Into the Hudson - Flight 1549

Animation and transmission of a remarkable flight.



This is what geese do to engines...

The Decline of Los Angeles

Touching on LA’s history, contemporary malaise and decline, Forbes has published a scathing assessment on The Decline of Los Angeles.

A Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive editor of New Geography.com Joel Kotkin asks why the city that has declined under Villaraigosa’s reign would so willingly re-elect him.

Now L.A. seems to be fading rapidly toward irrelevancy. Its economy has tanked faster than that of the nation, with unemployment now close to 10%. The port appears in decline, the roads in awful shape and the once potent industrial base continues to shrink.

Job growth in the area, notes a forecast by the University of California at Santa Barbara, dropped 0.6% last year and is expected to plunge far more rapidly this year. Roughly one-fifth of the population depends on public assistance or benefits to survive.

Once a primary destination for Americans, L.A.--along with places like Detroit, New York and Chicago--now suffers among the highest rates of out-migration in the country. Particularly hard hit has been its base of middle-class families, which continues to shrink. This is painfully evident in places like the San Fernando Valley, where I live, long a middle-class outpost for L.A., much like Queens and Staten Island are for New York.

In such a context, Villaraigosa's upcoming coronation seems hard to comprehend. By most accounts, he has been at best a mediocre mayor, with few real accomplishments besides keeping police chief Bill Bratton, a man appointed by his predecessor. So far, Bratton has managed to keep the lid on crime, a testament both to his skills and to the demographic aging of much of the city.

All true, except that Kotkin missed Chief Bratton’s role in the disaster.

Bratton has not kept “the lid on crime” but has managed, as he was appointed to do, to keep the lid on crime statistics and reporting. By reporting burglaries as trespass (with a theft) and incorporating neighborhoods of vehicle burglaries into single incidents, it’s hard to believe that statistics remain as high as they are. This is not a difficult feat when the mayor pays the Chief $300K/year to not arrest his friends, while prosecutors, the judiciary and the media willingly play along. Without accurate reporting, Sheriff Baca’s pending release of another one-third of LA’s inmates onto the streets of LA will not likely bruise Bratton’s juked statistics.

LA has, for all intents and purposes, returned to the corrupt days of the Shaw Administration (1930s) and even Hollywood’s yellowed façade cannot save it.

LA Times Promotes LAUSD Disaster

Despite the 30-year-plus disaster that is the LAUSD, reporter Howard Blume held his nose and wrote the Times’ latest propaganda about Mayor Villaraigosa’s mythical service to LA schools.

Instead of reporting on LAUSD’s dropout factories or the fact that our union-controlled US schools rank 23rd behind Thailand, Slovenia, and the Russian Federation, Blume praised Horacio Vignali’s friend for planting trees and promoting picnics. This is what Blume should have written about:

LAUSD’s Scam in a Nutshell:

Operating Budget = $12 Billion
Construction Budget = $22 Billion
Employees = 80,000
Students Served = 650,000
Cost per student = $18,400

Many LAUSD classrooms currently warehouse over 40 students. If LAUSD’s classrooms were limited to 30 children, we would require no more than 21,666 teachers (650,000 ÷ 30 students).

WHERE'S THE WASTE?

80,000 employees
– 21,666 teachers
= 58,334 non-teaching employees

Compare that to LA City’s wasteful budget:

Budget = $7 Billion
Employees = 40,000
Residents Served = 4,000,000

LAUSD employs not to teach students, but to fund the Democrat Party.

80,000 (LAUSD employees)
x $100/mo (Union Dues)
= $8,000,000/mo

If LA residents demand their part of LAUSD’s operating budget, they would control an $18,400 voucher each year.

Principals who opened a private school for 100 voucher children ($18,400/year) would control their own $1,840,000 annual budget. For that amount, they could attract top teachers from all over the US for a starting income of $100,000/year and leave more than enough funding for supplies, offices, field trips, and merit pay. Private schools would pop up like mushrooms all over Los Angeles and we unclog our streets and freeways of the thousands of smoke-belching yellow buses that currently shuttle students from one failing school to other failing schools.

Teachers and other LAUSD employees could fund their unfunded pension system with LAUSD’s unnecessary $22 billion dollar construction budget.

Until parents secure control of their education funding from unionists who do to LA’s students what the United Auto Workers have done to the US Auto Industry, nothing will change. (More info here)

Blog Hits Another Milestone

Two million visitors!

Four years ago, I started this little blog with one purpose in mind – to sleep at night. Whether anyone read it or not was not as important as unburdening my heart.

After introducing myself and writing about my motorcycle ride to Newfoundland and back, I wrote about Katrina, LA’s corrupt and incompetent public school system, the sanitized racist history of the Democrat Party, making war, the blatant corruption of LAPD’s old and new police chiefs, and hospitals that rely on fraud and gross negligence to harm patients for profit. Most recently, I wrote about the corruption of the Nobel Prize.

Unlike many private investigators, I no longer rely on my clients for financial security. As a result, I have the luxury of picking and choosing who I want to help. My criteria – clients cannot lie to me and must be of good moral character. My cases must also affect humanity in a positive way.

