12.16.07
Posted in Political at 4:32 by lnxwalt
Some choice words from “Unlimited Taxation“, which comments on California legislators’ idea to fix the deficit by making it harder for California citizens to make ends meet.
Only government has the luxury of increasing its income at will, whenever its spending exceeds its income. Too bad the taxpayers can’t do the same. As George Will once said, “…in the lexicon of the political class, the word ’sacrifice’ means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.”
Being generous with other people’s money, for your own political benefit, isn’t altruism. It’s theft.
How often do we think of it that way?
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Posted in Political at 4:28 by lnxwalt
Looming Budget Crisis
One thing that has been pretty constant over the past several years is that the state has a little financial boomlet, spends 100% of the incremental tax revenues, and then has a bust. The two parties point fingers at one another, as one side fights to raise taxes and keep “essential” services running at the same level they were before and the other side fights to cut services and avoid raising taxes at all.
I fall more on the cut side than on the tax side, but it isn’t realistic to expect the state to suddenly wean itself off of its love of spending other people’s money. Instead, we need to rely upon cuts for 70% to 85% of the needed funds, and then use taxation to come up with the rest.
Our state must learn to live frugally, putting some money away for a rainy day. One thing that anyone can guarantee is that the time will come when those reserves will come in handy.
Schools And The State Budget
After Proposition 13, when property tax growth was capped, the state government became the primary source of funds for school districts. This allowed other local agencies to consume a larger proportion of property taxes. The problem with that has been that there is effectively no local funding for schools. There are no brakes on spending growth, as there would be if spending increases had to be justified to local taxpayers. As long as Sacramento sends the money, the local districts will continue spend it with abandon.
Another proposition, I think it is 42 or 44, requires the state to give schools at least the same percentage of state funding as they had the prior year. In a year when it may be necessary to cut spending 10% or more, schools will scream unless they are left alone.
We already know that a partial solution to this is to once again place most of the funding and most of the control of schools in the local community. For one things, it makes local residents responsible for raising the funding and containing the costs, so that their local schools continue to serve their children’s and grandchildren’s needs. In addition, we need to break up the mega-districts. A mega-district like the one for Los Angeles is so big that it takes a huge and expensive bureaucracy to run it.
As an example, in almost thirty years of voting, (and with elections nearly every Spring and Autumn,) I can count on one hand the number of times there has not been statewide or local bond issue to borrow more money for the schools—and there are often a number of other bond issues being voted on as well—not that they all pass, but there are frequent attempts to borrow money. The payments on those bonds are now contributing to the crisis, since delaying or reducing those payments could force the state into bankruptcy court.
Current Situation
State lawmakers are talking about raising taxes to pay for the projected budget deficit. Because California did not cap its spending during and after the last budget crisis, there was no money laid aside for the inevitable economic decline.
The slumping housing market, fueled by the subprime mortgage meltdown, remains the main cause of the state’s deepening fiscal woes, having an impact on a wide range of revenue including that from property and sales taxes.
In other words, the decline in taxes is caused by something that everyone knew would come sooner or later. This means that California’s spending plan was based upon resources that we knew might not exist from year to year. It looks like the state is about to get smacked down, exactly the way that a spendthrift household does. Eventually, there is no one left who will lend you any resources, and you have to suffer the consequences of your profligacy.
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12.06.07
Posted in Political, Society at 6:24 by lnxwalt
At first, high speed rail (HSR) was just an idea promoted by dreamers and idealists. Then the Japanese actually built high speed passenger rail lines. Magnetic levitation (maglev) passenger rail was a techno-fantasy, until the Europeans and Chinese developed reliable, high speed maglev systems. The question is, why haven’t we done anything like this in this country?
Popular Mechanics has a vision piece that can help us see where we should be heading. Their maglev article is light on the technical and economic details, and completely ignores the social and political transformation that will be required in order to establish maglev and high speed rail as important components of our national transportation infrastructure. Even so, I recommend that we read the article and that we seriously consider its points.
