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May 2, 2012 at 1:24 PM in reply to: OT: Can we talk something about real estate on this blog… Please??? #742686
bearishgurl
Participant[quote=captcha] . . . How is it possible that the county destroys blueprints 90 days after the work is done? What’s stopping me from making an unpermitted modification (something that’s not visible from the outside) and claiming that’s how the things were as long as I don’t get caught during construction?[/quote]
Nothing, that I can see . . . as long as the “footprint” remains unchanged.
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=markmax33]
Auditing the Fed is a waste? Sorry SK, there’s only one waste of pixels in this thread. We all know who it is![/quote]We’ve talked about this numerous times. The Fed already gets audited every single year. If he had wanted the scope of the audit expanded, addressing specific issues, then he should have written the law that way. He didn’t. The bill simply says an audit will be done and the Comptroller of the Currency will issue a report on the findings. No scope identified. Without any expanded scope, there’s no necessity for this new audit to be any different than the old. This bill is either a publicity stunt on the part of Paul, or he really is a moron. I suspect the former. Though given some of his ridiculous claims lately, I’m not really sure.[/quote]
So, SK, are you voting for Romney, Obama, your own “write-in” candidate, or have you decided to “sit out” this election year??
Just wondering if you intend to vote …..
May 2, 2012 at 10:55 AM in reply to: Ron Paul Wins Alaska and Washington State + Several State GOP Chairman Positions #742668Participant[quote=markmax33]…and since when is following the Constitution fringe? You can’t even name a fringe idea that he presents. It’s kind of just slander in cyberspace. Fringe is what Obama and the Republicans present:
1. Fringe is spending 100% more tax money than we make every year. We’ll be around $2T in deficit this year.
2. Fringe is repealing the constitution without an ammendment and locking up Americans in overseas jails without a trial.
3. Fringe is monitoring everything on the internet and arresting people based on that information without a search warrant.
4. Fringe is allowing the money supply to be controlled by 12 men in a locked room with no accountability.
5. Fringe is being pulled over by the TSA while you drive on a road and being searched with no warrant.
etc, etc.[/quote]
Thank you for laying this all out here for the Piggs to munch on, MM3!
May 2, 2012 at 10:29 AM in reply to: Ron Paul Wins Alaska and Washington State + Several State GOP Chairman Positions #742664ParticipantNot surprisingly, it sounds like a lot of “voter apathy” going on here. Who are the “most vocal” Piggs here voting for in the primary . . . that is, if you’re even registered (or registered for the “right” party)?? :=[
Deadline to register for the primary is May 21 and you can now fill out the form online and mail it in, forthwith.
https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/register-to-vote/
Aren’t happy with the current PTB’s?? Get to it, Piggs!
ParticipantI just reregistered again today as a Repub so I can vote for RP in the primary. I don’t like any of the other choices for Prez and will be paying attn to see how far RP can “upset the apple cart” this year!
And I’m sure I’m not alone ….
ParticipantHere is a link to Prop 60 provisions.
http://arcc.co.san-diego.ca.us/services/reapp_ex_prog.aspx
Call (619) 531-5481 with questions.
I knew a co-worker who successfully did it. She just moved within the county from a house to a condo.
It is a one-time-only benefit. Make sure your MIL will be buying her (hopefully) last house before applying for it.
ParticipantI agree with the authors that “timing” can play a role in luck. For instance, those SV “ground-floor entrepreneurs” of tech startups in the 80’s and early 90’s which are now household names made huge fortunes.
Even though there are still startups in SV today, the “golden era of invention” (when the idea of “tech” to the masses was new) has passed. The beneficiaries of this “timed luck” were indeed born between 1950 and 1955. Steve Jobs (with a HS Diploma and 1 yr of college under his belt) was a good example.
Participant[quote=flu][quote=desmond]One thing that I have seen change over the years as a native Californian is the old “California laidback lifestyle” has long been forgotten even as a cliche. If you lay back in CA you will be trounced and passed over by the millions that have ended up here. CA is still a great place to live, is it worth working so hard you rarely get to enjoy it? I think it is better to actually be able to enjoy things in life without working ourselves to death in the short time that we are here.[/quote]
Desmond,
The issue though really isn’t just california. It’s the entire world.
* The entire world is smaller, it’s inherently more competitive, competing for resources… Twenty years ago, globalization wasn’t nearly as pronounced as it was before. Now people here compete not only with each other but abroad.
