flacaltenn
Diamond Member
For the record, the Pork Chops were a hit (someone had suggested adding finely ground coffee to the rub. I took a risk and did so and it produced a great crust when I seared the chops on the grill). Some dipped the chops in a little BBQ sauce served on the side, I tried the sauce with several bites and it really worked.
Anyway, back to the fray. My understanding of the economic troubles facing California cannot be blamed on one political party or one ideology. Democrats generally favor an activitst government providing an array services to the citizens. Such an ideology is costly yet creates jobs in both the private and public sectors.
Republicans too engaged in similar job building. Rather than provide services, for example, they pushed legislation limiting a judges sentencing discretion and sending more offenders - both juvenile and adult - to prison.
(Don't misunderstand, I'm retire LE and know first hand that some offenders need to be caged for long long times. But most offenders don't, and the three strikes laws, determinent sentencing, and prison sentences for alcohol and other drug crimes has created overcrowding leading to an out of control gang problem and huge costs)
California's problems are systemic and exacerbated by ideology on both sides of the aisle; doing the same thing for decades was insane and we can see the results today.
During my career we saw more famine than feast on the local level. Preventative services were replaced by more and more punitive 'solutions' which clearly have not worked. Jails are overcrowded and soon will begin to recieve more state prison inmates as the state cuts its budget; CA sheriffs and Chief Probation Officers as well as city & town police agency's are faced with receiving an influx of persons released from the prisons, including sex offenders and violent offenders as well as Alcohol and Drug offenders entering local institutions and hitting the streets with few resources and very little hope of securing employment in today's economy.
Pointing fingers ain't productive, it's time for emotion and ideology to be put aside.
Hey -- congrats on actually CARING about "a rub" or "a sauce".. I'm impressed..
But truely -- you expect me to believe the problem is on "both sides of aisle" when the "aisle" has been DEEP BLUE for nearly 40 years? The entire state leg. with the exemption of about 4 or 5 yrs in the senate side has been DOMINATED by the nation's most progressive left.
The way around Republican Govs. has been thru the Inititive process. So anything that the "mean ole guarddog" just might veto or criticize has been sent directly to the public ballot where the PEOPLE of Cal goofed up repeatedly on bond issues, on matters of policy, ect, ect.
I tried to pull Figure 1 from:::
http://reason.org/files/a2ec7caccc5d660e870c4a21526ef5f8.pdf
It shows total spending (NOT COUNTING Fed money) almost Tripling since 1990. The per capita spending has almost Doubled in the same period. And the pension funds are a WMD size threat to the budget.
Farewell, My Lovely - Reason Magazine
In 1999 Davis signed a law that retroactively increased pension benefits for all government employees by 25 percent to 50 percentincluding all workers employed at the time and all new hires. Senate Bill 400 (S.B. 400) was, in the words of David Crane, Schwarzeneggers special adviser for jobs and economic growth, the largest issuance of debt in California history, and it was issued without voter approval or voter knowledge.
SNIP<<<
A Long Road to Small Reform
It quickly became apparent that there were serious errors in those estimates. But it wasnt until 2008, when CalPERS lost somewhere between a quarter and half of its portfolio, that the vast taxpayer liability became too clear to ignore. Wall Streets subsequent series of fools rallies has done little to restore CalPERSs solvency, and investments now cover only 63 percent of CalPERS ongoing commitments, far short of the federal governments minimum threshold of 80 percent for basic pension plan health. Taxpayers are on the hook for the remainder.
The Golden States 2010 budget shortfall included an additional $3.9 billion in unexpected charges for pension payouts. Legislative sources expect that gap to increase more than threefold, to nearly $14 billion, in 2011. The gap is increasing, at an accelerating rate, year by year; and there is no realistic scenario in which market performance can begin to close it. CalPERS, whose accounting house of mirrors is still built on projections of 7-to-8-percent annual returns indefinitely, claims to be untroubled. But it also continues to ask for more help from the states general fund, citing market losses as well as longer retiree life spans.
Highway patrol officers and firefighters care very deeply what the public thinks, Bob Wolf, president of the California Department of Forestry firefighters union, told me during the budget battle in October. We believe our neighbors down the street, whom we protect, believe that we deserve fair retirement and fair wages and decent working conditions. Thats all were asking for. Were not asking for pie in the sky.
Along with the California Association of Highway Patrolmen and four other unions, Wolfs group agreed last summer to roll back some of the past decades gains in public employee compensationspecifically, they supported a return to pre-1999 pension formulas for new hires and an increase in employee contributions. Through his scorched-earth campaign on operational spending and a threat to leave office without a 2010 budget signed, Schwarzenegger eventually won the war of wills with Democratic legislators as well.
Even the UNIONS realized those projections are apocalyptic. You guys are not only sitting on too many faultlines. You're playing Dr StangeLove riding the bomb into the ground..