Who is really behind the minimum wage hike? The SEIU:
California’s drive to hike the minimum wage has little to do with average workers and everything to do with the Golden State’s all-powerful government employee unions.
Nationally, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is known for representing lower skilled workers. But, of the SEIU’s 2.1 million dues-paying members, half work for the government. In California, that translates to clout with much of the $50 million SEIU spent in the U.S. on political activities and lobbying spent in California. In fact, out of the 12 “yes” votes for the minimum wage bill in the Assembly Committee on Appropriations on March 30, the SEIU had contributed almost $100,000 out of the three-quarters of a million contributed by public employee unions—yielding a far higher return on investment than anything Wall Street could produce.
Unions represent about 59 percent of all government workers in California. Many union contracts are tied to the minimum wage — boost the minimum wage and government union workers reap a huge windfall, courtesy of the overworked California taxpayer.
“California’s taxes and regulations are crushing businesses, and there are more opportunities in Texas for people to start new companies, get good jobs, and create better lives for their families,” said Nathan Nascimento, the director of state initiatives at Freedom Partners. “When tax and regulatory climates are bad, people will move to better economic environments—this phenomenon isn’t a mystery, it’s how marketplaces work. Not only should other state governments take note of this, but so should the federal government.”
According to Tom Gray of the Manhattan Institute, people may be leaving California for the employment opportunities, tax breaks, or less crowded living arrangements that other states offer.
“States with low unemployment rates, such as Texas, are drawing people from California, whose rate is above the national average,” Gray wrote. “Taxation also appears to be a factor, especially as it contributes to the business climate and, in turn, jobs.”
“Most of the destination states favored by Californians have lower taxes,” Gray wrote. “States that have gained the most at California’s expense are rated as having better business climates. The data suggest that may cost drivers—taxes, regulations, the high price of housing and commercial real estate, costly electricity, union power, and high labor costs—are prompting businesses to locate outside California, thus helping to drive the exodus.”
It’s not just pensions: “The state paid $458 million in 2001 (0.6 percent of the general fund) for state worker retiree health care and is expected to pay $2 billion (1.7 percent of the general fund) next fiscal year — up 80 percent in just the last decade.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
How to fix San Francisco’s dysfunctional housing market. “Failed public policy and political leadership has resulted in a massive imbalance between how much the city’s population has grown this century versus how much housing has been built. The last thirteen years worth of new housing units built is approximately equal to the population growth of the last two years.” Also: “The city is forcing people out. Only the rich can live here because of the policies created by so-called progressives and so-called housing advocates.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
Calls for UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to resign, she of the supergenius “pay $175,000 to scrub the Internet of negative postings about the pepper-spraying of students in 2011” plan.
75% of current Toyota employees are willing to move to Texas to work at Toyota’s new U.S. headquarters.
California isn’t the only place delusional politicians are pushing a “railroad to nowhere.” The Lone Star Rail District wants to keep getting and spending money despite the fact that Union Pacific said they couldn’t use their freight lines for a commuter train between Austin and San Antonio. The tiny little problem being that the Union Pacific line was the only one under consideration…
The Manhattan Institute has a new report out discussing how California’s pension spending is starting to crowd out essential services. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Unfunded pension liabilities are a concern for county and city governments throughout California. Reviewing this problem in Marin County, the Grand Jury examined four public employers that participate in the Marin County Employees’ Retirement Association (MCERA): County of Marin, City of San Rafael, Novato Fire Protection District, and the Southern Marin Fire Protection District, hereafter collectively referred to as “Employer(s)”
The Grand Jury interviewed representatives of the County of Marin, sponsors of MCERA administered retirement plans, representatives of MCERA, and members of the various Employer governing boards and staff. It also consulted with actuaries, various citizen groups, and the Grand Jury’s independent court-appointed lawyers.
In so doing, the Grand Jury found that those Employers granted no less than thirty-eight pension enhancements from 2001- 2006, each of which appears to have violated disclosure requirements and fiscal responsibility requirements of the California Government Code.
Why does the University of California system have to hike tuition 28%? Simple: Pensions.
As with other areas of state and local budgets, a big factor is pension costs, which for UC have grown from $44 million in 2009-10 to $957 million in 2014-15. And the number of employees making more than $200,000 almost doubled from 2007-13, from 3,018 to 5,933.
