California Collapsing

Are they still considering splitting Cali into 3 different parts?

There is a simple solution to the State budget crisis.

Sell pardons to all the Californians who've been arrested over the years.

In some communities, this would generate revenue from over 80% of the population.

reply to post by apacheman


Eh? What are you talking about Apacheman. I'm a Californian and have been here 20 years, and we waste GOBS of money on unneeded programs, services, and state workers. The new code word for the waste up in Sacramento is "safety net" (welfare), and they refuse to cut back on it. New taxes are "Revenue Increases".

The highest income tax bracket for this state is 45,000. The poverty level is $60,000. I make 70,000 and see that monstrous amount for state taxes taken out of every paycheck -- not to mention SDI, sales tax, gas tax, vehicle registration fees, etc etc etc. Grats to LA on that 10% sales tax as of this week btw.

Yet they want to suck more of my money dry here as they spend money like drunken sailors on shore leave. Billions are wasted in welfare and illegal alien services alone. Hows this for welfare queens? We have 12% of the population and 33% of the welfare receipts in the nation. That proves the program they so highly tout as successful do NOT work. Add in services that illegal aliens have taken or wasted with our health, prison, justice, and state services and see the billions add up, and we're not even to the legislature level yet. The prison system alone is estimated to have 30% illegal aliens incarcerated at a cost of over 1.8 billion a year.

As for your free ride buddies, it isn't the corporations -- they are leaving and have been leaving for quite some time. That is reserved for the fire unions, police unions, prison guard unions, teachers union. The largest union in California, the Service Employees International Union got a contract during the budget crisis and before the last tax hike for NO LAYOFFS OR FURLOUGHS.

No tax increases? LAY OFF TEACHERS AND POLICE! But whatever you do, don't touch the THOUSANDS of non-essential workers such as administrative assistants, supervisors, or superintendents. LAUSD has over 1000 administrative assistants (read secretaries) on the payroll and one of the highest drop out rates in the nation.

When you have hundreds of committees and subcommittees taking half million dollars in salaries for the legislature or their buddies, something is wrong. Seriously, does California REALLY need a commission on blueberry marketing and research?

We don't waste money? Bull. We waste it like no tomorrow and ask for more.

I have lived here for two decades and have had enough. I'm sick of the leeching. I'm sick of feeding the beast that wants more and more food. I vote no on all new taxes because quite frankly I'm tired of them taking more and more and producing less and less. I don't care what kind of taxes they are anymore. The answer is NO MORE.

This is nothing new either. Regan as Governor specifically saw the problem with the ever expanding California government and gave a speech about this very problem in 1967 over 40 years ago. Well, the chickens have finally come home to roost.

You would have thunk they got the picture with ALL taxes voted no, and freezing their salaries until the budget is balanced.

When I finally do leave the state, and many others who are like me, the state is going to be left with nothing but a bunch of leechers demanding their entitlements from people of my salary who are no longer there. I'd love to see how the state does then. Good luck with State Unions when there's no one but leechers left in the state.

And oh, keep raising taxes, I dare you. The last tax raise only dropped revenue by $1.8 billion. What happens when Google who brings in over 1 billion alone in tax revenue decides to pick up and move shop? California is already the most hostile environment for companies in the US.

Keep going Sacramento. The more you puff yourself up, the harder you and this State will fall.

reply to post by ladyinwaiting


In that post I also mentioned Rewriting the tax code for something simpler, stream lining services(usually done by exploiting new technology), and calling a constitutional convention to rewrite an overly complex document with over 500 amendments. These are part of what would lead to broader solutions and they MUST be done. But politically speaking these things may not happen, and the Federal Government may step in. That, however, has far greater consequences. You're only reading what you want to.

[edit on 2-7-2009 by projectvxn]

reply to post by projectvxn


Okay, that's fine. You've invested study into this, and it is an area of great interest to you. I understand that. I'm just thinking you are coming on a little bit too strong. Maybe your frustration with the situation is coming across as anger. It's hard to read someone over the net.

But, I mean....look at my signature. I'm all about belief in solving problems, and although there are grim days ahead, and things might get worse before they get better.....

California's not going anywhere.

It will be restored to it's previous state of glory. That's all I'm saying here. It's not just them. It's all of us. We have danced and danced and now the piper is demanding to be paid.

We will all have to pay up. All of us.

reply to post by JoeyGowdy


Splitting the State into two has been proposed, and was proposed again recently to solve the budget problems. Also there are people ran initiatives for one state to be the leeches (LA/San Fran), the other to be the rural areas including San Diego and Sacramento.

Being in Riverside county, I'd say good riddance to those cities and areas.

[edit on 2-7-2009 by Not Authorized]

The state collapsing is definitely no laughing matter here folks, like I've said in other posts. If it wasn't already...California is turning into an even more dangerous place to live. Crime rate has been rising and people left and right are getting laid off of their jobs.

Not only that but going to the unemployment office is turning into an all day event...majority of the time the lines are out the door. The people working at the offices are so overwhelmed with people bombarding them with questions about eligibility. And the complaint's of the lack of pace of service...no wonder nothing is getting resolved.

In my opinion not only does the atmosphere feel more depressing, but you can sense the vibe with other people that the energy and happiness that once flourished seems to be diminishing.

People are staying in their home's more, not driving as much, becoming permanent couch potatoes and turning everyone anti social!!

I hope this turns around fast, I can see the future not being pretty at all.

reply to post by ladyinwaiting


Not until there is a giant flush of the stagnant cesspool in the legislature, unions, contract, and laws.

This will probably be resolved by people based initiatives. Already there is a growing movement of massive people based reform, including reverting back to part-time legislature along with a massive cut of legislature salaries, and a state constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget each year.

Thankfully most of the giant flush will happen in bankruptcy court for union contracts, and later voter reaction. Then and only then can California begin to rebuild. Hopefully a little wiser.

[edit on 2-7-2009 by Not Authorized]

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by wutone

 

Overpaid teachers?


Try teaching in California, then claim teachers are overpaid.



[edit on 2-7-2009 by apacheman]

dcjobsource.com...

Yes they are overpaid and

www.manhattan-institute.org...

In all the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, public school teachers make more than professional specialty and technical workers. In metro New York, they make 20% more; in metro Los Angeles, 23% more; and in metro Chicago, 12% more.

Public school teachers have higher earnings than 61 of these 85 occupations. For example, editors and reporters earn 24% less than public school teachers; architects, 11% less; psychologists, 9% less; chemists, 5% less; mechanical engineers, 6% less; and economists, 1% less. Airplane pilots earn 186% more than public school teachers; physicians, 80% more; lawyers, 49% more; nuclear engineers, 17% more; actuaries, 9% more; and physicists, 3% more. Public school teachers also earn more than private school teachers. (See Table 3.) Nationwide, public school teachers are paid 61% more than private school teachers.

This is kind of damning for public schools nationwide, especially considering the results they get.

And in metro Los Angeles, public school teachers work an average of 33.2 hours per week.

table 3


Wow 44.64 and hour in Salinas, Ca in 2005, not exactly the big stressful metro area, especially compared to St Louis which is $31.95. Oh wait St Louis is a cheap midwest city, ok then, lets check out a coastal bastion of west coast excess like Seattle, $32.41 an hour for the teachers...hmmmm.

And don't give the "Try teaching in California" crap because there are many private school teachers in poor schools that teach way better for much less.

reply to post by ladyinwaiting


Imagine that, fraud, mismanagement, and poor leadership angering someone...Whodda thunk it?

Refer to my most recent post. I did offer solution. They are first critical steps for any recovery. Again you're only reading what you want.

reply to post by projectvxn


Here, Sweetheart. I've made you a cocktail.

Let's raise our glasses to the good citizens of California, and not argue anymore.

Peace,
liw

Originally posted by ladyinwaiting
reply to post by projectvxn

 

Actually I agree with some of what you said. Some things I don't.

But I don't think I am an emotional reactionary.
I think you are.

Do you have a plan other than legalizing marijuana? Can you offer something positive, or are you just hell-bent on the state being
irreparably damaged?


I agree the problems are complex, but I believe they can be fixed.

I stand by my previous comments.

[edit on 2-7-2009 by ladyinwaiting]

Why not spend $200 Billion Federal $$$ to build a NEW city
just north of LA. You could call it Crystal Peak.
Jobs!...Jobs!...Jobs!

reply to post by wutone


That report from the manhattan consistently conflates "white collar workers" and "management and technical professionals" using the one for wage comparison (white collar) and the other for time worked comparison. Not the same groups, which makes for a serious flaw in the methodology. That happens throughout this flawed report.

They acknowledge that on an annual basis teacher earn less than other because they are employed only nine months out of the year, then count that "free time" as a bennie. That's not "free time", the monthly bills don't end, but your income does.

Whether teachers use those free weeks to make additional money or simply to enjoy their time off, that time is worth money and cannot simply be ignored when comparing earnings.

I noticed you used percentages rather than dollar figures as they looked better. Here are the dollar numbers: the average teacher made $34.06 an hour in 2005, with the range from $21.67 to $47.28 per hour for a 36.5 hour workweek. 36.5 hours sounds like the at-school hours for a public school teacher to me, not including grading time, lesson plan prep or research. The authors glibly pass this off as being comparable to the take-home work of management class, a switch from white collar comparisons used earlier, but don't calculate it or account for it in their comparison. Even they admit that 50% of teachers reported taking work home (lol, that's about half the real rate) as compared to 30% of the managers and professionals, but don't make a 20% difference in hours worked.

All in all, that report would never pass a peer review, it's too deeply flawed.

But the important part is in the numbers: you're saying that at $34.06 an hour, teachers are vastly overpaid? What would you like to pay them? $10.00 an hour, less than you'd pay a good babysitter?

I can only assume you make minimum wage, or are vastly overpaid yourself, those are the only two classes of people who would think that $34.00 an hour is far too much.

reply to post by ladyinwaiting



Fighting? Sweetheart? Don't patronize me.

You came in here throwing around words like "Gloom and doom" and saying we should go and revel in it. I'm not fighting, I'm putting forth the information I have spent over a year compiling. You're in here with a high and mighty attitude reading only what you want and discarding the rest missing huge amounts of information in the process.

Educate yourself on the issues before you start throwing stones at what people you don't know are saying.

Best headline of this whole mess yet in my opinion:

"Cash-Strapped L.A. Struggles to Accommodate Jackson Memorial Service"


quote:
"There are a lot of safety concerns, and those safety concerns cost a lot of money," Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine told FOX News.

"If you can imagine 100,000 people show up [at the Staples Center] and you have 20,000 capacity, there is not sufficient room. Now you have a crowd-control problem," Zine said, adding that with the July 4th holiday weekend, "it's the worst time ... to work something out."

Zine, a former member of the LAPD, also led an effort last month to help the city — which is operating at a $500 million deficit — find private funding to cover the cost of police overtime for the Los Angeles Lakers victory parade.

“We’ve done Laker parades. There’s no precedent for this,” said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who is acting mayor while Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is on vacation in Africa and City Council President Eric Garcetti is in Japan.
Related Stories

City officials and AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips, the promoter for Jackson's concert tour and operator of the Staples Center, were expected to announce Friday the details for Jackson's funeral, which is expected to start at 10 a.m. PDT.

Speaking at a news conference Thursday, Phillips said that while there will be no charge for tickets to the event, he had no specifics about what kind of memorial service was being planned or how tickets would be made available and distributed.

“It’s all up to Katherine,” Phillips said, referring to Jackson's mother.

California; Getting their priorities straight since...

A city, single US city operating at 1/2 a billion in the red, and this is a concern. Never should it be asked "how did we get here" again.

[edit on 3-7-2009 by Spartak_FL]

reply to post by projectvxn


I apologize for getting your name wrong.

I'm not an economist.....I don't really understand it. I tend to get things on an intuitive level, I read alot of stuff written by people who do understand economics and then compare it to what I see in the field. I'm a realtor here in California...have been since 2000 so I've never experienced "normal" market. In the past year and a half my only client is one of the institutions being blamed for the mess we're in now. I list REO's. I'm the one who goes to the door and says "Hi, the bank has hired me to sell your house. when can you be out?" NOT fun.
I remember when W. proclaimed "houses for everybody!" right after he got into office and I turned to my husband and said "just watch the credit cowboys now". Sure enough, in my area where the historic appreciation in real estate had been 6%, we were seeing 22-24% a year. People were making $100,000 in equity a year and acting as if they'd earned it. So they spent it. As for the engineering....yep it was. And those in the State and Fed governments knew it. So as property taxes rise along with the housing prices, they spend as if they too think it will never cycle down? Now it's oh dang we're broke too? We didn't see it coming? No, I don't beleive it. they knew it was coming and now they are just processing the rest of the program.
I gotta tell you I had my heart broken yesterday. I had to verify occupancy on a new REO listing. It was empty but a rather new RV was in the driveway so I checked with the neighbor to see if I could get a hold of the person to find out what they wanted to do with it.
So the neighbor called the guy and said to come over because I was here. Turns out he's a 70 year old man. He bought the house to retire in at the top of the market and refied his other house to do the remodeling of this one. Then his wife got sick and died a year after they bought it. He was an electrical engineer making a ton of money and then when his wife died he grieved deeply for a year and lost his job.
Then everything began to spiral downward. And now he's got lukemia and heart problems. This house got into trouble. His first house was in trouble. Now this one is gone, he's trying to hang on to the first one but expects he'll be living in the RV but has no money to bring the tags up current so he asked me to hire him to finish the electrical.
People make their decisions based on the information they have at the time. For this whole economic disaster to be engineered is criminal. This man was duped pure and simple and that is criminal. They turned our economy into a fraud and that's criminal. And now I can only hope to get a chance to speak with his kids and try to get him some help, partly because he needs and partly to heal my own heart.

Sorry for the long post.......I guess I needed to vent.

www.forbes.com...

Here is a link for all the blamers to enjoy.

originally posted by: ANNED
California Collapsing has been a long time democratic party project.

There Utopian views of no industry, logging, mining. and power plants ECT ECT ECT has stripped the state of its main tax industries.

People flipping burgers do not pay taxes anywhere near people working in industry.
So the higher tax payers have left the state in large number fallowing the jobs and the burger flipper are now the largest tax base.

And 14 Years Later , it Still is . California after Gutting it's Industrial Base has turned into it's Own 3rd World Nation .

It doesnt thrill me to watch the middle cars of the cali train derail, cause rember folks joe biden thinks we should make the rest of merica like california.

I am terrified, I need to buy a house in alaska but do I get it now and probably overpay when the bottom drops I am screwed or wait for the bottom drop and maybe get a loan with 15-20% interest if I can get approved at all.

This was 100% preventable, but once we did to big to fail and then did 20 years of quantitative easing there was no stopping the crash it was just how far down the road can it be kicked.

originally posted by: Irishhaf
It doesnt thrill me to watch the middle cars of the cali train derail, cause rember folks joe biden thinks we should make the rest of merica like california.

I am terrified, I need to buy a house in alaska but do I get it now and probably overpay when the bottom drops I am screwed or wait for the bottom drop and maybe get a loan with 15-20% interest if I can get approved at all.

This was 100% preventable, but once we did to big to fail and then did 20 years of quantitative easing there was no stopping the crash it was just how far down the road can it be kicked.

It Got So Bad in Cally , that some People there Moved to New Jersey . My Condolences to them ............*)