Where Are My Keys?

You know what would help fraud like this go away?

Budgets.  When you don't have oversight, and it is apparent no one cares, why wouldn't you spend like a drunken sailor?

One federal employee leased a $53,000 take-home car with taxpayer money in apparent defiance of federal regulations and regularly billed the government for service at shops such as BMW of Fairfax.

Others charged the government monthly for family members’ cell phones and high-end TV packages and Internet at home — and even at second homes.

Managers freely made out checks to employees without requiring documentation of how it would be spent, giving $1,316 directly to one who said she was reimbursing herself for furniture she bought for a “home office” and using convenience checks to give workers bonuses.

Government employees used federal purchase cards to order items such as a $560 Bose stereo and $1,490 for two high-definition televisions that could not be located.

All of these examples happened at the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, an obscure runaway government agency where the median annual salary is $120,000.

That amount far exceeds the national median household income but it wasn't enough for many FMCS employees, many of whom routinely charged nearly every conceivable expense to government credit cards known as “purchase cards,” according to bank records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

Even the bank didn’t know where much of the money went, because it was paid using checks with an “illegible payee.”

Disgusting waste of taxpayer money, and this is just one agency.  What is the true cost throughout the entire Government?

You remember what Nancy Pelosi said a few weeks ago, right?

 

How long can this go on in California?

My guess is "Not long":

The average retirement payout for new retirees in California's biggest public pension system doubled between 1999 and 2012, according to CalPERS data, and initial monthly payments for one group nearly tripled in that period.

State and local cops and firefighters benefited the most.

In the 14 years covered by the data analyzed by The Sacramento Bee, average first-month pensions to state police and firefighters went from $1,770 to $4,978. California Highway Patrol officers' first-month retirement payments doubled from $3,633 to $7,418, and local government safety employees' pensions went from $3,296 to $6,867. 

...

"These numbers indicate the cost of benefits given away a decade ago are finally coming home to roost," said Dan Pellissier, a pension-reform advocate who tried and failed to put a measure before voters last year to roll back pensions. "We're finally having to pay the pension piper."

Just as higher pensions established years ago are still rolling through the system, significant savings from changes that took effect this year – including caps on benefits for new hires and higher employee contributions – won't significantly stem retirement allowances and their cost to taxpayers for many years.

Your City has recently declared bankruptcy, remember?

Probably not the best time to build a new hockey arena funded 44% by the public.  Typically, the old "building this will create jobs and raise tax revenues" story is being told:

When asked why taxpayers and city employees should support public funds for a sports arena at a time when Detroit is bankrupt, Snyder defended the use of MSF-issued bonds.

The arena project “should increase the tax base of the city longer term, and should increase the employment opportunities for Detroiters,” he said. “So this should create a better environment for Detroit long term, and that will be better for all of us.”

W. Howard Morris a Detroit accountant and Snyder appointee to the MSF board, was the only board member to ask the state and Ilitch officials why this is a good deal for taxpayers. Mark Morante, of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., said the new arena would spur other activity “in our signature city (Detroit), on its signature spine (Woodward Avenue) to connect downtown and Midtown.”

If all this greatness is going to come from building a new stadium on the backs of broke residents, why not just build three or four new "entertainment" venues, like performing arts complexes, casinos, and art museums.  Why not just buy and build your way out of bankruptcy?  No wonder Motown is broke.

I don't normally have a problem with public funds going towards new stadiums and arenas, but financing in that manner while the City is bankrupt makes zero sense.

The problem with Detroit..

The problem (as with virtually all Democrat "solutions"), is that eventually you run out of other people's money:

Detroit’s bankruptcy has just teed up one of the most consequential court cases in recent memory. As part of the plan to help the city exit bankruptcy, the government will likely cut pensions promised to city workers, a move allowed under federal law. But there’s a catch: the state constitution of Michigan forbids it. Citing this fact, a state judge ruled the bankruptcy unconstitutional (she also rather bizarrely argued that the bankruptcy doesn’t ”honor the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy”). The WSJ has more:

But despite the judge’s ruling on Friday, the issue is likely far from settled, said legal experts.

“It’s an issue that’s completely up for grabs,” said Gary Klausner, a bankruptcy lawyer at Stutman Treister & Glatt in Los Angeles, who has worked on Chapter 9 cases. “You just haven’t seen too many courts deal with it.”

Detroit’s situation seems almost unprecedented, and it’s not clear how the city can best respond to it. The unions’ biggest problem is that Detroit simply cannot pay their pension claims without destroying city services. Detroit doesn’t have the money to provide even minimal services to its current population while paying off the large numbers of retired workers, many of whom hail from times when the city was larger and richer.

Because there is no money, there is no solution that gives the unions the relief they seek.  Total obedience to the state constitutional mandate might not be possible, and that’s a problem. The government can pass a law saying that everyone has a constitutional right to a free trip to the moon, but if it doesn’t build the spacecraft that can get you there the right is void.

While the principle that federal law trumps state law on most issues is pretty clear, there are real arguments on both sides in this complicated case. But if the state constitution is unenforceable as well as being in conflict with federal law, it would be that much harder for the state constitution to block the execution of federal bankruptcy law.

