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Sequestration
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From Capetonians link....Are these the poor souls you're talking about Chandler?

Consider California, where just 10 individual pensioners will cash $50 million in pension checks from state and local governments over the next 25 years. Already some 30,000 retired California government employees pull in pensions higher than $100,000 a year. One retired librarian in San Diego receives a $234,000 annual pension. Beach lifeguards in Orange County are retiring at age 51 with $108,000 annual pensions plus health-care benefits.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 8:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
isobars wrote:
stevenbard wrote:
their pay is already way above civilian pay.

I posted the fallacies in that claim a couple of weeks ago.


Sorry to burst your bubble, but there would be a free flow of individuals in and out of govt if their pay was market based. It is not, so they latch on to the govt teet. And if you really want my opinion, most govt folks would have a difficult time surviving in the real world if ejected from their govt jobs.

They are way overpaid, and your assertion is laughable. There is practically 0 turnover in govt. There is significant turnover in the private sector.

It's not just "my" assertion; it's from large agency comparisons of the pay government and private workers get for the same job.

From just one earlier post:
• This comparison is way over the heads of us peons, the media, and most pundits. It's just too complex, has too many variables, and depends too much on what the meaning of "is" is, to justify the blanket statements we see from the media or any administration. [Besides, the comparisons we see in the media are based on gross average pay scales, not head-to-head job skills vs pay. A GS-15 at Hanford makes 1/3 to 1/5 the pay of the private contractor peers and subordinates he goes toe-to-toe with every day.]

• It's no surprise to me that state and local government compensation is often off the charts. The federal picture is much more stringently controlled, but still has many aberrations. Salaries in the DOE, for example, are tens of thousands of dollars above those of far more competent DoD personnel for the same job at the same location.

• Comparisons overlook some of the regulations and laws federal employees must obey. Examples:
o Access porn on a gum’mint computer and you’re history.
o Express any political opinions in any way in public and your job is in jeopardy.
o Accept anything worth more than $25 - - lunch, snacks at a meeting, a ticket -- from a contractor and you’re likely to become unemployed.
o Frequent flyer benefits go to the government, not the flyer.
o Tell a subordinate manager whom to hire and you’re outta there.
o Any hourly-paid employee who works overtime without authorization, even without pay, is likely to be fired.
o Cannot run for public office.
o Feds must disclose all personal finances.
o No smoking in the building, beginning in the 1960s.
o Before you are approved for an advanced security clearance, the government will know which hand you wipe with, so to speak.
o Many federal retirees are expressly denied Social Security benefits they paid cash for.
o I have seen dozens of federal civil servants ordered to work as long as they can stay awake, get a few hours’ sleep, then repeat, 24/7, for 400 straight days/nights including weekends, without one extra cent of pay.
o Many very senior federal employees are subject to immediate dismissal without cause.
o I’ve seen managers forbid employees from setting office air conditioning thermostats below 100 degrees in the desert SW (during the Carter administration’s energy conservation fiasco).
o Violation of any of those is a federal offense, not just a mark on the boss’s $#!+ list.
o And, of course, some government employees’ job descriptions include getting shot at.

I don’t think everybody is going to get in line for those cushy, overpaid gum’mint jobs all at once.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Obama haters find new and unique ways to avoid facts; the latest from the man who cannot spell--or read:

Quote:
LOL, you do know that Mark Murray has always carried BHO's water, or at least aspires to.


It is hysterical how you missed the poll, so I'll repeat it for you--it has nothing to do with Mark Murray. 52% of those polled thought the sequestration was a bad idea, with 50% saying the cuts were too severe. You can see the full poll here. If you scroll down and compare approval rates for Obama and the Republicans you might understand what Murray opined about--and why you come across as completely uninformed.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/A_Politics/_Today_Stories_Teases/13061-FEBRUARY-NBC-WSJ.pdf
Try some kool aid.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 12:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

From the midget Napoleon who runs New York...

“We are spending money we don’t have,” Mr. Bloomberg explained. “It’s not like your household. In your household, people are saying, ‘Oh, you can’t spend money you don’t have.’ That is true for your household because nobody is going to lend you an infinite amount of money. When it comes to the United States federal government, people do seem willing to lend us an infinite amount of money. … Our debt is so big and so many people own it that it’s preposterous to think that they would stop selling us more. It’s the old story: If you owe the bank $50,000, you got a problem. If you owe the bank $50 million, they got a problem. And that’s a problem for the lenders. They can’t stop lending us more money.”

Oh yeah? That's like saying nobody is going to make a 17 ounce Coke illegal....
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 1:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"From Capetonians link....Are these the poor souls you're talking about Chandler?"


