Posts Tagged ‘waste’
Monday, February 23rd, 2015
Greece two weeks ago: “We will not negotiate this people’s pride and dignity.”
Greece today: “Yes, Master! We’d love to grovel some more if you continue tossing pennies into our cup!”
“As far as we can tell, the Greek government hasn’t achieved even a single one of its aims so far. The bailout was extended by four months, but in spite of a few cosmetic changes to the wording accompanying it (e.g. the ‘troika’ has been renamed ‘the institutions’), it is still precisely the same bailout agreement as before.”
This is an event completely unforeseen by everyone except anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to previous installments of Greek Bailout Kabuki. For all the bluster, it’s not like Greece had many options other than to get down on all fours and really lick boot, since it was slated to run out of cash tomorrow.
Naturally anyone who was foolish enough to believe Syriza’s promises (the technical term for such people is “rubes”) is hopping mad. “It’s as if [Greek PM Alexis] Tsipras, [Greek Finance Minister Yanis] Varoufakis and the others are telling me: ‘We believe that you are stupid…and you will believe whatever lie we tell you.'” The fact Syriza was elected at all is pretty much testament to the well-grounded accuracy that belief. That, and, oh, every single piece of news out of Greece since the Euro debt crisis struck, as long as that lie involved Greece continuing to spend money like drunken sailors with a stolen credit card and never having to pay their debts back.
The open secret, of course, is that Greece will never repay its debt. “We have to be realistic here. Greek debt is now 175 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); it’s higher than it was when this whole business first started.” (Well, by one measure. Another puts Greek debt at 317% of GDP.) Yeah, that’s what happens when you continue to run huge deficits even under your “austerity” budgets.
As I previously wrote:
I’m sure Syriza would love to implement their pie-in-the-sky big spending socialism, but their real goal is to lie to the Greek people long enough for the EU to write at least one more check, and lie to the EU about implementing reform long enough to cash it. Since Syriza only recently came to power, they probably want keep the farce rolling long enough to feather their own nests with Euros before engineering a grexit. After all, center-right parties got their turns at the public graft trough; why not the far left?
And back on December 29 I wrote:
So we’ll see another election, and if Syriza wins we’ll see another round of demands for more bailouts and debt writedowns, with Greece threatening yet again to exit the Euro. We’ve seen this movie before. The most likely outcome is that another cabal of EU-phillic insiders in the Greek government will engineer a last-minute cave-in to demands from Brussels and Frankfurt, ram another toothless austerity measure through parliament in exchange for still more credit (and perhaps even a small symbolic measure of debt forgiveness), dissolve the government again following the inevitable public outrage, then have the Greek bureaucracy ignore even those woefully inadequate reforms, setting the stage for the farce to repeat itself in another 12-18 months, or until mean old Aunt Angela finally cuts up the credit card.
Behold The Amazing Person’s uncanny powers of prophecy! Like Groundhog Day, it’s gotten remarkably easy to predict exactly what’s going to happen. Different people may occupy the Prime Minister’s office, but all them invariably wake up to the political equivalent of Sonny & Cher singing “I Got You Babe.”
It looks like the only I thing I was off on was the piddling four month extension rather than twelve, and the fact that Syriza didn’t even get the tiny fig-leaf of symbolic debt reduction. I guess that request for reparations from Germany rubbed Angela Merkel the wrong way. Too bad Greek PM Alexis Tsipras failed to heed Basil Fawlty’s eminently sensible advice…
Tags:Alexis Tsipras, Angela Merkel, Budget, European Debt Crisis, Foreign Policy, Greece, Groundhog Day, Syriza, waste, Welfare State, Yanis Varoufakis
Posted in Budget, Foreign Policy, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Thursday, January 15th, 2015
For those not up to speed on the EarthQuest saga, it was an attempt to build an “ecological theme park” northeast of Houston in Montgomery County. The fact that it was going to be built with a large dollop of taxpayer money via a special taxing district only enhanced the stench of Eu de Boondoggle EarthQuest gave off, as grandiose plans gave way to missed construction and funding dates, at least one bankruptcy filing and a complete halt to visible activity. It’s essentially been moribund since 2012.
