JayB

The vast majority of employers in this country manage to attract and retain employees who are sufficiently qualified to do their jobs without imposing massive, potentially bankrupting future pension obligations on themselves.

There are no reasonable answers to fallacious questions. Cutting your hand off will stop your finger from bleeding, but you won't have stopped the bleeding. As matter of fact, you'll have made matters worse: permanently decreasing public employee compensation will further degrade public services and reinforce the race to the bottom. If pensions, work-rules, seniority based pay, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc then California world beater in every category of public sector performance. It isn't. Virginia outscores California, Illinois, NJ, NY, Wisconsin, etc in every category. http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp_report_card.aspx There *are* states with collective bargaining rules that score well, The data certainly don't support the claim that collective bargaining is necessary for the efficient delivery of high quality public services, effective public administration, etc.

Keep the unions, get rid of collective bargaining. Same as with the Federal Government. Here's more on the nightmare that awaits both public sector unions and the public once collective bargaining goes away in the form of a head-to-head comparison between Virginia and Illinois. http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/research/JLPP/upload/Hodges.pdf The horror...the horror....

Jim's proposal to eliminate pensions and replace them with 401(K)'s is actually more "radical" than any of the concrete changes that Scott Walker made to existing pay and benefits, so it's puzzling to see that suddenly praised at "moderate." Put that on the table in this state and I can guarantee that "moderate" will never once appear in any of the responses from any of the public sector unions that currently get guaranteed pensions. The other amusing thing about the hyperbole that's greeted the efforts to content with the fiscal reckoning is the rhetoric about what awaits the public if you take away the public sector employee's capacity to organize against them on the other side of the bargaining table. Compare that to the reality on display in the 2008 Pew report on state government performance, and compare Virginia to a state of your choosing. It's impossible to look at any data on public sector performance and argue that unions are necessary for the delivery of high-quality public services, let alone to do so in a cost-efficient manner. http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp_report_card.aspx

Plenty of fighter jets in Euroland.

Courts or autocrats, Jay never met a dictatorial power in the service of capital he didn't like. So...the Democratic mayor of Sacramento is a dictator, and the pool of revenues generated by local taxes, for the express purpose of providing public services, is "capital?" Yes. Every public adminstrator trying to maintain the minimal level of public services with the actual stream of income at his disposal is a cigar chomping plutocrat hellbent on leveraging his power to enrich himself at the expense of the poor wretches under his charge. :lmao: "Critical Social science degrees and and the damage done, a Marxist cartoon for everything under the sun, ohhhh, the damage done..." Can the good guy bullshit, psycho-boy. We all know this is about bond traders and shareholder value for you. The crisis in public services just provides a convenient talking point to make sure the "right people" get paid and the "other guys" take the haircut. If it were about anything else, y'all wouldn't have been cashing out all your chips through tax cuts when times were flush. What role are the Freemasons and/or the Bilderburg Group playing all of this? Please expand. Interesting to record all of the non-answers that Jim's very straightforward questions have generated here.

"One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face."

Courts or autocrats, Jay never met a dictatorial power in the service of capital he didn't like. So...the Democratic mayor of Sacramento is a dictator, and the pool of revenues generated by local taxes, for the express purpose of providing public services, is "capital?" Yes. Every public adminstrator trying to maintain the minimal level of public services with the actual stream of income at his disposal is a cigar chomping plutocrat hellbent on leveraging his power to enrich himself at the expense of the poor wretches under his charge. :lmao: "Critical Social science degrees and and the damage done, a Marxist cartoon for everything under the sun, ohhhh, the damage done..."

Math

Wingnuts aplenty at every level of government these days, it seems.... " San Jose mayor targets pensions in budget San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said Friday the city cannot afford to pare its work force any further to close chronic budget deficits. But with a 10th straight year of red ink raising the specter of massive cuts to everything from police to libraries, avoiding more layoffs will require hefty reductions to current and future employee pensions and perks, Reed said in budget recommendations released Friday. The City Council will consider the recommendations Tuesday and vote on them the following week. "It is a big sell," Reed acknowledged. "The level of service we have today is the minimum. We've cut and cut and cut for nine years, and we have to do things to preserve services to the community, and there aren't other ways to do it." The council can modify Reed's recommendations, which provide policy guidance to the city manager. The council must adopt a final budget by June for the budget year starting July 1. Councilwoman Rose Herrera, who represents the Evergreen District in East San Jose and is considered a moderate swing vote, said Reed's proposal "sets the right tone in terms of our goal to right-size the organization so we can return to our focus on providing services to our community." Upon taking office in 2007, Reed vowed to end the city's chronic budget deficits, driven chiefly by employee costs outpacing revenues. Since 2000, revenues grew 22 percent while employee costs rose 77 percent and staffing fell 17 percent. But Advertisement employee unions have fought his calls for concessions, even after a national recession worsened the city's financial woes. For much of the last decade, the city patched deficits by eliminating vacant positions of employees who retired or resigned and cobbling together temporary funding in hope that an economic recovery would deliver more tax revenues. But the economic downturn that began in 2008 has eaten into revenues, and the city has fewer jobs to cut. Last year, when a record $118.5 million deficit threatened layoffs and budget shortfalls loomed far into the future, a half-dozen city unions grudgingly accepted the city's demand to reduce their pay and benefits 10 percent, a level matched by the council and top officials. The city imposed 5 percent cuts on one small union, and police agreed to 4 percent reductions to save 70 officers from layoffs. Firefighters couldn't reach agreement on concessions with the city, and 49 were laid off. Two other unions still under contract continued receiving raises. Still, the city cut 800 jobs and demoted or laid off more than 150 employees. This year, the deficit has climbed to $105.4 million, driven chiefly by pension costs that are projected to grow from $156 million to $256 million next year and top $400 million in four years. Next year's deficit doesn't include $23 million that temporarily maintained several police, fire, library and community center programs through June. It also doesn't include a possible $10 million in additional costs from the city's struggling redevelopment agency. The agency has seen its revenues plummet in the economic downturn, and Gov. Jerry Brown wants to end redevelopment statewide. Several unions have stepped forward with offers to accept the 10 percent cuts city leaders had called for last year to ease the ongoing budget woes, most notably firefighters, who reached a tentative agreement with the city that will be voted on March 22. But Reed noted that the worsening budget picture means employees will have to give up much more to avoid further layoffs. The 10 percent cuts would save only $38 million. About 480 jobs would have to be axed to cover the balance. Reed said the city already is thinly staffed and can't afford to lose more employees. The city, he added, can't afford to keep "fiddling around the edges" of the pension reforms he's sought. Reed said employees need to reduce pensions not only for future hires but existing workers, including raising retirement ages, reducing automatic pension increases and bonus checks. Eliminating other perks like a provision that pays retiring workers for unused sick leave can also save millions of dollars, he said...." Guess Chuck Reed's party affiliation...

I have no objection to letting them go bankrupt and having the courts make the cuts via the bankruptcy process. Bills that can't be paid, won't be paid.

Deep brush The horror...the horror....

Awesome. Thanks for posting that - loved the photos.

It's cool, Philonius, whatever Our Little Janitor needs to puff himself up! Nothing wrong with being a janitor, amigo.

No, Jay figured out a way to get in with a good money making protected racket that gets in on serious government $ that he's ideologically willing to give up, but realizes practically he'll never have to in the meaningful future. He's become the yuppies he mocks More like I ran into a woman that I was actually attracted to that didn't run away screaming when I started talking about climbing, economics, and the political economy of foreign aid in Africa.

Doesn't have anything to do with my politics - but the fact that I'm married to someone that's hot, fit, smart, talented, and loves to ski, climb, travel, and makes good money doing something she enjoys that genuinely helps people probably means that I can personally look down on a guy like you, though.

Except that in this case, the containment of pension and benefit costs will actually enable the government to *avoid* laying off workers. None of this drama has anything to do with the awful plight that awaits public sector workers once they're subject to being victimized by the cruel whims of the voting public that they're employed to work on behalf of under terms like those that the legions of destitute and bedraggled Federal Employees labor under.

Just thought that the hipster beard and heavy-frame vintage glasses were potent visual signifiers of the transition away from the trade unionists of yore. uh...okay...doesn't look so different from this union guy or these auto union guys or him you seem atypically mean-spirited on this... Think the empirical data supports a pretty substantial shift in the union demos since the advent of public sector unions, and in the midst of the massive decline in percentage of unionized private sector workers.

Just thought that the hipster beard and heavy-frame vintage glasses were potent visual signifiers of the transition away from the trade unionists of yore.

Sweet TR. Another vote for the Rocky Mountain Ski lodge for those looking for a place to stay.

Life isn't fair. Ask these guys. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/canadian-surgeons-face-flat-lining-job-market/article1920006/

The point wasn't to be inspire anyone. It was to point out that I'm one of millions of people who have found themselves having to work unpleasant jobs that were orders of magnitude below what they might feel like their education and training qualify them to do, just to get by. That's life. I was eventually lucky enough to land in one that had a path to something better. Much less likely to happen if you stay out of the workforce entirely.