We have written about this before. But since the Brown win it is imperative that we refresh your memory.  The Pension Bomb waiting to explode in California, will be much too hard for the taxpayer to bare. As the well to do, the entrepreneur and the corporation see more taxes on the California horizon, they are making plans to  flee the state. And when they do, it will be quicker than the locusts that eat an Iowa cornfield in minutes. What is coming back to California year after year, are not the pleasant sight of the swallows of Capistrano, but the swallowing of the hard earned salaries of the California taxpayer.

Be prepared for a massive Tea Party statewide in the coming months. The setting off of this Tax Day Tea party will be the eventual publication by the liberal mass media informing the tax paying public of the inequitable pensions received by state retirees. To bring the Tea Party Patriots up to date on the California pension debate, we provide this information.For example, California has over 15,000 retired workers collecting more than $100,000 per year in pensions. And that is not all, many retired at the age of 50 collecting 90% of their final years pay, which of course included overtime. Many of the retirees are ex-police officers, firemen and prison guards. We have no qualms with any of these civil servants, but when the people are broke, something has to give. Please note that the liberal politicians succumbed to the Union minions.  Whence they took office they were forced to pay back in spades.

California's unfunded liability is on par with the small State of Connecticut. California and Connecticut both have unfunded liabilities  of over $60,000,000,000, that is correct 60 Billion Dollars. We are taking bets, which state will go bust first? To top it all off the pensions are adjusted for inflation. However, all is not completely lost, the liberal politicians have begun to see the hand writing on the wall, the taxpayer is in rage and it will be the politician that will feel this rage.  What happens next is anyones guess. 

The solution proposed by THE NEW BOSTON TEA PARTY is the simplest yet. Keep the pensions at current levels, but tax them 100% after $35,000. How is that for a quick fix? Do the politicians have the intestinal fortitude to make this happen? We shall see. If nothing is done, Bankruptcy will result. After all, the out flow of productive citizens will no doubt pressure more politicians to levy more taxes on those left behind. That in itself will cause mayhem. We cannot wait to see a New Boston Tea Party in Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and all points in between.  Bring it on!
More information, you need to know, what you are paying for and why you are paying for it.

Do not make a mistake about it, the salaries of most teachers across this nation are bankrupting families and town budgets. Typically education budgets account for 70 to 90 percent of a municipalities budget.  However, only 20% of household units have children in school. Hence, 80% of those who do not get the benefit of the education monopoly pay 80% of the bill. 

Because teachers salaries are 50% higher when compared to private industry, one can conclude that the taxpayer is being separated by his money by a legal pickpocket, the teachers union.  Right now teachers salaries are set by negotiation, but if negotiation does not lead to a compromise the salary issue goes to arbitration. And who are the arbitrators?  In most cases, liberal enablers, ex-teachers and union patsies.  So, in the long run the taxpayer does not have a chance. He is doomed from the beginning.

The teachers lobby, that is the union, is against charter schools, teacher merit increases, pay for ability and any other form of improving the lives of our school age children. What can be done in the short term? Not much, but show your support for no budget increases. Demand accountability.  As we all know, the graduation rate in some areas of the country is 50%. What can we attribute this too? There is only one answer, the education monopoly.  It is said that 25% of those accepted to college have to take remedial reading and math courses just to qualify as freshman. What happened in elementary and secondary school? Didn't the teachers teach them anything?

Public Employee Pensions Should Be Fair All Around

Andrew G. Biggs describes how the state of Montana is seeking to minimize the amount of its unfunded pension liability to be disclosed to the public ("Public Pensions Cook the Books," op-ed, July 6). He explains why state and local governments might wish to understate this figure, but says little as to why the various public employee unions -- ostensibly those which should be protecting the future pensions of their members -- aren't themselves insisting on a more honest and realistic calculation of this liability. I suggest there is a very practical reason for union acquiescence to an underestimation of the pension liabilities owed to their members: They have more to gain by maintaining the present system, as opposed to risking any changes to future benefits which might result from an honest accounting of the liabilities.

Generous retirement benefits for teachers and other public sector employees, we are told, compensate them for the relatively lower wages they receive on the job. Long ago, this was likely the case.Yet over time, as teaching and other public sector jobs have increasingly become unionized, that wage gap (to the extent it still exists at all) has been reduced. But the generous benefit structure, from pensions to fully subsidized health care to vacation allowances, has been safeguarded by the unions and the administrators (many of whom are themselves union members). In other words, the pension and benefit systems are at the core of how teaching and other public employee unions maintain themselves.

If the pension and benefit systems look more like the packages found in the private sector, it becomes harder to justify having a union. It seems that maintaining the system is the chief goal of public unions; paying for it is someone else's problem.

W. R. Nelson

 

Thursday, September 11, 2008; Page A17