[Shadowfax]

[quote=ctr70]Instead they should be marching on the state capitols against the ridiculous pensions and health care benefits paid to Government worker retirees that is bankrupting the state and cities. That is where the real rape & pillage of the tax payer is happening.[/quote]

You are still drinking the propaganda Kool Aid.

[Shadowfax]

[quote=poorgradstudent]Econ 101 pretty much tells us that long term, in order to keep talent, if critical government jobs cut benefit plans, they’d have to raise salaries, basically making it a wash in terms of taxpayer benefit. I personally know several people who work for the State for wages lower than they could take elsewhere specifically because of the benefits.
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The irony is that the character qualities that many people exhibit in taking a government job–sacrificing a larger salary now for a reward paid out later in benefits–is usually admirable. Kind of like those who are frugal and save their money instead of being the consummate consumer. But suddenly, they are all being villainized for being reasonable and responsible!

I agree that some of the benefits being paid out are out of hand, but for the majority I don’t think the benefits are out of hand.

This discussion wouldn’t be happening if the fund and pension managers hadn’t bought the lie. If they’d kept the pension funds invested in safe, moderate return facilities. Now comes the MBSes and the funds lose tons of money and now there is nothing left to pay out to retirees. It’s not their fault–most of them don’t even have control over what the pension invests in–but now they are the villains?

[Shadowfax]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Shadowfax: As I read the Rolling Stone piece, I couldn’t help but think how much an independent, investigative media would help expose shit like this.

Its not just enforcement agencies that have been gutted. Pick nearly any major metro paper of your choosing and look at how lean their staffing is. When’s the last time you read a really good piece of muckracking journalism (outside of Taibbi and the Rolling Stone)? Chances are its been a while. We know to the minute what Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian are up to, but don’t have a fucking clue when it comes to meaningful reporting. Its sad and a major part of the reason that we, as a country, are where we are.[/quote]

Yes, the failure of our free press is another depressing topic. I think in general Americans are lazy and complacent and as long as they receive a steady dose of entertainment, they don’t really give a shit whether the walls tumble down around them–but they will complain all day about how bad they have it.

And all the while Fox Spews emits such garbage under the color of “information” and so many people swallow that poison like it’s the truth, what else can we expect of our electorate?

[Shadowfax]

Let’s assume that zombies have the rights of citizens of both State A and the US and that they can be murdered (even though they are already dead). If an otherwise law abiding zombie is captured in State A and transported to State B against its will, where the perp uses zombie’s credit card to rent a hotel room and then kills zombie. Several federal and state laws are violated. The federal laws are invoked because of the interstate nature of the crime. The FBI will be involved. The various enforcement agencies may work it out amongst themselves on how the case will be prosecuted–whether under state or federal laws and whether in state or federal court.

Drug trafficking is a largely federal crime and eats up a lot the federal court resources due to the fact that the illegal substances are transported over state lines.

None of this has anything to do with abortions, unless a zombie can be considered equivalent to an unborn fetus?

[Shadowfax]

[quote=UCGal]MarkMax… the subject has changed to zombies… or better yet – zombie sharks!!!
(Now that is really terrifying.)

I love the idea of sending Marian to stay behind and fight them.

Can we make a stop at La Posta to get grub before we head out to the Carl Vinsen?[/quote]
I am usually all for these thread detours, but I am geeking out here for a bit. I’ll come back around to appreciate good humor in a bit. I do like the zombie shark idea…

[Shadowfax]

[quote=walterwhite]Each state has its own constitution and each state gets to interpret it’s own state constitution.[/quote]

Ah, but the federal Constitution is the “one ring” that binds them all. If you have a state law that someone feels doesn’t fit with the principals of the US Constitution, the USSC gets to review it in the light of the US constitution, and the basic rights embodied in the US Constitution trump the state’s laws, if they are out of sync. That was one of the conditions of federalism.

[Shadowfax]

[quote=Hobie]No Italians in this group, so far:) Eating,drinking,friends is art.[/quote]
I am a recovering Italian. Food is like breathing in an Italian family.

[Shadowfax]

[quote=pri_dk]So the Mexican drug cartels have all the pension funds.

How do we get it back from them?[/quote]

I dunno. Any ideas of your own?

[Shadowfax]

[quote=BoomerAang]Do some activities together. I play billiards when I talk with guy friends. We go to bars together, bowling, etc. Just find some random activity that you can do together when you meet. K1 in carlsbad? Wine-tasting, microbrewery or bars?[/quote]

I don’t think that addresses the caloric intake problem…. And drinking is even worse in my opinion–the empty calorie conundrum.

The challenge is removing the calories from every aspect of American life. If you go to the beach, people eat and/or drink. If you go bowling, people eat/drink. If you have a party, people eat. The problem is that for some circles, eating has become the focus of every activity.

As for holidays, I think you just have to go with it. They are traditionally “feast” days, so you are fighting hundreds of years of tradition on those occasions.

[Shadowfax]

The place looks like a UCSD undergrad flop house. I thing the pics were taken by a LL in support of an eviction proceeding and then the LL made a mistake and handed over the wrong USB drive to the realtor, who was desperateto just to post something for people to look at.

[Shadowfax]

Start a walking club? You can still converse while walking. Or take up golfing? Without the golf carts and beer….

I heard a story (might be an urban myth) that the head of a prominent San Diego defense company used to hold management meetings during his daily lunchtime jog. All the managers that reported to him had to be able to run. I don’t know what his pace was, but I bet they saved money on their health insurance plans with so many fit executives!

[Shadowfax]

It’s a start. Better from them than from the rest of us, you included, right?

Didn’t break any laws? You are kidding, right? These guys (I am not aware of any women CEOs, but there may be some) are the Chief Executive Officers–they are ultimately responsible for the actions of the banks they are in charge of. It’s Enron all over again–“I didn’t know my traders were actively and knowingly fleecing grannies of their savings!”

Since when was fraud not a crime? If we had an enforcement arm that had any cojones, most of these assholes would be in trial for the basic crime of stealing.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/finally-a-judge-stands-up-to-wall-street-20111110

Part of the problem with the banks that are too big to fail is that they are also too big to be accountable. You can’t throw a corporation in jail, so you have to look to the people who made decisions or overlooked the crimes being committed in the name of profits. Look at Solyndra: it’s being investigated for taking government money. Did the CEO line his pockets with some of that money? Maybe. But at least there is/was an investigation into where it all went.

Where is the investigation of the banks that sold these retirement plans (usually conservative customers for investment products) toxic securities? Well, the enforcement arms have been gutted by budget cuts and the commissioners’ seats are filled with insider cronies who can’t bring charges against their Harvard MBA classmates. Who you gonna call? So the CEOs and others at the helm of Wall Street either participated or were willingly or woefully ignorant. They should recompense the people they fleeced. End of story.

[Shadowfax]

[quote=pri_dk]The question moving forward really isn’t “Public sector employee or Wall Street?”

The question is “Public sector employee or Taxpayer or Public services?”

Some combination of the latter three are going to have to bear the cost of the generous promises that have been made.[/quote]

I think some form of restitution from Wall Street would help with those last three areas. We speak of Wall Street like it’s an amorphous entity, but it’s ultimately a small group of individuals who have been highly compensated to oversee the great rip off of the rest of the country. I think the Goldman and Citigroup and other CEOs, for starters, should have their salaries garnished and their multiple homes auctioned off to pay back the tax payers whose savings were wiped out while Citi bet against its own investment vehicles, profiting off the failure and those who were lied to about the investment’s quality.

Yay!! Wealth redistribution!!

[Shadowfax]

[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
My point is that municipalities and states will always spend to their level of income and that these various Treasurers, Controllers and Comptrollers have NO business being in the business of investments that they don’t understand. The reason I gave the investment “opportunity” a miss, was that I didn’t understand a friggin’ word this guy was telling me (and I suspect he didn’t know fuck-all about the investments, either) and it seemed too good to be true. When you have CalPERS predicating pension payouts on an annualized 8% rate of return EVERY year, well, at some point the chickens come home to roost. And here we are.[/quote]

One thing future polititians should look at is how to incentivize savings within government. I surmise that there is not much incentive for a given department to not spend up to their level of income because then they have a surplus and they know that surplus will be cut or transferred away in the next budget cycle. The “saving for a rainy day” concept doesn’t seem to even enter the picture. There will always be other areas that need funding, so if education has a surplus one year and CalTrans doesn’t, then the education funds will be wiped out to pay for road fixes. I don’t have any answers but I think this is one idea that needs careful consideration.

[Shadowfax]

Yeah, it’s those several thousand pages of legal reasoning, citations, quotations from other cases, etc. that make up the framework of constitutional law, that holds most people back from understanding what the hell is going on here. I include myself in the ingnorant crowd and I am suspect of anyone who thinks they have all the answers. Especially when they emerge after a summer course in Constiutional Law sponsored by some right wing religious “college.”

Unless you are some sort of ConLaw scholar, it’s really hard to have a good grasp on why the USSC makes the decisions that they do in this area. It’s way more complicated than the pundits would like the public to believe. I am a woman and I happen to think that the Court in Roe v. Wade got it mostly right, but maybe not entirely for the right reasons.

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