“Stop me before I steal again”
Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone article describing how Jefferson County, Alabama, borrowed itself into bankruptcy can be read as a tragi-comedy or farce. Worse, it can be read as prophecy. Jefferson County, under pressure from community activists and environmental groups, decided it would reduce its sewage flows into the Cahaba River to nothing. That lofty engineering goal required it construct the mother of sewage systems, which turned out required the mother of all funding. But what with cost padding and local corruption jacking up the totals astronomically, even rate rises proved unequal to paying for it. So the county borrowed a staggering sum from Wall Street to cover it, on terms which reduced immediate payments at the cost of bloating them later, like one of those deals where you can buy a leatherette sofa with no payments until 2012 — at which time it will cost more than the Mona Lisa. And since people who buy leatherette sofas on installment usually can’t afford a Leonardo da Vinci, Jefferson County found itself defaulting on its payments.
Taibbi says that thousands of county employees now simply have to go without “so that Wall Street banks could be paid.” Politicians are now facing jail time. The place is bankrupt. Capitalism has failed the county, he claims, because even though corrupt government officials got them into this mess, it simply wasn’t fair for business to let them do it? Where’s the corporate responsibility?
What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for people like Lisa Pack. …
Once you follow that trail and understand what took place in Jefferson County, there’s really no room left for illusions. We live in a gangster state, and our days of laughing at other countries are over. It’s our turn to get laughed at. In Birmingham, lots of people have gone to jail for the crime: More than 20 local officials and businessmen have been convicted of corruption in federal court. Last October, right around the time that Lisa Pack went back to work at reduced hours, Birmingham’s mayor was convicted of fraud and money-laundering for taking bribes funneled to him by Wall Street bankers — everything from Rolex watches to Ferragamo suits to cash. But those who greenlighted the bribes and profited most from the scam remain largely untouched. “It never gets back to JP Morgan,” says Pack.
But maybe that’s because — while we’re on the subject — s**t flows downhill. In a racket it’s normal for someone to get caught holding the bag, usually the slowest of the gang. Because if the 20 guys convicted in federal court had their druthers, wouldn’t they prefer that JP Morgan took the rap and they remained untouched? However that may be, it takes two to tango. Unfortunately while the music plays someone will get up to dance. Some government officials, knowing their limits, have in lucid moments implored the taxpayers not to lead them into temptation. John Stossel, in an article entitled “Stop Me Before I Steal Again” captured the allure of the irresistible.
Earlier this week we got a rare moment of honesty from a politician, when Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA) said:
“The only way to get congress to balance the budget is to give them no choice… whether it’s balanced budget acts or pay-as-you-go legislation, the only thing — if you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. In the same clip he gives an accurate description of the problems with Medicare:
“Part of what has happened with Social Security and Medicare is that when they were set up, life expectancy was such that people would be on it for 2 or 3 years, not 15 or 20 years…”
That’s true. And as a result, the unfunded liability of Medicare alone is $36 Trillion. It’s the country’s biggest ponzi scheme, and I will devote a show to the subject soon.
Despite Rep. Perriello’s honesty, he doesn’t seem too eager to keep Congress from stealing more. He voted for the Stimulus, Cap-and Trade, and Obamacare — though he says he’s undecided about that one now that it’s coming up for a vote again.
So how would one keep the tragedy of Jefferson County from being replayed everywhere? Taibbi wonders why no one stopped the train wreck from proceeding.
That such a blatant violation of anti-trust laws took place and neither JP Morgan nor Goldman have been prosecuted for it is yet another mystery of the current financial crisis. “This is an open-and-shut case of anti-competitive behavior,” says Taylor, the former regulator.
Now there’s an idea. Maybe someone can stop Wall Street from corrupting the politicians by putting the politicians in charge of Wall Street. Find someone from Chicago who can do it. Or, if that doesn’t work, abolishing capitalism will get results so that in the first place there’s no money to corrupt anyone. Either more government or no business. That’s sure to work in the same sense that you can avoid cancer entirely by having all your organs removed.
But if that doesn’t appeal, there is Rep. Perriello’s proposal, “give them no choice” but to be honest. Perriello, perhaps stepping outside of himself, can see what an alcoholic in his more lucid moments knows must be done. “Keep it out of my reach. Stop me before I do it again.”
Jefferson County is an example of what happens after the party’s over. Even government jobs proved to be no safe haven. When the bottle’s dry that feeling on the tip of your tongue isn’t the last drop of gin trickling down the neck. It’s the glass itself. Now what? Taibbi writes:
As public services in and around Birmingham were stripped to the bone, Pack struggled to support her family on a weekly unemployment check of $260. Nearly a fourth of that went to pay for her health insurance, which the county no longer covered. She also fielded calls from laid-off co-workers who had it even tougher. “I’d be on the phone sometimes until two in the morning,” she says. “I had to talk more than one person out of suicide. For some of the men supporting families, it was so hard — foreclosure, bankruptcy. I’d go to bed at night, and I’d be in tears.”
Homes stood empty, businesses were boarded up, and parts of already-blighted Birmingham began to take on the feel of a ghost town. There were also a few bills that were unique to the area — like the $64 sewer bill that Pack and her family paid each month.
No money for nothing. Well, at least the new sewer system saved the earth. The county probably won’t be hearing from environmentalists for a while. Or maybe not. When the trash starts piling up in the streets, someone’s got to collect it, right? A few more protests, a little more militancy — the money’s in there somewhere. It’s got to be. Oh, did someone mention the money?
At least there’s the Social Security lockbox. Thank God some things are too big to fail.
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Right now the bulk of people on SS outlive their contributions plus any interest by a little over two years, if I understand thae statistics correctly. Essentially, someone like myself who owns a business is paying nearly 15% of his income so that elderly people can leave more money to their children. What the hell kind of system is that?
Let’s call SS what it really has become – welfare for poor old folks. Once you’ve used up everything you’ve put in plus interest you’re taking money from working people. It’s a failed program.
A guy offering advice on YouTube to people who’ve lost a job says “cut everything to the bone”. The old life is gone. Which suggests that if the support net for poor old folks is about to fail then the remaining funds ought to be focused on the core needs. But clearly there’s no room for gold plated sewer systems or things of that nature. Therefore people ought to be looking to cut government expenditure in order to keep the elderly poor in macaroni and cheese, not adding new programs unless absolutely necessary. If you can’t pay the bills you already have, why incur new ones? Cap ‘n trade and stuff like that? Maybe not right now.
But unfortunately this common sense intuition is undermined by another notion headed in the other direction: the idea that to stimulate the economy entitlements ought to be increased. That’s like saying, if you’re out of a job, part of the solution is to spend your way out of unemployment. I knew a guy who argued that you ought to spend your last thousand bucks on a good suit instead of subsistence food. That’s like saying, “Don’t worry baby, I need this new suit and sunglasses to make a good impression so I can get that job.” Ok. But does that make sense in a macroeconomic sense? What’s the point of buying a suit if you are both the employer and employee?
But on it goes. And one wonders whether it will a case of hope in haste, repent at leisure.
I am not about to defend the scumbags on Wall Street – they will eat your toenails in a reduction sauce if it gains them a buck.
However, not one of them could do the things they do to ordinary citizens were it not for the scumbags in congress who tailor legislation to allow Wall Street to act as it does
Were it not for the scumbags in congress who have, from its inception, used the Social Security payments to fund every pork barrel entitlement project that they can imagine
Were it not for the scumbags in congress who take bribes on a daily basis, and defend their actions as promoting “social justice”
Were it not for the scumbags in congress. Period!
Matt Taibbi has written a series of articles on the financial crisis, and generally he’s done a better job than most anyone else writing at pointing out some of the outrageous fraud that’s gone on. However, I think he left out a good part of the story here. I don’t object to any of the facts he relates, but they’re not new; I started reading about the disaster in Jefferson County about 3 years ago. And the Wall Street firms certainly are responsible, as he says they are. What he leaves out is the way that the voters and employees of Jefferson County are every bit as responsible as anyone else, and although this is harsh, they deserve all the misery they are in for what they allowed to happen.
It’s said that we all get the government we deserve – Jefferson County got theirs. Where were they when this plan was being hatched? They weren’t completely ignorant; no, they were all cheering the piles of jobs that all the big construction jobs were going to bring, they decided it was the gravy train for all of them. They elected the people who took the payoffs, now they get to live with the consequences of their choices.
There also is a real solution that I wish Taibbi would have discussed more, and which I think it still is a fraud not to go for. And that is bankruptcy and default. Why not? Why keep paying off these onerous debts, especially since the sewage system is there now and no one can take it back? The answer, of course, is that they’re still hooked up to the money machine, and they still want to maintain the ability to leverage up in the future. This is the only thing that holds back anyone who’s overleveraged from default; how long will this dynamic hold, not just for Jefferson County but for Greece, Portugal, and the rest?
Drop it – drop those pretensions, and face real discipline. No borrowing, enforced by the refusal of anyone to loan money anymore. The County only pays money out of what it collects each month and what it can save. If the County overspends, then the police and the county employees don’t get paid that month, and the pension checks don’t get sent out. That’s real discipline, and that’s the kind of discipline Jefferson County needs to put itself under for years to come. Otherwise it will never kick it’s taste for the drug. And this has the side effect of disciplining the likes of J.P. Morgan by both making their collateral worthless and by shutting off all avenues of future enrichment for them. Bite the bullet and do it, Birmingham.
Taibbi also left out the real consequences of this debt – what business would move to Birmingham knowing that they would be taking on these payments? None, because there is an endless supply of similar job markets that have much lower tax burdens. (I live in one) And businesses that are in Birmingham are going to be leaving if they can and dying if they can’t.
This is how cities die. And this is the proper and just consequence for allowing this kind of chicanery to go on while pretending you can’t see it – the towns and counties that were responsible thrive, the ones that aren’t should shrivel up and pass out of existence.
That’s the underlying reason for true fiscal discipline, and we all apparently need a few more very public object lessons before that sinks in. Birmingham should not be “saved”, and neither should Detroit and neither should any other great failure. They should be allowed to fail and then held up as examples of human folly for generations to come.
no mo uro:
“the bulk of people on SS outlive their contributions plus any interest by a little over two years”
The sad part of that statistic is that one has to use imputed interest to even talk about it, since the payments that have been made into the SS have been used for everything other than generating interest for the accounts. Had the SS fund been isolated and managed to draw even as little as 3-5%, there would be no crisis in SS today.
The fact that the county is bankrupt does not mean the loans will go unpaid. The county has one big “asset” that can be tapped–the tax payers. It is all most certain a bankruptcy court will assess whatever taxes are needed to pay the loans.
By the way, this also applies to all those pension and health plans retired public employees get. The courts can and will assess the taxes needed to pay them.
no mo uro,
call SS what it really has become – welfare
Bush wanted to replace the Social Security system for new entrants with a savings and investment plan modeled on the Chilean program. That is how the federal government employees own Thrift Savings Plan works. By shifting people’s retirement planning away from government welfare, which is what SS is, and into equity investments two things would happen;
1. the inflationary focus on home ownership, that caused the bubble, would be reduced,
2. the savings rate would rise, leading to a reduced need to borrow from overseas.
The poor oppressed voters of Jefferson County, Alabama feel cheated by the clever bankers and lawyers of New York? That sounds like a Leftist lead in for some old fashioned Antisemitism. While I have no doubt that the people at Goldman Sachs have made an industry out of serially corrupting government institutions at all levels, culminating in Jon Corzine running New Jersey into the ground, they are not the one’s who bought the sewage plant. The voters elected the politicians who did this in their name. Unless they can prove that Acorn moved in and stole the elections the voters are responsible.
A theory of displaced responsibility is also behind liberal efforts to simultaneously reduce punishment for violent criminals who use a gun and punish the people who manufacture the gun. It is the same attitude that wants third parties to pay for expanded health benefits for people with unhealthy and self indulgent behaviors while increasing the taxes and regulations faced by the merchants who produce the junk food consumed by those same voter-patients. In NY Governor Patterson wants a special tax on soft drinks. That will probably lead to an increase in the consumption of beer. The discovery of new health problems caused by sedentary people sitting for hours surrounded by beer cans while staring at a TV could be addressed by placing a special tax on La-Z-Boy, and the manufacturer of Barca loungers.
NY City is blessed with one of the safest and cleanest water supplies on earth. Fresh water flows into the City from reservoirs, mostly in the Catskill watershed, that the City owns. The system is a marvel of 20th century civil engineering. NY City is now effectively bankrupt partly because the federal government insisted that the City build and pay for a multi-billion dollar Croton Filtration plant under Van Cortlandt Park.
