Los Angeles County employees rally for a new contract.
Posted on 01/22/2010 5:00:19 PM PST by GOP_Lady
Months after closing its last budget gap, the Golden State is $20 billion in the red.
Sacramento
An old friend of mine has a saying, "Even the worm learns." Prod one several hundred times, he says, and it will learn to avoid the prodder. As California enters its annual budget drama, I can't help but wonder if the wisdom of the elected politicians here in the state capital equals that of the earthworm.
The state is in a precarious position, with a 12.3% unemployment rate (more than two points higher than the national average) and a budget $20 billion in the red (only months after the last budget fix closed a large deficit). Productive Californians are leaving for states with less-punishing regulatory and tax regimes. Yet so far there isn't a broad consensus to do much about those who have prodded the state into its current position: public employee unions that drive costs up and fight to block spending cuts.
Earlier this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a budget that calls for a $6.9 billion handout from Washington (unlikely to be forthcoming) and vows to protect current education funding, 40% of the state's budget. He does want to eliminate the Calworks welfare-to-work program and enact a 5% pay cut for state employees. These are reasonable ideas, but also politically unlikely.
As the Sacramento Bee's veteran columnist Dan Walters recently put it, the governor's budget is "disconnected from economic and political reality." Mr. Walters suspects what will happen next: "Most likely, [the governor] and lawmakers will, to use his own phrase, 'kick the can down the road' with some more accounting tricks and other gimmicks, and dump the mess on whoever is ill-fated to become governor a year hence."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
They can build a bitter LA county all right!
75 cents out of every California tax dollar goes to pay a state workers benefits and salary.
Think about that.
The need to survive generally makes people smart very fast!
The trough has done gone dry loooong ago.
I’d like to see a list of how that compares to the other 49.
They look like illegals. Now, I see why they have been so sucessful. The left can not operate without them and forced donations.
Fire them.
Nothing is going to be done until the whole thing falls apart, which may be sooner rather than later.
Watch this video and you will understand why California is doomed by its public employees.
http://reason.tv/video/show/783.html
Well, you can only call them stupid if you think they are the people's representatives. Once you realize they are bought-and-paid-for professional shills for all of these pressure groups, it becomes clear that they are not stupid - just doing the job they are paid to do, regardless of the consequences to the state's finances.
That might even be an acceptable statistic if the gross amount were about $50 billion less.
All smart people need to just leave California for ten to fifteen years- however long it takes for the state to collapse into complete ruin. No revenue = no government. Start over.
California is the vision for all America held by every Demo-Marxist in this country.
Healthcare was intended to take us there....
America stood up and said, not gonna go.....
Unions are killing this country and these idiots in government union jobs simply don’t get it - that when all the taxpayers are jobless....THEY WILL BE TO!!!
Incrementally more dysfunction doesn’t wake people up in failed locales. Detroit. Michigan. Cuba. The whole continent of Africa. There is a critical mass of stupid people in those places that makes it impossible to reform. Lost. Lost forever.
GM and Chrysler suffered the consequences of paying people for decades not to work.
State and local governments will have to face them as well and meet the ire of taxpayers lacking generous pensions and benefits yet having to work their whole lives to pay for the public employee slugs who retire at 50.
It’s not going to be pretty.
Sadly, public employee unions are a far, far more deadly threat to liberty and to the future of a free and prosperous United States than Al-Qaeda.
The concept of public employees unionizing against the people is utterly vile.
The other 56.
Saw a recent report that the city of San Diego is spending 69% of its payroll budget on retiree pensions and benefits.
If they keep refusing to fix this our way, how about applying a LIBERAL solution to the problem. They won’t fire them. They say their salaries, benefits and tsunami of scheduled pensions are mandated by contracts and can’t be touched. If you can’t fire them or change their contracts, tax them! They are ok with every special tax anyone has ever dreamed up, so put in taxes on windfall pensions, Cadillac health plans and high pay, which ONLY applies when paid by government entities (Fed, state and local) which is owed by the employees, not to be made up by employers. Certainly somewhere there’s a staffer clever enough to write this and make it as kosher as the average new tax; when have considerations of equality ever stopped taxes before. The rats can sell it to the voters as taxing the REAL fat cats and should be happy the GOP is finally going along with a tax increase.
I live in Santa Cruz County California. It’s the second smallest county in the state as far as size. Some crime but still mostly a semi rural high income area definitely not inner city. Here are some of the annual pay rates for the local county sheriffs. Not a bad gig if you can get it. Also they retire with 30 years service at 90% pay and life time health care.
Name (last, first) SWANNACK, CHRISTINE
Job title SHERIFFS SERGEANT
Regular pay 102316.68
Overtime pay 65639.82
Total pay 167956.5
Name (last, first) Officer #5
Job title SHERIFFS SERGEANT
Regular pay 104893.39
Overtime pay 55973.49
Total pay 160866.88
Name (last, first) LEONETTI, SHON
Job title SHERIFFS SERGEANT
Regular pay 96215.6
Overtime pay 40818.69
Total pay 137034.29
Name (last, first) SILVA, NAOMI
Job title DEP SHERIFF ++
Regular pay 87850.26
Overtime pay 42638.56
Total pay 130488.82
Name (last, first) BALDRIGE, NICHOLAS
Job title DEP SHERIFF ++
Regular pay 78708.36
Overtime pay 48056.2
Total pay 126764.56
Are you going to retire with a $110,000 to $150,000 annual pension at age 54?
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