* In the U.S., while a lot of innovation still is happening and going to happen, the opportunities that are available these days to our younger generation are far fewer than probably your generation (I’m assuming you’re baby boomer or more..Sorry, but you said you had a kid that already graduated and working)…A lot of the stuff invented/assumed is from big corporations because they control the means and inventions and with deep pockets to both governements and W.S. to secure funding and legal teams to rightfully or wrongfully defend/squash ideas.
A kid born these days, call it a silver spoon or what not… These days, if you’re kids aren’t born with a significant financial seed, it’s really tough for them to make it on their own… I don’t consider my household poor, but I do need to watch where my money goes. Although my parents gave me a huge seed, I don’t have a trust fund or inheritance of money/resources to tap into that can allow me to kick back and do nothing.. Not saying there’s anything wrong with it, or that it’s something that I want… It’s just how it is…So I have different starting point that someone else. The saying that you need money to make money is true, especially in this country at this particular time, and depending on social/economic/cultural demographics, a lot of the outcome depends on, well timing, effort, and luck….
* We as a society have gotten more spoiled and want to spend more of our money on resources/things we really don’t need beyond the basic necessities of life. So as a result, we are slaves to the new materialism…Especially in Southern California.[/quote]
I don’t think today’s parents have to be “rich,” per se, and throw tens of thousands at their kids to help them launch if they don’t have it. I think to succeed in life today, a young person needs a work ethic and also the good sense NOT to indulge in student loans, credit cards and auto loans in their college years. This involves financial discipline and money-mgmt skills which are NOT skills that very many young people of today have, due to being overindulged by parents. Sometimes the solution is working their way through college. This is especially doable if they have a partial scholarship or grant.
If young adults today manage to bury themselves in debt early on, they will very likely be financially crippled for many years, thus unable to pay rent and live independently. This is true even if they land a good entry-level position with benefits because most of their salary will have to be deployed to debt service and the rest of their life (marriage/children) put on hold. Those who marry without retiring their student loan debt make their debt their new spouse’s problem, often end up deferring it due to “life happening,” and the debt grows instead of shrinks. At the age of 40+, those who took deferrals are often STILL burdened by college debt. This situation doesn’t help the couple buy a house and the non-indebted spouse grows tired and resentful of the problem, which could have been avoided entirely by better college planning.
Nothing has changed over the last few decades in this regard, except that college students can now borrow enough on a student loan to “subsidize their lifestyle” both on and off campus. In the past, colleges were paid directly for tuition, fees, bookstore, dorm and meal ticket, etc by the lender, grantor or scholarship fund and the student never saw any cash. Also, a college student of 20 years ago didn’t have a multitude of credit cards literally thrown at them on campus. However, I think this practice has stopped in recent years.
I think it’s the decisions that young people make for themselves that primarily determine how “successful” they will be down the road. LOTS of students whose educations have been funded by wealthy “benefactors” (parents/grandparents and other relatives) have never even used the (expensive) degrees they earned. Many of these “silver-spoon-fed” students ended up taking jobs unrelated to their major in order to be on their own. Some of the jobs they took didn’t require any college at all! And some of these “well-funded” students ended up working only PT after college or never worked in their entire lives due to being supported by someone else. Again, I believe work ethic DOES matter on whether you will be successful in life…moreso than having a college degree and/or wealthy parents.
Participant[quote=enron_by_the_sea][quote=briansd1]
…And roads and schools don’t get funding forever?[/quote]Road funding comes from gas taxes (not general fund).
To do the same to high speed train, you will have to charge 300+ for the ticket (see above) and no one will use it.
In general for most transportation user pays.[/quote]
Precisely. It only costs $160 to $170 (reg price – not sale price) to fly RT from BUR, ONT, SNA or SAN to SFO on Southwest Airlines ($120 – $140 sale price). Whether one flies or rides a train, they will in both cases have to get picked up at SFO or rent a vehicle there.
Participant[quote=enron_by_the_sea]Now I hear that even if we somehow build this thing, its operation will cost the taxpayers of the state of CA forever! Real white elephant!!!
[quote]
If the bullet train project is to pencil out, it must operate far more economically than any high-speed rail system in the world, according to the experts, who include former World Bank executive William Grindley.
