03.08.08
Posted in Local News, Political at 6:16 by lnxwalt
I was in another one of our local communities today. It was a bright, sunny day, and I was walking down the street. I saw someone putting up some signage for the city, telling pedestrians not to cross the street at that intersection.
I was not going that way, but if I had been coming from across that street and heading back the way I had come from, I would not cross the street three times to get to a place that was one crossing away. In other words, either they are making it harder and slower for pedestrians to get where they are going, or they are creating more lawbreakers.
In my own town, we have a whole corner shopping center that is now a ghost town, primarily because the town decided to put up median to prevent vehicles from turning into or out of the center and then put up signs telling pedestrians to walk a block out of their way in order to cross the street. This was previously high-traffic location, with a supermarket, fast food restaurant, clothing and shoe stores, an auto parts store, doughnut shop, a discount store and a drug store / pharmacy. In fact, it was the local high school Friday and Saturday night hangout.
What is the problem? If we want our local shopping areas to thrive, we have to make it easy and convenient to pull vehicles into and out of a central parking area, and we have to make it convenient for pedestrians to get to various stores, restaurants, and shops in the local area. We have to make that a priority, even to the extent of slowing the flow of traffic in the area. We then need to make sure that there is also adequate housing nearby, because many of the customers for local businesses will then walk.
In the quest to make things better for SLOBs, we have to make it easier for nearby residents to choose and support those businesses. We have to stop taxing SLOBs in order to give “incentives” to big corporations from outside the area. We have to give locally-owned businesses priority in zoning changes, setting taxes and fees, and even in deciding how to route traffic. We need to make sure that we continue to support and promote the locally-owned businesses that are going to hire many of our local high school graduates and support our local youth sports teams. Our civic leaders need to buy most of our city’s (or town’s) products and services from locally-owned businesses, too.
I hope that someone in our local community is reading this. We are about small, locally-owned businesses, about family-owned businesses (FOBs), and about owner-managed businesses (OMBs). All of these are suffering due to neglect by our local governments, who are busy pursuing the big companies that send their profits outside the community. What is it going to take to wake someone up and get us started with building up our local economy?
Local business: profits stay here, recycled within community. Often smaller, but existing in large numbers.
Out-of-area business: profits exported to another area, resulting in a net export of funds from the community to wherever the company is headquartered.
Let us join together and build our communities.
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09.02.07
Posted in Local News, Political at 16:36 by lnxwalt
As you’ve probably noticed, this blog speaks fairly often about policy issues that affect smaller businesses. One of the biggest issues we deal with is education. There are a couple of really big reasons for this.
First of all, most of us have children, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, and neighbors going through some level of the educational system. It is in our interests to see that they get what they need to step into their futures.
Secondly, as small business owners or prospective small business owners, the fruit of our local educational systems are the raw materials that can and hopefully will make us different from our competitors.
Local educator Rick Piercy said it this way:
Piercy described public education as an assembly-line system that worked well in its time, when large populations of manual laborers were needed, but times have changed and America is now competing in a global economy.
“We take kids by chronological age, we put them in a group and move them down the line year by year,” he said.
Like an auto-assembly line that produces essentially the same car with minor differences — some with air conditioning, some with automatic transmission — America’s schools have little of the versatility needed in the 21st century.
“Everybody who liked the comfort of not changing keeps things mired,” he said, urging a willingness to radically rethink the way America’s children are educated.
We really need to take a look at what he’s saying. Monolithic, assembly-line, age-divided education has not worked since at least the late 1970s, as the first twinges of global competition wiped out manual labor in textiles and clothing and began crushing our steel, shipbuilding, and automobile manufacturing industries.
Unfortunately, his charter school has become mostly a smaller version of a regular school, as California has cracked down on the independent study and other innovative methods that enabled motivated students to actually learn something that interests them and prepare for their futures.
Having spent some time supervising recent graduates in quick-service restaurants (”fast food”), I can tell you that most students are not prepared for the workplace:
Why do you think this is? The school system gives specific, step-by-step directions on a daily basis. You don’t give students a schedule of what chapters to read and what work to turn in at the beginning of the semester, because some students will complete the entire schedule in two or three weeks. They will then quickly become bored and begin to entertain themselves, distracting other children in the process. So instead, we teach children to require close supervision in order to accomplish even routine tasks.
