Back from Vegas with lighter pockets and ready to rock.  Turns out though that the real action is in California Indian Casinos which pulled in $25 billion last year and are growing faster than Las Vegas.  Sure, but are their prostitutes health screened?

Meanwhile, San Diego’s City Council got it right today, affirming their previous vote to ban big-box stores within the city.  Mayor Sanders is whining that it’s anti-business to ban things that are bad for business, but if the current 5-3 vote stands up, his veto is irrelevant.  Story comments are predictably ill-informed for the most part, but probably several are legitimate candidates for the U-T editorial staff.

And continuing on the “reality is whatever I tell you” road, Mayor Sanders is defending his cuts of city services by saying that funding cuts don’t mean service cuts.  He decided that firefighters didn’t deserve a cost of living raise because not enough of them were leaving, then boasted that, while opening several new branches of the library, he wasn’t reducing net hours.  Currently, the city has two fire hazard compliance officers.  I sure hope that there isn’t a really dry fire season or anything.

But anyways. I got my ticket today to see The National at the end of the month and I’m really quite delighted.  On that note (ah ha!), The National – Mistaken For Strangers

“surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wannna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults”

Last week, we got some good news regarding the pension fund for our state’s teachers. In 2004, the long-term deficit was projected to be $24.2 billion. Today, the long-term deficit is projected to be $19.6 billion. It’s not quite as good as we want it, but it’s getting better.

So how did our favorite right-wing commentator who always misses the point respond? Oh, Chris Reed just looks for a way to tie this to “the public employee unions’ master-puppet relationship with Democratic lawmakers“. Huh?

Follow me after the flip for more…

So what exactly is Chris Reed angry about? I guess this:

Last June, three state Senate Democrats — Don Perata, Debra Bowen and Gil Cedillo — killed the governor’s nomination of David Crane, a smart, well-regarded San Francisco financier, to the California State Teachers Retirement System board. Crane’s sin? “The three Democrats on the five-member Senate (Rules Committee) agreed that Crane seemed too concerned about the burden of pension shortfalls on taxpayers,” according to a published report.

Perata, Bowen and Cedillo’s open declaration of allegiance to the California Teachers Association over Californians in general showed anew that public employee unions have a master-puppet relationship with Democratic lawmakers — and that taxpayers are being and will continue to be brutalized as a result.

Wait, so how exactly did the Democratic lawmakers act as “puppets” to the “masters” at the public employee unions? And what’s so horrifying about the state teachers’ pension fund? Take a look at this article from The Sacramento Bee last week, and try to explain the “crisis”.

Surging stock markets and three straight years of strong investment returns have pared billions from a long-term pension shortfall plaguing the California State Teachers’ Retirement System in recent years, but it’s not enough.

The state, school districts and teachers still will be forced to dig deeper into their pocketbooks to erase a projected $19.6 billion gap over the next three decades, according to a new report for the nation’s second-largest public fund. […]

The CalSTRS analysis, prepared by the actuarial consulting firm Milliman, shows the giant fund’s financial outlook improved slightly at the end of fiscal year 2006 as the nation’s second-largest public fund continued to rack up double-digit percentage annual investment gains, including a 13.2 percent return in ’06.

The results have cut the long-term deficit to $19.6 billion, compared with $20.6 billion in 2005. That’s an improvement from a $24.2 billion funding gap in 2004.

Milliman said CalSTRS, with nearly 800,000 members, has enough assets to cover 87 percent of its pension obligations decades from now — up from an 82 percent rate in 2003. By comparison, the average for 125 state retirement systems is 88 percent, according to a 2007 report by Wilshire Consulting.

OK, so now the pension fund has enough assets to cover 87% of our teachers’ pension needs for the next few decades. We’re not quite fully funded yet, but we’re getting better. And apparently, there’s already a proposal to fill this gap. Again, from Sac Bee:

The consultant’s report said CalSTRS needs a 3.3 percent boost in annual pension contributions to wipe out the deficit. Currently, school districts pay 8.25 percent of payroll toward teacher pensions, while the state puts in 2 percent and teachers contribute 8 percent of their pay.

In December, trustees backed a legislative measure to increase contribution rates in 2009 while leaving benefits intact. The proposal calls for raising the teachers’ rate to 8.5 percent while gradually increasing the state’s portion to a maximum of 3.25 percent. The school district contribution would slowly rise and be capped at 13 percent.

OK, so what’s the big deal? The teachers pay a little more. The school districts pay a little more. The state pays a little more. And in the end, the pension fund is fully funded. Under the current proposal by the pension fund trustees, everyone chips in a little more (including the teachers themselves) to ensure that our teachers can afford to stay alive after they retire.

So how did Chris Reed respond?

The story noted that CalSTRS still had a projected long-term $20 billion shortfall in paying for the pension benefits of retired teachers. How did the CalSTRS board propose to deal with this huge unfunded liability? Not by trimming benefits, an approach it flatly rejected. By waterboarding taxpayers.

And what does he want to do about this? Go back to whining about one of Arnold’s good buddies from SF not making the pension trustee board. Oh yes, and if one really wants to talk about “master-puppet relationships”, look at this. David Crane is a venture capitalist who served on Arnold’s transition team in 2003. And Arnold placed him on his “Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth“. And he’s part of Arnold’s inner circle as an economic adviser. And even though David Crane calls himself a “Democrat”, he boasts of his admiration of Milton Friedman.

And Chris Reed is really surprised that Senate Democrats won’t nominate someone adamantly opposes “non-market deals” and who calls public pension benefits for workers who serve the public “special privileges”? Give me a break!

So once again, Chris Reed misses the point. The teachers’ pension fund isn’t quite doing as well as we’d like it to, but it’s doing better than it had been just five years ago. And now, the pension trustee board has proposed a solution to the remaining problem. However, Chris Reed doesn’t like a solution. So now, he’s criticizing the State Senate Democrats for rejecting a radical Friedmanite (who despite being a “Democrat”, is VERY CLOSE to Arnold) to serve on the pension board. Can someone please explain Chris Reed’s distorted “logic” to me?

[Orange] County Supervisor Janet Nguyen is 50 days late so far in complying with a county oridinace [sic] on campaign donations. Some time after the Feb. 6 election, she accepted three contributions in excess of the county’s $1,500 limit and put them into a legal trust fund set up by her lawyer. Turns out county code prohibits such trust funds, so the money was moved out of there and the excess donations, they say, were returned.

And once again, Janet’s silence on her funny money hit Total Buzz. Hmmm, so what’s happening with Janet Nguyen? And why won’t she report what exactly happened with her missing funny money?

Follow me after the flip for more…

OK, so how did this all begin? Well, it started when The LA Times reported this:

Newly elected Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen solicited secret donations above the campaign contribution limit in an effort to quickly pay down her legal debts, an apparent violation of campaign finance law, according to interviews and an e-mail obtained by The Times.

The solicitations came as Nguyen was seeking money to cover her legal costs defending a hair-thin victory in the Feb. 6 special supervisorial election. Among those approached were public employee unions and trade groups representing business interests that regularly come before the Board of Supervisors.

Donors were asked to make checks out to a client trust fund of her campaign attorney, Phillip Greer, and to mail the checks to her Garden Grove campaign address.

In an interview Thursday, Nguyen admitted that she sought the contributions but said she did so on the advice of her lawyers, under the belief that it was legal because politicians at the local, state and federal level are allowed to maintain legal defense funds. She said she had selected the people to whom the requests were sent based on personal contacts.

Well, I guess Janet wasn’t paying attention to what was legal at the county level. Here in Orange County, we have a little something called TIN CUP. And clearly, Janet and her campaign team had an idea as to what was allowed and what wasn’t under TIN CUP since they had to ensure early in the campaign that money transferred from Janet’s Assembly account could be transferred into her Supervisorial account. So why did she still violate TIN CUP during the recount?

And oh yes, why hasn’t Janet reported this to the Registrar of Voters? Not only is Janet Nguyen required to return the money, but she must also report it. Well, Janet said that she returned the money, but how do we really know if she hasn’t filed the proper paperwork? No wonder why Martin Wisckol has become so curious over at Total Buzz.

County code says that you have to return such overages within seven days — and then file paperwork with the county Registrar of Voters within 72 hours, documenting how much was returned and to whom.

It’s now been more than two months since the money was allegedly returned. Each day I grow increasingly curious about who those generous donors were and just how much they tried to give Nguyen. Is there some reason she doesn’t want the public to know who they are?

Yes, is there a reason? Why hasn’t Janet filed the paperwork? If she really returned the money, then why won’t she report it? And oh yes, just who was giving her this money? And why did they want to give her all this money?

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I agree with Jubal/Matt Cunningham on this:

But her refusal to comply with a simple provision of TIN CUP is difficult to understand. It’s not a complicated task — all she has to do is fill out some paperwork about three donors to her illegal legal defense fund whose donations exceeded TIN CUP contribution limits. […]

Let’s leave aside the implausibility of Janet’s claim to know there are three donors who gave more than the $1,600 limit, but she doesn’t know who they are, although she does know the excess donations were refunded.

What excuse does she have for refusing to comply with a county ordinance for going on two months now? Janet’s a county supervisor, after all — and flouting county ordinances doesn’t look good.

Yes, what exactly is her excuse? She’s our sitting County Supervisor now. She should be setting an example by following county law. And if she can’t even follow one county ordinance on campaign contributions, then why should we trust her with this and other laws?

If Janet Nguyen wants to all this speculation about her legally questionable contributions, then she needs to report them to the Registrar of Voters. After all, she is the only person perpetuating this scandal by not being forthcoming. So can Janet please just report? There’s something about Janet and her campaign account, and it would be so much nicer for everyone if she can just obey the law and report what she got.

From today’s LA Times:

Two appointees whom Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent to fix California’s dysfunctional prison healthcare system pushed a $26-million, no-bid contract for outside medical services while contract reviewers steadfastly maintained it was overpriced and illegal, records and interviews show.

But instead of providing a strong step toward reforming the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s $1.8-billion medical system, the handling of this relatively small contract erupted into a fight that forced out the two appointees and highlights what critics say are systemic contracting breakdowns that helped bloat healthcare costs at the state’s 33 prisons. (LA Times 6/4/07)

Well, I guess I would add one thing. Privatization is not the answer to all things public. If Arnold wants to get this stuff done, then he should be willing to pump money into prison health care. This little debacle was a disaster from the get-go, but the conservatives just love their privatization and had to help build the prison-industrial complex. But like most other conservative privatization efforts, it was a debacle. Well, at least prisoners get single payer health care…