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Feeling pain at the pump? Food prices got ya down?

(16 posts)
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  1. mr
    Member

    The wealthy simply do not have enough money to cover the pensions of public workers from coast to coast. Everyone is going to have to pay, while at the same time having their social security adjusted.

    I only had to read one article about some of the features of state and local pensions to figure out that the elected officials have been literally using taxpayer money to buy votes. Some people just can't accept what has been happening.

    Here's a quote about something else that I read about another unusual feature of CA pensions that Jerry Brown thinks he can support channging:

    He'd favor barring the purchase of "air time" (service years not actually worked.) And he'd "do something about local pensions, which are worse."

    Here's another interesting feature of teacher compensation in NY and probably country wide:

    1,500 Teachers Paid to Do Union Business While Missing Class

    In New York City's funny math, you get only one teacher for the price of two.

    The Department of Education pays about 1,500 teachers for time they spend on union activities -- and pays other teachers to replace them in the classroom.

    It's a sweetheart deal that costs taxpayers an extra $9 million a year to pay fill-ins for instructors who are sprung -- at full pay -- to carry out responsibilities for the United Federation of Teachers.

    With Mayor Bloomberg calling for thousands of teacher layoffs to balance the 2012 budget, critics say it's time to halt the extravagant benefit.

    "In these tight fiscal times, it defies common sense to pay two different people to do one job," said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a government watchdog. "It's a waste of money."

    That $9 million would cover the salaries of 198 new teachers at the current annual $45,530 starting pay.

    The DOE lets 40 experienced teachers collect top pay and fringe benefits, but work just one class period a day.

    Under a contract agreement since 2003, the DOE excuses these veterans to work for the UFT -- currently 38 as district representatives and two as union vice presidents. The UFT pays them another salary, plus expenses.

    Anyone who thinks this is appropriate is either hopelessly partisan or is a public employee or has a spouse who is one.

    Posted Friday Mar 11, 2011 17:55 #

  2. mrt
    Member

    There needs to be pension reform certainly. But the biggest factors for the budget deficits are shown in this graphic, which shows the Bush policies such as the Iraq/ Afghanistan wars prosecution, and the economic downturn (due to the unregulated financial industry; and see a few posts above). The pensions, tho in need of fixing, are not the big drivers of the mess..

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/27/mitch-daniels-bush-budget-director_n_828773.html

    Posted Friday Mar 11, 2011 18:31 #

  3. spatny
    Member

    When I started this thread it was about gas prices rising and why that is. Obviously, when a couple days before Libya erupted and their production was cut from two to one million barrels a day, the price was about $90 a barrel. How it got to that level was based primarily on speculation. Then it jumped to almost $106, and now is down to about $100. I can blame our government for not curtailing rampant speculation, and there is a long and detailed history to why the CFTC is not better monitored and when necessary, curtailed.

    But today McConnell and Boehner both come out to blame it on Obama, even though it was the Republicans that axed the bills to put more teeth in regulation. Their answer is the old - "Drill Baby, Drill." But what happens then? The oil companies that have been turning in huge and record profits - Exxon almost $20 billion in a year - and who get huge tax breaks and subsidies and then pay relatively little in taxes - get to drill up oil that will be sold on the world m,arket to the highest bidder. When they drill in the Gulf or in Oklahoma that doesn't mean that oil necessarily comes to us. Lots of Alaska oil goes to Japan. It goes to whoever they sell it to. The problem is not that the U.S. is sinkling, but that other nations are rising, and they can choose to spend their resources for whatever they want - and commodities like oil which when they are produced anywhere are sold - or swapped - for the highest price. There's no way around it. People want oil and it has an intrinsic value that people everywhere will pay for. Those that dig it up should be taxed at least as much as the citizens that use it.

    Posted Friday Mar 11, 2011 20:03 #

  4. mr
    Member

    The Iraq/Afganistan War is a federal issue. The pensions are a state issue. The pensions, along with medicaid, are the biggest drivers of state budgets. The pension costs are going to get larger with baby boomer retirements. Almost every article that I read about social security says that the fix for it is relatively easy. No one says that there are easy answers for the pensions of state like NY, IL, CA, NJ. I think the unfunded liabilities of state and local pensions dwarf the problems with Social Security.

    As for the federal budget, all analysts agree that the problem is entitlements - and of the big three-Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Social Security is easily fixable - the others are not. This is not to say that we should start more wars or deregulate business. The pension problem is huge and frankly I am afaid of it. It will cause our state taxes to more than double from where we are now.

    Posted Friday Mar 11, 2011 20:14 #

  5. mr
    Member

    Mitch Daniels has done a sensational job in Indiana - from a fiscal standpoint. I don't think there is much disagreement on that. As budget director, he was not a policy maker.

    Posted Friday Mar 11, 2011 20:16 #

  6. anonymous
    Member

    so why don't we drill? We need the oil--without it, life as we know it is over. We're obviously buying oil, and billions of our dollars are leaving our country to go to countries that hate us. We have enough natural gas and oil for one hundred years in our own land. Why don't we drill baby drill and work to become less dependent on oil. As it is, Communist China and Venezuela, and Mexico are drilling off our shores in the Gulf of Mexico. Do they care about safety? No, not so much. Do they care about pollution? Again, another negative. How many jobs would be created in collecting and refining our oil? How many people would be working? How much oil would we save just in the transportation costs alone?

    Posted Friday Mar 11, 2011 21:37 #

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