Uh oh – Cal unions join the 1%

 

Municipal retiree, 2017

California union pension funds earned 1% last year. This should be welcome news for the Occupy crowd, for whom all profits are evil, except that these plans (and most municipal pension plans across the country) have been saved from being declared insolvent by using a mythical 7.5% estimated return on investment. That pretense is now shredded and towns and counties will have to make up the difference.

Stockton, move over.

HSBC aided and abetted terrorists, drug cartels in the US

Tip of the iceberg.

HSBC [Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp] did business with firms linked to terrorism, failed to guard against money- laundering violations in Mexico and bypassed U.S. sanctions against Iran, according to U.S. Senate investigators.

HSBC affiliates worldwide gave terrorists, drug cartels and criminals a portal into the U.S. financial system, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a 335-page report yesterday detailing a decade of lax controls. Lawmakers plan to question senior executives from the London-based bank, Europe’s largest, at a hearing in Washington today.

“HSBC sets up a U.S. bank affiliate as its gateway into the U.S. financial system and lets its global network of affiliates abuse that gateway,” Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the subcommittee, told reporters. “The failure of accountability here is dramatic.”

Second largest bank in the world. Look for a Chinese connection.

UPDATE: Over at ZeroHedge, it’s pointed out that the National Association of Realtors successfully lobbied to be exempted from the very regulations HSBC is accused of (admitted, actually) violating. Well hell, even drug dealers and terrorists deserve to live somewhere, don’t they? Give me a break.

Global warmists: we blame Bush!

Mother Gaia is SO disappointed in us!

Iranian mullahs claim their drought is all a western plot. And they have the scientists to prove it. Funny how, faced with unpleasant natural phenomenon, primitive people try desperately to make sense of it all by inventing myths.

Didn’t he make the same promise to Putin?

Obummer to Syrian rebels: you’ll have to wait until I’m reelected.

How come a black man can denounce racism while white liberals cheer it on?

I dig you absolutely!

Representative Eldridge Emanuel Clever Jr. denounces racist anti-Romney ad as “ignorant” and “embarrassing”.

There are, I think, two reasons for white liberals joining in with this racist nonsense:

1. They fear losing their (imaginary) “street cred”  for being one with the oppressed people – witness Leonard Bernstein sucking Black Panther ass back in the late 60′s for an early example of this (and God bless Tom Wolfe for being there to record it for posterity)

2. As liberals, these people think that they can call conservative blacks “field niggers”, “Uncle Toms”, “Oreos” and worse, all of which have been applied to both Clarence Thomas and Condoleezza Rice, or “a white bread, jello-eating Mormon turd” (Romney) and assume they can do so without exposing themselves as racists because, as liberals, it is impossible for them to be racists.

Mr. Clever sounds like the black politician many Americans had hoped for when they voted for Obama, someone who could unite the country rather than play on people’s racial fears and anger. Perhaps if Obama had been able to accomplish anything during his term he might have “evolved” into that man; as it is, he remained silent on the Romney ad and is busy roaming the country at taxpayer expense fanning the flames back to life. Pathetic. Three Dollar Bill and his sorry crowd, on the other hand, and more than pathetic, they’re beneath contempt.

A second sales price reported today

16 Lake Drive South, Riverside, $1.835 million (May 10 contract). I liked this house back in January and still do. It sold for its 2003 price, by the way.

Isn’t the Montessori philosophy all about letting children follow their interests?

A text book example of child abuse?

And what could be more interesting to a 13-year-old boy than getting it on with his “sultry temptress” (NY Post description) of a principal?

Montessori seductress off to prison. At the very least, I hope the school refused to refund the kid’s tuition – talk about getting what you paid for.

UPDATE: Ha! Turns out the lady’s a member of PETA – gives a new meaning to “teacher’s pet”.

Hey, John Kerry played without a helmet and it didn’t hurt him, right?

 

I have the helmet to this day!

Ivy League imposes new rules on contact sports to lower incidences of concussion.  Asked to comment on behalf of non-Ivy League sports programs, Duke Athletic Director Kevin White responded, “huh?”

Don’t help a good boy go bad

Dumbest ad campaign ever, but Democrats loved it

State Democrats have their snouts in the public’s pocket, again, collecting $27,000 each for their pre-ordained (Connecticut Democrats rule this state) election campaigns. They take this money, they claim, so that they won’t be tempted to cave in to “special interests” – teachers unions, for instance. Really?

So if we pay them more than unions do, they’ll vote as they think is proper and right, rather than as their donors tell them to? This time they’ll stick to their principles, by gum! Does this argument suggest they actually have principles? I think not.

