Walter Russell Meade is in fine fettle, today:
Scott Walker move over; San Francisco is the latest front line in the battle against abusive public sector unions.
The bluest city in the bluest state in the union has woken up and smelled the latte; generations of extortionate collusion between shamelessly greedy and shortsighted union leaders and unforgivably opportunistic and irresponsible politicians have left the Blue Paradise on the Bay with a pension bill that it simply can’t pay…
California’s shortsighted unions and politicians have left their successors in a horrible position: do you slash pensions that old people rely on, or do you cut government services like police, fire protection and education? Taxpayers generally favor the first alternative; it is hard to persuade hardworking immigrants struggling to raise kids that they should send their kids to bad schools on dirty, unsafe streets to save the money necessary honor abusive contracts made by past generations of labor and political bosses.
Maybe California can leave the dollar zone and switch to drachmas.
“…it is hard to persuade hardworking immigrants struggling to raise kids that they should send their kids to bad schools on dirty, unsafe streets to save the money necessary honor abusive contracts made by past generations of labor and political bosses.”
Uh, haven’t lived in San Francisco, have you? The political class and their apparatchiks will screw the regular working families in a hearbeat. Which is why, a generation ago, as soon as The Doctor announced that SNO had become a Work In Progress, we began to make planes to head towards the sunrise. We were (are) not obscenely wealthy and thus were not going to be able to protect ourselves and our children from these, er, people.
While I remain hopeful, I expect they’ll kick the can further down the road somehow and move onto more important things: Like declaring San Francisco an Open City for the OWS fringe or something.
What Comjam said. I retired at Moffett lived in San Fran with the wife. When it came to be family time, we both decided this was NOT the place to raise a family, and headed East, all the way to the coast. Boston area moonbats are at least as nuts as the Bay area’s nuts, except they aren’t stupid, vicious, self serving A***’s. They’re just nuts. I can live with that. (Well, that and Crescent Ridge Ice Cream, huh, SK1?)
Crescent Ridge!? I live within a few miles.
Trends in California are usually a leading indicator of things to come for the other states in the years that follow…now if they can just throw Pelosi under the largest bus possible.
Rhode Island is in even worse shape due to the pension mess.
Greedy Unions and their political allies have made a mess that rivals the TARP fiasco and one we’ll be paying for quite some time…..Communities will have to declare bankruptcy to get out from under….when you are spending more than 20 % of your annual budget on pension payments, you have a serious problem.
I don’t know what California’s going to do, but I know what better not happen – the Feds bail them out. I had no hand in electing the people who made those promises. No way do I want to have to pay for them.
Frisco has gotten so expensive to live in that there aren’t a whole lot of what you might call “w*rking class” families left there…
it’s mostly rich moonbats and rent subsidized whack j*bs, and they deserve each other.
of course, the whole state is screwed, and even though the 6 element and i are both natives, the mumbling about GTFO and going elsewhere is getting stronger than the ties to the native land.
unfortunately, as our host will attest, the economics of such a move are even harder to arrange than making the decision to leave is.
if only we could forcibly evict everyone who wasn’t born here: i don’t care if it’s New York or Nuevo Laredo, just go home. you’ve ruined paradise, and if i wanted to live in a Third World country, i would have moved there.
Well, day-um! DiFi and Pelosi should sell off their holdings to cover the debt! Same with the other Burton Machine capons in SF. After all, they support the Occupiers and the “tax the rich” so they should be thrilled to lead by example and sell off their houses, restaurants, vineyards, stock, and other investments for what they believe in.
Just so, Joe–nothing like having the courage of one’s convictions, right?
Naturally I’m holding my breath–any day now, right?
Yep…I expect to read all about how they bailed out the City and County of San Francisco in the Monday papers.
Joe:
Be careful when you put your tongue that far in your cheek; you might not be able to get it out before your mouth closes.
Paul
Die, San Fran; just die. The rest of the wierdo-State can follow. And how just to have the city of Pelosi, Feinstein, and Boxer go under. I was born in California and raised here and I loved this State for the great place it WAS. The weather, the economy, the great State schools, the freeway system; all of it. The wacko leftists and all the greedy or opportunistic politicians ruined it with the help of the do-nothing Feds who allowed the borders to be open for decades, even after they promised to change in 1986. Let San Freakshow go under. A great lesson to all. Then the State can fail and, maybe, be rebuilt IF we can be rid of the leftist mindset that created the problems in the first place. Or not; still a great object lesson.
Maybe it’s the start of an “American Winter” when cities all over the US see the public sector Unions for what they really are- corrupt, greedy, power-hungry organizations that aren’t really looking out for the American worker, but their own Union coffers.
Just an observation. I noticed that in Hong Kong there are no old age pensions, state benefits, nothing. Strong family bonds through the generations is all you can expect to sustain you into your dotty years. Fellow travellers will have seen the black-clothed old ladies of a particular caste collecting cardboard, plastic bottles, ally cans, and anything else that can be sold for recycling. But you need a society with those sort of family values to make that work at all – and of course it isn’t that simple. It ain’t pretty, but its an accepted fact of cheap life in Kong. Like i said, just an observation from a traveller passing through. Had great clam chowder when I was in SF, but never saw Sonny Barger. Got smiled at a lot by men riding the trams, though, despite holding my wife’s hand :-/
Maybe they thought it a quaint foreign custom for men and women to hold hands, Hogday.
Got smiled at a lot by men riding the trams, though, despite holding my wife’s hand :-/
I went into Chicago to my choirmaster’s apartment to take a voice lesson arter work. My wife was out of town, so after the lesson we went out to a bar in his neighborhood for a drink or two. He’s a good bit younger than I, so it was a young crowd. Also quite a gay crowd. My choirmaster, who is well known at the bar, introduced me to the bartender. I told him that I was married but that my wife was out of town so I stopped in.
That got a smile. Apparently that’s not an unusual story. My choirmaster had to explain that I really was straight and I really was there just for a drink!
Off topic, but ya gotta love the Old Guard:
http://www.allproudamericans.com/No-Laughing-at-the-Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier.html
“Mr Pullings, Give that honour guard an extra measure of rum (and bring me the testicles of the sniggering swab)”.
Crowe has to do another Jack Aubrey movie. Master and Commander was a fine picture.
+1
Oh DAG! That’ll leave a mark; probably directly in the underpants of Laughing Boy. Question – does that rifle have bullets in it?
I rather doubt that it would have bullets.
By themselves, that is. Maybe as part of complete cartridges, but not just bullets.
On the other hand, he does have a bayonet.
And apparently, some guts behind it.
(movie reference there)
Even minus the bayonet, the blunt end would certainly get the offender’s attention.