Posted by Michael Haran on Nov 1, 2012
A Bunch of Malarkey in our Own Backyard
By Michael Haran
Published Healdsburg Tribune 11/01/2012
Regarding Mel Amato’s recent Letter to the Editor (I can read a Thesaurus 1018/12) Mr. Amato’s should look up the word “malarkey.” How stupid does he think people are? Either he is a one percenter, a lapdog for the rich or just loves seeing his name in print. I am not going to comment on his Thesaurus BS and focus on the facts.
He like every other conservative extremist in this country likes to twist the facts to pander to likeminded ignorant and prejudiced people. The reason the deficit has increased over the past four years is b
ecause our economy is working through the worst recession since the Great Depression. The deficit had to rise to help people and businesses get through these tough times on shrinking tax revenues. When Obama took office the economy was in a free fall. His administration implemented a stimulus package which helped stop the slide in the summer of 2009. In retrospect no one knew just how bad this recession really was and that the stimulus package was actually too small. Obama has since tried several times to get a jobs stimulation package through congress but has been stymied by congress at every turn. They have no intention of trying to stimulate the economy they only want the “black” man out of the “white” house.
Mr. Amato would be doing the local community a great service is he would recalculate his figures from the summer of 2009 forward. The reason food stamp dependency is up is also a result of the crashed economy. The unemployment rate has improved considerably since the bottom of the recession.
Another reason the recession has lasted so long is because of the housing market. Traditionally the U.S. has been lead out of recessions by housing. This time, because of the largest building boom the world has ever seen and subsequent crash, it has taken longer to get out of the mess the previous administration got us into with deregulation and two unfunded wars which benefited only the U.S. military industrial complex.
The current administration has steered us through the hard times. The economy appears to be improving. Consumer debt is the lowest in six years. The housing market looks like it’s healing with modest price increases, lower foreclosures and short sales, increased builder confidents and higher traffic to new home subdivisions. Not only does Romney have no real plan to further simulate the economy if he gets elected guess who’s going to take the credit for the improving economy.
As the president said Romney has no “five point plan” his only focus is to pander to the wealthy. The richest four hundred families in the U.S. saw their wealth increase by over four hundred percent over the past 10 years while the middle class has lost over two trillion dollars in the past three years – that’s trillion as in trillion! And if Romney gets elected the Republicans will continue to squeeze the middle class to pay for more tax deductions for the rich. This is no way to promote growth. Just look at the Middle East where in most countries the lack of a strong and vibrant middle class has led to stagnation and extremism. Our system of government was set up by our founding fathers to prevent Mr. Amato’s type of ideological extremism.
If Mr. Amato truly believes in what he is saying about adhering to our “founding principles” and turn back “our stampede down the Marxist road” he should send his Social Security and Medicare checks back to the government. And while he’s looking up “malarkey” he should also look up “oligarchy” and “hypocrisy.”
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Posted by Michael Haran on Oct 30, 2012
I have been following this year’s city council race in Healdsburg. The town has a sales tax increase, Measure V on this year’s ballot which will raise about one million dollars which current city council member have said will go toward public safety, street maintenance, economic development activities and general repairs and maintenance to city facilities. Two of the council members running for reelection are Gary Plass and Susan Jones both retired public employees.
Everyone knows we need a strong tax base to ensure public safety and a smooth running local, county and state government which provides for both business growth and a good quality of life. What bothers me about agreeing to a tax increases is that I don’t feel enough has been done to get rid of the waste in government. Once redevelopment funds dried up it became obvious that city and county government had been using these funds to expand government growth whether it was needed or not. A recent CBS report which showed Caltrans administrators using state rented pick-up trucks to shop for wine and clothes at Nordstrom’s during business hours and then being stonewalled by Caltrans management continues to erode voter trust.
Back in 2002 the Board of Supervisors enacted measures that have now increased pension costs by over 400 percent. The 2012 Sonoma County Grand Jury concluded that these pension increases were approved in a manner that did not comply with the law in an obvious attempt to dupe voters. In a September 2012 Santa Rosa Press Democrat article on the subject Brett Wilkinson wrote “Zane and other county leaders, nevertheless, were unified in defending the legality of the enhanced pensions. Trying to roll them back would be a costly lost cause, officials said, so the county will continue to pursue changes through legislation and collective bargaining.” I think a jury might think otherwise.
Most newly enacted pension reforms pertain to new hires in a so called “second-tier” reform. As far as I know nothing has been done to reduce the spiked pensions of current retirees who continue to collect lifetime pay increases because they were allowed to roll in their vacation, sick and car allowance pay into their lifetime retirement benefits.
I really don’t blame the public worker rank and file for this. In fact, as the LA Times columnist Steve Lopez recently said (Don’t Blame the State’s Teachers 10/28/12) “As a group (private sector workers), we’re torn between envy and anger, faced with uncertain financial futures while we pay for the comfy retirements of government retirees.” A friend has joked, “Where were we when this gravy train was went by?” Not wanting to be hypocritical I know that if I were a public employee and was offered the same spiking opportunities I would have taken it them too. But this isn’t about blame it’s about correcting a wrong.
Because of, the thinking went at the time, lower pay for government employees should be offset by taxpayer retirement guarantees. That was all well and good until the tide went out on the private sector and exposed the rotten under pinning of the public sector. Again, I don’t blame the public sector workers I think the whole immoral practice of pension spiking was a result of union shenanigans due to their unrestricted power over our state legislators. This is what gave rise to this year’s Prop. 32. This country’s oligarchs saw a chance to deceptively crush the state’s unions. This is frightening thought but the unions have no one to blame but themselves for this challenge.
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’m not saying that what the Board of Supervisors did in 2002 is the same as what went on in Bell, CA but it came from the same “look how well the private sector is doing – we deserve this” mentality. It was a culture of total contempt for the people who trusted them.
I don’t know if anyone has looked at what the saving would be if all currently retired public employees had their current retirement pay rolled back to what it would be if their retirement benefits hadn’t been spiked. I’m not suggesting reducing their base pay but just cutting off what was unfairly gained. Maybe if an actuary were to exam this it could be a substantial savings on the local, county and state budgets without reducing the retirement pay that the retirees agreed to when working. If the retiree has already collected what would have been a lump sum payment at retirement the overage should be cut off. If we just wait around for runaway inflation to bail us out the liability is just going to get bigger. There is nothing “grey” about insider trading and conflicts of Interest and there should be nothing grey about gaming a system of public trust.
This brings us back to our little burg north of Santa Rosa. Council members Gary Plass and Susan Jones are good people who care a great deal about our town. However, as retired public employees and the city facing a $26 million dollar unfunded pension liability I think their conflict of interest is just too great to ignore. One can’t help but wonder if they are supporting Measure V to help Healdsburg or to protect their retirement pay. If you have to rebuild the chicken coop you don’t want a fox designing the blueprint?
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