Hello, My Name is Stockton, California. Prepare to Die

This piece is adapted from an article previously published on Al Fin Potpourri


Like many other California cities, the cost of pensions, pay, and benefit packages is bankrupting Stockton, California. In fact, Stockton has already declared bankruptcy. The city cannot afford to hire new police officers, because all the money is going to pay for the pensions and benefits of old police officers and other municipal employees -- current and retired.

Murder, rape, and robbery are becoming the new normal in Stockton, something of a preview of coming attraction to other Calfornia cities who find themselves in the same fiscal boat.

In Stockton, California, which declared bankruptcy earlier this year, your chances of becoming a victim of a violent crime such as murder, rape, robbery or assault are 1 in 70, which is nearly four times higher than the national average.

Your chances of being the victim of a property crime are even more likely, with 1 in every 17 residents of the city facing the prospect of having their house broken into or car stolen this year.

This is what happens when a city, county, state or federal government can no longer pay its bills and is forced to lay off workers. In the case of Stockton, the city has cut tens of millions of dollars from their budget, mostly targeting law enforcement and other essential services. _Stockton's Woe

In fact, in cities across the "blue zone" of the US, municipal workers' unions have enough power to bankrupt cities, and force the same type of hardship on their citizens.

Detroit, Michigan, is the true forerunner of municipal decay. And as you might guess, the municipal workers' unions of Detroit stand front and centre to blame for the downfall of motown, motor city.

What we are seeing is the doom of cities -- from Obama's Chicago to Detroit to inner city Philadelphia. Murders, flash mobs, out of control gang violence, and fat cat wealthy unions able to control elections and determine who gets elected to oversee their contracts.

Government officials on all levels are stuck. They are overloaded with debt and have no more money to spend. The only option is to start cutting services like law enforcement, emergency medical response, public food and homelessness support, and other social services like rental assistance. The effect of this collapse of government services is rising crime across the entire spectrum of criminal activity including murder, theft and organized attacks like flash mobs.

This is more than likely coming to a town near you in short order, no matter where in the United States you live. _shtfplan

The comments following the article linked above are also interesting.

Private citizens are being forced to come together to form citizen's vigilance groups, militias, and armed neighborhood watch posses. This is what comes from the US electing a president who is viscerally antagonistic to the private economic sector and the non-governmental economy.

If Obama is re-elected, expect the situation to grow even worse. Much worse.

A newbies' guide to UAVs -- fly your own security drone to monitor the mean streets around your gated community.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Sometimes You Have to Take a Closer Look

Under the "how to lie with statistics" category, Jerry Pournelle offers a simple puzzler. See if you can solve it:

Some Teachers Unions have pointed out that the average grade and high school performances in Wisconsin, which has teachers unions, are higher than the corresponding averages in Texas, which is a right to work state. This is true. The average student performance in Wisconsin is higher than the average student performance in Texas.

It is also true that the average black student performance in Texas is higher than black student performance in Wisconsin. The average Hispanic student performance in Texas is higher than the average Hispanic student performance in Wisconsin. The average white (non-Latino) student performance in Texas is higher than the average white (non-Latino) student performance in Wisconsin. The three classes are collectively exhaustive.

These facts are true, and they are not contradictory although they may appear to be. We’ll talk more about this next week, but if you are moved to comment I’m listening. _Pournelle

Jerry's simple puzzle is meant as food for thought. While the teacher's unions in Wisconsin claim that the higher average grades and scores in their state reflects upon the "superiority of union teachers," what it actually shows is something quite different -- and extremely politically incorrect.

Similar phenomena which appear to be paradoxical at the surface level, prove to be rather commonplace when one understands the dynamic processes involved at deeper levels. Anyone interested in the IQ debates might want to take a look at this Wall Street Journal article that attempts to deny the importance of IQ test scores. See if you can count all the logical fallacies (non sequiturs etc), and outright falsehoods.

Anyone with similar puzzles or examples of lying with statistics, feel free to share.

The Great $1 Trillion University Funding Confidence Game

As this semester begins, college loans are nearing the $1 trillion mark, more than what all households owe on their credit cards. Fully two-thirds of our undergraduates have gone into debt, many from middle class families, who in the past paid for much of college from savings. The College Board likes to say that the average debt is "only" $27,650. What the Board doesn't say is that when personal circumstances go wrong, as can happen in a recession, interest, late payment penalties, and other charges can bring the tab up to $100,000. Those going on to graduate school, as upwards of half will, can end up facing twice that. _Atlantic

University presidents can collect salaries in the millions of dollars, university professors on sabbatical can be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars every few years for not teaching. Luxurious facilities are being built on expanding university campuses in the middle of an ongoing recession. And universities are bursting with "administrative bloat," a serious problem pushing higher education costs upward far above inflation rates.

A fact of academic life is that the tuition-debt nexus keeps most colleges going. At Loyola University in Chicago, 77 percent enroll with loans, as do 85 percent in New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce. At historically black colleges, where endowments are low and students are often poor, it's usually 90 percent. Nor is soaring private tuition the only reason. At public Kentucky State University, with only $6,210 in charges, 76 percent sign up for loans; so do 85 percent at the University of North Dakota, where state residents pay $6,934. What these figures suggest that borrowing is as much to finance living away from home as for bursars' bills. Books, travel, and socializing quickly add up. Room and board charges have doubled in actual dollars since 1982 to enhance campus life. Bowdoin's menu features vegetable polenta and butternut soup, while Penn State provides legal downloads of music numbering two million songs a week. But let's be clear. It's not the colleges which are paying for these and similar amenities. It's the students, mainly by borrowing, which the colleges actively encourage. _Atlantic

Where else do we see this type of irreversible bloat and skyrocketing costs? Oh, yes. In the public sector union arena. And would it surprise you to learn that university staff and faculty across the US are pushing for union representation and collective bargaining rights? Can you imagine the scam running up to $10 trillion a year, with a little union help?

Only in government, academia, and the media does one see such a total disconnect from the brutal realities of economic life in a recession. Such huge multi-trillion dollar debts could only be run up when these giant special interest groups cover for each other. It is a perfect storm of obfuscation and lead-up to massive ruination of ordinary lives.

The sacrifice and long term burdens and economic scars would perhaps be worth it to many young people and families -- if only the youth were receiving valuable training and preparation for life. Instead, as a rule, they are receiving an indoctrination into a dysfunctional ideology, rather than a worthwhile education. That is what makes the entire confidence game so completely destructive.

Government Unions to Taxpayers: "Me Master! You Slave!"

One can see the economic future of at least half the states and cities of the US, by looking at California. Nowhere in the US is the power of unions so total and uncontested, and nowhere is the Democratic Party so dominant. And nowhere in the US is the economic future so rutted into a predictable  path to total collapse. The complete fusion of government unions with the US Democratic Party presents a picture of corruption and an apparent impossibility for meaningful reform which staggers the logical mind.

