Posts Tagged ‘Economics’
Saturday, June 20th, 2015
The bank runs have started in Greece. Why the Greek peeople would even keep their money in banks, having the example of Cyprus’s bank “bail-ins” before them, would keep any but the most minimal amout of cash in a Greek bank is a mystery.
Given that Greek banks are insolvent without the European Central Bank’s backstop, one wonders why Greek PM Alexis Tsipras thinks he can continue to bluff the EU caving on reform demands. It’s tough to bluff when you have no hole cards…
There’s talk of a “new” Greek proposal, which could mean Tsipras and Syriza are finally coming to their senses and giving in to EU demands, or it could be just another smokescreen. I mean, we’ve only seen about a dozen “new” Greek proposals this year that didn’t offer meaningful reform. What’s one more?
Stay tuned…
Tags:Alexis Tsipras, bank run, Budget, Economics, European Central Bank, European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, Greece, Syriza, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, May 15th, 2015
I knew if I was just lazy enough, I could get the Friday LinkSwarm back to Friday!
“If Baltimore wants to get its economic act together, it has to get something else right first: policing.”
What the left says is the same thing the 9/11 hijackers told the passengers: “Stay quiet and you’ll be OK.”
ObamaCare exchanges are melting down across America.
Coalition airstrikes against ISIS are increasingly targeting frontline fighting positions.
ISIS list of states to be attacked strangely doesn’t include Texas. Gee, I wonder why…
Is Hillary the new Bob Dole? Without, of course, the war service or dry wit…
Real editorial, or masterful New York Times trolling? “Let Syrians Settle Detroit”.
Mark Halperin asks Ted Cruz to play “Babalu.”
“This is America: You can go to the bookstore and buy yourself copies of everything from The Basketball Diaries to The Motorcycle Diaries to The Turner Diaries.”
On the other hand, the DEA can just take your money without a trial.
Verizon buying AOL. Remember when AOL was important enough to merge with Time Warner as an equal?
I chuckled:
It’s not enough to believe in climate change, you must also abjure cost-benefit analysis of how to tackle it.
George Stephanopoulos: It’s conflict of interest all the way down. What, did you expect Renfeld to actually serve any other master? (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
“The vile dishonesty of the Democrat-Media Complex is exceeded only by the vile hypocrisy of the Democrat-Media Complex.”
Ben Carson gets to pandering early.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said UT must turn over requested documents to its own regent Wallace Hall. So why haven’t they?
Bill to mandate E-verify for all Texas agencies moves forward.
Psychologist discusses porn and video game addition and a discussion of modern manhood’s discontents breaks out.
Seattle pizza shop closes due to minimum wage hike.
So former Smashing Pumpkins front man Billy Corgan is going to form a tranny wrestling league? The proposal seems as ill-conceived as his entire post-Melon Collie career…
Tags:AOL, Baltimore, Ben Carson, Billy Corgan, Bob Dole, Border Controls, business, Crime, DEA, Democrats, Detroit, Economics, Elections, George Stephanopoulos, Global Warming, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton Scandals, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Jihad, Ken Paxton, Kevin D. Williamson, Mark Steyn, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, police, Republicans, Robert Stacy McCain, Slashdot, Social Justice Warriors, Ted Cruz, Texas, Texas 84th Legislative Session, Verizon, Wallace Hall
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, ObamaCare, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 26th, 2015
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup:
Forget all those snide liberal cracks about Texas’ public education system, since we have some of the highest graduation rates in the country.
“San Bernardino has defaulted on nearly $10 million in payments on its privately placed pension bond debt since it declared bankruptcy in 2012.”
The missed payments illustrate the trend among cities in bankruptcy to favor payments to pension funds over bondholder obligations, which has increased the hostility between creditors and municipalities.
San Bernardino declared last year that it intends under its bankruptcy exit plan to fully pay Calpers, its biggest creditor and America’s largest public pension fund with assets of $300 billion.
The city continues to pay its monthly dues to Calpers in full, but has paid nothing to its bondholders for nearly three years, according to the interest payment schedule on roughly $50 million of pension obligation bonds issued by San Bernardino in 2005.
