Long Beach, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is complaining that California's Democrats and union bosses are standing in the way of government reform and want to destroy me.
The remarks came less than two weeks before the voters decide on a set of Schwarzenegger-backed ballot measures that could undercut the power of public employee unions and the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
"I want to move things forward and ... they want to destroy me," the Republican governor said in an interview Thursday. "It's a self-serving government that's all about them rather than serving the people, and it's wrong."
As an example, he blamed Democrats' close ties to labor for the failure of a bill that would have offered subsidies to building owners who installed solar panels.
Democrats insisted on a provision requiring electricians to be paid prevailing wages.
"Never one single time during those negotiations did anyone on the other side say, 'This is good for the people, this is good for the environment,'" Schwarzenegger said. "No one talked about any of this. It was all, 'No, we want prevailing wage.'"
Well, yeah, most people want to earn the prevailing wage.
However, the writer manages to avoid further clarification of what the battle is really about - key words: ... undercut the power of public employee unions ...
Why? Because trillions of dollars of employee pension contributions would pull California out of the financial hole residents have allowed the Legislature to put them in!
The problem is, every public servant pensioner would have to take a cut so as to financially prop up the state's welfare system. Much of California's cities have fewer taxpayers than welfare recipients.
Don't tell me that any of you think that's fair, or would sit quietly by and allow their own money to be swallowed up this way, because I won't believe you....unless maybe you're one of those who thought Enron's CEOs did the right thing.
Any typos are mine.
Not only the welfare system, but to save bankrupt public employee unions such as in San Diego, who did not take a look at what was working in other counties - what was thriving for decades!
Buena Park P.D. went for the State pension and I wonder how healthy that is, overall? Start thinking the prisons' personnel, juveniles and the Youth Authority ("Country Club"), Highway Patrol ....
Dear lakey,
Either you are very misinformed about Arnold's aborted move to reform public pensions, or you are trying to mislead people. The pension reform initiative would have simply converted defined benefit pensions into defined contribution pensions, like a 401k plan.
The fact is, under the current system, the State CAN raid the pensions whenever it wants to, because the money in the pension funds DOES NOT belong to state employees, or to pensioners, but to the Pension Boards, which are creatures controlled by the State.
Actually, if Arnold's plan were enacted your pension would be much safer, because the money invested would belong to YOU, the worker, and be kept in YOUR OWN account, not in a huge pool of money under the control of a board appointed by the politicians.
Also, remember that the laws governing the pensions were created by the Legislature, which could at any time amend the law, and put the pension money under THEIR direct control.
You should fervently pray that Arnold's pension reform DOES get enacted. The only reason it was pulled from signature-gathering last Spring is because the author, Assemblyman Keith Richman, did not provide any protection for disability and survivor benefit plans for police and firemen, so their unions stirred up a lot of negative publicity, mostly with lies about the Governor planning to starve their widows and orphans by cutting off their their pension checks.
The fact is, such plans could easily be covered by insurance programs, paid out of profits from the private accounts.
For a good idea of how beneficial private accounts would be, go to my brilliant friend Dick McDonald's website for his New Social Security Institute:
http://www.thenewsocialsecurity.com/
Regards,
Svensun