Living where I live, I fairly often see traffic backups on the main Los Angeles to Las Vegas route, I-15. On some Fridays, traffic heading Northeast backs up all the way to the junction of the 210 and 605 freeways. On some Sundays, traffic heading back toward the Los Angeles area will be backed up all the way into Victorville. Why? Because the leaders of California and Nevada have not yet decided that it is worthwhile to invest taxpayer funding in eliminating that traffic congestion.
Driving around Southern California, I get to see traffic tie-ups along the 15, the 215, the 210, the 605, the 10, the 5, and the 805 (all of which are Interstates, so should be I-15 and so on), along with the 91, the 57, and the 60 (all of which are state highways, so should be CA-91 and so on), the 395 (which is or was a US highway, so should be US-395), and (to a lesser degree) a host of surface streets and highways. For the local traffic, neither HSR nor maglev offer the convenience and flexibility that commuters require. But for longer-range commuting, such as traveling from Southern California to Las Vegas for a weekend, or traveling from Rancho Cucamonga to Anaheim as a daily trek, a well-run rail system is the future.
All we are waiting for now is for our political leaders to have the nerve to declare that this is a priority, including a funding priority. We’ll grumble for five years or so of taxes, but once we get to cut our daily commuting time by half, and the occasional fun trip’s commute time by two-thirds or more, suddenly those very politicians will be heroes.
Infrastructure investments that Southern California Must Make Now.
This is part of a series of articles meant to highlight the fact that our present course is unsustainable. The primary issue in this article is commuting time, which is unbearably long. In a recent workplace, I was staying just twenty miles away, but it took over an hour to get to work. Fifteen to twenty miles, by the way, is about how fast a reasonably fit person can travel on a bicycle in one hour. My present workplace is about six miles away from where I’m staying, and it took me about fifteen minutes from driveway to driveway this morning.
For those who maintain that maglev and HSR are not practical, we can see that they certainly are practical just by looking at the examples of Europe and Japan. Yahoo recently linked both of these articles and this search from their front page, part of a special focus on maglev trains and HSR.
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Tags: infrastructure, transportation, mass transit, political
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10.16.07
Posted in Political at 2:27 by lnxwalt
I am certain that nearly every American has heard of the events in Jena, Louisiana. As is often the case, the school administration and the town had the chance to take what became a very negative situation and to make it a teachable moment.
Thirteen months ago, when a black student asked at a Jena High School assembly whether he could sit under a tree known as a gathering place for white students, an assistant principal told him he could sit anywhere he wanted. The next day, though, two nooses were found dangling from the tree. Hanging nooses is not a crime under Louisiana law, but, in a state where 335 blacks were lynched from 1882 to 1968 (a total exceeded only in Mississippi, Georgia and Texas), it is a repugnant, overtly racist act.
Three white students were quickly identified as the perpetrators. The principal recommended their expulsion. But a school board committee overruled him. The students were suspended — but the length and terms were not disclosed. “Some alternative suspension, along with other criteria,” LaSalle Parish School Superintendent Roy Breithaupt told The Town Talk in nearby Alexandria, La., shortly afterward.
Anyone who grows up with dark skin is constantly reminded that America’s opportunities and its equality are not distributed equally. Any honest look at our national history reveals that we have historically been very rough on non-White residents. Why, then, would the local leadership choose not to harshly prosecute the noose-hangers? Had the troublemakers been arrested and expelled from the beginning, the events that followed would not have occurred. Quick, sure action to prevent a longer-term malaise is the prescription there.
Look. I am not a fan of the Al Sharpton / Jesse Jackson school of race relations. I believe that we are Americans, and that we are one people. Thus, the only solution is to harshly prosecute those whose actions threaten that oneness. If anything threatens our nation’s security, it is all the splinter groups who look only to their own interests and not to the interests of all Americans. This ranges from the guys in sheets who threaten and kill dark-skinned residents to the people who blame everything that happens to Blacks and Hispanics on Whites to the groups that are trying to replace the English language with another one to the guys in the corporate offices who pile bonus on top of bonus, but leave their employees with mere crumbs. In every case, where their actions threaten our national oneness, we need to use existing legal resources to constrain their behavior.
