Posted on

Obviously!

If there were a worldwide pandemic or catastrophe, most would think that the first duty of a state government (e.g. California) would be to provide whatever is necessary to care for the citizens of their state (all Californians). The well-being of the earth’s overall population would be a concern, but a secondary priority.

One would think that the Sacramento politicians would say, “We are going to take care of our own first, and then worry about the overall welfare of Mother Earth somewhere down the road. As the representatives of the people who have elected us, our duty is to make the caring for the citizens of California our highest priority.”
I hate to keep referring to “common sense” all the time, but obviously, this seems like common sense.
It’s no surprise for those of us that live in Southern California that this past August was the hottest on record. Maybe this is a result of global warming and maybe it isn’t. It will take a few years to establish any trend.
Let’s assume for a minute that this warmest August on record is a sign of things to come, and the summers are just going to get warmer. Where should the priorities of state governments be? Should their priorities be to try to help their own citizens, or to punish their own citizens under the guise of looking out for the “well-being” of the earth and all of its billions of people? One would think that the answer would be “obvious” with a capital “O.”
During an especially hot spell what do people, both the young and the old, do when the temperatures soars. They obviously turn on their air conditioning. Those who are young turn on the A.C. for comfort while those who are old also have to be concerned about keeping themselves safe. Perhaps in years past the seniors had found it necessary to turn on the air conditioning only a few times a year, but this August they found it necessary to turn it on every day, specially if they wanted to sleep. Again remember that these people are Californians. What would you think that the Governor, the other state representatives, and the CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) would do? Obviously, these big advocates of “global warming” would have anticipated such a scenario, and would have made a contingency plan to deal with such a situation.
What has actually happened? Electric bills have skyrocketed. Individual bills have zoomed up out of proportion to the amount of kilowatt hours used. Whoa! That doesn’t seem fair, but that is what happened because of a tiered system of billing that punishes those who find it necessary to run their air conditioners.
A few basic questions:
What is a tiered system of billing?
Think of a tiered system as a power company’s version of a graduated income tax . . . the more electricity you use, the higher rate you pay for it. In addition to charging more as one uses more electricity, it charges more per kilowatt hour in the summer, as opposed to the winter.
In tier 1 the summer rate is 27 cents per kilowatt-hour, but if one uses 130% of its baseline allowance, the rate goes to 48 cents per Kw-hr. In other words if you find it necessary to turn on your air conditioner, you will pay almost double for that air conditioner electricity! If you use >400% of your baseline allowance, you pay a “high usage charge” at a rate of 55 cents per Kw-hr. In other words if as senior with a fixed income, you find it necessary to use your air conditioner every day, you may not be able to afford to eat like you usually do because your electric bill was double or triple what it usually is!
Why a tiered system?
The tiered system was initiated as an attempt to discourage electrical usage. Apparently someone  who “knows best” decided that we needed to limit our personal use of electricity. Why?? . . . probably for the good of the planet, i.e. to prevent global warming!
Baseline Allowance . . . what is that?
This is the amount of kilowatt-hours of electricity a home is deemed to need each month. “Deemed” by whom? Deemed by the CPUC in Nov. 2017 and this allowance will significantly effect 81,000 SDGE customers this summer who will have much higher electric bills.
What does SDGE, the local electricity supplier, pay for its electricity?
The average rate it pays is apparently 22.5 cents per Kw-hr., but as a company spokesman noted there are a lot of additional costs for SDGE, such as repairing underground lines and circuits, increased costs for wildfire safety, and increased costs for storage mandates because of state law.
Does California pay more for its electricity than other parts of the country?
Yes, a lot more! Even though it was hot all over the U.S. this year, everybody does not pay the same for their air conditioning electricity. Since about 2013 Californians pay more for their electricity than anybody else in the U.S. The average cost for residential electricity in the U.S is 12.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, while the cost in California is about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour. (The runner up state is New Jersey in which the residential cost for electricity is about 15.8 cents per kilowatt-hour.)
Could this be because California has moved aggressively against fossil fuel use?
Duh!  . . . Is the Pope a Catholic? The answer to both questions is obviously, “YES!”
Gary Ackerman of the Western Power Trading Forum stated, “the increased cost is in part due to mandates imposed by California policy makers.” These policy makers are the Democratic Legislators and Governor Jerry Brown. In Europe Germany has moved to “green” electrical production (solar and wind), and they now have the highest rates for electricity in Europe. No one should be surprised that Californians are following in the same expensive path as the Germans with very high rates for electricity, because both are strong advocates of “green power!”
There is a sad part of this “we know what is best for everybody, and so we will limit your electricity usage, or punish you if you use more than we think you need to.” The sad part is that it obviously punishes the poorest among us disproportionately. Has anyone seen or heard of a poor person putting solar panels on his house? Is it not true that the poor have to live further inland because they cannot afford to live near the coast? Is it hotter inland or on the coast?
The even sadder part is, “you haven’t seen anything yet!”
As long as the dum-koff California voters continue to vote Democratic, obviously, things will only get worse! SDGE has already asked for an 11% rate increase for 2019![contact-form][contact-field label=”Name” type=”name” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”true” /][contact-field label=”Website” type=”url” /][contact-field label=”Message” type=”textarea” /][/contact-form]

