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Gen. Ripper posted:Democratic Supermajority!: The CA-GOP has been a walking corpse ever since Governor Pete Wilson tried to shove through Prop 187. As zombies are wont to do, the GOP responded by lashing out and attacking everything, which most notably manifested itself in blocking goddamn near everything relating to a budget, since you need a 2/3s majority in the legislature to pass one. Luckily, we elected a Democratic supermajority to both houses in 2012, so now stuff can get done. Hopefully. Quantum Mechanic posted:What's the status on the possibility of UHC in Cali? I heard that its proponents went oddly silent the moment the D supermajority came into power? This is actually great because it's the best object lesson for idealistic liberals on how lovely the Democratic party is. As a reminder, this state passed universal healthcare when there was no supermajority, and it knew it was going to get vetoed by a Republican governor. Half a year under a supermajority with a Dem governor and not a peep. The state Democrats could do whatever they want, enact the liberal dream agenda. But they won't, because Democrats are poo poo. Remember this when you hope for a Democrat supermajority in Congress.
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Jun 28, 2013 07:34
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Play posted:Okay, this is very simplistic. Firstly, my county has universal low income healthcare. Secondly, the state is right in the middle of implementing the PPACA, which was not in existence the last time they aimed for universal healthcare. Thirdly, the state is just now recovering from seriously terrible budget deficits and is trying to avoid spending like a drunken sailor which is the standard Democratic party routine when there is a budget surplus; this is also as opposed to the situation last time. I would say give it time. If Obamacare is not working well (it looks like it will be, starting prices on the exchange are lower than expected and California is going to be the premier test case for the PPACA), then we'll see what happens, but personally I am all for caution and not loving up this opportunity given to the party by the voters. If we're still running a surplus in a couple years we'll see what can be done. You called my analysis simplistic? I can't think of a time in recent history where California democrats have spent like drunken sailors, but if they wanted to, they easily could. The state is one of the 10 largest economies in the world, and contains 15% of the country. California can afford to do a lot of things, but there's simply no interest from State Democrats to not be 90's Republicans. Or are you doing that Political Capital thing, where Democrats can't do anything good now, because something something and they will ~in the future~. I'm not simply talking about UHC here, the party could do anything it wants. Yet here we are, cutting school budgets, cutting programs, fighting for the right to continue torturing prisoners.
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Jun 28, 2013 17:37
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redscare posted:LA is also flat broke. Gray Davis and his SB400 pension expansion that then ballooned downstream has led to 18% of the city's budget being spent on pensions. It's also part of the reason why 70% of the budget goes to pay for police and firefighter salaries and benefits (including pensions - the 70% and 18% numbers are separate calculations). There's no money left, so the roads are infamously crap, the water infrastructure is crumbling, debt levels are eye-watering, and the city is looking at a $1b cumulative deficit over the next 4 years. [citation - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/17/us-usa-election-losangeles-idUSBRE94G0A420130517] As usual, the ancient refrain of "we're just too generous to our employees" marches on. No, we underfunded those pensions to play budget games, and golly, turns out that after those people got out of office they don't give a poo poo about the havok that caused. Surely it must be workers fault.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:00
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Arsenic Lupin posted:We quite literally had the director of corrections from Texas testifying that our prison conditions were inhumane. Let that one sink in. As a reminder, Texas is the state where they hide prisoners in tunnels during inspections to hide overcrowding, and is known for it's juvy-to-adult-prison pipeline. Powercrazy posted:Texas isn't even on the radar when it comes to bad prison conditions in the country though. So what is supposed to "sink-in" other than California tribalism and deflection? How wrong you are. Just because not aware of it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Read up in the prison thread if you want to know more.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:03
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UberJew posted:Yep it's them drat public employee unions. Because CTA and SEIU don't have basically zero influence in Sacramento, don't get paid bupkis and hosed on every contract and don't cover an order of magnitude more state employees than CCPOA does or anything. No, you see the richest state in the country simply can't afford to pay out pensions that are similar to the ones paid by many nations that are a fractions of it's size.
