Halting State: How state employee unions stole California

Police officers and firefighters are widely regarded as underpaid.  So how come police captains in Vallejo, California can make $300,000 a year, then retire at 50 on 90% salary, adjusted for inflation, for life and the life of their spouse?

The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone.  “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot.  “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’

City Journal's Steve Malanga details the history of how public-sector state employee unions bought California's state government lock, stock and barrel. Their bought-and-paid-for politicians repaid the favors by bankrupting the state, looting the budget to fund ever more lavish salary and pension plans for public sector union employees.

Screw Apple

After reading this, there isn't enough money in the world to make me ever want to work at Apple.

That GM loan payoff? ...Not so much.

Remember that report a few days ago that GM had paid back the balance of its bailout loans?  Well, according to both Fox (yeah, yeah, go on, get the jokes over with) and the Wall Street Journal, it puts a bit of a different perspective on this accomplishment when you learn that GM repaid its bailout loan using TARP money.

Now, a Treasury spokesman said this is OK, because it was "public knowledge" that GM would use the money loaned it under TARP to repay its bailout loan as long as it didn't need it for anything else.  But this argument is mendacious.

Consider:  You're in trouble and can't pay your rent, so I loan you a hundred bucks.  Six months later, you're broke again, and I loan you another hundred. Three months after that, you haven't actually needed to spend the second hundred, so you use it to pay back the first hundred and say that this settles your debt.

No, it doesn't.  You still owe me a hundred bucks.