Posts Tagged ‘Welfare State’
Wednesday, October 14th, 2015
Time for another Texas vs. California update:
Texas is the best state for small businesses.
Supreme Court to hold hearing on mandatory union dues in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
“Transparent California, a watchdog website provided by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, revealed 19,728 former government retirees across California received monthly stipends of $8,333.34 or more — adding up to at least a $100,000 a year for each person.”
[Orange County] government workers receive an “average full-career pension of $81,372 for miscellaneous [employees], which includes all nonsafety retirees, and $99,366 for safety [mostly police and fire] retirees of all Orange County cities enrolled in CalPERS.”
Republicans manage to defeat California tax hikes.
California politicians excel at corruption and self-dealing. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
“If money and household wealth follow people, then Texas is doing better than any other state in nearly every way.”
San Francisco drives last existing gun store out of the city with burdensome regulations.
Judge strikes down law requiring landlords to pay up to $50,000 in relocation fees to evicted tenants.
Texas continues to earn the highest possible credit ratings.
New law mandates that CalPERS and CalSTARS must stop investing in coal. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Stockton update: “After only one full budget year, the city has already broken three fundamental promises and is destined to return to insolvency within four years.”
Bankrupt supermarket chain Haggen has found buyers for some of its California stores.
This story is so strange I suspect it could only happen in California. (Playboy link, so it may be blocked at your place of work.) Despite the large number of guns. ($5 million for 1,200 guns? I call BS. That would mean each gun was slightly more expensive than the list price for a bolt-action Barrett .50 BMG sniper rifle. The photos mostly show pretty common hunting rifles.)
Tags:California, CalPERs, Democrats, Guns, Haggen, Orange County, Republicans, San Francisco, Stockton, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Democrats, Guns, Republicans, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2015
If you want to attend tomorrow’s blogshoot/meetup/tweetup, try to drop me a line (lawrenceperson at gmail dot com) so I’ll know how many will attend.
Now the LinkSwarm:
ObamaCare co-ops are going bankrupt.
Thanks to The Magic Power of Socialism™ and an estimated 800% inflation rate, Venezuela is now the most expensive place to live in the world, at least going by the official exchange rate. “Depending on which exchange rate you use, Venezuela can either be one of the cheapest countries in the world, or the most expensive.”
Democrats last year: “All those gun-toting white racist redneck freaks from Jesusland will be lining up to vote for Hillary!” Pollsters this year: Not so much.
Hillary Clinton now totally opposes the very Tran-Pacific Partnership she helped negotiate.
“Let’s take Malcolm Turnbull at his word that it’s only “a very very small percentage of violent extremist individuals”. What is the actual percentage? In the aforementioned Malmo, where up to a thousand mostly young male “refugees” arrive each day, suppose the “very very small percentage” is two per cent. That’s 20 brand new “violent extremists” per day. During the Northern Irish “Troubles”, MI5 estimated that there were no more than a hundred active members of the IRA at any one time – that’s to say, people actively involved in shooting and killing. So Malmo is taking in the equivalent of the entire IRA every week.”
How spree killers get their weapons. Or, once again, the New York Times twists facts to fit the narrative.
Speaking of the Times, this is what happens when the professional editors and proof-readers edit and proofread professional writers.
Wendy Davis thinks the reason she lost is she didn’t talk about abortion enough. Sure, Wendy, that’s it. Go with that… (Hat tip: Perry vs. World).
The Nairobi mall attack revisited. If this report is to be believed, armed civilians actually contained the threat, then army and security forces showed up and promptly managed to start shooting each other.
“In zombie world, the man who relies on the government for his safety will be zombie chow in short order…In zombieland, there are three kinds of people: those who know how to use guns, those who learn how to use guns, and zombies.”
Remembering the Yom Kippur War.
Tags:abortion, Arab-Israeli Wars, Border Controls, Economics, Guns, Hillary Clinton, inflation, Israel, Jihad, Mark Steyn, Media, ObamaCare, Texas, The New York Times, Trans-Pacific Partnership, Venezuela, Welfare State, Wendy Davis, Yom Kippur War, zombies
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2015
Ah, that October chill…is not evident yet here in Austin. It’s supposed to hit 94° today.
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup:
The joys of working in Los Angeles: a $30,000 tax bill on $500 worth of freelance income.
California nears passage of another trial lawyer full employment act.
Texas had five of the ten fastest growing metropolitan areas in 2014. Austin isn’t on this list, but Midland and San Angelo are numbers one and two. (San Jose, California’s lone entry, checks in at eight.)
72% of Californians polled thinks the state has a pension crisis. Too bad this thinking doesn’t seem to influence their voting patterns yet… (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
And yet a new bill would exempt some new hires from paying their fair share of pension costs. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
New pension accounting rules are about to show that a lot more California municipalities are insolvent.
