Eideard

Faced with the difficult task of balancing a budget in austere times, officials in New York’s Suffolk County said on Friday they had no choice: they had to sack Santa Claus. The county executive said he could not justify carving out $660 from his $2.7 billion budget to pay David McKell, 83, a World War II veteran and former homicide detective, to don his Santa suit for the tenth year running and greet children on Long Island…

He said that some 750 county employees were facing layoffs as a result of budget restraints, including what he described as a $20 million cut in state aid to the county’s health system…

Steve Levy was quickly called a Grinch by his opponents.

“Do we really have to hold Santa Claus hostage to balance the budget?” said Bill Lindsay, a Democrat and the presiding officer of the county legislature.

“I mean, $600? Give me a break,” Joseph Sawicki, a Republican who as county comptroller is charged with overseeing the county government’s fiscal prudence, said in an interview. “There comes a point where you go overboard in terms of penny-pinching…”

In the end, Steve Bellone, the current town supervisor of nearby Babylon, who is running as the Democratic candidate to succeed Levy, said he would pay for Santa.

Levy, who is not running for reelection, dismissed Bellone’s gesture as “pure grandstanding”, and said his office was investigating whether the check breached rules governing gifts to county agencies.

Exactly the kind of response I’d expect from a Scrooge getting caught out at being a cheapskate at managing somebody else’s money. He hates like hell to admit he’s a lousy money manager; so, he blames the people who point out his distorted values.

Dropping water one bucket at a time

One of the dozens of massive blazes that have torched rain-starved Texas was set by arsonists, police say.

Cops in Leander are hunting for two teenage girls and two teenage boys suspected of starting a fire Monday night that gutted around a dozen houses and forced hundreds of people to evacuated their homes…

The teens were spotted running through a wooded area where the fire started, police said. The city was offering up to $2,000 to anyone with information leading to the arrest of the arsonists.

Local reports said the blaze ripped through at least 300 acres, destroyed 11 homes and damaged at least eight homes around Leander, about 22 miles northwest of Austin…

Investigators say one of girl suspects was wearing a pink shirt and blue jeans, and she had black hair that may have been dyed. The other girl was described as having dirty blond hair in a white T-shirt and jeans. Both boys had dark, shaggy hair and were dressed in jeans, police said. All four teens are white, cops said.

More than 150 different wildfires have ravaged hundreds of thousands of acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Texas this week.

One fire, in Bastrop, southeast of Austin, was described as the most devastating wildfire in more than a decade. That fire raged for a fourth-consecutive day on Wednesday, consuming 45 square miles and forcing 7,000 to evacuate the area. More than 600 homes were said to have been destroyed, and four people have been killed.

Murder is murder is murder. If they catch these kids and they are proven to have started fires – throw away the key.

Yes, there are safety reasons for that – the maximum flying hours, not the cheapskate part.

Freshman U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh, a tax-bashing Tea Party champion who sharply lectures President Barack Obama and other Democrats on fiscal responsibility, owes more than $100,000 in child support to his ex-wife and three children, according to documents his ex-wife filed in their divorce case in December.

“I won’t place one more dollar of debt upon the backs of my kids and grandkids unless we structurally reform the way this town spends money!” Walsh says directly into the camera in his viral video lecturing Obama on the need to get the nation’s finances in order…

An intense, silver-haired firebrand, Walsh, 49, has taken cable TV by storm in recent weeks, becoming the unofficial spokesman for the “No compromise” faction of the Republican majority in the U.S. House — refusing to consider any debt crisis solution that includes raising taxes on the wealthy.

Walsh admits he is not wealthy. Some of his financial problems — including losing his Evanston condo to foreclosure — were documented before his out-of-nowhere victory last fall in the 8th Congressional District in Chicago’s north and northwest suburbs…

Before getting elected, he had told Laura Walsh that because he was out of work or between jobs, he could not make child support payments. So she was surprised to read in his congressional campaign disclosures that he was earning enough money to loan his campaign $35,000.

“Joe personally loaned his campaign $35,000, which, given that he failed to make any child support payments to Laura because he ‘had no money’ is surprising,” Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed in December seeking $117,437 in back child support and interest. “Joe has paid himself back at least $14,200 for the loans he gave himself…”

Walsh lives with his new wife and children in McHenry. He has not paid any of the $117,437 yet, Laura Walsh’s attorney, Jack Coladarci, said Wednesday.

My lifetime political dicho still stands: Republicans would have invented hypocrisy if Christians hadn’t beaten them to it.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The boss of the budget airline Ryanair has called for co-pilots to be removed from the flight deck to save money and suggested that air stewardesses could land planes in an emergency.

Michael O’Leary claimed that air stewardesses could instead be trained to land an aircraft in the event of an emergency.

In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, Mr O’Leary, who has previously suggested that planes could fly with “standing-only” areas for passengers, said: “Why does every plane have two pilots?

“Really, you only need one pilot. Let’s take out the second pilot. Let the b—– computer fly it.”

When asked what would happen if the single pilot fell ill while flying a plane, he said: “If the pilot has an emergency, he rings the bell, he calls her in. She could take over.”

The idea has been ridiculed by pilots, who questioned Mr O’Leary’s commitment to passenger safety.

Patrick Smith, an experienced pilot, described the idea as “beyond preposterous”. He added: “Even in routine operations it’s important to have a second person there…”

Kate Hanni, the founder of FlyersRights.org, a passenger campaign group, said: “He insults the dignity of the flying public every time he opens his mouth.”

And as long as passengers make their booking decisions solely on price, this shitheel will continue to make money.

I bump into folks online every day who step back – as I have done – and review travel decisions based on reasonable qualities of safety, sanity, how you care to live your life and, then, maybe, what cost is required to achieve what you wish. None of which makes it likely I would ever fly Ryanair.