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The Sponsors of the Young Men’s Islamic Association proposed for the Holy Mother Coat Factory are seeking a 9/11 Recovery Grant.
My first thought is that an old friend has reappeared on the scene to rescue me from one more column leading with a bunch of sarcastic comments about Cathie Black.
The latest flare up between North and South Korea has led the New York Times to say that the reason China props up the North is that it does not want an American ally, the South, on its border. In light of this and South Korea’s poor treatment of President Obama during his recent visit there indicating that South Korea is feeling its oats perhaps it is time to evaluate a new strategy for the peninsula.
Cathie Black, fiscally responsible?
Looking to get away, do some international travel to escape the realities of modern life? Want to see some exotic places, places of historical or cultural value. Great, we have a list of 79 countries you can visit. The only problem is that if you are gay you just may be put to death in some of these countries just for being gay. Kind of makes what the film Midnight Express did for Turkish tourism a walk in the park compared to many of these places.<
As I noted previously, John Bury is an actuary turned newspaper commentator and blogger in New Jersey, who has published detailed analyses of the upcoming pension disaster. He is non-partisan, for example noting in New Jersey that a large part of the problem is the fault of past taxpayers who did not pay enough in, not just public employees taking too much out.
In his latest post, he does some calculations on individual New York City public employee pension funds, and finds that the fund for NYC teachers is the worst funded of all, with a "drop dead" date of 2019. This doesn't mean that pensions won't be paid. It might mean that property taxes will be raised so high that all the properties would be seized, and former homeowners would become tenants of the pension fund (and not rent regulated tenants either). And it might mean that public education is de facto eliminated as money is shifted to pay the pensions. In any event, read Bury's post, look at his numbers, and remember this pension enhancement a little over two years ago. One that was supposed to cost nothing.
Administration caught off-guard by Blacklash
If you followed my compilation of 2007 Census of Governments data, you know I try to come up with reasonable comparisons by adjusting for the varying level of population and income in different places (by measuring government revenues and expenditures as a percent of personal income), and the differing structure of local government in different places (by aggregating data at the county level). Even so, comparisons aren’t perfect because some places have more government services than others. There are some places that have professional fire departments, while others rely on volunteers. There are some places with free municipal solid waste collection, some with contracted out solid waste collection, and some where people have to hire and pay for their own collection services. Some places have public water, sewer and transit, and others do not.
What every place in the United States has, however, is police and public education. This post uses data from the Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau to examine the relative level of spending on these services as a percent of personal income, with some discussion of Medicaid from other data sources mixed in.
Despite all of my (sometimes nuanced) Rangel bashing, let me now be the contrarian and call upon him to serve out his term.
The choice of Charlie's successor should rightly be made by voters in a Democratic Primary (and, yeah, the general too) and not by a Party Committee (and then ratified in a meaningless, no turnout special election).
Dominick Carter shills for Bloomie (then denies it in the comments thread), saying:
"Bloomberg has the right to appoint Cathleen Black Schools Chancellor. We may not like it, but the appointment of Cathleen P. Black to become Schools Chancellor boils down to an example of how mayoral control works."
I've often complained that everyone just talks about the state pension plans, while New York City pension plans, which cover local government employees working for the City of New York and New York City Transit, are ignored. Well NJ actuary and pension commentator has done all of us a favor, and calculated the bankruptcy data for major city pension plans on the same basis as his calculations for state plans. He finds the New York City pension system goes bust in 2023. Much to my surprise, that isn’t much different than the New York State plans. Which means that since existing workers can’t have their pensions cut (constitutionally) or their pension and health care contributions increased (politically), public services will be completely wiped out throughout the state with the nation’s highest tax burden at about the same time, in order to pay pensions without pension funds. (We may get a downpayment next fiscal year). And it doesn’t matter how much they cut the pensions, pay and benefits of future public employees, because they won’t be able to afford to hire any.