Now from dedicated EarthQuest watcher Sopboxmom comes news that the IRS has revoked Institute EarthQuest’s tax-exempt status:
Exempt Organizations Select Check
Automatic Revocation of Exemption Information
The federal tax exemption of this organization was automatically revoked for its failure to file a Form 990-series return or notice for three consecutive years. The information listed below for each organization is historical; it is current as of the organization’s effective date of automatic revocation. The information is not necessarily current as of today’s date. Nor does this automatic revocation necessarily reflect the organization’s tax-exempt or non-exempt status. The organization may have applied to the IRS for recognition of exemption and been recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt after its effective date of automatic revocation. To check whether an organization is currently recognized by the IRS as tax-exempt, call Customer Account Services at (877) 829-5500 (toll-free number).
Revocation Date (effective date on which organization’s tax exemption was automatically revoked):
15-May-2014
Employer Identification Number (EIN):
26-2454184
Legal Name:
INSTITUTE EARTHQUEST
Doing Business As:
Mailing Address:
21575 US HIGHWAY 59 NORTH
NEW CANEY, TX 77357-8355
United States
Exemption Type:
501(c)(3)
Revocation Posting Date (date on which IRS posted notice of automatic revocation on IRS.gov):
15-Oct-2014
Exemption Reinstatement Date (effective date of tax exemption, determined by the IRS
after the organization’s exemption was automatically revoked and the organization applied for reinstatement of exemption.):
Finally, despite their zombie website, EarthQuest has ceased to be, and even nailing it back on the perch wouldn’t help.
More information here.
Tags:EarthQuest, Houston, IRS, Montgomery County, Texas, waste
Posted in Texas, Waste and Fraud | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, January 6th, 2015
Here’s your first Texas vs. California update of 2015:
Real personal income increased by 1.4% in Texas in Q3, the most of any state. And that with the oil bust just starting to bite, which I’m guessing helps explain why South Dakota’s personal income decline by .2%. (Well, that and getting six inches of global warming in September….)
Texas was the number one magnet state in the country for people moving here yet again.
“The real reason for the tuition increase is that the UC system needs funds to bail out the mismanaged pension system that covers retired employees of its ten campuses.”
This is all the result of the regents’ irresponsible oversight. In 1990, UCRP had 137 percent of the assets it needed to meet its obligations, so regents suspended employer and employee contributions to the pension fund. State legislators also stopped allocating money to UCRP. This “pension contribution holiday” lasted 20 years. To top it off, during this period, university officials boosted pension benefits a half-dozen times. By 2012, more than 2,100 UC retirees were each collecting six-figure pensions for life.
(Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
Former Pasadena (California) employees arrested on 60 count, $6 million embezzling charges. (Hat tip: CalWatchdog.)
More on outrageous California pensions: “In 2013, an assistant fire chief in Southern California collected a $983,319 pension. A police captain in Los Angeles received nearly $753,861.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami).
California’s doomed high speed rail boondoggle breaks ground today.
More on the same theme from Twitter:
Opponents of California’s statewide plastic bag ban have gathered 800,000 signature for a referendum to overturn it, which will also keep the law from going into effect on July 1.
California charity hospitals to be sold to for-profit company to keep them open.
Tags:Budget, California, Crime, fraud, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Friday, November 7th, 2014
A Friday LinkSwarm after a very eventful week…
So exactly when was it that the UK became the child rape capital of the Western world? First Rotherham, now Manchester.
Government of Burkina Faso falls. Evidently people there thought that 27 years of rule for President Blaise Compaore was more than enough…
Russia sends more tanks into Ukraine. Looks like we’ll dealing with the fallout of Obama’s “flexibility” for decades… (Hat tip: Jim Geraghty).
The Pakistani version of Axe Cop sounds a whole lot less entertaining than the American version.
DSCC head blames Obama for Senate loss.
The DSCC decides that they’ll stop pouring money down the rathole that is Mary Landrieu.