If you’re a bank, a retirement fund, or a hedge fund, why on earth would you buy California municipal debt when there are safer alternatives? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ Doom roundup.)
So how’s that San Francisco minimum wage law working out? Exactly like everyone who understands economics expected. “Some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland’s Chinatown have closed after the city’s minimum wage was raised. Other small businesses there are not sure they are going to survive, since many depend on a thin profit margin and a high volume of sales.” Plus this: “Low-income minorities are often hardest hit by the unemployment that follows in the wake of minimum wage laws. The last year when the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate was 1930, the last year before there was a federal minimum wage law.”
California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office suggests phasing out state health care for workers entirely.
California is dead last in spending transparency among the 50 states, with an F rating and a piddling score of 34. Texas ranks 13th with an A- and a score of 91. (Hat tip: Cal Watchdog.)
“North Texas gained an average of 360 net people per day from July 2013 to July 2014, a testament to the job-creating machine in the Lone Star state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau…North Texas and Houston were the only metropolitan areas to add more than 100,000 people during that one-year period.”
Just because California has some of the highest taxes in the nation doesn’t mean that the state’s Democratic legislature doesn’t want to add still more.
Meanwhile, the Texas Senate just passed a $4.6 billion tax cut.
California is rolling out more subsidies for Hollywood.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power not only has the highest employe costs in the country, it also ranks last in customer satisfaction. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
While Texas is certainly in much better shape than California on public employee pensions, things here are not entirely cloudless either. “The Texas Employee Retirement System is reporting unfunded liability of $14.5 billion in 2014, compared with liability of just $6.3 billion in 2013. By comparison, all of the state government’s general obligation debt as of 2013 was $15.3 billion. The Texas Law Enforcement and Custodial Officer Supplemental Retirement Plan is reporting unfunded liability of $673.1 million in 2014, compared with $306.7 million in 2013.”
Unlike California, Texas looks to get ahead of the curve on pension concerns with House Bill 2608, which restores control of pension funds to the local level by eliminating legislative approval for pension changes. I”nstead of locking up significant benefits in state statute, HB 2608 would allow city pension systems, like the Houston Firefighters’ Relief & Retirement Fund, to solve pension problems at the local level by changing benefit structures, if they so chose.”
“Support for the “bullet train” is ebbing across California, except, perhaps, in the Governor’s mansion.”
California raisin packer West Coast Growers files for Chapter 11.
American Spectrum Realty, a real estate investment management company that operates self-storage facilities under the 1st American Storage brand, has somehow managed to file for bankruptcy in both California and Texas. I think it’s safe to say that financial shenanigans are involved…
Lawsuit over misappropriated funds in a Napa Valley winery leads to a murder/suicide. It’s one of those stories that sounds too strange not to link to…
Tags:Budget, California, Crime, Economics, education, Los Angeles, minimum wage, Napa, Oakland, pension crisis, San Bernardino, San Francisco, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2015
It appears we may finally be reaching the endgame of the endgame on Greece.
Greece is suffering a bank run and owes just over $2 billion in debt payments due Friday, but shows no signs of having the money or meeting the Troika’s conditions for obtaining more. Quite the opposite. Greece’s left-wing Syriza government is increasingly acting like an erratic heroin addict refusing to check into rehab and howling through the streets at night in search of an angry fix, heedless that there’s an arrest warrant out in his name.
“The International Monetary Fund, one of Greece’s main three creditors, was reported to have called Greece ‘the most unhelpful client’ the Fund has dealt with in their 70-year history.”
“During the teleconference, the Greek representative said his government wasn’t prepared to talk about the country’s finances with technical experts and instead wanted European Union leaders to discuss the issue at a summit in Brussels, one of the European officials said.”
I’m sure telling your bank that you’re “not prepared to discuss my finances” when asking for your fifth bridge loan would go over really well.
Also this: “There was a general feeling that the Greek side is completely out of touch with reality.”
You think? How about the fact that Greek parliament just passed a raft of anti-austerity spending measure, which is rather like a man with stage 4 lung cancer lighting up a couple of stogies in route to the operating room.
Some are wondering if Syriza wants to see Greece kicked out of the Euro.