While total UC employees rose 11 percent from October 2007 to October 2014, the group labeled “Senior Management Group and Management and Senior Personnel” jumped 32 percent.
And by my count, there are 157 BART employees who make more than $200,000 a year in salary and benefits…
California state senate committee votes to raise California’s minimum wage to $13 by 2017. If I were Gov. Greg Abbott, I’d be ready to start sending Texas relocation information packets to large California employers the minute this gets signed into law.
California-based Frederick’s of Hollywood files for bankruptcy. The retail lingerie business just isn’t what it used to be…
Torrence, California newspaper wins Pulitzer Prize for reporting on local school district corruption.
Priorities: Carson, California approves $1.7 billion for an NFL stadium even though they don’t have an NFL team to put in it.
Dilbert’s Scott Adams weighs in on California’s drought:
California institutes mandatory water restrictions due to drought. California is indeed suffering a horrific drought, but it’s imposition of or acquiescence to idiotic environmental restrictions (see also: Delta Smelt) have made things much worse.
Volokh the Younger examines the legal framework around the California rule (“not only that public employees are entitled to the pension they’ve accrued by their work so far, but also that they’re entitled to keep earning a pension (as long they continue in their job) according to rules that are at least as generous”), as well as its practical effects:
The California rule distorts what the salary/pension mix would otherwise be, given employer and employee preferences, and given the tax code as it is. Because underfunded pensions are a popular form of deficit spending, public employee compensation may already be too pension-heavy, and the rule makes it more so by freezing pensions in times of retrenchment. The incentive effects of the rule, given the political economy of government employment, may well exacerbate this tendency. And the possible theoretical reasons for preferring a pension-heavy mix don’t go very far in justifying this particular distortion.
The harsh truth is that the advertising machine behind the Obama administration seems not to really know what normal human beings are like.
Medicaid + ObamaCare + Estate Recovery = The feds get to seize your estate. (Warning: DailyKos) But think of the future! Medicaid + ObamaCare + Estate Recovery + Death Panel = Ka-Ching! State government need but speed up your shuffling off this mortal coil to help close those pesky budget deficits to pay for public employee union pensions! It’s a win-win-win! (Well, for everyone but the poor schmuck getting the state equivalent of a pillow over their face…)
ObamaCare brand heroin. Well, they’re both being pushed by people who want to get you hooked and make you dependent for their benefit. But I’m given to understand that a junkie can tell whether the smack is good within seconds; we injected Obamacare into our body politic four years ago, feel horrific side effects, and we’re still waiting for the high…
Senators Coburn and Feinstein introduce bill to eliminate corn biofuels mandate. It’s a start. They should eliminate all biofuels mandates and agribusiness subsidies.
Nancy Pelosi says that being an illegal alien is no cause for deportation. Evidently the purpose of the border patrol is to hand out free lemonade along with ObamaCare application forms and membership cards for the Democratic Party…
Mack Brown goes out with class. Asked his biggest regret, you’d think he’d say Colt McCoy getting injured in the national championship game against Alabama. Nope. “They’d be two things. I would want Cole Pittman back, and I would want the bonfire [tragedy] not to have happened at A&M.” It was time for Brown to retire, but he always conducted his program with class and respect.
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.
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.”
California, bluest of blue states, forcibly sterilized female prisoners. Well, liberal’s love of eugenics goes back at least as far as Margaret Sanger…
The season has switched from not Summer to Summer here in Texas, so here’s a hot, humid LinkSwarm:
In Europe, youth unemployment is climbing to scary, stratospheric heights. So scary I’m going to swipe their chart:
Notice how countries that have kept their deficit spending relatively low (Germany and even the UK, where deficits has at least decreased under Cameron) are doing much better than the PIIGS. Again, Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it’s been declared difficult and left untried.
Harry Reid calls his close personal friend and business associate Harvey Whittemore (and his wife) “wonderful people.” Oh, and Whittemore is now also a convicted felon.
Eric Holder: Obama’s sin eater. “The attorney general has done little in his tenure to protect civil liberties or the free press. Rather, Holder has supervised a comprehensive erosion of privacy rights, press freedom and due process. This ignoble legacy was made possible by Democrats who would look at their shoes whenever the Obama administration was accused of constitutional abuses.”
