Lanny Being Lanny...

No wonder Travis Strongarm is afraid to attend city council meetings: too many freaks like him!! A clinic in abnormal psychology..at its finest!!

So I'm watching the Santa Barbara City Council Meeting, interested in the latest employee contract outcome..it passed (Dale Francisco was absent!) over the concerns of my pal Lanny Ebenstein, an economic legend in his own mind, who this time was representing the County Taxpayers Association, as its president of all things.
SHADY
I'm a taxpayer and they don't represent me! This is a shady organization with ultrarightwing members like Joe Centeno, Joe Armendariz, Mike Stoker and the Chumash Casino..bling chasers who they claim to be non-partisan, which is total bullshit..they are anti labor and anti union. When Executive Director Joe Armendariz, dazed and drunk, crashed his car in Montecito, the TAXPAYERS cleaned up his mess; when Mike Stoker was spokeman for GREKA, the county fire dept responded dozens of times to clean up their mess..who paid? the TAXPAYERS...so don't give me this nonsense about being taxpayer advocates..they are a bunch of hypocrites!
ok..so now Lanny is president of this limp outfit, and here's some of the message they want you, the taxpayer, to hear: A particular area of interest will be the comprehensive remuneration of local government employees, including benefits. For too long, local governments have allowed particularly benefits of employees to become out of line with standards in the private sector. This cannot continue. The SBCTA will take a leadership role in bringing inappropriate pay and benefit provisions of local government employee contracts to the attention of the public and elected officials, and we will advocate for corrective action in this area.
translation: they want to try to bust the union..
standards in the private sector?? WTF are you talking about, Lanny? Wendy doesn't have any retirement benefits or scruples, her pussy is as dry as the Mojave; Enron stole their employees pensions; stop trying to pretend you're some kind of financial genuis and get a real fucking job, dickwad! Just try to reduce pay and benefits of public service workers and watch what happens! Where was the SCTPA during the last four years of the Bush administration while he was pissing away money in Iraq? or ignoring Wall Street Fraud?? They were cheerleading and shining Armendariz's shiny Mercedes, that's what !! jesus fucking louise!!
Lanny tried to sell the council not to approve the contract because private industry would not...how many times do these people have to be told: there is a public sector and a private sector...the private sector is not automatically a better model: ENRON.. AIG.. CITI to name a few less than stellar examples..so stop trying to tout it as such..Lanny, get it through your thick skull, the city is a PUBLIC enterprise...the workers are unionized.. you got it??
Now, before they got to the contract, the Teen Appreciation segment (Go Teens!) and the public comment section preceded. Some members of the public spoke: Wayne Scoles, the Mesa Madman, was up there in raggedy tank top, reading from Robert Eringer's anti-Cam Sanchez blog. Scoles looks like he's one step away from the edge, TYPE A personality, looks like he's got some sort of post traumatic stress disorder.... ARRRRHHGGG...Cam Sanchez sucks as Chief of Police, I agree, but all Scoles is doing when he performs like a lunatic in front of the city council is make Sanchez a martyr. Next, we get Kate Smith, another rambling lunatic..I was hoping Kate would redeem herself but she's off the deep end..and continued to read from Eringer's blog! Robert Eringer, Pied Piper to the Insane!
Sometimes watching these folks is like watching One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest..and Iya Falcone or even Marty Blum are very much like Nurse Ratchett..in a good way!
I'm sure the city workforce is bemused by all the fuss about their contracts, but they will continue to work, day in and day out, provide essential services, and let the politics play out in the media..as it should..God Save the Queen!