EU institutions seem far more ready for what lies ahead. “The European Central Bank (ECB) is preparing for a possible Greek exit from the euro zone.” Conversely, EU insiders have also floated the idea of imposing capital controls to prevent Greece from leaving the euro.
And the one person whose opinion matters the most? “German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that Greece has no choice but to carry out economic reforms if it wants to receive more financial aid, dashing any hopes Athens might have had for a softening in Berlin’s stance.”
Carrying out real reforms (like stop spending more money than the government takes in) is what Greece in general, and Syriza in specific, has steadfastly refused to do. And the reason they refused is that the European cradle-to-grave welfare state has become more sacred to voters than the capitalist economics and fiscal discipline necessary to support it.
This is not a recipe for happiness.
There’s a chance that all of this is posturing on both sides, and that a kabuki compromise involving small reforms in exchange for still more loan extensions may yet kick the can a few more feet down the road. But there is every sign that EU institutions have finally tired of Greece’s show, and are willing to see the final curtain drop. And the Greeks are about to learn that the vengeance of the gods of the copybook headings cannot be delayed indefinitely…
Tags:Budget, Economics, Euro, Europe, European Central Bank, European Debt Crisis, Eurozone, Foreign Policy, Greece, IMF, Syriza
Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 11th, 2015
Angela Merkel tamped down a party revolt to extend the Greek bailout terms by four months. And her reward for extending that lifeline? Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reviving demands that Germany pay World War II reparations to Greece.
Before Syriza came to power, the rest of the EU and the Troika seemed content to play along with the Greece farce (extending further loans in exchange for yet more empty promises of reform) at least a little while longer. However, Syriza’s virulently anti-EU and anti-Germany rhetoric seem to have finally exhausted their patience with the show. It seems even Europeans have limits to the abuse they’re willing to take from perpetual welfare recipients. It’s bad enough to underwrite a freeloader, but evidently having to put up with constant insults from them was too much.
At this point, everyone knows Greece will neither reform nor pay back their debts to the Troika (or anyone else). That’s why Europe has finally started taking a real hard line with them, insisting on inspectors on the ground to see reforms are actually implemented.
Either Tsipras has severely overplayed his hand (quite possible), or he is deliberately preparing to use Germany as the theoretical scapegoat for exiting the Euro.
To say that Tsipras and Syriza has no plan B to escape the crisis is misleading, since their cunning “insult our creditors into giving us more money” doesn’t even count as a plan A.
A bailout from Russia? It’s not like Putin is rolling in dough following a fall in oil prices and his continuing isolation over his invasion of Ukraine. Let Putin subsidize Greece all he wants. (And I doubt a Greek navel base would give him any advantage over what he has in Sevastopol.)
Greece could have avoided all this many years ago if their government had just stopped spending more money than they took in. Given their addiction to a bloated welfare state, this is the one thing they have proven singularly unwilling to do.
I doubt Syriza has thought through just how nasty a divorce from the Eurozone might turn out. Never mind asking they repay their debts, I’m thinking a complete halt to all bank transfers between the Eurozone and Greece, and international foreign exchanges refusing to list a newly floated drachma. People hate having their welfare benefits cut, but they really, really hate being unable to buy food…
Greece has finally reached the stage of socialism where they’re run out of other people’s money, and the results are not going to be pretty.
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn from no other…
Tags:Alexis Tsipras, Economics, EU, European Central Bank, European Debt Crisis, Eurozone, Foreign Policy, Germany, Greece, grexit, IMF, Syriza
Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 4th, 2015
Thanks to the Magic Power of #Socialism™, in Venezuela a 36-pack of condoms now costs as much as an iPhone:
Venezuelans who already must line up for hours to buy chicken, sugar, medicines and other basic products in short supply now face a new indignity: Condoms are hard to find and nearly impossible to afford….
On the auction website MercadoLibre, used by Venezuelans to obtain scarce goods, a 36-pack of Trojans sells for 4,760 bolivars ($755 at the official exchange rate), close to the country’s minimum monthly wage of 5,600 bolivars.
It take a special kind of socialist magic to make your people too poor to have sex.
In other Venezuela news:
The Maduro government has seized a supermarket chain. I’m sure that will do wonders to make more basic goods available to people.