One important reason to support Federalism is so that the costs of irrational or failed expenditures can be isolated. When Socialists push for the centralization of control and the spreading of costs to the entire nation they break down the financial fire walls. If a mistake in Alabama fell on the tax payers there then the system could provide for a realignment of capital. When the problem becomes a national one then the entire market is paralyzed. It is like having to many water tight compartments on the Titanic breached.
It makes sense to buy the suit if you actually go out and look for a job. It makes no sense to buy the suit and then use it to try and pick up girls for a last party.
“In Birmingham, lots of people have gone to jail for the crime: More than 20 local officials and businessmen have been convicted of corruption in federal court.” – RS
There is one big one on the loose and pulling the same type of scam – The Big Zero. They guy at the top sets the tone for ethical behavior. The Big Zero has shown that cronyism pays and pays quite handsomely.
The Big Zero is making the Kingfish, Huey P. Long look like a piker. The Big Zero’s back room deals reek of corruption and malfeasance. The Big Zero is the Problem. The solution is impeachment. Frog march him out of office as quickly as possible on any and all available charges. The Big Zero vastly over shadowed anything that Nixon did. And, Nixon got the boot.
The impeachment mechanism is in place for a reason. It’s there to get the real dirty guys out of office. 0bama and his cronies are the dirtiest of the dirtiest. It’s high time for the Big Zero to get the boot – and the quicker the better.
Once gone the rest of cockroaches will run from the light and head for the cracks in basement floor. Booting 0bama from office would go a long way toward restoring credibility and integrity in the US Federal Government.
There is no reason to use obscenities in here.
“The fact that the county is bankrupt does not mean the loans will go unpaid. The county has one big “asset” that can be tapped–the tax payers. It is all most certain a bankruptcy court will assess whatever taxes are needed to pay the loans.”
The problem with that “solution” is that *tax*payers can and will leave, and you are left with a county made up of nothing but the poor, the old, the criminal, and the county employees. (and those categories, especially the last two, are not mutually exclusive) Who pays the taxes after every solvent taxpayer has gone John Galt on them?
As I said earlier, this is how cities die.
And since the remaining voters are going to elect people who are going to refuse to collect the taxes due (they always do) then who is going to enforce these collection efforts, the Sherrif of Nottingham? You can see what road this is going down already. It’s a very old story – pushed far enough, the government itself can fall over this issue. Bad King John had to find this out the hard way, will the current crop of tax collectors push until they come to the same end?
wws (I wish comment numbers would come back):
Bravissimo, sir!
Sounds like a good micro sample that is happening all over the place. California comes to mind.
A comment on the stock market from years ago, “Bulls can make money, Bears can make money, it is the hogs that mess it up for everybody.”
In his defense it is somewhat difficult to talk about national policy without mentioning Congress.
Jefferson County is lucky because what it lacked in transparency it also lacked in scale. California has the same dysfunctional dynamic going for itself but instead of reaping a bitter comeuppance it has obfuscated enumerable impending disasters by a dazzling shuffle of problems around endless districts and political interests. If a feckless public could be duped imagine the possibilities when a growing percentage of the governments’ first loyalty is to kinfolk from a foreign nation. The Boxer’s, Pelosi’s, and Feinstein’s of the state have made a bold gamble to harness this dynamic but are shrewd enough to claim their stakes before the whole Ponzi scam collapses. They will leave the citizens with a terra incognita ruled by a class of oligarchs that will trade favors with the Gaia crowd to enrich their own kinfolk while creating an irreversible and impenetrable bureaucratic caste system. The result will be futile prospects in a feudal state just like back home. The reckoning will mean nothing but a wrecked future and those who cling to their familial ties and vote as a block will inherit its rubble.
One of the most consistent drums that I beat is the idea that the only way to reduce government corruption and waste is to reduce the pile of cash they play with; nothing else will work.
You will never completely eliminate corruption because of human nature, but abuse and theft become so much easier and in larger wads the more there is.
The analogy I use is two piles of money.
If I tell you to guard a pile of cash equal to 1 billion dollars, and you steal $500,000, I am not going to notice unless I go to the trouble to count it.
If the pile is only $1,000,000, then you have to steal appreciably less for me not to notice.
If one wants to reduce government waste, reduce the amount government gets. Period.
This analogy also works in terms of power, btw. The more power you hand to government, the more they will abuse it.
I also laugh at how Taibbi, who seems in many ways to be a dedicated reporter, allows his ideological bias inform his writing.
“Capitalism is the problem,” he seems to draw from the sad tale of Jefferson County, impugning the companies who made the loans, and apparently got away scot free, when it was the local government that got itself into the mess in the first place. Also, was there no fault to be found with environmentalism which demands X, but has no interest to the cost?
I have not read the article yet, but I am betting he makes cursory mention of their responsibility, if at all.
The downward spiral:
1) Financial crisis: >20% private sector jobs lost. U6 numbers have been there for a year now.
2) Economic crisis: Loan defaults in private sector; tax revenues plummet; governments either default
or cut costs (lay-off workers). I think we’re there. Just nobody wants to admit it.
3) Social Crisis: Folks start going hungry. Crime rates rise. These will force migrations and we will
see (more) ‘economic refugees’.
4) Geo-political crisis. Without real leadership & because of globalization, this one is just a matter of time.
Birmingham is the south of the Mason Dixon line version of Detroit in many ways. In the bad old days it was run by the Steel companies in cahoots with the segregationists. Once that came crashing down, the city government was taken over by black corruptocrats as the whites fled to Shelby county and the suburbs surrounding the city. It’s a pretty wretched place.
I miss having the responses numbered. It makes it very easy to track your position and to refer so an outstanding post.
JoeB@7:14am,
Yeah, the numbers were handy. We’ll have to look around and see if we can find some other unique id to use. Let me know if one occurs to you.
to programmer at 4/5/2010 – 7:21 am – there’s always the time stamp, but that’s a kludgy, dissatisfying way to have to do things. But it’s all that I can think of unless they change things, though. And I do hope the Tocque designer is working on making a comeback.
programmer@4/05/2010 – 7:21am You got me, but the numbers were cleaner…
I will be as concise as I can:
I could have done without Mr. Taibbi’s profanity, but he does a good job of providing the overview of this story. There is some background needed here as well, and I’ll have some thoughts on implications not just for other jurisdictions but the federal treasury as well.
First, I’ll let you know that for the past 8 years I have known every Jefferson County Commissioner, and have had the opportunity each month to speak with a different one of them both on and off the record for between 30 minutes and an hour. Naturally, the sewer situation has been a big topic for the past few years. (I’m not a reporter, if you are wondering.)
Some background on Larry Langford, the commission president and later Birmingham mayor who spearheaded the bond swap: I like Larry personally, and I find him to be a tragic character. He has cooky ideas, but some vision, and for some reason is incapable of playing it straight. He is a crook. A Democrat and previously the mayor of Fairfield, Langford built a small amusement park called Visionland for the town. Everyone said it couldn’t be done, but he made it happen and it made him a hero. It was generally known he stole significant funds from the project, but no indictment or investigation ever took place that I know of. However, even if he was investigated, it wouldn’t have stopped his election to the commission. Sad as it is, African-American political heroes do not require a clean rap sheet.
The bond swap deals: They were not supported by all the commissioners at the time they were made. The current commission president, who has been mercilessly and wrongly vilified by local press and radio personalities, opposed the change at the time. Commissioner Collins has stood fast to avoid declaring bankruptcy on the county sewer system, fighting with pretty much everyone including fellow Republicans on the commission.
Re: Bankruptcy and a bit of mischaracterization in the Rolling Stones article: The temporary layoffs and cost cutting at the county have virtually nothing to do with the sewer debt. The county’s tax receipts have, of course, plummeted due to overall economic conditions, and major budgetary fights have ensued as a result, including a fight with a county sheriff with a spending addiction. The sewer (funded by sewer fees) is a separate entity from the general budget, so if a bankruptcy were to be filed, it would be for the sewer, not for the county government as a whole. The county’s current position is to tell the banks to stick it. (I happen to agree with this approach.) Payments are being made in good faith on a regular basis at reasonable levels, but the county is refusing to pay the outrages additions the banks are insisting on. The irony is, of all the investments some of these banks have made recently that aren’t paying off, Jefferson County is one of their more reliable payers, and the banks seem determined to kill the golden goose.
I really don’t appreciate Mr. Taibbi’s characterizations of a ‘boarded up’ Birmingham as some kind of reflection of the county as a whole. Parts of Downtown Birmingham have been boarded up for decades in good times and bad because of the mayors and city councils of Birmingham, not the county commission. Jefferson County surrounding Birmingham in places like Hoover or Trussville are vibrant and dynamic and not governed by and endless parade of Democrats with no threat of ever losing office. Of course, none of these areas are as vibrant as Shelby County, directly to the south, to where I have recently moved.
When the bond swaps were made, the county did save a little money on their payments, but that of course is the danger of any scheme designed to lower rates and payments in exchange for stability and certainty. Had the swaps never been made, there would be no issue today. While sewer rates in Jefferson County are rather high, the debt would today be financed along normal lines to all lenders’ satisfaction. It was a stupid move born of corruption under the premise that good times are here forever, so why worry?
And that is the implication for the country right there: The federal government is borrowing obscene amounts of money at ridiculously low rates. The moment those rates tick up… and they will… the cost of financing that debt will consume everything. Only this time, there will be no bankruptcy to even consider. We won’t simply be able to separate the sewer debt from the general budget and keep operating. It is possible we could avoid a catastrophe regarding the national debt, but it doesn’t look good. People are scared, and they should be.
Thanks for you patience if you read this. I’ll try to answer any questions best I can.
(Oh, and by the way… That sewer system really is amazing and the Cahaba River is pristine. The mistake the county made in the 90s with the EPA was the consent decree, rather than what everyone else did which was go to court and either tie it up or force a more affordable agreement.)
There’s nothing wrong with SS that can’t be easily fixed, namely raise the retirement age to match the demographics.
It will work forever then.
(You can’t have a lockbox or trust fund because the government must instantly return all money taken in to the economy, lest the money supply fall. Future benefits will be provided to future retirees by future workers, not today’s workers. The retirement age is the the precise control you have that keeps that balanced. If you want to retire sooner, do it on your own dime to bridge the gap.)
SS is an inflation-adjusted annuity that guarantees you won’t outlive your income. It’s an insurance policy. You’re supposed to get back on the average what you put in, but mostly you’ll get back less to pay for the long-living few; just as you pay for people whose houses burn down when yours doesn’t.
Oh, it’s not that bad. Birmingham’s number one industry today is health care. (That’s in large part due to UAB, which has tremendous cardiovascular and research departments.) One of our saving graces down here is a lack of unions.
“Right now the bulk of people on SS outlive their contributions plus any interest by a little over two years, if I understand thae statistics correctly. “
Sounds like I would like a link to that stat. Because I figured mine and I would have to live to be over 108 to get back the money paid for me/by me.
I can say without question I won’t make it that long.
Papa Ray
Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA) said:
“The only way to get congress to balance the budget is to give them no choice… whether it’s balanced budget acts or pay-as-you-go legislation, the only thing — if you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing.”
While this may sound like some sort of mea culpa, me thinks this is just a lead in to the next big “crowning achievement ” of the Obama Administration: permanently higher taxes.
The Dems want a tax vehicle like a VAT that would better avoid the Laffer Curve problems and tax avoidance problems of the income tax; a tax that would tax all consumption and would permanently ensconce big socialist government for all time.
Then you don’t want to know the names I call politicians of all stripes.
One thing though. When a community spends large amounts of money (at least in Texas) voters have to vote on it. In some cases vote on bonds and such. If the voters give the go ahead, even if the politicians have not told the whole truth or have made errors in their proposal, the citizens carry much of the blame if they wind up getting a bad deal.
The citizens should have demanded other investigation/viewpoints and better accounting before voting.
Spending money is not something you do without either benefit or consequence. If it is your money, it is up to you to make sure it is spent wisely.
Penny wise and all that.
Papa Ray
The curious thing is that there are an increasing number of
technologies that turn raw sewage into power from electricity to methane to oil.
Its still a bit esoteric but making power from sh-t will be SOP everywhere in ten years. Waste treatment centers will turn from being cost centers to profit centers.