Posted on

A Quid Pro Quo Gone Bad

Just when I thought that I had seen the worst of the audacious behavior by liberals during the Senate hearings on the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, something new has just topped that on the disgusting scale! A caller threatened to rape one of Senator Collins’ young female staffers, if the senator voted “yes” on Kavanaugh’s confirmation! This is the lowest of scum. This sort of threat should never be tolerated and should be aggressively investigated, pursued, and prosecuted.

Also a website is attempting to persuade Senator Collins (R, Maine) to vote “no” on the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh. Actually “persuade” is a much too kind a way to describe this chicanery, as the effort by this crowdfunding website is an out-and-out attempt at bribery. As described in the Wall Street Journal the website is threatening to give more than one million dollars ($1,041,878 collected so far by credit cards) to her opponent in the 2020 Senate election if she votes “yes”, for Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court.

Clearly this threat is a quid pro quo, and appears to me to be illegal.
Should this website be prosecuted? Should all of those who have contributed to this “bribing of a member of Congress” be prosecuted or fined at least the amount of their contribution? Of course, any sort of prosecution would discourage this type of behavior, but do we want to discourage this type of behavior by the leftists?
A silly rhetorical question? Perhaps!
But wait, let’s consider the real life implications of this monetary quid-pro-quo threat against Senator Collins.
The way I look at it, ironically, Sen. Collins is now actually forced to vote for Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation! If she were to vote against his confirmation, it could only be viewed as a capitulation by her to these bullies. This would be the general opinion no matter what she said afterwards, irrespective of how she really felt.
In addition, if Sen. Collins were to vote “no” on the Judge Kavanaugh issue, there would be far reaching consequences as other nut-jobs would attempt the same thing again, either with Sen. Collins or with other politicians. Who could possibly want their name associated with this potential future nightmare?
So in conclusion she is now caught in a trap that can only have the opposite effect from that which was hoped for by the website when they instigated this threat.
My prediction here is easy. Unless there is some dramatic relegation concerning Kavanaugh, she will vote “yes” on his confirmation. And yes you can take this to the bank!
Posted on

What Was He Thinkin’?

Atweel, at times you have probably heard someone say or do something and you think, “What was he drinkin’?”

(BTW: ”Atweel” was my on-line “word of the day” today, and so I thought that I would try to use it in this essay. FYI: “Atweel” means “surely!”)
Last week Barack Obama was back on the campaign trail and was bad-mouthing Republicans and the present president in contra-distinction to the established norm of past presidents not reentering into the political arena, especially to bash their successor. What was he drinkin’?
Personally I was not at all surprised at his behavior as one’s behavior oftentimes dissolves the mask which is hiding one’s character. Can anyone recall President Bush ever saying anything derogatory about Mr. Obama? Nuff said about that.
Back to the “What were they drinkin’.”
Mr. Obama wants everyone to think that he had some role in the present booming economy. He said, “When you hear how great the economy is doing right now, let’s remember when this recovery started.”
Huh!? What was he drinkin’?
In a column in today’s Wall Street Journal, Peter Ferrara, a university Economics professor, states, “Before Mr. Obama, in the 11 previous recessions since the Depression, the economy recovered all jobs lost an average of 27 months after the recession began. In Mr. Obama’s recovery, the recession’s  job losses were not recovered until after 76 months, more than 6 years.”
Likewise while he was in office, Obama backers said that the economy could no longer grow any faster than the 2% growth averaged over Mr. Obama’s eight years. Slow growth was the “new normal.” “Get used to it!” What were they drinkin’?
Again from Professor Ferrara, “After Mr. Trump was elected, he fundamentally changed course from Mr. Obama’s policies, increasing annual growth to more that 3% within six months and now to over 4%.”
The sad part about these “What are they drinkin’” analogies is that there are plenty of
thirsty liberals out there who avidly drink this Obama Kool-Aid. They do not care that B.O. is stretching the truth concerning the recovery, and they certainly do not care about his crossing the past presidents’ speech etiquette line. And worst of all . . . atweel they will vote!
Posted on