They’re also arrested pharmacy owners for “conspiring” to create long lines out their stores. Maybe Maduro thinks business owners can conjure hard currency out of their own asses.
Interview with opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
One wonders if The Road to Serfdom or Economics in One lesson have ever been translated into Spanish…
Tags:condoms, Economics, Foreign Policy, Henrique Capriles, hyperinflation, Nicolas Maduro, socialism, Venezuela
Posted in Communism, Economics, Foreign Policy | No Comments »
Monday, December 29th, 2014
Just because the European Debt Crisis hasn’t been in the headlines much as of late doesn’t mean it’s gone away.
Greece’s government has fallen again and they’ll be holding general elections next month. “Opinion polls point to a victory by the radical leftist Syriza party, which wants to wipe out a big part of Greece’s debt, and cancel the terms of a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund that Greece still needs to pay its bills.”
The problem is that Greece wants to continue spending other people’s money to prop up a bankrupt welfare state, and the rest of Europe has decided they would really prefer to stop pouring money down that particular rathole. Syriza is against “austerity,” which is to say they oppose the Greek government even pretending to practice fiscal restraint. Because pretending is all they’ve done.
Remember, real austerity is reducing outlays until they match receipts. All those “austerity” street protests were over lowering Greece’s budget deficit from 9% of GDP to 7.5% of GDP. The rest of Europe didn’t ask them to stop digging their own grave, they just asked them to dig more slower. And this year, Greece’s budget deficit stood at 12.2% of GDP. Evidently even fake austerity is too much to ask of them; even the illusion of fiscal restraint is intolerable. This is why all news that Greece has “balanced” next year’s budget should be taken with several grains of salt.
So we’ll see another election, and if Syriza wins we’ll see another round of demands for more bailouts and debt writedowns, with Greece threatening yet again to exit the Euro. We’ve seen this movie before. The most likely outcome is that another cabal of EU-phillic insiders in the Greek government will engineer a last-minute cave-in to demands from Brussels and Frankfurt, ram another toothless austerity measure through parliament in exchange for still more credit (and perhaps even a small symbolic measure of debt forgiveness), dissolve the government again following the inevitable public outrage, then have the Greek bureaucracy ignore even those woefully inadequate reforms, setting the stage for the farce to repeat itself in another 12-18 months, or until mean old Aunt Angela finally cuts up the credit card.
Europe has had several years to acclimate itself to the fact the Greece might exit the Euro, and the possibility of a “grexit” has been priced into the markets for some time now. I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of the European banking system, but my impression is that much of the “stress testing” of European banks this year was to prepare for one or more of the PIIGS leaving the Euro. I suspect that the European elite have minimized their own exposure to a Greek default (which is really all they care about), and that the EU and the European Central Bank has found new, sneaky ways to put taxpayers on the hook for any possible sovereign defaults, strengthening the banking system without addressing Europe’s long-term economic problems (unsustainable levels of debt to support cradle-to-grave welfare states for shrinking populations).
It would be great if Greece actually undertook real structural reforms of their bloated, dysfunctional government, but I see precious little evidence that they’ve actual done so. Expect more pain ahead, and at least one more bailout…
Tags:Budget, Economics, Euro, European Central Bank, European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, Greece, PIIGS
Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy | 1 Comment »
Thursday, December 11th, 2014
There’s been a lot of talk of how low oil prices are screwing Russia, but Venezuela is, if anything, more screwed thanks to the Magic Power of Socialism™:
U.S. currency is vital to Venezuela, which imports as much as 80% of what it consumes; 96% of its exports are petroleum products…In effect, the one-third decline in the price of oil means that the state oil company must either raise or divert enough production because Venezuela effectively owes China 67 million barrels of oil, roughly 27 million more than it did before, for this loan alone. And there are billions of dollars in other loans to consider.
And the outlook for the immediate future is equally grim:
Venezuela’s economy is expected to contract in 2014 and 2015, and even though it’s already recognized as the 14th least competitive economy in the world (according to the World Economic Forum) and the eighth-worst economy for doing business (according to The World Bank), [President Nicolas] Maduro’s laws seem to discourage private investments even more. The new laws reinforce bureaucracy and the difficulty of doing business in the country, particularly in the area of taxes.
“Increasing numbers of low-income Venezuelans are souring on Maduro as they suffer a declining economy, the highest inflation in the Americas, chronic shortages of basic goods and one of the world’s highest murder rates.”
If Venezuela’s economy collapses, they might take Cuba down with them, since the Castro brothers are so heavily dependent on Venezuelan oil subsidies to prop up their own moribund economy.
Compounding Venezuela’s crises is the fact that it’s probably going to default on its bonds. So they’re finally reaching the point in socialism where the run out of other people’s money. Next to that singular problem, U.S. sanctions on government Venezuelan officials for killing protestors are a trivial irritation…
Tags:Cuba, Economics, Foreign Policy, hyperinflation, inflation, Nicolas Maduro, socialism, Venezuela
Posted in Budget, Communism, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, June 24th, 2014
Hot on the heels of Hillary Clinton claiming that her family was dead broke in 2001 (for certain values of “dead broke” that include being worth more than $20 million) comes news that Hillary has doubled down on the “shucks, we’re just regular folks” gambit.
In an interview with The Guardian, Clinton said she isn’t “truly well off”:
But with her huge personal wealth, how could Clinton possibly hope to be credible on this issue when people see her as part of the problem, not its solution?
“But they don’t see me as part of the problem,” she protests, “because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work,” she says, letting off another burst of laughter. If past form is any guide, she must be finding my question painful.
The full quote is actually more damning than just the “not truly well off” bit because it suggests an even more radical disconnect from the economic reality most Americans face every day. Evidently Hillary is suggesting she gets a pass from class warfare envy because: A.) She and Bill have actually deigned to obey the law by paying taxes, and B.) Americans know just how hard it is for Bill to give $103 million worth of speeches.
A few choice reactions:
Moreover, Hillary’s daughter seems to have picked up on her mother’s entitlement issues. It seems that the woman married to a former Goldman Sachs manager who started his own hedge fund, the woman who owns a $10 million Manhattan apartment, the woman who was given a $3 million wedding and the woman who MSNBC paid $600,000 a year to (or $26,724 for every minute she appeared on-air) says she doesn’t care about money.
At least one pundit has suggested that Hillary’s clan suffers from “Status-Income Disequilibrium”, in which people with All The Right Opinions suddenly realize how much wealthier fellow members of the Overclass are. Or, as Rush Limbaugh puts it, “in [Hillary]’s world, $50 million is peanuts.”
Let’s give Bill Clinton one small piece of praise in all this: As far as I can tell, on this particular subject he’s apparently been smart enough to keep his mouth shut…
Tags:Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Democrats, Economics, Hillary Clinton, Rush Limbaugh, video, wealth
Posted in Democrats, Economics | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014
Lots of news on the Texas vs. California front. An audit turns up $31 billion in California budget mistakes, Democrats hike the minimum wage there, Jerry Brown tries to do something about the growing CalSTARS pension deficit, and people and businesses continue to depart the “Golden State” for Texas…
You know how Democrats were crowing that California had a budget surplus? Forget about it:
The California Bureau of State Audits set off a scandal on June 1st by disclosing that the State Controller’s Office made accounting misstatements amounting to $31.65 billion. The timing of the announcement may be devastating to the Democrats who expected to use their super-majority to pass billions of dollars in increased spending, but may now find the net effects of the accounting restatements are a $7 billion General Fund deficit.
Snip.
As the former Treasurer of Orange County, California it is my preliminary judgment that under state law the negative $7.847 billion impact from overstating general fund assets and revenues and overstating deferred tax revenues may create an “on-budget” deficit to the state’s $96.3 billion “General Fund Budget.”
From the same audit: “There was a deferred tax-revenue figure posted as $6.2 billion when it was actually $6.2 million.”
California Senate votes to hike minimum wage to $13 an hour. It’s like they want to export ALL their jobs to Texas.
Wealth continues to move from high tax states to low tax states. “The nine states without a personal income tax gained $146 billion in new wealth while the nine states with the highest income tax rates lost $107 billion.”