By this summer, the perceived underreaction to the nooses, contrasted with the harsh treatment of the six teens, had caught fire on black radio and reverberated across the Internet. The national media descended on Jena, and on Sept. 20, civil rights activists, including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, led a rally that drew thousands to the town, many waving signs proclaiming “Free the Jena 6.”
This is what I am talking about. By being so lenient about the original incident, they guaranteed that things would amplify. A prompt and draconian response to the nooses, followed by a “if you threaten our togetherness, you’re going to jail” speech would probably have calmed things down considerably.
But even in the midst of rampant race-based thinking, smaller businesses can be the light of justice, or we can wait until we once again get an activist DOJ in Washington to force justice upon us. Frankly, I prefer to be a part of the solution, to dedicate some of my resources toward rectifying injustices where they have occurred and preventing them where they have not. It is sure that those who bury their heads in the sand will be called to account for their inaction.
Smaller, locally-owned businesses [SLOBs] will always get to deal with the consequences of racism anyway. There are those who will not patronize a business if the proprietor is not of their same ethnic background. This harms the economic vitality of locally-based owner-managed businesses [OMBs], while strengthening the hand of large corporations led by avaricious pirates. There are other customers that will refuse to deal with employees of varied ethnic backgrounds. In all these things, up to the limit of the safety of yourself and your employees, a small business owner / manager needs to do the right thing, not the convenient thing.
I urge every small business owner to become a part of the solution to ethic strife. Stop considering ancestral background in hiring, promotion, firing, or in deciding whom to do business with. Whatever other languages your employees may understand, explain to them that the language of the United States is English, and make sure that they learn to use the English language on the job, even if they also use another tongue.
India has had constant turmoil since independence, primarily because each ethnic, language, and religious group wants to be separately recognized. The government of India is a delicate balancing act whereby each people group wants recognition in local and sometimes national affairs. You have to wonder if that is what we want for our country. Or perhaps we want to learn the lesson of Israel, whose citizens came from all over the world and spoke many different languages. The military and social institutions enforced the use of the Hebrew language, which has helped keep the country together. Our nation threatens to burst at the seams over minor and inconsequential issues like what continents someone’s ancestors came from. Our choices will be a lesson for other multi-ethnic societies.
Repeat after me: We are not “Euro-American”, “African-American”, “Hispanic-American”, and Native American. We are Americans of various ethnic backgrounds. We are one people, the American people.
“The town of Jena has for months been mischaracterized in the media and portrayed as the epicenter of hatred, racism and a place where justice is denied,” Jena Mayor Murphy R. McMillin wrote in a statement on town letterhead faxed on Friday to The Associated Press.
The Jena mayor is upset that John Mellencamp sings, “Jena, take down your nooses”? If you do not like being portrayed as a bunch of racists, then change the way you act. Recognize that your town had the opportunity to decide how to respond. It is your town’s response that appears to be racially biased, leading to the marches and songs about injustice arising in the South.
Mellencamp’s song opens, “An all-white jury hides the executioner’s face; See how we are, me and you?” As he sings, images of Jena, the high school and the tree are followed by video from the 1960s, including civil rights marchers, police beatings, and President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King speaking. Still images include one of a protest sign reading, “God demands segregation,” a stylized drawing of people in Ku Klux Klan robes and an older image of a black man in shackles, begging.
This is a critical time for our nation. We would do well to heed the advice in the USA Today column:
Throughout the episodes in Jena, authorities seem to have lost sight of the obvious goal when a teenager goes off track. It is to salvage his life — usually by some mix of punishment and instruction — not to destroy it. That applies to noose hangers and muggers, though perhaps not in equal proportions.
More broadly, authorities in Jena appear to have had ample opportunities to use those hateful nooses to open talks about race relations with students and parents, black and white — the most productive outlet for racial tensions. [District Attorney] Walters had a chance to use his discretion more wisely.
If there is a lesson here for the rest of the nation, it is to recognize that color-blind justice is far too rare and that when racial tensions simmer, they need a peaceful outlet, not hot flames that will bring them to a boil.