“Salon Writer Condemns Arithmetic As Racist.” Or how Jonathan Chait ruthlessly used his Mansplaining Male Math Privilege to oppress Jenny Kutner.
Because their attacks on Koch were so successful, Democrats double-down on stupid.
U.S. hits targets in Syria. Not ISIS, but “the Khorasan group.” For such a reportedly “small” group, we seem to be bombing them a lot…
Fatah and Hamas thoughtfully take a break from trying to kill Jews in order to blow each other up.
I’m shocked, shocked that there’s abuse and fraud in the “Obamaphone” program.
In addition to national and statewide outbreaks of sanity, there was even an outbreak in Austin, where voters defeated a proposal to expand Capitol Metro’s toy trains.
Tags:2014 Election, Austin, Blaise Compaore, Burkina Faso, Democrats, Elections, Fatah, feminism, fraud, Gaza, Hamas, Jihad, Jonathan Chait, Koch Brothers, Manchester, Media, Military, Pakistan, Rotherham, Russia, sex offender, Texas, UK, Ukraine, waste, Wendy Davis
Posted in Austin, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Media Watch, Military, Texas, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 17th, 2014
Time for another Texas vs. California roundup:
The Texas economy continues to hum along:
During the second quarter, Texas employers added 148,200 net nonfarm jobs—an average of 49,400 per month. This amounts to an 18 percent share of all jobs created nationwide over this period in a state with only 8 percent of the country’s population and about 10 percent of total economic output. Over the last year, the addition of 382,200 net jobs in Texas was more new jobs than any other state. These employment gains increased the annual job growth rate to 3.4 percent, which is higher than those of the national average and other highly populated states.
The city of Los Angeles is at an impasse over police raises: the police union (naturally) wants raises, while the city says they can’t afford them. So what happens next? The issue goes before the Employee Relations Board, which just happens to be packed with union-approved appointees. In one-party Democratic cities and states, it’s always government together with unions against taxpayers. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
“The ugly reality is that so long as the boards of CalPERS and CalSTRS are controlled by public employee union loyalists, pension reforms enacted by state lawmakers and signed by governors will never live up to their billing.”
Jerry Brown lies about pension spiking.
Why San Antonio’s public-private partnerships are better at dealing with drought than Los Angeles.
A FAQ on Costa Mesa’s pension situation. Including answers to such questions as “How could the $228 million in unfunded pension liabilities affect the city budget?”
Watsonville, California passes a sales tax hike solely to pay for additional union pension payments.
A judge rules that bankrupt San Bernardino can cut firefighter pension benefits in order to exit bankruptcy.
A union-sponsored bill tries to increase liabilities for companies that hire contractors.
California is evidently cooking up a whole new batch of unconstitutional gun laws.
A look at phony baloney jobs numbers for California’s high speed rail boondoggle.
Firefly Space Systems is relocating from California to Burnet County, Texas. “King said Firefly was attracted to Texas partly because of its business and regulatory climate.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out California offers a lousy climate for business. Or to put it another way: My days of underestimating California’s ability to improve its business climate are certainly coming to a middle…
Drone-maker Ashima is relocating to Reno, Nevada from California.
If you hadn’t heard, Tesla is building its battery factory in Nevada, not California.
An actual good law out of California: A law that prevents companies from suing customers for negative reviews.
North Carolina offered twice as much incentive money to Toyota but still lost out to Texas for relocating their HQ.
Your dedicated BART employee in action:
Tags:Ashima, Austin, BART, Budget, Burnet County, California, CalPERs, CalSTARS, Democrats, drought, Firefly Space Systems, Jerry Brown, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Regulation, San Antonio, San Bernardino, Tesla Motors, Texas, Texas Public Policy Foundation, unions, video, waste, Watsonville
Posted in Austin, Budget, Democrats, Regulation, Texas, unions, video, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 6th, 2014
It’s not just California. The bureaucratic apparatus has a way of feathering its own nests across the globe.
Take the “town hall tycoons” in the UK, for example:
There were at least 2,181 council employees who received total remuneration in excess of £100,000 in 2012-13, a fall of 5 per cent on the previous year’s 2,295.
