Again, just like the Founders and Framers envisioned things! Free market? Meh. Taking taxpayer funds to pay often-times immovable, indismissable government employees outsized salaries to keep them voting your way — all while hiding the whole sordid enterprise? Now that’s the way to do things.
Imagine trying to run a business without knowing how much it cost you to provide health insurance or retirement benefits. Imagine if you didn’t even know how much each employee made.
Ask any businessman or woman, and they will tell you that this would be crazy. When your employees came to you asking for a raise, you’d have no idea whether they were over or underpaid, and no clue how your competitors were pricing similar work.
For decades, this is what it’s been like for California taxpayers trying to rein in government compensation. But instead of going out of business like a private company, California governments have just raised taxes higher and higher. California residents now suffer the highest individual income tax rate in the country, one of the highest rates of sales tax and corporate income tax rates, and the second highest tax on gasoline. Behind all the increases, there’s a big contributing factor in common: the insatiable salary demands of government employees.
Now, however, that can change — thanks to the California Public Policy Center’s just-released website, TransparentCalifornia.com. Transparent California is the largest database of California government employee compensation that is searchable by name and job title. It includes over 2 million salary records and over 1 million pension records.
Instead of relying on the assertions of union officials about how underpaid government employees might be, citizens can see what these employees are actually making. In thousands of cases, the information is shocking.
Consider Redwood City, where three fire captains and one firefighter made between $434,274 and $452,733 in total compensation in 2012. One police officer made $463,690 in total compensation. In all, nine employees made over $400,000 in total compensation with a total of 33, mostly police and fire department employees, making over $300,000 in total compensation in 2012.
Those are staggering sums anywhere, but in a city with a population of just 79,009, they’re a recipe for fiscal disaster.
Redwood City is hardly alone. The city manager in Temecula, population of 105,208, made over $497,000, while the advisor to the city manager made over $436,000, both in total compensation. The Fire Battalion chief in the city of Milpitas, population of 68,800, had a compensation package that topped $494,000 in 2012.
[…]
Information alone won’t solve California’s problems. Especially with the outsized influence of public employee unions in local elections, it’s going to take concerted action. Nevertheless, the facts are an indispensable component to mobilize action and solve the problem at hand. Thanks to Transparent California, taxpayers have those facts at their fingertips. Any business owner will tell you that you can’t control costs absent the truth about salary and benefits. Now, Californians can do just that.
While compensation for public employees keeps driving up taxes, it’s also pushing California tuition sky high. Two University of California Directors made over $900,000 each in 2012, excluding the cost of any benefits. Thousands of UC and California State University employees made over $200,000 in 2012, excluding benefits.
From the state’s top positions to those at the bottom, Transparent California makes it easy for citizens to find inflated salaries and benefits for many public employees. A Monterey County Secretary made over $146,000. An Alameda County sheriff took home over $541,000. The Parks and Recreation Directors in San Jose, Santa Rosa, Cupertino and San Mateo each made over $240,000.
Thousands of firefighters made over $200,000 in salary and benefits in 2012, with hundreds taking home over $300,000.
Information alone won’t solve California’s problems. Especially with the outsized influence of public employee unions in local elections, it’s going to take concerted action. Nevertheless, the facts are an indispensable component to mobilize action and solve the problem at hand. Thanks to Transparent California, taxpayers have those facts at their fingertips. Any business owner will tell you that you can’t control costs absent the truth about salary and benefits. Now, Californians can do just that.
First things first, though. Divide the state up into independent localities so that when those that do take measures to rein in public sector employees show a decrease in taxes and an increase in overall prosperity — not to mention an increase in private sector jobs and investments — sensible Californians can vote with their feet and move to those parts of the state that aren’t run by crazed, destructive, greedy statists who exist only to empower and enrich themselves at the expense of those they are putatively there to represent.
It’ll prove tough to run a welfare state when the producers are able to avoid paying for it.
I don’t think CA should be split multiple states, rather, I think the Central Valley should move to become part of Nevada. Key selling points: No state income tax, less onerous EPA regulations and lower corporate taxes. One bonus would be relaxed gun control laws. Added bonus: would probably bring in enough votes to get rid of Reid.