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Jun 28, 2013 18:11
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Dusseldorf posted:Los Angeles is absolutely spending money to expand public transit faster than any other city in the county. The city is just huge and started way behind. Saying it spends more on expanding transit in a country like the USA isn't saying much, though I suspect your numbers are off given that NYC is digging enormous tunnels right now. LA has a 30 year plan to build a system that could be done in 10. Pervis posted:Re: Pensions - it's an issue not just because of the size, but the ease of abuse (in terms of gaming the system to make well more in retirement than during actual employment), grandfathering of contracts that should never have been given, and also for many years CALPERS basically said "yeah we're fine" (during the bubbles) so states and counties stopped paying in. Then came the crash and the lack of payments made the loss even harder. There were definitely larger unions (hello CHP / state police) who got absolutely amazing deals, on top of the large %'s getting disability (at a rate far higher than that of private industry). That's part of why you are seeing cities and counties all watching the bankruptcies being declared by Stockton etc - once it starts it's just going to go through and all those liabilities will be shed one way or another, regardless of whether they are reasonable or not. It's going to suck for the less powerful unions (of which there are many - small independent unions). The reason that cities are declaring bankruptcy is the same as why CalPERS took a bath on it's investments: They got lied to by the finance industry. We've been underfunding our pension obligations for decades to play budget games, and to blame the result of that on the employees is so hilariously cynical I could laugh or cry. I'll have to dig it up, but I believe the numbers state that erasing prop 13 would easily fix California's deficits. You could double the property tax, run a surplus, and still be below the national average of property tax rates. People always seem to forget, California has a bigger economy than all but the biggest countries. Our deficits are insignificant compared to our GDP. Zeitgueist fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 18:34
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redscare posted:They got underfunded because the employees were only asked to contribute a token sum and the demographics stopped being favorable because pension plans, like most social welfare programs, are demographic-based ponzi schemes that are only sustainable if there's a ton of employees with a small pool of retirees. Between this and "Democrats spending like drunken sailors" it's pretty clear you either don't know what you're talking about, or are being dishonest.
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Jun 28, 2013 19:00
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LA's transit system: A brief summary LA is a huge sprawling collection of smaller cities and suburbs, with massively overcrowded roads. This despite the fact that it probably has 3x the amount of freeways as any other city in the country. There is simply too many people and not enough road, though not for lack of trying on the roads part. You could likely built a second level on most LA freeways and still be quite busy. LA's light rail system is a relatively recent thing, dating back only to 1990. Initially, it was thought that LA is so invested in it's "car culture" that nobody would use it. That, and money, factored into an above-ground system designed for limited use. Of course, the first line(the Blue Line) is essentially a best-fit-line through the poorest parts of LA...IE, the people most likely to use public transportation. Because of this, the platforms had to be expanded in the first 10 years of operation to allow larger trains. This is a running issue in LA transit: The people who design and run the system have no realistic view on who and how it is used, because the LA Metro is almost exclusively the domain of people with lower incomes. Very few people who can afford a car decline to use, despite the horrific traffic. Another interesting feature of the LA system is the Purple line. If you look at a subway map, you'll see a line that goes for about 4 stops, ending in the Wilshire area west of downtown. Half of the stops are concurrent with the Red line, with only 2-3 independent. Why such a small line, you ask? Well we had to stop digging when we ran into some controversy over environmental concerns. Somehow, the line simply can't figure out how to go west of that point. What's west of there, you ask?  Another interesting choice in LA rail design is the Green line, which runs down the center of the 105 freeway to LAX airport. Or rather, near LAX airport. It stops about 100 yards from the property but does not go in. You have to switch to a bus for the rest of the trip, despite the fact that there is literally a turn-off built into the track for an LAX connection. Mysteriously, nobody with the City can quite explain why this connection never got built. We're also building a north-south Train along Crenshaw that will come just as close to the airport, but also not enter. As far as I'm aware, LA is the only city in the US with a light rail system that doesn't connect it to the airport.
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Jun 28, 2013 19:16
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Rah! posted:But the parts that it does serve are served pretty well, better than many American cities in fact. The bus system is large and widely used in the areas that it does serve well (over 1 million riders every weekday), and LA has been expanding it's metro and light rail lines, and has more expansions planned, so things have been steadily getting better over the past couple decades. It's not quite as lovely as it was in the 1950s-1980s, which is when LA really got famous for having bad public transit. The LA metro rail system has an average of 360,000+ riders every weekday, which is actually almost as many daily riders as BART, though neither systems have the best coverage...which is amplified for LA seeing as it has over twice the population of the Bay Area (plus the Bay also has the MUNI metro and VTA light rail in addition to BART). So it's a mix of pretty good and completely lovely in LA, depending on where you are. That's just LA county though, the rest of the LA area is even more hosed, but then so are the suburban regions of most US cities. The bus system is overcrowded, slow, unreliable, and they're actively cutting lines. People ride the bus because they have to, not because it's convenient. Often you'll see a bus go right by because it's too full. The trains definitely get used, but they don't cover enough areas and they need to be bigger. Often in the evening rush hour, the Blue line will be standing room only, so much so that at literally the first stop, people can't get on. The Expo is OK most times, but I think once it actually connects Santa Monica to downtown it's going to be packed.
