The gall, arrogance, and stupidity of public union pandering has reached new heights. A senate bill sponsored by written by Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles seeks to force businesses with five or more employees to create personal defined benefit plans, managed by CalPERS. The Sacramento Bee reports California Democrats push pension plan for nongovernment...
In my last column, I documented how California’s pro-union Attorney General Kamala Harris provided an unfair and dishonest title and summary to a pair of pension reform initiatives submitted to her office, thus effectively killing the measures. Last week the unions tried—and almost succeeded—with an even nastier stunt designed to undermine democracy. In San Diego,...
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...
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,...
In an editorial posted in January 2011 entitled “Wall Street & Public Sector Unions,” we identified an irony still lost on the occupy movement’s rank and file – Wall Street is financed by the pension funds of unionized government workers. Every year, taxpayer funded government agencies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into Wall Street...
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...
To outsiders, liberal San Francisco may seem preoccupied with leftist protesters occupying prime real estate in the Financial District or with debating proper restaurant etiquette for the city’s small but flagrant nudist population, or until recently, with arguing whether male circumcision should be outlawed. But the prospect of bankruptcy focuses the mind, even in a city so obsessed with leftist causes celebres....
Today’s Wall Street Journal published an article by Phil Izzo entitled “Bleak News for Americans’ Income,” where, citing U.S. Census Data, it was reported that U.S. median household income – adjusted for inflation – fell by 7% over the past ten years. In constant 2010 dollars, the average household in the U.S. saw their income...
If you need evidence on how corrupt self-serving unions and union officials can be, then please consider Ex-labor chief’s 1-day rehire nets $158,000 city pension A retired Chicago labor leader secured a $158,000 public pension — roughly five times greater than what a typical retired public-service worker in the Windy City receives — after being...
Breathe a deep sigh of relief now that state legislators have headed home. As Judge Gideon Tucker (and also attributed to Mark Twain) exclaimed, “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” You are safer now than you were a little over a week ago. The real issues of...