7 ms·

It's worth observing that: 1) Orange County went bankrupt by cooking the books. After the scandal broke, their treasurer went to jail. 2) The Republican admin

by jordanb 16y ago

It's worth observing that: 1) Orange County went bankrupt by cooking the books. After the scandal broke, their treasurer went to jail. 2) The Republican administration turned a blind eye to the Democratic treasurer's malfeasance because it was allowing them to keep taxes very low, which was making their government very popular. 3) The government refused to raise even a temporary tax to avoid bankruptcy, as that position was highly unpopular among the wealthy residents of the county. At various points the county insisted that it should receive bailouts from the California state and federal government, which drew anger from across the nation as Orange County is among the wealthiest places in the nation. 4) In bankruptcy, Orange County cut $200 million from its budget by clawing back commitments to its low level employees who had no part in the high level corruption, as well as through layoffs and reduced services. The OC bankruptcy, from the perspective of the average person, is like a minified version of the bank bailouts. It was a "heads I win, tails you lose" bargain between the wealthy people of OC and the average people who were hurt most by the layoffs and reduced services.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
...low level employees who had no part in the high level corruption,... The low level employees didn't vote for and join unions which helped that Dem treasurer to get elected? They didn't push for overly generous pensions and non-transparent accounting? They must have behaved very differently than contemporary unions.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Give me a break. Those low level employees do a job under a contract which was supposedly negotiated in good faith. Now because you don't like "unions" or "government" it's ok to stiff people who perform a public service for a previously agreed upon wage and benefits? What, because highway workers weren't doing financial due diligence on the multi-hundred-million dollar county's books? It was their responsibility to do this? I thought that was the responsibility of the guy who got thrown in jail for cooking the books. This is what that professor was talking about when he was apologizing. Everybody wants to cut taxes and make public servants work for free, whether it's out of simple selfishness or a more highly evolved ideology (aka fancy selfishness).
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Union contracts are not negotiated in good faith. That's the problem. Our politicians do not get into negotiations with the union, driving as hard a bargain as possible and looking out for the taxpayers. Our politicians are in league with the unions hoping to get their support in the next election. In any case, no one wants unions to supply labor for free - all anyone is advocating is that the government pay it's suppliers market rates or below. I.e., the politicians should look out for the taxpayers, not government suppliers. As I've pointed out to you before, most liberals get strongly outraged when there is even a hint that a military contractor might have gotten a sweetheart deal. And yet, there is a strong defense of Big Labor when they get a similar sweetheart deal. Why is that?
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Liberals don't claim that the government should renege on a contract that was lawfully entered into with a military contractor. In fact, nobody claims that, ever. Yet whenever local budgets are crunched, we always hear about how greedy the municipal workers are. You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? I've negotiated union deals from the government side. I negotiated fairly, in good faith, and nobody attempted to bribe me with campaign contributions or do 1/10 of the stuff that regularly happens in Washington with military contractors. Your assumption that the deal must be crooked because it's paying workers is ridiculous. How about the fact that they were out of money because they were cooking the books? How come the workers have to pay for that screwup?
      - houseabsolute 16y ago
        > You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. (http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655 http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655). Personally I think an entry-level pay of $80k for someone with only a high-school diploma is pretty good. There are other areas in the Bay where pay is even higher, like Oakland. I can't speak to highway workers.
        16y ago
- ubernostrum 16y ago
  I fail to see a logical connection between "you joined a union" and "you lose the right to have contracts you signed upheld". Perhaps you could elaborate?
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    I fail to see why you think I implied there was a logical connection. I was simply disputing the idea which I quoted.
jbarham 16y ago
Whereas "temporary" taxes are popular with non-wealthy people? Nice try w/ the class warfare. FWIW I live in Orange County but what really matters is what city you live in within OC.
lr 16y ago
This is a GOP strategy called "starve the beast", and Paul Krugman has been writing about it for years: http://www.google.com/search?q=starve+the+beast+krugman http://www.google.com/search?q=starve+the+beast+krugman
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  This same thing is also an extreme Liberal strategy. Sorry, I can't remember the name to look it up. The theory is that you can so overload the government that it simply can't stand up anymore (like the USSR I suppose). It crumbles, and that gives you the opportunity to erect a new one in its place, doing away with all those things that stand in your way, like Constitutional restrictions on the government. UPDATE: the name is "Cloward-Piven" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#The_strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#... ), see my follow-up below.
  - itsgoats 16y ago
    Except there's no mainstream, tea-party-a-like leftists loudly advocating that strategy in the US.
    - CWuestefeld 16y ago
      ... Which doesn't change a thing about it. I finally found a reference, it's called the Cloward-Piven strategy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#The_strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#... >>Cloward and Piven’s article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of the United States Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. They argued that full enrollment of those eligible for welfare "would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments" that would "deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas."
MaysonL 16y ago
Actually, OC went bankrupt because they had lousy financial controls, and the treasurer made some insanely large bets on interest rate derivatives, which worked for a while and then went sour.

