Posted on 11/24/2009 3:21:37 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Plundering California
Public-sector unions have brought the state to its knees.
23 November 2009
The economy is struggling, the unemployment rate is high, and many Americans are struggling to pay the bills, but one class of Americans is doing quite well: government workers. Their pay levels are soaring, they enjoy unmatched benefits, and they remain largely immune from layoffs, except for some overly publicized cutbacks around the margins. To make matters worse, government employees—thanks largely to the power of their unions—have carved out special protections that exempt them from many of the rules that other working Americans must live by. California has been on the cutting edge of this dangerous trend, which has essentially turned government employees into a special class of citizens.
When I recently appeared on Glenn Beck’s TV show to discuss California’s dreadful fiscal situation, I mentioned that in Orange County, where I had been a columnist for the Orange County Register, the average pay and benefits package for firefighters was $175,000 per year. After the show, I heard from viewers who couldn’t believe the figure, but it’s true. Firefighters, like all public-safety officials in California, also receive a gold-plated retirement plan: a defined-benefit annual pension that offers 90 percent or more of the worker’s final year’s pay, guaranteed for the rest of his life (and the life of his spouse).
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Ping!
Its about damn time someone else took notice of the public sector scam in this state.
I know several personally, and its driven me insane for years now. We in the private sector need to understand we are becoming modern day serfs.
bookmark
We need to go back to the time when public employees could not belong to unions.
I used to include teachers some decades ago until it became apparent that they were/are "indoctrinating" our children, rather than educating them.
My problem is with the 10's of thousands of redundant/worthless bureaucrats and other so-called "civil servants" and their greedy unions, sitting behind desks who take home similar compensation for doing nothing but pushing paper and thinking up ways to make our lives more difficult in the name of "equal outcome". End rant.
It's not just Orange County, who already defaulted once on their municipal bonds. The state and municipal employees all belong to unions who negotiate state wide.
Civil service pensions are breaking governments nationwide. Social Security is a government pension fund.
yitbos
I would like to see a Ballot Initiative that would cap public sector compensation, union or not, to no more than the median private sector income for comparable jobs, inclusive of all insurance benefits, perquisites, and retirement benefits.
Nothing like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
You bet, but I hope the rest of America can stop drooling on themselves long enough to figure out that California is nothing but a satellite company to the home office, the federal government.
The fish rots from the head.
Someone else gets it...See door #12.
How many civil servants are there, federal (less military), state, local.? More than 20 million.
How many former civil servants are on pension?
yitbos
bttt
You bet, but I hope the rest of America can stop drooling on themselves long enough to figure out that California is nothing but a satellite company to the home office, the federal government.
The fish rots from the head.
The collectivist congress and Marxist Black Liberation Theologist Hussein Obama is, indeed, the clear and present danger.
The socialist Congress invented "Build America Bonds" to bail out state employees. Osama pays most of the interest on them.
yitbos
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