Urban B demonstrates once again the value of Belmont Club — a commenter who knows what the real story is and is able to convey that information concisely. Thank you, UB. Next question: what’s the solution? And after that, what’s the solution nationally? F
An important point:
35 years ago, I got my first summer job. I was a general laborer at a construction company owned by a friend of my Dad. I got my very first REAL paycheck. And I was ASTONISHED and outraged at the bite taken out of it.
Who the hell is this FICA, and who said they could take MY MONEY.
And so Social Security was explained to me.
I’ve had the fifty-horsepower shopvac hooked up to my income stream for almost four decades, and I WANT MY GODDAM MONEY.
I take great care to inform every politician who serves me that I will FIRE THE SON-OF-A-BITCH who touches my benefits.
They can find the damn money somewhere else.
Lamont
Urban B, thank you for some FACTS! So, much of the basis for this story is false. So it goes.
And I had such lovely lessons to be learned from it. Sigh.
Still, I will toss out two points, first that it is *criminality*, at the very least actionable fiduciary failings, that takes us over the line. Thus it is not a failure of capitalism, it is a failure of law enforcement.
Second, that Kalifornya is deep into the picture drawn, every bond issue in the past twenty years was white-shoe bankers sucking blood from the state for no reason at all, whatever the project they could have been funded directly by tax revenues, or not at all – the projects that truly pay for themselves are rare as hen’s teeth, and even those can just as well be paid from revenues. Leverage? Have we learned nothing?
You just hit the nail squarely on the head.
The people elect the leaders.
The leaders set the rules (and allow the loopholes) that bankers and businessmen follow.
Of course some bankers and businessmen are crooks but the vast majority do not stray over the line of what’s legal. If Congress makes common sense, economically responsible financial regulations and laws, almost everyone within the business community will play by the rules.
They want to get rich, not go to jail.
What that means however is that programs and projects have to be constrained by what’s affordable.
The reason they’re not is because liberals have fully bought into the central premise of social justice theory, that the ’80/20 rule’ is the result of the greed and manipulation of the rich.
You did however, leave out one group from responsibility in this fiasco…the environmentalist activists.
When are they going to be held to account?
Well, I would say the Stones article misrepresents or ignores a good deal of the background, but gets the nuts and bolts of the bribery case right. Although a MAJOR player, Al LaPierre, is left out of this story. Much of the bribes were funneled through LaPierre.
One part missing from the article: party affiliation. The only time any party is mentioned is for a case in Illinois involving a Republican. The word ‘Democrat’ does not appear anywhere in the article. Larry Langford, the individual most responsible for all of this, is a Democrat. Bill Blount is a former AL Democratic Party chairman. Al LaPierre, the major player not mentioned in the article, is a former executive director of the AL Democratic Party.
Capitalism is the problem?
Sure, and flies cause garbage trucks.
And they flies do cause the garbage trucks because without the trucks the garbage would pile up and we would have lots of flies and no one would like that. But the flies do not cause the garbage.
A recent article I read explains that due to reduced water usage people’s water bills are going up. The reduced usage means less income for the municipalities, and their costs are largely independent of the amount of water they produce.
Similarly, here locally the value of real estate plummeted, and since they say the cost of providing fire protection does not decrease when the value of the houses go down, along with a minimally reduced tax bill we got a special assessment equal to 30% of the tax bill.
It is true that fixed costs exist. I don’t know how many times at the Pentagon that I had to explain that if you have 20 launches from Cape Canaveral one year and 10 launches the next year the costs to run the facility do not drop by 50% but in fact the budget for the base may have to increase because you are not getting the revenue from those 10 missing launches.
But what really tend to be fixed are not costs but attitudes.
A few years back in a county in Indiana someone went on line to the website that enables you to look at assessed property values and changed the value of a single house from $75K to $75M. This resulted in an automatic increase in calculated property values – and in expected tax receipts – and this was flowed down to individual department budgets. And with the increased budgets the various departments proceeded to go on a spending spree, buying backhoes and bulldozers and police cars and hiring new workers. Just because they could. Part way through the year the mistake was recognized and they had to lay people off and give the equipment back and get refunds.
Unfortunately an awful lot of “budgeting” at all levels in government uses this same process, not based on What We Really Need but instead on Yes We Can.
Real estate values are still declining. They may have another 30% to go. Tax payers owe their property taxes on May 15. Businesses are going bankrupt and stiffing the landlords, who are wondering how they are going to pay the county property tax. The dominoes are falling. We’ll be seeing lots of stories like these:
“Homeowners balk as property tax bills stay high”
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/2010-03-29-property-tax-assesments-protest_N.htm
Sorry, but it’s too late. Successive Congresses have already looted your money and everybody elses.
Congress Is Looting Federal Worker, Military Retirement Funds, Says William Fruth, Founder of 10 Amendments for Freedom
Congress Is Looting Federal Worker, Military Retirement Funds, Says William Fruth, Founder of 10 Amendments for Freedom
PALM CITY, Fla., Feb. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As of January 1, 2010, the amount of money owed to federal civilian and military pension trust funds passed the $1 trillion mark as Congress continues to loot all of the federal government’s trust funds to pay for deficit spending.
More money is now owed by the federal government to these two funds than what is owed to China.
“In the future, little kids in kindergarten and their children will have to repay these funds,” stated William H. Fruth, founder of the 10 Amendments for Freedom.
“Those responsible for creating this massive, unconscionable debt will be dead and gone, not able to hear the howling curses directed toward them by those who will have to pay in the future,” Fruth continued.
For the first three months of the 2010 fiscal year (October, November, and December), Congress borrowed more than $400 billion to pay for its deficits.
Of this amount, Congress spent more than $65 billion of the money which is supposed to be in federal government workers’ retirement funds.
A trust fund is like a savings account. Money is deposited into the fund to be spent another day, when it is needed. The Social Security Trust Fund is the best-known. However, Congress has spent all of the savings in all of its trust funds.
The following chart shows the national debt and the money which has been borrowed from several trust funds as of January 1, 2010:
Total National Debt: 12,298,936,000,000
Public Debt – Owed to individuals, banks, foreign entities: 7,811,009,000,000
Intergovernmental Debt – Owed to federal trust funds: 4,487,927,000,000
Owed to selected trust funds:
Social Security Trust Fund (includes disability): 2,518,540,000,000
Medicare Trust Fund: 304,612,000,000
Federal Civil Service Retirement: 750,208,000,000
Military Retirement: 295,792,000,000
Source: U.S. Treasury
You notice the use of the words “borrowed” and “owed”.
Like the Congresses had intended to pay the money that they looted back.
The real words are “Looted” and “Stole” with no intention whatsoever of ever paying back.
Papa Ray
It makes sense to buy the suit if you’re looking for a job in sales
or if you are a lawyer but not so much sense if you are a
a bricklayer. Likewise, borrowing money to buy goods/services in
the consumer/service society doesn’t make sense whereas borrowing
to build a factory or bridge (to somewhere useful) maybe does.
The bottom for residential real estate won’t be hit for a couple of years but the first of nearly a trillion and a half of commercial real estate is coming due the last part of this year. Most of it already “underwater” right now.
Unless the Feds print up another Grand Canyon full of money and get it out to the banks the US will see thousands of banks closing in the next two years.
Or so one of our group told me. I know from nothing about real estate. He does, he has been in the banking, real estate business for forty five years.
He recommends to not do business with banks anymore, get your money out and use Credit Unions instead.
Papa Ray
Sounds good but there is one point I’d like you to address…how do you avoid that solution creating another problem?
There are far more baby boomers than generation x,y, or z right?
If we raise the retirement age to match the demographics…that necessarily means that the baby boomers stay in their jobs, right?
Which means that generation x,y,x are stuck on the ladder and can’t be promoted into the jobs that the baby boomers aren’t retiring from…right?
If you match the demographics, people won’t be taking early retirement until perhaps 70, which means you have an 8 year window where promotions and even job openings are essentially static.
Plus, many less jobs are available since most baby boomers aren’t upper management. There are far more factory and craftsmen workers where job openings won’t be opening because those baby boomers are compelled to stay on the job.
Then you have debilitating but not life threatening illness. Many 65 year old baby boomers couldn’t do their job anymore but would be ineligible for Soc.Sec. what do they do?
So we’ve compounded the problem by adding other ones.
Oops! That damned law of unintended consequences again!
…there is Rep. Perriello’s proposal, “give them no choice” but to be honest.
Maybe Tom Friedman would support public execution. It’s very Chinese.
Muted capitalism bashing.Check
Morale downer. Check
Touch of condescension toward Rednck US. Check
Byzantine story line to drawn in the enlightened. Check
Trusting an unknown Austalian entity–well I feel blaphmeous–but there have been other times I not sure who is playing for what team. Did you click on the Nork traffic chick video last year? I did.
Of course comments are now not numbered so they can be dele.
“Once you follow that trail and understand what took place in Jefferson County, there’s really no room left for illusions. We live in a gangster state, and our days of laughing at other countries are over. It’s our turn to get laughed at.”
Which countries do you think Taibbi has in mind when he talks about how we used to laugh at others for their gangster capitalism and now they laugh at us? Hint: it’s where he spent several years working for The Exile – Russia. I’m talking to you LOTM and others here – ‘The Natural State’ as one blogging Professor describes the Russian government is now here.
He and other ‘conservatives’ ought to be more worried about the U.S. becoming an oligarchy like Russia in the 90s rather than whatever Putin is doing now (in this case, paying the U.S. back in spades with Comrade Hugo for making Misha the Tie Eater our armed-to-the-teeth-client state for the last several years…but for such people, there is never any such thing as blowback).
I’m surprised even after his big splash with the Government Sachs sucking the life out of humanity article how few people talk about Taibbi’s time in Russia as shaping his worldview. There’s a columnist on True/Slant writing about Russia too that also happens to work in his day job for a law firm with the Taibbi name – maybe Matt’s Dad or Uncle?
http://trueslant.com/markadomanis/2010/04/03/in-which-american-conservatives-talk-about-the-root-causes-of-terrorism/
NRO – American Conservatives Suddenly Start Discussing the Root Causes of Terrorism – Suicide Bombers Are Separatists Radicalized by the Kremlin in Moscow and Islamofascists Everywhere Else (!)
LOTM
That water system was engineered in the 19th Century.
Lifeofthemind:
@ 5:39 “There is no reason to use obscenities in here.”
Thank you for the discipline.
@5:29 “One important reason to support Federalism is so that the costs of irrational or failed expenditures can be isolated.”
Agree completely. Also, federalism allows for careful experimentation and responsible change, expanding on successes and abandoning failures before they are catastrophic in scope. For some reason we conservatives have not been successful in countering the image that we are happy with all of the evils in this world and wish to keep things just as they are.
Best wishes
http://trueslant.com/markadomanis/2010/04/03/in-which-american-conservatives-talk-about-the-root-causes-of-terrorism/
When suicide bombers strike in Mumbai, New York or Jerusalem it’s because they hate freedom and/or are eliminationists who dream of driving every Jew in Israel into the sea. When they attack in Moscow it’s because the poor things have been radicalized by the Kremlin. This is disgusting, worse than Rich Lowry saying leave poor ‘helicopter’ Ben Bernanke alone he’s doing the best job he can printing money to save us from the ‘crisis’. I wish Bill Buckley were still alive and strong enough to give them a swift kick in the rear.
Nothing reduces Washington conservatives to more cognitive dissonance and/or pure wild irrationality faster than the mention of Russia, not even Obama.
Papa Ray:
A comment I made some time ago to a WSJ article on the Bush plan for a 5% privatization of SS:
In a sense it is absurd to talk about privatization of Social Security. All of the money in the system now comes from Private sources. The Federal Government does not have a factory producing pickup trucks to get money for SS. When they need more money for SS they don’t go sell an Air Force Base. What we are really talking about is withdrawing a very small potion of the SS funds from the control of the people in DC, who periodically are “Shocked, shocked” to discover they themselves spent the money buying votes.
jim Nicholas,
Thank you and I would like to assure you, gepaza, Papa Ray and others that I am a sailor and I know how to use the full of range of the English language when it is needed. The point is to do so in the right time place and for an effect. As someone once said some words need to be applied like artillery and not spread around like manure. DirtyBlueshirt has a point, to call something a Congress or accuse someone of behaving Congressionally may be considered “fighting words.” Untimely invective serves the purpose of your enemy by rendering it harder to get people to listen. That leads people to further marginalize themselves by resorting to ever more confrontational terms. Invective when misused become a self perpetuating road to failure that spreads through the market. In a way it is a counterfeit of real communication. This could be a rhetorical example of the principle behind Gresham’s Law or what I refer to below as “Vampisism.”