P.J. O’Rourke said that giving money and power to government is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys. Take away the power and the money will disappear – problem solved.

And of course there’s no real estate news,

or I’d tell you about it! Check in later today and I’ll have a round up, if there is anything to round up. 2 Silk Road, new construction in Cos Cob, sold for $2.050. The builder asked $3.495 for it back in 2008 but that’s really irrelevant – it hadn’t been built then, so who knows what design/finish/size compromises went into getting this down to $2 million? Compromises or not, $2 million for a new house on a good street in town, even Cos Cob, strikes me as a pretty good deal.

Criminals probably aren’t getting any dumber (how could they?) but nowadays they do turn themselves in

Chicago teens beat a crippled old man to death for his soda can nickels, post video of themselves doing so on You Tube. I used to advocate mandatory shooting lessons for gang members and other sub-humans so that they wouldn’t hit innocent bystanders and would kill their intended target, rather than paralyze him and cost society even more money. Now I think we should just pass out free video phones and watch the arrest rate soar.

How to get free money (if you don’t need it), in 2 easy steps

Above water

1. Become Mark Zuckerberg, 40th wealthiest person in the world.

2. Get a 1%, $5.95 million mortgage.

Assuming inflation stays above 1%, a likely bet, congratulations! You are now truly a member of the 1% (don’t give out your address to the Occupy Commies).

There’s that word again

Market down after June retail sales “unexpectedly” decline. After 43 months of this, you’d think those expert economists would start figuring it out. And if they can’t, maybe the American public will. We’ll find out come November.

Barton Biggs is dead

Greenwich resident, 79. Judging from “Hedgehogging”, the world has not lost a great novelist, but the attempt at writing came after a more successful career on Wall Street.

The new normal

Married Olympians can’t share a bedroom but gay couples can.

Obama: “Imagine the world without us”

We don’t need no stinkin’ budget, we’ll live on love and tofu!

Nirvana. On the other hand, if you want to see the world as run by Democrats, California’s a good place to start.

California, where no non-cyborg Republican has been governor since 1996. Democrats have also enjoyed complete control of the state legislature since 1997. And they have governed exactly the way you’d expect Democrats to govern.

Spending has more than doubled, from $45.4 billion in 1996 to more than $92.5 billion today. Income, sales and car taxes have all been hiked. As a result, California has the most progressive income tax system in the nation, with seven income tax brackets, and the second-highest top marginal rate.

Even with all those tax hikes, California’s 2012 budget is still $15.7 billion in the red. So what does Gov. Jerry Brown want to do? Raise taxes again, of course. He has proposed a ballot initiative that would: 1) raise sales taxes on everyone and 2) raise incomes taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year (like Obama has proposed to do nationally). But even this $8.5 billion tax hike would still leave the state $7.5 billion short. Where will California get that money? Who knows?

And that is not the only spending binge California Democrats haven’t paid for. Just this month, the state legislature approved a $2.6 billion bond sale in order to fund construction on a scaled-back $68.4 billion high-speed rail project that will supposedly connect San Francisco and Los Angeles.

If California begins construction on the train before this December 31 (a big if), Obama has agreed to give the state $3.5 billion in federal money to help. But that still leaves a $62.3 billion hole. Where does California plan to get that money? Who knows?

With all of this unfunded government spending, Keynesian-Democratic thinking would predict that California’s economy should be booming.

It isn’t.

At 10.8 percent, California has the third-highest unemployment rate in the country. There are fewer private-sector jobs in the state today, 11.9 million, then there were in 2000, 12.2 million.

And thanks to liberal welfare requirements, a third of all the nation’s welfare recipients live in California despite the state only containing one-eighth of the national population.

San Francisco, with its own fiscal and social problems, has the solution: mandatory reuse of water bottles. The earthquake can’t come soon enough.

A economic plan about as realistic as Mr. Hope and Change’s

 

We’ll be sorry, someday, but not right now

French demand return of Crown Jewels as compensation for Britain’s execution of Edward Plantagenet in 1499.

Sounds fair to me – will they in turn pay reparations to the de la Fontaine family for the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572?  We lost our lands, our title and most of my ancestors and so far, no one’s dropped by to apologize. I’m sure this new interest in righting historical wrongs signals a new attitude of repentance in France, so I’m going to start planning my retirement now.

Open and notorious

Maybe not so open. Democrat Party Chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schwartz has blogger thrown out of public campaign event. Wasserman has her knickers in a knot over the guy because he’s been calling for her to release her tax returns. Wasserman, who has loudly and repeatedly demanded that Mitt Romney produce his tax records, refuses to release her own.