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Tags: racism, small business, jena
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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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Posted in Political at 15:38 by lnxwalt
Shorter breaks help kids recall lessons - Yahoo! News
Interesting theory. As I understand it, you forget about half of what you learned in just 21 days, with the bulk of the forgetting coming in the first few days. In California, a number of our school districts are using these kinds of schedules. In the Victor Valley area, it started with the use of separate “tracks” to shoehorn more children into existing facilities. Once the local school districts built more schools, they kept the schedules, without the tracks.
The result? After six to ten weeks of classes, the schools go on a break for one to four weeks. After the break, the first few days are spent reviewing what was covered before the break. At least with MJ and his friends, it appears to have slowed down their progress.
You have to remember that most kids hate school1. The more that they differ from whatever the school’s norm is, the more that they hate it. If you pick up things more quickly than most students, you hate the repetition and the slow pace. If you pick up things more slowly than most students, you hate the quick pace. If you speak another language at home, it is more difficult to absorb things in English, at least until you learn spoken and written English at the same level as most of your peers.
For most students, sitting while someone lectures and scribbles on a whiteboard is about the worst way to try to teach them. Spending six to eight hours having someone yak at you, and expecting to remember most or all of what they covered is idiocy. That’s why recess is probably the most educational part of school. Not only do children learn coping and social skills that they will need for their entire lives, but they also get to rest their brains from overt learning and slip into the far more effective covert learning mode.
How many young males have you seen that can’t read at grade level, but can figure out how to “juke” you into an ambush on the latest online first person shooter game? What is the difference? In the game, he is learning by doing, for the purpose of using what he learns and not learning for the sake of learning. When Ms. Jones says to read page 37 of Beowulf aloud in class, not only is it overt and intentional learning, it is learning for the sake of learning when he has no intention of ever using what he learns.
MJ, for example, learns by reading and doing and discussing. He formulates arguments, promotes and defends them, and learns from this kind of interaction with his peers. Sit him in a classroom, listening to a lecture, and he cannot even tell you what topic the teacher discussed. He also cannot absorb very well in a typical classroom full of people. He seems to require that the number of learners stays south of twenty. I’ve noticed that even twenty-five students significantly degrades his achievement. I don’t know if it is instructor attention so much as the fact that large classes require an intensely structured environment (students sit and listen and take notes while the instructor lectures, no questions until and unless the instructor asks for them, no discussion or interaction among students, and students are not allowed to do other things such as read the textbook for another subject).
As he heads off to college, it will be important that he is aware of this, and that he selects his school and classes to meet his needs.
When I was in school, I learned by reading and doing. I wasn’t much for argument or discussion, as it took time that I would have preferred to use learning. All these years later, I’m finding that it hasn’t changed. Lectures, presentations, audio and video tapes present obstacles to me learning, as do large groups (larger than five to ten individual learners), although smaller groups within a larger class is a workable alternative.
(Note: I am not an education researcher, but I have read a bit on the subject. I also noticed the difference in performance when MJ attended a local charter school. It wasn’t just his performance that improved. It seemed like nearly every child in his school was doing better than they did in the “lecture and notes” programs at the public schools. For more on what the school was doing differently, see this article in the Victorville Daily Press.)
Do you disagree? Why is it that the three most enduring songs for young people are “Schools Out,” by Alice Cooper; “Another Brick On The Wall,” by Pink Floyd (”We don’t need no education …”); and the traditional “no more pencils no more books, no more teachers dirty looks” song?
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Tags: education
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08.09.07
Posted in Political, Small Business at 2:12 by lnxwalt
I recently wrote about the political campaign. This has the potential to be a series of small articles.
Look, there are a lot of major problems in the educational system. There are far too many for me to list, and even if I did, some would disagree with nearly every point.
Tonight, I want to focus on one problem only: unrealistic goals.
First of all, school is supposed to give you the general background needed to learn a job on the job. Our school system is not supposed to train the workforce to walk in the door and immediately be competent engineers. Anyone who expects something different is lying to himself. It has never been that way, and it will never be that way.