—-
Lamont Cranston,
I will FIRE THE SON-OF-A-BITCH who touches my benefits
Papa Ray is correct, your money is gone. The Left counts on people acting just as you do now. They want you to channel your outrage at being robbed into a dependence on them and support for them extracting more money from others. That is one of the true and great costs of Socialism. Not only does it spend resources inefficiently and politicize market decisions but it also corrupts people morally and turns everyone into an accomplice. You know that the correct thing to do is to refuse the money, the same way that Bobby Jindal and others wanted to refuse the Stimulus. Of course in the real world you have to survive in the conditions those politicians created so you need the money. When you take the money you create new victims. We all do, it is a form of political and economic Vampirism.
Your money went partly to government bureaucrats, good luck trying to get that back, and largely to people who are either dead or old and infirm. How to you propose to retrieve your money from them? You know that whether or not they were lied to when they created the system that they benefited from at your expense the people in there 60s and older are the ones who created this tax on the future as much as the voters of Birmingham Alabama did in supporting their politicians. Once you take the money you become part of the system and they will accuse you of any and all the crimes in the Left’s lexicon, hypocrisy, bigotry, and greed, that they are themselves guilty of, if you want the gravy train to stop after you get a refund.
—-
herb,
Correct, designed in the late 19th century and largely built during the early 20th.
—-
Urban B has done an outstanding job explaining the facts in Alabama.
Having replies buried in the middle of a thread only works if you can also sort by time to catch the latest comments quickly. The “Preview” feature is a welcome addition.
To be blogged under the title “Gresham’s Law and the Politics of Vampirism.”
Solutions? Search me.
Actually, I do believe there are solutions which involve pain and therein lies another part of the problem. In order to get the economic house in order, a lot of people will necessarily experience hardship, as their industries are put under because they can no longer compete or the government job they had is eliminated. Take a flat tax, for example. Obviously, far superior to the current U.S. tax code, but of course there will be a loss of business for the thousands of accountants who make a living off of it. As unfortunate as that aspect is, it is the best for everyone, and eventually their talents will be used elsewhere. The same goes for a government that has stretched its tentacles into virtually everything. As it pulls back, supports will be removed and people will tumble. They and all the rest of us will be better off, but in the meantime: Greece.
“Well, at least the new sewer system saved the earth….”
Which reminds me of a favorite quote:
“How ironic it is that some of the same people who conclude that the earth is fragile as a spider’s web, that the human body is a sitting duck for anything synthesized by man, nevertheless see the American economy’s capacity for absorbing ever-higher taxes and regulations as being boundless as the universe.”
–-Science Under Siege, by Michael Fumento
How about noting the unique time and date each message is posted?…not as good as numbers, but it’s something already there.
RWE,
The Federal Government does not have a factory producing pickup trucks
Well now they did steal GMC. Somehow I don’t think that makes things better.
Here’s an example of what might happen. In 2004 I purchased a sailboat on terms from a friend in San Diego. I managed to pay it off in 2006 and transferred the title into my name. What happened next I am not quite sure but at or around the time I bought it I was in the process of moving so I used a PO box that I had in LA. Unbeknownst to me the LA county assessor started taxing me for the boat. I knew nothing until I tried to register it this year and found there was a lien against the registration for several years of back taxes. (a luxury tax at that) This is a neat trick because you can’t go anywhere without registration in California. Now about that time the San Diego Port Authority has informed me that my boat will be impounded if I do not pay my $15.00 for registration. This is the future of government. Extortion. Accountable to no one.
Thanks to Urban B for the information about party affiliation. I was looking, and the County Website really works hard to not tell the party. Given that, one would assume from the media game of “name that party” that they were Democrats. I did find that there is a strong interchange between Jefferson County government officials and the government officials in Birmingham who are listed as Democrats as soon as they become candidates in Birmingham.
Two other pieces of the puzzle. The form of the County Government was set by Federal Court Order in 1988. Before that, the 3 Commissioners were elected county wide, and pretty much everything done had to be argued out to satisfy everyone. The Federal Courts mandated a 5 member board of commissioners, elected by districts, and any 3 can commit the County.
Add to the financial woes, in a matter I am not sure of all the details of; but a big budget hit was because the County tried to collect an “occupations tax”. The courts just threw it out as unconstitutional and ordered an immediate refund of about $50 million in principal plus back interest at 12% a year. Apparently, after being thrown out by the courts, the County is trying to reimpose the same thing by another name. I am looking forward to seeing the courts slap them down at even a greater cost.
As was mentioned, the County came up with the idea of this “perfect” sewage treatment plan voluntarily. Just meeting EPA standards would have been cheaper. However, Democrats do not understand the concept of costs, let along marginal costs. It was the Democrat politicians and I assume the environmental radicals, who decided to build their beyond-the-economic-state-of-the-art system. So of course, when it goes Tango Uniform, it has to be someone else’s fault. Because Democrats and environmentalists are never responsible for their actions. Especially if they personally profit from them.
Subotai Bahadur
PS. If anybody at PJM is listening, can I put in a loud vote for return of the numbering system. The current set up is best described by the sort of language that we were rightly warned about above by LOTM.
Which obscenity? scumbag or Congress?
After Social Security was “saved” from collapse in 1983, SS ran a surplus. That is, revenues exceed benefits payable. Our elected representatives “invested” this SS surplus in government bonds. They commingled the surplus cash with other general revenues and spent it…it’s gone. This surplus situation ended this year with ever increasing SS benefits payable now exceeding SS revenue. This is what happened in 1983. The Federal Government will now need to redeem some of those bonds to make up the shortfall. Guess where this money will come from?
In 1960 there were five workers paying taxes to support each retiree. Today there are three and a half workers per retiree, by 2030 there will be two. The math is not difficult. Under the current transfer system, we’ll face unavoidable choices: cut promised SS benefits, cut other government spending, raise SS taxes, or borrow at unprecedented levels – $7 trillion by 2040. The effect of our changing national demographic cannot be temporarily “shored up” with a budget surplus nor will it go away when the baby boomers are gone. Tinkering with SS at the margins, such as raising the age at which benefits can be drawn, will have little effect on the situation.
We have numbers now on top comments but not on replies.
These are however not hot linkable and my old links just default to the top of a thread.
Interesting watching this evolve.
Agree, except for the “all” part. There were certainly voters in Jefferson County that did not cheer the irresponsible borrowing done in their name, just not enough to swing the electionthe other way. And there is the real tragedy, where the notion that they got what they deserved has a problem. The people who didn’t want this didn’t get what they deserved, they got what their neighbors deserved, and their neighbors didn’t get the full measure of what they deserved, they got to dump some of their share of the burden on the people who voted against the spending (or the spenders).
Amid all the other reforms we need to consider, perhaps the most significant is that we somehow have to attach financial responsibility more strongly to those who vot for financial profligacy. It is likely necessary that a majority can impose some costs on the minority as a condition of having a functional government, but it is immoral when a 51% majority can impose bankruptcy on their fellow citizens.
Absolute limits on the amount of future obligation a government entity can accept is a necessary reform.
The solution to this and many other problems is likely to be:
Hemp rope. Banker. Lamp post. Some assembly required. Repeat as necessary.
Banking used to be a reasonably well-compensated service, essentially transmitting money from savers to borrowers with some compensation for risk taken and some profit for the bank. Now, the only real difference between the activities of the Wunch and the Mafia is that the latter haven’t quite yet managed to have their activities made legal. And the latter are more honest, too.
LOTM:
President Bush’s problem was that the Chilean system wouldn’t necessarily work in the United States. The Chilean model has controls that an American system would be unlikely to have. Besides, the stock market is a deeply emotive topic. I think many Americans are thankful that their Social Security hasn’t gone into the stock market!
The funny thing is that half of the Democratic Party back in 2005 would have gone for allowing people paying into Social Security to choose between federal government bonds (which is the present de facto default) and state, county, or municipal bonds. I think the Chicago machine would have loved it!
Conversion funds would be necessary to do this, though. That’s because the federal interest rates would go up. And interest payments. Moreover, Social Security taxes create a cushion for the dollar that keeps it from fluctuating like most other currencies.
Against these costs, interest rates would go down for any state, county, city, or township government to construct long-term projects. In particular, state universities and agencies such the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would be able to use their institutional power to encourage people to buy their bonds for key projects.
The problem with promoting free choice on pensions (even what I am recommending!) is threefold. Firstly, corruption also exists in the private sector – remember Enron. Secondly, most people not only don’t know how to invest – they know they don’t know how to invest. They generally have better things to do than to get bothered by watching a stock portfolio. Thirdly, requiring someone to choose a private mutual fund for one’s pension has the similar kind of dubious morality that requiring someone to buy private health insurance would have. (The alternative of having the federal government pick and choose which private companies to invest in is quite dangerous.)
Suffice it to say, I think the Obama presidency is to socialism what Enron was to capitalism – hype that blinds the media to a serious breach of faith and a bubble that will eventually burst.
I think President Bush had good intentions with his plan to reform Social Security. Even though his attempt failed, he paid a cost and so did our country. In late 2004, support for the war effort was reasonably strong. During the time when President Bush promoted Social Security reform, support for the war in Iraq tanked. Why? I think it was because President Bush focused on reforming Social Security instead of winning the war in Iraq!
There is always a cost whenever a President takes his eyes off the ball during wartime.
Cute little factoid from Jefferson County’s Wiki page: “Although Alabama as a whole voted for John McCain by double digits, Jefferson County voted for Democrat Barack Obama.”
Numbers back! Odd thang is that it says 60 posts while there is 40, which is probably due to counting the replies twice.
True (and I have a couple of family members who are accountants making most of their livings off preparing tax returns). But the rest of us should take heart and think of the future. An example where those who earn their daily bread as facilitators of government get (pardon the prase) royally screwed might help dissuade future work-seekers from going into parasitical professions.
Right now there is far too much security associated with government employment, government contracting, and compliance assistance. Cynical politicians even use that security, along with the assumed security of other government largess (such as social security, mortgage interest deductions, welfare payments, school lunch programs, medicare, farm subsidies, etc. etc. etc.) as reasons why their handiwork can never be repealed. Nobody can ever be asked to forego their free government cheese. Obama et al are counting on that to preserve Obamacare.
Taking a bull-like stroll through the government security china shop might help reset expectations.
Chapter NINE of Title 11 of the Bankruptcy Code does not work that way.
Normally the judge hits the creditors with a haircut.
Remember, Chapter Nine is voluntary… No creditor can force a state entity ( County or City ) into Chapter Nine.
Alexis #40: “I think many Americans are thankful that their Social Security hasn’t gone into the stock market!”
That was an argument used to attack the idea of allowing people to invest a portion of their SS contributions into the stock market. The concern was that the politicians would be unwilling to take action adversely affecting the market. Me, I always considered that “concern” a plus for the market investment idea.
Fletcher #9: I applaud the concept but it is not feasible. The lampposts will all be taken up by politicians. Perhaps tying their leashes to the bumpers of pickups for a fast trip down some country roads will do for crooked bankers? Unfortunately, doing that with the worst of the worst, Harold Raines, would produce charges of racism but then again what does not nowadays?
2X4 #42 I think that replies to posts are not counted separately, a feature I have not used but that some have.
Speaking of which, Lifeofmind, I don’t think selling the pickups works when you use SS funds not only to buy the plant but also to guarantee the unreasonable pensions and Cadillac health care plans of the workers.
Alexis,
The Chilean system in the United States is the federal workers Thrift Savings Plan. About 8 years ago I attended a debate between, Former Labor & Social Security Minister for Chile José Piñera, the late Former United States Senator Paul Simon, and Tim Ferguson, Editor, Forbes Global on the subject. Piñera was pretty convincing on the subject, especially given how the economy has performed in hindsight. TSP offers several managed funds that a worker can divide their contributions among that range from government securities through fixed income to a and a broad market index to small cap equities and an international equities fund. They will even shift investments over time based on a contributor’s anticipated retirement date. To compare this system, available to the people who staff the Social Security Administration, with that offered to the rest of the country is to induce wonder at how they get away with it.
The Bush plan was killed in 2003 through sheer demagoguery and the Left continues to attack the Chicago Boys with slander. As with other victims of their vitriol the intensity of the reaction and it’s avoidance of reasoned analysis is what makes clear that the objects of their scorn could succeed in liberating millions of people to live in comfort without fear or dependency and that they would strengthen America.
