Preview
Time magazine called the Vallejo neighborhood watch groups — and the increased level of prostitution — an indication that “things could get pretty crazy in other cash-strapped cities across the country.” It is also a preview into how it might play out: a desperate struggle between public sector unions moving Heaven and Earth to keep their wage, manning, and pension levels in the face of a shrinking budget.
When President Obama recently characterized the Republican Party’s vision of America as being every man for himself, where “everybody is left to fend for themselves, everybody makes their own rules, a few do very well at the top and everybody else is struggling to get by … their core vision for America,” one would have thought he was talking about bankrupt cities in California or perhaps Greece after decades of socialism. The aftermath of a collapsed welfare state isn’t the “traditional” American society of white picket fences and frame houses peopled by Bible-clinging bigots. Not at least in the first instance. In any case it has to pass through the Mad Max stage of neighborhood watches and truck gardens. Not “I’m from the government and here to help you,” but a world where ordinary people say “where is the government, we’re here to help it.” And oh, they still have to pay taxes. To pay off the debt, of course.
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I heard Obambus talking today about energy and politics. “The Republicans have a three-point plan to return gas to two dollars a gallon. Their first point is to drill, their second point is to drill, and (dramatic pause) you can guess their third point is more drilling.”
OK, Mister President, and your point is?
I just keep coming back to it, this is the age of in your face ignorance and blatant conravention of facts and logic, turn everything on its head, ignore answers and hold on tight to problems. I know perversity is a basic factor in the world, but when exactly did it take the upper hand? Aw, foo, it was FIFTY FREAKING YEARS AGO that Hunter S. Thompson wrote, “When the going gets weird the weird turn pro.” Guess I should just open up some ether and mellow out.
“Eventually you run out of other people’s money” to paraphrase Lady Thatcher. One by one the dominos will begin to fall; first the small cities, then larger one, then the counties, then the states and finally the national government. The amazing thing isn’t that this is happening, but rather how long it took to get to this point. Guess one can circle the drain for awhile before the laws of nature finally claim their victim.
Wow! 350 neighborhood watch organizations. In a city smaller than mine. We’re lucky to have three or four functioning groups, total, and some of their members are “shooting their own wounded” in internal squabbles. When a city’s cash gos, the pros and hos will run rampant. Hard times acoming to the not-so-golden state. Time to stock up and plan ahead.
LUCY WAS RIGHT! ‘CHARLIE BROWN’ OBAMA IS WISHY-WASHY
http://tinyurl.com/6qnfpbz
Interesting. The implication seems to be: “Who gives a crap about what your books say? You can always squeeze the chump taxpayer for more money so that we don’t have to sacrifice one penny.”
Isn’t that essentially the message that Michael Moore and his smelly brethren The Occupiers say? We’re not really broke, there’s always a “stash” to confiscate somewhere. I wonder what it’s going to take to get these folks to realize how real wealth is generated? Who am I kidding, most of them will probably go to their graves raging at The Man who kept them from their Marxist Utopia.
“The old joke is that General Motors is just a health insurance company that makes cars on the side.” The current joke, and not a very funny one at that, is that most governmental agencies have devolved into entities whose primary concern seems to consist of taking care of their employees, and the duties and purposes for which they supposedly exist have become dim and distant priorities.
Class warfare is real, but it isn’t your Marxist Granny’s notion of it. It’s based not on how much money you make, but rather upon the divide between those who gain more from the existence of the present government and its policies versus those who gain less because of their existence. And the lines are not always as clear as they seem at first blush. Its easy to see that an EPA bureaucrat and a welfare queen both make their livings off the government. But many people in the private sector make their livings off of government policies as well. What would happen to accountants and tax attorneys if the tax laws were changed where everybody could file a tax return with one simple calculation? And that is just one example; the rot has its tendrils all throughout society.
Here’s a video of an attempted eviction in Ireland due to non-payment of mortgage repayments.
As this may be coming to your town soon, it is worth a look. It is an excellent example of people power, publicity, knowing the constitution, and using Ireland’s historical aversion to eviction.
ADE
NEWS FLASH! THE FRIENDS OF SYRIA WANT TO NEGOTIATE!
PROPOSE A UN MISSION UNDER KOFI (OIL FOR FOOD) ANNAN!!
http://tinyurl.com/6qj4xx5
Kofi Annan??? Kofi Annan??? What are you talking about, Kofi Annan!!!
Queen Consort Noor of Jordan you misogynists!!!!
Either that or G I Joe and the World’s SWAT Team 6!!!!!
This is your last warning!! Drop the guns and come out with your hands up!!!!
They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
A beginner’s guide to surrendering!
http://tinyurl.com/7tfuszt
That’s what we call a Crusader Warrior Princess!
Here’s another girly-boys! http://tinyurl.com/3hrcpwf
Contract negotiations like legal proceedings require two adversarial parties. You cannot negotiate with yourself to create an obligation that a third party has to pay. The unions by capturing the government invalidated the legitimacy of the contracts. The best move for the citizens of Vallejo would be to terminate the contracts and announce that they are now paying only cash up front, buy your own health plan, and contributing to a 401K type plan except for legitimate on the job injury disability payments.
The distress of the Bay area cities is pain the rich white liberals of Berkeley and the manipulated minorities of Oakland inflicted on everyone. Ron Dellums built a career castigating the US military until eventually the Navy said “Here’s your Peace Dividend. We’re out of here.” The Presidio of San Francisco is stuffed with left wing institutes and NGOs using the former military base.
Now watch how her mood swings when she meets a MAN!
http://tinyurl.com/yzhow2t
A dollar is worth more today than it is tomorrow. When I first heard this in a finance class 20 years ago I didn’t think much of it. When I took a graduate level finance class a couple of years ago, it started to strike home. Give me my money now. Is it any wonder why public sector unions insist on governments abiding by work contracts and health and pension agreements negotiated by officials that had a vested interest in their re-election? Like all good things the cycle of the public sector unions working with elected officials will come to an end. It won’t be pretty. And the people who got their money first will have plenty of time to rationalize their past decisions regardless of future effects.
As Wretchard has said here many times, and many commentators, the money is gone and the members of the government/public workers mutual admiration society is coming into conflict with itself because there are only a handful of parachutes for a bunch of people as the plane begins dropping faster and faster….
The Court system is pretty corrupt in itself, but either it stiffs the union goons and lets these governments wriggle off the pension hook, or government shuts down and vigilantism returns to CA’s Barbary Coast. When will the Street Watch Owls of a town stop photographing the scurrying night denizens and start carrying them off as prey and spitting out their bones?
Obama looms over our degeneration like some jug-eared ogre, and you wonder when will all the “pretty people” start waking up screaming as what he’s done to us dawns on them. Sebastian Haffner said that if Hitler had been cacked or died naturally in August of 1939, the German people would have waken up to the reality that he had dismantled their government and left them utter chaos.
We have utter chaos pounding on the door (no longer politely knocking).
People (not all, but most) will find a way to survive. Feudalism works quite well, if it is necessary. I’ll have to make a banner with a black crow in Celtic design on a white field, or something, for the castle I’ll have to build.
Interesting times.
An Préachán
If you had to pick one institutionalized element of government that is most likely to perpetuate economic malaise and the infringement of personal liberty among the general population it is public sector unions.
So called public policy in California is already straight out of Atlas Shrugged with unions calling the shots on every piece of important legislation and regulation. The guy on the street doesn’t stand a chance of making good without playing ball with the union.
For most other municipalities across the country pensions and disability payments consume the lion’s share of the annual budget. Discretionay spending means choosing pencils with or without erasers because there is no money that is not already contracted.
Public sector unions are the scourge of the democratic state and will eventually kill it or subjagate it. The long term goal of Obamacare is to unionize all health care workers. When and if that happens the head of the US Government will be the SEIU boss regardless of who sits in the WH.
The fact that no national politician will touch this issue is a good indication that we are already past the point of no return.
DoD has proposed large icnreases in fees for healthcare of both retirees and active duty personal, including means testing to determine fees – in some cases this would increase yearly enrollment costs by a factor of 5. Meanwhile, Obamacare is eliminating some retired military healthcare programs – “due to overuse by retirees.” That’s the thought process at work – if its popular and effective then get rid of it.
I read recently where during Great Depression FDR directed a 10% cut in military pay. I think that is coming next, and if it does occur I think it will be accompanied by a potentially even larger reduction in retired pay. And I think it will be accepted to a degree – as long as it is clear that the Federal Civilian workforce is undergoing similar reductions that are at least as great.
Meanwhile, they implemented a new $60M (so far, it’s not done yet) fraud reduction program for Medicaid. And it’s paid off, too, a savings of $7,900 over the past year. Note, that’s $7,900, not $79M. They assure us that savings will increase once the program gets up and going fully. But I don’t think that will happen until we see SEAL teams busting down doors and tossing grenades in the foreign countries where the crooks so often flee.
It’s not a simplification to see that the situation is one of robbing Peter (the taxpayer, who’se paid only one million in reserves for the city to use, vs. the 10-11 million the unions want) to pay off Paul (the unions), to then pay off Fred (the insurance companies). The insurance companies are the ultimate beneficiary of what the unions hustle. In Vallejo, if people want insurance they have to pay more of it themselves to keep the city solvent. If you want insurance, or more of it, you should pay for it yourself. Insurance will get you doctor visits, co-pays, and anything and everything a doctor can feasably, or infeasably bill you for, frugs and pills, and more visits, and a career in being a patient.
It’s been recently admitted by the medical establishment that cancers grow and receed and die over and over throughout the entirity of one’s life, but if they find one, they are going to jump on it and wipe you out, sorry, loot you and your entire savings in the process. You won’t need the money anymore, you’re dead, but what about your widow or widower? Not their problem, apparently.
I’m so sick of “doctors” and insurance companies, and drugs and pills. and uneccessary hip replacement surgeries that patients survive for anout two weeks, but with a new and better hmechanical hip that goes bad if you don’t die “peacefully” a month after the surgery on your 97 year old grandmother. It’s all voodoo now, completetly disreputable. I don’t trust a one of them anymore. and the proxy doctors offices big pharma pushing big pharma products of questionable but “legal” “drugs” and pills. People’s wierd faith in government is predicated on these now institutionalized quacks and the unquestioned loyalty they demand since of course, they are educted “professionals” now, aren’t they? And that goes back quite a ways now doesn’t it, hundreds if not thousands of years>?
We are from the government unions and we are here to loot. Out of money? No problem, we will let you borrow it. Out of borrowed money? No problem, you can owe it to us… with interest. We’ll be back for da muny.
“…most of them will probably go to their graves raging at The Man who kept them from their Marxist Utopia”
Let us encourage that outcome. It’s just a matter of time before the prostitution rings become armed gangs and the Neighborhood Watches an armed and well regulated militia. Wear your pants around your ass? Aim twelve inches above the belt buckle.
13. An Préachán
For my banner I pick a medium blue background with one of them Hungarian sheep dogs sitting on a hill, a 1911 or Browning Hi-Power on his hip.
16. Gaffe Prices
As a member of the profession I have to sadly say your rant is wrong but only in degree; there are still plenty of islands of integrity left but they’re surrounded. Back surgery is clearly overdone IMHO and you might also mention the electronic medical records racket. I don’t really think that many doctors are truly unethical but there is a huge financial squeeze going on plus the younger ones (ie, younger than I am) were not raised in the conservative climate of yesteryear.
Blast @ 10:“You cannot negotiate with yourself to create an obligation that a third party has to pay.”
Doing exactly that was a big part of what brought Enron down. McLean & Elkind in “Smartest Guys in the Room” (2003) describe how CFO Andy Fastow started his own investment company on the side which bought interests in Enron assets. Of course, in the negotations between Fastow & himself over terms and conditions, Enron’s shareholders’ interests got the dirty end of the stick. Fastow went to jail. Some of our union-bought politicians may come to hope that their treatment will be as civilized.
But there is nothing new under the sun. Olson’s “Rise & Decline of Nations” (1983) is full of guilds and the like repeatedly capturing the state and driving it into extinction (including themselves). The good news is that the human race has survived this kind of self-defeating stupidity before. The foolish union officials and their short-sighted politicians are unsustainable. After the necessary period of chaos, life (for some) will go on.
Peter Boston #14:
I lived in Calif for 10 years, owned two houses there, had the best job of my life there, still have many friends there, now am employed by a private firm which has its corporate HQ in Calif.
But I cannot figure out why the public sector unions in Calif now seem to have so much influence.
I have never lived anyhere that anyone gave a rat’s rump what the public sector employees wanted. To the contrary, most people seemed inclined to think that if it was bad for the public sector employees it almost certainly was a good thing.
So what’s different about Calif today? I have heard that the public sector employees have a high percentage of Hispanics, and I guess that might swing the Hispanic vote, both legal and illegal.
My friends there say that the TV ads that come out from the unions in an election are incredible in intensity, but at some point that has to wear thin, when people don’t have jobs themselves.
ADE@ 7
I don’t claim to know the rights and wrongs of this case but I do know that if the banks can not foreclose on a mortgage they will start considering a mortgage unsecured debt. In simple terms that maens that mortgages will in very short order become unavailable unless you can put something in the order of 25-50% down, have near perfect credit, you have other collateral, and you are willing and able to pay a much higher rate of interest. This will either gut shoot the construction industry and/or require the government to be the primary provider of mortgages. We have seen where that leads with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mack. Another example is that the EU has unilaterally changed the terms of the Greek bonds. Once that sinks in I expect that independant capital will flee Euro zone debt as fast as it can and that debt will become much more expensive to finance.
I have lived in California most of my life and I can’t explain it. Communists in the north sticking it to the god fearing conservatives of the south? It is class warfare.
Like a parasite that kills its host, for example Ichneumonoidea, public sector unions, as a specific case, seem stuck on self-interest. What is good for me, rather than subordinating self interest to the general welfare of a well-ordered society.
It can certainly be argued that unions have produced better working conditions, among other issues. However, leadership yields to unstable positive feedback mechanisms. Promising increased benefits as a means to obtain power & position.
It’s understandable that teachers, for example, want to be shielded from poor leadership in school administration. Once politicians gain sway in public school systems, dismal results are certain. All we have now is a circus of “programs of the month” and more firey hoops for teachers to hurdle.
In the corporate arena, despicable leadership in the boardroom and corporate officer ranks seems to demand offset by union power. I have never heard of an officer in the US military demanding a couple of million to cushion his departure after failing in leadership in combat.
Still, it is poor leadership and followership that demands an ever-increasing share of the public trough at the unjust expense of the public they are purported to serve. Despicable.
How does this square with such well received lines such as “Ask not what your country can do for you…”? It is noteworthy that we need not even make attribution for people to understand the source.
Self-interest without attendant shame. Disregard of the interest of the public and the nation. Would that there were some shame in those folks, leaders and followers.
rwe @ 20: But I cannot figure out why the public sector unions in Calif now seem to have so much influence.
It’s too simple, really, they buy politicians with union funds, which are taxpayer funds, which their politicians then use to further reward them to fund their reelection, a lovely closed circle with positive feedback can’t you hear the screech as this is elevated to the national level by Obambus the Zeroeth?
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ob @ 21: but I do know that if the banks can not foreclose on a mortgage they will start considering a mortgage unsecured debt.
Good point, and as banks are just not allowed to carry much unsecured debt this is ugly, requires the Fed print more bongobucks and hand them to the bank to compensate. Ugh. I’d never realized that was the dynamic. Even foreclosed, while they carry it … I guess then it is “just” a nonperforming asset, but that’s better?
All I know is I have a house to sell in a moderate neighborhood in Los Angeles, and it ain’t moving because it’s neither a repossessed wreck nor a 100% up to date and perfect move-in. The middle market is a disaster. I’m discovering this is yet ANOTHER underreported drag on housing, and no real improvement on the horizon.
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You want previews, we’ve got previews:
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/sacha_baron_cohen_responds_from_COcym1GEcPohzpJLQkfAYO?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=
Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest alter ego, Gen. Aladeen, has responded to being banned from Sunday night’s Academy Awards.
Cohen called “Today” hosts Carl Quintanilla and Ann Curry this morning — in character as tyrannical despot Aladeen — to express his “outrage” over the Academy’s decision, saying, “I had to delay 30 executions to do this,” and threatening that, if the Academy does not change its mind “oil prices might be raised.”
“On behalf of the nation of Wadiya, I am outraged at being banned from the Oscars by the Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Zionists,” says Cohen. “While I applaud the Academy from taking away my right to free speech, I warn you that if you do not lift your sanctions and give me my tickets back by 12 p.m. on Sunday, you will face unimaginable consequences.”
“Furthermore, it is an act of aggression that no Wadiyan films have been recognized by the Academy,” says Cohen. “Where are the nominations for ‘When Harry Kidnapped Sally,’ ‘You’ve Got Mailbomb’ and ‘Planet of the Rapes?’”
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Roger Simon just posted this on the PJ Tattler too.
No Worries Mates – We’ve got a whole generation of Daddy’s Girls acomin’
http://tinyurl.com/6rjeq7v
We’ll put those radical feminists out to pasture!!!
Vallejo:
Me, I blame Bill Clinton and the base closures after the USSR went TU. Mare Island Naval Shipyard was THE major employer and taxpayer.
RWE @ 20:
That influence comes from the self-negotiation: one) voters ignoring the terms that the elected negotiate with the union “because it doesnt affect me”; two) having the local govt act as the collector for union dues; three (and more importantly) the union recycling those dues to reelect the cooperative pol.
The union dues are taken from a limitless pool of tax money so that the pols have unlimited funds to run with.
More or less what Josh said.
The main narrative that emerges from the Stockton/Vallejo saga is that the system has no capacity to fundamentally reform itself. It will cling to an unsecured rope, keep scraping at the bottom of an empty barrel, try to squeeze blood from a stone as if reason didn’t matter. It is in fact behaving like a crazy addict, the drug in this case being taxpayer money not crack. But the behavior is the same.
That suggests the system will not pull itself out of the dive until it finally hits rock bottom with its face. No logic, argument, demonstration of reason or explanation will dampen its cravings. Things have to get to the point of Detroit and beyond; maybe literally get to point of self-destruction before things change. That is the saddest thing. People don’t change. They need Darwin to finally take them off the board, like a movie star or rock singer who finally offs himself from prescription drugs because the singer was still there but the mind and the will were not; it had fled, never to return.
The good news is that unlike individual humans, societies are more diversely personified. Not everybody, like the Owls, are willing to go the “Pro or Ho” route. Internationally, bad as things are, things are better in America than in Europe; better than in the Middle East. They are stuck — how did Aladeen put it? — in the Planet of the Rapes. Yet not everyone there is like that, except they too are chained to the system till the end of the ride.
They say the Irish monks saved Europe simply by remembering, preserving and keeping a citadel of knowledge away from the outer dark. Maybe that’s what groups like the Owls do, and what everyone in the end, will be reduced to attempting.
mojo…
Yes, yes, yes…
That’s where the sugar HAD been coming from. Even the local school system received ‘impact’ monies.
So much sugar created a diabetic economy.
The actual payroll costs in Vallejo ramped hyperbolically. Total compensation for rank and file firemen reached almost $200,000 per annum. (!)
It would help if you new that the surrounding area is a low cost of living area — not San Francisco by a long shot.
( Once you leave the base you’re in the sticks. It has been used in movies: the Killer Elite comes to mind. )
Top-of-the-line salaries equate to multi-millionaire status: $ 500,000 per annum ( ish ) when you back in all of the sweet sugar / insane retirement packages that they wrote for themselves.
I strongly suspect that the ‘negotiators’ normed their package on Alameda NAS and Hunter’s Point. ( San Francisco )
As for being the major employer — it was the ONLY game in town — and for miles around.
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As for why Mare Island was ever built: almost all of the Bay Area was and is completely unsuitable for ocean level ship locks. It’s nothing but silt — all the way down to the last turtle.
However, up the bay near Vallejo faulting threw up a choke point between the Sacramento River delta and San Francisco Bay. During the last ice age annual super-floods eroded all of the softer soils. ( Flowed like the Amazon, it did. )
And so, the USN was compelled to use Mare Island for battleship repairs. ( Its original purpose. )
IIRC, Mare Island was the decommission facility for the Iowas. Certainly, BB61 anchored in the moth-ball fleet for many years. You could see her from the I-680 freeway.
Prosperity to poverty
Is but a tiny jump
The city on a hill is now
The city on a dump
That suggests the system will not pull itself out of the dive until it finally hits rock bottom with its face.
Nor even then, that’s the problem. The Dark Ages can last centuries.
This isn’t huge news, it’s all in Kuhn (or if you prefer Darwin), much less history.
You can’t beat something with nothing, and as the old guard struggle, they never struggle any harder than against anything new. Yet, eventually, something new comes along, a new paradigm breaks through, and we get another chance. You can probably express this all in second degree differential equations and come up with chaotic factors to explain it all.
But the good news is that in better times that new paradigm comes along sooner, even before the full face-plant, the old guard gets replaced in under a generation, though this is rare. Atomic theory had to fight off the most eminent scientists of the previous era, around 1900. Maybe the process has to be slow, or else every crackpot idea that comes around (global warming, cough) gets picked up and diverts things down worse paths.
That’s why government funding for crackpot ideas is a bad idea. Keep government out, let the bad ideas starve on their own, the good ones will prosper on their own, the ol’ invisible hand at work.
But politically, nobody wants to retreat, at least nobody in the west since the Renaissance began. Islam – well, that’s another matter. China is an interesting case, they have no tradition of progress, yet now they are absolutely drunk on technology, change, and capitalism, they are embarrassed at their own success – and I think almost as embarrassed at our current failures.
Anyway back here, the way out has to be forward. The Republicans (or the Democrats, were any of them sane) have to say, “This is the New Thing! Mo’ Betta Freedoms! Mo’ Betta Jobs! Mo’ Betta 4 U!” No Bob Dole “Bridge to the past”, not even in the face of Obambus.
It’s a bit of a pickle trying to be a conservative and coming up with a progressive-sounding message like “Mo’ Betta!” Yet, it has been managed, by the founders in the Federalist Papers, and by Ronald Reagan as the sunshine superman. These country club Republicans drive me almost as crazy as Nancy Pelosi. Can’t anybody here play this game?
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b @ 29: those old battleships were so beautiful! when the aliens arrive and want souvenirs, I think one of those might be on their top 10 list.
Stockton has major gang problems and one of the largest per capita percentages of
heroin addicts in the nation. Who needs cops? Cali might be getting ugly. Dr. Hanson has painted the central valley as going all third world. The world ends not with a bang but a whimper.
It is my understanding that California cities can dis-incorporate. All property taxes go to the County anyway but the cities get a proportion based on their tax rolls. If the city dis-incorporates, the County just keeps the whole thing. Stockton is the County seat of San Joaquin (like the Valley) county. Arguably, Stockton is redundant anyway. I don’t think that the County pays their deputies and firemen anywhere near as much as the City of Stockton pays (paid?) theirs.
@erc rodson:
I once read a story in the Richmond, Virginia daily newspaper, decades ago, about a proposal to solve all of the District of Columbia’s problems with drugs, gangs, illegitimacy, failing schools, political corruption, budget woes and being controlled by the U.S. Congress in one fell swoop by re-incorporating it into Maryland. The problem of course is that the Maryland legislature, at that time at least, had a significant membership from much more rural, less corrupt, less impoverished areas of the state. As you can imagine, they said HELL NO! They had no intention of shouldering the burden of the District.
Stockton is in the same position today. For the last several years it has swapped places with Detroit and Cleveland as the most miserable city in the U.S. and hasn’t dropped out of the top ten for years. The city is over run with illegals and has always been really raw. A bastion for poor minorities who couldn’t be found in other parts of the San Joaquin valley. It’s dirty, poorly maintained, corrupt and crime ridden!
Much of the real political power and money in San Joaquin County is thirty miles or so down the road in Tracy which has been transformed into a semi-lily white enclave of overpriced (but recently severely deflated and defaulting) McMansions because of it’s convenient commute to Silicon Valley 60 miles away.
Stockton is done, just like Detroit, it just doesn’t know it yet!
When the California government is finally forced to make the draconian cuts that are necessary and constitutionally required, Stockton will either largely become a ghost town or it will violently implode. Either is long overdue.
Steer clear of Stockton, in fact, stay out of the central valley altogether. It’s incredibly dry nine months out of the year and the current population far exceeds the lands natural carrying capacity. When the trouble really starts, a lot of people are going to die of dehydration or from drinking contaminated water all up and down the valley.
Cheers!
Armageddon Rex
Still bitter and clingin’ to my guns!
Rex !
Very true. I have relatives in Visalia and, until last year, owned citrus and not trees in Tulare County.
The folks in the Valley are in big trouble: water, freeze this winter, illegals and rural crime and drugs. Dr. Hanson (the Sage of Selma) writes elegantly about this situation.
I am an old second generation Californian, born 1945, been following things since abut 1950 (reading about the Korean campaign in the Santa Ana Register).
I, and I expect you also, have seen California destroyed by progress.
You guys are wrong about health care, it’s far far worse than anyone not working in the system can imagine!
4 cent Colchicine for gout now over 5 bucks.
$1.70 steroid cream now at $52.70.
There isn’t a limit to the greed of big Pharma.
Professional patients? There almost isn’t any other kind! The dollar consumption of these “gamers” is at levels beyond belief. All paid for by Medicaid. How about crutches for finger surgery? Does sound like fraud, doesn’t it? But somebody must have needed them?
This doc to that doc to this drug from that drug to this procedure from that procedure, to this clinic from that clinic, it’s endless.
These products/services are valueless to the recipients, ’cause that’s exactly what they paid for them!
The folks that come in with legitimate concerns, I am so very very proud to help them! Even prouder to pray for them!
Moot at #18
BHP, terrific, have a 40 S&W, Tripp Research chrome, Sprinco Corbon Recoil (65% reduction with Ranger ammo), fantastic shooter, Tam prefers over her 45ACP S&W 1955 for HD!
I guess I’m back to my ’85 GC Nat Match SS Colt 45 (serial 35xx), and the HK P7s.
I inherited a pretty nice little piece of property in Patterson, CA, same general area as Stockton, last year. Sold it as fast as I could for what I could get for it in the terrible market down there; who wants to ride CA down?
As to the CA union problems, a subject I know a bit about, the first issue is that under CA law, the union gets to decide whether there is a union shop or not, and that is unique to CA. In the other states that countenance public employee bargaining, so far as I know, all make whether or not the union can compel dues a subject of bargaining, most also make whether or not the employer deducts dues, called a check-off, a subject of bargaining. In CA, if the union decides through its own processes that it has majority support, it can impose a union/agency shop and compel all the employees in the bargaining unit to pay dues and the employer to withhold dues and transmit them to the union.
In states where this is a subject of bargaining, a responsible administration can hold the union/agency shop hostage to the union being reasonable on other terms of the agreement. My state, Alaska, is the only fully unionized state that consistently has a Republican governor, legislature, or both. The fundamental reason is that the oil industry owns the Republicans just as organized labor owns the Democrats, and that makes for a pretty good contest. When I was director of labor relations it was kinda like having Saul Alinsky pull you one way and the Governor General of the British East India Company pulling you the other, a well-paid and powerful version of being drawn and quartered. It results in even Democrat governments having to be semi-responsible on at least the economic side of bargaining since under our law, the Legislature has to approve the monetary terms of a labor agreement by specific appropriation; if the union runs up too big a tab, the Legislature can say no.
When you have a Republican Governor, you can put the unions’ institutional interests in play by threatening their dues stream. Also, when the Legislature refuses to fund an agreement, the union is without a contract and is relatively powerless against a determined employer. As far as I know, we’re the only union state to have done it, but we have repeatedly stopped enforcing their compelled dues clauses by refusing to fire employees who don’t pay dues when the contracts expire. Unions become very reasonable when their income starts to be threatened. In CA, you can’t do that.
I talked to the CA labor relations people quite a bit back during Swartzenegger’s initiatives. Actually they were pretty sanguine about the fact that they were about to get their heads handed to them. They didn’t have the AG or the Legislature, or any friends, when they took the unions on and they didn’t have a way to cut the unions’ dues off. Consequently, the unions used dues money to beat the Administration to death in the media. Ironically, the 9th Soviet, er, Circuit, would probably be a good circuit to take on the Constitutionality of CA’s dues laws and the unions’ dues schemes. Frankly, in Blue states, unions have nothing to fear from the government so they make no attempt to adequately and accurately separate their costs of collective bargaining from the “social, political, and fraternal” activities of the union. It is black letter law that no employee who objects can be compelled to pay for the “social, fraternal, and political” costs of the union, so any attack on a union’s dues structure is likely to be successful. All it takes is the guts to do it and the unions’ nuts are in a vise.
We need to bail these poor cities out. All of us. Only the feds can make this happen…. but where to get the money? Having the ability to tax income in any way that it wants, allows the Feds to create an exise tax on “excessive” pensions paid out from systems that are drowning. These excise tax revenues could be cycled back to the plans that need help. This would bypass the unions and their politician lapdogs.
Economy of core Bay Area is strting to recover. In property crazed california, this might spill over to Vallejo.
This might be our last bite at the capitalist apple. My advice is for everbody to make it a good one.
@38 – and you don’t think the unions have lapdog politicians at the federal level?
@#18, moot. You are right. A rant usually focuses on a diatribe against one to the exclusion of any other arguments that clarify the situation. Doctors are trained to be ethical, but their individual position is set against more powerful entities. Insurance companies operate as middlemen and doctors are often squeezed or enticed to go along with some other program at odds with what they are taught. And some do, and some don’t. Insurance companies might be alright if left to self regulate or be protected from intrusion by the state, but it looks as if we’re past that now.
“The city has also taken steps to find more revenue. It’s created a one-stop permit center for developers and is asking for a 1-cent sales-tax increase and medical marijuana tax on the Nov. 8 ballot.”
With all the marijuana that is used in California, that tax alone should be enough to solve all their problems. Pathetic.
Comming soon to most cities and states in your area,
Destroy America, 4 more years…
And now the solution to all pension problems in CA:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/24/4287094/california-democrats-push-pension.html
Yes, CA will lose all private employers under this plan … I need to think about selling my house before others figure out that this will destroy CA … maybe Google can get an exemption for a while.
Unlike most of the posters here I live in Stockton. And have for almost 60 years. Begun in 1845 Stockton became the supply center for the Southern mines during the gold rush. In the 1920′s Stockton was the second largest industrial city in California. It remained an industrial powerhouse well into the 60′s. Caterpillar Tractor was invented here. They once employed 10,000 people here. There’s a seaport, ample rail transportation, it’s at the intersection of both major North-South freeways and I-205/580 to the Bay Area. From Stockton you can go to San Francisco in two hours, The Monterrey Penninsula in less than three, the Napa Valley in less than two. The first private university West of the Mississippi is in Stockton. There is a Symphony orchestra that is in the black and performs a full concert schedule and the Haggin Museum with a world class art collection and a year round series of exibitions both local and travelling. Stockton has two real problems. In the 1970′s in a fit of absence of mind the then City Council required Real Estate developers to provide low income housing in all the new developments. This guaranteed that a bunch of neighborhoods (like the one I lived in) quickly turned into slums. The second problem is that Stockton was divided into four assembly districts ensuring that there was no state level politician who was a go-to guy. San Joaquin County rapidly turned into a garbage can for the rest of the state. There are seven state prisons in the county and something on the order of 140 halfway houses in Stockton. The jail is consistently overcrowded, The police are reduced to answering only the calls where a crime is in progress or writing tickets to enhance revenues. So if you live in a nice neignborhood (I do) and have a good job (I did) it’s a good place to live. It’s always been a tough town, like most of the ag towns in the Valley but what it really needs is leadership that has the guts to call a spade a bullet and put the thugs in jail.
I don’t mind California and its cities creating a lot of Detroits (because that seems to be what they want) as long as they do not expect the federal government to help pay for the results. Those of us outside of California need to make sure our representatives and senators start now to prevent that from happening.
Good luck with that Over50. Too many electoral votes in California for Uncle Sugar to employ tough love….
Not a hope ‘n Hell, Over50; too many votes and too much Democrat money coming from CA. They can just blithely spend money because they’re confident the rest of the Country will bail them out. My solution would be to just let those EBTs not recharge one day and let the looting begin. Since the white lefties have all the nice rides and plasmas and the Gangstas have all the guns, when the Gangstas kill all the white liberals, the military and police can come in and kill all the gangstas are restore order, and Kali and the Nation will be a better place.
PM has devolved into a Randian garbage truck. Socialism? Anything to the left of Rands anarcho-capitalist wet dreams is “socialism”. Like Marxist, you freaks think you know the truth, are privy to the truth. You live in a fantastic world—frankly, you embarass the real right wing intellectuals. So, continue in your revisionist bs where Hitler was a leftist, Obama is a Marxist, Reagan is an icon of frugality and sagacity. Continue to whisk yourselves into the dustbin of history.
Richard Wilson, you can start with Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism”, and if you can read it with comprehension, you might graduate to F A Hayek’s “The Fatal Conceit”. After that, come back and reuse your revisionist history to explain how Hitler was not a leftist and, following his next Presidential fiat, how Obama is not a Marxist. These books may give you a glimpse into the minds of real conservatives. Conservatives don’t profess to know where free markets will take our civilization, but we do know that the wet dreams of socialism cannot ever come to pass in a society larger than a family clan. But, yes, conservatives are a little freakish when they run counter to the prevailing political perceptions in what is left of our country.