Despite this, 93 councils increased the number of staff who received remuneration in excess of £100,000 in 2012-13.
Keep in mind that at current exchange rates, £100,000 is somewhere north of $180,000.
Tags:Budget, UK, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Budget, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 29th, 2014
Well well well, what have we here?
It’s a jeremiad by Democrat Bill Curry about how his party has abandoned its soul for the sweet smell of Wall Street crony capitalist dollars.
Democrats hooked on corporate cash and consultants with long lists of corporate clients were less attuned to Nader’s issues.
Democrats today defend the triage liberalism of social service spending but limit their populism to hollow phrase mongering (fighting for working families, Main Street not Wall Street). The rank and file seem oblivious to the party’s long Wall Street tryst. Obama’s economic appointees are the most conservative of any Democratic president since Grover Cleveland but few Democrats seem to notice, or if they notice, to care.
These days, says Curry, Democrats “don’t believe in ideas because they don’t believe in people” and calls for a Nader-esque populism. (Indeed, Nader’s latest book seems to provide the spine for his piece.)
Curry actually sees the populist Tea Party energy on the right and laments its absence on his side of the aisle. “If there’s a true populist revolt on the left it is as yet invisible to the naked eye.” (Though I note one very hot populist issue, widespread opposition to the Democratic Party’s push for illegal alien amnesty, is conspicuous by its absence from his piece.)
“Democratic elites are always up for compromise, but on the wrong issues. Rather than back GOP culture wars, as some do, or foreign wars, as many do, or big business, as nearly all do, they should back libertarians on privacy, small business on credit and middle-class families on taxes.”
This advice is far from the worst Democrats have received, but they are congenitally unable to follow it for numerous reasons:
As a party, Democrats are all in on Big Government. Access to the Gravy Train and charging a transaction fee on robbing Peter to pay Paul are the only thing that holds their coalition together. Likewise, to say Democrats are unenthusiastic about cutting taxes is to vastly understate the case.
Democrats can’t embrace populism because both the political and cultural soul of the party is rooted in elitism. The people who run the party in D.C. are absolutely certain that they and their brethren can run peoples’ lives better than they can run their own. And the party’s biggest supporters in blue bastions like New York City, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco are convinced that they are manifestly smarter, more moral, and above all more sophisticated than those gun-toting redneck freaks of JesusLand. Asking them to embrace real populism (as opposed to candidates making meaningless promises every 2 or 4 years) is almost certainly futile.
A significant fraction of their supporters in those blue bastions benefit directly from the crony capitalism Currey decries.
There are also numerous areas where Curry appears unable to shed his blue-colored glasses:
When he says “Oddly, the one system working relatively well, public education, is the object of our only sustained reform effort,” he’s ignoring the huge problems in teacher union controlled schools and curricula as documented everywhere from Waiting for Superman to Vergara vs. California. And in his conclusion, the very first member of his potential future coalition mentioned is “unions,” pointedly ignoring the populist revolt against fat cat public sector unions that have helped bankrupt Detroit and numerous California cities.
The plight of American workers pushed out of jobs by illegal aliens, and the popular revolt against busing them to communities across the country and amnesty? No mention.
He seems equally enthused about small business and fighting “global warming,” with nary a mention about how the EPA’s power grab thanks to the latter is crushing small business left and right, nor how many “green” firms are riding the crony capitalist gravy train.
Other populist “small ball” issues that never get mentioned: cheap light bulbs that work and toilets that flush. Though Shalt Not Question Washington’s Mandates.
Agribusiness subsidies, crony capitalism in almost its purest form? Not mentioned.
The Democratic Party faithful are never, ever, ever going to reengage with Nader, because their hatred for George W. Bush is far stronger and more visceral than their theoretical attachment to populist economic policies.
Of course, since it’s Salon, the piece has more than one inside-the-blue-bubble howler:
“Nader’s belief in convergence isn’t the same as Obama’s naïve pursuit of the holy grail of bipartisanship.” Obama has pursued “bipartisanship” with much the same fervor the late Amy Winehouse pursued “sobriety.”
