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UCGal
Participant[quote=CA renter][quote=sdduuuude][quote=CA renter]The vast majority of people who apply for a position with a public school district are doing it specifically because there IS a union. You always have the option of working for lower pay and benefits in a non-union position…though I’m not quite sure why anyone would choose to do so.[/quote]
You are saying the same thing – that unions increase the cost of teachers’ salary because they can command higher prices based on their market power. In other words, it’s a monopoly. Yes, there are other options, but they are not viable.
That monopoly selling to the public entity hurts the taxpayers. Also, that monopoly uses its voting power to put people in office that are willing to keep the monopoly in place, again, at the taxpayers’ expense.
How anyone, regardless of their left/right tendencies, can support the legality, morality or public worth of any public employee unions is truly beyond me.[/quote]
PRIVATE entities who do business with the government use their money and/or voting power to put people in office who are willing to keep the monopoly in place…at the taxpayers’ expense. Not only that, but EVERYONE who has any power at all, even if they don’t do business directly with the government — all corporations, banks, business associations, etc. — use their money/voting power to extract money from taxpayers. It can be in the form of tax credits, incentives, new infrastructure which benefits the corporations, special trade and tax policies, etc. There are so many ways that PRIVATE entities use the government/taxpayers to benefit their bottom line.
It’s naive to think that public employee unions are the problem. At least the money that goes to public employees is spent back into the local economy where the tax money came from. That’s much less likely to be the case where private corporations/entities are concerned. These public union positions provide decent-paying jobs that keep demand levels up for local businesses. They also help private sector workers because private employers have to compete with public employers for employees; and private, non-union positions pay better wages/benefits as a result.
Keep in mind, the unions cannot control who gets into office, nor the decisions they make, any more than a private entity can. They have no more power over politicians than private entities do.
Now, if you want to argue that ALL money and influence (including offers of jobs in the private sector, etc.) should be kept out of politics, we’d be 100% in agreement.[/quote]
Dylan Ratigan has a campaign to get ALL money out of politics.
http://www.getmoneyout.com/I’m not sure I agree with that but I *do* agree with a radical change to campaign finance. Limit personal contributions of actual humans to some fixed amount. Eliminate PACs and Super PACs. Eliminate Union financial contributions to political candidates and paid “issue” ads. Eliminate corporate contributions and paid issue ads. Corporations and unions can ask employees/members to contribute personally or volunteer personally, but not coerce. After all – we have free will – folks won’t contribute or volunteer if they don’t agree. No coercion of any kind allowed. (My company “suggests” that employees above a certain paygrade contribute to a PAC – I have yet to do it because I disagree with pretty much every candidate the PAC funds. If they ever even hinted it was required I’d make such a stink…)
And severely restrict lobbying. Shut down lobbyist-for-hire K street firms. Citizens (human beings) should be able to go make their case. Employees of a company should be able to go make a case for their industry. (In other words – it’s ok for a company to have a DIRECT employee who’s job it is to make the case for their industry.) But having 3rd party firms involved in it, providing access, etc, corrupts the system.
But I’m not in charge.
ParticipantThe other issue with student loans is that they are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
Students are encouraged to take on this debt. Often they are young with little financial sense. So they just keep borrowing and not downsizing their lifestyle appropriately (as mentioned – putting living expenses on the student loans).
The biggest problem with student loans are that they are given to kids who’ve never lived on their own.
Financial education – the basics – should be mandatory in high school as part of the college requirements. Not just 2 years of a foreign language.
ParticipantUnless you’re a teacher applying to a charter school (publicly funded, but non-union)
Or an aerospace engineer applying to Boeing. (Private industry, unionized engineers.)ParticipantIf you spend your life indoors, it makes sense.
Vegas is nice for periods in the spring/fall/winter. But too hot for my tastes in the summer.It’s not too bad right now (high 80’s)… but the over 100’s in the summer… nope, wouldn’t want to live there.
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]
Well, CE, not sure what you are implying here but FWIW, I was not a resident of CA at the time. I don’t know what UC tuition/fees were in that era but IIRC, SDSU (recently renamed from SD State College) was about $114-143 semester + fees (about $168 semester incl pkg). CA CC’s were “free.”
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I went to SDSU in the mid early/mid 80’s. It was SDSU even back then. And had been for a while.At the time I started registration and fees for in-state students was approx. $350/semester. Books were another $100. By the time I left it had gone up to $550/semester, and books had doubled.
It’s up to $3289 for registration and fees for in-state students, per semester. And the sdsu.edu website claims it’s about $800/semester for books. That seems pretty steep to me.
Participant[quote=AK]Most of the low down payment buyers I see on Property Virgins, etc., are Canadian … it seems one can still get 95% or even 100% financing in the Great White North.
But it’s OK because the market is hot, real estate never goes down, and it can’t happen there![/quote]
A lot are Canadian – but I see some domestic stuff too – Colorado, Georgia, Florida, etc. And these are post crash because they’re also dealing with short sales and foreclosures.Sandra does venture out of Canada periodically. LOL
Participant[quote=Fearful][quote=UCGal]What is the age of the home?
If it’s older – you need to test it for asbestos. Homes from the 60’s and 70’s often had asbestos in the popcorn ceiling. This adds *significantly* to the cost.If the house is older, you can buy a test kit at Home Depot -scrape a little and mail it off.[/quote]
I may get scorched for this, but: If you discover your ceiling contains asbestos, you have gained information you really could have done without. Do it yourself or find a contractor that wants to be paid cash and does not mention the a-word. If you discover it has asbestos in it, you are then obliged to disclose that to the contractors and to subsequent buyers. Do yourself a favor: Ignorance is bliss.You get the stuff off by wetting, scraping, and putting it into plastic bags, whereupon it quietly disappears back to the ground from whence it came.
You’ll probably have to sand a little bit; do so with a vacuum sander, wear at least a nuisance dust mask, and ventilate the house well.
You probably will have to have a drywall guy re-tape some of the seams. One motivation for sprayed-on ceilings is the shoddy work they hide.
One alternative, though it is not at all cheap, is to cover the popcorn ceiling with a 1/4″ drywall layer, thereby entombing the suspected nasty stuff.[/quote]
I agree it’s not a bad DIY job – but do you want to risk asbestosis if there is asbestis in it? I don’t. But the risk is relatively easily mitigated with filter masks and containment of the debris from the rest of the house.
Also there’s the fact that it is illegal to put asbestos in the regular landfill.
When we looked into DYI we found that there are few disposal sites – and only contractors have access to them. So you’d need to hire a contractor to dispose of it – even if you did the scraping.
Here’s a list of EPA approved sites that accept asbestos
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CEQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnepis.epa.gov%2FExe%2FZyPURL.cgi%3FDockey%3D000001EP.TXT&rct=j&q=asbestos%20in%20landfills&ei=1HOcTtq7BsWWiALH7vyhDQ&usg=AFQjCNHUTYoycqOFuoq5xK7jhvTwSDPuDA&cad=rjaHopefully the OP has a newer house and it’s a non-issue.
ParticipantWhat is the age of the home?
If it’s older – you need to test it for asbestos. Homes from the 60’s and 70’s often had asbestos in the popcorn ceiling. This adds *significantly* to the cost.If the house is older, you can buy a test kit at Home Depot -scrape a little and mail it off.
ParticipantI admit I watch the shows on HGTV a lot.
And there are definitely people who are completely unable to see “diamonds in the rough”, because of all the shiny/sparkly graniteel’d houses on HGTV.
It amazes me when I see a buyer on Property Virgins or House Hunters that will say something like “House A had a great layout and price, but the appliances were white and the counters looked dated. House B was more expensive and had tiny little rooms – but that kitchen had stainless and granite”. And then they pick house B.
Along the same lines – the inability of buyers to see beyond staging (or lack of staging). It’s become required to stage homes – largely due to expectations from HGTV. 10 years ago I rarely heard about homes needing staging when listed. Cleaned and painted, yes… but not swapping out furniture, removing family photos, etc. When did buyers get so picky they wouldn’t buy a house if it had a family photo in it?
I would also add another symptom to HGTV syndrome: Failure to do the math. Again on Prop Virgins and HH – they have very low downpayments (10K on a 400k budget for example) and the realtor fails to point out that improvements typically aren’t financed. Very rarely is the discussion “you can improve and update over time as finances allow”. They look at the 400k budget – and assume they have 100% of it for the finished product. Not with that small of a cash reserve.
ParticipantGoldman was never really a commercial bank anyway – except on paper so they could get that tasty, virtually free, money.
This might be an indication that the spigot of money to the banks from the fed is going to dry up.
The giant squid will always come out ahead of the game.
Participant[quote=pri_dk][quote=CA renter]Hogwash. Most of the richest people today do nothing to increase domestic production or create jobs.[/quote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_400_(2010)
Funny, I found the facts that demonstrate how wrong you are on Google, using a Dell computer running a Microsoft OS.
Now I’m off to Wal Mart, where I can buy tonight’s dinner for my family for under $10…[/quote]
Hmmm – most of those companies haven’t added significantly to US jobs, once you account for acquisitions.
I just dove through the 10-k filings for 2009-2011 to see the employee head counts.Microsoft has lost 2000 jobs in the US since end of FY2009
Google added just under 5000 jobs between FY2009 and FY2010 (10k for FY2011 not out yet). I assume some of the headcount is due to the acquisitions they made in that time frame. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google)
Dell gained 24,400 employees between FY2009 and FY2011 – but 23,800 were from the acquisition of Perot. And when you do the math on domestic employees, they’ve “gained” 7000 employees domestically, but most of the Perot employees were domestic – so domestically they’ve shed jobs.
One more thing on Dell – if you look at their 2008 employment (88,200) and add in the Perot jobs, they’re down 8700 jobs.Walmart has stayed flat domestically and internationally on employment for the past 3 years. 2.1M employees worldwide, 1.4 here in the US. And they talk of the high percentage of part time workers, and high turnover of employeees in their 10-K’s.
I wouldn’t hold those companies’ CEOs out as shining examples of rich CEOs hiring lots of US workers. The data doesn’t show it.
Company CEOs look at employee headcount as an expense. They don’t want to ADD expenses, they want to CUT expenses.
October 11, 2011 at 4:29 PM in reply to: It’s going to get much worse…there is no escape (ECRI) #730486Participant[quote=walterwhite]Would it work to stimulate the economy to say we are going to have the best party with the best party technology next year? Spend whatever it takes and instead of fighting, just partying like crazy. Producing jello shots instead of bullets. Getting the best entertainment the best party wear and just gearing the nation up for the most intense partying ever?
Wouldn’t this generate a lot of activity, like war?[/quote]
Are you inviting pigs?
And do you provide crash space so we can consume jello shots in excess and not have to drive home from Temecula?I like your plan to stimulate the economy.
ParticipantThe best public transit systems are hybrids of light rail and bus.
Philly is a good example of this – Septa to bring folks in from the burbs. The El and the Broad Street line for intra-city cross town type stuff. And buses to get between neighborhoods.A good friend in Philly was 37 before she got her drivers license – was a mom, employee, functioning person all without a car.
When I was in NYC 2 years ago for a week we used 100% public transportation – trains/subway combos to get to/from the airport. Cross town buses to get across central park. Subway lines to go north/south. We didn’t even use a taxi… all public transit. It was fast and looking at the people on the buses and subways – it was the way everyone traveled – including the middle class and professional folks. All it took was watching who got on/off the bus near the Met museum to convince you it wasn’t just the poor folks on the bus in NYC.
San Diego’s public transit has some good and some bad. If you live in UTC, Fashion Valley, or Downtown – you can get pretty much anywhere. The trolleys are great. I have quite a few friends who commute by coaster. But if you don’t live or work near a bus line, it’s awful.
October 11, 2011 at 1:25 PM in reply to: OT: red light camera ticket for right turn and 0.1 secs #730471Participant[quote=sdduuuude]Do they have video ?
Can they prove you didn’t stop before turning right ?[/quote]
Hubster got one at Murphy Canyon and Aero. The photo they sent with the ticket made it look like he was just stopped. He was all set to fight it. Then he got a link to the video – and it was no longer an option to fight it – he rolled the stop at a right turn on red.It’s a VERY expensive ticket – and even more when you add in traffic school.
I’ve been beyond careful ever since. The $ amount is a serious deterrent.
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