welcome to last year

I stumbled across this article from last year about the CA governor's race. It offers the rather surprising fact that California has one of the lowest state-employee-per-capita rates in the country. A mere 108 per 10,000, compared to, say, Delaware with 305/10,000.

Maybe this means the 'wasteful spending' is not so much from the government employees, but from all the stuff that has been farmed out to the private sector.

Not to bash the private sector too much, since obviously a lot of that outsourced stuff is bond issue things that voters have demanded without much thought for the cost when the bills come due.

Maybe I should found Alchemy Centre International

Interesting story about the crumbling of Madonna's Malawi charity, which originally hoped to build a $15 million girls' school.

Last week it was announced that the future would not be built. Despite the fundraising success of Raising Malawi, which collected a reported $18 million in donations and spent $3.8 million on the planned academy, the girls' school has been abandoned and the Raising Malawi foundation has imploded.
...
To understand what went wrong, one has to look at Madonna's partner in the foundation, a mysterious and controversial organization called the Kabbalah Centre International, which is now a focus of federal investigators.
...
members of the religious order (including the Bergs) "have taken a vow of poverty" and look to the center "for their meals, lodging and other subsistence." [Aw, that's nice.]
...
Four of the five Berg families live in Beverly Hills mansions owned and remodeled by the center. [Oh, I see, it's like Vatican-style poverty]

Salt-rubbing kicker: "UNICEF's Schools for Africa program, for example, has renovated or built 1,000 schools and trained 100,000 teachers since 2004."