Your comparing this to the Health Care insurance plan does not make sense to me. The government already extracts a large regressive tax from labor. The question is how to effectively use the workers contributions to provide for a national pension and retirement plan. I see no reason why participation would have to be compulsory. If you wanted to start a discussion of how this may be a model for replacing the current Medicare plan, that other enormous tax next to FICA on the W-2, with a voluntary privatized national basket of managed Health Insurance plans under federal oversight, then please go ahead.
The key point to me here is that the employees of the federal government, who overwhelmingly voted to support the Democratic Party, rely on a set of managed free market based plans for both their retirement and health care that are far superior to those they would consign the rest of the population to.
RWE,
Concur except the plant wasn’t purchased with SS money, it was stolen from it’s lawful creditors.
2X4,
40+ top posts and 18 comments in the thread, they only get counted once as I see it.
wws,
Did a little searching and found maps of the 1860 election returns by county. There was a lot of support for Bell and the Constitutional Union Party throughout the South, about 30-40% of the vote in most places. Jefferson County looks like an outlier back then too.
To be blogged under the title “A Chilean Model for Pensions and Health Care.”
Subotai @36: OH MY GOD! THE OCCUPATIONAL TAX! I can’t believe I forgot about that.
WHERE IS MY BRAIN!? I am so sorry everyone. Okay… back up. The Rolling Stones article starts out with a sob story about temporary layoffs and some such business. The temporary layoffs were the direct result of the loss of the occupational tax and tens of millions of dollars worth of revenue, so the county had to make some kind of adjustment until the Alabama Legislature came up with a solution. Everyone familiar with the concept of ‘home rule?’ Well, it’s basically your local levels of government making pretty much every decision for local affairs… We don’t have that here. The taxation system for Jefferson County is set up in Montgomery. The county is incapable of raising more money on its own, but must govern under whatever guidelines set up by the state government.
This really isn’t that important for all you guys, so I apologize, but it does play a role in one really important area… The sob story aspect of Rolling Stones piece, the bit about seeing what the third world looks like, the part about government services being stripped to the bone… In addition to not being accurate, it has absolutely, positively NOTHING to do with the sewer debt. Sorry Wretchard, but your comment about trash piling up? Yeah… that’s not going to happen. The occupational tax was replaced by a new tax that will be phased out over 7 years (unless renewed by referendum), rather than slicing a quarter of the county revenues all at once.
You want to hear the really important message about all of this? The county is making some very difficult choices about their funding, cutting meaningful amounts out of the budget… and it’s virtually impossible to tell the difference. Trash isn’t piling up. Crime isn’t out of control. There are no marches in the streets. Ask the average Joe, and he couldn’t tell you the difference… Except we have something to complain about on local radio talk shows.
Again, sorry I forgot about this. Much thanks to Subotai Bahadur for reminding me. I should have known better, am embarrassed, and prepared for your flogging.
A quick note about party affiliation: For the county commissioner races, they are technically non-partisan, even though it is generally known what party a candidate or commissioner falls under. Birmingham’s races, I believe, are partisan. That’s the reason for the change over.
I give you the Census Bureau stats for Jefferson County.
Fun facts: 41% Black, 53.6% White, the rest various non-Whites/Hispanic etc. Black Owned firms, 12.9%, and so on.
What else could anyone expect?
It is funny how magically, all these places close to Canada, seem to be well run, without massive corruption problems, and these places that are not close to Canada, are always having problems. Why, New Orleans would magically look like Boise or Portland if it were just moved right next to Canada!
Why not just move the cities next to Canada? After all, being magically next to Canada somehow just makes people more honest, more likely to own businesses, more likely to be sober taxpayers demanding good, clean government. After all, the citizens of Boise or Salt Lake City or Portland have sewers. Sewage problems. But I don’t read about this stuff going on there.
Therefore, it must be because they are closer to Canada! It could not be, the people. After all, we KNOW by religious dogma that “diversity creates wealth” and the more non-White populations increase, the more wealthy and wise a place becomes. After all, the fact that Porland OR is about 78% White and only 6.6% Black could have NOTHING AT ALL TO DO with how well the city is run compared to Birmingham. It could NOT be that Portland is a Whitopia and Birmingham is not.
Here’s the simple solution to all our problems: Move every city in the US RIGHT NEXT TO CANADA! Problem solved!
Perhaps part of the answer to the problems discussed here would be “Democracy”. As in — the need for affirmative votes from 50%+1 of eligible VOTERS to do anything.
How many times do we see bond issues get approved in local elections where only about 15% of voters show up? A minority of less than 1 in 10 imposes its will on the majority. And how many County bureaucracies wheedle & scheme to get their bond issues put on obscure elections where none but activists show up?
It would be nice to set the universal standard for approval to 50% + 1 of eligible voters — for bond elections, and for all elections. If 50% + 1 don’t show up to vote for the n’th re-election of Representative Joe Schmo, then a Representative would instead be chosen randomly from the voter roll, just like jury service.
It would also serve to discourage those of a certain political persuasion from padding the voter rolls with dubiously legal supporters who are not certain to turn up on election day.
Of course, this would also require that all voting be done in person — no more blizzards of absentee ballots, except for serving military.
Ah, excuse me but I must have missed the obsenity you’re referring to. Could you please point it out?
Since the numbers are back just give me the number so I can re-read it to make sure I don’t cross your lines of propriety.
Thx
The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and its interpretation under Train v. City of New York. Until that point, the President had the option of not spending all appropriated funds.
HABU,
Relax, you don’t make it a habit sputter ineffectual deprecations about the evil forces out there in a way that kills the conversation. Well not recently anyway.
/sarc /sarc /sarc
You have other ways of sharing your unhappiness. As I said below (do your own search by name I’ve lost control of finding my way around in this thread) a well delivered insult should be delivered like a focused barrage onto a target and not just lobbed around like amateur hour at the grenade toss.
So we now have a Czar of the Obscene and what is not?
Sorry dude, you’re a smoothie but if I want to call Osama bin laden a scumbag or The Speaker of the House a supperating carbuncle, I will.
Even the Supreme Court has a test.
1) A thing must be prurient in nature
2) A thing must be completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value
3) A thing must violate the local community standards
If it meets all three of these things, it is obscenity
Upthread there was some discussion of the VAT and the Flat Tax. I have seen some advocacy for the “Fair Tax.” Does anybody have any information on this? Is it a gimmick or is it serious?
Err, um, ah. Detroit’s next to Canada.
“For some reason we conservatives have not been successful in countering the image that we are happy with all of the evils in this world and wish to keep things just as they are.”
Well, that has a very simple answer. Except for a very few, the millions of Conservative Americans over the last fifty years have said little and done less. They were too tied up with their lives, living in their little bubbles and hating any conversation that had politics involved. In fact not wanting to talk politics at all.
Some voted, some didn’t even bother. Those that did vote believed the lies of their favorite politician or just voted the party line and forget about it as soon as they did.
While the liberals planned, executed and fulfilled their dreams, while the Republican leadership and Congress got too used to the taxpayer money and too used to the power and prestige of their positions, while forgetting who the hell they worked for and why.
Well, that has to not only come to a screeching halt but be turned around and reversed or our great Republic is going to be a thing of the past, something that we can tell our great grand kids about and that they won’t believe.
Papa Ray
Thanks for the admonishment to cool it, but last time I checked you weren’t the Czar of Propriety. You’re smooth sure but even the SCOTUS has defined obscene. I must meet these standards…ALL of them:
Supreme Court Obscenity Definition
1) A thing must be prurient in nature
2) A thing must be completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value
3) A thing must violate the local community standards
If it meets all three of these things, it is obscenity .
Just so we have a firm understanding…. #1 I’ll chill when I get damn good and ready.
#2 The SCOTUS ruling trumps you every day.
So if I wanted to call Nancy Pelosi supperating carbuncle I might just consider doing just that.
LOTM ….remember
Ecclesiastes
All Is Vanity…..don’t let your strength become your weakness in honchoing BC contributors.
You forgot the democrats favorite money stash.
Long before the time-line you envision happens, if democrats are still controlling the Congress, the money will start being siphoned off of our Military as it always has been. In fact, it has already started under Obama.
In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the American Government went into the surplus military equipment business. Want a five million dollar tank for two million? Plus shipping of course.
There are lots of customers.
Papa Ray
What you describe and said is true. I would add that also the people in this president’s country need to understand and be involved in whatever war is going on at the time.
I read that less than two percent of the American population is actually involved in or affected by the long war against Islam (even if they call it by other names).
With participation like that it is no wonder that we are where we are, with no good place to go.
Papa Ray
Is there a way to display the comments in chronological order, so that you can just look at those added since the last time you logged on, and not have to go back to look at all the “Reply”s?
Spank, Spank, Spank…now go to your room.
We still love you, but you do have to pay better attention.
Papa Ray
Just like the Dumb and Dumber IOU’s, our government has provided an entire agency to look after “algore’s lockbox.” Indeed, the Bureau of Public Debt slaves every day to account for all of the Social Security money borrowed by the government for the government. Located in Parkersburg, WV, modestly paid government “lifers” prepare and store paper, (yep, I said “paper”) interest-bearing bonds payable to the Social Security Administration that pledge the full faith and credit of a government too large to fail, just to assure that US citizens will receive their Social Security payments.
Contained in a three-ring binder and locked in a white metal cabinet, the $2.5 trillion dollars worth of bonds are “non-negotiable”, which is another way of saying that they are worthless.
Don’t you feel better already?
Almost snorted milk up my nose on that! Who’d a thunk LOTM was the straight man?
That could/would be funny but someone in our group is investigating buying a thousand + acres in Canada right now.
We all hope and pray it will not be needed.
Papa Ray
knowing that someone as bright as Wretchard can also make a pull from “Dumb and Dumber” somehow just makes me feel better tonite.
LifeofMind #49:
The Fair Tax is a serious concept being advocated most famously by talk show host Neal Boortz. There is a book out on it. The book is on my ever-growing reading list. In fact there are two books out on it, the 2nd one answering the critics and a third book is in work I heard today. It is basically a national sales tax that eliminates ALL other taxes, including SS payroll taxes, Capital Gains, excise, etc. It is not a VAT added on top of other taxes. It has a provision for refunding the taxes to people below a certain income level. I think that food is not taxed, either, rather like here in Florida where you do not pay sales tax on food or medicine.
The Fair Tax was devised for the purpose of encouraging economic activity and was thunk up by a group of very smart experts who studied the problems of taxation very thoroughly – and one of those experts is named Leo Linbeck, as in our redoubtable III’s father.
The VAT Cometh
Americans for Fair Taxation
The above were kinda picked at random as there are thousands of hits on both subjects.
Me? I know nothing, nothing I tell you!
Papa Ray
I don’t see how.. But that is one feature that used to be on the old bulletin boards years and years ago.
Papa Ray
ok what is the secret to the avatars? don’t you have to register to do that? I cannot find a registration link anywhere on PJM right now. is it here somewhere?
i don’t even actually have one ready, but I’ll get something.
thanx.
ooooh, a preview button!
… that does nothing?
I guess, one could reply to a numbered post and then re-enter the reply as a post, saying this is a copy of a reply to post 50!
No doubt, that would give some people grief!
Err ah, Whisky, Chicago? Buffalo? Minneapolis? Seattle? New fricken York city!? It isn’t the proximity to Canada that makes or breaks a city. It is the people and excepting the few wonderful people I know that live in a city. Most of them are just parasites. They live in cities because that is where the money is for the shakin’ and bakin’. Peace out bro.
Gravatar
Sign up, it is free. Provide a email addy and upload a pic from your hard drive. BAM! you are in like Flint.
Try this:
http://en.gravatar.com/
It is tied to your email address, so if you make a mistake typing your email, the avatar won’t show.
Papa Ray
LOTM:
If José Piñera had made the presentation in 2005 rather than the Bush administration, that may have made a difference.
If (1) it’s optional, (2) it is strongly regulated, and (3) federal employees already have it, the idea looks good. Moreover, imagine if there were federally regulated mutual funds of bonds. I still think that half of the Democratic Party would love the idea of making more capital available to local governments for bond issues.
The downside of any Chilean-style mutual funds is that it would require conversion funds from the federal government. I don’t see the real function of Social Security in the modern economy to be providing pensions for old people; instead, it functions as ballast for the dollar. I think any shift of capital away from Social Security would necessarily increase federal interest rates and thus add to interest payments on the national debt.
