[Pictured: He's watching you! Get to know new ZD influence, Chris Voss.]This post based on these two ZD TWITTER posts that merit a full thread as applied to City of Los Angeles and not only it's budget crisis, but the REAL crisis...the budget has been approved, but unions are saying they will fight furloughs in court. Here are the Tweets followed by the Times.
ZD: L.A. City Council approved the mayor's budget, which includes furloughs and give-backs the unions have not agreed to. IT'S A SHAM BUDGET!
ZD: City of L.A. should call-in Chris Voss to re-negotiate contracts between Villarshady and unions.ESPECIALLY since budget is already approved!
City of Los Angeles could soon slap sign on door: Closed every other Friday
June 3, 2009 - David Zahniser and Maeve Reston at L.A. City Hall
The Los Angeles City Council voted late today to move ahead with a furlough plan that would save $100 million in employment costs but close a majority of city operations every other Friday.
While the city continues to negotiate with public employee unions in search of salary or job concessions, the council spent more than four hours behind closed doors exploring ways of scaling back city services.
Matt Szabo, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said that the mayor still would prefer to close the budget gap by pursuing a plan for privatizing parking structures and leasing parking meters, similar to a plan pursued by the city of Chicago. Council members held off on that plan, saying that even if it were feasible, it would not generate money for another year.
But Zuma Dogg, a superior spokesman for the People of Los Angeles said now the crybaby mayor can say, "It's not our fault, Zuma Dogg and City Council didn't let us do the parking scheme idea that would have fixed the problem, even though the numbers are B.S. (overshooting with $80 million projections) AND it hasn't even gotten underway, and WILL NOT be here in time. IN OTHER WORDS, B.S. FROM HEAD TO TOE, JUST LIKE THE GUY WHO THOUGHT OF IT. THE MAYOR HAS A BAD HABIT OF THROWING OUT BAD/NOT REALISTIC IDEAS, THEN CRYING LIKE A COWARD WHEN IT IS REJECTED, THEN BLAMING EVERYONE ELSE BUT THE CAUSE...AND FOR THAT HE WOULD NEED A MIRROR!]
Union officials said they are still pushing for an early retirement package and have vowed to fight furloughs in court. The city’s lawyers, in response, hope to prevent a judge from imposing a temporary restraining order by showing that the city has engaged in a “reasonable” period of negotiations before pursuing unpaid days off.
[Oops, the mayor knows he's in trouble because even an arrogant dummy like him KNOWS this IS NOT reasonable, not because of the time, but because of the "not-enough, way too late" solution, and he has been told it would be rejected the entire time it was being proposed and now he is going to be the cause of the entire city shutting down. And has the mayor EVER been anything but REJECTED in court? Has he EVER had a victory? NO! Don't expect one on this, either. MAYOR V. FOR GOVERNOR!]
The city’s budget for 2009-2010, signed by Villaraigosa earlier this week, seeks to eliminate a $530-million shortfall through a series of furloughs, layoffs and concessions from employee unions.
Even with the furloughs, the city must rely on other reductions to scale back another $226 million, Garcetti said. The budget calls for 800 layoffs, on top of 400 approved earlier in May.
AND ON ALL THE OTHER REDUCTIONS, THERE'S NOT A CLOWN IN THE HORESHOE THAT COULD DECIDE ON WHERE ONE PESO CAN BE CUT!!! NOTHING...NOT A THING!!! THERE IS REALLY NOTHING THAT CAN BE CUT!!! THE CITY HAS BEEN AT OPTIMAL EFFICIENCY ALL THIS TIME, AND THEY HAVE ALREADY TAKEN ALL THE MONEY FOR ALL THE FAVORS!
So, since the unions have already indicated they are going to sue (starting with "no" as Mr. Chris Voss calls it), and Villaraigosa is in deep doo-doo for fucking up the city and now having to get a bunch of pissed off union members to "give back" to the irresponsible spend-thug who they hate...AND CLOWNCILOSERS COULDN'T AGREEE ON WHERE TO TRIM A PESO OR SAY NO TO A THING....
BETTER CALL IN MR. CHRIS VOSS who may, or may not be an LA Daily Blog reader.
Voss is a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service.
Prior to becoming the FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator, Voss was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorist Task Force for 14 years (1986 -- 2000) and was co-case agent for TERRSTOP (the Blind Sheik Case – Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman) and the TWA Flight 800 Catastrophe. While in New York City, Voss was the lead Crisis Negotiator for the New York City Division of the FBI. [What did YOU do today?]
Voss has taught counter-terrorism, hostage negotiation and hostage survival internationally and was a teaching assistant at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government where he received a Masters of Public Administration in June 2008.
Voss’s company, The Black Swan Group consults on both business negotiation, and kidnapping and terrorism related incidents.
Voss’s business negotiation consulting in based on applying the lessons of hostage, crisis and kidnapping negotiation to the business negotiation world. Voss’s experiences in working to improve the FBI counter-kidnapping response strategies were greatly influenced by what he learned from the Harvard Program on Negotiation (both as a student and an instructor) and from private sector negotiation consulting firms such as Triad Consulting and the Jim Camp Group.
Ideas & Influences
Voss’s contention is that what he learned from Jim Camp’s book “Start With No” blended easily with what the FBI was doing in its negotiation program and was an important influence in developing new strategies for that program.
Voss contends that the principles of hostage and kidnapping negotiation are directly applicable to business negotiation. Voss states that kidnappers run their operations as a form of a "business", albeit an illegal business, and as such are governed by basic business principles. Negotiation tactics that disrupt businesses will disrupt kidnapping operations.
If a terrorist or criminal gang conducts a kidnapping, they have an expectation of receiving revenue in the form of a ransom within some expected time frame. [Wait, is this about criminal gangs, or Villaraigosa and L.A. City Council...I can't tell?]
If the time frame is continually extended beyond their expectations then the ransom victim becomes a form of inventory that is difficult to "turn over" and therefore undesirable. Since the business has a "sunk cost" in this "inventory" they will not discard it, but will continue to bargain for until it is "sold". Their long-term reaction will either be to avoid this type of "inventory" (meaning they will avoid kidnapping this type of person) in the future or change businesses.
Many terrorist organizations (or in this case Villaraigosa and City Council) use kidnapping [like of people's jobs and city services as a source of funding. Therefore disrupting their kidnapping operations through disruptive negotiation techniques is a strategy that can be effective in disrupting terrorism. (I think Zuma Dogg has been doing that.)
Since kidnapping negotiation is a form of business negotiation, Voss contends that savvy kidnapping negotiators would be talented business negotiators. Voss contends business negotiators can learn a great deal from the kidnapping negotiation process.
Interestingly enough, Voss also contends that people who negotiate on the behalf of kidnapping victims have to form an effective working relationship with their criminal counterparts, in this case the mayor and city council members. The agreement with the kidnapper is effectively a "contract", yet there is no recourse for enforceability. The agreement itself has to be negotiated through a process wherein the process makes the agreement meet all requirements of "durability".
If this contention is true, then these strategies have tremendous application to business. Increasing the durability of agreements, or negotiating them in ways which ensures that they will be performed upon would reduce or eliminate costs associated with renegotiating contracts or the legal fees associated with filing lawsuits in an attempt to enforce contracts."
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