“Republicans can talk values even while defending a corrupt status quo because, recent Tea Party convulsions aside, defending the status quo is their job. The Democrats’ job is to challenge the status quo; when they don’t do it, nothing they say sounds sincere. ” Republicans certainly defend many cultural status quos, but it is the Democratic Party that has consistently defended the status quo of the lumbering monstrosity that is Big Government.
When he says that until 1996, congress “had not enacted any major social or economic reforms since the historic environmental laws of the early ’70s,” he’s flat out lying. (Kemp-Roth was certainly reform.) What he actual means is “No reforms that far left economic populists like myself approve of.”
In the next paragraph he decries the deregulation of the airline, trucking and phone industries, missing the point that these were not only reforms, but populist reforms that ended monopoly profits by entrenched special interests, and ones which radically brought down prices for consumers.
“But Nader always hit hard; you don’t get to be the world’s most famous shopper by making allowances or pulling punches.” I would venture to guess that the world’s most famous “shopper” is probably someone like Paris Hilton, which is probably not the image he wanted to convey…
“Liberals have spent the intervening years debating macroeconomic theory.” Have they? As far as I can tell, the only debate in the ideological vineyards of the Democratic Party is over how much Keynesian vs. how much Marxism.
“Democrats must also learn to argue history. They chortle when Michele Bachmann credits the founders with ending slavery or Sarah Palin forgets who Paul Revere rode to warn.” Tiny little problem: By and large Sarah Palin got Paul Revere’s story right, no matter how much liberals might insist otherwise.
“The best template of populism remains the career of William Jennings Bryan.” Well, it’s not that Curry is necessarily wrong per se, but one must view with a certain jaundiced eye the idea that current electoral models can be found in a man who probably peaked in 1896.
Indeed, when you get right down to it, Curry’s piece could be boiled down to “Talk vaguely about populism while pushing the same Big Government, redistributionist schemes liberals always push.” Maybe the Nader book itself is bolder (and if someone wants to pay me to review it, I’d happily give it a go), but Curry’s piece is very old and undistinguished wine decanted into a slightly shinier bottle.
No matter how many times liberals declare “This is it! I’m finally fed up with the Democratic Party!”, the party’s fat cats know the truth. Come November 8, 2016, they’ll remember they loathe Republicans far more than they love reform, and pull the (D) lever no matter how many jeremiads Bill Curry and his ilk pen.
We’ve seen this movie before, and we know exactly how it ends.
Tags:agribusiness subsidies, cronyism, Democrats, Global Warming, populism, Ralph Nader, waste
Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Media Watch, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2014
Ted Cruz has thoughtfully compiled a fourth list of Obama Administration abuses of power. If you’ve been following the ObamaCare, IRS and Benghazi scandals, there might not be anything you haven’t already heard, but it’s nice to have them all in one place. There’s also mention of more obscure Obama Administration abuses of power, such as violation of the Magnitsky Act, or paying $205,075 to relocate a $16 shrub. Moreover, every item in the list is sourced, most to MSM outfits that liberals can’t dismiss summarily dismiss.
Read the whole thing, then send a copy to any undecided voters you know.
Tags:Benghazi, IRS, Magnitsky Act, Obama Scandals, ObamaCare, Ted Cruz, waste
Posted in Obama Scandals, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »
Monday, March 24th, 2014
In California, I would say that March Madness is ignoring the looming pension crisis, except that madness extends to every other month as well…
Where is income inequality worst in the U.S.? Well, for one thing, in California:
Perhaps no place is inequality more evident than in the rural reaches of California, the nation’s richest agricultural state. The Golden State is now home to 111 billionaires, by far the most of any state; California billionaires personally hold assets worth $485 billion, more than the entire GDP of all but 24 countries in the world. Yet the state also suffers the highest poverty rate in the country (adjusted for housing costs), above 23%, and a leviathan welfare state. As of 2012, with roughly 12% of the population, California accounted for roughly one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients.
