Twice I’ve written something to fill this space, since January 30, and rejected both, although to be honest, the second bit was a rewrite of the first. Politics really feels so futile. It doesn’t change anything and we’re labeled the “blogosphere” and relegated to the heap of voices that don’t matter in this world.
Right at this moment on the other side of the political aisle someone is tap-tap-tapping away at their device of choice with something equally is passionate as anything I’ve written. It’s all bullshit no doubt. Just the other day someone posted a bullshit article by a retired Marine Corps officer who claims President Obama only role in the killing of Usama bin Laden was to say “yes” to the order. That kind of bullshit doesn’t even warrant a response. In fact, it’s such bullshit not even FOX News tries to peddle it.
Sure, the Republican Primaries have been quite entertaining so far, and we’ve only been through three primaries and one caucus. As of this moment a second caucus election is taking place in Nevada.
Who doesn’t love watching and listening to Newt Gingrich bloviate? His speech after the Florida Primary was priceless. His fellow Republicans were calling it everything from crazy and wacky to “off the wall.”
Not to be outdone with funny things to say, Chuck Todd of NBC referred to the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh as the “Tea Party Intelligentsia.” As oxymorons go, that’s funny.
Thanks to the advent of unlimited amounts of money being spent on our elections, the real tragedy is a handful of extremely wealthy individuals will control most of our election process. Regardless of your political persuasion, that isn’t good for our economy or our soul.
Just wait until the general election rolls around when the two sides of the presidential race each have a billion dollars to spend. Expect more than half the commercials we see on TV to be political ads, from the campaigns themselves and from the Super Pacs supporting them.
Here in San Diego we’re picking a new mayor. Although our current mayor, Jerry Sanders, has his critics, the general feeling is that he has been successful. When Sanders was first elected six years ago, the office of mayor was given more power and authority over the city’s business.
Sanders got to the mayor’s office due to the resignation of his predecessor, Dick Murphy, who resigned over the scandal involving the city’s pension program. The scandal being city workers get better benefits than people who work in the private sector. Explain to me why that’s a bad thing?
Thirty years ago people working in the private sector received the same kind of benefits: fully funded pensions and health coverage that didn’t eat up the family budget.
Sanders’ plan is to make city workers get the same kinds of benefits as the private sector, which means they will be as fucked as the rest of us. Why?
Why not work to bring the fortunes of the private sector up to that of the public service employees? The simple answer is it would interfere with the corporations making record profits, as they are doing now. By turning pensions into 401(k)-type accounts, the city—or state as the case may be—turns billions of dollars over to the big investment bankers. In other words, they will tie the retirement fortunes to the vagaries and risks of the stock market and we saw how well that worked in 2001 and 2008.
People who thought they could retire are now looking at working until they die. Good-bye Yellow Brick Road. In 2001 I was working for the giant multinational corporation, AOL-Time Warner. In 2000-2001 the Internet giant America Online (AOL) merged with Time Warner to take advantage of that big broadband market. Little did anyone know AOL’s stock was over-valued by as much as 40%.
In 2001 the “Dot-Com” bubble burst and voila! All of a sudden all those 401 (k) accounts were worth half of what they had been the day before. At best.
As a new employee, the guy in charge of Human Resources was convincing all the new employees to invest most of their 401(k) accounts in AOL-Time Warner stock because it was going to go through the roof! I had to think about that and it just didn’t seem to make sense, so I didn’t. I did put more into AOL-Time Warner than what anyone would consider prudent, but my thinking was, “What if this guy is right?”
Well, he wasn’t and as investments were collapsing, most especially the worth of AOL-Time Warner, my fellow employees would walk around the workplace in shock, holding the statements from their 401(k) accounts trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.
There was a couple I remember in particular, husband and wife, both of whom had planned to retire within a year. During a lunch break one day I happened to share a table with them and both had rescinded their retirement papers because they could no longer afford to retire. I’ll never forget the woman fighting back tears. I felt like a real dick though, because I had been bragging about not putting so much of my 401(k) into AOL-Time Warner so my account didn’t take such a big hit. This couple, they lost over 50% of their investments.
Yeah, put public sector employees into the same boat so they can be just as fucked as everyone else.
Mayor Sanders has been glorified as the great savior of San Diego. What did he do? He went after the city employees first … primarily. First off Sanders put 1,500 city employees on the unemployment rolls. Then he went after the pension and benefits.
At no time did he try to increase the revenue coming into the city’s treasury by attracting new business to San Diego. His entire policy was based on a slash and burn of the city employees. Now, for new city hires, there’s no pension and they have to pay more for the reduced benefits, unlike employees who have been with the city before 2009. They get their full pensions and benefits.
When Sanders became mayor he said he would take a significantly reduced salary, just over $36,000 a year. When he was re-elected he chose to accept the full salary, just over $109,000.
As a retired police officer, Mayor Sanders gets pension and benefits from that job. According to records, the mayor has waived his pension and benefits associated with his position as mayor. Well, kudos to him for that.
Has Mayor Sanders been good for San Diego? The city’s debt has gone down significantly since he took office, but at the expense of city employees. Anyone can fire employees and take away their benefits. Just ask Donald Trump and Mit Romney. Hell, Mit likes firing people.
What’s next for San Diego? At the moment there are four people running for the job: District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, Representative Bob Filner, Councilman Carl DeMaio and Nathan Fletcher. DeMaio and Fletcher are for the pension initiative that’s moving city employees from pensions to the high risk of 401(k) accounts; Filner and Dumanis oppose that initiative.
Our primary comes June 5 when the field will be winnowed down to two candidates. My guess is the race will be between Dumanis and DeMaio. Fletcher is not that well known and Filner has too high of a negative rating plus, he doesn’t have the money to compete. He should stay a member of the House of Representatives.
The deciding factor for me will be who will speak for the working class. Right now that isn’t clear. The public sentiment is to screw public sector employees instead of trying to raise the standards for all. This might be as interesting a race as the one for president.
TheForkesReport