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Modern-day telethons have been distilled down to shorter, albeit star-studded, benefit concerts to respond to specific catastrophes - 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Indonesian tsunami, Australian bushfires - but none have had as lasting an effect as the MDA telethons, which have raised more than $1 billion to date. And if the pity party gets to be a bit too much, follow Lewis' own words from a 1990 broadcast: "If you find I'm annoying, I'm getting to you, you've got a remote-control clicker...
Once the remaining $73 million is gone, Palmer says California would turn to its general emergency fund, which totals $500 million. In signing the budget in July, Schwarzenegger made additional cuts in order to have half a billion dollars in reserves put aside for catastrophes such as fires and earthquakes. (See 10 things to do in Los Angeles...
...fire for the state to worry about. A string of major wildfires has hit California over the summer. Addressing reporters on Sept. 3, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to sound reassuring, "Even though we have a budget crunch and we have an economic crisis and we just solved a $23 billion deficit, we will always have the money available to fight the fires because public safety is our No. 1 priority...
...even with federal assistance, the California fiscal crisis - and in particular July's $1.9 billion raid on local government finances to help balance the state budget - could threaten the system of mutual aid between fire departments across the state. For example, several fire departments in northern California went south to help out with the Angeles National Forest blaze. As the fire season continues, however, budget cutbacks may force some local fire departments to stop participating in mutual aid. "Local agencies may have no choice but to hold back. A fire department's first responsibility is to protect the home front...
...tourism, whether targeting children or adults, creates huge monetary incentives for human traffickers, according to Siddharth Kara, a board member of the Washington-based NGO Free the Slaves and author of the 2008 book Sex Trafficking. Even within the exploding slavery industry, which according to Kara generated $152.3 billion in revenues in 2007, trafficked sex workers are by far the most profitable of slaves - although they constitute only 4.2% of the world's slave population, trafficked sex workers contribute 39.1% of slaveholders' profits. Destination countries often turn a blind eye to sex tourism because of these enormous revenues. The International...