With the farm economy increasingly mechanized and industrial growth stifled largely by regulation, many rural Californians particularly Latinos, are downwardly mobile, and doing worse than their parents; native-born Latinos actually have shorter lifespans than their parents, according to a 2011 report. Although unemployment remains high in many of the state’s largest urban counties, the highest unemployment is concentrated in the rural counties of the interior. Fresno was found in one study to have the least well-off Congressional district.
The vast expanse of economic decline in the midst of unprecedented, but very narrow urban luxury has been characterized as “liberal apartheid.” The well-heeled, largely white and Asian coastal denizens live in an economically inaccessible bubble insulated from the largely poor, working-class, heavily Latino communities in the eastern interior of the state.
The Myth of the California Renaissance:
California also has the nation’s highest poverty rate and the most food stamp recipients, and policymakers have done little to address profligate spending, unfunded pensions, and ever-growing retiree health-care obligations.”
Inland California, from Imperial in the south to Modoc in the north, remains one of the poorest regions in the nation. Though the state unemployment rate fell in February to 8.1 percent, inland unemployment ranges from 9.5 percent in Riverside to 25.9 percent in Colusa. Of the 20 counties in the United States with the largest unemployment rates, 11 are in California.
California only has the second highest taxes in the nation! Thank God for New York!
Unfavorable ballot language stymies a California pension reform effort…
…but pension reform advocates are regrouping to make another push in 2016.
Indeed, pension reform will be the biggest issue for southern California voters this fall.
More on how government at the state and national level is destroying California agriculture in the name of protecting the Delta Smelt.
There’s speculation that California Governor Jerry Brown actually wants to see the illegal, underfunded, and ill-fated “bullet train to nowhere” die, he just doesn’t want to get the blame for killing it.
How Texas job growth has outpaced both the nation and California.
Occidental Petroleum is moving its headquarters to Houston and spinning off its California operations as a separate company.
Rick Perry raids again.
Telecom company Channell Commercial is relocating from Temecula, California to Rockwell, Texas. “Blaming California for an oppressive business climate for manufacturing growth, Channell said the costs to do business here have made expansion in this state no longer feasible.”
And I missed this story from last year on Chevron building a 50 story office building in Houston. That could mean the days of their California headquarters are numbered…
Tags:California, Channell Commercial, Chevron, environmentalism, fraud, Jerry Brown, Occidental Petroleum, Rick Perry, Texas, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Regulation, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 11th, 2014
Meant to put this up at lunch, but Stuff. And Things.
How California overprotects public employee union contracts. If the paper from Volokh the Younger is too heavy-sledding for non-lawyers, here’s a nice summary.
CalPERS is demographically doomed.
The people of San Bernardino vote all the bums out. “After Tuesday night, six of seven council members are now on record as saying they want to explore reducing San Bernardino’s pensions, along with [Carey] Davis, the new mayor, and a new city attorney, Gary Saenz.”
Another California city, Placentia, drifts toward bakruptcy. “Placentia has been papering over a structural $1.5 million deficit in its $30 million budget for at least five years, plugging the hole with lucky money (more soberly called ‘one-time revenues’).”
Stockton: Hey, we’re in bankruptcy! I guess that means we can just kill our shelter animals willy nilly. Federal judge: Not so fast.
Los Angeles firefighter compensation averages $218,000 an employee. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.).
Are even California’s Democratic legislators waking up to the problem?
California university workers plan a strike. See, no matter how broke you are, unions still want wage hikes…
Unions want to ensure that Bob Filner’s closest ally is elected Mayor of San Diego to keep their gravy train coming…
Union membership in California is down to 16.4% of the workforce.
Jerry Brown: Hey, Supreme Court, reverse that high speed rail decision! High Speed Rail Contractor: Thanks, Jer! Here’s $27,000.
Websense is relocating from San Diego to Austin. Dropbox is also moving additional jobs to Austin.
Charles Schuab is relocating jobs from San Francisco to Texas.
California industrial brush company relocates to Utah.
The Texas labor force keeps growing.
Tags:Austin, Bob Filner, California, fraud, Jerry Brown, Los Angeles, Placentia, San Bernardino, San Diego, Stockton, Texas, unions, waste, Welfare State
Posted in Austin, Regulation, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »