Posts Tagged ‘unions’
Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
Smart denizens of California must be eying Detroit’s bankruptcy warily. After all, 60 years ago Detroit was the wealthiest city in America. And California seems hellbent on following Detroit’s Blue State path to bankruptcy sooner rather than later…
Problem: California public employees union members getting outrageous retirement benefits on the taxpayer’s dime. Solution: Hide their pension figures from the public.
From Dwight comes this gem of a news story:
Bruce Malkenhorst took home more than $911,000 a year as city manager of the tiny city of Vernon. His reign ended shortly
before he was convicted of misappropriating public funds, and he walked away with an annual pension that eventually topped $500,000,
the largest in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.
But CalPERS last year decided to cut his pension to $115,000, concluding he’d derived some of his hefty salary improperly.
So now the 78-year-old Malkenhorst is suing Vernon to make up the difference.
And if you’re interested in California corruption, you should be following Dwight’s regular updates on Vernon and Bell.
Resignation Media, another California company, is moving to Austin. (Hat tip: Urban Grounds. )
Meanwhile, California e-discovery firm Daegis Inc. is also moving its headquarters to Texas.
Navarre Corporation relocates from Minnesota to Texas.
Houston edges out New York City as the nation’s largest goods exporter.
More on Dwight Howard and others fleeing California’s income tax burden.
Detroit won’t be the last city to declare bankruptcy.
California Latino supermarket chain Mi Pueblo declares bankruptcy. The article says that creditor Wells Fargo wanted to “change the terms” of loans, but something doesn’t add up. Turns out that profits dived when Mi Pueblo was forced to fire illegal aliens after an audit, and that put their profitability under the level dictated by the terms of the loan.
Parallels between Detroit and San Bernardino.
Tags:bankruptcy, California, fraud, San Bernardino, Texas, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Economics, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Thursday, July 11th, 2013
The hot days of summer are here. Texas is now into its usual 100° summer days. However, if it’s any consolation, Death Valley hit a record 129° in June.
Texas’ business climate is a lot like our summers: hot, hot, hot! California’s business climate is a lot like Death Valley: Still and oppressive.
On to the Texas vs. California roundup:
Unemployment claims are up in California.
You know all that talk of California having a small budget surplus? That doesn’t count the $10.3 billion California owes the federal government for unemployment compensation, an amount that is not expected to be paid off until 2020.
Between 2007/8 and 2013/14, “the officially reported unfunded pension liability for state workers through the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) grew from $31.7 billion to $57.2 billion, an 80.1% increase.”
He, remember that short-lived BART strike? How horribly were the employees “underpaid?” “BART employees — including management and nonunion workers — earn an average of about $83,000 annually in gross pay, contribute nothing toward their retirement and $92 monthly to health insurance. Their pay and total compensation are both the highest in the Bay Area among transit agencies.”
BART’s highest paid employee in 2012? Someone who earned $333,000 and never worked a day that year.
California’s coming health insurance death spiral.
California writer explains why he and his family relocated to Texas.
Did taxes help Dwight Howard decide to leave the Los Angeles Lakers for the Houston Rockets?
Rick Perry retiring means the Texas is losing on of its greatest pitchmen to the business community.
California, bluest of blue states, forcibly sterilized female prisoners. Well, liberal’s love of eugenics goes back at least as far as Margaret Sanger…
Tags:California, eugeneics, Margaret Sanger, ObamaCare, Texas, unemployment, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, ObamaCare, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 10th, 2013
The ongoing European Debt Crisis hasn’t ended, it’s merely undergoing a summer hiatus while the various bankers and Eurocrats involved in the shell game take their customary 8 week vacations. As such, expect a new round of crisis headlines to come rolling in during the fall.
Remember: The purpose of the shell game is to let insiders unload their bad debts onto taxpayers. (Look how it was done in Ireland for pointers.) The shell game will continue as long as the insiders can get away with buying off restive electorates with an unsustainable cradle-to-grave welfare state.
Europe’s present is our future.
Once again, Greece is being given money to pretend to reform. Look for more fake austerity, and another bailout in six months.
“Greece will never repay the money it’s been lent to ‘save’ it. The current debate over whether Greece has done enough by way of reform, tax hikes and spending cuts to have earned the next tranche of bailout funds is largely beside the point. If Greece is cut loose, or walks away, its euro-zone creditors will lose their money. The Greeks and the Germans are surely both aware of this. They’re also aware that Greece’s external debt position is far worse than when the bailouts began—when its debt stood at a mere 129% of GDP—and that any talk of debt sustainability in Greece has become a joke.” It’s now at 157% of GDP.
Predictably, Greek unions respond to more fake austerity and staff cuts by extending strikes.
