Unable to resist a pun, yesterday I ran the following item:
Category: News and Opinion
City Pensions: Read It And Weep
|I've noted that what motivates me to write here is the unsaid, the facts that are unrevealed and non-decisions that are not discussed because doing so is not in the interest of those in the game. When the unsaid is said, that is no longer necessary. So rather than write something, I'll just link something you should read. Actuary John Bury is up to 46 city pensions plans in 25 cities in his analysis, and the NYC situation looks really bad.
It appears to me the only way for the teacher's pension to get out of the hole would be to go pay as you go (or something close to it) for several years, shifting at least $1.4 billion per year and perhaps more (depending if the early retirees from the 25/55 deal are fully reflected here) from the classroom to the retired. That would require not only drastically increasing class sizes, cutting extra curriculars, sports and student services, but also possibly knocking a year or two off the education most NYC children receive. A repeat of the 1970s, in other words.
Maybe, just maybe we should give Cathie Black a chance
|I Concede the way Cathie Black was rolled out as Schools Chancellor will make her job all that much harder. Granted! No one can argue that.
Black comes in with some elected officials and parents screaming bloody murder that she does not meet the qualifications for the job. That she is not an educator. How could the mayor just do this?
A poem entitled: “ONE DAY” (translated from Spanish to English).
|It was written by a young Otto Rene Castillo: a Guatemalan born writer -now deceased.
One day
the apolitical intellectuals of my country
will be interrogated by the simplest of our people.
They will be asked:
“what did you do,
when your nation died out slowly;
like a sweet fire, small and alone?”
The Gateway (Giving Thanks That the Weekend is Over and I Can Stop Driving to Jersey Edition)
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Seven year old Dybbuk to his Aunt: You should find someone; it can be a man or you can be gay, but you should find someone. Either way, you can still have children.
As John Sebastian said: And then I know that all I've learned, my kid assumes.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTAy5RU_m4
Fade to Black
|Some people have wondered about my indifference to the new schools chancellor. Perhaps because I’m not an educator myself, I don’t see any of the educational controversies being debated as being nearly as good or bad (depending on your point of view) as the financial disaster that is coming:
1) The end of federal stimulus money for education, this year.
2) The state budget crisis.
3) Past pension underfunding in the good years, based on an excessively optimistic (bubble level) rate of return assumption.
4) Fifteen years of retroactive pension enhancements, with a massively costly unfunded one for NYC teachers just two-plus years ago.
Other places are facing the same problems. But with lower tax burdens and lower debt levels than NYC. And our bills acre coming due right on schedule.
Median Household Income by State: New York is Going Down
|A recent article in The Economist magazine contained data that was so alarming I had to look into it further. According to the article, U.S. median household income adjusted for inflation fell 7.1% from 1999 to 2009. In several states, including Rustbelt Michigan, Indiana and Ohio and previously booming Sunbelt North Carolina and Georgia, the decrease was 12.9% to 21.3%. This, of course, was not a fair comparison, since 1999 was a near peak economic year and 2009 was a severe recession year. So I downloaded recent Census Bureau data – the readily available data was for the average of 2008 and 2009 – and compared it with data from another weak economic year, 2003 data from the Statistical Abstract of the United States. This is still not the right comparison, because the median household income in 2009 is apparently lower than the 2008 to 2009 average. But it does make for another interesting comparison. From 2003 to 2008/09, median household income in the U.S. was basically unchanged. But in New York State, it fell about 5 percent.
Most Are Celebrating Thanksgiving, But for Bloomie It’s Already Black Friday (The Gateway)
|Even Gasbags are Stealing My Stuff Department:
Gatemouth (11/10/08): If Bloomie had picked Michelle Rhee, that would have been an act of guts, vision and audacity; this is merely an act of "arrogance," a trait he usually attributes to his betters.
ON BLOOMBERG AND BLACK: EDUCATING BROWNS, REDS, YELLOWS, BLACKS AND OTHER COLORS OF THE RAINBOW (Part One).
|I have been told that presently the NYC public school system has close to 1.25 million students. I am also told that only around ten per cent of these students are white; and that the vast majority are Negro and Hispanic; with significant East Indians and other Asians: in other words black and brown, and yellow, and red all over.