The upside to increasing federal interest rates in this way would be that it would provide a better return on investment for bondholders in the Social Security system. Another may be to put a stop to a possible conflict of interest by the federal government in using Social Security funds (controlled by the federal government) to buy federal bonds (also controlled by the federal government). Making more capital available to local governments would be a blessing, but a mixed blessing.
The question is, would you be willing to consider having Chilean-style mutual funds that invest solely in government bonds? If so, I could imagine legislation of that variety going through Congress at some future time. It would need to be clean, though. Very clean. One wouldn’t want such reform legislation coming out of the Augean Stables.
Lamont @ 24:
To echo what LOTM said … your money is gone. That is the cold, harsh reality.
Now, you can go around like the Hambone character in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” — asserting, with single-minded righteous outrage, “He gonna gimme MY HAM!!!” — and to be sure, you will have right on your side insofar as you are on the road to being cheated out of what was taken from you under false promises, irresponsible failures of leadership and outright thievery.
But none of this — being in the right, being on the bad end of an injustice, and being livid about it — is going to get you your money back. Because the money has already been spent.
The only way the gubmint can afford to give you anything at all is to jack it from the paychecks of others still in the workforce, and/or to borrow on the backs of those still toddling around in diapers and kindergarten classrooms. In other words, people who had nothing to do with the stealing of your money, will be stolen from in turn in order to pay you off.
Do you want stolen money?
The gubmint is betting that you do. And you are going to see plenty of people around you who will take that stolen money. Because THEY want THEIR “goddamn money” and they don’t care who it gets took from.
See the vicious pattern?
The Great American Ponzi Scheme sets American against American. Generation against generation.
And therein lies the cynical evil genius of it all. It not only makes slaves of citizens, as LOTM observed, but it also puts the slaves at each other’s throats. Every day the slaves spend fighting each other instead of the slave-masters, it’s a good day for the masters.
I, too, have been working steadily since I was 15. I’m on the older end of Generation X. I’ve spent the last 15 years KNOWING that I would never see dime one from any of these “entitlements,” and pretty damn sure that my entire working life would be spent paying in. “Entire working life” for my generation will almost certainly be longer than for Boomers; “work till you drop” will most likely be a reality for most people my age. Thus do GenXers like me who have been blessed with good health and the longevity gene become the Boxers of the American Animal Farm.
You want your goddamn money?
I understand. I want my bucket of oats. And my fields of clover. We deserve what we worked so hard for.
But it ain’t gonna happen. How to avoid the glue factory (blue pill or red pill?) becomes the next least-worst choice.
He liked to bring things home from work
A virtue, I will grant
The problem was he worked all day
At the disposal plant
But that was nothing to the stuff
The politicians got
Watches, cash and sweetheart deals
It all went in the pot
Enviro whackos egged them on
The river must be clean
We’ll kill dear Mother Earth, they cried
Unless we all go green
The whackos listened not at all
To engineers who said
A simple three stage treatment plant
Would be just fine instead
With money dangling ‘fore their eyes
The politicians lunged
And grabbed it all for them and theirs
And into debt they plunged
They hocked the town up to its ears
And built the grandest bit
Of waste disposal just to find
They’d built a crock of shit
RWE,
one of those experts is named Leo Linbeck, as in our redoubtable III’s father.
It’s a small world.
Papa Ray,
Spank, Spank, Spank
That proves it. I was right, we are sinking into the swamp of utter depravity.
Oh the humanity.
Kae Arby,
Scores!
Alexis,
One of the 5 main TSP funds is the G-Fund for US government securities. The F-Fund tracks fixed income, including I believe corporate and local government paper. I would have no objection to starting an M-Fund for Municipals.
bogie wheel,
Thank you.
—–
The format is evolving under the hood. Now the emailed comments have formatting and embedded links. With luck all comments will be numbered and we will be able to switch between sub threaded and chronological display modes. For me making the thread linkable through that number, instead of just the internal database id now offered, matters because of my old blog links that now go to the top of a thread rather than to the linked comment. As it is I suspect that people will avoid the ‘Reply’ button because the sub thread becomes lost upstream.
Other brainstorms for the wish list follow;
1. perhaps an auto quote of the replied to comment that is ready for editing would be a nice inclusion,
2. formatting tools, bold italics links strikes and quotes, such as Michelle Malkin has on her WordPress blog,
3. also noting on the top page which threads are open for commenting or closed,
4. finally an embedded link, at the top and bottom of the page, to the preceding and following threads would be nice because it would signal when a new thread has been posted by wretchard.
You can’t buy votes by laying off government workers and cutting entitlements. The sin here (in addition to whatever graft took place) was putting off the bill until after the politicians figured they wouldn’t be around to deal with it anymore. That ‘ol balloon mortgage came due.
Ultimately a city or state is stuck paying its bills which is why you really want to be a federal politician. They can print all the fiat currency they want even after they have sucked all the liquidity they can out of the internal and external bond markets and then defaulted on that. Like an alcoholic they won’t/can’t stop until the whole shebang goes completely to hell and an angry mob winds up hanging them by their heels from a public lamp post or an external enemy does it.
As a country our fate was probably sealed the day we created the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. That magical little lending machine basically means the politicians need never deny their constituents anything nor tax them for their desires. Add to it that fewer than half the voters pay all the taxes and you will have one party that wants to make every election Christmas morning and the other party, the spoil sports who only want to chow down on half the seed corn – today. We’ll have the rest for lunch tomorrow.
I still don’t know if Obama is purposely destroying the economy or if he is just s simpleton. He could be both I guess but one thing for sure is he is the perfect storm. God help us all because this isn’t going to end well. God gave us half of the richest continent on earth and we are bankrupting it. If we are already monetizing the debt now by having the Fed buy $1.4 trilion of Treasuries what happens when the medicare, SS, and Obamacare bills come due? We are more screwed than a $10 hooker on fleet day.
Add to it that fewer than half the voters pay all the taxes
I really think I need to start hiring Vinnie the Trick to prepare my tax returns. As a working-class schlub who has never climbed out of the primordial ooze of the lower three income quintiles, and who in fact spent many years in the second-lowest, I somehow never managed to escape paying either payroll or income taxes in all that time.
Then again, I did not (a) have 6 kids out of wedlock, (b) eat myself to 500 lbs and a disability check, (c) mysteriously acquire Sick Building Syndrome from every workplace I encountered, (d) claim the goldfish as dependents, or (e) use Tim Geithner’s copy of Turbo Tax.
My mistake, ubviously.
Well, now I am curious. I assumed, based on your initial reply to my comment, that you were being playful about my term of endearment for our elected representatives.
Do you really consider the term I used to be an obscenity, and, if so, why?
I use it solely to define a low class despicable person, but, then, I was in the Army, so maybe our language development skills were more limited (or more refined due to less exposure to the corrosive effects of sea water). .
bogie wheel,
I did not … (e) use Tim Geithner’s copy of Turbo Tax
Then hire me, “Taxes by LoTM.”
Our motto;
We’re Un-beatable
Un-licensed
Un-qualified
Un-indicted
When you let LoTM do your taxes you will be amazed by the results!
LOTM @ 61 – #4 (Un-indicted) is surely the most important qualification, right?
That reminds me of that classic Bugs Bunny routine, when he was calling at the mailbox of one “Wile E Coyote, Genius”:
“Are you in, genius? Are you in, capable? Are you in, solent?”
The wascally wabbit is a sure-fire cure for every hue of mood indigo. IMHO anyway. Now it’s all just flatulence jokes. Oh do I miss the days of “Pronoun trouble.” *sigh*
Ah, Bogie Wheel.
You have stolen my identity, or else we were separated at birth
I’m a late boomer and I’ve been laughing at those SS statements we receive for the past 25 years, only the joke gets less and less funny as I get older. The sudden cries of “I want my goddamn money!” astound me. Back in the late ’70′s, my friends and I figured out that the older boomers would wipe out SS like a plague of locusts. It didn’t take an econ degree to figure it out. This train’s been headed toward the cliff for a long time now.
But imagine the best case scenario: the Dems take real hits in November and in 2012 and Obama is replaced with a true fiscal conservative who tries to change course. The MSM will present us with a million and one sob stories about the cruel cons who consider ketchup a vegetable and make families live in cars. I remember very well the ’80′s narrative they presented; a handful of yuppies partied away while millions ate cat food. And despite the popularity of Reagan they have managed to sell that view of the ’80′s to young people, just as they have managed to sell their take on the “idealistic” hippies of the ’60′s.
““Entire working life” for my generation will almost certainly be longer than for Boomers; “work till you drop” will most likely be a reality for most people my age.”
I was born on the tail end of the boomers and I too knew, OK, since the gubmint splained it, that I was being had and recognized that the government was busy trying to give my money to foreigners so they could buy their appreciation why pissing on my right to life and the pursuit of happiness. I can expect that they will offer me drugs to ease me into death but hope that in the meanwhile that they uphold my second amendment right, if nothing else, so I can put a bullet in my own head when it is a time of my choosing. Government has failed and has willfully abrogated the laws that lend them legitimacy.
I have known a number of people who were smarter and harder working then me and I applaud their success. It is a shame that the deadly sin of jealousy is now a cultural value that is exploited by our not so benevolent rulers.
56. bogie wheel
I agree with you. I’m 52, and I’d be willing to write off the SS money I’ve already paid in if they’d only stop taking it from my paycheck.
Donna – First off, I have enjoyed your recent comments on BC … very well-written and well-observed. Forgive me if you have posted frequently before; I’ve only just noticed the frequency of your posts in the past week or two.
Anyhoo.
I say this in all seriousness. If there is to be any future at all short of complete ruination for the United States, everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY over 40 is going to have to be prepared to fall on their swords, financially speaking. If the choice is not made for you, circumstantially (and it may come to that, via complete system collapse), then what are you going to do? Clamor for the scraps stolen from the mouths of your own kids and grandkids? Or renounce the vast portion of what would otherwise have been rightfully yours, in order to preserve some vestige of liberty and hope for those same kids and grandkids?
When I read what Papa Ray writes about his beloved granddaughters, I know he is someone who has already made his choice. (Thank you, Papa Ray.)
It’s going to come down to personal honor. Because a lot of people around you will be begging and hollering at the government and tearing at the last bits of flesh on the bones, you will only be one of many if you join the frenzy. Rarest of the rare will be the person who abstains, on principle.
I realize this is easy to say in the abstract. Much more difficult when refusing the government tit becomes a very real choice to sacrifice food, medicine, shelter, or clothing. Only God knows what is going to be asked of each of us, individually.
Ora pro nobis.
And remember your honor.
What ever happened to tar and feathering, and running the scam artists out of town on a rail? With warnings not to come back. Be they the politicians, crooks or zealots promoting the latest fad (“we have to preserve the snail darter even at the cost of human life” “the river you swim in isn’t clean enough” “see that number on our new, more sensitive test equipment, that’s the arsenic that’s in your water, we must do something” (even though it’s less than what you get from eating mushrooms..) )
Be a lot simpler and likely more effective than today’s justice system, including the ability to ambush a bank director who made the decision but denies any wrongdoing, has no regrets. Esp. since there’s no recourse, no undoing the wrong once the money is gone. And (we’re fortunate) most assault is handled in a locality, often by a justice of the peace (not a federal crime). “A pity, sir, that you lost all your body hair, I award you a dollar.”
bogie: Thank you for your kind comments. I lurked here a while before commenting; the erudition of both the host and many of the regulars is a bit intimidating, but there is so much food for thought here.
I am not expecting my golden years to be secure and serene. And, while I hope to behave honorably, I honestly don’t think I will have a choice in the matter, because this circle of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Peter robbing Joe to pay Bill, etc. cannot continue much longer. Neither will continually kicking the can down the road, because the can is now in a dead end road. As the Iron Lady said, you eventually run out of other people’s money. Scream “I want my goddamn money!” as long and hard as you want – it’s not there. And there aren’t enough youngsters to foot the bill. Them’s the facts; the sucky, sucky facts.
Hi, I’m Mad Fiddler, and I’m a blogger.
This is the 12-step program meeting place, right?
But I really thought things would be different when I started posting my passionate and carefully-crafted logic, with thoroughly-researched assertions and all the embedded links meant to demolish the doubters’ scoffs.
Why hasn’t Obama seen the undeniable truth of my arguments, and all the wise other arguments of the thoughtful posters here? Why hasn’t he abandoned his mean-spirited and self-mutilating policies??? Why are all those grinning monsters still squatting in their fancy executive offices drawing up plans for the concentration camps????
poop.
