“Boot Camp” Examines Pension Cloud over Government Budgets
Under the shadow of the public employee protests roiling Wisconsin, the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility and other non-profit groups held a one-day "Boot Camp" tackling the issues of benefits to public employees in California.
While the major Wisconsin issue of repealing collective bargaining for public workers was not on the Boot Camp agenda, the meeting dealt with the costs of public employee benefits and the burden they will impose on local and state government budgets.
The Boot Camp was a working session for the 200 attendees in Irvine and 350 following online made up of local government public officials and others interested in the issue, not a rally against public employees. "This is not partisan and not ideological, this is based on numbers," said Jack Dean, the publisher of the website Pension Tsunami, which gathers information around the country on the public pension issue.
Dean said the system has to be fixed for both the worker and the taxpayers. Current employees will lose benefits if nothing is fixed, he said, and it is unfair to taxpayers because they have to guarantee the benefits.
The Bogus “California Budget Challenge” Survey
The left wing, big government group Next
10 has for some time touted their clever online survey – "The California Budget Challenge — How will YOU balance the
budget?" It is a sophisticated
scam.
It is based on a logical
fallacy – in this case, what logicians call a "false dilemma." According to Wikipedia, a
false dilemma is also known as a "false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, fallacy of false choice,
black and white thinking or the fallacy of exhaustive
hypotheses."
While the Next 10 online survey is sophisticated in format – replete with
interactive pie charts and a bit dazzling to the layman – when all is said and done,
essentially only two major choices are offered:
1. Raise taxes
2. Cut services
Making All the Wrong Moves
Doesn’t it make you groan when smart people do dumb things?
I’m thinking of Andrew Puzder, chief executive of CKE Restaurants Inc., the Carl’s Jr. chain. For a smart guy, he’s made some dumb statements lately.
It started with a Jan. 31 article in the Dallas Morning News in which Puzder said he was about to meet with Texas Gov. Rick Perry to discuss the possibility of moving the headquarters of his Carpinteria company and about 500 employees to Dallas, Austin or San Antonio.
“The discussions will get kicked off in the next couple of days on a more serious level,” he was quoted as saying.
He got in a few jabs at the Golden State. Puzder told the paper it’s “easier to open a restaurant in Shanghai than in California,” and that he is drawn to Texas’ business-friendly atmosphere and the prospect of a 10 percent pay raise, thanks to the state’s lack of an income tax.