Cut. It. Out: Add another $7 million to the projected $20 million budget shortfall for the current fiscal year and we should expect next year’s budget won’t be booming. But for the first time since merger, the Abramson administration says Metro government will have less money to spend in the 2009-2010 fiscal year, which means we should wince when the mayor presents the budget plan to the Metro Council later today.
Big blue storm: Although he’s not named in the allegations, the NCAA has asked UK Coach John Calipari be present when its judicial body meets over allegations of major rules violations that occurred while he coached at the University of Memphis. Meanwhile, former UK coach Billy Gillispie is suing the university’s athletic association for millions for being canned, alleging breach of contract and fraud.
Not about Bill: Remember the person in high school who was hot shit, but years later turned into a sad case who was a shell of their former self. That’s who President Bill Clinton was during the Democratic primary, the one who tries to make every moment a sequel of days gone by. He was an embarrassing distraction, but NY Magazine has an excellent piece on the mellowing former president, who has seemingly accepted the acendency of his wife and being in the background in the ‘Age of Obama’.
Afro-Rican: Playing to the symbolism in a nomination that is becoming increasingly about race, the hackneyed discussion about the black-brown divide was bound to pop up. Time magazine’s Tim Padgett writes Obama picking Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is “the most potent symbol yet of a 21st century rapprochement between the U.S.’s two largest minorities, Latino Americans and African Americans, who in the 20th century could be as violently distrustful of each other as blacks and whites were.”
Who’s your outsource?: When a magazine in Pasadena outsourced city hall coverage to reporters in India to save a little bit of money, John Adamian, group managing editor of the Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate, & Fairfield County Weekly, came up with a novel idea — outsource the entire issue for all three papers. Joking at first, Adamnian says outsourcing news is still a bad idea, but give him kudos for originality for reporting on globalization from the alt-weekly perspective.