I just attended an interesting local board meeting where every local problem, and they are legion, was touched upon or hinted at in an indirect manner. How the Library Board came to be the nexus of that, I am not exactly sure, but here is my best guess:

In Central Valley towns everywhere, including Porterville, social problems abound. No need to get into the specifics of why, but John Steinbeck wrote about it in Grapes of Wrath so they are well known to the American public. The problems shown there have not been solved, not a one of them. Oh some of them are not quite as bad as they used to be, but some are worse.

So it seems that in order to fight the Ghost of Tom Joad, in a pique of blaming current crime levels for all the ills of the City, a few years back before I arrived, the town voted to tax itself with a local sales tax of .75 percent in a ballot measure known as Measure H.

Measure H doles out the money 85% to police and safety for new toys to “reduce crime”. The other 15% is supposed to go to the library for vaguely defined “literacy programs” because it is believed that doing so will also reduce crime.

All well and good I suppose, but there is a catch. The cops want that 15% and the locals are inclined to give it to them, or at least make the Library beg continually to justify every single dollar, although cops and fire departments have no such pressure to justify their large piece of the pie.

How does that happen? There is a committee, called an oversight committee, that once a year reports to City Council its opinion as to whether the Measure H funds (the Library part of it in practice) were spent “wisely” during the preceding year.

This past year there was a large controversy, because for the first time the Committee told the Council that the funds had not been spent wisely.

So the Council is leaning on the Library to justify its very existence by creating a “business plan” in order to justify the part of the budget that would come from the 15%. That request was made about 3 or 4 months ago.

Tonight the Library board met to accept and recommend the “Plan” that Library staff created to Council on Wednesday. Problem is, the Plan is not really a Business Plan. Both I and another member of the public, actually, a member of the Oversight Committee, were present to gently inform the Board they were headed for another disaster.

But the Board barely understood. It is not persuasive enough to toss out programs and assert they cause crime to go down in Porterville. Some sort of evidence is needed. There are at least some descriptive statistics available, but all the Plan has are aggregate statistics with 5 and 6 significant figures. Really? You know how many “visits” there were in a year to 1 part in a million? How much next year’s budget will be to nearly 1 part in a million in advance? That’s pretty creative!

Meantime, if there is no breakdown of even that by month or of program usage by demographic, let alone any outcomes from the programs, then there is no hope at all of correlating them with the statistics the police department has, or other demographic information that City Hall has. Let alone running a regression of some sort that might identify the relative contributions of each program to an outcome, which would be really helpful for identifying how to spend the 15%.

Or even better, to evaluate the contribution of all programs in Library Services, Police, Fire and Safety Services, in order to see what is the best way to dole out the funds, if in fact anything serves to reduce crime in those areas at all (an iffy proposition in my mind off the top of my head).

But real data would mean hard choices – maybe we could eliminate the tax, or refigger it in a new ballot measure. Maybe the library would get more, and could be run more entrepreneurially. And maybe, just maybe, this could extend to actual measurements of data, with actual hypotheses that can be studied, with actual aims of curing some of the social ills that ad hoc approaches have not solved since long before John Steinbeck and Dorty Lange brought them to the attention of the broad American public. Not by Wednesday, when the report will be made to the Council, but maybe soon.

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Probably not meant to be read too closely – the writing actually appears pretty dense (as in packed on the page, come on, be nice!), I think this was supposed to introduce Reagan to the public as a whole and give his image some “heft” after being best known as an actor.

Apparently it worked.  I haven’t read this yet, but I will definitely add it to the pile of fist hand documents related to the fundamental principles of our country.  Now that we know “the rest of the story”, it will be interesting to see how much of it turned out to be foreshadowed in this book.

A few quotes from the back cover:

On Name Calling from the Political Left and Right:

I suggest to you there is no left or right, only an up or down. Up to the maximum of individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.

On Federal Welfare Spending:

If this present welfare spending was prorated equally among these (9.3 million) families, we could give each family more than $4,000 per year. Actually, direct aid to the poor averages less than $600 per family. There must be some administrative overhead somewhere.

On the Fear of Speaking Out:

If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile, hoping he’ll eat you last.

