George Rebane

“death spiral” is how a learned correspondent characterized the latest Democrat rejections of starting a two-tiered Calpers program for government employees (as reported in the SacBee here).  The second tier was supposed to offer a bit more reasonable package to new state employees – not a chance with this crowd.  Their argument is that such a policy would discriminate against the recently hired if their retirement benefits were lower than that of those already on the payroll.  Well, no s%&t Red Ryder!  How else are you going to start reducing an expense that has bankrupted the state and that taxpayers can no longer afford?  This reasoning, however, is too lofty for our left-wing legislature and their state workers’ unions. 

The public employees pension fiasco is a developing story that will shake the state to its foundations.  Regular RR readers will have already fastened their seatbelts, hidden their wallets, or rented a U-Haul. 

As an aside, we read today that Calpers is suing the three credit rating agencies for leading it down the primrose path on Structured Investment Vehicles.  This comes from the world’s biggest retirement funds manager with over $170,000,000,000 in assets.  These poor babies are now crying foul (more here)  With that much money and their considerable management fees, you’d think that they would have someone on board who could rate these screwy stealth securities in-house.  Or if they couldn’t do that, alarms would go off and they wouldn’t invest in them.  Stupid is forever.

Meanwhile, we’re not too bright ourselves staying in a state that has a net loss of about 100,000 productive people a year.  Also, the Public Policy Institute of California reports that the net out migration is over 1.5 households for every household moving in.  The only thing that keeps California’s population growing is the birth rate of its minorities.  (And the influx of illegals that the Democrats now want to include in our 2010 census.)  The latest Economist has a lead piece about our death spiral.  Word definitely has gotten out.

And let’s see, what’s more important for me to do today than scream (respectfully, of course) at my state government?