Untenable pension promises made by corrupt politicians to corrupt unions in an unholy alliance is about to sink another city. Please consider Providence is facing bankruptcy Rhode Island’s capital city will be in bankruptcy by June if it doesn’t get help resolving its financial crisis. That was the dire warning from Providence Mayor Angel Taveras...
On January 29 Bloomberg reported Bing Races to Beat Michigan Deadline for Union Detroit Deal Democratic Mayor Dave Bing is racing to wrest concessions from 48 bargaining units to erase a $200 million deficit in the home of General Motors Co. and the cradle of the U.S. auto industry. Otherwise, the city of 714,000 dominated...
Every year state politicians loot the pensions of more than 17 million public workers and retirees to “balance” budgets, yet those workers keep putting the looters back into office while fighting the few who try to head off this $4-trillion national economic catastrophe. A look at the latest U.S. Census data shows that over four...
This week both of California’s largest government employee pension funds, CalPERS and CalSTRS, released their portfolio earnings numbers for the most recent twelve months. In a statement released on January 24th, “CalSTRS Calendar Year-End Investment Returns Show Slight Gains,” CalSTRS disclosed “Investment returns for the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) ended the 2011 calendar...
Pension plans rebounded sharply in 2009 and 2010 from the devastating losses in 2008. However they never got back to even. 2011 was another poor year, and in spite of the start to 2012 I expect this year and/or next year to suffer more losses, or alternatively the market to limp along with no gains...
David Stockman former budget director for President Reagan, appeared on Bill Moyers and presented his message about money, Wall Street financiers, and crony capitalism. Link: David Stockman on Crony Capitalism Money dominates politics, distorting free markets and endangering democracy. “As a result,” Stockman says, “we have neither capitalism nor democracy. We have crony capitalism.” Stockman...
Years ago, after starting to report and editorialize on news events in an old factory city in Ohio, I was quickly dubbed a “negative” for pointing out the disastrous government spending, housing and tax policies embraced by city leaders — policies that were keeping a nice place wretched. Anyone who made similar criticisms was dismissed...
How much is that sweet retired teacher who lives down the street draining from your bank account? As the public employee pension mess worsens in California, little Rhode Island shows a way out. In last week’s post, I focused on “air time,” a little known scheme in California and 20 other states that allows teachers...
As the public employee pension and health care benefit crisis sweeps across the nation, some states are dealing seriously with these multibillion-dollar threats to public services and treasuries. And other states remain in deep denial. California, to no one’s surprise, is moving stridently in the wrong direction. The tiny state of Rhode Island, for instance,...
With government employees, a union agenda is inherently in conflict with the public interest, because unless taxes are raised, there is always a choice between higher wages for government workers, or investing in improving government services. With unions in the government, the overall union agenda – more wages and benefits, more union members – is...
Michigan Live reports Detroit could run out of cash in December, plan must include layoffs Bing is expected to discuss a confidential Ernst & Young report obtained by the Detroit Free Press that suggests Detroit could run out of cash by April without steep cuts to staff and public services. That’s a grim prognosis, but...
The recovery has fizzled out in California with revenues $1.5 billion below overly-optimistic estimates. California tax collections since the start of the fiscal year have fallen $1.5 billion behind projections, raising concern that the most-populous U.S. state will face automatic spending cuts. Revenue was $810.5 million less than budgeted in October, bringing the total to...
Despite some encouraging details in Gov. Jerry Brown’s recently announced pension-reform proposal, there’s virtually no chance the state will seriously reform — or even seriously attempt to reform — a system creaking under the weight of up to an estimated $500 billion in unfunded liabilities. The proposal isn’t bad. It doesn’t go far enough to...
In less than five years California will have over 10 million residents who are over the age of 55 (ref. U.S. Census, California Demographics). If every one of these people were to receive a pension equivalent to what the average public employee in California can now expect after working full-time for no more than 30...