Secondly, I have read that nearly fifty percent of all U.S. employees say their first job was in fast food. Yet, we constantly hear about the poor quality of our graduates. Don’t get me wrong: dealing with customers and incompetent managers is challenging and takes an amazing level of skill. Still, when I worked in fast food, I said I could teach a ten year-old to do most of my job within thirty to sixty days. The whole design of the business is to take away the latitude to make decisions, and therefore the necessity to do any thinking whatsoever.
The one thing that I do wish schools taught kids is how to count back change instead of depending on the computerized register. That skill that is even more valuable as a customer, because it will clue you in to possible theft by an employee.
Still, if we do not have the challenging jobs available, why do we need to give kids so-called entry-level skills in a particular field?
What is wrong with schools? Schools need SLOBs to absorb many of their graduates and give them the on-the-job training that will help them for the rest of their lives. Schools need the owners of OMBs to come and help the kids get acquainted with the kinds of jobs that they are likely to be doing once they graduate. Schools need some major organizational structure-type changes, but these two changes are doable NOW. Get involved.
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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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07.23.07
Posted in General Management, Political, Small Business at 10:07 by lnxwalt
I am currently working out of state, over 2700 miles from home. On my daily phone call home, the kid says that he wants his best friend to go to an out-of-area college.
“Why?”, I asked.
“Because I don’t want him to get stuck here.”
That is a telling indictment of our local economy. This year’s high school graduates are making each other promise to leave the area and never return. They see what our elected leaders (and most businesses with locations in the area) do not see. Until we find a way to offer a decent living to substantially all of our local residents, this remote area we call home is toxic waste.
I resolve the situation by working mostly out of the area–locations like Reno, NV; Albany, NY; Binghamton, NY; and the unforgettable Pasadena, CA–but it is getting old. I would certainly take a look at an opportunity that put me in one place (such as the Atlanta area) that gave me the ability to truly launch my business because I’m actually going to be around to run things.
The sad thing is, this is not a bad place. It has its positives and its negatives like any other. But our leaders have consistently used taxpayer funds to try to attract large, out-of-area businesses to relocate or expand into the area. These corporations are not full of fools. They realize that they can play one area against another and win tax breaks, payroll subsidies, financing help, and even free land (well, $1 land). Then, these companies often pay their employees so little that it does not really even help the local economic situation.
If our local governments would only support (and not just with their lips) SLOBs, a lot of this could be reversed.
Use Local Governmental Funding
Our local governments spend thousands of dollars per year on brochures, trade show materials, and the annual “High Desert Opportunity” show. The problem is, the targeted companies are getting the same pitches from other areas all around the nation. If it makes financial sense for a large company to come to the area, they will come without a lot of dollar-waving. If it does not make financial sense, they may come anyway, but your cities and residents will have to absorb the difference.
Instead, we need to devote most of that funding to training and establishing small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs) that already have an incentive to remain in the area. This might entail providing both technical (that is, industry-specific) and business (that is, general to any business) training and advice. It could also involve providing space in an incubator program to get businesses started.
Another way to help is to provide grants and loan guarantees to SLOBs for the formation & establishment or expansion of their businesses.
Leadership
Follow-Through
The most important factor, after the funding mentioned above, is follow-through.
In the early 1990s, I used to work for Carl’s Jr Restaurants. The best (most effective) manager I ever had was there. He came in one night at 1AM, while we were cleaning up the restaurant, then bent down and cleaned out a floor drain. If you don’t know it, a floor drain collects fluids so that they do not pool on the floor. However, a floor drain also collects solids, which must be removed so they do not clog the drain and pipes, and so they do not decay and fill the kitchen with foul odors. Because the solids have been soaking in fluids all day, cleaning floor drains is an unpleasant experience, so most employees avoid it.
When Vince, the manager, cleaned the floor drains himself, none of us could make any excuse. By cleaning the floor drain that one night, he assured that we would keep them clean afterward. A fantastic lesson. I later worked for a competitor where the philosophy was “I’m not paying a manager $20 per hour to sweep the floor.” Not surprisingly, only a very few employees would put much effort into cleaning the place.