However the courts eventually decide, decades of misgovernance, the criminal corruption of the Democratic Party in Detroit, and the depraved indifference of politicians at every level as crooks and hacks conspired together to loot and wreck a great American city have brought us to a place where Detroit’s problems seem almost beyond solution. The saddest part of this story is that there is still much, much more pain to come for a lot of people. Both the residents of current day Detroit and the cops, teachers, firefighters and others who trusted in the promises of Detroit politicians and union officials face a world of hurt.

Are you happy with your "investment" in GM?

Looks like the Feds will dump their remaining shares in GM tomorrow, with the estimates of total losses to the US Taxpayer to be about $10,000,000,000:

The United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust — which holds about 14 percent of GM — will also participate by selling 20 million shares, making the total offering size 50 million shares. It represents about 12 percent of Treasury’s outstanding GM stock.

The move may mean that Treasury completely exits in 2013, rather than by the end of March 2014. The return to the S&P will prompt significant demand for GM shares and the stock has recently traded near its highest level since February 2011. GM is filing a new prospectus ahead of the sale.

The Treasury sold nearly 20 percent of its remaining shares in General Motors Co. in the first three months of the year, the Detroit automaker disclosed Thursday.

The Treasury, which initially held 60.8 percent of GM as part of the U.S. $49.5 billion bailout, now owns just 16.4 percent, or 241.7 million shares. In December, the Treasury sold GM 200 million shares of its stake for $5.5 billion to reduce its stake to 300 million shares.

In total, Treasury has recouped $30.6 billion. At current trading prices, Treasury would lose around $10 billion on its GM bailout.

Regular readers will recall that GM shares needed to trade around $55 per share for the Taxpayers to break even.  Current price has the stock in the $34.75 range.

You know what is a good measure of how things are going in your Country?

I'd probably start with how many of your households are on food stamps.  Stands to reason, doesn't it?  If you have a lot of folks on food stamps, things probably aren't going very well.  So how many in the good old US of A are being fed by the White House these days?

More than 23,000,000 households you say?  And that's a record, you say?  And it increased by almost 900,000 since the same year?

Nice economy, Mr. Obama.

City Workers finally having to contribute like the rest of Us..

Cities around the Country are waking up to financial reality, and *gasp* asking new hires to pay their portion of retirement expenses.  You know, like we do:

Pension costs have caused several recent high-profile municipal bankruptcies recently, so other cities are trying to avoid suffering similar disasters by asking employees to begin paying part of their pension costs.

In Sacramento, Calif., City Manager John Shirey said today he will hire 58 new police officers only if current officers agree to pay the employee share of their pension payments. The police union is one of few groups of employees in the city who don’t pay any of their own pension costs,  according to the Sacramento Bee.

Most public pension plans are set up with a set contribution for employers and employees, but employee unions often negotiate for employers to pay both the employer share and some or all of the employee share, which makes pension payments a large chunk of many cities’ budgets. Bankrupt Stockton, Calif., for instance, owes the California Public Employees Retirement System $900 million.

It's not just Sacramento seeing the light:

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake introduced a bill today that would require city employees to pay part of their share to address $681 million in unfunded pension liabilities, according to the Baltimore Sun. The bill would require employees to put 5 percent of their salaries into the pension fund by 2018. Rawlings-Blake’s office estimates it would save $53 million over nine years, according to the Sun. “The costs of outdated benefits have crippled our ability to pay workers what they truly deserve in their paychecks,” the mayor said in a statement. “We must make tough choices to rebalance the way we compensate our hard-working employees by reforming unsustainable benefits and instead invest in better wages up-front.”

Look for more and more this to happen in cities near you.

Remember, something that can't go on forever, won't.

When your Budget Director doesn't know about your budget, what does it say about your judgement in filling that position?

 

Compare the various budgets..

All in one easy chart, you can check out the various budget offerings.  The chart is interactive, so follow the link to the site to play with different scenarios.

The Democrats have no interest in trying to solve our fiscal issues.

Here's how the "P" in those pesky "PIIGS" I talk about is thinking about paying workers..

Not in cash, like every other civilized Country out there.  Nope, Portugal is thinking about paying workers in T-Bills. 

As reported late on Friday, just as the market closed, the Portuguese constitutional court decided that several provisions of the country's 2013 budget were not constitutional. According to the high court, cuts in wages and pensions of public employees were unfair (there's that word again) because they targeted only the public sector. The court rejected plans to cut one of the 14 paychecks that public workers usually get each year and to slash 6.4% from pensions for retirees.  This coincided with the government warning that the court's decision would put into question the country's ability to fulfill its €78 billion international bailout program, which in turn would send bondholders of Portuguese sovereign debt scrambling for the exits as suddenly the country mayfind itself in the ECB's "dunce" corner, with Draghi preparing to pull a "Berlusconi" on a government which can't even whip its judicial branch in line. However, of more immediate concern is how will the government now plug a hole of up to €1.3 billion in its €5.3 billion 2013 budget. A solution has, luckily, presented itself: bypass the unconstitutional provisions by paying government workers not in cash, but in government bills!

This will certainly end well.