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Almost Time to Fire Up the Encanto Gas Holder Shredder at SDG&E
Mis-spelled thread title totally my fault on initial posting...— March 15, 2010 11:37 a.m.
Work for a Government and Rake in Bucks
I didn't write that everybody was so qualified. I wrote a conditional statement, which I sincerely believe is true, even if nobody else does. Besides, anyone who considers a single hypothetical premise to be an argument is, well, less than optimally educated at the community college level. And we still don't have anyone who has put forward a "coherent" plan for taking back government from the controlling interests that have us in this whole mess in the first place. Otherwise, the only way I can see for getting out from under an impossible-to-swallow pension debt is to simply dissolve the municipality from which the pension payments are owed. Or sell Balboa Park. Whatever.— March 13, 2010 8:41 p.m.
Work for a Government and Rake in Bucks
Forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but it appears that everyone has bought into some kind of axiomatic economic assumption that the supply of people willing, able AND qualified to be police officers or firefighters in this town is inelastic with respect to total compensation. If "everybody" were qualified, then John Gardener could have been a truant officer instead of a paroled sex offender. I bet he'd love to be on that job right now, sunshine tax or not. As for the idea that we can't afford those services anyways, I'll concede that point, so we can get about the business of winding up this town and selling off the assets until we can get down to a level of government that we CAN afford. If not, then we can just all sit back and let the developers, sports team owners, and union bosses have their way. After all, we don't seem to be good for anything else here except waiting around for someone else to offer up a "coherent policy" for some other way of dislodging those interests from controlling what goes on in San Diego.— March 13, 2010 5:51 p.m.
Work for a Government and Rake in Bucks
OK, I give up. Reduce or eliminate the police and firefighter pension, then see how many of them we have left after they move on to other municipalities that are probably better run and pay better than ours. It's been happening for decades, and reducing or eliminating the pensions will only accelerate the problem. I still maintain that whatever skills and training they may or may not have per the discussion above will have to be yours too, or you'll be slacking off when it's your turn on volunteer fire watch.— March 13, 2010 8:59 a.m.
Citizens Sour on Lemon Grove?
RE #2: If you think that land give-away deserves interest, then you should have seen the street give-away to the Citrus Heights developer that was engineered before the Lemon Grove Community Development Department, later approved by said City Council... when both streets to be eradicated for some of 77 proposed homes are actually in the San Diego city limits! (This may actually be in dispute, but the City of Lemon Grove has historically spent not one dime for improvements along those stretches of Broadway and 69th. The area became part of the Helix Water District only in the last two years.) Do you imagine that anybody thought to include San Diego in any of those discussions? The Lemon Grove City Council seemed rather oblivious to the fact that the entire site was subject to a federal criminal case where the local power utility was initially found guilty (http://www.justice.gov/usao/cas/press/cas70713-SD…).— March 13, 2010 8:48 a.m.
Work for a Government and Rake in Bucks
RE #274: You're welcome. Since you seem to be stepping up by apparently asserting that all of us could do without police and fire fighting services, you can deal with all of the 911 calls. Personally, I don't need that kind of stress.— March 12, 2010 3:32 p.m.
Work for a Government and Rake in Bucks
I've had a few government jobs. One of them actually called on me to fight a small wildfire in Virginia once. The Army retired me before I was 21, but I got orders saying I was awarded a GCM that I never received from HQ 9th Infantry Division. I later got so rich being a part-time accounting/algebra/DP/English tutor for the San Diego Community College District that I no longer have to hold down a regular job. My internship with HQ FDIC/RTC during the S&L Crisis made me quit banks and credit cards cold turkey. Instead of a pension, I've got about $50 in an AIG retirement thingy that will generate enough interest for a movie ticket with popcorn, no Pepsi in the next decade or so. Do police officers and firefighters deserve the pensions they get? As long as they do things on a daily basis that the rest of us would screw up monumentally if we tried doing them without their help and supervision, probably so. If you don't think so, then step up and volunteer some time with them. If we can't do that, then why are we complaining about their overtime when we won't cover for them?!?— March 12, 2010 2:48 p.m.
Morbid Curiosity
"The internet makes it so easy to satisfy my morbid curiosity." It's amazing how much student research in college gets done at times when the campus library has been closed for hours. Favorite site for planning runs to the nearest academic library: http://worldcat.org For decompression after seeing images that evoke declarations of deific re-birth (recommended finals prep for all physiology/pre-nursing students): http://www.worldcat.org/title/review-of-medical-p…— March 12, 2010 10:36 a.m.
Should The Banks Pay Us?
I've been avoiding credit cards and bank accounts since I interned with FDIC's Resolution Trust Corporation in DC during the S&L Crisis in 1990. Your credit card rates might stabilize when the fed rate is something higher than 0% (that's right - zero percent... try following Don Bauder's blogs and articles to get a handle on that). A low fed rate means in a round-about way that banks can't make all that much on savings deposits even though banks will loan to other banks at well below 5%, so all of you credit card holders get to pick up the check for future bonuses once the banks pay back all of that bailout money. They will pay it back because they don't like the government giving them any lip about the bonuses banks are paying out to Wall Street "Masters of the Universe" already. It's not hard to get the flavor of that by listening to Kudlow on CNBC, the Prophet of Profit and cheerleader of unrestrained capitalism with no government controls whatsoever.— March 11, 2010 11:18 a.m.
San Diego Unemployment Rate Leaps to 11%
RE #3: I agree that remittances to Mexico are down to about $25 billion, but the underground economy is a whole lot bigger than just illegal aliens. In fact, you can probably find underground economic transactions within 100 yards of leaving your front door in most San Diego urban neighborhoods. I'd also agree that it's not necessarily doing "better" in terms of absolute dollars. It is probably doing "better" in terms of the absolute number of transactions year over year, as well as the number of people involved in those transactions. This includes barter transactions that aren't reported on anybody's tax forms, especially when clever ones skirt the rules by declaring that anything bartered has zero salvage value. If the totality of the underground economy ever gets close to 1/4 of the official economy, then I must be living in Humbolt County or we've seen the DJIA dive to about 2000. In any case, I'm not admitting anywhere SDG&E can find it that my neighbors and I are bartering electricity as a part-time cooperative... but look around and see just how many San Diegans are conducting business out of the backs of cars, trucks and SUVs lately. And you can't take my money 'cause Sempra Energy already has dibs on my next $70K or so.— March 10, 2010 8:36 p.m.