While some financially secure gumshoes retire, a few others set about looking for the biggest case of their career. I was casually looking for such a case last year when I visited Washington DC to testify about whistleblowers and retaliation. While there, I was presented with an unbelievable story that fit my criteria. But unlike Captain Ahab, I did not harpoon a whale – I harpooned an asteroid.

I posted my report on other websites and I knew by the comments and anonymous hatred that I had touched a nerve. Although my report implicates Republicans and Democrats in what will soon become a trillion-dollar international fraud, I was disappointed (but not surprised) that major liberal blogs refused to post it. Despite the enthusiastic examination by local and international correspondents, their editors and agencies still refuse to consider my report for fear of enduring the retaliation that I described in my report.

It’s taken a while but last week, my little blog reached the milestone of more than two million visitors from 217 countries, according to the little Neoworx counter I installed in 2007 (top/right margin).

I attribute most of my traffic to the report I call Gallo’s Egg. I’m still routinely attacked and threatened for writing and posting it, but I’ve openly invited critics and academics to refute the evidence I have presented. As Michael Crichton MD said in his 2003 speech at Cal Tech, “(T)he work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right…”

Despite attacks from MDs and PhDs from places like Cornell University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (that receive millions of dollars annually to promote the fraud), not one of those so-called academics has ever provided proof that contradicts my report. Based upon my examination and their response, American science and medicine now resemble something closer to pagan theocracies than academic institutions where the mullahs demand faith and punish non-believers.

So for my readers, I’m honored by your faith and comments. For my new visitors, this entry explains why I believe why two million people from around the world have visited.

Internet Security 101

I recently received this message from a friend. I’ll call him Bill (not his real name):

My computer crashes have caused me to lose all my stored information.

When I called to assist him, I learned that he purchased and plugged in his computer, but had never properly installed a firewall, router, or anti-virus software. Unknown to Bill, this left him completely vulnerable to Internet viruses, trojans, and worms that not only rendered his computer and bank accounts vulnerable to professional Internet hackers, but it also enabled his computer to attack his friends’ computers.

Since joining Semmelweis Society International and its Board last year, I’ve discovered that a large percentage of our highly educated members are dumber than a box of dirt when it comes to Internet security. This will probably change as new doctors replace older ones but, in the meantime, I’ve posted my email to “Bill” so that our members can do the same.

Dear “Dr. Bill”

I feel your pain. My first computer crashed in 1989 – I had stuff on that from 1982 when I bought my first computer. I’m still sick about that. I now use Acronis to back up my three computer drives onto a one-terabyte back-up drive. Although still painful, a crash will lose, at most, six days of data. There are also some good online backup services that work pretty good.

Before you do anything, find a reliable “computer guy” who you can trust. I live in Los Angeles and pay my computer guy $50/hour when I have problems. He lives nearby and he is efficient and knowledgeable. If you live in Maine or Chicago, you should not need to spend more than $50/hr. Pay him immediately and don’t give him trouble. If you’re rude and don’t pay immediately, he’ll either raise his rates or stop assisting you. Many high school and college kids know more than enough to set up your system safely. If you use CraigsList, get references and call them first. When you find the right guy/or gal, treat him like family. He’s worth his weight in gold.

Once you’ve found your computer guy, tell him what you want.

As much as you use email and Google, your computer guy needs to install Spybot, Norton Antivirus, and Outlook:

1. Spybot is free and effective in protecting your registry and blocking hostile websites, but you’ll need to check it regularly for updates.
2. Norton’s updates are automatic but require an annual $40 subscription. For 11 cents a day, Norton is a worthwhile investment.
3. DON”T upgrade to Vista – it’s got a bad (and well-deserved) reputation. A new operating system is expected this fall that is basically Vista without the bugs.

These services won’t prevent professional hackers from breaking into your machine, but it’ll protect you from 99.999% of the viruses, trojans, and worms that infest the Internet. XP has some good firewalls, but you’ll need a router (I use a wireless Linksys router) and a hexadecimal password (like Ddk52f0Wq!).

Some hard-core Mac users insist that they’re computers are invulnerable, but this is false. Although not susceptible to PC hacks, they routinely get hacked and phished.

Outlook will manage all of your email address in one place. Have your computer guy set up those things for you.

I also use Avant Browser. Firefox and others are just as good with powerful shortcuts and macros. Avant’s companion service, Roboform generates, saves, and manages all of your passwords. Many people make the mistake of using one username (Bob) and password (1234) for ALL of their computing needs. The problem is that if your only name and password get phished, they'll be used to attack your other hundred accounts – including Amazon, eBay, and your email. A hacker in Canada, Africa, or China could spend a lot of your money that way. Imagine the fun some kid would have logging into your email account and sending gay porn or viruses to all your friends, family, and associates with YOUR NAME. But if you use Roboform to generate, save, and manage your names and passwords, getting phished once won’t automatically clean out all of your other accounts.

This won’t protect you from all Internet-based threats, but like fences, doors, dogs, windows, and locks, it will greatly improve your defenses and computing ease.