Let's Give All Politicians A Raise As We Watch California Sink In A Sea Of Debt.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-crane6-2010apr06,0,6247734.story
California's $500-billion pension time bomb

The staggering amount of unfunded debt stands to crowd out funding for many popular programs. Reform will take something sadly lacking in the Legislature: political courage.

The criminal political class has plenty of courage. They just hate to waste it on political reform. They are happier using it to defraud the public. Which is why the political class never met a raise they didn't like. Which is why our political class is now paid more than double what the same position in private business is paid. Which is why the political class does half the work the same position in private business does.

The state of California's real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.

The State of California has been ripping off the public for more than a decade. How has the State of California been doing this? They have been knuckling under to the demands of the unions for higher wages and retirement benefits, without having to pay anything extra into the retirement plans. Like any good criminal enterprise, the State of California has been keeping two sets of books. One set of books they display to the slaves citizens which shows what a good job the State of California has been doing in spending the tax money and balancing the budget. The other set of books shows how the underhanded tactics and the unfunded debt incurred by the State of California are sinking the State in a sea of debt.

What can we do about this? For the promises already made, nothing. They are contractual, and because that $500 billion of debt must be paid, retirement costs will rise dramatically no matter what we do. But we can reduce the sizes of promises made to new employees and require full and truthful disclosure so that pension debt can never again be hidden.

Spoken like a true politician. Full of lies and misdirection. The political hacks all claim the problem can not be fixed. They continue to claim we need to raise taxes, and cut our spending and give political hacks and their beneficiaries a raise.

The political hacks, as usual, are 100% wrong. Instead of facing the problem like a gangster politician and claiming there is nothing that can be done to fix the problem, the gangsters politicians need to face the problem like a business. When a business faces bankruptcy, they don't demand every one in the vicinity to pay up or else? A business that can't meet it's costs closes down it's operations (including union contracts and pension benefits), and tells every one there is no more money and go elsewhere. You are out of luck.

Our current education system is the laughing stock of the world. When the State of California (which has the highest paid teachers in the country) determined that less than 50% of the students graduate with the ability to read and write, the State of California decided to stop giving exit exams that test the level of learning of graduates.

Our current criminal justice system is the laughing stock of the world. We don't have enough money to keep rapist and serial killers in prison. So we continue to pass more laws to jail jaywalkers and marijuana smokers and let the rapists and serial killers out of jail early without any oversight. And when the state provides oversight of rapists, they manage to ignore someone who raped and held a victim captive for almost 20 years.

So when I suggest that the State of California simply cancel all contracts, fire everyone, and close their doors, we will actually be no worse off than we are already. We would end up better off, because we could start over again, maybe with even less corruption than before.