Archive for the ‘Budget’ Category
Wednesday, September 5th, 2012
The City Council of San Bernardino, California failed to pass budget cuts at their meeting Tuesday, despite the city already being in bankruptcy.
After a meeting that lasted more than nine hours and stretched past midnight, the San Bernardino City Council failed to pass a plan for drastic budget reductions, an initial step in the city’s bankruptcy proceedings.
The proposed “pre-pendency plan” included $22.4 million in cuts, achieved by measures including slashing more than 100 jobs and closing three of the four city libraries. It would not cover the entire $45.8-million budget shortfall, but city staff called the plan a necessary first step.
Proposed cuts to the Fire Department became an irreconcilable sticking point. Twenty positions in the department were slated to be eliminated without layoffs, and the plan included an option of rotating closures at fire stations.
Instead of voting on the budget plan as a whole, Councilman Chas Kelley made a proposal to vote on an alternate plan for the Fire Department that was backed by the firefighters union, and to direct staff to seek bids on a proposal to contract out some of the city’s trash services.
The vote, taken after midnight, passed 4 to 3 but was promptly vetoed by Mayor Pat Morris, who had called that plan “irresponsible” and an “almost slavish adoption of a union proposal without any analysis.”
Maybe they can delay things long enough that repo men are actually carting furniture out of the council chambers before they vote…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)
Tags:Blue State, Budget, California, Democrats, San Bernardino
Posted in Budget, Democrats | 2 Comments »
Monday, August 27th, 2012
It’s late August, and California’s slide toward insolvency continues apace.
How badly underwater is CalPERS? Try $884 billion.
Speaking of California unions, here’s how they’re trying to block reform.
California’s recovery is much slower than the already slow pace of the rest of the nation.
Things have gotten so bad that Moody’s is rexamining the outlook on all California cities.
What California should learn from Wisconsin.
CalTrans spends $22.5 million on unneeded home repairs, with a hefty side-helping of graft. (Hat tip: Dwight)
So what happened to all those Solyndra glass tubes? Can you say modern art?
Texas snags it’s lowest bond interest rate ever at 0.225%. That makes sense. Broke ass California getting a 0.43% rating doesn’t.
Texas has five of the ten fastest growing counties (including Williamson).
California’s “urban forest” offset scam.
Tags:Blue State, Budget, California, environmentalism, Obama Scandals, Red State, Solyndra, Texas, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Global Warming, Obama Scandals, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Thursday, August 16th, 2012
Looks like California has done such a good dog of screwing the pooch that I may have to start doing these roundups weekly:
Although bankrupt, California is about to add another outrageous benefit to its already bloated pension plan.
The Road Warrior‘s future as California’s present.
Creditor demands that Stockton reduce it’s outrageous pension plans.
In deed, CalPERs and state and local governments have combined to screw both taxpayers and bond-holders.
Hermosa Beach meter maids make make nearly $100,000 a year.
Could Fresno be the next California city to declare bankruptcy?
That is, unless the next California city to declare bankruptcy is Los Angeles.
Tags:bankruptcy, Blue State, Budget, California, CalPERs, fraud, Fresno, Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles, Red State, Stockton, Texas, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Economics, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Sunday, August 12th, 2012
Just in case you were trapped in a mine, Mitt Romney selected Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidential running mate. There are many things to like about the pick, but I’d like to focus on just a few:
The election, more than ever, is about the size of government. Obama wants an ever-larger, ever more powerful federal government, while Romney-Ryan want to reign it in. Despite Romney having a reputation as a bit of a squish, the pick shows he’s serious about reigning in runaway government. And it doesn’t detract from the debate over Obama’s horrible handling of the economy: Runaway government spending (and the uncertainty it engenders) is the largest single factor holding back the economy.
