CalPERS: the pension fund that ate California. A tale filled with lies, waste, and outright corruption that’s even worse than I thought (and I thought it plenty bad).
Via the indispensable Will Franklin comes this eye-opening comparison of welfare in California vs. Texas. “As you can see, California is practically in a quadrant unto itself, indicating a lot of people receiving a lot each in welfare benefits. Meanwhile, Texas is situated precisely in the opposite corner of the graphic, indicating that a low percentage of Texas’ residents are receiving welfare, and among those who are receiving welfare, they’re receiving smaller benefits than those living essentially anywhere else in the country.” Read the whole thing. And get a gander at the chart.
Jerry Brown gets voters to approve a measure that cuts California public employee union pensions a tiny, weensie bit. The result? “California Public Employees’ Retirement System is essentially going to defy the order that pensions will be calculated based on base pay by declaring enhancements and bonuses are part of base pay.” And some unions are suing to opt out. And Brown isn’t even willing to defend the reforms in court.
“The highest-paid 10 percent of Southern California Edison employees earned at least $418.8 million in combined total compensation during 2011, and charged at least $11.8 million to their expense accounts, according to a report the public utility filed with the state. SCE’s most recent annual report showed 19 executives and other SCE employees received more than $1 million in total compensation during 2011, and at least 130 others received $300,000 or more in total compensation.”
Judge in Stockton bankruptcy: Sure, it’s OK to screw bondholders. Go right ahead.
Professional athletes are leaving high tax states like California for low-tax states like Texas and Florida.
At least Texans know how much they owe.
Here’s the official Texas state document on local debt. Texas cities, alas, haven’t been nearly as frugal as the state legislature has been.
Speaking of not being as frugal as they could be, here’s the place to search Texas pension funds. I might delve more into these two links when I have time.
Texas Public Policy Foundation on keeping Texas competitive.
And if you haven’t kept up with Dwight’s updates on the Bell corruption trial, you really should.
Tags: Budget, California, fraud, pension crisis, Texas, Texas Public Policy Foundation, unions, waste, Welfare State, WILLisms
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2013 at 7:13 PM and is filed under Budget, Democrats, Economics, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Regarding the comparison of welfare in California and Texas, I read the Union-Tribune’s second point differently from you and Will. It seems to me they’re not saying that welfare recipients in Texas receive less money per person, but that the cost of welfare per capita (of our state’s entire population) is smaller than every state but Idaho (“annual cost of welfare assistance per capita”). They seem to me to be referring to cost (what we pay), not benefits (what recipients receive).