When my nephew Pikachu moved from one school to another in a different city, his teacher kept punishing him because of his mathematics work. He had learned to do the problems he was presented, but he did them the way they did it in Victorville, not the way they did it in his new city. He got the correct answer, but did not follow the specific sequence of steps that the teacher wanted him to follow.
The school system in your local area needs to be fully-controlled by local interests. Are most of the area's graduates likely to remain in the area? If so, students need to learn general entry-level skills for jobs in your area, without shortchanging those who will go to college or move to a different area. As long as the state and federal governments are setting standards and ignoring local needs, schools will continue to fail, because they will fail to adapt to local needs and conditions.
One exception that I can think of: in areas like South Los Angeles, schools need to have outside help, particularly the help of good-sized owner-managed businesses. These students need to learn entrepreneurship and then be launched out with some financing, so they can help to change their communities. Even there, once they are aware of what they need to do, outside control needs to go away so the schools can adapt to the needs of their communities.
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08.09.07
Posted in Local News, Political at 1:49 by lnxwalt
We are beginning the “silly season” a year early. This means that we get to wade through the politicians talking one another down and trying to come up with cute phrases that will fit in a thirty second “sound bite”.
I have to admit that I am far from ready to listen to the politicians argue, but when I do start to listen, I want to hear:
- Visions for the future and plans for how to accomplish that vision
- An emphasis on individuals, families, and smaller businesses and organizations–rather than larger corporations and organizations–in every plan, I want to hear how it benefits the “regular Joe and regular Jane” American.
- How to break up the concentration of power in Washington, DC and in the larger corporations and organizations that run things behind the scenes. How to make government accessible to ordinary Americans. Rather than having the federal government collect taxes and then give money to the states (with strings attached, naturally) to build and fix highways, I’d like to hear about ways to put more of the control and funding in the hands of the states. I want to hear how we can push some of the decision-making power into more localized levels of government, where individual citizens have more of a voice than they do in the nationwide government.
- How to return power to parents and teachers and students, rather than the layers of “educrats” that infest our educational system today. Teachers are generally hard-working and dedicated individuals, trapped in a morass of overly-specific requirements that prevent them from giving the attention to the areas that they perceive are most needy. Parents are given instructions to take their childrens’ all-important “free” time and fill it with homework.
You know what I don’t want to hear? I don’t want to hear:
- how this person is bad or evil or corrupt or he changes his mind sometimes.
- how someone is too liberal or too conservative.
- about this or that candidate’s personal peccadilloes (well, within reason)
Our nation is self-destructing, and all I hear are insults.
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07.21.07
Posted in Local News, Political, Small Business at 16:48 by lnxwalt
I am a proud graduate of our nearby campus of the California State University. I took Business Administration at CSU San Bernardino (CSUSB). I was there when the University’s College of Business and Public Administration received AACSB acreditation. It was a good school then, and it is a good school now.
CSUSB has its main campus at the foot of the San Bernardino mountains, near the intersection of the I-15 and I-215 freeways (the I-210/CA-30 is also nearby). It also has a branch campus in Palm Desert, funded through a unique partnership between local Coachella Valley businesses and governments with the state of California.
In the Victor Valley and Barstow areas, there are large numbers of people coming into the area, but relatively few employment opportunities for those residents. As a consequence, motivated residents tend to take a lot of classes at our local community colleges (Victor Valley Community College and Barstow Community College). Those who can afford the commute then wind up driving up and down the Cajon Pass to complete their Bachelor Degrees at the CSUSB main campus.
I propose that local government, local businesses, and the two community colleges sit down with the administration of CSUSB and work out a solution. Here are my ideas:
- Create the High Desert Campus (or campuses) on land near Southern California Logistics Airport (SCLA), Apple Valley Airport, or Barstow-Daggett Airport. This campus should include branch campuses of the two community colleges as well. Another interesting option is to get other state-owned universities (University of California-Riverside [UCR] and California State Polytechnic University-Pomona [CSPUP] come to mind) to also join in the effort.
- Research–the community needs research into alternative energy, conservation, recycling, mass transit, information technology & robotics, and low environmental-impact production processes. Let that be a focus of this campus, combining technology, business, and the sciences into a blended program that is both theoretical and practical. For example, developing residential (home/apartment-based) power generation systems that can then be installed throughout the area would both advance our understanding of the challenges of such systems and have practical effects of lowering the utility costs of local residents. Research into mass transportation systems to connect areas like ours to regional employment and recreation centers is another area of need. Research into ways to get more use out of the water we have (and ways to get more water into the area) would also be helpful.