As an observant Catholic, Ryan sharpens the debate on the Obama Administration’s War on Catholics. The fervor with which Democrats pursued codifying taxpayer-funded abortion (no matter how many House seats it cost them) and the unwavering refusal to allow Catholic and other pro-life entities to opt out from providing insurance coverage of abortion suggests that it was one of the central driving goals of passing ObamaCare. Increasingly it appears that yes, that is the hill liberals want to die on. We should let them, and make sure that devout Catholics know the contempt the liberal establishment holds for both them and their beliefs.
Ryan Puts Wisconsin Further in Play. Scott Walker’s budget successes, and the abysmal serial failure of the Wisconsin recall elections prove that this once solidly Democratic state has been trending increasingly purple. By naming favorite son Ryan as his VP pick, Romney has singled he’s going to put up a real fight there. Romney can win elsewhere (Nevada and Iowa, for example) and still win 270 electoral votes; I don’t see any realistic path to victory for Obama if he loses there.
Tags:2012 Election, abortion, Budget, Catholics, Mitt Romney, ObamaCare, Paul Ryan, Presidential Race, Wisconsin
Posted in Budget, Elections, ObamaCare, Republicans | No Comments »
Friday, August 10th, 2012
Time for another look at how Texas’ Red State model stacks up against California’s Blue State model, with a roundup of relevant news from the past few weeks.
Here’s a roundup of California’s dysfunction. Lots of tasty tidbits, including this gem: “California has both the highest state deficit in the country and the highest personal income tax.”
The Summer California Went Bankrupt.
California was counting their Facebook chickens before they hatched.
How California’s green energy delusions are impoverishing the entire state.
How California drove XCOR to Texas.
George Will on California’s high speed rail insanity. “At one point, an estimate of 44 million riders a year—subsequently revised downward, substantially—assumed gasoline costing $40 a gallon.”
California can’t even keep run it’s own prisons.
Texas tax revenues are up 10%.
Texas is going through a craft brewing boom.
While commuter rail isn’t cost effective in California, the Long Beach-to-Los Anegles Blue Line is good for one thing: killing people. (Hat Tip: Dwight.)
And while California schools are in crises to pay their bloated pensions, Beaumont’s school district actually instituted a tax cut and gave teacher’s a pay raise.
Tags:Blue State, California, economy, Red State, Texas, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Democrats, Economics, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 8th, 2012
Hey, remember when UT’s Dean stepped down because he had a $500,000 slush fund?
Well, there’s been another law school dean stepping down because of a slush fund. Only this time it’s St. Louis University School of Law Dean Annette Clark and she’s stepping down not because of her own slush fund, but because University President Father Lawrence Biondi transferred more than $1 million in law school funds into his own slush fund. Without asking her. Or consulting her on the new law school building. And refusing to meet with a law school reaccreditation team.
I am very far indeed from intimate knowledge of St. Louis University, but if even half of what Clark alleges is true, something stinks to high heaven.
(Hat tip: Tax Prof Blog, via Instapundit.)
Tags:Crime, education, slush fund, St. Louis University
Posted in Budget, Crime | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 7th, 2012
Back in 2008, this sort of news would probably get my dander up. The upshot is that the federal Highway Bridge Program is going to force various levels of Texas government to pay for replacing little-used bridges rather than repairing them, even if some only get 25 cars a day and there are alternate routes available, in order to keep getting federal funds.
There’s lots wrong with the program: Taxpayer money wasted for one, and the principles of Federalism violated for another; there’s absolutely no reason for the federal government to take money from taxpayers in the various states, put it in a big pot, rake off their bureaucratic maintenance fees, and then redistribute it to states, counties, etc. Let counties and states repair their own bridges, and decide which ones to repair and how to pay for them.
