Below is today’s (5/15/12) lead editorial from the WALL ST JOURNAL. While we concentrate mostly on government pension problems, this worthy piece delves into the PRIVATE defined benefit morass — the “multiple employer”pensions the private sector unions have put in place in a number of industries.

Like public pensions, dishonestly is rife in this sector. Maybe even more so. Consider this excerpt: ——— Labor’s actuarial reading of one SEIU fund for health-care employees finds it 100.4% funded. Credit Suisse’s fair-value reading finds it 49.6% funded—or some $6.8 billion in the hole. ———-

The reason this problem is important to us all is that these pensions are “insured” by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency. When the money runs out to pay these guaranteed pensions (and it surely will), the payout obligation shifts to — you guessed it — us taxpayers.

Sadly, it appears that this eye-opening editorial has a MAJOR error, one that unnecessarily detracts from the fundamental message.

The story asserts that the maximum pension payout covered by PBGC is only… Read More

Episode V – Housing: For those of you who perhaps are new “subscribers” to this “Report from my Laptop to Yours”, I have been writing a series on the things I think we need to do in order to bring about a new, extended period of substantial growth that offers prosperity to our people, refreshes our culture and preserves and extends our hegemony in world affairs. This is Episode V. (You see how I cleverly use roman numerals in order to add a degree of erudition to these writings. My close proximity to the ways of Hollywood has not been completely without influence.) If you missed the first four Episodes, you can find them on my website HERE.

Now on to Episode 5…..I mean V. Regular readers of this missive will know that restoring growth to the housing market is one of my major priorities in Congress. This is not because I’m a housing guy. I’m not really. I’m a car guy. But, the fact is that the car business and the housing business have some similarities. Both are high… Read More

On May 23rd, less than two weeks from now, the Los Angeles City Council is apparently poised to not only ban plastic shopping bags at every single grocery store in the largest city in America, but they are also planning to ban paper shopping bags as well. This may seem too stunningly idiotic a maneuver for you to actually believe, but yet it is true. I know you are going to ask the obvious question — if the politicians ban the most commonly used methods by which grocery shoppers take their purchased goods home, how in the hell to people get their groceries from the store to their homes? The answer is that the LA City Council has decided that you and every other shopper are going to buy those cloth bags like they sell over at Whole Foods for a buck a bag (not that most people in LA have ever set foot in a high-end store like Whole Foods). They will force you to buy them, and then they will train you like a monkey to remember to keep bringing those same cloth bags with you back to the store over and over (maybe they will follow the plastic and paper bag ban with a requirement that all trips to the grocery store must initiate from your home, not on the way home from… Read More

ByReps. Buck McKeon and Paul Ryan

Last year, as the federal government approached a limit on how much it could legally borrow, the Obama administration asked Congress to rubber-stamp an increase in the government’s borrowing authority without any spending cuts to match.

When House Republicans made clear that any increase in the debt limit must be accompanied by an even greater amount of spending reduction, the President insisted that he would not accept a debt-limit deal that did not include large tax increases on American families and businesses.

All of this work was made more difficult by the Senate’s failure to pass any budgets at all in 2010 or 2011. Nevertheless, both parties were eventually able to come together and avoid defaulting on the government’s obligations.

We succeeded in protecting hardworking taxpayers by securing a debt-limit increase that contained zero tax hikes.

Instead, we established caps on spending for government agencies, saving roughly $1… Read More

When the U.S. Supreme Court set the stage for the creation of so-called “Super-PACs” – independent groups that can spend unlimited money and raise corporate and union dollars in unlimited amounts to affect Federal elections – it did not mean that existing regulations of the Federal Election Commission banning “coordinated communications” between independent groups and official campaigns were set aside. In fact, the legality of the activities of such groups are absolutely founded on the notion of independence from control or coordination with official federal candidate campaign committees, according to the Supreme Court. So the FEC’s “non-coordination” regulations are a very important consideration in the realm of “Super-PACs.”

Last week, the campaign manager for Congressman Brad Sherman, Scott Abrams, filed a complaint against 30th Congressional District rival Congressman Howard Berman, and his campaign committee, alleging illegal coordinated communications between those Respondents and the independent Super-PAC supporting Berman, through Mr. Jerry Seedborg, a Long Beach-based political consultant and… Read More

Attached is a list of the delegates that Mitt Romney has submitted to the California Secretary of State. Given Romney’s positioning in the GOP primary, it is overwhelmingly likely that virtually all, if not all of these folks will be seated. Romney needs a plurality of Republican votes both in the statewide tally and in each of California’s 53 Congressional District to have all of his delegates seated.

There will be analysis to follow, but I wanted to get FR readers this information asap!

(h/t to FR friend Mitch Zak for the scoop!)… Read More

Unless you have been under a rock, you have read about how Assembly Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) has has been charged with the crime of driving under the influence of alcohol.

Now, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that Assemblyman Hernandez forgot about the Assembly rule which prohibits members of the legislature from taking state-owned vehicles beyond the Sacramento area without prior permission. Hernandez was in a State Assembly “pool car” that he drove from the State Capitol. Let’s also say Hernandez was simply naive, believing that state-owned vehicles are supposed to be at his disposal for his late night escapades (according to news account, when he was arrested and taken into custody, there was a female in the car with him).

While we’re at it, let’s also say Assemblyman Hernandez was “flashing back” to his college days at U.C. Riverside, where it was okay be out and about at 2:06 a.m. on a work-day, way down in Contra Costa County some 83 miles from the State Capitol, even… Read More

We are broke. Our national credit card bill has now topped $15 Trillion. Our debt has now eclipsed our entire GDP. Each year our government operates on a $1.5 Trillion dollar deficit, a deficit that is larger than our entire federal budget used to be when I first came to Congress. In 12 years, the Medicare Trust Fund will be bankrupt, in 20 years the Social Security Trust Fund will be bankrupt. Our military is facing cuts so drastic we will see the US reduced to the smallest Navy since WWI and the smallest Air Force since its inception. We are broke.

Recently, in between the news stories of continued record unemployment, skyrocketing gas prices and European nations like Greece going up in flames due to their crippling national debt and forced austerity measures (a course we are quickly following), we learned of a lavish conference held in Las Vegas by the GSA.

This conference, complete with all the Vegas luxuries of flashy shows, flowing alcohol, exquisite food and all the other 5 star amenities Sin City affords, rung up to a grand total of $820,000 plus. This nearly million dollar price tag included spending for frills such as a clown, a mind reader and a… Read More