- Technology–The community needs research and development of reproducible, BSD/MIT/GNU-licensed technologies for improved business processes. For example, programmable robots would be an option. Technologies that are developed with public funds should always be licensed under open-source licenses and be freely usable by taxpayers (at least those of said jurisdiction). This will enable the development of a zone for seeding low environmental-impact technology SLOBs. The best thing would be for the County of San Bernardino and the local cities & town to provide managerial and financial assistance in exchange for an agreement to stay in the area for up to ten years (if the business is still open by that time), hiring local residents for any open positions. This isn’t much more than what is already given to large out-of-area companies, except that those out-of-area companies tend to leave when things get rough.
- Vocational training–This would be applied technology taught in conjunction with the two community colleges. Since SCLA is just North of a large federal corrections complex, there would probably be some federal funding available for “rehabilitating” some of their inmates. Apple Valley airport is not too far from large retail chain’s area distribution center and I also believe the County of San Bernardino has a small correctional facility (or maybe youth correctional facility) a couple of miles North of the airport.
- Military re-entry & vocational rehabilitation–with so many of our young people going overseas to fight in wars, there is a large group of people that are or will be returning to this country without any usable civilian job skills. Many of them will have physical or emotional damage from their tours of duty. Building a large re-entry facility and offering to help the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs re-acclimate these individuals into society can only help our locality as well as the whole of American society.
- Foreign Languages–Assuming that the military re-entry program flies, there would be a pool of people who have been exposed to foreign languages and cultures. The area could utilize that to build competencies in international cultural understanding in partnership with local school systems. In addition to Middle Eastern languages and cultures (Arabic, Kurdish, Hebrew, Farsi, and so on), it would be great, for example, to bring in real Japanese residents to come and instruct high school and college students in Japanese language and culture. Ideally, each class would be a yearlong immersion, including a two-week trip to said country.
There is a reason why so many local graduates leave the area. However, with some serious effort by CSUSB, SB County, and the local town+cities & educational institutions, this can be a place that attracts ambitious people.
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Tags: economicdevelopment, education, high desert, victor valley, csusb, vvc
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07.08.07
Posted in Local News, Small Business at 21:48 by lnxwalt
I realize that the entire country is now aware of California’s extraordinary drought conditions. In our area of Southern California, we already have a desert, so there is a more or less permanent drought going on. Even so, conditions are quite a bit drier this year than usual.
There are plenty of things that we can and should do to reduce our water consumption. However, before I advise you to cut your water use, I want to warn you that sometimes mandatory rationing is done as a percentage cut of the previous year’s consumption. If that happens, people who have already been conserving will be expected to cut just as much as people who have been wasting water.
This was brought to mind by an article in the weekend edition of USA Today (July 6-8, 2007). One thing that is happening during this extended hotel stay is that I’m reading the dead-tree version of the newspaper most days. Right on page 1A, the front page of the front section, there is an article entitled “Ease up on the faucet, residents told”. You might do well to read it.
There are a few things that we can do during this period, and even more that need to be done over the long term.
Short Term
- Limit watering of lawns, the most water-consuming part of a normal home, to just enough to keep the grass alive. The only parts of the lawn that should be green are human-use zones. That is, if you walk and play on the grass, water it. If you don’t, let it die.
- Car-washing: skip the hoses and drive-through washes. Get a neighborhood teen to use a bucket and towels to wash your car each week. Many of them have tight budgets and unlimited wants, so a regular cash-flow might be welcomed. Better yet, do it yourself and get a little exercise.
- Turn faucets / spigots all the way off when you are not using them. If they still leak, repair them. Make sure that any watering that you do goes on the plants you want. If you have water runoff or wind-blown mist, you need to change something about your watering.
- Shorter showers can save gallons of water each day.
- Wait until you have a full load to do your laundry.
- Offer to help elderly neighbors repair leaks. On triple-digit days, be sure to visit them and ensure that they have cooling. If they do not, bring them to your home or to a mall or to an emergency heat relief center. I first heard of these last year. Apparently California has some designated places where people may go to cool off during heat waves.
