Vallejo City, California files for bankruptcy

Getting a position in a fire house isn't easy. A lot of people who go to fire academy don't become fire fighters.

 

Local property taxes are worse than the income tax. At least with the income tax if you get tired of working you pay nothing.

I've been wondering what cities that have been living off the real estate boom are going to do when the market bottoms out.

 

I just read the Bloomberg article on this and saw they went bankrupt because of $16 million? That is WEAK. This is stupidity at a ridiculous level.

edit: HAHA, this city is ripe with retards: City of Vallejo's $100K-plus Earners, this is nepotism gone mad.

 

In cases like this the city employess have their friends and family turn out in high numbers on election day.

Additionally a lot of property owners/business owners don't live in the towns that are charging them the high taxes. So, they have no say on property tax rates.

 

Haha I wrote an article about it.. my state, Florida is considering about $350 billion in education cuts. Mostly because of the declining property taxes, but also because of a tax cut and the fact that some of the state's budget was held in mortgage backed short-term bonds. Needless to say, this is a pretty poor long-term solution since our state already has some of the nation's worst education

 

In small towns with high paid government jobs, it becomes the family business.

If it weren't for falling real estate prices towns would be using eminent domain to take over private property and sell it.

 

The world is so remarkably different than 1800 or 1900. If you believe we should have the same level of government and or societal interaction and control...you should go back and try and live in and environment like that of 1800 or 1900. Possibly you should move to a compound such as they have in Texas that you seem to support. Ooops even they travel into town to (I assume purchase modern goods that weren't available in 1800 or 1900).

On the other hand, in so far as national government is concerned on issues of business regulation or environmental regulation, we have far less government today in those 2 areas than we had in 2000. Far less.

I found this reference interesting vis a vis environmental regulaion. It just happened.....http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/73234/96851

A woman who was an active Bush supporter, and who was a senior EPA official in tghe field was let go this month.

On the day she was let go the administration announced she was leaving to pursue private/family matters.

An hour or two before the official announcement she had a press conference/announcement stating she was being fired from EPA because she had continued to pursue Dow Chemical about cleaning up gorunds it had polluted.

It seems like the Feds fired her for trying to do her job, enforce environmental regulations....and this government cares more about Dow Chemical than it does about environmental laws and protecting the citizenry/environment.

Over the past eight years we have had far far far less government in so far as businesses and environmental protections are concerned.

...and manywould argue the world is far worse off because of that.

 

When was the last time the government closed a department down?

Best thing that ever happened to this woman was getting fired. Now she can write a tell all book, make a killing, become a celebrity and be financially independent.

Getting fired from a government job is a good thing.

Btw Earl, you might want to cool your jets on the ranch thread. You claimed I said I was pro-rape, and I refuted that as a false charge. Either your research is sloppy or you are a liar. Either way, such nonsense won't fly with me.

 

Paying people for not working doesn't work. Pensions are becoming a bigger and bigger problem each year.

http://californiapensionreform.com/vallejo.htm

Ponzi schemes don't work.

Paying people -more- when they retire doesn't work.

Encouraging people to retire early, when they live longer, doesn't work.

 

In the past public servants were compensated with a pension for the low public salaries of the public. But it seems that both pensions and salaries are getting out of control.

 

All government retirement plans should be exclusively Social Security. From the president down to the newest higher, no exceptions. This would include school teachers, cops, fire dept and more. If they want better they have to pay for it just like the rest of us and since their incomes are higher (with a few exceptions) than the working (and producing) public they should be able to afford it.

 

The federal government does not use an accrual method of accounting. That makes it easy to ignore pension and/or any kind of future payments. It probably facilitates the existance of the long term financial problems that we face.

I'm curious. I should know this but don't. Do states, towns, etc. provide their accounting on an accrual basis or a cash basis?

Any practising accountants here?

 

I use cash basis of accounting in my business, and I'm about $2 million in yearly revenue. Each has its merits and drawbacks. Once you reach a certain size have a lot of depreciation accounts; accounts receivable, etc.

My accountant never really harps at me to change, so I don't bother. I don't see it as a big deal either way.

Governments should really be on the accrual system though - in fact, it would be illegal for a publically traded corporation of their size and types of income/liabilities to use a cash basis. But they can't change, not now. Imagine seeing a budget deficit jump from 300 billion to 11 trillion overnight. LOL.

 

The issue isn't necessarily how the books are kept, it's that with leadership turnover and institutionalized contracts and bureaucracies, it's almost impossible to maintain control.

Then of course, we have to remember that our government doesn't function like a business (if it did, we would have a corporatacracy). Revenue is by mandate, sales are by fiat. Like say pubic garbage collection. If the service sucks, you can't necessarily extract your contribution to the costs and go with a competitor.

The power to hand out contracts and cartel industries by government monopoly creates disincentives for efficiency and an atmosphere for corruption and graft.

Logic tells us it would be nearly impossible to run a business successfully where we had no mechanism for feedback on quality or performance except at election time. Where the CEO and executives are rarely around long enough to see the (rotten or ripe) fruits of their policies. And where budget overruns and deficits are institutionalized, just short of being policy.

If you want better government, shrink it to a manageable size. The notion that the private sector can't handle many government services is nonsense. Anecdotal evidence can be found in many other countries.

 

Here is an example of the state functioning like a corporation, as a separate legal entity from the constituents, rather than a manifestation of the will of their constituents.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/ma...repeal_state_income_tax/?p1=email_to_a_friend

So employees of the state, are going to create (dis)education programs to inform voters about how important the taxes are, in order to save their jobs, departments and bureaucracies. And while they may or may not use public money for their PSAs, you can be sure this will be discussed on "company time" and over lunches paid for with state expense accounts.

Does anyone else see a conflict of interest here?

~~~


browntwn was looking for this article up-thread.

Red light cameras too good for their own good?
Some cities rethink devices as drivers pay heed, reducing fine revenue


Does anyone see a conflict of interest with that?

Here is the commentary from LRC

 

That's a great idea. I'd like to see it passed. Then the waste would have to be cut out. Doesn't seem to be any other way to rein in wasteful government spending. The question is whether the Mass. government would allow it?