The Democratic Party has folded Sacramento into one of the tightest one-party grips in contemporary American politics. In November, bucking the national trend, Democrats in California won not just the governorship but 51 Assembly seats to Republicans’ 29, 24 state Senate seats to Republicans’ 14, and every statewide office. With the passage of a referendum lowering the number of legislative votes required to approve a state budget (from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority), California is that rarest of land masses for the 2011 Democratic Party: conquered territory. State Democrats have freedom to rule virtually unchallenged by the scattered, rusticated Republicans.

As 72-year-old Jerry Brown enters his second governorship, he has an agenda to match that power, with visions even greater than those that haunted his two-term administration of the 1970s and ’80s: building 20,000 megawatts of renewable power, laying a new high-speed rail network that will connect the state’s major cities, forging a statewide infrastructure for alternative energy, hiring thousands of green employees. The new governor’s environmental agenda is ambitious, untenably expensive, and indelibly popular with voters and lawmakers.

Yet when Brown looks out on Democrat-controlled California, he seems less like Caesar at the Rubicon than Wojciech Jaruzelski at the Gdansk Shipyard. Brown is champion of a workers’ party with monopoly control, yet all his plans are being derailed by a labor movement nobody can harness. _Reason

The unions’ political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state’s public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation’s and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination—high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes—has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state. _CityJournal

California may be more beholden to government unions than most US states, but it is far from alone. Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Illinois, New York, and a score of other states are deeply wrapped within the web of government union power, and may find it ultimately impossible to escape doom.

...public-sector workers are spoiled rotten. Government employees earn 21% more than private ones and are 24% more likely to have access to health care. Only 21% of private workers enjoy a defined-benefit (DB) pension, which guarantees retirement income based on years of service and final salary. But 84% of state and local workers still receive DB plans.

All this might be grand if states and cities could afford it, but they cannot; unlike the federal government, they have the pesky obligation to balance their budgets. The recession has already drained pension funds. _Economist

US governments are corrupted by ties to government unions from the top to the bottom. Good government is impossible under these conditions, much less a viable economic plan for commercial prosperity.

The enslavement of taxpayers by government unions is virtually complete in California, and at least a handful of other states. But the Obama government wants to put every US state into the same position as California and Illinois. It is not clear that the nation could recover from such a disastrous plan, if achieved.

More: Even the NYTimes is beginning to see the handwriting on the wall for government unions. Anyone still pro government union by now, simply has no brain. Such people are generally referred to as zombies, in the age of Obama. ;-)

US Public Sector Unions' Descent Into Chaos

Nationwide, state and local government pension plans are suffering a $1 to $3 trillion dollar underfunding. State governments are sinking, in large part due to impossible commitments to public sector unions.

Until now, no one has been courageous enough to point out the impossibility of meeting the exponentially rising taxpayer commitments to public sector union warchests. Until now. Both taxpayers and a few governors and legislators are waking up to this harsh reality.

But unions and their minions are not waking up. Quite the opposite. They are descending into incomprehensible chaos. As if the threat of violence could possibly change the fiscal facts. Only criminals and fools take that tack in the face of the dark budgetary winds that are blowing.

US Government Desperately Needs a Maintenance Shutdown

Machinery of all types experience wear and tear over time. Routine scheduled shutdowns for vital maintenance are part of any industrial plant's life cycle in the developed world. Such routine and profound plant overhauls prevent disastrous failures at future times. The machinery of large governments is no different -- it needs to be shut down periodically for crucial maintenance, replacement, and refurbishing.

The US government is in current desperate need of overhaul, requiring deep surgical cuts to prevent a far worse catastrophic failure in the future. Despite rampant quasi-superstitious fears over the thought of a government shut-down, the alternative of "business as usual" is the genuine cataclysmic alternative.

The government in Belgium has been shut down for 257 days, and the people there seem happy with the result. In the US, as long as the social security checks and other important entitlement disbursements continue during the shutdown, the people of America should be likewise content. Particularly if they were made aware that crucial maintenance was being done to the government, to allow it to avoid a massive breakdown within the next decade or two.

Fiscal policies of government are in particular need of overhaul, with no end in sight for a growing massive debt. Educational, immigration, and cultural policies are leading to a dumbed down Idiocracy which cannot support a high tech society for long. Current energy policies are leading to a terminal energy starvation whose fatal repercussions will rebound through the US economy and society in devastatingly short order.

The US elections of 2010 revealed a deep-seated dissatisfaction among the American electorate, with the direction of the Obama - Pelosi - Reid regressive government. Most Americans believed the nation was being badly mis-directed by its leadership. The election of 2010 re-arranged the US Congress as well as state-level legislatures and governorships. It was not a merely cosmetic overhaul.

There is an awakening at the American grassroots -- particularly among persons who must produce the wealth which the rest of the country lives on -- that the American government has grown a huge crop of freeloaders both within and around Washington DC and state capitals. It is an unsustainable crop which is choking off any chance of economic prosperity for the nation at large.

A few modest attempts to right some of these wrongs in the state of Wisconsin has led to a massive reactionary and potentially violent government-sector union response. President Obama himself has denounced the Wisconsin governor's attempts to balance the Wisconsin state budget -- using his campaign apparatus to bus in hundreds or thousands of outside agitators-for-hire in an attempt to intimidate the government and people of Wisconson into acquiescing to their own death-by-parasites.

What is happening in Wisconsin is bound to happen in many or most other US states, and eventually in the US government. No one knows how violent and bloody these standoffs can become, if the freeloaders of the public sector decide to go all out in demanding their special privileges and benefits. Mr. Obama has so far done everything he can to fuel public union intransigence, anger, and potential violence.

If something cannot go on forever, it will eventually stop. It is in the interest of government and public sector unions to accept the reality that a perpetual wild and exponential growth in their ranks and benefits is unsustainable. An orderly shutdown and overhaul -- similar to a deep maintenance shutdown in an industrial plant or a "controlled burn" in the wild -- is mandatory to prevent a cataclysmic collapse eventually.

Scheduled, elective surgery is always in the best interest of the patient, the surgeon, and the medical centre. It is time to schedule a deep surgical procedure on the US government.

An Overpriced Educational Establishment Becomes Public Enemy 1

More: If you want to know how the educational establishment could drift so far out of touch with reality, the words of Alexis de Toqueville may provide a clue:

"Should members of the lettered class," wrote the Frenchman, "fall into the habit of frequenting only themselves and writing only for one another, they may lose sight of the rest of the world entirely and thereby lapse into affectation and falsity, gradually alienating themselves from common sense...." _DeToqueville_quoted by Fred Siegel

Educational expenses in the US have been rising exponentially, while educational attainment has not even pretended to keep pace. Public sector educators are on the verge of rioting in US state capitols, and universities are cutting vital departments to balance budgets -- while continuing a costly and counter-productive administrative bloat.

In a budgetary situation being played out in other cash-strapped states and municipalities, the legislation requires workers to cover more of their health care premiums and pension contributions, although supporters say local governments will ultimately decide on health care contributions for their employees.

The Wisconsin legislation also requires collective bargaining units to conduct annual votes to maintain certification. Unions would lose the right to have dues deducted from worker paychecks and collective bargaining can only cover wages. _CNN

This type of reform is under-stated in the extreme, and long past due. If public sector unions are prepared to riot in the face of such desperately needed budgetary and policy reforms, imagine what they will do in the face of a genuine collapse -- which they seem to be working so hard to bring about?

At the higher education level, many forces are working together to bring about significant -- perhaps revolutionary change.

Nationally the price of college tuition increased more than 274 percent from 1990 to 2009 -- roughly four times the rate of inflation. That's even more than the brutal rise in health costs that has touched off a near-crisis in that field.

...Technology will change, perhaps cataclysmically, almost all colleges. That's according to Clayton Christensen, a BYU grad turned Harvard professor who is now an acclaimed expert on innovation. He is the lead author of a new paper, "Disrupting College," on what lies ahead, and soon, for higher education.

He has studied how new technologies have disrupted and transformed industry after industry. And often established companies were upended or destroyed in the process.

The same fate could happen to established universities, as technology brings the biggest changes in information dispersal since the invention of the printing press.

Christensen and his co-authors write: "Roughly 10 percent of students in 2003 took at least one online course. That fraction grew to 25 percent in 2008, was nearly 30 percent in the fall of 2009, and we project it will be 50 percent in 2014."

The shocks don't end with technology. "Disrupting College" suggests that "the business model of many traditional colleges and universities is broken." Moreover, this model's collapse is "so fundamental that it cannot be stanched by improving the financial performance of endowment investments, tapping wealthy alumni donors more effectively, or collecting more tax dollars from the public. There needs to be a new model." _DailyHerald

From "Disrupting College:"

America is in crisis. Employers say paradoxically they cannot find the right people to fill jobs even though the country is facing its highest unemployment rates in a generation. Competition with a rising China and India and their vast populations lend urgency to the need for the country as a whole to do a better job of educating its citizens. _DisruptingCollege

As science better understands how students learn, and as educational technologies offer revolutionary possibilities for new teaching paradigns, the mass production assembly line factory-style methods of education will find themselves squeezed from all directions. Those which are unable to change due to fossilised unions or other forms of paralysing groupthinks of entitlement, will ultimately be crushed.

Educators and establishment insiders from K-12 to University are demanding that a recession-plagued US society mortgage its future, in order to provide them tenure and generous benefits. The halo over the head of the educational establishment is slipping badly, as teachers and professors are starting to be seen more as extorting thugs than as wise, honest, and impartial learning coaches and advisors. At the state and local levels, the problem is clearly the public sector unions and a climate of entitlement among public educational workers. At the higher education levels, it is more a problem of administrative bloat and an insane groupthink crisis of a badly decayed leftism which dominates the humanities and administration on most campuses.

Union Boss: "Screw the Workers! We're In It for the Power"

How Big Unions Exercise Power

1. By getting friendly legislators, judges, and bureaucrats elected and appointed
2. By lobbying legislators and bureaucrats for favourable legislation and regulations
3. By well-timed work stoppages and slowdowns to influence public sentiment
4. By the use of violent attacks and threats of violence against political enemies
5. By using political influence to immunise union activists from arrest and prosecution
6. By using allies within organised crime as "force multipliers"

and so on . . .

Source: Breitbart_via_NewsAlert
When unions invade the public sector, they corrupt every aspect of government. No longer is government looking out for the people. Instead, the primary purpose of government is to protect special interests -- primary among them being public sector unions.

Unionised public sector workers can refuse to clear snow-clogged streets. They can refuse to answer distress calls for assistance. They can refuse to provide care to anyone they choose. They can do all this because the mechanisms which might protect the public from arbitrary abuse of power by unionised public workers against the public depend upon action by other unionised public workers -- or by the abusive public workers themselves.

At the same time that citizens in western countries grow older and less able to take care of every critical aspect of their lives, governments are growing increasingly unionised AND influenced by public sector unions. Public sector union members have different health care policies and different pension plans than everyone else. Why should they care if everyone else has to suffer from union abuse of power?

More: US States Begin to Fight Back for Sake of Survival

Unions Cry Crocodile Tears in Fear of Retribution, Beg for Mercy with Knife at Throat of Taxpayers

How Much Crap Will Americans Take from Their Governments?

Before the US could become an independent country, it had to fight a bloody revolution in order to force Britain to release its claim on the colonies. The US experienced its ups and downs, over the centuries, but other than a brief civil war its people have remained relatively loyal to the crown government. But things do tend to change over time, and we may soon see just how far royalty-imitating US governments can push their subjects before the people decide to rebel.

Many members of the ruling classes suffer under the delusion that "The Tea Party Movement" is as bad as rebellions in the US are likely to get. Consequently these pseudo-intellectual twits tend to direct their most concentrated bile against people such as Sarah Palin or Sharron Angle. These complacent fools have a lot to learn, and a long way to fall.

The US federal government is spending its way into oblivion -- but the US government can have new money printed to make up its deficits. US states, cities, and counties, are likewise spending themselves into perdition, but they cannot print their own money. Consequently, they must issue bonds and otherwise borrow money to operate. But as these local governments continue to spend beyond their means, eventually even bond investors begin to wise up. Their bonds lose value, and such governments must pay more to borrow more.

When governments reach the end of their ability to borrow, they will be forced to cut services and other obligations. But even cutting services and all obligations except for public sector union contracts will not save the cities, states, and counties. These profligate spenders are going to have to do the unthinkable -- declare bankruptcy and slash their union contracts to the bare bones.

Even that will not be enough. They will have to go back on their word to workers and retirees, and in many cases dump public sector union contracts altogether -- and make public sector unions illegal for many occupations such as police and fire.

The unions will not sit still for this, in fact they will become even more violent than we are accustomed to seeing them become. In addition, when police and fire departments go on strike, let the public beware. Many cities, counties, and states have already begun cutting back on essential services, so when law enforcement and fire departments go on strike, a lot of people may not notice very much difference.

The Pew Center on the States estimates $1 trillion of underfunding for the pensions and health benefits of states.

Economists Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Rochester and Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University have higher totals for pensions alone; their gaps are about $3 trillion for states and almost $600 billion for localities.

Underfunded health benefits for states and localities together are reckoned by different studies between $500 billion and $1.5 trillion, report economists Robert Clark and Melinda Morrill of North Carolina State University.

Whatever the ultimate costs, they threaten future levels of public services. The generous benefits encourage workers to retire in their late 50s or early 60s after 25 years of service. The health benefits typically provide coverage until retirees qualify for Medicare at 65.

To pay for unfunded benefits, either government services must be cut or taxes must be raised. _Samuelson

Here is the public union problem in a nutshell: Union members lobby vociferously for untenable wages and benefit packages. Greedy politicians willing to accept bribes to get reelected, go along. On any threat of reduction in benefits, union organizers get out the vote with massive fear-mongering campaigns promising ruin if they do not get what they want. At election time unions donate massively to candidates willing to back union sponsored agenda. Over time, school boards, city halls, and legislative bodies in general get packed with politicians accepting bribes (campaign contributions) from the unions. _Mish

Like homeowners, states and cities splurged on debt and found inventive ways to get around borrowing limits to finance projects they couldn’t pay for otherwise. And recently the federal government encouraged investors to pour their money into the coffers of these less-than-creditworthy borrowers.

Now some of those investors, like the few lonely mortgage-industry short sellers in 2005–06, have started betting against the borrowers. Time reports that some of them “are jumping into the credit default swap market to bet against cities, towns and states.” A CDS is an insurance contract that protects a bond holder against default. But there’s a difference: You don’t necessarily have to be exposed to the underlying bond to buy a CDS. They can be bought or sold, and are priced depending on the market’s perception of bond default probability. If the risk increases, it is likely that the demand for CDSs will too, leading to an increase in their price. Brian Fraser, a partner at the law firm Richards Kibbe & Orbe LLP, told Time, “The spreads on CDSs have been growing, and the dollar amount of CDSs on municipals has grown in the last year. That’s a clear warning sign that people are effectively starting to short the muni market.”

The state and municipal debt crisis could culminate in a request for the third near-trillion-dollar bailout of the last two years. That much federal borrowing on top of the current debt could very quickly have an impact on interest rates and on the dollar. And at that point, we can just forget about the recovery. _ReasonMag

The last quote above suggests that once the repercussions from state and municipal defaults and overspending percolate through the federal government bailout process, we can forget about any economic recovery.

But that is just the author's optimism speaking. In reality what you can forget about is any kind of domestic harmony between government worker and taxpaying citizen.

What should you expect, ultimately? When all of the money-grubbing corruption at the state, municipal, and federal levels impacts the total economy and sinks through the thick skulls of the average citizen, producer, employer, and investor, there will be more anger and hostility within the citizenry than can be contained by traditional and legal means.

Anticipating this, the federal government and many states have tried for several decades to strip US citizens of their US Constitutional Bill of Rights 2nd Amendment right to own firearms equivalent to weapons used by average soldiers in the national infantry. Since most Americans do not own or practise with firearms regularly, the reaction against such rights-limiting moves have been only sporadic and limited. But some people have been paying attention.

Americans tend to think in narratives -- stories -- so the stories that are passed from parents to children and from peer to peer are significant, in terms of how Americans will act in the public sphere. The more oppressive and "lordly" governments and government employees tend to act toward ordinary citizens, the more often stories such as "Unintended Consequences", "Let Us Prey," and the long list of similar narratives will be passed from person to person.

Such ideas will not likely captivate the majority of Americans' minds, but compared to the number of Americans who sit at the controls of the corrupt governmental enterprises, the number of persons who become indignant at the growing tyrrany of the ruling classes is likely to be significant.

The problems of debt and corruption are not unique to American states, municipalities, or federal governments. Governments in Europe are facing the same problems -- with the added problem of a growing underclass of third world Muslims who are apt to generate bloody uprisings of their own.

The bond markets do not look good in the intermediate term, as all of this excrement contacts the rotating fan blades. The economic picture in general does not look good, which means that demand for economic goods such as commodities -- other than food -- does not look good.

How all of that will play out on the international stage -- who will be tempted to launch a war against whom, and so on -- must be left to your imaginations.

In the opinions of Al Fin economists and sociologists, it is public sector unions and their political partners in the US and other nations in the west who will bear a huge amount of blame for the economic brittleness and lack of flexibility which may ultimately (over decades) lead to governmental collapses across Europe and the Anglosphere. These public sector unions artificially inflate the sizes of governmental agencies to enhance their own power and income -- and prevent all governments and their agencies from downsizing during the inevitable, cyclic economic downturns which occur in any economic system.

As the next economic downturn develops long before we recover from the current one, the underlying dysfunctionality of politically correct, non-assimilated multiculturalism will manifest themselves in a very unpleasant manner.

You must know that those who are forewarned will more likely ride out the storm to reach the other side safely.

Public Unions Pushing US States and Cities to Breaking Point

It is not surprising that New York, Illinois, and Ohio are the #1, #2, and #3 US states losing population. "Poodle states" such as these are kept on a tight leash by public unions. In New York, vital public services will be curtailed to satisfy the insatiable demands of the public unions. More from a governor on the front lines of the battle to save the US from the public unions:

The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or "strong back" jobs. They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming "industry" left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.

Federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector. And across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt.

How did this happen? Very quietly. The rise of government unions has been like a silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.

Public employee unions contribute mightily to the campaigns of [leftist] politicians ($91 million in the midterm elections alone) who vote to increase government pay and workers. As more government employees join the unions and pay dues, the union bosses pour ever more money and energy into [leftist] campaigns. The result is that certain states are now approaching default. Decades of overpromising and fiscal malpractice by state and local officials have created unfunded public employee benefit liabilities of more than $3 trillion. _WSJ

(Notice that Al Fin has replaced the word "liberal" by the more appropriate descriptor "leftist" in the quote above, using square brackets. Leftists destroy economies intentionally, while those who go by the misnomer "liberals" only do so out of incompetence.)

Even the left-leaning New York Times has expressed some concern over the kamikaze tactics of public unions and their legislative enablers in municipalities and state houses:

It is the long-term problems of a handful of states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, that financial analysts worry about most, fearing that their problems might precipitate a crisis that could hurt other states by driving up their borrowing costs.

But it is the short-term budget woes that nearly all states are facing that are preoccupying elected officials.

Illinois is not the only state behind on its bills. Many states, including New York, have delayed payments to vendors and local governments because they had too little cash on hand to make them. California paid vendors with i.o.u.’s last year. A handful of other states, worried about their cash flow, delayed paying tax refunds last spring. _NYT

More states are approaching the breaking point due to unfunded pension, wage, and benefit liabilities to public unions.

It’s hard to overstate the havoc that a meltdown in the state and municipal bond market would cause. Many private investors and retirees are heavily invested in securities long thought safe. Worse, many pension funds, including state pension funds, have large positions in the muni market. The meltdown could feed on itself as falling bond prices would undermine state pension fund reserves and raise the interest rate on new debt issues. The panic will intensify and spread, sucking new states into the maelstrom — as more and more European countries have been affected by a crisis once limited to Greece. _AmericanInterest

Those US taxpayers who can get out, are leaving the states that have become enslaved to public unions and are growing impoverished as a result. But the same phenomenon is occurring at the US federal level, along with quite a few other fiscal, regulatory, and tax misadventures. Leaving one's country is a bit more complicated than leaving one province or state for another. But becoming an expatriate may well be easier than removing the politicians, regulators, lawyers, and union crooks who together are dragging the structure down.

You may want to add your weight to the much-maligned Tea Party movement before you go to those lengths. Most people are more attached to their homeland than they realise.

Who Said You Could Get Up? Bend Over!

If public employees retire at age 50 on a millionaire's income, you'll just have to pay more taxes, and work a few years longer to pay for it. You didn't actually believe that they were working for YOU, did you?

Many of the largest U.S. municipalities are understating the true size of their pension obligations by using inappropriate accounting methods, leading to $574 billion of unfunded pension liabilities, according to a study released Tuesday.

Those unfunded pension benefits are in addition to $3 trillion of unfunded liabilities that the study's authors have said exist among state pension plans. _WSJ

Reason

The only real choices you have are to either go expat, or go Galt. Otherwise, you're going to be paying for these people's sea cruises, motor homes, and summer cabins for the rest of your lives.

The result is a growing wave of pension shortfalls that threatens to wash over many local governments in the near future, the report said. The authors calculated that each household in the 50 cities and counties they studied owes an average of $14,165 to current and past government employees for their pensions.

The report says that five major cities -- Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Jacksonville and St. Paul -- have pension assets that can pay for promised benefits only through 2020.

Philadelphia, for example, has assets on hand that can only pay pension promises through 2015, the report says. But that assertion is disputed by some Philadelphia pension officials. _WaPo

Municipal bondholders are watching these developments closely (PDF), in the hope that they will not get burned by cities in the same way that Obama burned the auto company bondholders.

The US Democrat Party has been in bed with labour unions since forever. The relationship between the US DP and public sector unions is particularly close, and will only grow stronger as the pension crisis forces the unions to call in their markers. This will result in DP politicians losing more battleground elections, although most of the big city precincts are DP dominated (and bleeding cash).

Keep a close eye on Pension Tsunami for the latest developments.

Things Are Going to Get a Lot Worse

Public-sector unions aren't protecting government workers against abuse; they're inflicting abuse on the rest of us -- because private workers pay for all the government jobs by losing their own jobs and with higher taxes. _NYP

Public sector unions are sucking the blood out of the private sector.

Thirty years ago the vast majority of union workers were in the private sector. Public employees in unions reached parity with private sector members by 2009. This was aided in part by campaign contributions from the unions to elect Democratic Party candidates and generous pay packages and retirement plans passed by those same politicians in return.

By 2010, the general public received a series of shocks. The first shock was the jobless recovery of the Great Recession that cost 8 million jobs. Most of the job losses occurred in the private sector yet the majority of the $800 billion Stimulus Bill went to “save and create” public sector employment. The second shock was learning that civil servants earned twice that of private workers. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal workers received average pay and benefits of $123,049 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. The third shock was revelation of incredible retirement plans doled out by politicians since 1999. In 2002, California passed SB 183 that allowed police and safety workers to retire after 30 years on the job with 3% of salary for each year of service, or 90% of their last year’s pay. During the Great Recession, fireman began retiring with $150,000 pensions at age 52 despite a life expectancy approaching 80. In Orange County CA, lifeguards, deemed safety workers, retired with $147,000 annual pensions. The Orange County sheriff, recently convicted of witness tampering, will receive $215,000 annually while in jail. Bob Citron, the Treasurer of Orange County who pushed the county into bankruptcy in the 1990s, receives a pension of $150,000 per year. A tsunami of anger and resentment is building. _NG

$3 trillion pension disaster on the way Will Obama Pelosi bail out their union buddies yet again -- at the private sector's expense?

Pension Tsunami blog

Overpaid government worker blog

Is it time to end tenure for university indoctrinators?

At a time when nearly one in 10 American workers is unemployed, here’s a crew ...who are guaranteed jobs for life, teach only a few hours a week, routinely get entire years off, dump grading duties onto graduate students and produce “research” on subjects like “Rednecks, Queers and Country Music” or “The Whatness of Books.” Or maybe they stop doing research altogether....dropping their workweek to a manageable dozen hours or so, all while making $100,000 or more a year... _NYT

And those are the more responsible of the tenured professors. ;-)

Things are going to get a lot worse, because there are a lot more shoes left to drop.

As US interest rates inevitably rise, every additional $trillion that Obama adds to the national debt will be felt by all but the richest Americans. Eventually even Obama zombies will mutter Obama's name as a curse, like everyone else.

Intrinsic Injustices In Obama's America -- The Unstable Society

At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.

Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year. _USAToday

Public sector workers are becoming the wealthy masters and tyrants at the expense of hard working and productive persons in the private sector. Working together as collaborative unions and associated groups, public sector factions use taxpayer dollars to support politicians who support their cause -- an ever stronger, larger, and better compensated public sector. Even if it kills the goose that once laid the golden eggs -- private markets.

"What do they produce besides deficits and debt?" asked Nicholas Bavaro, president of Bavaro Benefit Advisors in Modesto, when we talked to him. He's also a former member of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, a state panel that determines the salaries and benefits of California legislators and constitutional officers. "They don't produce any product that consumers purchase. They don't invest. They don't create jobs."

As to the "high level of skill and education" of the federal workers supposedly managing all that contracting-out, Mr. Bavaro responded, "There's no comparison" to private-sector managers, who "are at-will workers. If they don't produce, they're gone. They live by the standards of their company. You can't do that with federal, state or local government employees" because of union contracts that make it nearly impossible to fire them. "That's why we're in the mess we're in" with the national economy, he said. _OCRegister

Bonus chart from EscapeTyranny:

The Obama Pelosi regime generously gave another bailout to union supporters -- this time to teachers' unions. Public sector unions are well placed politically, in the increasingly impoverished and unstable Obama Pelosi world. Not only can these taxpayer supported groups campaign for and vote for politicians who will keep the corrupt scam in operation, they can also enlist the services of a large network of "community organisers" and quasi - organised crime auxiliaries to squelch and harass public assemblies of the opposition, while making sure through the use of force that opponents are unable to stage peaceful counter-demonstrations anywhere in the vicinity of public sector union rallies. If you doubt the reality of all of that, you are not paying attention.

Pension Tsunami is a website that carefully follows and documents this massive and growing injustice in Obama's America. As Obama Pelosi proceeds to provide generous payoffs to its supporters, the underlying economy of the US continues to shrink. Tax revenues continue to decline, even as munificent benefits to public employees continue to grow beyond logic or justification.

Public sector workers are the new royalty. Perhaps they should wear crowns and display identification decals prominently on their motor vehicles, lest any commoners show disrespect out of ignorance of their relative status. More: Pampered Public Employees

Remember that antiquated document, the US Constitution? Don't worry about it anymore. It's history. We are almost back to where we were before all of that nonsense started.

Murder of the US Constitution? Suicide by Government?

WSJ
US states and municipalities are drowning under a tsunami of public sector debt.

So what does the US Congress do about it? The Democratic Party controlled Senate is rushing to pass a law to force ALL US states to give public sector employees the right to collective bargaining -- even if the states have explicitly chosen not to do so! Despite the looming catastrophe hanging over virtually all the states and cities that have allowed these workers to unionise, the Obama Pelosi regime is pressing a knife to the throat of states that are already struggling to survive economically.

The Senate is moving closer to passing legislation that would require states to grant public-safety employees, including police, firefighters and emergency medical workers, the right to collectively bargain over hours and wages.

The bill, known as the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, would mainly affect about 20 states that don't grant collective-bargaining rights statewide for public-safety workers or that prohibit such bargaining. State and municipal associations, as well as business groups, oppose it, saying it will lead to higher labor costs and taxes, at a time of budget deficits.

...The House passed a version of the bill in 2007. If enacted, the legislation would be a significant victory for unions, which are smarting over the failure of Democrats to pass a separate, broader bill that would have made it easier for unions to organize workers, especially in the private sector, where union membership has been in decline for years.

...If the bill becomes law, state and municipal associations expect legal challenges, saying the legislation might violate states' constitutional rights.

"If states and localities have chosen not to go in the direction of collective bargaining, that should be their right to do so," said Neil Bomberg, a lobbyist for the National League of Cities. Currently, 15 states don't grant collective-bargaining rights to public-safety workers on a statewide basis, two states, Virginia and North Carolina, prohibit such workers from bargaining, and four states allow collective bargaining for firefighters but not for police.

Mr. Bomberg said the National League of Cities is "neutral" on collective bargaining, but that the bill would be "a huge problem" for cash-strapped municipalities to hire staff or contract with collective-bargaining experts to negotiate with unions. _WSJ

Clearly, the US Congress is an ass -- a suicidal ass at that. The US Constitution was meant to limit the federal government to a few specified functions. The states were meant to be sovereign over most procedural matters of state government. The passage of this bill would simply add to the ongoing death knell for the constitution, and the US economy.

Such a simple thing, an innocent sounding thing. Until you understand the implications of how it is being done, and what the ultimate effect will be in the long run. Then it becomes absolutely devastating.

More: The US federal government itself is exploding in debt. That means we can expect more huge new spending proposals from Obama Pelosi. The strategy appears to be to overload the US economy with overwhelming debt which is programmed to snowball within a few short years to unimaginable proportions. By that time, most of the perpetrators within the Obama Pelosi government may wisely choose to take a wealthy retirement in Costa Rica.

This Is Your Dollar On Obama - Pelosi

ImpactLab
Before a leftist government can redistribute wealth, the wealth must first be created. Wealth creation typically occurs in the private sector, by persons who are motivated by self-interest. If the leftist government appropriates and redistributes wealth faster than it can be created by the private sector, the value of the overall economy will shrink -- regardless of government generated GDP statistics.

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA Today analysis of government data finds. At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. “This is really important,” Grimes says.

The recession has erased 8 million private jobs. Even before the downturn, private wages were eroding because of the substitution of health and pension benefits for taxable salaries.

...• Private wages. A record-low 41.9% of the nation’s personal income came from private wages and salaries in the first quarter, down from 44.6% when the recession began in December 2007.

•Government benefits. Individuals got 17.9% of their income from government programs in the first quarter, up from 14.2% when the recession started. Programs for the elderly, the poor and the unemployed all grew in cost and importance. An additional 9.8% of personal income was paid as wages to government employees.

...Economist Veronique de Rugy of the free-market Mercatus Center at George Mason University says the riots in Greece over cutting benefits to close a huge budget deficit are a warning about unsustainable income programs.

Economist David Henderson of the conservative Hoover Institution says a shift from private wages to government benefits saps the economy of dynamism. “People are paid for being rather than for producing,” he says. _ImpactLab (from USAToday)

And who is rioting in Greece (and soon Spain)? It is the public sector union freeloaders, who want to retire at age 55 to at least 30 years of leisure at taxpayers' (and the EU's and IMF's) expense.

American public sector unions are prepared to go to war to maintain their ill-won benefits -- even if it kills the productive private sector. Just like their violent cousins in Greece.

Public sector unions are bankrupting California, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and any other state where they can control who gets elected to the state assembly. It is a type of corruption that is very difficult to break and get rid of. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey is making a heroic attempt to save the state from the corrupt partnership of unions and politicians.

Obama - Pelosi represents the epitome of union - political corruption. If unions are successful in placing judges, law enforcement personnel, and government attorneys under the union blanket, there will be no way for a citizen to receive justice when abused by union aggression and violence.

When an entire nation becomes psychologically neotenised, academically lobotomised, and media zombified -- when the nation becomes an idiocracy -- it elects a government like Obama Pelosi. Unless concerned citizens move quickly to correct their mistake, it becomes irrevocable.

"Gold is down. Silver is down. Oil is down....."

The euro is down. Mortgage rates are down. Mortgage applications are down.

The main thing that is up is mortgage payment skipping. At least 10% of American households missed a monthly mortgage payment during the first three months of 2010. This is an all-time high in the post-World War II era. The rate was 9.1% in the first quarter of 2009. It rose to 9.5% in the final quarter. The trend is ominous. Americans will stop making payments on every other category of debt before they skip a mortgage payment. The fact that they are skipping mortgage payments indicates that they are in very tight straits. _GaryNorth

And the future doesn't look a lot better -- not with the current crop of university students, graduates, and the monkey-minded professors who are lobbing balls of shite into their heads:

Universities are sending young achievers out into the world with the words of rabid leftists ringing in their heads. It's a dismal picture, given the future the [leftists] running Washington have created.

...universities are no longer places to question authority, but cheerleaders for the establishment. It's a sad sight, given that it is graduates who will in the end be forced to foot the bill for these big-government excesses and warped values. _IBD

We are living in a "dumbed-down" world from top to bottom, of course. Parents abdicate their duties to raise their children to popular media and a leftist-curricula government educational establishment. Children are pampered, indoctrinated, have their self-esteem pumped up -- and are never really challenged, never pass through a distinct rite of passage separating childhood from youth. A bumper crop of Peter Pans and Cinderellas are flooding into the world, with no idea how to think, or what to do with themselves.

And that is just the way Obama Pelosi wants it. Because now that they've got the system twisted into the shape they like, who is ever going to be able to challenge them now, with the dumbing down of all future generations assured?

And the Obama Pelosi establishment intends to milk the taxpayer and the productive sector for every penny. And they don't mind breaking a few laws or traditions to do it:

From the G.M. bondholders, to the Black Panthers at polling stations, to ACORN to these assaults on private citizens, Obama is running a Hugo Chavez-style thugocracy. Like Chavez, he gets non-official "allies" to act as his henchemen and do the intimidation work. Obama provides the narrative and tells the story of "greed" while the SEIU provides the muscle. This is about power, not prosperity. _AndreaTantaros

Obama Pelosi's friends in the public sector unions are very happy with the way things are going. To make sure that the unions keep all of their friends in congress where they can do them the most good, the unions plan to spend $100 Million to grease the "wheels" for the 2010 mid-term election.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) plans to spend in excess of $50 million during the 2010 campaign, part of which will fund “a massive incumbent protection program,” according to Gerry McEntee, president of the union.

AFSCME spent roughly $67 million on its political activities in 2008. But the $50 million slated for the 2010 elections is the largest expenditure the union will make in a midterm election, according to union officials. The money will go to help defend the union’s top tier of eight Senate seats and 34 House members.

“We have got to protect the incumbency in the House. We have got to protect the incumbency in the Senate,” McEntee said. “It is going to be hard. Those tea-baggers are out there. There is an anti-incumbency mood out there.”

…The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) plans to spend $44 million in total on its 2010 election program. The union spent $85 million on its 2008 campaign, according to union officials. _The Hill_via_Gateway

That $100 million will be money well spent for the public sector unions, since the largesse of government extends all the way down from the federal level to the states, and to counties and municipalities. All of these levels of government are sinking under debt and pension obligations to public sector employee unions. Thousands of bankruptcies would be inevitable if not for the ability to get federal bailouts. It's like one big happy (crime) family! Only the taxpayer suffers, and if you're the unions: who cares about the taxpayer?

The Obama Pelosi criminal way needs only one thing more: a steady supply of uneducated, untrainable, and highly manipulable future voters -- by the millions. And it doesn't have to look far to the South to find them.

Various estimates put the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. between 10 and 20 million. One argument says we can't round up and deport all those people. That argument differs little from one that says since we can't catch every burglar, we should grant burglars amnesty. Catching and imprisoning some burglars sends a message to would-be burglars that there might be a price to pay. Similarly, imprisoning some illegal immigrants and then deporting them after their sentences were served would send a signal to others who are here illegally or who are contemplating illegal entry that there's a price to pay.

Here's Williams' suggestion in a nutshell. Start strict enforcement of immigration law, as Arizona has begun. Strictly enforce border security. Most importantly, modernize and streamline our cumbersome immigration laws so that people can more easily migrate to our country. _WalterWilliams

WHOOOPS!!! Dreadfully sorry. I must have allowed that politically incorrect Walter Williams to insert his opinion, instead of printing the ever-so-correct opinion of Obama Pelosi on immigration. I'm running out of space, so I will just summarize: Obama Pelosi says "Let everybody in as long as they're impoverished, ignorant, and likely to stay that way. That way we can be assured that they will vote for us -- because we will always give them free goodies and take care of them."

Obama Pelosi happens. It happens because enough voters were stupid enough to let it happen. If you're part of the thugocracy or the idiocracy, you are happy with Obama Pelosi. If not, you will either fight back, go Galt, jump in a lake, or find somewhere else to live.

Is it Time for Online Education for Every Child?

Since the Internet hit the big time in the mid-1990s, Amazon and eBay have changed the way we shop, Google has revolutionized the way we find information, Facebook has superseded other ways to keep track of friends and iTunes has altered how we consume music. But kids remain stuck in analog schools. Part of the reason online education hasn't taken off is that powerful forces such as teachers unions -- which prefer to keep students in traditional classrooms under the supervision of their members -- are aligned against it. _WaPo

North American schools have been failing students for decades now -- losing focus on core educational needs and spending too much of limited time and resources on politically trendy quasi-indoctrination and social engineering. Meanwhile, increasingly incompetent graduates of the system feed into a growing societal incompetence and dysfunction. The society is rotten to the core, and the core institutions just keep producing a rotten product, unfit for modern times. What is the answer?

How do we know online education will work? Well, for one thing, it already does. Full-time virtual charter schools are operating in dozens of states. The Florida Virtual School, which offers for-credit online classes to any child enrolled in the state system, has 100,000 students. Teachers are available by phone or e-mail from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. The state cuts a funding check to the school only when students demonstrate that they have mastered the material, whether it takes them two months or two years. The program is one of the largest in the country. Kids who enroll in Advanced Placement courses -- 39 percent of whom are minority students -- score an average of 3.05 out of 5, compared with a state average of 2.49 for public school students.

In his book on online education, "Disrupting Class," Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen estimates that half of all high school courses in the United States will be consumed over the Internet by 2019. But we have a long way to go to reach 50 percent. Seventeen percent of high school students nationwide took an online course for school last year; another 12 percent took a class for self-study. Many of these students, along with younger kids taking online classes, might be considered homeschooled, though that very concept is changing as they sign up with virtual schools connected to state systems.

...While many remain skeptical, online educators say parents are more open to the idea than they used to be. Baltimore-based Connections Academy has an enrollment of 20,000 students in 14 states, providing a full educational package primarily outside a physical school. Chief executive Barbara Dreyer says that "questions like 'does this even work?' have died down."

But though the families of students enrolled in online programs rave about them, cultural resistance has been slow to fade. And winning hearts and minds isn't the only hurdle to widespread adoption: Virtual education remains essentially illegal in many states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Seat-time requirements -- which mandate that students' butts be in classroom chairs, often within the sightline of a qualified teacher, for a certain number of hours -- are a major barrier.

...Unions are right that virtual schools are competition. Oregon teachers unions, alarmed about declining enrollment in traditional schools, made fighting a Connections Academy charter school their top legislative priority last year, eventually forcing the legislature to cap enrollment in online schools and mandate face time with teachers, killing prospects for growth at one of the top-rated schools in the state. _WaPo

Contemporary government education in North America is so bad that millions of parents have taken their children out of the system altogether. Millions of other parents have moved their children to religious or secular private schools, in an attempt to escape the perpetual government dysfunction.

Bruce Hall's university model for high schools is one of the better ideas for reforming secondary schools on a bricks and mortar campus.

Charter schools are certainly better than the status quo, as well, on average. Teacher's unions are guilty of much of the destruction of the human capital of North America's last 2 generations, at least. The economic devastation felt in most US states and soon to be felt in some Canadian provinces is, at least partially, a direct result of the dumbing down of these generations in order to make them more politically correct and compliant with the dictates of governments. Charter schools that are able to slip out of the noose of teacher's union control at least have a chance to provide a real education.

If parents are able, it is probably best for children to be homeschooled for the first few years, at least. For some parents, online education may well facilitate quality homeschooling.

Al Fin Refuses California Use of Syndicate Hit Men

Despite being pressured by some of California's most powerful political operatives, Al Fin is holding steady in his refusal to allow hit men from the Al Fin Syndicate to assist California state, county, and municipality governments to balance their budgets. With California municipalities -- starting with Vallejo -- being forced to declare bankruptcy over the cost of their exploding pension obligations, some of the craftier government executives appear to be looking into creative methods for reducing their liabilities.

While some retired government workers in California may collect yearly pensions as high as $200,000 to $500,000, a good hit man will generally charge no more than $25,000 a hit, according to the FBI. Australian hit men receive only about US $10,000 per hit, and Russian hit men will rarely charge over US $1,000 a hit. Depending upon contractual benefits to surviving family members, a government might well come out ahead by seeking professional help.

Across the US, government employee pensions are roughly $2 trillion in the red. Already overburdened taxpayers in the private sector are left holding the bag, being forced to work into their seventies so that government workers who retired in their fifties can take expensive and extended vacation cruises.

California's unfunded pension liability is about $60 billion, and that for Illinois is about $55 billion. Both states are sinking rapidly due to the absence of government executives willing to stand up to public employees' unions. New Jersey is also in a serious situation, but the new governor, Chris Christie, is attempting to implement some tough measures which may save the state from defaulting on its sovereign bond debt.

Thanks to public sector unions, several US states are in danger of defaulting on sovereign debt -- just like Greece and Spain. Governments whose workforce is thickly infiltrated with union workers will find it easy to raise wages and benefits when their economies are doing well. But when the economy crashes and tax revenues dry up, the same governments find it virtually impossible to adjust wages or benefits downward, for union employees. Default on sovereign debt can follow.

US federal government programs such as Medicare and Social Security, are likewise ballooning in cost, as the baby boom generation hits retirement age and younger generations fail to maintain tax revenues high enough to pay for the exponential rise in expenses. Consequently, President Obama and the Pelosi congress have devised a clever means to kill off large numbers of US senior citizens, and called it ObamaCare. An unfortunate side effect of ObamaCare is that it will burden the US economy with many $trillions more debt, but perhaps to Obama and Pelosi that is another good thing about the plan.

The use of hit men to eliminate the most costly recipients of overblown public employee pensions is likely to be limited to California -- where peculiar rules make it especially easy for mediocre employees to retire to the guaranteed lifestyle of a millionaire -- and to Illinois, where it is impossible to tell the difference between government and the mob. For most of the other 48 states, the stark example of their most irresponsible fellow states may jolt them into at least temporary sobriety. Hit men should not be necessary.

Regardless, you can rest assured that no Al Fin Syndicate hit men will be allowed to assist California to get out of its public employee pension mess. Al Fin feels that the California Assembly got itself into the mess, and it should either get itself out of the mess or die trying. Either way. ;-)

Zombie US States Follow Lead of Zombie King

The history of public sector unions goes back to 1962 when President John F. Kennedy signed executive order 10988 allowing unionization of the federal workforce. This changed everything in the American political system. President Kennedy’s order swung open the door for the unrelenting rise of the unionized public workforce in many states and cities. _Mish

US states have fallen into an inescapable financial quagmire, owing largely to their growing debt obligations to public employee unions. This problem is devastatingly unsolvable as long as public sector unions are allowed the same collective bargaining rights as private sector unions. As long as public sector unions can get friendly legislators and executives elected, the exploding Ponzi scheme will continue to the bitter end.

The problem in the US goes back to the early 1960s, under green rookie president John Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy thought he was doing the right thing, but he was never completely sure. And although Mr. Kennedy is long gone, his legacy of union-instigated exploding debt has just begun.

In 1962, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, which allowed collective bargaining and gave unions other powers.
The same year Kennedy also gave public-sector unions a tool to justify higher wages by signing the Salary Reform Act of 1962, which established that there be "comparability" of public-sector pay to pay in the private sector.
One senses that even Kennedy wasn't sure he was right. The executive order, for example, excluded the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and any other office performing security functions should its head deem that collective bargaining would endanger national security. One of the slowest federal agencies to obey the order and extend recognition to unions was the Justice Department, headed by President Kennedy's brother Robert.
Observers understood what Kennedy had done. Later presidents might move against public unions – as Reagan did against PATCO, the air traffic controllers' union. But they couldn't
This reluctance to allow union bargaining in sensitive areas is germane now because the American Federation of Government Employees is petitioning for the right to organize the 40,000 airport security workers across the country.
The public-sector unions recently surpassed private-sector unions in membership. And the lengths to which Americans have gone to accommodate public-sector unions is extensive and artful. _OCRegister

There is only one governor in the entire US who seems to have the cojones to try to turn back the killing tide of public unions: Chris Christie of New Jersey. Christie's courage is rare among public officials, and public sector unions will do everything they can to destroy his effort to save New Jersey.

A recent poll revealed that 87 percent of Americans are aware of and concerned about runaway public debt. This is pretty amazing, since it's hard to believe that 87 percent of Americans would be aware of any single thing no matter how important.

[Public employees] aren't to blame for the system in which they work. This is not an attack on them. But when the school board in Fairfax County, Va., urges supervisors to raise taxes by $81.9 million, as reported by the Washington Examiner, and admits under questioning that the need for that is mostly because of exploding pension and medical benefit costs -- well, what Reason Magazine's Nick Gillespie calls "the coming war over public-sector pensions" is getting close, very close. _BaltimoreSun

What's to be done? Here is one person's idea:

So what's done is done, and there is not much that we can do about it — except work until we are 80 to help fund cruises for folks that retired at 55.

But rest assured that when this train finally arrives, it really will run us over — just like Greece, but much closer to home.

Because standing behind all of this mess is biggest black hole of them all: your Uncle Sam, sort of like a half-assed zombie king... But that's a hair-raising tale I'll save for another day.

Until then what you need to realize is this: The status quo can not possibly be maintained. _SeekingAlpha

"The status quo cannot be maintained." That qualifies as the understatement of the year. The question is, "how badly will things fall apart when they do indeed fall?" It is possible that the longer we put off the reckoning, the more catastrophic will be the fallout.

More at Pension Tsunami and Free Enterprise Nation

And, can the US pay its $99.2 TRILLION(!) dollar pension obligation?

Update 4 March 2010: New York State competes for Zombie State Award