There are more things you can do as well, but this will help immensely.
Long Term
- Rip out lawns and other high-water-requirement landscaping. Replace them with drought-tolerant and native plants, even if they will need a little extra water the first couple of years. The only place where lawns should be in the desert are walking and playing areas.
- Install drip and other low-waste watering systems instead of using the old hose and spray nozzle. Set them on an automatic schedule that avoids common high-wind and high-temperature portions of the day.
- Remove ponds and other ornamental waterflows.
- Get low-flow fixtures.
- Get on the phone promptly when you see water flowing down the street or across desert lots. Some local areas have older iron pipes that break repeatedly. The water company “can’t afford” to replace these pipes, so they put these metal straps on to stop or at least slow the water loss. Other flows will be caused by someone overwatering.
- Advocate for a Southern California desalinization plant to bring several million gallons of purified seawater daily to areas from San Diego to Santa Barbara to Barstow to the Imperial Valley. This will help reduce the North-South tension in the state as well, by making the South less dependent on taking water from the North.
- Advocate for solar and wind power generation, including home-based systems designed primarily to reduce household dependence upon the “grid”. These plants have less need for evaporative cooling than coal and natural gas generators, saving water for other uses.
- Sweep your driveway and sidewalks, rather than hosing them off.
A final thought: one of the reasons so many people are coming to the Victor Valley (and throughout the High Desert and Inland Empire areas) is housing affordability. However, this brings the problems associated with commuting and also increases water use in areas that are already in overdraft.
When we build small, profitable, owner-managed businesses and enable our neighbors to give up their commutes to Los Angeles and Orange Counties, local residents of those counties will be better able to obtain jobs in their own areas that pay enough to meet their needs.
We need to continually remind our local governments that small, owner-managed businesses are on the right side of just about every social issue. Rather than kow-tow to large out-of-area corporations that will dump the area at a drop of a hat, our town and city councils and county boards of supervisors need to support and promote locally-owned and managed businesses that have an incentive to stay and make things better for everyone.
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05.02.07
Posted in Legal Issues, Local News, News and Announcements at 20:22 by lnxwalt
Shortly after CBS’ Don Imus was fired for his remarks, Clear Channel’s Barbara Stanton was suspended for racially-insensitive comments she made on her radio program.
I had heard of neither broadcaster before their respective incidents. Imus was apparently trying to be funny. Coverage of the event refers to him as a “shock jock,” so it may have been his job to generate controversy (and therefore higher ratings).
Stanton, here in the sleepy Victor Valley, could not have been much of a shock jock–that genre would never survive here in the conservative High Desert. Her words came during a serious discussion about the acquisition of the local bank by an out-of-the-area bank. That the words were serious, and that they come so soon after Imus’ experience is disturbing, to say the least.
Unfortunately, besides being out of line in her expression, Ms. Stanton is also misinformed about the responsibilities of the CEO of a publicly-traded bank. Ron Wilson, CEO of DCB had apparently been interviewed on her program recently, without mentioning buyout talks. Well, I am sorry if he has to obey the laws relating to insider information, but there are some things that can not be revealed except under specific conditions.
As a side note, Jonathan Schwartz of Sun has had a running discussion with the SEC about finding a way to publish announcements on Sun’s site at the same time or even before releasing the information to the traditional channels, because most individual investors do not get those announcements until the next day, when they appear in the Wall Street Journal and other financial publications. This gives large institutions a leg up on reacting to any news or announcement. Schwartz believes that a standardized way of displaying that information on the company site would be a better way to reach investors, because they tend to check the site for information anyway.
What is this thing with degrading groups of people because of their ancestry? After several civil rights movements and hundreds of years of progress, is this all the distance we have come?
On the other hand, I favor freedom of expression. If people feel that they can express such sentiments, we will be more likely to know who actually has those sentiments. It makes it a lot easier to understand it when certain things happen.
Mr. Imus, you need some Black friends. Ms. Stanton, you need some Asian friends. I don’t just mean that you know one another. I mean friends to the point that you get upset when you go with them to a conference and the hotel suddenly has no rooms available; to the point where you get angry when everyone at the restaurant has ordered and been served, but your friends are still waiting for someone to come and take their orders; and to the point where you are mad when people start talking with accents and repeating ethnic stereotypes about your friends’ presumed ancestry.
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