I shoulda stayed in Bakersfield...cities going the way of Detroit...

http://washingtonexaminer.com/exography-19-u.s.-cities-have-proportionately-bigger-workforces-than-bankrupted-detroit/article/2533338

Detroit declared bankruptcy due in no small part to $3 billion in unfunded public employee pensions owed a sprawling city workforce that kept growing even as the city’s population shriveled, but a Washington Examiner analysis found that 19 major American cities have even bigger ratios of such workers to residents.

The Examiner used the Census Bureau's 2011 Annual Survey of Public Employment and Payroll to rank every U.S. city with a population of 200,000 or more.

Some of those cities managed to get along fine with comparatively few municipal employees, such as San Diego, which has 9,501 employees for 1.3 million residents, or one for every 137 residents."

But others like San Francisco had a bureaucracy seven times as large, with one of every 28 of the city's 800,000 residents on the city payroll.

Remarkably, the Census Bureau excluded from these figures all teachers and education professionals, which make up the largest group of local government employees.


......The city with the leanest government is Bakersfield, Ca., which has 1,410 employees for 348,000 residents, or one for every 246. The city's population has quadrupled in the last 40 years, and its public employee workforce may have lagged behind. The city is one of California’s most conservative and the largest that employs the lowest sales tax allowed by state law.

Cue seagoat to blame it on capitalism, the weather, and disney.

Bakersfield and Detroit are great anecdotes for conservatives, but I suspect you both know that if we compare political lean with things like income, home-ownership rates, graduation rates, wealth, (insert any other measure of success that you feel relevant) across the entire US, we will see that Bakersfield and Detroit are in fact nothing more than anecdotes.

PkrBum wrote:Cue seagoat to blame it on capitalism, the weather, and disney.

Who do you blame?

I'm gonna bet it's African Americans and the federal government.

My dear Mr. Steward:

As I am unable to accept your kind invitation to be present on the occasion of the Twentieth Jubilee Convention of the National Federation of Federal Employees, I am taking this method of sending greetings and a message.

Reading your letter of July 14, 1937, I was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades "has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships." Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.

The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

I congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful.

Very sincerely yours, FDR

http://www.pionline.com/article/20120828/DAILYREG/120829886

Market-valued unfunded public pension liabilities made up 67% of all state debt, according to a report Tuesday by State Budget Solutions, a non-profit organization advocating state budget reform.

The group's third annual state debt report, which looked at combined debt and future spending obligations in all 50 states as of Dec. 31, found that $2.8 trillion of the $4.19 trillion total debt total goes toward pension liabilities.

Good luck Pkr these guys are like Capone's vault...hard to get into and a lot of suspense but once they are opened... nothing just a void. Liberals think government can solve everything and a government in bed with unions well that is paradise by the dashboard lights...