Trouble With Public Pensions?

I have recently read a column published by Ruben Navarrette Jr, who is a reporter at cnn.com.  The title to his column is called The trouble with public pensions? Ask San Diego, is about public pension being cutting of to the state and making the pension money come out of the state to pay their retirees.  It would be a huge cut to the city of San Diego, where he reported a 3.6 billion budget shortfall.  He explained that the city had been shortchanging its public pension fund to the tune of more than $1 billion.  The city of San Diego does not have the money to pay out what it already owes to the current retirees, let alone the multitudes of the future city retirees waiting for their turn.  The public blames public employee unions for the collective bargaining powers they have and the corruptive scandals of political powers in the state.  For instance in the case of the retired city head librarian who makes more than 200,000 a year who received a lavishing pension plan.  The city officials knew of the budget shortfall and the gold plated pension plans but kept quiet to the public.  Know more than thousands of retirees are sitting with no pension plans and its looking like theres going to be no hope for future retirees.  Ruben is doing a good job of reaching out to the public letting the city of San Diego know of there corrupt political figures and their short budget pension plans.  By reaching out to the audience of San Diego they are more well aware of there current situation and can act on it.  Once the word got out of the pension problem city officials who were linked to these deals or knew about it have run from office and were replaced by reformers.  Navarrette Jr, has good credibility being he is a reporter for cnn and presenting strong evidence through out his column.  He shows good evidence of the scandal with the pension plans by presenting column pieces from the San Diego Union Tribune helping him win over his audience of the city.  Having read this story it makes you think really hard about us as working class citizens knowing if our public pensions are being handled properly by our state.  Going through life working hard knowing one day when we retire after being with a company for a long time, we will have a pension plan will let us sleep better at night.

You can read this column at http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/24/navarrette.pensions.wisconsin/index.html .

Balancing Our Nation's Budget

I have read an article entitled Balance the Budget Now by Jim DeMint, it caught my attention and decided to write a blog about what he had to say.  Our nations debt has reached it's highest point ever recorded by the government at an astounding 14 trillion dollars.  Our current president Obama has raised the current debt ceiling again for the four time since he has been president.  The government has been borrowing substantial money for the last couple of years in order to keep up with there huge spending spree.  Increasing our nations debt is going to raise our taxes in order to keep up with the surplus of our governments spending.  The republicans and democrats have not yet come up with a solution to cut back the spending.  The year 1990 our national debt was at 3 trillion dollars, here in 2011 the debt has risen to 11 trillion dollars. That as an amazing 450% increase in our nations debt, its on track for 26 trillion in the next 10 years.  With all this government spending a small percentage of the money is trickling down into our economy.  Big industries are benefiting from the large government spending but the small business don't see any of the profit.  Hopefully the government will look closer into the situation they are putting us American citizen in.  We are feeling the full effects of our weak economy today, our future generations are the ones who will suffer from our massive nations debt. Changes in our government spending need to be addressed in order to help our current economic status.  The senator from South Carolina made very good points, i would recommend this article to anyone.

Balance the budget now