by jordanb 16y ago

yummyfajitas 16y ago

...low level employees who had no part in the high level corruption,... The low level employees didn't vote for and join unions which helped that Dem treasurer to get elected? They didn't push for overly generous pensions and non-transparent accounting? They must have behaved very differently than contemporary unions.

jbooth 16y ago
Give me a break. Those low level employees do a job under a contract which was supposedly negotiated in good faith. Now because you don't like "unions" or "government" it's ok to stiff people who perform a public service for a previously agreed upon wage and benefits? What, because highway workers weren't doing financial due diligence on the multi-hundred-million dollar county's books? It was their responsibility to do this? I thought that was the responsibility of the guy who got thrown in jail for cooking the books. This is what that professor was talking about when he was apologizing. Everybody wants to cut taxes and make public servants work for free, whether it's out of simple selfishness or a more highly evolved ideology (aka fancy selfishness).
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Union contracts are not negotiated in good faith. That's the problem. Our politicians do not get into negotiations with the union, driving as hard a bargain as possible and looking out for the taxpayers. Our politicians are in league with the unions hoping to get their support in the next election. In any case, no one wants unions to supply labor for free - all anyone is advocating is that the government pay it's suppliers market rates or below. I.e., the politicians should look out for the taxpayers, not government suppliers. As I've pointed out to you before, most liberals get strongly outraged when there is even a hint that a military contractor might have gotten a sweetheart deal. And yet, there is a strong defense of Big Labor when they get a similar sweetheart deal. Why is that?
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Liberals don't claim that the government should renege on a contract that was lawfully entered into with a military contractor. In fact, nobody claims that, ever. Yet whenever local budgets are crunched, we always hear about how greedy the municipal workers are. You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? I've negotiated union deals from the government side. I negotiated fairly, in good faith, and nobody attempted to bribe me with campaign contributions or do 1/10 of the stuff that regularly happens in Washington with military contractors. Your assumption that the deal must be crooked because it's paying workers is ridiculous. How about the fact that they were out of money because they were cooking the books? How come the workers have to pay for that screwup?
    - houseabsolute 16y ago
      > You know what policemen and highway workers get paid? Policemen get paid a lot of money where I live. (http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655 http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655). Personally I think an entry-level pay of $80k for someone with only a high-school diploma is pretty good. There are other areas in the Bay where pay is even higher, like Oakland. I can't speak to highway workers.
      - 16y ago
ubernostrum 16y ago
I fail to see a logical connection between "you joined a union" and "you lose the right to have contracts you signed upheld". Perhaps you could elaborate?
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I fail to see why you think I implied there was a logical connection. I was simply disputing the idea which I quoted.

jbarham 16y ago

Whereas "temporary" taxes are popular with non-wealthy people? Nice try w/ the class warfare. FWIW I live in Orange County but what really matters is what city you live in within OC.

lr 16y ago

This is a GOP strategy called "starve the beast", and Paul Krugman has been writing about it for years: http://www.google.com/search?q=starve+the+beast+krugman http://www.google.com/search?q=starve+the+beast+krugman

CWuestefeld 16y ago
This same thing is also an extreme Liberal strategy. Sorry, I can't remember the name to look it up. The theory is that you can so overload the government that it simply can't stand up anymore (like the USSR I suppose). It crumbles, and that gives you the opportunity to erect a new one in its place, doing away with all those things that stand in your way, like Constitutional restrictions on the government. UPDATE: the name is "Cloward-Piven" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#The_strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#... ), see my follow-up below.
- itsgoats 16y ago
  Except there's no mainstream, tea-party-a-like leftists loudly advocating that strategy in the US.
  - CWuestefeld 16y ago
    ... Which doesn't change a thing about it. I finally found a reference, it's called the Cloward-Piven strategy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#The_strategy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloward%E2%80%93Piven_strategy#... >>Cloward and Piven’s article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of the United States Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. They argued that full enrollment of those eligible for welfare "would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments" that would "deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas."

MaysonL 16y ago

Actually, OC went bankrupt because they had lousy financial controls, and the treasurer made some insanely large bets on interest rate derivatives, which worked for a while and then went sour.