Rebane's Ruminations

It's a-comin', but ya gotta be patient

George Rebane

Got Vaccine (Yet)?

George Rebane

‘Don’t get sick’, that is how the liberals in Congress dismiss the conservative proposed alternatives to Obamacare.  But that same advice should be given to all of us trying to avoid the ongoing swine flu epidemic.  Getting vaccinated is a problem, because our country doesn’t have a timely supply of enough vaccine.  I discussed why this is so (here) but am still puzzled as to why no one wants to talk about the recent history of on-shore vaccine manufacturing.  It is a clear example of how government puts its own welfare, comfort, and security above and ahead of its citizens.  Always has, always will.

Instead, the diversionary news items fill the airwaves.  We are told of ‘old technologies’, ‘bad batches’, and ‘frustrated’ politicians.  The real problem is that bad laws and policies were made about the nation’s emergency healthcare.  After they were implemented, and when the mistakes became apparent, instead of making corrections, everyone got real quiet hoping that the problem would never come.  Well, the problem came and now it’s CYA time on the hustings.

What makes revelation of our inadequate vaccine manufacturing capacity so explosive is that its cost in American lives is completely computable.  Every passing week without a large-scale vaccination program underway increases the known mortality count.  And that count can be laid at the feet of identifiable agents and agencies.  Talk about fully functional death committees already in place and working.

 

Today in our own Nevada County, the Public Health Department tells us that supplies are “extremely limited”, but it has received a “small initial shipment” of the H1N1 vaccine.  It is dispensing this according to CDC guidelines with no one above 8th grade in the general population getting the vaccine (see figure).  Since the PHD has no knowledge of when additional or adequate supplies will be forthcoming, it simply does not talk about it.  So the question continues to go begging.

We are reminded that this is an example of the healthcare tragedy now hanging over us all as our government prepares to force Obamacare on the nation.  And even if you stay healthy, the economic ruin it will unleash on the land will make you sick.  But that’s another untold story.

Bit by Slow by Plan?

George Rebane

Are they really going to string us out until the election season next year?  Admittedly, we do have short memories.  And if we get the money too soon, we'll forget who all our benefactors were when we go to mark our ballots.  Ahh, the stratagems of vote buying - neither simple nor cheap.

A Disconbuberated Boob at the Rood Center

George Rebane

This is a hard post to write.  I have been agonizing since leaving the Board of Supervisors meeting at the Rood Center a little after mid-day.  This was the day when Nevada County’s CFO Joe Christoffel gave his scheduled quarterly report on the county’s fiscal health to a full chamber.   Everyone had come to find out about the county’s significant unfunded pension liabilities.  As announced in these pages (here), Michael McDaniel of SESF gave a short and workmanlike presentation on the pension liabilities which was then followed by Mr. Christoffel’s main event wherein he would cover the county’s position on these liabilities.  This was followed by some Q&A, and we all walked out for the noon recess.  By then my head was spinning.

 

To frame these remarks, let me begin by saying that our county’s leadership and staff are about the best that any citizen, at least of my political leanings and ideology, could expect to have working for them.  Oh, I could pick nits with some of the supes, but as a group they are head and shoulders above damn near any set of politicos you could vote into office these days.  And our staff under CEO Rick Haffey is a first class team.  So what set my head spinning as I scribbled many pages of notes?

‘All is Well’

[This editorial appears today (24 October 2009) in The Union’s print and online opinion sections.  In there it is retitled ‘Unfunded liabilities time bombs are ticking away’.  This is the submitted version. gjr]

George Rebane

Nevada County’s unfunded liabilities to its Calpers pension commitments total over $80 million.  By now most people know that Calpers is the world’s biggest public employee pension fund management agency.  It currently invests over $200 billion of contributions from the various California taxing jurisdictions (counties, cities, towns, agencies, and, of course, the state).  Other lesser known pension and healthcare fund management organizations in the state, whose unfunded liabilities (UL) added to Calpers’, bring the California total UL to over $130 billion.

This column’s readers know how Calpers pension liabilities are calculated, and how local electeds commit their jurisdictions to pay for their promises.  Unfortunately, not all the electeds here and across the state are so informed.  As a result, many have continued to burden their jurisdictions with liabilities they neither realize nor can resolve.

Next Tuesday 10am October 27th at the Rood Center, the regularly scheduled Board of Supervisors meeting will feature a presentation on county finances by Joe Christoffel, the county’s Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer.  Mr. Christoffel told me that he also plans to include the county’s UL situation in this quarterly review. 

Michael McDaniel, Executive Director of the Sierra Environmental Studies Foundation, will then give an overview of the county’s unfunded pension liabilities.  Mr. McDaniel will be speaking at the invitation of the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots who requested extended BoS coverage of this issue.  He will also present recommendations that may help get us out of the financial holes in which the county and its cities find themselves.  Mr. McDaniel is the lead author of ‘Unfunded Liabilities – Our Community’s Fiscal Time Bombs’ published by SESF in December 2007 and available at sesfoundation.org.

The county’s hidden UL problem did not just grow out of the recent financial crises, but has been building over many years.  Two years ago, before the current recession when SESF raised the issue locally, the county’s pension UL was just under $50 million, and Grass Valley and Nevada City had undisclosed debts of about $4 million and $700,000 respectively.  Then Calpers’ well-documented investment disaster last year reduced the monies available, but not the obligated amounts to be paid out.

The jurisdictions in which the retired public sector employees worked are still responsible for all retirement payments. The markets’ downturn, along with TBD BoS in/actions over the last two years, have increased the county’s UL to the over $80 million number.  The county has neither highlighted nor disclosed any plan to make up these UL.  Well, that’s not entirely true.

Some local bloggers and folks in the Rood Center seem to think that the entire problem is really not ours, and can be laid at Sacramento’s feet.  This longstanding ignorance is unfortunate.  When the SESF report was presented to the BoS and the local media, it was essentially ignored.  In the interval some of us, who have continued to point out the coming train wreck, have been accused of “demagoguery” for bringing the problem to public attention.  A day late and a dollar short, the country’s UL have become national news with daily articles outlining the fiscal calamity facing communities across the land and especially in California.  (For more, please visit pensiontsunami.com.  See also The Union’s online edition and Rebane’s Ruminations)

Politicos and their staffs across the country are pointing fingers at state capitols and Washington to place blame and expect solutions.  In California the ignorance and/or inattention (I’ll leave out perfidy) of local elected officials created our problems.  These same officials hired and fired, and determined the retirement benefits for their public-sector employees.  And if they saw their actions creating an unsustainable fiscal future for their jurisdictions, why did they remain silent?

These same worthies now expect that someone else up there will pull our fat out of the fire.  But the remaining ‘solutions’, as some of us have outlined elsewhere, are few and stark –

• Adopt a two-tiered system treating new employees differently (give them less) than existing employees and the retirees.
• Hyper-inflate (i.e. destroy) the dollar so that all contracted liabilities can be paid off in cheap/worthless dollars.
• Declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy (like Vallejo) and abrogate all unfunded liabilities.
• Pass a state law that stiffs the retirees and current employees by cutting their pension benefits to a fraction of what was contracted.
• Hope that retirees will start dying early and at a high rate (i.e. that the actuarial tables will quit working).
• Hope that the people in Ohio will chip in to pay California’s debts.
• Hope that a miracle happens and the security markets will return over 15% annually so that the Calpers investments will make good all unfunded liabilities.
• Ignore the whole thing and hope that your term is up before things get nasty.  This tactic has worked well in the past, and may still have some legs.

Yes, some of these alternatives do require higher intervention, but only cynically can they be called solutions.  The remarkable thing is that the public employees continue to ignore all of this and remain quiet.  When you come next Tuesday, find out what Nevada County’s solution will be.  If you don’t hear one, or hear one that makes sense, step up to the mike and ask.

An article in the 15oct09 Wall Street Journal warned that “The cost of shoring up Calpers, the troubled $200 billion pension fund for California public employees, will ultimately fall on the state's 38 million residents, who are already dealing with tax increases and reduced public services.”

Cities and counties will have to cut (more) visible and important services in order to meet their legal obligations to retired workers.  Unattended, the various UL time bombs in Nevada County will go off, and any prayers for a bailout from someplace unknown will not be answered.  Next Tuesday people should ask - Where are we now?  How did we get here?  How are we going to work out of this UL mess?

For those not interested or with hopeful faces still turned toward Sacramento, please open page 142 of your hymnal and join in the singing of ‘All is Well’.

George Rebane is a retired systems scientist and entrepreneur in Nevada County who regularly expands these and other themes on Rebane’s Ruminations (www.georgerebane.com).

Things are looking up ...

George Rebane

... I think.

Stuck Again

George Rebane

It looks like the much bally-hooed American Redistribution and Re-election Act of 2009 is, like the song says, a sometime thing.  Wonder if we have to apply for some more again?  Smart money is riding on the major releases to come next year as the mid-term elections get closer.

 

Sustainable Resilience

George Rebane

Resiliency has joined sustainability as desirable attributes that are getting a lot of attention these days.  It’s always been hard to pin people down on what sustainability means when we talk about conservation and communities, and I don’t think the job will be easier with resiliency joining the jargon jar.

Why is a commonly understood definition of these terms important?  Well, I think it’s because both will be important watchwords in tracking today's flood of government monies and the attendant abbreviation of liberties that will inevitably follow.  The land is layered with government agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and even for profit corporations all sidling up for the next politically directed wad of cash from Washington.

Odd as it may seem to you, getting a good handle on these terms is probably not in anyone’s favor in the money and control game except, of course, for the thinking taxpayer who will foot the bill.  And a good part of the game is to keep the taxpayer bamboozled as long as possible, especially if the taxpayer is also a voter.  So let’s do a little semantic shoveling.

Engineers and scientists like what are called operational definitions for the terms they use to describe and communicate their work.  Operational definitions let you design a bridge that will not collapse, an airplane that will fly, and an MRI that will pick out your tumor in time.  An operational definition requires you to do something specific and get a measurable result that then defines the term.  Feel-good, fuzzy, circular, and/or BS definitions that are much in use today don’t pass muster.  For example, an operational definition of height may be the number that you get when the vertical dimension of an object is measured with a certain kind measurement device, e.g. yardstick.

Ruminations - 8oct2009

George Rebane

- ObamaCare’s deficits go “conceptual”
- Pelosi shows how VAT is not a tax on consumers
- Locals still confused about unfunded pension liabilities

The Washington Lies Factory is working overtime in the attempt to deliver something passable that can be labeled ObamaCare.  The Dems, led by Finance Committee Chairman Senator Baucus, have been pressuring the Congressional Budget Office to revise the damning estimates of their various bills’ deficit impacts over the next decade.  With some success they’ve gotten the CBO to go from $1 trillion to $597 billion to $245 billion in added deficits for the Senate versions of ObamaCare.  Now in a last big push, Baucus cajoled the CBO into looking at the latest “conceptual language” version of the Senate Finance Committee bill and issue a “score” for it.

With obvious heel marks on the floor, the CBO was reluctantly dragged into doing a “preliminary analysis” of the “conceptual” bill, and guess what?  It turns out that this version of ObamCare could reduce deficits by a conceptual $81 billion.  The CBO’s accompanying letter qualified this scoring by stating –

CBO and JCT’s (Joint Committee on Taxation) analysis is preliminary in large part because the (Finance Committee Bill), as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.

For those who track these things, Harry Reid now has to merge the Finance Committee bill with the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP, love that acronym) Committee bill, which then must be merged with the House version to create the final monstrosity that Obama will sign.  During this long process you will be told by the Dems and their MSM to keep your eye on that $81 billion deficit reduction number, no matter how conceptually preliminary its publication has been.

Public Tit on Short Leash

George Rebane

As longtime supporters of the Salvation Army, Jo Ann and I got an invitation this morning to set up a meeting with Captains Don and Martha Sheppard who are the new heads of our local Nevada County unit.  The Union ran an article yesterday on the progress of a $1.6M government grant that the local SA received “to address homelessness”.  The money is planned to run out in 18 months at which time other proposals for more money will be in the mill “to keep the program going.”

All good and fine, but it got us thinking again on how these short-term, ad hoc government-sponsored programs are run.  Sustainability is the big idea these days, yet the declared use of funds like this does nothing to sustainably reduce homelessness – it is a temporary band-aid that must be replaced while the problem remains.

Seems to me there are two kinds of homeless – those who are there temporarily and should be helped/encouraged to get back on their feet, and those who are there more or less for the long term.  For the latter case an appropriate long-term housing program should be sought and funded.  If we have decided that government should be the source of funding for one or both (which is another story), then let’s screen the folks and issue them the proper long and short-term Public Tit Cards (PTCs) the presentation of which gets them into the right program without further fuss.  (For those whose eyebrows get raised at the notion of a public tit card, consider that most of us already carry them.  For example I have two PTCs - my Social Security and Medicare cards.  And, of course, there are many more kinds floating around out there issued by this or that government agency.)