Nevada would probably welcome the oil industry and farming.
– If, by some miracle, the US ever passes and strickly enforces a law against any form of political pandering, the Progressive/Democratic party will cease to exist almost overnight.
>I think the Central Valley should move to become part of Nevada.<
sacramento is ok with that? no
go ca
Plan to split California into 6 states advances
– If you like your 2500 you can keep your 2500.
– I’m not sure how effective “running away from OCare and Bumblefuck for this election cycle” will be for the jackasses. Are voters just supposed to forget which party passed this train wreck?
Just saw my first Jimmy
KimmelFallon monologue.It’s kinda hard to know if he’s funny when he keeps ending the joke before the punchline.
Ba-dum-CHK
Splitting California into six states doesn’t sound so bad when you realize that the average California State Senator has more constituents than the Governors of Alaska, Delaware, both North and South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming, plus the Mayor of the District of Columbia. Montana’s total population is only barely higher than that average.
Why is it that population density is directly proportional to the desire to control people’s lives?
– The two things you can always set your watch by with the Democrats is pandering, and tax increases. Of course Bumblefuck will go after any savings because in the Progressive world saving your hard earned money is the height of selfishness because “redistribution”. You can’t redistribute other peoples money if you can’t steal it first.
– That is also why the ruining class on both sides do everything they can to torpedo a flat simple tax system. The day such a law is passed DC will cease to be the center of the universe.
Splitting California into six states doesn’t sound so bad …
Until you ponder the addition of 10 new West Coast U.S. Senators might mean.
Oops,
meant to say “what the addition of…
..as long as the area including (but not limited to) San Francisco can be correctly stated “People’s Republic of China, Jr.”.
“of 12
10new West Coast U.S. SenatorsDanger
It means 4 socialist Senators, maybe 6 (areas containing Frisco, Los Angeles and maybe Napa) with the balance being conservative.
Most people see California as liberal, while Californians see only the big cities that way. There ARE parts of California outside those sinkholes, and we who live in those areas are daily rooting for the San Andreas to cleave off the LA basin and any land within 20 miles of the Golden Gate…
The sooner, the better, for the same reasons that are currently ruining Colorado and the large Texas cities.
Yet do you not harbor a suspicion Darleen, that left solely to their own devices California’s current socialist enclaves would not remain as such for terribly long, if due only to the absurdities into which they would certainly twist themselves and their constituents? Crazy country might seem inviting to many people, so long as it is mere talk, but burdened with requirements to sustain itself in the world and without recourse to the help of the sane, such a place may be inherently self-expunging.
See also “Feature, not bug”
“of 12 10 new West Coast U.S. Senators”
nr:
They already have two Senators. Six states = 12 Senators – the two current authorized = 10 new Senators. (unless somehow you believe the two current poster girls for mental illness won’t be in the mix ;^)
>unless somehow you believe the two current poster girls for mental illness won’t be in the mix <
it is debatable how popular the grrls would be in their respective new states. the status quo only helps proggtards.
and after breaking up california you hit them with term limits via an article v convention. just keep attacking the “ruining class” they’re doing the same.
“It means 4 socialist Senators, maybe 6 (areas containing Frisco, Los Angeles and maybe Napa) ”
Darleen,
I’d call that a net negative. Socialist politicians tend to entrench and enrich themselves while destroying that which they are called to defend.
An equal addition of Conservatives is not likely to make up for the damage.
Not to mention more blind defenders of a lawless Democratic administration. The Constitution’s provisions to impeach and override bill veto’s may as well be amended to only cover Republican Presidents.
nr,
Let’s just skip the Senate Californication and proceed with the article v convention.
Let’s just skip the Senate Californication and proceed with the article v convention.
oh noes go with the break up of ca. see if the 9th says fu to the peeps like prop 8. hammer the proggs in everyway.
I’d rather wait for California to bleed out like New York is on track for. Florida will pass it as the 3rd most populous state come next census.
California is hemorrhaging talent and treasure to Arizona and Texas and a couple of well placed amendments would put the 9th circuit it it’s place without sending six more Bernie Sanders to DC.
>a couple of well placed amendments would put the 9th circuit it it’s place without sending six more Bernie Sanders to DC. <
i'll stay with a referendum and with a potentially rethug congress that needs no baracky. forward to subsidiarity
nr,
Gonna need a few more well-placed amendments to constrain the congresscritters of BOTH parties!
Night all,
And KEEP FIRING!!!
>Gonna need a few more well-placed amendments to constrain the congresscritters of BOTH parties! <
the no. 1 art. v conv: is term limited reps and senators. break up the oligarchy.
Just because they’re talented in their fields doesn’t mean that they aren’t fucking idiots when it comes to politics and economics. Especially economics.
If Arizona and Texas don’t want to end up like Colorado, they damn well better increase their residency requirements before they let Californios vote in their State elections.
there’s a lot of squirrels what can’t find nut one out of all the nuts they buried late summer and fall
cause of all the goddamn snow is why
plus Eric Church’s new cd flat-out sucks ass in a major way
it’s all very troubling
i chalk it up to him being something of a strikingly uneducated momo fucking pothead
but that doesn’t explain about the squirrels
So how do you get a $300K firefighting job in California?
Same as any other job there: connections.
Just because they’re talented in their fields doesn’t mean that they aren’t fucking idiots when it comes to politics and economics. Especially economics.
Yup,
But, at least they tend to reproduce at a low rate. Hopefully we can get the Catholics and Mormons to keep outmanning em ;^)
Oh,
Forgot to throw in a couple of these: ” ” for Ernst.
EBL
I suspect the $300K figure is all inclusive of benefits & overtime. And when CA has a bad fire year these guys are on the lines for days-weeks with little/no break.
sdferr
The problem with the “socialist” enclaves in California is that they exist in the Thatcher “works until they run out of other people’s money” zone. They continue to enrich themselves and ignore all the rumblings of Mount Debt Vesuvius.
It is enraging that the one time budget paper-surplus makes front page news but our combined debt in the trillions is never addressed.
The problem with the “socialist” enclaves in California is that they exist in the Thatcher “works until they run out of other people’s money” zone. They continue to enrich themselves and ignore all the rumblings of Mount Debt Vesuvius.
Well yes, but that’s the point I thought.
Remove the money of the other people in the state from their grasp (under the separation hypothesis) and their free-spending ways are brought more quickly to an end, intensified, even, as their constituents would be quick to learn — and then those either rising up against them or fleeing, and in either case, bringing down the hammer.
Of course, in this respect it’s just like the thesis of the squishy GOP choosing to do nothing about ClownDisasterCare, saying they’re content to watch as it falls apart all on its own accord, which means in practice untold, unnecessary and undeserved suffering to be borne by those over whom the tyrants rule — a position we rightly object to on moral grounds because it is unnecessary and lays a mark of cowardice on those politicians who choose it, but a position we won’t deny should effectively put an end to the depredations of the political left, albeit while leaving a stinking taint upon those politicians who choose that course, knowing that it means unnecessary (and undeserved) suffering.
Remove the money of the other people in the state from their grasp (under the separation hypothesis)
True. But it’s like the decades of the San Fernando Valley trying to separate from Los Angeles. The takers in LA won’t allow SFV to break away.
While it looks good on paper to break up CA, I want to explore what vampirism might be in the fine print to allow the coastals to continue their domination of the rest of the state.
for instance, New York city continues to thrive even as many of the worker bees live in New Jersey.
If you live in outside of California for 6 months minus one day, you owe CA income tax on all your earnings.
heh. And what do the movies teach us about vampirism? Kill them, and hurry up about it!
While it looks good on paper to break up CA, I want to explore what vampirism might be in the fine print to allow the coastals to continue their domination of the rest of the state.
SIX CALIFORNIAS INITIATIVE MEASURE SUBMITTED DIRECTLY TO VOTERS
http://www.sixcalifornias.info/
And what do the movies teach us about vampirism?
That they’re a bunch of sparkly emos who stammer a lot, and whose heads shatter like porcelain if you hit them just right.