Union-dominated states are sinking further into economic stagnation as Democratic politicians increasingly dominate the local political climate. In 2012, California Democrats won a supermajority in both houses of the legislature and proceeded to accelerate a tax and spending spree that has been ongoing for two decades. For example, California now has the nation’s top state income-tax rate, at 13.3 percent.
Those kind of policies have consequences. The Manhattan Institute released a report in 2012 that found that since 1990, California had lost nearly 3.4 million residents to other states with lower tax rates.
Snip.
The U.S. is swiftly becoming a tale of two nations. States that are following the Reagan model of low taxes and incentives are booming while states that are opting for the Obama model of wealth redistribution and European welfare-state economics are stagnating.
Texas’ unemployment rate “has now been equal to or below the national average since January 2007 and below California’s rate—4th highest in the nation—for 93 consecutive months.”
A look at how many more billions per year California taxpayers will be coughing up for the inevitable CalSTARS bailout.
“Alameda Unified’s pension costs could nearly triple and those of its teachers could rise by 25 percent under Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to reform the California State Teachers Retirement System.”
But even though its a step in the right direction, Brown’s proposals stretch out installments so far that they’re still not fiscally responsible. “Even with the higher rates, the debt would continue to grow until 2026. That’s because the amortization over 32 years means the payments would essentially not even cover the interest costs for the first 12.”
And the assumptions behind the repayment schedule sound like fantasy: “The state still faces a huge unfunded liability in the teachers’ pension fund—the governor’s proposal would increase employee’s contributions by 3 percent and increase school district’s by nearly 2 ½ times and it would still take 30 years to close the gap with a generously estimated 7.5 percent annual return.”
Judge rules CalPERS can be sued for mishandling a long-term insurance program.
Thanks to various legal rulings, there will be more felons on California streets. “Release on parole continues a steady climb in California. In just the past five years, over twice as many convicts serving life sentences have been paroled than in the last two decades combined.”
Cargo aviation firm Ameriflight is relocating from Burbank to Dallas/Ft. Worth.
Sony Pictures Imageworks visual effects house is relocating to Canada.
Tesla narrows down list of possible factory locations to Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. Not on the list: His home state of California. “The winning state will need to have all the necessary permits approved by the time Tesla plans to break ground next month. With the onerous requirements of the California Environmental Protection Act (CEQA) and other environmental regulations, Tesla would be lucky to break ground by 2017 – when its battery factory is scheduled to open.”
New effort to bring California’s underfunded health liabilities onto the books. “Legislation in the early 1990s created an investment fund for California state worker retiree health care, but lawmakers never put money in the fund.”
Remember the FBI agent who shot and killed a suspect connected with the Boston marathon bombing? Turns out he receives $50,000 a year in disability pay from the Oakland Police Department. And he’s been getting that since 2004, when he retired at age 31. “59% of Oakland Police Department retirees have received disability retirements.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Why people are moving to Texas:
As a growing number of Americans choose to call Texas home, it is critical that policymakers not lose sight of the reasons why: low taxes, limited government, and personal responsibility. Liberty is popular. That’s a message that needs reinforcement, particularly at the local level where some of the macro level trends involving taxes, spending, and debt are moving in the wrong direction. We can keep Texas and our cities beacons of prosperity and flourishing — but to do that, we must understand the principles that got us here, and defend them in policy and the public square.
Some California cities have hidden taxes just to fund government worker pensions. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Lawsuit over California teacher’s union seniority rules to go to trial.
Jerry Brown may let California commit more Kelo-like eminent domain abuses.
Sriracha followup: The Irwindale City Council voted Wednesday night to drop its declaration that the hot sauce plant was a public nuisance.
Just so I’m not accused of glossing over the occasional bit of bad Texas economic news, Motorola Mobility (which is owned by Google) is closing their Texas smartphone assembly plant. But I think this says more about Motorola Mobility’s viability in a smart phone market dominated by Apple and Samsung than about Texas’ economy…
Tags:Ameriflight, Budget, California, CalPERs, CalSTARS, Crime, Democrats, Economics, pension crisis, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sriracha, Tesla Motors, Texas, unions
Posted in Budget, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Texas, unions, Welfare State | 1 Comment »