense. And then there's my favorite story, "Tony Amato shouldn't use the rarely used district SUV that he pays the lease for, so let's pick up the tab for that and pay Amato $650 more a month." Confused? Yeah, so was the dumb broad who brought it up, now the district's out another $7,600 plus $650 a month to Amato. But it's ok, it's not like we're in a recession or anything. It's not like retarded populist sentiment is to crucify any sort of avoidable, non-essential spending, even with private money.

How do you know when your article/column is biased?

When the subject calls you to thank you for its fairness and accuracy when it was anything but fair and accurate. Apparently Randy does great business when the biggest festival of the year is in town, imagine that. He also has 3 potential buyers going through the motions with his broker. So soon, affordable food will be available in that space. But until then, you can continue paying twice the price for half the food! But really, this is all about some petty subsidy boycott. Not affordability, at all.

We're #19! We're #19!

In what can only be described as the most obvious example of link-baiting this side of Politico (a practice we encourage by the way), Christian Burkin has complied 2007's violent crime stats into national rankings in a response to Forbes' most recent list declaring us the 5th most dangerous metropolitan statistical area.

He used the crime stats for actual cities as opposed to the previously mentioned MSAs and lowered the population threshold for list inclusion to 100,000. Basically he used the stats and rules normally used when violent crime rates rankings are made instead of Forbes' lazy way of doing things. The result? Well, Detroit's not even the most dangerous city in it's state. Flint, Mich. beats by a whole extra violent crime per 1,000 people. Oakland is actually 5th behind those 2, St. Louis, and Memphis. And Stockton ranks a low, but still impressive 19th (take that Buffalo!).

Suspicious by their absence is Las Vegas, which is kind of funny considering there's not really a metropolitan area around Vegas, just more desert. But hey, math was never our strong suit so we'll trust CB on this one. But we may have to rethink our wager with Sin City now.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The violent crime rate in the city of Las Vegas is actually 1017.11 per 100,000 residents, higher than the 887 Forbes calculated by including the suburb of Paradise, but obviously low enough to keep it out of the top 25.