And Then There’s This…
After my disappointment with Trump’s decisions re the Epstein files, I felt obliged to mention this as a piece of news.
On Friday, Venezuela released 10 jailed Americans, as well as agreeing to accept scores of migrants the Trump administration dumped in El Salvador after President Maduro refused to let them back into Venezuela – reportedly because he knew that most of them were incarcerated criminals that were permitted to get out of jail if they took advantage of Biden’s policy of giving Venezuelans a free pass over the southern border and into the US.
So it was a win-win for Trump and his State Department. How Maduro was persuaded to make the deal has not been explained yet, but I’m guessing it had something to do with tariffs.
“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement in which he thanked El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.
You can read the details here.
Don’t Buy That Hotel on Ventura Boulevard!
Hotel owners in LA are up in arms, I’m reading, because of the city’s new $30-an-hour minimum wage. The LA city council voted to boost the wage for workers in hotels with 60 or more rooms to $30 by 2028. It’s not something I’ve thought about much, but it doesn’t take much thinking to realize that a big part of the expense of running hotel is the cost of all the people cleaning the bathrooms, changing the linens, and replacing light bulbs.
According to Nigel, hotel occupancy in LA is currently at 74.9%, which, also according to Nigel, is in the “healthy” range. But because the cost of everything in LA is so high, the profitability of the city’s hotels has been poor for many years.
Speaking to a WSJ reporter, Jon Bortz, CEO of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, said, “We would love to sell our LA hotels. But nobody wants to buy them.”
Another Celebrity and Another Nazi Salute?
A hugely popular right-wing Croation singer and tens of thousands of his fans performed a pro-Nazi WWII salute during a massive concert in Zagreb, according to the Associated Press. His name is Marko Perkovic, and one of his most popular songs, which ignited the salute fest, begins with what the AP says is called the “For the homeland – Ready!” salute, which was used by Croatia’s Nazi-era puppet Ustasha regime that ran concentration camps at the time.