The Next 9/11 Equivalent ?

On September 11th and 12th  my son discussed 9/11 and its aftermath in his world history classes. Keep in mind that most, if not all of these high school students were not alive when 9/11 happened, so it doesn’t stick out in their minds like the day JFK was assassinated sticks out in the minds of us older folk. Putting 9/11 in a historical perspective he said that he believed that 9/11 was the most important event since WWII. (In his mind the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a close second.) Close to the end of class one of his students asked, “What do you think has been the most important historical event since 9/11?” Before he could give his thoughtful erudite answer, the bell ending class rescued him. Later in the day he asked me the same question.

Now before you read on, think about the question:
“What event or general occurrence has been the most important historical event since 9/11?”
Give it some real thought, keeping in mind that a single event or group of events has the potential to have very long-lasting world-wide consequences. What are your contenders? What is your top choice?
My initial reflexive thought had to do with the outcomes of recent presidential elections in the U.S.A. However, on reflection, I felt that my initial thought process was self-serving and oozed with conceit. It’s hard to imagine that the rest of the world would  ever consider the U.S. elections of lasting world-wide consequence. However, I suppose if one looks back, was the appointment of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of England in 1940 the event that changed the outcome of WWII?
Nonetheless, I do not feel at this point that the election of President X or President Y would be considered the most important event since 9/11. If this question is re-asked in 20 years, perhaps the answer will be different.
As my son and I talked this through, in our minds there were a few major contenders:
The Arab Spring
The civil war in Syria
Brexit
Mass immigration into Europe
The rise and subsequent fall of ISIS
The explosion of the internet
The invention of the Smart Phone
What is your answer?
Email me your thoughtful responses at dc6255@yahoo.com
Posted on

The “Corner Boys”

When I was growing up we had two very distinct groups of kids in our neighborhood. Of course we had the boys and the girls, but those are not the two groups to which I am referring. Back in those days there was a group of boys that mainly hung out at the corner in front of the drug store. We referred to them as the “corner boys.”  There was a smaller group of girls that also congregated at the corner.  . . . mainly to be noticed by the “corner-boys.” It was not where they hung that distinguished this group, but rather it was their behavior in certain situations that identified them as a group. They were proud of their non-conforming, anti-good etiquette behavior. In general they were coarse and crude, especially with regard to denigrating comments that they would make to an innocent passerby. It didn’t matter to them if there were women or children in the area, as the only important thing to them was for their cronies to be impressed by their complete lack of etiquette.

They also thought that mischievous behavior in the surrounding neighborhood was  not only okay, but to be emulated. Knocking over trash cans in the alleys – condoned and encouraged! Trampling on flower beds in people’s front yards – condoned  and encouraged! Taking the daily newspaper from someone’s porch – condoned and encouraged! Putting a candy bar or a pack of gum under one’s shirt and walking out of the store without paying – condoned and encouraged!
Over the course of many years I have occasionally wondered what happened to this unruly group of boys and girls. Well this past week the lightbulb went on . . . it occurred to me that a lot of them are in Washington D.C., in Congress, proud to be Democrats!
Why would I say such a thing?
Two recent things:
First is the behavior of Senate Democrats at the hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. They went out of their way to be coarse, and insulting to Judge Kavanaugh, even in the presence of his wife, his children and other young girls in the audience, sitting right behind him. Senator Kamala Harris (D, Ca.) appeared that she was trying to be a poster child for “Rudeness 101!” Senator Cory Booker (D, N.J.) wanted a “Spartacus moment” for himself as he implied that if he had to break the rules, he would. His fellow “corner boys” cheered him on! This coarse and crude behavior was not limited to these two, as Sen. Durbin (D, Il), Sen. Whitehouse (D, R.I.),and Sen. Coons (D, Del.) tried their best to be number one on the “obnoxious Top 40 list” – condoned and encouraged!
Second, in The House of Representatives, Democrats objected to a bill that defined “crimes of violence” for which non-citizens would be mandatorily deported. These crimes of violence included: murder, assault, child abuse,kidnapping, arson, etc. Just like the corner boys, they would not go on record to discourage aberrant and unlawful behavior. You could almost hear them whisper, “if the accused is one of our corner boy compañeros, do not say or do anything against him/her.” Only those from “the corner” could be for someone who has committed a violent crime. This bill eventually passed 247-152 with the vote largely along party lines with only a few Democrats crossing over.
My guess is that we haven’t the last of this type of boorish behavior, as in the Senate,  and we haven’t seen the last of total disregard for standards of moral conduct as in the House, as it appears that the Democrat’s “corner boys” approve!
Posted on