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Jun 28, 2013 19:20
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Dusseldorf posted:LAX Bus "G" which runs from the Aviation Green line stop to the airport is actually really great and probably works as well as any rail connector would. Having taken that bus many times, and been in airports with rail connections, I can assure you this is not the case. It's not awful, but it makes no sense for the Green Line to not actually enter the airport. Additionally, that was original plan because it would be utterly stupid not to....unfortunately, as is usual in LA, some lobbying got involved. quote:Also once the Crenshaw rail line is built then they'll probably have to put in a rail connector to LAX. The Crenshaw gets close but doesn't go in either. But yes, there are plans for an LAX connection completely independent of Crenshaw/Green Line construction. Dusseldorf posted:A ton of people ride the buses, just not white people. This is entirely true of all of the LA Metro system. And also why the system is such an afterthought.
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Jun 28, 2013 19:23
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Pellisworth posted:I've been told anecdotally that the main reason the trains go almost but not quite to LAX is due to lobbying from cabbies, bus/shuttle companies, and airport parking services who didn't want the competition. That's the conventional wisdom, but I wasn't here at that time so I don't' know for sure.
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Jun 28, 2013 19:34
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redscare posted:I made no mention of Democrats aside from the specific case of Gray Davis and SB400 and I fail to see how I'm incorrect in my assessment of pensions as the base level. You need X amount of new workers to pay for the $Y benefits of Z retirees. If Z is growing (and it is, because people living a pretty long rear end time now and die way later than they did when many of these were set up), then Y is growing and thus you need X to grow. But X is shrinking due to automation/budget cuts/slower population growth/etc, so the contribution from X has to increase (via higher taxes) or Y needs to decrease. Yes, the pension money doesn't just go into a box and gets invested, but a certain return % is needed as well, which could require a risky strategy, something a pension plan should not engage in. Pensions and social programs aren't Ponzi schemes. You have no idea what Ponzi scheme is, and are simply confused by standard PAYGO systems.
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Jun 28, 2013 20:02
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Slobjob Zizek posted:Right, but an economic bubble is a Ponzi scheme. So, reducing pension contributions to buy into a bubble (and to assume it will last forever), is to buy into a Ponzi scheme. Not even that is true. A Ponzi scheme is not a catchall term for "things that are unsustainable that I don't like".
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Jun 28, 2013 21:42
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Slobjob Zizek posted:You can call a bubble whatever you like -- but it's functionally the same as a Ponzi scheme. Future returns are promised to more and more investors until they are no longer sustainable and everything collapses. Honestly explaining basic concepts to you is a derail for this thread, but what you're doing here is trying to make a false equivalence in order to support an argument. This specific post is you trying to change definitions of words after getting called out. A Ponzi scheme is one where the investors are directly paying to the previous investors. A stock market bubble does not operate this way, as it is an open market. The stock market is a stupid gambling house, one prone to silly bubbles, but it is not even remotely the same as a ponzi scheme, or similar. Now putting that aside, even if CalPERS literally invested in a Ponzi scheme, it would have no bearing on whether a PAYGO pension system was a Ponzi scheme, which it is not. Please just come out and say that you don't like pensions or unions or whatever, rather than this disingenuous crap. redscare posted:Bingo! I don't even dislike the idea of pensions, but there is a point at which a benefit becomes unreasonable and unsustainable, one that I think most CA public employee pensions have crossed by a considerable margin to the detriment of everyone and everything else. You have no idea if it's sustainable or overgenerous. You've merely scapegoated the victims of bad legislation because you don't understand what PAYGO is.
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Jun 28, 2013 22:29
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Slobjob Zizek posted:I don't really know what you are talking about here as PAYGO is a term specific to balancing the federal budget (and was created in the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990), but I suspect that you mean that the state makes up shortfalls in pension earnings by either raising revenue or cutting spending. Ironically, I may be using an incorrect term myself. What I mean is that we have a pension system where both the employees contribute, and the government contributes. The state of California has previously not met it's end of the funding obligations, for various budget magicking, pushing it off until later. Now it needs to make up what it owes out of the current budget, current workers paying in through taxes. That is not a Ponzi scheme. Additionally, CalPERS has funding issues due to investing in financial instruments fraudulently rated as AAA(the only risk level it can invest in). This has nothing to do with the underfunding, and is also not a Ponzi scheme.
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Jun 28, 2013 23:01
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redscare posted:You realize that this is exactly what governments doing and that it's what is consuming all of these budgets, right? This either means the employees aren't paying enough, there aren't enough employees, or that the benefits are too generous. Actually you left out the option that's actually happening: The government didn't pay it's share. It passed the buck and now it's due. quote:Expecting taxpayers to endlessly fill the shortfall for a class of government employees that is already considered over-compensated and over-protected is about as sustainable as the entire setup itself. Ponzi may not be the most accurate term, but the eventual crash and underlying causes are the same because budget allocations for pensions and public (especially public safety) employees on LA's scale are unsustainable and unfair. How is not paying the pensions you said you'd pay fair? The underlying cause of all the problems is not some bus driver living high on the hog, but our hosed up budgets and tax base. The government employees aren't considered over-compensated and over-protected, other than by people like you who are attempting to victim blame because they have an ideological problem with them.
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Jun 28, 2013 23:18
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JT Jag posted:So, now that the Democrats have a supermajority in California, is there any avenue for them to, you know, get rid of that "you need 2/3rds to raise taxes" law? To prepare for when they don't have a super-majority. It's being chipped away at. We can pass budgets with only a simple majority(it used to be super) as of 2010. The 2/3 tax raise is part of Prop 13, and would need another prop to rescind. Repealing Prop 13 completely would be a political non-starter because it would be a big tax increase, especially for rich people and businesses. You're also assuming a significant portion of the legislature aren't basically Republicans in terms of taxation. You'd be wrong. The governor describes himself as a "born again tax cutter".
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Jun 28, 2013 23:33
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CURATOR OF ANIME posted:How is the California High-Speed Rail coming along? Have they even begun construction? This state needs one badly. The first section is going to be built in central CA where nobody will want to ride it, because it's cheaper to build it there. Then because nobody is riding it, they will use that as an excuse to kill the project before it connects a major city, taking the money to go build more prisons. Save this post and congratulate me in a few decades when it becomes true.
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Jun 30, 2013 17:50
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Dusseldorf posted:The "tourist district" in SF also happens to be the financial district and the "outskirts of LA" happens to be about a quarter mile from downtown LA and the heart of the cities transit hub. Yeah as cynical as I am, the highspeed rail plan is pretty good for LA because of Union Station. Now the proposed Las Vegas highspeed line that will probably never happen always ends up being planned through San Bernadino or whatever.
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Jul 1, 2013 19:04
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Glass of Milk posted:The Las Vegas rail line has been floating around forever and will never be built because America. FCKGW posted:Isn't the Vegas line just for people to go spend a bunch of money in Nevada? Well the linked article and FCKGW's comment pretty much put the problem in a nutshell. The article says a train from Victorville to LV, and honestly everyone who's made the drive knows that after you've hit Victorville it's smooth, if boring, sailing. Maybe worse coming back on Sunday, but you're still going to spend 2+ hours in traffic getting to Victorville. And yes, it's pretty much a highspeed method for taking cash from CA to NV, especially since nobody is going to take a train from LV to a desert wasteland that is hours from LA, where they will now have no car. Any plan that doesn't have a train coming into Union Station is hilarious foolish.
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Jul 1, 2013 22:10
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etalian posted:I don't see how people could survive in the bay area without good raises, the cost of living is impressively expensive especially for how the tech sector boom made rents go crazy over the last decade. As long as they quote numbers higher than the median many people will fall for the crap-barrel tactic.
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Jul 2, 2013 00:21
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coolskillrex remix posted:All this being said I do think unions for public sector tend to abuse their position, which is "BART will just bend backwards because at the end of the day its government money/debt" This doesn't make any sense. Unions in the public sector aren't abusing their position by doing what unions do, which is fight for their employees and strike when needed.
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Jul 2, 2013 01:44
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withak posted:http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-talks-in-limbo-as-strike-paralyzes-commute-4641826.php I'd suspect that BART is not willing to come to the table because the media narrative is hurting the union and they'd like to let it go for a couple of days.
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Jul 2, 2013 21:54
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GrumpyDoctor posted:This article about the strike has been bouncing around, for what it's worth. Useful quote: quote:As BART officials have inflated the salary figures of BART train operators and station agents to an average of $71,000 annually, the SF Examiner reported workers make a maximum of $62,000 annually. While this still may seem like a decent salary, a family of four living in the Bay Area need $74,341 a year just to get by. Note that the inflated number is being thrown around without any kind of investigation at all, much like the UAW worker numbers used to be, the ones that included all benefits written as dollars.
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Jul 2, 2013 22:19
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AshB posted:Does anyone know of any relatively objective reads about all this stuff going on with BART? I want to see something that gives both sides some fair consideration, but most of what I've heard from people I know is anti-union chatter. Somehow I doubt the whole thing is so black-and-white. The Alternet article linked upthread covers it pretty well.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:37
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UberJew posted:NIMBY liberalism at it's finest. Yeah Berkeley is more liberal than it is leftist, and making GBS threads on unions because you were inconvenienced is about as liberal as it gets.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:13
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Van5 posted:But Solidarity Well it's as if this is accidental. You've got decades of propaganda and legislation working towards this goal. Kyrie eleison posted:Unions are out of touch and out of date. Their strike is making a fool out of them in front of everyone. They think they can get the public to side with them by pissing them off. It will destroy their credibility forever Case in point. 
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Jul 3, 2013 22:39
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FilthyImp posted:While I don't disagree with the Union's ability to strike, or the reasoning behind it, it strikes me as kind of right to say that they're out of date. They're out of date in the sense that unions have been hamstrung by legislation for decades, and the media essentially repeats whatever story anyone anti-union says as if it's fact, following decades propaganda. But since there isn't really an alternative, I don't know that they can ever be out of date.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:53
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Van5 posted:Except for the fact that striking has worked thousands of times before you mean The "organized labor is out of date" line is essentially "I don't agree with the concept of organized labor and will not attempt to make a self-fulfilling prophecy".
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Jul 3, 2013 23:07
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Van5 posted:I'm sorry but what would be a self-fulfilling prophecy in this instance? What I mean is that people who say "unions are out of date because they don't work" are people who never wanted them to work, and don't care if they do.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:16
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I got confused.
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Dave47 posted:This article's central idea is that allowing people to commute to and from their jobs during a public transit strike is the "dark side" of private transit. But if we're going to adopt the logic that everyone must suffer equally, then why exactly do BART employees deserve a raise? We're all supposed to be suffering together, remember! Might want to re-read that article again. The article I read was about how affluent workers are largely unaffected by this strike, highlighting the wealth inequality that exists in the Bay area.
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Jul 4, 2013 00:32
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sincx posted:The data shows employees from the two striking unions make around $78,000 to $81,000, including overtime. For reference, base pay is 55-65K.
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Jul 5, 2013 00:12
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AshB posted:Where did you get that figure? I'm getting pretty confused because the sources are all saying muddled things with salaries ranging anywhere from $28k-$83k. Can someone explain which employees specifically people are complaining about (i.e. their job title) and what the average salary is with a break down? I want to know the income without including benefits. The same link that article did. That is the mean average without overtime figured in.
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Jul 6, 2013 00:20
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As usual, the popular debate is about whether the workers are being greedy. How messed up is that?
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Jul 8, 2013 21:45
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A Winner is Jew posted:CA's prison industrial complex could really be it's own thread unto itself since it's absolutely one of the worst ones in the nation. It owes a lot of this to the Gate's brand of police protectionism (all signs point to the fucker letting LA burn during the riots just to make it clear holding them accountable for anything will not be tolerated) that is ingrained into every police force in the state now, the CCPOA which really is a horrible boogie man of a union that conservatives think all unions are, and the detestable three strikes law which thanks to the CCPOA will probably never get repealed. The Prison threads have always been quite heavily about California, or King Cali as HidingFromGoro says.
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Jul 8, 2013 22:16
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bawfuls posted:FUNFACT: The trolley system in San Diego (light rail) goes quite close to but does not connect with the airport! Yeah, apparently there's a couple of cities that do stupid stuff like that. Doesn't make it any less of a travesty.
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Jul 9, 2013 00:30
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natetimm posted:The trolley is drat close, though. Probably a mile or less and they have specific buses running to the airport from the close stations. The San Diego airport is in a really bad place geographically and can basically only be accessed by a huge bottleneck on the eastern (busy) side and coming in through the west takes driving all the way out through Point Loma. LAX's situation is worse, it has 2 major freeways including one that funnels cars directly to it, and the other is arguably the worst in LA(the 405). Also the actual portion of the airport you can access by car is a tiny horseshoe that is laughable to everyone who's ever been to an airport like JFK, and it's essentially been an continual traffic jam for several decades straight.
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Jul 9, 2013 02:23
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Someone posted this over in the picture thread.
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Jul 10, 2013 21:20
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GD_American posted:Why does the line take such a pronounced hook south of Bakersfield? Geography? Yeah, as far as I can tell. 
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Jul 10, 2013 21:27
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Bizarro Watt posted:In my dreams, I'd like to have a high-speed rail line that goes up and down the coast. Yeah the coast is beautiful, but that would pretty much be Rich People Express. Though Amtrak already does that route at non-high speeds.
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Jul 10, 2013 21:45
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