I know times are tough and local governments are looking for a way to get some extra cash, but extorting demanding money from bloggers smacks of thuggery.

The Washington Post wrote:

…Philadelphia, where the city has been asking bloggers with any sign of a business model to pay for a “business privilege license.” [emphasis mine]

Of course, the definition of “any sign of a business model” is a bit broad. It apparently includes having an ad on your blog. So what about writers who have their book covers on their blog? Or maybe bloggers who don't have ads but affiliate links to places like Amazon?

Philadelphia City Paper reports:

After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.

Many of the bloggers who are being extorted — yep, I said it — don't make anywhere near $300. A lot of them are doing it just for fun / as a hobby with an ad thrown in there.

In a way it's sad since people can't just decide to boycott this ridiculous fee. The government has the power to jail or fine you or whatever to get the money it wants. (Unless you run like hell to another country or something.)

My solution to the bloggers in Philadelphia — Form a union of bloggers. Then demand a bailout from the federal government on the basis of “too big to fail”.

I was going to blog about something else, but I just couldn't stop myself from saying something about the ridiculous situation in Bell, CA.

In case you didn't know, California and all its cities are suffering from massive budget shortfalls. In Bell's case, it appears that the obscene pay to public officials is a big contributing factor to the budget crisis.

LA Times reports in two parts:

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bell-cuts-20100727,0,5834864.story

The report shows that community services, including social services and recreation programs, were cut by 21%, or $593,438, while public safety took a 3.7% hit, or $228,888. Police training was whacked by 58%.

The salaries of [City Admin Officer] Rizzo, [Police Chief] Adams and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia are equal to about 10% of Bell's $15.9-million general fund budget.

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bell-salaries-20100727,0,1970663.story

…the city's top officials received some of the highest municipal wages in the nation. City Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo made $787,637 a year, almost twice the salary of President Obama; Police Chief Randy Adams made $457,000, 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck; and Assistant City Manager Spaccia made $376,288, more than the top administrator for Los Angeles County.

All three resigned last week.

I really hope it doesn't end with their resignations because it's an empty gesture.

They got to keep their ridiculous pay (almost twice what we pay our commander-in-chief!) and as far as I can tell, they'll be able to get their pensions when they reach retirement age. This is the biggest F-you to the people Rizzo, Adams and Spaccia can come up with on their way out. (Oh, BTW — Rizzo has been collecting that big pay from the city for fifteen years!)

And to further illustrate how outrageous their pay was — the population of Bell is about 38,000. No, that's not a typo. It's only 38,000.

If Bell had paid just those three half of what they made, the city would've saved $810,462.50 this year. That's enough to preserve the funding for community services for the residents, and it would have almost no impact on the funding level for public safety. Now this is just those three. Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars could've been saved if the city hadn't overpaid other public official fat cats.

Nothing short of a full investigation, and new laws with claw-back features will stop public officials from pulling this kind of stunt again.

I'm not sure what's up with books set in Japan these days. Or maybe I've been extremely unlucky. It's painfully obvious that the authors have never been to Japan, do not understand the culture and/or done all their research by watching anime (or perhaps reading manga).

The most recent one I bought made me livid. Even before I finished the first chapter, I came up with seven things wrong with the characters and setup. If it hadn't been an ebook, I would've returned it and demanded a refund.

Living in Japan does not make your character Japanese. Sipping green tea while eating sashimi does not make your character Japanese. Wearing kimono does not make your character Japanese. And for pity's sake, speaking broken Japanese in romanji does not make your character Japanese.

Got it?

Seriously…I'm never wasting my money again on a book set in Japan written by anime fangirls/boys.

…just because I write paranormal romance.

According to Mary W. Walters‘s open letter to editors:

…your desk is piling up with flimsy bits of vampire literature, fantasy, romance, detective stories and the kind of first-draft bubble gum that used to be called chick-lit but is now shuffled in with other women's writing in order to give it heft — although as far as you can see, neither the quality nor the subject matter has improved — which you are required to somehow turn into publishable books.

…

…fine fiction writers who are crappy copy-writers attempt to write fast-paced pitches about their own serious novels that will make those novels sound as much as possible like commercial drivel.

And literary agents are like rabid dogs — or was it vampires? — trying to destroy fine literature and screw editors:

They are the literary agents — that league of intellectual-property purveyors who bring you every new manuscript you ever see, those men and women who are so anxious to gain access to the caverns of treasure they believe you sit upon like some great golden goose that they would likely hack one another's heads off were they not united by one self-serving mission: to ensure that quality fiction never hits your desk.

Then Mary goes on to say that her novel was rejected by over sixty agents, “mainly sight unseen”. I assume this means her query letter was rejected by lots of agents. If your query letter can't get you some decent partial / full requests, you need to rewrite your query.

Oh…it also helps if you don't say all those nasty things about agents on your blog.

Now gas is dirt cheap again in the States. I heard that it's going for $1.50 / gallon. This is great for many of us short-term as we ride out the current recession. But it's a disaster if we let the cheap gas lure us into complacency and not innovate green technology, such as solar power, etc.

Why?

Because as long as we depend on oil as our primary fuel, we'll always be at the mercy of the OPEC nations. Take a look at the following list of member countries (* denotes founding member):

• Algeria
• Angola
• Ecuador
• Iran*
• Iraq*
• Kuwait*
• Libya
• Nigeria
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia*
• United Arab Emirates
• Venezuela*

How many of them do you suppose is our ally and promoter of human rights we hold so dear? Not many. We worry about things like gender equality in countries like Iran and Iraq and Nigeria and/or Iranian nuclear threats, etc. Guess what? They can do what they do because we give them lots and lots of money for oil.

On one of the loops I belong to there's been a discussion on one of the workshops because some people thought it was too snarky because the manuscripts were someone's baby. I don't know … but if you send something to publishing industry professionals, you should be ready to hear what they have to say even if you think their comments are mean. It's not their job to spare your tender feelings. Nobody put a gun to your head and forced you to submit.

Your manuscript is NOT your baby or treasure or any such thing. It's a product you hope to sell to make a profit. (Or at least generate positive cash flow since “profit” is a figment of an accountant's imagination.) This is not to say that it doesn't hurt to get rejected or us writers don't get neurotic when we write. But this kind of attitude helps because you can maintain some distance so that an editor/agent's rejection of your manuscript does not become personal and morph into a rejection of your baby.

(BTW — I don't get this “baby” thing in the first place. Do people normally sell their children to the highest bidder?)

To invest excessive emotional attachment above and beyond what's necessary will only break your heart even more when you get rejection slips, crappy reviews, and snarky reader comments.