[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.”
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.”
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.)
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 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.
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.”
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…
I’ve got a cold and my dog had major dental surgery yesterday, so pardon me if I seem out of it.
Democratic Party makes it clear they expect reporters to be good little lapdogs, going so far as to escort them to the restroom to keep them from talking to congressmen.
With all this election news popping up, this may be the last Texas cs. California roundup until after November 4:
New poverty figures are out from the Census. To quote a Texas Public Policy Foundation email about them: “The government report shows that, when accounting for some cost of living differences from state-to-state, Texas’ poverty rate dipped 0.5 percent to 15.9, the national average. Meanwhile, California still has the nation’s highest poverty rate at 23.4 percent. ”
“Back in 2005, some 1,841 retirees pulled down more than $100,000 a year in pension checks from the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. By 2009, this so-called “$100K club” had more than tripled, to 6,133 members. And by the end of 2013, membership had nearly tripled again, to 16,838, according to data from CalPERS.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami)
“With the Los Angeles Unified School District Board ready to fire Superintendent John Deasy, he resigned as head of the nation’s second-largest public school system just six months after he spiked his annual salary to $384,184 with $54,184 in buy-outs.” Bonus: Deasy came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he pushed Common Core.
The police union is suing the city of Vallejo for cuts made to their pensions during the city’s bankruptcy. if they win, they could push the city into bankruptcy again.
Among those 99 CalPERS pension-spiking buffs: Library Reference Desk Premium, Front Desk Assignment Premium and Audio-Visual Premium. “Hey look, I plugged the projector into my laptop! Give me a pension bonus, California taxpayers!” (Pension Tusnami again.)
San Francisco landlords win in court: “A federal judge ruled Tuesday that San Francisco cannot solve its housing shortage by requiring landlords, through a relocation assistance ordinance, to retroactively pay massive amounts to evict tenants under California’s Ellis Act.”
Via Dwight comes word that alternative weekly the San Francisco Bay Guardian has ceased publication. Alternative weeklies used to have a market niche as carrier mediums of left-wing opinion, music gig listings and porn ads. The Internet has taken over the music and porn listings, and the left-wing opinion market is glutted not only online, but with MSNBC, New York Times, CNN, NBC, CBS, Washington Post, NPR, etc.
But if you can’t make money with an alternative weekly in San Francisco, where can you? (And keep in mind that this was after they received a settlement from rival SF Weekly.)
California school officials are still grossly overpaid. Including 31 janitors who make more than $100,000 each. (Hat tip (for this and a few more): Pension Tsunami.)
And many of these munificently compensated employees are double-dipping: “More than 1,000 retired instructors who had already begun receiving their state-funded pension continued to work and receive a salary from districts in 2013.”
“Only in California could a bill that requires 32 years to catch up and fund parts of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System’s current $74 billion in unfunded liability be hailed as a major reform.”
Essential school services in California are about to be cut to pay for doubled pension payments.
San Francisco landlords are suing the city over a law that requires them to pay as much as two years rent for evicted tenants. Of course, many landlords were evicting people because insane rent control laws make it almost impossible to sell a building that actually has tenants…
California retail apparel chain Love Culture files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Evidently summer bankruptcies for retail stories are very unusual, since this is the time they start stocking up for the holiday season.
Another California for-profit university chain shuts down.
California has become infamous with business executives and owners there not only for high tax rates and complex taxing schemes but also for overzealous regulations and regulators that have managed to stifle the entrepreneurial energy of thousands of companies.
ZeroHedge (quoting a certain gun-grabbers business news service) offers up the most and least taxing states in America. Once again, California tops the list for most taxing. Plus a handy visual representation:
“California doesn’t just have the highest state income tax in the nation. It leads the rest of the country in almost every category of taxation: the highest state sales tax, the highest taxes on gasoline at the pump, and the highest corporate tax west of the Mississippi. And the taxes aren’t doing much for the people of the state, rich or poor. For the first time in history, the Census Bureau reports that California is also the poorest state in the nation, with 23.8% of the population living in poverty, in large part because of California’s high cost of living (which is not helped by all the sky-high consumption taxes the Democrats have enacted and the poor must pay to survive.)”
If that weren’t bad enough, a new bill (SB 1372) threatens to levy a class-war tax on CEO salaries. “Their bill would change the state’s fixed tax rate on publicly traded corporations to a sliding levy that’s pegged to the earnings gap between the top-paid executive and the median worker.” Evidently Democrats want all publicly traded corporations in California to move their headquarters to Texas…
The Pension Tsunami is going to wreck California sooner rather than later. “State and local governments in the Golden State have underfunded their golden-parachute pension promises by a terrifying half a trillion dollars. Twenty thousand public employees now collect yearly pensions of $100,000 or more.”
Some of the money those “public servants” are raking in is pretty staggering: “In 2012, more than 100 individuals took home more than $500,000 in total compensation; 8,248 raked in more than $250,000; 28,844 cashed in to the tune of $200,000 or more.”