Like the man and the results or not, those 3 lines are each marketing gold. I expect nothing less from every page of this book.  Priced at 75 cents new in 1965, with slightly yellowed pages and a cover with minor damage, 25 cents made it mine.

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The Universe doesn’t care what you believe

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Early Professional Wrestling Icon Captain Lou Albano

Captain Lou Albano, a former professional wrestler and actor (though never a sea captain), recently passed away at the age of 76 of natural causes. In the wake of his death, searches surged on the man and his unique body of work.

Still, despite his accomplishments in the wrestling world and his portrayal of video games’ biggest stars, the masses are likely to remember Albano for his work with Cyndi Lauper.

via The Buzz Log – Captain Lou Albano Dies at 76 – Yahoo! Buzz.

Captain Lou Albano!

The Man, the Song – Lyrics by NRBQ:

Captain Lou
Well, some say the man’s not wrapped too tight
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou, Captain Lou)
But when he’s on the scene, everything’s all right
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)
With the man of a thousand faces
I know we’d be goin’ places (hey!)
I’m gonna stick with the guiding light
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)

Lou don’t worry ‘cause it’s figured in
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou, Captain Lou)
And he’s got sharp teeth like Rin Tin Tin
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)
With the man of a thousand faces
I know we’d be goin’ places (hey!)
We’ll stick with the light through thick and thin
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)

Captain Lou:
Captain Lou, Captain Lou, Captain Lou
Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano
hey!
Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano

With the man of a thousand faces
I know we’d be goin’ places (hey!)
I’m gonna stick with the guiding light
(Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano)

Captain Lou, Captain Lou Albano {repeat}

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via Gay rights advocates march on DC, divided on Obama – Yahoo! News.

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I thought y’all might like a look into the types of books that draw my interest. I will elaborate on specific ones from time to time, and use their content as a jumping off point for various blog essays.

To that extent I have added a new “library” section to this blog. It can be found at http://www.portervillenerd.com/library/

To kick it off, I will add some books I grabbed today from the Porterville Library “Friends of the Library” monthly book sale. To be honest, there were far more books available than I expected, and I didn’t expect to find anything except curiosities, if that. I think I did a little better than that, and the money goes to a good cause.

For now, the formatting of the Library page, and the individual book pages may look a little iffy as I have not integrated the default formatting into this blog’s theme. In the interest of sharing information rapidly, I let you know about the data anyway

And if you see any books that are interesting, you can click on the images or the titles and you will be taken to the book’s page on Amazon.com. If you then buy the book, you will be bringing the internet economy to Porterville, which can really use it, and honoring me with a small contribution that Amazon will provide me for having helped you! I thank you for that honor, I hope you find some books as interesting as I do, and I welcome your feedback on what you think of them or the essays I will provide.

Here are the books I got today, all for a total of less than 10 dollars:

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Strathmore, California. Citrus workers in winter quarters 1939 Feb. Strathmore is adjacent to Porterville.

Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy

Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries

Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I’ll be there

Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand

Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”

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I want to go on record and applaud the Porterville City Council for taking a definitive stand on the issue of marriage. It is between a man and a woman. History bears this out for centuries, as being the intended state of marriage.

He then rambles on with a long series of arguments we have debunked thoroughly and repeatedly over the last 11 months before Council. We have debunked them so thoroughly that few if any of them were presented to Council during the 90minutes+ of open comments at last Tuesday’s meeting by the way.

For example:

Gay is a choice. Period. End of story. The APA has recently declared no gay gene. It is a behavioral choice.

How can 5 such short sentences have so many fallacies?

Science has never shown a “stupid” gene either.

Full text of the article after the jump, because I can’t believe this is what he meant to publish and the paper has taken material down before.

(...)
Hit the link for more: Bizarre Article on Porterville SB54 Vote

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The bill  would, if passed, clarify issues for same sex couples who are  legally married in other states and then arrive in California, in essence granting them all the rights of a marriage without allowing the relationship to be deemed a marriage. This is designed to clarify a gap in coverage that the California Supreme Court has identified in Prop 8, now a Constitutional Amendment.

Full statement after the jump ….

(...)
Hit the link for more: Statement from Barry Caplan, representing Same-Sex Marriage Advocates of Porterville

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