Take a look at these charts. Unemployment in Spain is up over 25%, and most have been unemployed more than 2 years. Matthew O’Brien is correct when he says that Spain’s inflexible labor laws contribute greatly to the unemployment, but errs when he says that “austerity hasn’t been the path to prosperity. It’s been the path to perma-slump.”
Austerity hasn’t failed in Spain. It hasn’t been tried.
Remember, real austerity isn’t trying to tax-and-spend your way to prosperity. Real austerity is cutting budgets until outlays match receipts. Estonia bit the bullet and balanced its budget, and its economy is now growing at a steady clip. Meanwhile, governments all across Europe continue to try the same deficit spending Keynesian pump-priming, and keep having the same recession. In most of Europe, “austerity” has meant digging their own graves more slowly rather that stopping digging.
If all this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Europe makes the same mistakes, gets the same results, and keeps doubling down on stupid, content to keep the farce running as long as they possibly can. Instead actually of solving the interrelated problems of debt, unsustainable entitlements, and the Euro, the Euroelite seem content to preside over the world’s slowest, most boring train wreck. Yes, it’s a pity the train is sliding inexorably toward the chasm, but there’s such fine vintages to be had in the saloon car, and it offers such a magnificent view of the coming crash…
Hempstead, N.Y.: All across the country, millions of unemployed Americans expressed relief and gratitude that Obama finally addressed their most important issue at last night’s Presidential debate: assault weapons.
“I’m glad Obama is finally tackling assault weapons,” said Barbara Rheems, taking a brief pause from brushing her teeth in the 1998 Honda Civic that has been her home for the last three years. “I think that’s the greatest concern facing our country.”
“Thank God Nina Gonzales had the courage to ask about assault weapons,” said Richard Smith, an unemployed construction worker, speaking from the cot in his mother’s basement. “I can’t think of a single more pressing issue.”
“Assault weapons terrify me,” said mother Gladys Castle, who was busy preparing an “Obama soup” made from pilfered ketchup packets for her three hungry children. “I’m afraid that at any moment they might burst out of closets and gun safes and start shooting people.”
“Well it’s about time someone dealt with America’s biggest challenge, which is reinstating the Clinton-era assault weapons ban,” said Tom Feller, who spoke to us from behind his homemade cardboard WILL WORK ANY JOB/HAVE CHILDREN TO FEED/GOD BLESS sign. “The fact is that Americans just don’t need a weapon that has any two of a folding stock, a pistol grip, a bayonet mount, or a flash suppressor, and it’s high time we moved to disarm ordinary Americans citizens who purchased such weapons in a completely lawful manner.”
A CNN poll of America’s unemployed showed that assault weapons were far and away the most pressing issue this election, with 78% citing them as their biggest concern, while those who said that their top issue was forcing Catholics to pay for contraception were a distant second at 19%.
Take a gander at the latest ad from American’s for Prosperity:
Not only does it work for me, it has a subtle, minimalist brilliance that not only makes it stick in the mind, but makes it hard to fight. What are liberals going to say? “No, unemployment isn’t high?” “No, middle class families aren’t suffering?” “No, it’s all Bush’s fault?” “No, let’s keep doing the same thing?” The very lack of dialog all but eliminates attack vectors against it, and any attacks against it will only make more people watch it.
I got this via Ace of Spades who, strangely enough, doesn’t like it. A commentator suggests that it’s because it stresses feelings over facts. But if facts and figure by themselves swayed the majority of voters, Obama would never have been elected President, and would stand no chance now.
If you have liberal friends on Facebook, chances are that they’re not forwarding links that show how objectively great a job Obama is doing. No, what they’re doing is forwarding links designed inflame fellow liberals with what horrible people Republicans are by focusing on the stupid things said by a few Republican office-holders. (Todd Aiken before, Paul Broun this week.) It’s meant to distract from Obama’s manifest failures by making the opposition evil incarnate. Political ads play on emotions because playing on emotions works.
Which isn’t to say it’s the only advertising you should be doing. But as part of a larger advertising strategy I think this particular ad is very effective.
You know what they could do to make liberals really crawl of their skin? Do the exact same ad with a black family.