Superintendent in a California school district who oversees 6,600 students pulled down a cool $674,559 last year. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Poll of residents shows that Texas is one of the five most popular states to live in. “Texans rank high on standard of living and trust in their state government, and they are less negative than others are about the state taxes they pay.”
Texas isn’t immune from California’s troubles when big city officials start spending like California Democrats. Big-spending Texas cities should learn from bankrupt Detroit’s example.
More details and repercussions from the indictment of California State Senator Leland Yee and his criminal associates on gun-trafficking and other charges:
Prominent Democrat Willie Brown (former Speaker of the California House and Mayor of San Francisco) wonders what the big deal is with the Yee indictment:
Give the guy a break. When all is said and done, his alleged crimes come down to taking campaign contributions in return for issuing proclamations, using campaign funds to set up a meeting and taking campaign funds for writing a letter.
Never did he sell his vote, steal public money or actually put money in his own pocket, as far as I can tell.
None of Yee’s decisions affected the public.
I’ve gone over the FBI’s criminal complaint and, from what I can see, the biggest crime he was accused of was trying hustle some undercover FBI agents who were out to get alleged Chinatown gang leader Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.
First, I don’t think Brown has read that indictment carefully enough. Second, notice how prominent Democrats seem to think that some felonies are just no big deal…
“Leland Yee symbolizes the pay-to-play virus that has infected our entire body politic.”
But don’t worry, Californians! Your Democratic Party-controlled government has the solution to all this slime and corruption: “intensive ethics training for senators and staffers.” Because ordinarily people just wouldn’t know that engaging in illegal arms trafficking to Islamic rebels was wrong. “Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?”
Alleged money laundering co-conspirators Leslie Yun and James Pau granted bail. They’re also accused of stolen stolen cigarette smuggling, marijuana distribution, and owning “a massage parlor that provides sexual services for its customers.”
Chow’s lawyers also accuse the FBI of entrapment, saying that the FBI threw millions of dollars at him. His lawyer also says that “the $58,000 Chow received from undercover agents were legal gratuities, not kickbacks for illegal activity.” Yeah, good luck pushing that theory…
Yee is out on $500,000 bond, his passport has been confiscated, and he’s been told not to leave California. I dunno about you, but $500,000 seems low for someone accused of running a major arms trafficking ring. Good thing Chinese tongs have never been known to smuggle people in or out of a country illegally…
Democrats were all for keeping convicted felon Rod Wright around as a state senator, but now that Yee is making all the wrong headlines, suddenly they want to kick Yee out because he was indicted.
The indictment on Shrimp Boy’s misdeeds: “Chow’s criminal history includes a guilty plea in federal court for racketeering, involving murder for hire, conspiracy to distribute heroin, arson, and conspiracy to collect extensions of credit.” 1. Shrimp Boy is obviously well-rounded, 2. “conspiracy to collect extensions of credit”? YOU MONSTER! (Actually, I’m guessing this may be loan sharking.)
Also indicted is a Alan Chiu, who is described as a “close associate” of Chow and is “employed by Men’s Warehouse.” Well, now we know where Shrimp Boy gets all of those natty outfits…
Kongphet Chanthavong is described as a Thai citizen with a felony conviction and “an outstanding warrant of deportation; however, country conditions preclude deportation.” What? Which country’s conditions? Ours, because Obama refuses to enforce immigration law, or Thailand? If the later, just get him a one way-ticket to Bangkok and let Thai officials deal with him. Problem solved.
Marlon Darrell Sullivan was indicted on narcotics trafficking, gun trafficking, and the murder-for-hire scheme. I’m guessing it’s this Marlon Sullivan, who represents football players Matt Toeaina, Jonathan Fanene, and Pat Williams, and boxer Karim Mayfield. I was unfamiliar with Mayfield until I ran across his name this morning. Where? On Chow’s Facebook page.
Just how does a sports agent wake up one day and say to himself: “You know, the agent business is good and all, but I really want to break into the lucrative world of contract killing”?
Maybe because he never left the street. “Marlon Sullivan, according to the federal affidavit, told undercover agents he’d have no trouble pulling off a ‘hit’, saying ‘I got a hundred niggas, I still got my ties to the street. I got young boys who love me.’”
Also this: “As I write, Sullivan’s whereabouts are unknown. He did not appear at the hearing where more than 20 of the defendants were arraigned.”
Yee traveled in the circles you would expect a California state senator to travel in:
He evidently has friends on the South Side:
(In case you don’t get the reference, that’s singer Moby. Kids, ask your parents what a “Moby” was…)
But that’s not the only supergenius headline they offer up on the case. There’s also this sparkling example of the headline-writer’s art: “Leland Yee indictment may mark abrupt end to his political career.” Really? You think? Then again, he is a Democrat. Convictions couldn’t fully derail Marion Barry or Alcee Hastings careers…
All the story needs to take it to the next level is Lo Pan casting fireballs from his fingers…