Europeans realize that their governments are corrupt. Those who think they’re not corrupt? “In Spain that number is just 8 percent. In Italy, it’s 13 percent. And Greeks and Portuguese have the least trust in the world regarding their governments’ efforts: Just 1 percent of respondents say their government is making strides against corruption.”
And just how corrupt is Greece? “Politicians and journalists are viewed as on the take by most Greeks with 50 percent also saying they’ve had to bribe public officials to get services.”
Eurozone unemployment hits all time highs.
The EU is preparing a banking union bill. No word on whether it will require depositors to take haircuts like those in Cyprus in the event of a bank failure.
And speaking of bank failures, there are rumblings that Slovenia will require a bailout.
Portugal is still trudging through their own bank bailout…
…despite which they may still need another bailout.
Italy could be forced to beg for a bailout in six months.
UK actually proposes to roll back some 35 EU laws. This may be the first sign that Cameron’s wet Tories have actually noticed how effectively Nigel Farge’s UKIP is eating into their base…
UKIP itself says it’s a threat to the entire political class Well, let’s hope so…
Latvia is now set to join the Euro on January 1, 2014.
Tags:Budget, Euro, Europe, European Debt Crisis, Greece, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Thursday, June 27th, 2013
Time for another update of just how hard Texas is kicking California’s ass:
Chuck DeVore has the skinny on California’s recent “growth:”
The BEA revised California’s real GDP growth downward from 2009 to 2011 in each of three years by a cumulative 2.6 percent, the third-largest negative revision in the nation.
In other words, California’s economy shrank an additional 2.6 percent before it grew 3.5 percent.
So, in the past five years California’s real GDP contracted 0.3 percent, one of ten states where economic activity was less in 2012 than it was in 2008.
By contrast, the BEA revised Texas’ growth upward by 0.5 percent from 2009 to 2011.
Texas’ newly revised real GDP growth from 2009 to 2012 was 13 percent.
From 2009 to 2012, California’s share of the U.S. economy shrank from 13.1 percent to 12.9 percent while Texas’ portion of the American economy increased from 8.2 percent to 9 percent.
Walter Russell Mead joins in:
What should be the Federer vs. Nadal of state-level competition has become a lopsided trouncing: Texas has humiliated its opponent in straight sets. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis is out with its state-by-state economic growth numbers for 2012, and Texas is dancing the two-step all over California’s “recovery.”
“Texas and California provide real-world results from the so-called laboratory of democracy — the states. The results aren’t even close. Texas wins and has been winning for years. California, champion of the big government blue state model, is in a death spiral. Texas, champion of the small government red state model, continues to grow and lead the way.”
California Democrats lose their supermajority, so they have to get one last “screw you” tax hike in.
California’s legislature has the highest salary in the country. (By contrast, Texas legislators make $600 per month, plus a per diem that’s currently $139 for every day the Legislature is in session.)
The Nanny State wants to regulate nannies. “Yo dawg, I heard you liked nanny states, so I put the nanny state in charge of your nannies so the nanny state nannies can nanny nannies.”
Billionaire Texas Democrat seeks to reform California pensions. Might want to pop some popcorn for this one. (Arnold does indeed give primarily to Democrats, but recently he’s also made contributions to Ted Cruz ($2400 in 2011), Tom Coburn and the RNC, plus a relatively paltry $200 donation to John McCain in 2010.)
Remember: If you’re going to kill somebody, it’s far better to do it in California than Texas. “At the pace the state has executed inmates over the last 35 years – roughly one execution every three years – it would take the state about 2,000 years to clear its backlog.” Why is why rail-traveling serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz was executed after 7 years in a Texas prison, but “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez spent 23 years living at the expense of California taxpayers before dying of natural causes.
California city of Atwater avoids bankruptcy by the skin of its teeth. Naturally, public employee unions are saying that now is the time to get raises…
Speaking of unions, even they are having problems with ObamaCare.
United Farm Workers picket United Farm Workers. No, that’s not a typo.
Tags:Atwater, California, Chuck DeVore, Crime, death penalty, ObamaCare, Texas, unions, Walter Russell Mead, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Crime, ObamaCare, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »
Monday, June 17th, 2013
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup!
California’s mullet budget: conservative in the front, but with a long greasy, tangled mane of liberal spending and debt in the back.
“Public pension costs are increasing simply because liabilities are growing faster than assets….To meet the rate at which pension liabilities were growing in 1999, Calpers needed the Dow to reach 30,000 by now.”
“California still has a mammoth long-term pension gap. If it used the same pension accounting standards as private companies must, its total debts would be a terrifying $1 trillion.”
What does the future look like in California? Well, take a look at Detroit, another one-party liberal Democrat fiefdom, where decades of chronic overspending and mismanagement are leading to a bankruptcy filing which will screw bond-holders and pensioners alike.
Speaking of bankrupt cities that can’t pay their bills, Stockton is paying out $5.1 million in settlements for retirees who are losing their health benefits due to the bankruptcy.
Some inside baseball news on maneuverings in the Stockton and San Bernardino bankruptcies.
Due the huge looming deficits, California’s public employee unions have had to accept wage cuts. Ha, just kidding! They’re getting raises.
California’s highest court rules that privacy rights don’t apply to you if public employee unions want your money.
Despite high electric rates, California is shuttering one of its nuclear power plants.
Thanks to California’s implementation of ObamaCare, Aetna is exiting the individual insurance market there.
Rick Perry travels to Connecticut to woo gun manufacturers to relocate to Texas.
Why NBA All-Star Dwight Howard might join the Houston Rockets: Texas’ lack of a state income tax.
Tags:Budget, California, Democrats, Detroit, nuclear power, San Bernardino, Stockton, Texas, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Democrats, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, May 10th, 2013
For a shocking change of pace, the Friday LinkSwarm will be on Friday:
“How can we ‘gun people’ honestly be expected to come to the table with anti-gunners when anti-gunners are willfully stupid about guns, and openly hate, despise and ridicule those of us who own them?” Read the whole thing.
Sheila Jackson Lee wants a National Gun Registry.
The lovely qualities of Jihadi Facebook pages: “The further I crawled down the extremist rabbit hole and the more caved-in skulls and headless corpses I saw.”
Union politics helped create the Baltimore Booty House.
“The Euro cannot be destroyed by any craft that we here possess. It was made in the fires of Frankfurt. Only there can it be unmade.” What does it say when Sauron wants the ring, er, Euro destroyed as well? Though once again: Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it hasn’t been tried.
“It was one thing to do amnesty during the white hot Reagan economy of the mid to late 80s. It’s quite another to do it in the midst of the Obama depression.”
Harry Reid unwilling to bargain in raising the debt ceiling? I say fine and dandy. Just cut government spending across the board until the budget is balanced.
“Detroit in worse shape than previously thought.” I don’t see how that statement can be true for any story that doesn’t include the word “cannibalism.”
London mayor Boris Johnson thinks it would be a good thing for democracy if the UK were to just walk away from the EU.
Travis County Democratic District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg is out of the clink after serving half a 45 day sentence for DWI. A jury will evidently determine “whether her drunken driving was habitual or whether the recent arrest was the result of a one-time event.” Because lots of people without alcohol problems suddenly decide “Hey, I’m going to go cruising around town with an open bottle of vodka and a blood alcohol level of .239! That sounds like a great idea!” I might believe that…if Lehmberg was 21.
Ted Cruz 1, Obama 0:
Tags:amnesty, Boris Johnson, Budget, Crime, Detroit, Euro, Guns, Illegal Aliens, Obama, Rosemary Lehmberg, Sheila Jackson Lee, Ted Cruz, unions
Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Guns, Texas | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
While attention was focused on the Boston bombing, Gosnell, and gay marriage, Greece just got another bailout. This is in exchange for further “austerity.”
What sort of “austerity” is Greece practicing? The sort that involves deficit spending at 10% of GDP, which is up from 9%. It was supposed to be cut to 7.5%.
So Greece wants more money because it can’t even keep to its previous promises on its fake austerity goals.
Let me explain it once again: Real austerity is cutting spending until it matches incoming receipts. Not reducing the rate of deficit spending. Not raising taxes so politicians can continue to spend.
No country in the EU (at least outside the Baltics) has practiced real austerity. That Forbes piece on the Baltic nations includes a lot of good advice that EU nations are largely ignoring:
Don’t run up big debts. It is a lot easier to manage when things go bad if you aren’t overextended to start. Observed Rosenberg: “Estonia’s experience shows that prudent policies during the boom may not avoid a bust, but they can put the country into a better position to deal with shocks.”
Don’t engage in an orgy of “stimulus” spending. That will run up big debts without generating long-term growth. When budgets eventually are cut, as they will have to be, the economic loss and political pain will be even greater.
Make tough decisions early. People typically are ready to act after the crisis hits. In the case of Latvia, argued Asmussen, by acting swiftly “most of the required painful budgetary decisions could be passed before the so-called ‘adjustment fatigue’ kicked in.”
Maintain fiscal responsibility. Otherwise any progress will be transitory. Growth is the natural result of reform. Delaying reform exacerbates the problem while prematurely terminating reform short-circuits the recovery.
Emphasize budget cuts. Expansive and irresponsible public outlays usually contribute to economic crisis. Moreover, the state as well as citizens should sacrifice after a crash. The answer is to cut expansive and irresponsible public outlays. In fact, economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna found that “spending cuts are much more effective than tax increases in stabilizing the debt and avoiding economic downturns. In fact, we uncover several episodes in which spending cuts adopted to reduce deficits have been associated with economic expansions rather than recessions.”
Finally, don’t rest on one’s laurels. There always is more to do. Even nations which have implemented serious reform programs, like the Baltic States, could make further improvements.
As far as I can tell, none of the core EU states (and certainly none of the PIIGS) has tried this approach since the 2008 recession hit. They keep trying Neo-Keynesian pump-priming and deficit spending to keep both the Euro and their unsustainable welfare state afloat, and they keep experiencing endless recession. Their fake austerity comes in slightly reducing the amount of their deficit spending enough to pretend they’re in compliance to keep the bailouts coming. Ireland hasn’t practiced real austerity. Neither has Portugal, Spain, or Italy (though Italy has come closest).
The shell game of bailouts and fake austerity will continue as long as the Eurocrats can keep getting away with it.
Tags:Euro, Europe, European Debt Crisis, Greece, PIIGS, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
Time for another Texas vs. California update:
The Stockton Bankruptcy:
Alarm bells have been ringing loudly in the heads of municipal bond investors…If you’re the chief of municipal bond investing for a big bank, whether on Wall Street or in San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago, this gets your attention. You might hesitate to lend hundreds of millions of dollars to other cities and counties if you fear they might go the Stockton route. Even if you proceed, you might insist on higher interest rates to compensate for what now appears to be added risk. That can translate to higher local taxes.
Can judges hire lawyers to lobby against budget cuts for courts? In what universe could the answer to that be anything but “No”?
California high speed rail to nowhere would lose hundred of millions of dollars a year.
Union response to the high speed rail boondoggle? Screw you. We’ve got ours, jack.
Seven years, seven billion more in unfunded liabilities for Los Angeles’ two largest pension plans.
Current California pension reform proposals are only a start.
Sacramento proposes to spend $447 million on an arena for a losing, mismanaged basketball team. “It’s 60 to 75 percent public subsidies.”
Problem: California’s politicians spend money like drunken sailors with a stolen credit card. Solution: Eliminate Proposition 13 so they can spend even more.
Indeed, that was just one of the many pro-economic suicide measures passed at the California Democratic convention.
Meanwhile, Rick Perry is pushing a business tax cut.
Austin, Houston and San Antonio among top 5 cities for small business.
Tags:Austin, Budget, California, Houston, Proposition 13 (California), San Antonio, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Austin, Budget, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, April 12th, 2013
Time for another Friday LinkSwarm:
Mary Steyn on Margaret Thatcher: “A generation on, the Thatcher era seems more and more like a magnificent but temporary interlude in a great nation’s bizarre, remorseless self-dissolution. She was right and they were wrong, and because of that they will never forgive her.”
The top story today (despite MSM attempts to avoid covering it) is the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell for murdering babies. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.” I guess doctors murdering black babies just isn’t a big deal for many white liberal journalists. Hell, Margaret Sanger encouraged it. Just contrast their reluctance to report on it compared to how they would have exploded if a guy walked into a hospital and shot seven infants in the head…
Man in Massachusetts arrested for shooting a bear that was trying to eat him.
America doesn’t need an official eugenics program when it has the Ivy league.
Head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents union calls out Sen. Marco Rubio for supporting amnesty.
Everything old is new again: Pogroms return to Ukraine.
Gee, Round Rock ISD officials are sure in an all fire hurry to resign all of a sudden.
Tags:abortion, Crime, Foreign Policy, Kermit Gosnell, Margaret Thatcher, Mark Steyn, Massachusetts, unions
Posted in Crime, Foreign Policy, Guns, Media Watch, unions | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
And still more on the late, great Margaret Thatcher:
Thatcher was right, and the left was wrong.
An appreciation by Paul Johnson.
Thatcher didn’t just smash paralyzing, militant trade unions, she also smashed the traditional British class structure.
Reagan’s greatest ally.
Thatcher appealed to the workers, not the shirkers.
Attention British liberals: Margaret Thatcher was not an all-powerful Satan.
This is incredible quaintness bordering on total delusion, the notion that Thatcher invented or popularised the previously unpopular notion of selfishness is laughable. As if before Margaret Thatcher the population of Britain was a kibbutz, or British people were known for their intense altruism, tossing money out of windows in the hope that literally anyone else would have it… She was a democratically elected politician after all, she won three elections and lost none, she didn’t dictate the mood of the public, rightly or wrongly – she reflected it.
One of the many enterprises Thatcher’s policies helped out? Theater.
What is the proper way for British left-wingers to celebrate Thatcher’s demise? Why, smash a charity shop’s windows and injure six policemen, of course.
Tags:Foreign Policy, Margaret Thatcher, UK, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Foreign Policy, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »