future Republicans???
Posted on 08/26/2011 2:21:11 PM PDT by dennisw
When Beverly Hills residents found out that many of their city’s 950 municipal and public safety employees were earning stunning salaries, 13 weeks of paid vacation, unlimited overtime and other tax-free retirement benefits, taxpayers were outraged and city officials rushed into closed-door sessions to figure out what to do.
These revelations, exposed through the efforts of the city’s hometown newspaper, The Beverly Hills Courier, unmasked an even deeper problem: many California cities, and likely other municipalities across the U.S., are being strangled by the cost of ballooning pension benefits they can no longer afford.
“What we have now is a grab bag of incredible benefits for public employees that are totally detached from what’s been happening in the private sector, and it’s neither fair nor sustainable,” said John Mirisch, a first-term Beverly Hills council member elected in 2009. “When the city was rolling in dough, officials may have thought the salary and pension structure was sustainable, but certainly, it was not fair.”
In Beverly Hills, city employees do not contribute to their own retirement pensions; the city pays everything with half of that contribution being largely tax-free, according to the Beverly Hills Pension Task Force headed by City Treasurer Elliot Finkel, as reported in the Courier. The Task Force presented its findings at a recent city council meeting.
When a city employee retires, he or she is guaranteed a fixed amount that increases every year. If CalPERS funding falls short, taxpayers make up the difference.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
future Republicans???
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of lib taxpayers!”
Looks like de chickens done come home to roost!
“Considering that the people who actually live and pay taxes in Beverly Hills are largely effete liberal degenerates, I say let them stew in their own juice. Pay your garbageman 100K a year for 3/4 time work. Knock yourselves out.”
Only problem is that you can’t make them stay there after they’ve dirtied the nest. They just pack up and leave for the next place, rinse and repeat. The ones that are screwed are the business owner and long time residents that can’t easily pack up and head for a better place. Eventually these cities will spiral down the drain as taxes are raised to pay for the benefits of retirees people will move out thus lowering the tax base requiring further tax increase, rinse, repeat until no one is left to pay for them. That day can’t come too soon enough for me. Actually the day I move can’t come too soon for me.
Bump.
Vengeance sounds pretty good to me. Doesn’t matter who is hurt. Elect people who will force the city in to bankruptcy, force the pensions to go into the pension trust and they’ll get ten cents on the dollar or so.
It has to stop, we can’t afford this kind of “legalized” theft.
Ignorance has never been a defense for being an accomplice to a crime. Pensions can go broke. The reality is that almost everyone with a private pension already doesn’t have enough money or will go broke before they die.
When libs in BH say “spread the wealth”, they don’t mean their own.
Typical.
That will mean fewer millionaires patrolling the streets.
In my state we have specialty plates (like most states), one of them being a bright red and orange fireman's plate. They're mainly found on luxury cars and expensive SUV's and trucks.
The math has NEVER added up. The garbageman gets 100K per year for life, and can retire in his 50’s. To generate that amount of money you’d have to have investments worth MILLIONS of dollars, and returns that keep up with and exceed inflation. The garbageman never put more than a token amount into his retirement during his working years. The rest HAS to come from people still working. And it isn’t chump change. So we get to have 4 people to pay the SS benefits for retirees and God knows how many people to support just one retired municipal employee. You can’t squeeze that much blood out of a turnip.
Thanks for posting. Very interesting. DEFUND socialist collectives, foreign and domestic.
Looking forward to the NCR (New California Republic) someday.
(one can hope)
In Kansas we have an open meeting law where they can not carry out public business behind closed doors.I wish DC had the same law.
LOL!
Government employees and politicians are brazenly, shamelessly looting the taxpayers - - wow, stop the presses.
They had already moved out; that was the “black” grievance. Apparently they were supposed to stay there and be mugged/killed by the “youths” because that is where their pension was paid (and deserved to be re-distributed by the animals).
That’s because people who vote for Dems are inherently idiotic knuckleheads and trust government to do the “right” thing.
Again, idiots.
REFERENCE----SCANDAL ROCKS CALPERS: Boss Forced Subordinates To Pay Millions To Consultant Cronies
Business Insider | 03/15/2011 | John Ellis
FR Posted by SeekAndFind
The LA Times breaks some major news: In a scathing report, a former chief executive of the California public employee pension fund (CALPERS) was accused of pressuring subordinates to invest billions of dollars of pension money with politically connected firms.
A 17-month investigation also found that Federico Buenrostro Jr. — along with former pension fund board members Charles Valdes and Kurato Shimada — strong-armed a benefits firm to pay more than $4 million in fees to consultant Alfred J.R. Villalobos, who later hired Buenrostro.
The report, prepared for the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CALPERS) by Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson, comes amid widening attacks on public employee pension funds in California, Wisconsin, Iowa and other states for providing lavish benefits that cash-strapped governments can no longer afford.
The findings of insider dealings at CalPERS could provide fresh ammunition to Republican lawmakers here who want Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to convert traditional pensions with guaranteed payments for life into 401(k)-type plans that rely heavily on employees' own contributions.(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
=======================================
Federico Buenrostro Jr., CEO of CalPERS from 2000 to 2008, accepted tens of thousands in gifts from Alfred R. Villalobos. Villalobos’ company Arvco Capital Research got more than $47 million in commissions for selling $4.8 billion in securities to CalPERS from 2005 to 2009.The California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s outside money-managers paid $180 million over the past decade to middlemen they hired to win business from the largest U.S. public pension, according to a report examining the use of so-called placement agents.
Villalobos represented New York private-equity firm Apollo Global Management and New Jersey-based Medco Health Solutions Inc. (MHS), the largest U.S. prescription-benefits manager. The report said the middleman exercised undue influence over Buenrostro and hosted former board members at his Lake Tahoe retreat, after which the board members voted in favor of Medco’s $26 million contract to manage pharmaceutical benefits for more than 300,000 members of Calpers’ preferred- provider organization health plan.
The report said Villalobos, who had no experience in pharmaceutical-benefits contracts, was retained as a consultant by Medco for $4 million after company CEO David Snow and Buenrostro were hosted at Villalobos’ Lake Tahoe home in May 2004.Villalobos later played host to Snow and three Calpers board members — Charles Valdes, Kurato Shimada and Robert Carlson — in September 2004, according to the report.
As members of a Calpers committee, Valdes and Carlson later voted to award the contract to Medco, while Shimada injected himself into discussions on the contract although he didn’t sit on the committee, the report said.
SOURCE http://tinyurl.com/4dbbwlg
That would be a great defense. At the least, it would give the enviros a severe case of angst.
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