Since 1944, the County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation has been meeting the diverse needs of not only residents, but also visitors from around the world. With over 63,000 acres of parks, gardens, lakes, trails, natural areas, and the world's largest public golf course system, the Department of Parks and Recreation is committed to providing the public with social, cultural, and recreational activities to enjoy the whole year.

On Monday, after a long quarter-century, West Virginians said goodbye to their state's 6 percent food tax. Now to see what, if any, business we've been missing. In 1989, retailers warned that sales in West Virginia would go down if legislators imposed a 6 percent tax on food. "Whatever they put on would be passed on to the consumer," Charles Forth, who owned supermarkets in both West Virginia and Ohio, told the newspaper in February 1989. "Six percent is $6 on $100. That will make a difference when people are already hurting and trying to make ends meet." It's a lot easier to drive customers away than to win them back, a fact legislators should bear in mind when it comes to taxation.

The Republican Party, also commonly called the GOP (for "Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery activists in 1854, it dominated politics nationally for most of the period from 1860 to 1932. There have been 18 Republican presidents, the first being Abraham Lincoln, serving from 1861 to 1865, and the most recent being Donald Trump who began serving in 2017.

On this date in 1776, rebellious colonials launched the first modern democracy, an experiment in government controlled by the people themselves. America succeeded so well that virtually the entire world later adopted democracy with its guarantee of personal rights.

The expert predicted that America's gross domestic product will return to more than 3 percent yearly expansion. For example, Dow Chemical is investing $4 billion in Texas plastics production that will be operational by 2019. Such growth requires cheap oil and natural gas - and "by 2022 or so, the United States will surpass Saudi Arabia in oil output, and Russia in gas." He continued: "The big attraction is the low price of natural gas, the lowest-carbon fossil fuel, which can be produced profitably at about a third the price per unit of energy as other hydrocarbons. That is particularly attractive to chemical companies. It is the raw material for plastics, Styrofoam, tires, sealants, adhesives, films, liquid crystal screens, nylons, polyesters - nearly everything around us."