Author: Larry Littlefield

I couldn't let this pass. The New York Post reports that most New Yorkers consider the state government to be dysfunctional. I've said in response that all levels of government, and corporations have been functioning very well for those siphoning money from them. Two kinds of people have been getting richer: the top executives that sit on each others' boards and vote each other compensation that even pro-business, pro-capitalist (but more or less honest) publications such as The Economist and the Financial Times call larcenous. And today's senior citizens, who have voted each other benefits they have refused to pay for, passing the cost to future generations who will be poorer. Especially retired public employees. Well guess who the Post's F. Dicker spoke to get man on the street complaints about dysfunctional government?

The sad thing for Generation Greed is that eventually it will have to end. It will have extracted so much from our future that there is nothing left to take. But in Albany, they don't think that far in advance. All they want is two more years to sign contracts with each other guaranteeing themselves even more future benefits and exemptions from cost, contracts that will be unassailable regardless of the consequences. And though elections are rigged, they still want to disguise the consequence of past deals until after the November takes place, so they can be assured of going back for more.

So how is it that a $400 million MTA budget deficit, now assumed to be a $525 billion budget deficit, just goes away? The answer is that the MTA will borrow $525 billion to get through November. In fact, it has already borrowed $475 million in "revenue anticipation notes" for revenue that was not actually anticipated to come. Since the MTA anticipated it, it could claim a balanced budget. Now it will just borrow $525 million more, for a total of $1 billion. Younger generations will be paying for that forever, with nothing in exchange. And they rejoice in Albany, while pretending $billions in borrowing does not exist.

In Sunday's paper. Referring to Illinois, which should hit the wall earlier than average, “We’re within a few years of having some of the pension funds run out of money…Funding for the schools is going to be cut radically. Funding for Medicaid. As these things all mount up, there’s going to be a lot of outrage…paying public pensions straight out of general revenue would be ruinous. In Illinois’s case, it would consume about half the state’s cash every year, bringing other vital state services to a standstill.” Of course it isn't just the pensions. It's the federal, state and local debts. It's the infratructure that hasn't been maintained. It's the lower pay and benefits younger generations receive, in both the public and private sectors, and will continue to receive when they get older — and face possible deprivation to pay for the prior generations than spent decades in leisure on borrowed money.

The benefit of foresight is that I'm already started moving beyond outrage to resignation.

Perhaps you are wondering why the state budget would cut municipal aid to New York City to zero, while cutting municipal aid to other areas, including those more affluent than New York City, by very little. It is because need in this state isn’t measured by the need for public services and benefits, which are irrelevant to the rich and a hassle for the political/union complex, which has privileged access to them, to provide to others. What matters is who gets jobs, and who gets sinecures pretending to be jobs. So local government employment in NYC, which was already down sharply since 1990, fell another 13,400 in the year to May according to data released yesterday by the New York State Department of Labor. Local government employment in the rest of the state, which had been up by 130,000 over 20 year, edged down just 3,400 — but public school employment in the rest of the state increased by 3,900. I guess they’ll have to slash New York City’s share of state school aid again, as in the previous two recessions.

Don’t New York City’s public employee unions have any clout? Sure they do, particularly since most of the best paid live outside the city. Far from wanting to keep their jobs, however, most don’t want to work at all. They want to retire early, at 55 instead of 62 for NYC teachers, after 25 years of work rather than 30. Thus you had the biggest fraud of the week, the UFT joining a protest cuts in schools. Guess what — NYC public school spending is going up, but more and more of the money is going to the retired, as a result of the 25/55 pension the UFT managed to grab. Protesting? They should be celebrating the money they will get for providing less and less in return.

From the New York Times: "For decades, New York State’s divorce system has been built on a foundation of winks and falsehoods. If you wanted to split quickly, you and your spouse had to give one of the limited number of allowable reasons — including adultery, cruelty, imprisonment or abandonment — so there was a tendency to pick one out of a hat." So there is no divorce except for a few causes even if both members of a couple agree, right? The title of the article certainly says so.

From deep in the article, near the very bottom: "New York law has long allowed people who agree to a divorce to get one if they both sign a separation agreement and live apart for a year. A new provision could do away with the need for the agreement." That's what the change is. There is no need to lie if both parties agree — and no need to consider the interests of the children either — under current law.  The difference is just one spouse could end a marriage unilaterally, and quickly. And that is not what is being presented — even by the New York Times.

Since I don't have any personal experience of it, it has been eye opening to hear, on a few occasions, the views of those whose parents divorced when the were children. It hurt, a great deal. Some are desperate to get married and create the family they were denied. Others have no interest in forming a family.

Under current New York State law, two parents can divorce if it is in their mutual interest and they can agree on the terms, regardless of any concern about the children. Under a new reform just passed by the State Senate, either party will be able to demand a divorce whenever they believe that breaking up the family could provide a better deal (sexual, financial, fun and enjoyment of life). The premise is that if a couple would otherwise make home life so terrible anyway, including the lives of any children, there is “no fault.” The bill is here. Read it over, and show me where in the bill there is any provision concerning itself with the interests and needs of any children. Or any provision that instructs the courts that regardless of whether the children would be worse off if the marriage continued or ended, the parents had failed as such, and thus had a greater obligation going forward to put the children first to offset that damage.

This is the kind of news you slip out on a Friday, so it will be in Saturday’s paper and read by few. The powers that be in Albany have agreed that local governments in the rest of the state, whose pension contributions are a fraction of those required of New York City, can choose not to make them, and borrow their required contributions from the pension funds instead. Allegedly they will have to pay back that money with interest later – at 4.5 to 5.5 percent interest rate even though the state legislature has asserted by law that pension assets earn 8 percent per year (which is why they can pass one pension enhancement after another and say no one has to pay for them), even though they don’t. But there is a 99.8 percent chance that a few years from now, when localities in the rest of the state are faced with an even more devastating increase in pension costs as a result of this borrowing, they will insist on a state bailout. A bailout with state taxes collected in part in New York City. Which means that New York City residents will help pay for their pension costs, even as our public services are destroyed by our own.