If our cities really want to reap the benefits of SLOBs, they need to follow-through. When purchasing, seek small, locally-owned vendors. Ensure that they are selling you locally-produced products and services whenever possible. It does not really help the local economy when you buy software from a local vendor who forwards most of the revenue to an out-of-area company. Neither does it benefit your community when you hire an out-of-area contractor to build your roads if someone in your community can do the work at an acceptable level of quality and within an acceptable time frame.
Relentless Commitment To SLOBs
Just as selling your community to out-of-area businesses takes complete commitment (you just wait until a new sewer bond is about to be passed that will affect them!), so you have to be completely committed to supporting smaller, locally-owned businesses.
One fast food chain, for example, used to put large banners on the side of their buildings to promote the monthly special. The local inspector would come and issue a take-down order and sometimes a fine. One of the largest supermarkets continually had large banners on their building. (In either case, it was a local branch of an out-of-area corporation, so it is difficult to feel sorry for them.) However, it does show a curious problem: big corporations seem to buy laws to suit their desires, which somehow seem to have the most impact on smaller businesses.
If you want to heal our local economy, you’re going to have to stop spreading the city’s butt-cheeks to large corporate interests. If a SLOB cannot have a banner (or paint advertising on their windows), then neither should a big, out-of-area corporation be allowed to have a banner or paint advertising on their windows.
Meeting and talking with your local chambers of commerce is also important, as you are likely to find areas of concern. However, the very smallest and most financially vulnerable businesses are not likely to be members. You have to go out of your way to find them and to involve them in policy discussions both at the mayor-and-council level and at the city enforcement bureaucracy level. And that means modifying some policies that would otherwise appear to have general support, so that they are less harsh on SLOBs.
Summing Up
If we want the Victor Valley area to be attractive to the brightest and most ambitious individuals, we have to stop kowtowing to large out-of-area corporations and instead cater to the home-grown enterprises that will stick with the area through the hardships of life. We need to assist these locally-owned businesses with formation, with finances, and with regulation. We need to buy from these businesses and promote these businesses. We need to encourage these businesses to produce locally, with local labor and materials.
The crudeness was unavoidable. Sometimes it seems like our cities give corporations everything that they want while penalizing the smaller, locally-owned businesses that actually provide most jobs. If this makes you change your behavior, it was a good thing.
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Posted in Political, Small Business at 8:46 by lnxwalt
In CSUSB Needs To Lead Us, I proposed a regional economic development effort.
Ever since the late 1980s and early 1990s, there have been mild efforts to bring a genuine branch campus of California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) to the area. While we continue to discuss this, the Coachella Valley has not only proposed such a thing, but has gotten together and paid for it, and as a result of strong local interest, succeeded in reaching its goal: The former Coachella Valley Center of CSUSB is now officially the Palm Desert Campus of CSUSB. Meanwhile, residents of the Victor Valley and Barstow areas continue to drive thirty miles or more to get to the nearest state university campus.
I propose that the Town of Apple Valley make available some land in the vicinity of the Apple Valley Airport, preferably along Dale Evans Parkway, for such a campus. Closer to the I-15 freeway is better in this case, and the location is fairly central once the Barstow area enters consideration. Since this will definitely increase traffic, DEPkwy should be widened to a four-lane road (two in each direction), with turning lanes added for sites such as the Wal-Mart distribution center where a relatively large number of commuters need to turn. In fact, a traffic light may even be justified at the High Desert Campus.
The CSUSB College of Business and Public Administration is accredited by the NASPAA. Public administration is not unlike administration of non-profits, so how about a practicum, a hands-on component in which students help manage and raise funding for non-profits that are assisting in the effort to build up the community the university’s High Desert Campus?
One major add-on. In keeping with the grand vision in the earlier article, I propose that the State of California admits that the present petroleum-based economy cannot continue indefinitely and therefore slap a twenty percent tax on the retail price of petroleum products to be spent designing, developing, constructing, and operating alternative energy generation facilities and high-speed rail lines between residential areas and employment, commerce, and entertainment centers. On top of that, add another 5% tax for CSU and community college research, education, and training programs related to this development.
These taxes will hurt–a lot–but continued inaction will bring even more intense pain in the near future. If we act now, our pain will be diminishing when other areas first start to recognize that a forced change is at hand.
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