I'm dredging this up from the comments on the "Council Meeting Update" post, because a couple of folks have mentioned to me that they don't read comments regularly.
One "Anonymous" writes:
Thursday 12-18-08 7:40 pm...
Was anyone other than me listening to KFI radio at this time (Hosts: Kennedy & Suits).... when they got to talking about Norma Torres AND played exerpts of her "performance" today at the budget vote session in Sacramento????
The Hosts wanted to know WHATTHEHECKGIVESINPOMONA for sending this MORON to Sacramento! They described her as 'unstable' and hysterical and then played the tape.... Yep! She was crying and putting on a true meltdown performance... saying that in Pomona, senior citizens are eating DOGFOOD and she had to sign this tax increase to put cops on the street, knowing it would 'take food out of the mouths of babies and take them out of school'.... incoherent... weepy, but in the middle of it, the radio station had to 'bleep' a big 'GODDAMN' she put in there... she was telling her story about being a 911 dispatcher on the graveyard shift. The radio hosts suggested she go back to that job (then backtracked, saying she is obviously unstable and you would not want to be talking to a nut if you were phoning in an emergency. It was hilarious BUT made Pomona look really stupid, low class and full of incompetents! They asked about how people make voting decisions in Pomona !!!!
Did anyone else catch this segment !!!??????
Now, if you've ever observed a legislative session (in D.C., in Sac, wherever), you know that representative democracy is a performance genre unlike any other (paging Robert Byrd, please totter over to the white courtesy telephone), so I hesitate to judge anyone by their stage antics at the microphone. And after the way that KFI covered the Condit-Mountain View let's-play-Injuns foofaraw, I take everything they say with a grain of salt.
On the other hand, I would not be shocked and appalled if Norma did not represent Pomona to its full advantage.
16 comments:
and the Acadamy Award goes to.....
Mark
Oh my. At the "newly elected officials" meet and greet last Wednesday, Torres schooled the crowed by explaining that in Sacramento there are Republicans and Democrats and that these two sides don't talk with each other. She also noted that Pomona's problems are not on the same scale as the problems in Sacramento. Gee, really? Seems to me our elected rep needs to jump on the ol' learning curve.
Yup. I heard KFI last night. They played a chorus of kids saying "YES" everytime Norma said something ridiculous.
The most disturbing thing for me in this whole Cal State financial mess is that as a medical provider, I don't have any recourse should the State run out of funds in Feb 09. I can't put my patients out on the street and I certainly can't close down. I'm still reeling and paying off debt incurred this past summer - when we went without payment for 80+ days.
*shakes head and puts face to hands...*
What more could we expect from Norma...she is not the brightest of the bunch. She recycles the same stories over and over again. I can't believe that she is in Sacramento representing Pomona in the company of exeptional politicians for other cities.
Link: http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/18227/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/18227/podcast/LOSANGELES-CA/KFI-AM/KS1216088P.mp3
That`s our girl
you get the idiots you elect.
http://w18.easy-share.com/1702924813.html
just the clip of her statements.
The link provided by "Anonymous 10:27" takes me to images I'm not allowed to download on my work computer, if you know what I mean.
Okay, so I finally heard the clip.
I expected to find the tears calculated and manipulative, but in fact they sounded utterly unplanned. Frankly, I think there's a 50-50 chance that Norma was getting so choked up out of sheer nerves; it didn't seem like legislative performance art at all. And the "Goddammit" was pretty mild -- it struck me as the kind of thing that wouldn't even get noticed if a man said it.
KFI's commentary was another matter. Am I the only person who noticed how many animal metaphors they used? "Throw a net over her," "Tie her up," etc. Only someone from a WASPy middle class background can be blind to the implications of that. Shame on them.
I finally listened to the clip, too (thank you, Pomona Joe). Torres is not well-spoken, and she is in dire need of some new anecdotes, but she didn't seem unstable and in need of nets or tethers. Rather, as Meg suggests, she sounded really nervous. I get that way when I speak publicly about issues I really care about. As Maggie Kuhn told us, "speak your mind, even if your voice shakes."
Here is a direct link to the soundbite. Its great.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/12/20/2231757/norma%20torres.mp3
Lets try this again
Norma Unleashed!
I will have to agree, she didnt actually sound insane, just a bit like a newbie up there. The dogfood thing was a bit strange, but I thought it was really going to be a major gaffe.
The real problems in Sacramento have to do with the truly insane reps up there and their proposals for ridiculous tax increases that have already pushed and are continuing to push people and businesses out of California in droves.
I say jump on the Texas bandwagon. No income tax, or super low income tax and major increases in use and sales tax. That way everyone is taxed equally regardless of citizenship or IRS filing status.
The Texas model also includes higher property taxes, indexed to the value of the land. California has very low property taxes, and with Prop 13 the taxes are essentially fixed when the property is purchased. The car tax is also lower than average. I would repeal Prop 13 for businesses so that at least their taxes can increase by CPI. I would add sales taxes to food and services (basically making it easier to collect and eliminating stupid loopholes like the "to go" loophole when buying a cold sandwich) while rebating the amount of taxes paid for a basic nutritional plan on the annual tax return, and adding that to the amount for food stamps so that it is cost neutral to the (legal) working class.
Realistically, though, you get what you pay for. Dirt cheap community colleges and relatively inexpensive Cal States within an hour drive of 95% of the population, an expanded Healthy Families health insurance for middle class kids, environmental and labor laws that are some of the strongest in the nation, and better than average public transit are some of the things that California taxes pay for. Drive on the roads in New York and Pennsylvania and see how screwed up they are. Try to catch a bus in Arlington, Texas, a city twice the size of Pomona - you can't.
Californians are highly taxed, but they do get some value for the money. The question is whether we can dial back some of those benefits while not turning this state into the next Mississippi.
The biggest problem we have is that not everyone is taxed on their income. The underground economy which is an ever increasing part of our state economy is mostly an all cash economy; while the children of those individuals are citizens and will be taxed as such, what do we use as a stop-gap until then?
The cash strapped middle class is paying 10% state income tax, plus federal income tax and carrying the most of the social services that are used by those who dont pay taxes, or pay very little in taxes (mostly federal at that); and are doing such as a very unsustainable rate. Why isnt this part of the discussion they are having in Sacramento.
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