But even given all that, my outrage meter is barely quivering. Unlike so many Obama-era boondoggles, at least we’re getting something tangible and useful. At least it didn’t line some corrupt solar power company CEO’s pockets before his firm went bankrupt. At least it didn’t screw non-union pensioners to line the coffers of the UAW. At least it’s not a multibillion dollar high speed train boondoggle that will never be finished. At least here’s a public works project that’s actually shovel ready. And, as long as you think that there should be public roads in the first place (there’s a libertarian case for completely private roads, but that ship sailed a long, long time ago), then at least we’re getting something at least vaguely within the purvey of some government entity.
And at least the program didn’t end up killing a border patrol agent and 300+ Mexican civilians.
So corrupt, incompetent and scandal-ridden is the Obama Administration that I have a hard time working up indignation over the fact that a significant fraction of $150 million will probably be wasted on bridges we don’t really need, mainly because I’m sure Obama or his cronies will find a brand new way to waste ten times that one something completely useless sometime over the next week…
Tags:bridges, fraud, highways, Obama, ObamaMotors, roads, Texas, unions, waste
Posted in Budget, Obama Scandals, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 17th, 2012
In order to divert attention away from the economic, moral, and political bankruptcy of Europe’s cradle-to-grave welfare state, some liberals, relying on figures from the Out of Our Ass Institute of Statistics, are tying to claim that Greece’s excessive spending comes from a “bloated defense budget.”
Try again. Greece only spends 5.5% of it’s budget on defense:
Either Europe (and the United States) must reform their runaway, bloated welfare states, or their welfare states will bankrupt their nations.
Tags:Euro, European Debt Crisis, Greece, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Economics, Welfare State | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012
Spent most of the day checking things off my list and web-surfing Creepy Pasta. So here’s a quick roundup of Texas vs. California tidbits:
A ballot initiative could derail the union stranglehold over California.
Among all states, Texas has the most adequately funded pension plan.
Endemic corruption in California cities.
California tosses another $4.7 billion down the high speed rail rathole. Hell, even Mother Jones says that it’s a money-wasting boondoggle.
Texas has a market that works just fine for electricity when government lets it: “California pretended to have a deregulated electricity market, but it was really a poorly designed, government-controlled system that eventually collapsed under its own weight. Texas’ economy is outperforming the rest of the country because we put fewer burdens on markets. This is why Texas has the most competitive and successful electricity market in the United States, if not the world. If we let it work, the world-class Texas electricity market will power Texas’ future.”
You know, if I were looking to save money, eliminating the state’s open meeting law is about the last thing I would cut. California at every level government needs more transparency, not less. (That probably true for the other 56 49 states as well.)
Obama continues his efforts to harsh California’s buzz by shutting down the state’s largest marijuana dispensary.
Finally, I want to note that Dwight has created a tag to track all mentions of the No Longer Golden State on his blog, so you can read his roundups on police incompetence, municipal corruption, and bankrupt locales such as Vernon, Bell, San Bernardino, Cudahy, Maywood, and Zalgo.
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Tags:Blue State, Budget, California, Crime, Economics, fraud, Texas, unions, War on Drugs, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Monday, July 2nd, 2012
One effect of the ObamaCare ruling is that states can safely reject ObamCare’s Medicaid expansion without losing access to all Medicaid funds. It appears that Texas, wisely, will be doing just that, as will Florida.
Hopefully all this won’t matter, as Republicans will take the White House and Senate in November and repeal ObamaCare as job one in 2013. But in the unfortunate scenario where ObamaCare isn’t repealed, here’s an example of Blue States increasing the size and scope of government while converting more of their residents from independent citizens to wards of the state while Red States continue to either scale back intrusive government or at least refrain from expanding it. And with the Medicaid portion of the ObamaCare ruling, it’s going to be easier than ever for Red State government to Just Say No to new federal welfare initiatives with new funding strings attached.
So Red States will continue to stay lean, while Blue States move ever more quickly toward bankruptcy.
Tags:Budget, Florida, Medicaid, ObamaCare, Republicans, Supreme Court, Texas
Posted in Budget, ObamaCare, Republicans, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »