NEITHER HOPE NOR CHANGE: California rejects even modest pension reform. “Unfunded public pension liabilities, which a Pew Center on the States report calculates is now as high as $1 trillion nationwide, threaten to bankrupt states that fail to address this ticking fiscal time bomb. But in California, which has an unimaginable $500 billion public pension problem and became the object of national ridicule for outrageous pension abuses in Bell, state lawmakers still couldn’t bring themselves to pass legislation preventing highly paid government employees from using unused vacation and sick days accumulated during their last year on the job to pad their life-long pensions.”

UPDATE: Reader Steve Rothstein writes: “To quote Powerline’s John Hinderaker from a June 26 post, ‘The tick (is still) faring much better than the dog.'”