Unless these extraordinary economies are achieved, the train will require alarmingly high annual operating subsidies “forever,” as the experts wrote in a report last month. The annual operating deficit could top $2 billion, they wrote.
The rail authority’s business plans indicate that the bullet train would cost about 10 cents per passenger mile to operate, Bushell said in a recent interview.
That means it would cost 10 cents to carry one passenger one mile on the rail system. But international high-speed rail systems cost on average about 43 cents per passenger mile, he said.
[/quote]
Read more here: http://www.modbee.com/2012/04/29/2179385/bullet-trains-operating-costs.html#storylink=cpy
BTW if real operating cost of the project is more like 0.43/mile as it has been observed elsewhere in the world, then the cost of transporting 1 person from LA to SF is about 300 miles* 0.43 = $129 one way. If HSR has to make any money then it will cost >$300 round trip to transport a person and this project is not viable.
Therefore they might have just made a number of $0.10/mile…[/quote]
Agreed, enron. Especially since (dtn) LA to (dtn) SF is actually about 425 miles…
Participant[quote=pri_dk][quote=flu]…And yet people have no qualms sharing every intimate and personal details about their life on facebook, myspace, linkedin, twitter, etc,etc,etc..[/quote]
But BG keeps asking me about my “immediate family” – what should I do? – should I post up my wife’s life-story or my dad’s income?…[/quote]
pri_dk, you put YOURSELF out there about a couple of months back by stating personal details about your family RIGHT HERE on this blog, when asked by me why you had so much time to spend here trashing public employees and their VERY hard-earned pensions! This is a personal affront to (likely) dozens of Piggs who are past or current “government employees.” Until you yourself serve 20, 25, or 30+ years of service to the public, you have no idea exactly what these workers had to go thru to finally become eligible to collect their pensions!
No one has asked you about your spouse (or even if you had one) or your dad (be grateful you still have one if you do). You’re “whining” here, again.
[quote=pri_dk]…Seriously folks, instead of ranting on a blog, why not actually DO SOMETHING:
– First, quit focusing on Obama and take note of the hundreds of our elected officials who actually did approve of this legislation. Is your congressman on the list? (mine is) Write a letter, make a call, or at least do an online petition.
– Second, try to remember some junior-high civics and understand that this will be battled in the courts and that court battles cost money. So give some money to the organizations that actually are fighting this thing and have a shot at overturning it. The ACLU and EFF are good places to start.
Or you could put your tin-foil hats on and whine about the “PTB” …[/quote]
This is the first lucid post based upon “reality” that I have seen coming from you (from the threads I’ve actually read). I’ve been saying this stuff all along and even repeated it in the thread we were discussing above:
http://piggington.com/otcontest_to_guess_the_occupant_of_beautiful_new_building_in_rsf
[quote=bearishgurl – March 8, 2012, at 10:59 pm]…Why don’t you lobby your congressman or legislator to abolish the entire portion of the CA Government Code (and while you’re at it, the CA Education Code, too) that deals with “collective bargaining.” Maybe you two are collectively “smart enough” to line it out and write in new code, lol!
Look at the initial sentence of this thread here. What does it say?? “Okay time for some fun.” (sans punctuation)
pri_dk, did you ever consider that the entire premise of this thread was to give sdr a platform for attacking public-worker benefits and pensions??
Duh …..
sdr claims he went up there to view the “Miraval tract.” Have we been discussing that here???
NO! The discussion on this thread (entirely led and directed by the OP) devolved from the materials used to build a public building (that the workers using it had no part of choosing) back to . . . where else but public salaries and pensions?
Given this particular OP and main participant(s), should we be surprised??
Since you’re both so presumably “successful” and thus have a lot of time on your hands to “whine” about sh!t none of us has any control over, why don’t you begin writing your representatives right now about your plans to repeal (wholesale) the CA Government and Education Codes?…[/quote]
For the record, I do not know who pri_dk is and we have never had any “PM communications” on this website or any communications at all off this public blog.
Participant[quote=captcha][quote=bearishgurl]
Throughout my long “career” as a bureaucrat, I have found that those families who typically use the MOST free or low-cost public services are, in general, the biggest complainers about public agencies their workers…[/quote]Well, that’s probably because those families deal with public agencies the most, no?[/quote]
Yes, captcha, that’s part of it. But it’s also because the beneficiaries of these services receive them free or for a very low cost, often for many years and sometimes for a lifetime, so they and/or their caregivers likely feel “entitled” to them and so appreciate them less. It’s kind of like belonging to a HMO where your employer pays the premium. When you don’t actually pay for a service or even see the bill and pay a tiny co-pay at each medical visit, you really have no idea how much it all costs. These services are in place specifically to serve eligible populations. If one qualifies for the services, they deserve to have them. This is the sole reason why these programs are in place.
Imagine what your life would be like if you lived in a third-world country and desperately needed even SOME of the health and human services that eligible Americans enjoy!
Participant(deleted by the admin as too obnoxious even for an unmoderated forum)
ParticipantY-a-a-a-w-n … Ironically, as I was going through bookshelves in my study last week to see if I could gather a pile to donate, I ran across this keeper (circa the “gulf war malaise”):
[img_assist|nid=16133|title=Special Issue – Time Magazine|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=447|height=600]
[img_assist|nid=16134|title=Table of Contents November 18, 1991|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=436|height=600]
This issue has been debated over and over again for the last 30 years or so.
I decided to open it up and read the interview with then Gov Pete Wilson and the chapter on “Environment” called Gobbling up the Land. Even back then, in an era when nearly every single proposition/referendum was summarily rejected by state voters, our PTB practically all over the state found Big Development and their backroom bribes just too tempting to pass up from the time of this printing forward.
Piggs complaining that there are too many gov’mt workers and too many workers vested in defined benefit pensions need only to look to your local elected officials who voted in CFD after CFD in multiple layers radiating out from city cores but all, of course, in need of continuing “services.” Thus, we now have before us the hellish nightmare of urban sprawl (much of it currently “underwater” and otherwise “distressed”).
Wilson was extremely troubled by the exodus of producing taxpayers from CA and the entrance of immigrants (with little resources of their own) in their place. He lambasted conflicting Federal laws which state both that an illegal immigrant is ineligible for any government services/benefits and ALSO that ALL resident children are legally entitled to a public education, no matter what their immigration status. He talked about CA public school teachers having to take on many more roles for this population than they were hired for. In a nutshell, he stated the relentless influx of new immigrants and their children and the refusal of voters to pay more taxes would eventually cause the state’s residents to wrestle with some very difficult decisions. Wilson’s prognostications have sadly now come to fruition.
There are so many things in the OP’s article that Kotkin pointed out that I think are terribly skewed but I’ll just stick with his “young family being priced out of coastal RE” argument and his “entrenched native” counter-argument.
I think the “real” problem with the vast majority of “young families” today making good money but complaining about where they have to live and what they have to live in is that they have much greater housing expectations than transplants who first moved here 20+ years ago. These young parents are no longer willing to live in a “starter home” in a “starter neighborhood” or even a well-established “working-class” or “retired” neighborhood. They want new construction <5 miles from the beach for their first house straight out of the gate! The vast majority of “entrenched CA natives” have in the past and are living today in much, much less than what a “newcomer” expects, ESP if they have “inherited” their parents home and have decided to make it their principal residence. Very few CA residents actually send their kids to private school. It is a small fraction of children overall, in the single digits. I can’t understand how worker-bee newcomers to CA would be focused on that, what with all their other relocation and job concerns. Private school is not a necessity.
“Young families” who made good wages in the 70’s and 80’s simply bought a home near relatives (if they had any here) and sent their children to public school without further ado. I myself worked alongside these employees with young families for many years and was in this demographic myself. Even the “professionals” I worked with bought homes in Spring Valley, El Cajon, College area, Chula Vista, Escondido, etc and sent their kids to public school and there were very few zone and interdistrict transfers issued back then. They did NOT expect to buy their first home in Coronado or La Jolla!
Kotkin even states a Utah family making $200K today would likely have to send their child to public school! What is he “lamenting” here, exactly?
Because of CA’s unchecked urban sprawl of the last 20 years, many new residents are now thoroughly confusing themselves with a plethora of housing choices all over the map, which have caused their housing expectations to soar thru the roof!
Kotkin would do well to jog his memory a bit back to ’72, when he was likely living in a rat-infested 2 br Berkeley walkup with 3 other guys or his first 1150 sf Oakland “bungalow” in ’78 (where he lived when his first child was born, lol), and ask himself if HIS expectations as a newly-minted college graduate and new parent were the same as those similarly-situated residents of today.
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