“Instead of building freeways, expanding ports, restoring bridges and aqueducts, and constructing dams, desalination plants, and power stations, California’s taxpayers are pouring tens of billions each year into public sector pension funds.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Stockton’s bankruptcy didn’t solve it’s pension crisis.
Texas had a net gain of 103,465 people in 2014, the largest number of which came from California.
San Francisco wants to keep housing affordable…by restricting supply. Looks like somebody failed Economics 101…
Pension reform initiative to be refiled?
Unions are trying to undo San Diego’s voter-approved pension reforms. Because of course they are.
“Texas is like Australia with the handbrake off. There is no individual income tax and no corporate income tax, which explains the state’s rapid economic and population growth. A recent downturn has sparked some concern, however. Apparently Texas will only create another 150,000 jobs during 2015 – about the same number as Australia, from a population only a few million larger. In a good year, that number of jobs is easily generated by a single Texan city.” Also: IowaHawk’s illegal human organ trafficking!
Texas ranks 13th in budget transparency. California? Dead last.
Even some California Democrats balked at increasing the state’s already high gas prices.
As part of the bankruptcy of northwest supermarket chain Haggen (which bought a bunch of Albertson’s stores just six months ago), they’ll be closing all their California stores. And if you guessed that Haggen is unionized, you would be correct.
Jerry Brown revives the state’s redevelopment agency…and its potential for eminent domain abuse.
Reminder: Texas is enormous.
A scourge spreads out upon California. Crack gangs? Illegal aliens? Try “short term rentals.”
Historical note: 105 years ago today, three union guys bombed the Los Angeles Times, killing 21 people.
Tags:Albertson's, Australia, California, Crime, Democrats, Haggen, Jerry Brown, Los Angeles, Midland, pension crisis, San Angelo, San Jose, Stockton, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Uncategorized, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2015
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup:
Why Texas is awesome:
First, there is no state income tax in Texas. Some people know this and some don’t—few really grasp what it means practically. It means that if you make decent money and decide to move here and rent something affordable, it’s essentially free to live in Texas. If you make $150,000 a year, your state income taxes in California are roughly $12,000 per year (in NYC it’s closer to $15,000). Or, you can put a thousand bucks a month toward your rent here. If you decide to buy, property taxes are high—but what you get for the money more than makes up for it. My editor at the Observer recently tried to cajole me into coming back to New York. Our house now—which has its own lake and is 29 minutes from the airport which never has lines—costs less than the rent we were paying for our lofted studio apartment in Midtown. Are you kidding?
Also note the mention of walk-in gun safes…
(Hat tip: Borepatch.)
600,000 Californians have moved to Texas since 2009.
Another take on that data: “5 Million People Left California Over the Past Decade. Many Went to Texas.”
Austin and Houston are the top two relocation destinations in the country.
$15 billion for a fish tunnel?
“The average full-career California teacher receives a pension benefit equal to 105% of their final earnings. CalSTRS CEO says the plan isn’t generous enough.”
In 2012, Los Angeles passed some modest pension reforms for newly hired employees. Surprise! A new union contract undoes those reforms. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
California, like Texas, has a homestead exemption built into their bankruptcy laws. Unlike Texas, California’s exemption doesn’t actually protect debtors.
The FBI raided Palm Springs’ city hall as part of a corruption probe.
Mining company suspends operations at California mine because rare earths aren’t.
Chief of tiny California fire district to have his $241,000 pension cut. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Enviornmental idiocy and California’s drought.
Texas’ 2016 Fiscal Year started September 1st. “Several taxes that were eliminated on September 1 include the Inheritance Tax, Oil Regulation Tax, Sulphur Regulation Tax, Fireworks Tax, Controlled Substance Tax Certificates, and the Airline/Passenger Train Beverage Tax.”
Meanwhile, California’s legislature is trying to raise gas and tobacco taxes.
Elderly poverty in California.
Evidently California’s Democratic politicians stay up late at night devising ways they can make the state go broke even faster. The answer: Host the Olympics again.
Korean-owned businesses in LA consider relocating to El Paso. “Kim makes the case that El Paso, once home to plants for denim companies including Levi’s and Wrangler, has abundant skilled laborers, fewer regulations, much cheaper rent and direct flights from Los Angeles.”
A cartoon via IowaHawk’s twitter feed. That is all.
Tags:Austin, California, CalSTARS, Crime, Democrats, El Paso, environmentalism, Houston, Los Angeles, migration, Olympics, Palm Springs, Regulation, Texas, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Regulation, Texas, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »
Monday, August 31st, 2015
Welcome to the final week of traditional summer. Of course, it used to be that everything (school, football, the new TV year, etc.) started after Labor Day Weekend, but that’s not the case any more…
“it’s cute to pretend that Black Lives Matter is actually about making policing better when it’s really just another Democratic party constituency agitprop group.”