No. I was talking about federal employees and programs that will be affected by the sequester. I don't think you can draw a parallel between federal employees that will be affected by sequester cuts and the pension issues associated with state and local employees in California, Illinois and San Jose. Nice try though.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 4:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-gsa-executive-jeff-neely-parties-at-las-vegas-resort-2012-4?op=1

Oh, you mean these guys?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17743
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SB--on the assumption that you are in one of your constructive modes, you have identified an important concern--but it has nothing to do with the Federal budget or sequestration.

California has a system--the Public Employee Retirement System--that covers both State and local government employees. State employees don't make a lot of money compared to education--but local government employees are sometimes paid way too much by local governments. A significant part of the problem is that the Democrats can't say no often enough to the public employee unions, and the Republicans have destroyed their brand in California by focusing on gay marriage, immigrants, and abortion rather than good government.

The legislature passed a law about 20 years ago allowing local governments to increase the pension payout if they thought it was prudent. That plus term limits meant that many public officials that understood money, and municipal budgets, were termed out. So folks that didn't understand government finance (an even less informed group than the current Tea Party fruitcakes), or people who knew that they would be on to bigger and better offices, allowed pensions to be increased. In mant cases local officials used the pension system to ease out employees rather than use the disciplinary systems. In combination with the skyrocketing cost of health care and the collapse of the economy, this hammered local governments.

The only thing this has to do with Obama is that the first stimulus had some money for preserving local jobs as local tax revenues plumetted. It matters a lot for local government revenues because personnel costs are most of the cost, and the big groups of employees are, in rough order, cops, firemen, and teachers.

Federal pay, and pensions, are less generous than local government pay and pensions, but more generous than State pay. But the total payroll of non-military Federal employees is a very small part of the Federal budget. Defense, social security and medicare. It is pretty easy to look these things up.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
Oh, you mean these guys?

I haven't verified it, but I heard one credible talking head say the DoD's boondoggle trips outdo the GSA's hands down. I'm a bit surprised, simply because of the caliber of most of my DoD peers, who would and often did blow the whistle and stop such deliberate fraud, waste, and abuse. I watched several promising careers end over a long term high-class whorehouse some of my coworkers had set up for themselves on government money, and I personally prevented a totally unnecessary week-long 40-person working trip one two-star had set up at San Francisco's Presidium. One friend has ended the careers of many colonels and generals who tried to abuse the DoD system. For every such ratbag in the DoD, I've got to believe there are at least 10 honest AND bold coworkers who won't tolerate that $#!+. Sure, it takes horsepower to bring down powerful abusers, but their power protects them only until the abuse reaches an honest, bold public servant higher up the totem pole.

A two-star ratbag protected his comparable-grade DoD ratbag civilian friend for years, but ultimately, the clamor from us peons went over their heads and solved the problem. I.e., the system worked, if very slowly, if a few people are willing to risk their careers in the interest of doing the right thing.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Senate offered Obama a bill yesterday expressly to grant the president the authority to carefully choose the individual targets of his sequestration law. Its objective was to let him focus the cuts on intelligently chosen wasteful expenses rather than all the horrible front line hits he has threatened. Just as he did on 11/11/11, he repeated that he would veto any such bill.

That very clearly reveals his single-minded objective: destroy the GOP [our sole obstacle to his transformational social agenda] at any cost to any and every public service including the economy itself and to the people he swore to protect. If he can fool enough people long enough, this would give him free range as our dictator. If the public and the Congress are too stupid to see through that, we are indeed farked. Unfortunately for him, his sharper supporters in the Congress and the streets are finally seeing through his claims that this is the GOP's fault; virtually no Congressmen believed sequestration as he defined it would ever come to pass. That, not 2.4% of our "budget", is what's at stake today and over the next few weeks.

And don't think that is just my opinion. It's coming from Congressmen of both parties, from celebrated world events analysts and newsmen and authors including liberals, from historians, and from tens of millions of voters. For the sake of the free world, we must hope the latter outnumber the welfare voters and the young idiots brainwashed by today's schools.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

You are correct about the Republican brand in Cali Mac. There are 2 sides to the equation. One is Obama's (Dems) amazing job on vilifying conservatives, and the other, the practical missteps by some conservatives.

In other words, how did gay marriage top the news cycle when our financial system was collapsing? Immigration, when we use so much of their labor? Abortion when most people don't approve of it personally? It seems to be a giant head fake to me. Waive one hand over here, while the other one is picking our pockets. Conservatives unable to articulate their positions.

As for Federal vs local, I will stick to my opinion that they are both over paid. When turnover in govt jobs equals 25% the turnover in the private sector, I'll change my stance. Currently the turnover is fractional compared to the private sector.
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