California bureaucrats: avoiding transparency or wastefully incompetent?

By Robert Fellner
02/28/2014
When making requests for information from government agencies, being both an environmentalist and an advocate for government transparency can be doubly painful. It is quite common for public agencies to stall or attempt to deny public records requests, but some methods are just too bizarre to believe. Two separate California school districts – Duarte Unified...

Comparing CalSTRS Pensions to Social Security Retirement Benefits

By Edward Ring
02/27/2014
Summary:  This study compares Social Security retirement benefits to CalSTRS pension benefits and finds a significant disparity between the plans, despite the employee contributions being relatively similar. For example, the average CalSTRS participant retires at age 62, which is the current earliest age one may collect Social Security retirement benefits. At age 62, the average...

Drone Transport Ships, Automation, and the Bubble Economy

By Mike Shedlock
02/27/2014
Editor’s Note:  This article by Mike Shedlock leads off with a report on “drone transport ships,” but moves on to explore a provocative and very pertinent question:  Are policies that create the “bubble economy,” i.e., artificially inflated asset values, partly motivated by a desire to counter the deflationary pressures caused by automation? We have explored...

TAGS: asset bubble, automation

Union Watch Highlights

By Editor
02/25/2014
Here are links to the top stories available online over the past week reporting on union activity including legislation, financial impact, reform activism, etc., from California and across the USA. Another big union refuses to accept workers’ rejection By Bill Zwerger, February 25, 2014, American Thinker On Friday, after two days of voting, workers at...

Pension Reform Comes to Ventura County

By Edward Ring
02/25/2014
“401Ks carry no guarantee, and that’s the distinction between a defined contribution system and a defined benefit system.”  – Rick Shimmel, executive director of the Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, February 20, 2014, Fox News Soundbite Truer words were never spoken, Mr. Shimmel. But when the “guarantee” can’t be lowered to levels that are merely...

TAGS: Adjustable Defined Benefit, San Jose mayor Chuck Reed

The Fall of Pacific Grove – Conclusion: The "California Rule" Cannot Stand

By John Moore
02/25/2014
In this series, relying on official records of CalPERS and the City of Pacific Grove, I have shown how those two agencies and the unions worked as one to destroy the ability of cities like Pacific Grove from providing minimal government services. But the Supreme Court of California is the great enabler and protector of...

TAGS: "California Rule", CalPERS, Pacific Grove insolvency, vested pension rights

How a Basketball Arena Would Expand the Unionized Workforce in Sacramento: Part 1

By Kevin Dayton
02/25/2014
Proponents of a proposed $447 million new “entertainment and sports center” in downtown Sacramento for the Kings professional basketball team claim the arena itself would generate over 4,000 full-time jobs, including employees hired temporarily for construction, employees for operations of the arena, and other outside service jobs related to arena events and activities. Proponents also...

TAGS: Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction (CFEC), New Sacramento Kings Arena, Project Labor Agreements, Senate Bill 922 (2011)

UTLA Presidential Candidates Slam Charter Schools

By Larry Sand
02/25/2014
At a Los Angeles teachers union election forum, presidential contenders portray charter schools as a disease that needs to be eradicated. As reported by LA School Report’s Vanessa Romo, charter schools were a primary target at the February 20th symposium for presidential candidates of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Actually, it seemed as if...

TAGS: California Charter School Association, Charter schools, Gloria Romero, Harlem Success Academy, Jason Riley, LA School Report, Larry Sand, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Nina Rees, United Teachers of Los Angeles

The U.S. Middle Class is Turning Proletarian

By Joel Kotkin
02/20/2014
The biggest issue facing the American economy, and our political system, is the gradual descent of the middle class into proletarian status. This process, which has been going on intermittently since the 1970s, has worsened considerably over the past five years, and threatens to turn this century into one marked by downward mobility. The decline...