Deja-vu

Deja-vu! I remember it well. It was early September, 1982. We were all over at Uncle Sammy’s place, and he was in an exceptionally good mood. Actually he had been in a good mood for a little over a year, whereas for the three or four years prior, he had been in a foul mood most of the time. Uncle Sammy was 73 years old, and had lived through the various political perturbations of the sixties and the seventies. Over the years his mood changes were often directly related to who was in the highest office in the land.

“Why the exceptionally good mood today, Uncle Sammy?”
While sitting in his usual comfortable brown chair, Sammy smirked a bit and responded, “As you are undoubtedly aware, the reason for my prior years of distemper was that uber liberal, Jimmy Carter, and today it dawned on me that the reward for putting up with Jimmy Carter is spelled R-E-A-G-A-N. It also then dawned on me that there is a high likelihood that for the rest of my days on earth, our president will be a Republican. For, you see, from my perspective there is little doubt that President Reagan will serve two terms, and he will be followed by his present vice-President, George Bush for another two terms. That gets our country another fourteen or so years of rational reasonable leadership, and since it is unlikely statistically that I will live to be older than 87, it almost guarantees that I will be in a good mood till I die!” (In actuality, Uncle Sammy did live his remaining days in a good mood as he died in June,1992, just after his eighty-third birthday, and prior to the election of Bill Clinton.)
I happened to think about Uncle Sammy today as I was sitting as usual in my comfortable chair. I was in a good mood. Whereas my mood had been dour for years,
I have been in a good mood now for well over a year.
Since I am 73 years old, it dawned on me, that there is a good possibility that for the next fourteen years our president will be Republican and thus for the remainder of my years on earth, my mood will continue to be good!
Deja-vu . . . all over again!
Posted on

Investment Advice . . . “Sell!”

Out of the blue last week one of my sons-in-law asked me what was my favorite movie of all time. After I told him what mine was, I asked him the same question. He responded, “My favorite movie of all time is Death Wish.” (For those of you not aware, Death Wish was a 1974 movie starring Charles Bronson.) I do not recall ever seeing Death Wish, probably because in 1974 I was married and had three small children . . . in fact, I do not recall seeing any movies for the entire decade of the 70s! Anyway when he said Death Wish, my immediate thought was the N.F.L. In what other business do the employees tell the owners what to do? I still cannot understand the ownership of the N.F.L. If I knew anyone who owned an N.F.L. team my advice would be, “Sell, Sell now before the 2018 season begins.” Why??. . . Three basic reasons as detailed below:

The television viewership was down last year and I predict that it will continue to decrease. The N.F.L. is on the losing side of this National Anthem culture war, and  more importantly this can only lead to a decrease of interest in football in general, as well as the N.F.L. in particular, as the years go by.

Last year two of my grandsons played tackle football on a community youth team, but this year this same community could not field a team because of a shortage of players, and this same scenario occurred in the three surrounding communities.  Participation in high school football is down and has been down since 2008-09. In 2008-09 there was 1,113,062 high school participants in the U.S.A. whereas this number decreased in 2012-13 to 1,088,158. In Illinois there has been a decrease in the number of students playing high school football of 17%, from 47K to 40K over the last few years.

Last week I saw an email that in essence was an “N.F.L. Police Blotter” detailing a list of multiple N.F.L. players than have been arrested, charged and convicted of crimes. Here in San Diego there is a case involving an ex-pro football player charged with multiple counts of battery in association with sexual aggression. My first thought here was, “He’s got Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy from football.”  My question is basically “which came first?” Are these guys basically violent to begin with, or are they violent because of C.T.E. that they have developed as a result of football? I am betting on C.T.E. to win, place, and show!

So in essence I see the N.F.L. on multiple losing sides of a polygon:                              decreasing T.V. viewership,                                                                                                             increasing awareness of C.T.E.                                                                                 decreasing youth participation in football

If there was a way to own stock in the N.F.L., I would be selling it short, and looking forward to a big payday perhaps ten years down the road!

Posted on

Underrepresented

“I have been underrepresented all of my adult life. It’s just not fair! When I was younger no one wanted me on their sports teams, and now that I am older, I am underrepresented in the corporate boardrooms. My group makes up 13.9% of the population in the U.S. and so we should make up at least 13.9% of those in corporate boardrooms. I am not going to take it anymore! I am tired of being nice! We need to pass a law to insure that we are proportionately represented. I am left-handed and proud of it.”

Any rational person reading this would probably have to resist laughing out loud. It should be obvious to everyone that boardroom representation would and should be based on merit. A corporation could appoint a bunch of southpaws to its board, but unless these left-handed individuals had concomitant excellent qualifications, this corporation would be setting itself up for failure.
But this doesn’t have to stop with left-handed individuals. For example, these same exhortations could be made by people of short stature . . . “Those of us men who are less than 5’7”, and those of us women who are less than 5’2” make up 19.75% of the U.S. population, and therefore it would only be fair if we made up at least 19.75% of the corporate boardrooms. All we short people have to do is get elected to state legislatures, and then we can propose legislation that encourages ‘fairness’ for a group that is obviously underrepresented in corporate boardrooms. If we can then get some vocal short legislators to feign enough anger and resentment to this obvious injustice, we can probably convince many of the other lemming-like legislators to agree that there is corporate bias against short people. Next we can propose and pass a law that corporate boardrooms in this state must not continue this prejudicial attitude. This new law will mandate that corporate boards have at least 20% of its members be people of short stature. It doesn’t actually matter that new law this is blatantly unconstitutional, because what’s fair is fair!”
I can hear all of you laughing out loud . . . but welcome to California!

Citing a lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms, California lawmakers on 8/30/18 sent Gov. Jerry Brown a bill that would require women to be included on the boards of directors of firms based in the state.The bill (co-authored by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, and Senate leader Toni Atkins, D-San Diego) states that publicly held corporations in California include at least one woman on their boards of directors by the end of 2019, and at least two by July 2021. Corporate boards with six or more members would be required to have at least three women on the panels by the middle of 2021. That means that a corporate board with six members would be required to have 50% of the panel members be female by the middle of 2021. Does it also mean that if there are three members on a corporate board of directors in July, 2021, that two of them, 67%, must be female?

“We are not going to ask anymore,” Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson said in a fiery floor speech. “We are tired of being nice. We’re tired of being polite. We are going to require this because it’s going to benefit the economy. It’s going to benefit each of these companies.” It is perplexing to me that a politician would know what is best for a company! . . . especially a politician with a hyphenated name!

Atkins responded angrily to those who said the bill isn’t necessary. “I am sick and tired of being in a position of influence and power and yet seeing so many people like me who are still pleading to be given that opportunity,” Atkins told her colleagues. This statement speaks volumes! Reread it carefully.

The legislation was opposed by a coalition of 30 business groups including the California Restaurant Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Trucking Assn. and the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. They issued a joint letter saying that they support gender equity but that the legislation is illegal.

The state chamber of commerce said the measure “requires publicly traded corporations to satisfy quotas regarding the number of women on its board or face significant penalties, which is likely unconstitutional, a violation of California’s Civil Rights statute and a violation of the internal affairs doctrine for publicly held corporations.”

Governor Brown has a month to sign or to veto this bill. Hopefully he will recognize that “fairness” and constitutionality are not the same despite what these two angry and fiery senators think!

Posted on

What if? . . . What to do about it

In the last essay, I outlined the problem of the upcoming tsunami of state and local pension deficits. Today I will explore the possible ways out of this disaster!
Recently there was a mixup with some AT&T pension payments. However the problem in this situation was that some pension recipients were inadvertently overpaid, and AT&T wanted the overpayments back. Some of these overpayments were thousands of dollars, and this money was long gone! Interestingly the general consensus sided overwhelmingly against AT&T. The basic sentiment went something like this, “AT&T made the error, and so the pensioners should not be punished.” But what will the sentiment be when there isn’t enough money to pay the state and local pensioners what they were promised? Should the pensioners be punished because the politicians were in bed with the union negotiators? On the other hand should the state’s populace be punished because of that same politician-union rep skullduggery? In general can this problem be solved? Can the state of California get out of its mess?
When you think about the problem, there are only a limited number of possible solutions:
#1 The most obvious solution is to not pay the retirees what they were promised. Besides the fact that the courts have thus far sided with those who are owed the money, I would find it hard to imagine the rest of us going along with stiffing these retirees. Compromise, Maybe. Stiffing them, No.
#2 The second way out of this conundrum is for the Federal Government to make up these pension plan deficits for each state. Since these payoffs would be with real money, this real money would have to come from somewhere. I can’t imagine states like Tennessee, Indiana, Nebraska, or Wisconsin (the four states that are the least in the hole per capita) going along with this. Why should their federal tax money go to paying for those states that have let themselves fall into such a deep hole. This will never happen!
#3 The third way out of this mess is for the powers that be to devaluate the dollar. This will never happen for basically the same reason as #2 will never happen. Those states that owe the least would not go along with the punishing of their citizens  to save the few states that are the worst off.
#4 The last option is for each state to sink or swim on its own. This may be the only feasible way out of this mess. Under this scenario, each individual state would have to solve its own deficit problem. To me the only way for each state to make up its own deficit is to raise taxes to whatever it would take to pay what they owe to their retirees. For those states with a low or a zero tax rate, it would be painful for the residents of that state, but a reasonable compromise. However in those states that already have a high state income tax, increasing this rate even higher would be extremely painful for its residents. For instance in California with an already very high state tax, each man, woman, and child is on the hook now for $25,166 to make up for these pension shortfalls. Considering that many of the residents of the state do not pay any taxes, where is this pension deficit money going to come from?
Not from me, as I will be moving!
Posted on

What If?

Humor me while we play a little game of “What if.”

What if someone sent you a letter, or an email, or came to your front door and told you that you and every member of your family owed $25,166! Of course your initial response would be something along the lines of, “#&+*<^¥€§x!! No way! What kind of scam is this?”
But what if this preposterous debt was on the up-and-up. What if you checked with your neighbors and your local family members and they had all received a similar notification. And finally, what if your lawyer and your accountant both confirmed not only was your debt a fact, but also that it was steadily increasing.
And to make matters worse, what if your state was the one to whom you owed this money! “How could this be? I pay my taxes. I have never borrowed any money other than my home mortgage.”
Well actually you owe this money because the state in which you live owes this money to those that have a public pension plan, and thus far the courts have ruled that the states cannot weasel out of this.
A 2017 study, “Hidden Debt, Hidden Deficits,” pointed out that almost every state and local government has an unbalanced budget, mainly due to runaway pension fund costs. The total deficit is $167 billion . . . note that is billion with a B! And this pension fund deficit is getting worse. In an April 2017 article Forbes stated, “There is no way that U.S. pension funds can keep promises to the next wave of retirees!”
The Heritage Foundation noted that in 2017 the unfunded liability of state and local government pension plans increased significantly despite a solid year of investment returns. In that same article all of the states were listed in order with their accompanying per capita liability. On this list California ranked 39th with Alaska being ranked the worst at 50. In California, where I live, the per-capita unfounded liabilities of public pension plans was $25,166 as of December, 2017. (Note that this is “per capita” and California has almost 40 million people!) But those that live in California are not alone. Every state is underfunding their public pension plans, just not to the same extent. Those in Tennessee only owe $7601 per person, while in Alaska, the state ranked the worst at number 50, each person owes $45,689 (population of Alaska is only 700,000+). As one would expect five of the bottom seven (states that are the deepest in the hole as to per capita debt) are the usual Democrat strongholds of Hawaii, New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, and Connecticut.
Okay enough of “What if!”
The question now should be, “What can we do about it?
State tuned!