Thought if I really knit my brow and gritted my teeth real hard, and CONCENTRATED I could exert mind control on the devils.
Clearly, I have misunderestimated the staying power of evil.
Need to go back to the drawing board.
And other folks need 2 xrcise 2 nd am end ment rites to the max.
You needn’t worry about the national obligations for Social Security. “Means-testing” will be a word you will all soon come to know and loathe. If you’re not poor as a church mouse, you’re not going to get Social Security in any meaningful fashion. It will be either denied you outright, taxed away from you after receipt, or you’ll receive it in full with debased dollars, of which $500 will be required to buy a quart of milk.
Those are our choices. They’re all ugly. I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that I will never be able to retire and that I will die in harness. Far cry from what we were promised, but that’s what happens when you live in a nation whose voting majority has twice turned the reins of government completely over to liberal idiots. 1964 started our decline and Obama will put us under.
LOTM, accurately describing my feelings about both Obama and LBJ would take a considerable amount of what I’ve often described as “seagoing freedom of expression.” I know better and more eloquent words but they don’t quite convey the emotional emphasis I would like to provide while discussing those two individuals. Whenever I think of them, for some reason the line, “It’s no joke, Tuco; it’s a rope” keeps coming to mind…
LOTM (#58)
No, no, a 2^32 times no!!! Haven’t you ever seen what comment threads look like on sites that offer that feature? Quotes within quotes within quotes ad nearly infinitem, LOOOOONG comments copied in toto by someone who adds “me too” at the end, etc. etc.
This item from the AP should be titled “UH OH”.
Then again, Obama is through selling lies to anyone on the center-right, so we will get more fodder for the fall election campaign.
gracias to you and PR for the pointer to gravatar … now all I need is a concept and a jpg! 48×48 …
Alas, it’s not the accountants that would be devastated with a flat tax, but the congress critters who would not be able to grant/sell exemptions to the tax code.
Ned
The so called Fair Tax is unfair to people who have savings which have been taxed. When they spend those savings, the same money would be taxed again. Some people say it would not work as proposed anyhow. I don’t think anyone really knows. Least of all the loudest proponents.
Ari Tai/65
What ever happened to tar and feathering, and running the scam artists out of town on a rail? With warnings not to come back.
Defenestrations weren’t that bad either.
Kirk Parker/68
Very empathic. And correct. I suspect that it would be a troll tool of choice to abuse it.
I certainly agree with you regarding the need for greater voter involvement before our elected “representatives” run off and stick the public with huge bills for pet projects.
I also agree that our current voter system invites widespread fraud. I don’t know if it has already occurred or not, but certain recent gubernatorial elections in the Northwest, and Senatorial elections in the upper Midwest sure do make me suspicious.
Yes, we need to do away with absentee ballots completely. No exceptions for anyone. Everyone who votes gets a digit or two soaked in permanent purple ink to ensure they only vote once in that election!
The military can certainly run their own polling places on the FOBs and COPs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Each Navy ship can have it’s own polling place as well. Polling places on established bases would be little different from Anytown USA. Have the unit’s First Sgt, or Chief of the Boat head up a randomly selected committee of three commissioned and / or warrant officers and three enlisted members to observe the voting, count the votes, transmit the results, and sign an attestation that no hanky panky had occurred on pain of UCMJ prosecution.
A handful of military members, probably considerably less than 2500 as conditions exist in our current conflicts, might not have an opportunity to vote in that federal election. It’s worth the price to ensure clean elections. Anyone who raised their hand and took the oath already understands they’ve given up many rights civilian U.S. citizens take for granted.
I like that Whiskey, “Move cities next to Canada.”
That would be near us then. we live in a tourist town with a full time population of 10,000. We have a “bed cap” which means we are almost fully developed and development fees and benefits are dwindling away to almost nothing. In the last four years our wonderful politicians have ‘invested’ in a five million dollar library and a composting plant and waste transfer station that ran, apparently, to eleven million. Pricey worms, just how much compost do you have to sell to pay for that in a town of ten thousand?
I am one of those older boomers who just took the social security early check. I am a carpenter in a dead building town . Every job you bid is underbid by flocks of illegals. I am scraping by on my little check and a job where I can get it, We have never had a lot anyways so simplicity is okay. There is no way this can end well any way you look at it.
Francis Shaeffer and C. Everett Koop did a series in the late ’70′s, early ’80′s called “How Then Shall We Live”. It followed the logical progression of a generation raised on the ethos of selfishness and abortion on demand. As the population ages, and 2 workers support 1 retiree; the hue and cry for involuntary euthanasia will be deafening. Of course it will be done in the name of compassion. The book I mentioned earlier by Herbert Schlossberg has a passage which states that we are living off the moral capital acquired by prior generations which were more Christian in makeup. But it is like the smile of the Cheshire Cat. When a generation arises that knows not God, then the horrors begin in earnest. For a historical precedent, read the Old Testament book of Judges. As the patriarchs who brought the Jews into Canaan died off, their descendants sunk into moral chaos and darkness. It’s coming here, but for the intervention of God.
“1) A thing must be prurient in nature
2) A thing must be completely devoid of scientific, political, educational, or social value.”
Habu, haven’t you just defined a member of Congress?
And another thing that Chile had that the US didn’t/doesn’t is a Pinochet. Someone who took the country kicking and screaming into the system they now have. At the time all the naysayers said it wouldn’t work, all the know-it-alls said it the people would never accept it. And now? Woe is to the Chilean politician that even dares mention that going back to the old retirement system would be a good idea. The Chileans have come to realize that it is THEIR money and want the politicans as far away from it as possible. That evil Pinochet was such a bastard!
Lamont, don’t forget Medicare. We’ve all paid into the system our entire working lives. And it’s bust just like SS.
Know what “Seillibllih Ylreveb Eht” is?
It’s “The Beverly Hillbillies” BACKWURDS, ha hahhaaaha…heh…spa…fon…..
Let me start with important things, terrible news from West Virginia. We need to build a system in which those who go down those mines don’t get robbed to pay for the vanity projects of the emotionally crippled. My favorite movie is about Coal Miners, John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley.
The other bad news, nothing like a fully stuffed sandwich is there?, is Obama announcing his nuclear policy. We now need to think of apologizing to our more robust seniors in France.
In 1945 we were not the least bit ambiguous when Harry Truman promised the Japanese “If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air.” Since then for 64 years every US President said that we would neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons and that if the United States or an ally were attacked we would respond at a time place and by a means of our own choosing. Now Obama chooses to toss it all in the trash. He has just hung out the “Kick Me” sign.
—–
OK, I am convinced about the auto quote feature. This one I toss in the can. Log it.
And I thought ex-PFC Wintergreen was to prolix.
To be blogged under the title “Alone in the Dark.”
ChrisJ, back in 1990 my city, Newport Beach, CA, spent six million dollars (serious dough back then for a small city) on a concrete wall to “hold back” a portion of a hill along Pacific Coast Highway. With a very pricy home on top of it and whose resident no doubt had connections to City Hall. They had some high price architect design it and when it was completed they had a ceremony to “pay homage” to the “work of art”. Complete with entertainment and champagne, and with the traffic on Highway One diverted. This is Newport Beach, after all. At the time I owned my own business in the city and remember thinking how could the voters let them (the city politicians) get away with this. Well, a year later the recession came to California and Newport Beach with a vengeance. To plug the leaking holes in the State treasury Governor Wilson stopped the transfer of tax revenues to the counties and cities. So the City of Newport Beach with declining tax revenues from its own tax base and money it had been counting on from the state gone found itself with a budget shortfall. As a member of a business owners association I got to attend a meeting where the city officials basically came groveling to us for help. When asked how big the shortfall was the answer came back, “Six million dollars.” It took every fiber of self-control to stop myself from standing up and shouting, “Well, if we hadn’t built that stupid wall along Coast Highway we wouldn’t be in this mess now would we?” And don’t get me started on the new Library and Art Museum buildings that went up around the same time. Seems all politicans think it’s their job to spend the voters’ money anyway they see fit and rarely wisely.
Jefferson County has been as crooked as a dogs hind leg forever. The fact that it took an immense “environmental” project to attract the Wall Street crowd just serves to show you how many equally corrupt opportunities there were closer to Wall Street. While I feel sorry for those thrown out of work by this mess, I take comfort in knowing that the civic minded folks who have for generations taken good care of Jefferson County are still working behind the scenes for the good people of the County.
“The courts can and will assess the taxes needed to pay them.”
Maybe where you live. In America ONLY congress can assess taxes. The other two branches of government do not have that power.
The Mencken solution is to have the Federal Budget for a year be no more then the taxes collected the previous year. Period. By running the budget in arrears, the pols couldn’t spend more then they have in hand. If you want to completely overhaul the US economy, end payroll taxes and go to a VAT or POS tax. Then don’t spend that money directly, but use it to pay off bonds that do the actual funding.
Say Congress wanted a new school lunch program. Float bonds for the cost of it. If there are not enough bonds sold, scrap the program. Ditto for the US Navy’s latest gold plated warship. If you can’t get enough Americans out of 300 million to buy bonds for something, the Feds shouldn’t be paying for it.
As far as ending corruption, force Congress critters to excuse themselves from voting on any bill that affects the interests of any campaign contributors. That will quickly put an end to vote buying. Just to make sure the vote buying is dead (no such thing as too dead when it comes to corruption and terrorists) Make it illegal for people to collect a fee for lobbing. Lobbing is a first amendment right protected by the Constitution. Charging a fee for it isn’t. Anybody can represent you in court. Only a member of the bar can charge you a fee for it. So it wouldn’t be unconstitutional to prevent a lobbyist from charging for their services. Of course that wouldn’t prevent envelopes full of cash from changing hands, but the FBI is pretty good. They caught algore didn’t they? 300,000 from that Chinese agent. Just a co-ink-see-dink, surely, that the Chinese got a set of plans for nuclear warheads not long after.
When you let LoTM do your taxes you will be amazed by the results!
IRS: “So you used ‘Life of the Mind’ Tax reporting?
ME: “Yes,’Life of the Mind’.”
IRS: “So, where are your records?”
ME: “All in my head.”
You don’t get to fire them.
While you’re trying to fire them fifty or a hundred others are trying to loot the money you paid in for THEIR benefits.
So much for “democracy”, sucker.
It’s amazing how many missed the point about blaming the lender for the problems of the borrower. Evidently the bureaucrats, in their divine wisdom and enlightenment, are no more savvy than the idiots who bought outrageous homes and took 2nd and 3rd mortgages to buy toys.
Evidently parasitism (borrowing money and expecting to stiff the lender) is alive and well.
Here’s a hint: well over half the population gets handouts and only a small subset of the population foots the bill. Like children, they never figure daddy’s wallet will come up empty.
Evidently parasitism (borrowing money and expecting to stiff the lender) is alive and well.
Actually, my profligate friends who voted for Obama are counting on the death of aged, wealthy relatives — and soon.
Jeez, you sound just like my grand kids, give them an inch and they want ten miles…(insert Smilely face here, you can add that to my wish list)
I wouldn’t want to see the quote feature you mention, the threads become a mile long with everybody tagging on the quotes with their comment and it becomes almost unreadable to me, and I get tired scrolling and scrolling.
As a passing thought I hope someone is backing up all of Richard’s blog off site somewhere so that when the government starts shutting down sites it deems as un-American or disruptive to the public good, we won’t all be flushed down the dreaded memory hole or what ever hole it will be called then. (insert your guess what it will be called here)
Just a passing concern.
Well, got to take kids to school see ya’ll later.
Papa Ray
“this year’s trustees report will be delayed until June 30”
Which makes my point that the health care debacle was to create a new meta-slush-fund to paper over the excesses of the failed Ponzi scams of Medicare and SS.
It’s not welfare. Welfare is supposed to go to poor people.
People receiving SS checks are for the most part, wealthier than the people paying into it.
Tell that to the federal judge in Indianapolis.
After taking over the school system, because in his opinion, it wasn’t integrated enough, he order the city govt to raise taxes so that he would have enough money to build things like swimming pools, in order to attract more white students to the public schools.
Life of the Mind @ 75
My great Grandfather was a Welsh coal miner during the period in which the movie is set.
A tribute to any and all coalminers written and performed by Rita MacNeil and accompanied by retired coalminers, mens chorus, “Men of the Deep”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-EiwiiAh68
There’s nothing in a flat tax that would prevent politicians from selling their services in order to create new exemptions.
