Charger's Stadium And City Hall

Charger's Stadium And City Hall

Proposals to revive the rebuilding of a new stadium for the Chargers in Mission Valley and the building of a new city hall for the City of San Diego have resurfaced recently, although with little imagination or creativity. The city also wants to build a new library and put in a new high school with it. The most audacious of the new proposals suggest combining the projects to save money and to utilize tax money without anyone griping about it. The new city hall and library could be built overlooking the newly built Charger’s Stadium where the current stadium is now. Who wants to go downtown to go to a library, city hall or high school? Besides when global warming kicks in next year, it’ll all be under the bay anyhow. The current stadium would be razed, since it is considered too old to be used anymore by people who have a lot of money they don’t want to spend. Where were our vaunted designers and trades unions when they were building this hunk of junk? Haven’t they ever heard of caulking and paint? It is not in as such a bad state of disrepair as the Roman Coliseum which has not been used for professional sports for quite a while now. This just proves that if we don’t raze it, the stadium will just hang on and languish for thousands of years and tourists visiting it wouldn’t even realize that L.T. played there. While the old stadium is razed and the new built, all Charger games would be held at Helix High School. Building the city hall in the same location would solve many ethical dilemmas. City politicians and workers are morbidly afraid of attending the games using the city’s free passes, but with city hall in that new location, would be able to brag about showing up for work on Sunday on their own time and yet still be able to see the game from their desk looking out of their window. It is expected to lead to a new tradition in creating a pleasant workplace atmosphere called, ”Bring the family, salsa and chips to work day”. While razing the stadium, they would raze the Qualcomm name and would sell it to some new up and coming internet company with a lot of money to blow or Google, although Google has not shown an interest for the naming rights as of now. If no really big spenders step up, some well placed Julian property owners have considered banding together and buying the rights. The stadium would then be known as the “Julian Municipal Stadium, formally known as Qualcomm Stadium and Jack Murphy Stadium”.

©2009 Eric Stamets

Congressional Pressure To Return Bonus

Congressional Pressure To Return Bonus

Michael Hart, head guy down at the Julian News, was recently pressured by members of Congress to return an enormous performance bonus that he was given early this year for his exemplary handling of the Julian News in 2008 for not eliminating, but cutting way back on the number of misspellings in the Julian News as best as is humanly and computerly possible. Unfortunately the return of the bonus was a few days late because it could have been used by the Julian News to purchase the Borrego Sun or even the San Diego Union Tribune, for what they’re worth. His performance was quite notable for keeping everything going in spite of the diminution of things to read in the paper with the drastic cutback in real estate advertising. Even though the Julian News did not need to accept money from the bailouts, the members of Congress said, “Hey let’s get him while we can.”

©2009 Eric Stamets

Too Many Czars Spoil The Pot

Too Many Czars Spoil The Pot

It seems like we’ve been taken over by the Russians. A while back the federal government was talking about an energy czar, then we have a drug czar, a couple of months ago they appointed a border czar and now they’ve come up with a cyberczar. The United States is suffering from czar build-up. President Obama reiterated that the United States doesn’t cybertorture, although he had no alternative to the fact that trying to get a computer to work properly can be pure torture. I’ve always had the impression that a czar was like the king or emperor of Russia who rode roughshod over the general populace until they rose up, killed him and his family and buried the remains in an unmarked grave. I’m not sure I would like to have the czar job no matter how much it pays, even with a cushy pension. Plus the word “czar” is etymologically derived from the Latin ”caesar” and remembering our history, Julius Caesar didn’t fare too well either. I don’t have a better term right off-hand, but the word commissioner sounds too much like Chicago gangster politics and has the equivalent of “commissar” in Russian. The United States has always had a president, the meaning of which is derived from the root words “presi”, as in “present” or “shows up” and “dent” as in “dental”. That means the main qualification of our leader is that he or she shows up with good teeth. The good hair was discredited with the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich. The vice president has to show up with good teeth but is allowed a few vices as long as he keeps his mouth shut. After all the stink about the English Parliament members and their outlandish expenses, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about the expenses of U.S. congressmen (and women). All of our House of Representative expenses are legitimate, however, because they are overseen by the House chief administrative officer Daniel Beard, who has flunky non-chief administrative officers that do the work. Mr. Beard had to hire House chief administrative officer spokesman Jeff Ventura to tell us that they can deny an expense that is inappropriate, but that they don’t keep records on inappropriate claims. Mr. Beard is too busy to speak for himself. The Senate has a similar procedure. Why do we have to have similar procedures and a duplicate bureaucracy to do the same thing? Who cares- it’s the American way. And let’s keep good old American names for our officials. We don’t need any spokes czars.

©2009 Eric Stamets

California Supreme Court Decision

California Supreme Court Decision

Most people and the news accounts misunderstand the defining decision by the California Supreme Court on the controversial Proposition 8 that the justices had expected would please everybody. The court ruled in a decision, with one dissent, to require marriage without sex as their way of upholding Proposition 8. This really simplifies the thought process of the ruling and they really needed that. The ruling stated that there would be no heterosexual or same sex marriage, just no sex marriage and Proposition 8 became a moot point. It stated that all procreation of Californians must take place in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon or offshore on a cruise ship. Of course there are the citizens in California who are married that wouldn’t abide by the court’s decision and they are probably the same ones who were sneaking around on their parents when they were teenagers. If you are not married, the ruling doesn’t affect you because we’re talking marriage here. The ruling also mandated that the state create the Commission on Marriage Without Sex with highly paid commissioners and an enforcement force that will patrol neighborhoods with advanced technological snooping devices at night to root out scofflaws. There is debate whether the system of penalties and fines will follow that for offenders of using their cell phone in their car or that for those who run red lights. The photo enforcement techniques developed for red lights are expected to be used in the enforcement of the ruling and the photos are expected to offer compelling evidence in a court of law. There is hope that there will be federal stimulus money coming to the state to help curb the stimulus.

©2009 Eric Stamets