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$822,000 Worker Shows California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters. The state’s 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job. Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California [...] I first met Mitt Romney in 2005. I was very impressed. I described him in this magazine as “informal, conversational, enthusiastic and speedy.” Mitt Romney? Yes, indeed. But then, we were talking about something he really believed in, or seemed to: his universal health care plan for Massachusetts, which included an individual mandate–an idea I’d admired since it was proposed by Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation in 1989. Romney’s [...] WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) - Without help from Congress, the U.S. Postal Service is likely to default on a big bill due Wednesday to the federal government — $5.5 billion to prepay health care benefits for retirees. Postal officials have said they’re bracing for default on the payment. They also don’t have the money to make a $5.6 billion payment due Sept. 30. Congress alone has the power to help the service. The Senate passed [...] WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — The head of the U.S. Postal Service said Tuesday that if the service doesn’t cut costs and Congress fails to act, it’s going to be in the same dire straits as Greece. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe drew chuckles from a group of postal policy conference attendees by comparing the beleaguered, indebted Postal Service to the beleaguered, indebted nation. He said that Greece’s ratio of debt compared to gross domestic product is 1.61 [...] (Reuters) – America’s swelling ranks of fallen municipal borrowers have been blamed in the past year on ‘what-were-they-thinking’ causes, be it a Taj Mahal sewer system in Alabama or an overpriced trash incinerator in Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg. But the next series of major cities and counties in danger of defaulting on their debt can hardly point to one single decision for their malaise. Whether it be Detroit, Miami or [...] Bankrupt photography giant Kodak is seeking permission to pay out $13.5million worth of bonuses to select employees to try and persuade them to stay at the crisis-hit company. The bonus pot would go to just over 300 members of staff, meaning that only one in 25 workers would benefit from the payday. It is usually illegal for companies to pay bonuses while they are restructuring, but Kodak argues that it is in [...] Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, talks with Bloomberg’s Tom Keene about a U.S. fiscal gap of $211 trillion. (Source: Bloomberg) Kotlikoff Sees U.S. Fiscal Gap of $211 Trillion – Bloomberg David Walker comes straight at you with critical facts and concrete ideas for addressing them. The problem is much worse than the current fiscal year federal deficit ($1.4 trillion to $1.5 trillion) and much worse than the current national debt ($14.7 [...] Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Postal Service wants Congress to help it raise the price of a first-class stamp to 50 cents, an 11 percent increase, as part of its strategy to avoid annual losses as high as $18.2 billion by 2015. The Washington-based agency included the increase in a five-year business plan released yesterday. In a separate letter to Congress, the service said U.S. taxpayers will have to cover [...] Editor’s note:Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economist, is a William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University, a columnist for Bloomberg and Forbes, and the author of 14 books including “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead” (John Wiley and Sons), “The Healthcare Fix” (MIT Press), and “The Coming Generational Storm” (co-authored with Scott Burns, MIT Press).
Boston, Massachussetts (CNN)– Our government is utterly broke. There are signs everywhere one [...] (CNN) — In a move largely seen as a compromise over the rights that can be afforded to gay and lesbian couples, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee on Saturday signed into law a bill that legalizes civil unions, making his state the fifth in the nation to allow them. The bill — which was signed just over a week after New York legalized same-sex marriage — [...] The Deficit Commission is considering the elimination of the tax deduction for job-based health insurance: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/28/health-care-tax-break-deficit_n_788852.html “WASHINGTON — Job-based health care benefits could wind up on the chopping block if President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans get serious about cutting the deficit. Budget proposals from leaders in both parties have urged shrinking or eliminating tax breaks that help make employer health insurance the leading source of coverage in the nation [...] The state funds that pay pension and health-care benefits to retired teachers, corrections officers and millions of other public workers faced a cumulative shortfall of at least $1.26 trillion at the end of fiscal 2009, according to a new report. The study, to be released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States, found that the pension and health-care funding gap increased by 26 percent over the [...] The Deficit Commission is considering the elimination of the tax deduction for job-based health insurance: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/28/health-care-tax-break-deficit_n_788852.html “WASHINGTON — Job-based health care benefits could wind up on the chopping block if President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans get serious about cutting the deficit. Budget proposals from leaders in both parties have urged shrinking or eliminating tax breaks that help make employer health insurance the leading source of coverage in the nation [...] by BocaJoe Corporate Welfare… YES Socialism… NO Tea Party Republicans in Congress should just say ‘No’ on their own health care By Doug Lyons November 17, 2010 10:12 AM A lot has been said about the nation’s health care reform law — derisively known as Obamacare — in many circles. The issue was an underlying theme in the 2010 elections in which Republicans and their Tea Party allies used to win key congressional and gubernatorial [...] The US poverty level could have worsen than the Great Depression without government safety net. Across the country, one in seven of us now lives in poverty. One in five children lives in poverty. Figures for 2009 show some 43.6 million people now form this growing army, its numbers swollen with casualties of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The poverty rate jumped to 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent [...] http://www.cnbc.com/id/36040002 AT&T [ATT 26.73 0.09 (+0.34%) ] said Friday that it would record a $1 billion non-cash charge for the current quarter related to the bill. The operator, whose annual revenue is expected to be $124.1 billion this year, said the charge is the result of a provision in the law related to the tax treatment of Medicare subsidies. AT&T also said it will be evaluating [...] |
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