You money was stolen long ago.
What you are demanding is the right to steal someone else’s money in order to replace what was stolen from you.
Sorry, but as the article pointed out, the people vote for the politicians who steal the money, so they can’t escape responsibility for what the politicians did in their name.
Some is going to get scr#wed here. Should it be the people who voted for the politicians, or should they be allowed to kick the can down the road and force children who aren’t voting yet, may not even be born yet, to bear the burden of these mistakes?
The Fair Tax is a sales tax. (It’s not a VAT.)
According to the proponents, all current taxes (income, business, capital gains, death, etc) could be replaced with a 23% sales tax. They handle the lack of progressiveness by giving every man woman and child, legally in the US, a check for (I forget the amount – I think the amount is the poverty rate times the tax rate) every year.
At first glance, one would assume that this would make everything we buy 23% more expensive, however since business taxes are eliminated, there costs and hence their prices would drop at the same time. Some have estimated that the cost pf paying taxes and the bookkeeping costs of keeping up with what is owed, comes to 30% of sales for most businesses.
And yes, competitive pressures do force businesses to cut their prices when thier costs go down.
As to the tax being unfair to those with lots of money in savings. Every tax is unfair to someone.
They could add a filter so that you not show all posts with a date/time earlier than whatever. Enter the time you last visited, then only new posts would show up. I have no idea how much work such a filter would be. There’s also the problem of coordinating different time zones.
Compliance costs for a VAT are huge. A company has to keep track of the cost of every unit of production, and correctly apply it to each unit of output, so they can calculate exactly how much value their company added to everything the sell.
A POS is much simpler, it also has the advantage of being visible. The people can see on every sales receipt, just how much money they are paying in taxes.
very nice piece.
my wife’s great-grandparents were Welsh as well, although not coal miners – they were from Pembrokeshire. She’s got the welsh in her blood, though, it makes her miserable if she even goes a single day without singing! You don’t have to ask if she’s good; she’s welsh, isn’t she?
You can go to gravator.com @ http://en.gravatar.com/ and pick one off your hard drive or one of the premade ones they are tied to your email address. You can change them anytime you wish!
OK, here is where I get deadly serious.
Talk is good, debate is even better, but it’s time that all of us do something more.
You may have read where I talk about what I do, what my group does and what others do other than write words on the net.
Here is Bill Whittle telling you the same thing. I hope that you take this to heart, make the necessary plans and preparations and just do it.
Bill Whittle: Support your local Tea Party and More.
If you won’t do it for yourself do it for the generations of Americans to follow us.
Do not let them down.
Watch this, five minutes of your time now to watch this and a few hours later is not too much for our children, then get your friends and get out and just do it. The liberals will give their all and millions of dollars to get their voters out, we must do even more or we…..
Bill Whittle: Support your local Tea Party and More.
Please………..
Papa Ray
P.S. YOU will have to register, no big deal, no hassle, just fill it in. They have excellent presentations and debates there. Everybody should take advantage of their efforts to defeat the liberals and the ones who wish to destroy America.
Buffalo, NY is also close to Canada.
There is an awakening going on. It is inspired by the TEA party movement. Most people pay little attention to the County Assessor candidates in elections but here in the People’s Republic of California the position is that of a sort of gatekeeper. While Prop 13 protects taxpayers on the upside when property values explode during bubbles, it is Prop 8 that was implemented to help taxpayers once the bubble bursts. Unfortunately, the County Assessor has a lot of leeway in reducing valuations. In Los Angeles County, the entrenched political machine has colluded with the public service unions to get their hand picked candidate elected. They need to keep valuations artificially high so they can protect their income stream on the backs of the small property owner. Any time the politically connected contributors get “friendly” assessments it is the small property owner that is expected to make up the difference.
He may be “spitting” into the wind but check out:Assessor 2010
He is trying to cut off their oxygen.
OK…off the computer, last link, life calls.
IRS Launches New Global Program to Target ‘High Wealth Individuals’
Well, at least I don’t have to worry about this…I barely make enough to even register on the scale and I will never have to worry about them coming for me…?
Right?
Papa Ray
Many of the people drawing SS paid into the program when the tax rates were much lower than what we’re paying today. I recall reading some years ago that in 1970, the top SS tax rate was something like 5% on the first $5,000 of income. That meant the total people paid that year was $250. Over the years, Congress has kept raising the tax rate and the income limits to “save social security” to the point where most young people today would never get back what they paid into the program.
“As to the tax being unfair to those with lots of money in savings. Every tax is unfair to someone.”
Then “fair tax” is a misnomer.
It’s more “fair” than any other type of tax.
In a few years, great wealth will be defined as making enough to feed your family without govt money.
You can call SS ‘welfare for poor old folks’ if you want to, but SS is the most important redistributive program in our history. Without it the US would have suffered much deeper recessions than the 13 we’ve had since 1956. 60% of recipients spend every dime of SS every month – such patriotism, such a patriotic group of consumers, doing their all to save capitalism.
I work at Waste water treatment plant in Iowa that digests biosolids into usable methane. It’s not nearly as easy as you suggest. The capital expense is quite high, and the lifespan of the equipment is short due to harsh conditions. Also, the waste streams into the digesters needs to have certain and very specific nutrients present or digesters will canabalize themselves over time and require reseeding. It works for us because our local industries have high flow reates and are rich in the required nutirents, and most importantly we can use our biogas immediately in our incenerator, which saves $5000 in natural gas that was being bought from the local gas provider which make the ecnomics work for us. In general the myth of “free” green is just that a myth. You whave to pay for you energy on way or the other.
What obscenities are we talking about. Scumbags is a descriptive word that accurately describes the members of the congress and senate of the United states of America.
Beautiful, crystalline, pure logic. It wasn’t these Wall Street sharks taking advantage of poor, unsophisticated Southern pols. These guys wanted to run with the big boys, and they went into these transactions eyes wide open.
Elections have consequences, as the people of Birmingham are discovering right now. Citizens of other political subdivisions had best take heed.
Stupid is as stupid does. Maybe next time the good people of Birmingham will elect non-stupid people to run their government.
“Rich” retirees collecting from Social Security as a rule weren’t rich when they entered the workforce. Had there been no SSA they would have had an extra 10% – 15% in their paychecks to pay bills, buy insurance, invest, save, whatever. There are many programs online that prove that had a person living 40 years ago entered the workforce at minimum wage and invested the money himself EVEN IF HE NEVER MADE MORE THAN MINIMUM WAGE ALL HIS CAREER when he retired today he could live very comfortably off the interest alone from his investments, earning several times what he made the year he retired.
The promise of Social Security was that in exchange for taking all that money from them the US government would take care of them after they retired for the rest of their lives. The money would be SAFE and THERE when they needed it. Changing the rules after they paid in all their money would be the greatest generational theft.
I’ve wondered what would have happened in Indianapolis if the city had told the judge that the Judicial branch hasn’t the authority to order the elected branch to impose taxes. Congress could pass one of their many unfunded mandates targeting the Indianapolis situation if they chose, but in neither case could a judge order them to do so.
As has been noted previously, then the productive taxpayers will leave. I’m about to head for the doors myself. Texas? Idaho? There’s a dozen or so possibles.
OOHRAH VOTE TEABAG BECAUSE MARINES WON THE SPICE WAR
ALSO RICH IS A STINKY SHITHEAD
social security is the largest ponzi scheme in american history.if you had a private company run this way you would go to prison.there is no social security fund.all the money that comes in every year is spent.you have absolutely no right to any payments congress could stop the payments at any time. had 15% of you pay had been invested everyone would retire with a million $ and be able to will to their kids the irony is older people have more money than the young people who pay now.the tax is 15% they hide half by calling it the employer’s contribution but if you think who ever signs your pay check doesn’t count it as part of you salary lives in never never land anyone who thinks social security made recessions shorter knows nothing about economics every tax you pay makes them last longer fdr didn’t stop the depression he made it worse at least serfs only had to pay 10% our tax rates are obscene why does everyone else have right to your pay but you.50% of your work goes to the government add in obama nightmare and transfer payments soon it will be a 110% tax we are heading to a default on social security and government bonds and massive inflation we haven’t had any real money since fdr stole our gold and lbj took the silver out of the coins
rules we do have no rules we don’t need no stinking rules we’re thieves
“The Justices have made their decision — now let them enforce it.” — President Andrew Jackson.
The difference between welfare and SS is that welfare recipients, by and large, have contributed nothing to the kitty whereas working people payed into SS, kinda like an “old age insurance policy” which has been pilfered by politicians.
I notice the environmentalists get off without any blame in this story. Basically, they bullied the government into building something no one needed. Everyone involved in the project knew it was unnecessary so they all decided to that if they were going to do something that stupid they might as well profit from it. It’s like if someone hired you to build a leprechaun trap. If you spent anything at all you would be wasting money or over charging for it so where is the incentive to keep costs down?
Life of the Mind (reference your lecture in 31 and your non-response to my query in response):
I am still breathlessly waiting for a clarification from on high concerning the roots of my “obscenity.”
At the risk of making myself unpopular in what you seemingly consider your own little fiefdom, I have to say that I have come to the conclusion that your style is a lot like Obama’s (oops! another obscenity!): You have a very high opinion of yourself and a very low opinion of others, you are fairly proficient at stringing words together, but not so much with sentences and thoughts.
You may not like my choice of the word scumbag (which, by the way, is perfectly descriptive), but you have no valid input into its use, only a complaint that you don’t like it.
Until Mr. Fernandez or someone else of importance on this blog informs me that you are the Word and Thought Czar, I think that I will treat your self-important lecturing as so much manure spreading (your words, not mine)!
The Fair Tax also includes a prebate (which is to offset the Fair Tax on incomes up to the Poverty Level). This goes to everybody, not only the poor.
So some of the savings that you are being taxed on would be offset by this.
However, the big point is this: you are already being double-taxed when you buy things with your savings. Every loaf of bread includes the income and payroll taxes of the man who sold the seed, the farmer who planted it and harvested it, the miller and his employees, the bakery, and the grocery store.
It’s not perfect. It’s light-years better than what we have, ten thousand light-years better than a VAT, and better than a Flat Tax (because we flattened tax rates in 1986; how flat are they now?).
ARRA stimulus funds. It’s the answer to all that ails…
Just to be clear the people of Jefferson County for the most part were against this when it came up. However they were never allowed to vote for or against the project directly. The County Commission had free reign to direct the development of the project, and they also had been subject to a federal lawsuit which required them to renovate the system for environmental reasons. They chose or were led to choose an insanely overpriced, and overcomplicated “solution” to the problem at hand. I honestly have no idea whether it was ignorance or avarice. Did they do it for the money or were they tricked into it?
Buying the suit makes sense if you are looking for a job that requires a suit, but spending $1,000 does not. You can get good suits for much less. Do they look like a $1,000 suit – no. But then again you have to look good not impeccable.
For most positions Dockers, dress sheet, sports coat and possibly a tie is enough
I don’t believe he was referring to you. Click on his name and go to his blog and ask.
This new format is confusing to me at least plus I think this thread has been dead for awhile.
Appreciate your participation.
Papa Ray
Thanks, Papa Ray!
You may be right. I took it to be directed at me because his comment was in direct reply to mine, but, as you say, it could have been a matter of placement.
It’s nearly set in stone now. It’s bound to happen. Maybe not this year or next, but we all deep down inside feel it coming, one way or another, though we express it differently in various ways. But most of us here will be alive to see it crashing down. The Collapse. A piece of paper (the Constitution) isn’t going to stop it. Nobody here at the BC can stop it, no matter how much we rage and wail about it. Don’t look to the president or congress for any wisdom, let alone even telling the truth. For a Spirit of Foolishness has them it its grip. They are utterly incapable of doing what is right. And they will continue to do everything possible to make the Collapse even worse, all the time patting themselves on the back about what wonderful people they are. But there is no way out. The republic is finished, and there is no way to tell what is coming after the Collapse. Maybe on the day it happens, we won’t even realize what transpired, but on the days the follow the horror will at first begin gradually and then with ferocious relentlessness to choke us. We will all have to deal with dread and fear, for ourselves personally and our children.
take heart, Iggy –the gov’t federal and states — could fix everything tomorrow before lunch, by launching a powerful virtuous circle, via simply announcing an immediate DEEP across the board spending cut and the cutback by some liveable % of all entitlement obligations going forward.
fight. fight. fight.