Texas mandates E-Verify for all state employees.
Ten questions about the Iran deal.
Indeed, the Iran deal stinks so badly that even Debbie Wasserman Schultz wants to keep the stink of Eue De Failure off herself and the DNC. (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Europe has begun to reform its welfare systems. (Hat tip Instpundit.)
Thanks to government efforts, heroin is now cheaper than cigarettes in New York City. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
McCarthy critic turns out to be a Soviet spy. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
UK Labour leader candidate Jeremy Corbyn: Apologist for oppressive dictatorships.
Oh, and he wants to give the Falkland Islands to Argentina. Why, it’s almost as if the hard left yearns for nothing so much as undoing every conservative foreign policy triumph out of spite…
And he also called Osama Bin Laden’s death “a tragedy.”
Criticizing Muslim antisemitism? That’s a $750 fine in Denmark.
Widespread street protests in Kuala Lumpur over corruption and embezzlement by Malaysia’s Goldman-Sachs-underwritten Prime Minister.
Still another reason not to use Ashley-Madison: “For every 7750 men, there were 3 women.” “Sausage Fest” doesn’t even begin to cover it…
Speaking of sausage, San Antonio woman steals $3000 worth of sausage.
Conservatives push back on victimhood identity politics guidelines from the College Board and win.
Austin Bag Ban backfires. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
A look back at 1945 plans for the invasion of Japan. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
Ten years of Tam.
Tags:Austin, Border Controls, college, College Board, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Denmark, E-Verify, environmentalism, Falklands, Guns, heroin, Iran, Japan, Jeremy Corbyn, Jihad, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Military, Osama bin Laden, San Antonio, terrorism, Texas, tobacco, UK, victimhood, Welfare State, World War II
Posted in Austin, Border Control, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Texas, Welfare State | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 25th, 2015
California has long had a tenuous grasp of what the rest of us regard as consensus reality. But two new pieces of legislation suggest they’ve gone off the deep end into full Victimhood Identity Politics land:
First, they decided that police shootings wouldn’t be subject to the grand jury process, because what’s a little things like two centuries of due process and the fifth amendment to the Constitution when there are policemen to be railroaded to satisfy black protesters?
They also decided to purge the words “illegal alien” from state statutes, because what’s mere law when there’s political correctness to be pandered to?
Of course, that’s not all that’s new on the Texas vs. California front:
“California taxpayers paid out big bucks to state workers in 2014. How much? More than the Gross Domestic Product of 100 countries, according to new data published by the State Controller’s office. In 2014, more than 650,000 state employees earned a total of $32 billion in wages and benefits.” It gets better: “Nine hundred sixty-nine state employees earned more than the President of the United States.” Added irony:
The lowest paid average workers represented agencies focused on the environment, women and people with disabilities. According to the state’s 2014 payroll data, the average salary for the 11 state employees at the California Commission on Disability Access was just $15,213 per year, slightly more than the $14,494 average salary paid to the four employees at the Commission on the Status of Women.
There is no California. Only Zuul…
Texas unemployment rate: 4.2%. California unemployment rate: 6.2%. (Hat tip: WILLism’s Twitter feed.)
Los Angeles’ new minimum wage has wrecked hotel employment. Or maybe just non-illegal alien employment… (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
Why Public Services in California Decline Even As Revenues Rise. “Until California’s leaders address the three elephants – retirement, healthcare and corrections costs — that are crowding out public services and causing unproductive tax and fee increases, citizens will continue to suffer and inequality will continue to grow.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Chuck Devore on what makes Texas friendly to business: less red tape and lower taxes.
Voters to San Jose City Council: We want pension reform! San Jose City Council to voters: Get stuffed! (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
TV’s CHiPS never seemed to be involved in ethics scandals the way the current administration is, including no-bid contracts to European companies. (Bonus: it’s also suitable for Dwight’s Art Acevedo watch.)
California’s “Green Jobs Initiative” spent $297 million to create 1,700 jobs.
More on the same theme, and Tom Steyer wasting $29.6 million of his own money pushing it, from City Journal.
California’s SFX: from billion dollar company to bankruptcy.
Tags:Border Controls, Budget, California, Chuck DeVore, Crime, Democrats, environmentalism, fraud, minimum wage, pension crisis, Political Correctness, San Jose, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, Tom Steyer, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 5 Comments »
Friday, August 21st, 2015
“Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned on Thursday, hoping to strengthen his hold on power in snap elections after seven months in office in which he fought Greece’s creditors for a better bailout deal but had to cave in.”
Turns out promising free ice cream, only to deliver expensive rotted cabbage, wasn’t popular with Greek voters.
Nor were his actions popular with members of his own party, 25 of whom have broken off to form the new National Unity Party, who will evidently return to the “demand free ice cream and insist others pay for it” strategy Tsipras abandoned in the face of the sinister force know as reality.
On the plus side, Greece just used it’s new bailout fund to make a debt payment to the European Central Bank for the last batch of money it borrowed to prop up its unsustainable welfare state.
We’re in that happy honeymoon period after Greece gets more money and before Eurocrats are shocked, shocked that Greece’s economy is still a festering pile of fail that all those and promised economic reforms haven’t actually been implemented.
Give it another six to nine months…
Tags:Alexis Tsipras, Budget, European Central Bank, European Debt Crisis, Greece, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Welfare State | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 13th, 2015
So I haven’t done a Greek update in a while, since after Greece caved into the inevitable (Newsflash: broke people generally do not have leverage over those lending them money), it was all over but the shouting. Now that Greece and its creditors supposedly have a third bailout deal inked, and Greece settles into its clearly defined misery, let’s take a look at exceptionally bankrupt Greece these days, shall we?
Via Zero Hedge comes former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis’ detailed review of the bailout agreement. It’s a mixture of self-serving lies (trying to distance his own Syriza party from the horrific economic mess they made acutely worse) and brutal truths (about just how screwed Greece is by the agreement).
Speaking of Varoufakis, it looks like he’s going to be up on hacking charges…for preparing emergency plans to float the drachma.
Oh: He also says the latest bailout deal won’t work. He’s not wrong…
Greece’s economy miraculously grew in the second quarter. But that was before the full effects of the crisis were reflected…
Greece’s tax revenues have collapsed.
Greece’s manufacturing sector fell off a cliff in July. Funny how that happens when your banks are closed and you can’t pay for goods.
Greece faces two years of recession. That part’s probably true. But that primary budget surplus? Yeah, not so much.
“Greece’s banks just made the mistake of being banks in Greece.”
After all that? Greece still isn’t fixed.
To add a cherry on top, Greece’s refugee crisis continues to grow. Because it’s still safer to live in bankrupt Greece than the Middle East…
Tags:Budget, Euro, European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, Greece, PIIGS, Syriza, Welfare State, Yanis Varoufakis, Zero Hedge
Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, August 7th, 2015
Time for the traditional Friday LinkSwarm!
“Unions represent the main political obstacle to just about every kind of reform: School choice. Entitlements. Pensions. Health care.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Since the 70th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing is upon us, time for a classic reprint: “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.”
Illegal alien pulls gun on police in Pearland, lucky to still walk among the living. (Hat tip: SooperMexican.)
Side effect of Seattle’s minimum wage law: workers asking for fewer hours so they can keep getting government money.
Once again Dwight is on the DefCon beat.
“As I dug the bodies of several women out of the rubble, one of the other rescue workers asked if I’d heard that Cecil the Lion was killed. I froze in shock, dropping part of what I assume was once a human arm on the ground. ‘Not Cecil the Lion!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not him! Truly, is there no innocence left in this world?’ I cried harder than when we discovered my brother was gay and ISIS forced us to throw him off a building.”
Why the news media can’t do straight reporting on guns:
The news, like Hollywood, became trapped in creating and fawning over celebrities. Getting Anderson Cooper publicized became more important than breaking the big story. When you have celebrity reporters telling you how they feel about being in Iraq instead of reporting on how our troops are doing you begin to lose perspective. With guns, instead of going to gun ranges, gun-owner’s homes, instead of interviewing women who’d stopped an attacker, and instead of really trying to understand the world such women live in and what they’re going through, they just tell us how they feel.
Respectable Dallas Observer liberal Jim Schutze goes to a Social Security office to get a replacement card for the one he lost. Simple, yes? Eh, not so much.
Speaking of the Dallas Observer, here’s one of their writers praising the Tea Party. Dogs and cats sleeping together!
Oh boy: Via Mark Steyn comes another story from Rotherham involving children with something to offend everyone.
St. Louis judge: Mere taxpaying peasants don’t get to vote on stadium subsidies their betters have decided on.
A sinkhole grows in Brooklyn. You can’t really expect Mayor Bill De Blasio to deal with this sort of trivia when there are so many cops to insult…
Welcome to the era of the $400 textbook.
Speaking of cops, a Taco Bell worker was fired for writing PIG on a policeman’s order (Hat tip: SooperMexican.)
Just about all Olympic athletes are doping.
Tags:Border Controls, Dallas Observer, DEFCON, Guns, Jim Schutze, LinkSwarm, Mark Steyn, Media Watch, minimum wage, New York City, Pearland, police, SooperMexican, steroids, unions, Welfare State
Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Media Watch, unions, Welfare State | No Comments »