Paying Off People With Public Money

Why should the state government take sides in a labor dispute?  

A group of California Democrats are expected to propose handing out unemployment benefits to striking workers.

Language expected to be released in the coming days or weeks to provide striking workers with benefits from California's unemployment insurance program that is $18 billion in debt. The move comes amid historic strikes by both screenwriters and actors, forcing many movies and TV shows to halt production.

"It would allow individuals on strike who are not looking for work and were not let go through no fault of their own to claim unemployment insurance as if they were truly unemployed," California Chamber of Commerce Policy Advocate Rob Moutrie, who opposes the legislation, told Fox News.

It would make just as much sense to compensate businesses for lost income due to strikes.

If This Surprises You, Raise Your Hand

From euronews.green:

The richest 10 per cent of US households are responsible for 40 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, a new study reveals.

Rather than focusing on consumption - such as transport, food or energy use - the study looked at emissions linked to people’s income.

They found that wealthy US households reap the biggest benefit from emissions while being most responsible for them.

The study's authors argue that an income based carbon tax - particularly on investments - could help reduce climate inequality and fund much needed decarbonisation measures.

They were doing fine until that last sentence.

University Priorities

West Virginia University is facing a budget shortfall and is forced to make some cuts:

West Virginia University leaders have recommended discontinuing 32 of its majors at its Morgantown campus as the school is feverishly working to make up for a multi-million budget shortfall. 

The preliminary recommendations, released Friday afternoon, said 12 of those programs are undergraduate majors and 20 are graduate-level majors. Other programs were told to reduce their faculty size — 169 faculty jobs are on the line for cuts...

The Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, which includes Spanish, Russian and Chinese studies, was marked to be completely dissolved...

The university is also reviewing plans to eliminate the language requirement for all majors. “Eliminating language instruction will close avenues of opportunity, career advancement, and personal fulfillment for current and future WVU students,” she added.

The cuts, if approved, will affect 147 undergraduate and 287 graduate students, which the university noted was less than 2% of total student enrollment. 

In addition to the World Languages department, the following programs will be eliminated:

• MA Higher Education Administration
• MA Multicategorical Special Education 
• PhD Higher Education
• EdD Higher Education Administration
• MM Collaborative Piano
• MM Composition
• MM Jazz Pedagogy
• MFA Acting
• PhD Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences
• MLS Legal Studies
• MPA Public Administration
• MS Mathematics
• PhD Mathematics
• MFA Creative Writing
• MS Energy Environments
• PhD Resource Management
• BSR Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Resources
• BS Environmental and Community Planning
• BSLA Landscape Architecture
• MSLA Landscape Architecture
• BA Agribusiness Management — This program will be discontinued and merged with the BS in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics resulting in a single new program and major.
• BS Environmental and Energy Resource Management This program will be discontinued and merge with the BS in Energy Land Management resulting in a single new program and major. 
• BS Environmental and Natural Resource Economics — This program will  be discontinued and merge with the BS in Agribusiness Management resulting in a single new program and major.

Additionally, several programs were marked for the development of a cooperative program, including:

• BS Energy Land Management
• BSF Forest Resource Management
• BSF Wood Science and Technology

Not being touched are Women's and Gender Studies and other Aggrieved Victims Studies.  No doubt the high standards and perceived status of such programs make them extremely popular with students.

Pay Back Your Student Loans

I can forgive the high school students a little bit.  Every teacher they've ever had has been a college graduate, and thus the mantra students hear from the first day of school is that they must go to college.  If they choose to do something else they're met with the consternation of screwing up the first adult decision they have to make.

College students, though?  They're supposed to be smart enough to figure this stuff out, and to be wise enough to look beyond just their nose:

According to Fidelity’s College Savings & Student Debt study, six in 10 high school students say they won’t be able to afford college without the help of student loans, and more than one-third (36%) don’t know how long it will take to pay them back.

Additionally, the study results reveal 65% of college students taking advantage of the current federal payment pause say they have no idea how they’re going to start repaying their loans once the emergency pause is lifted this fall.

"These findings are not as much a surprise as they are a concern," says Jesse Moore, head of student debt at Fidelity Investments. "This October will be the first time in over three years that most federal borrowers make a student loan payment, and a lot has changed in three years. These people have bought homes, started families, changed jobs and all have felt the impacts of inflation."

They bought homes without considering how they'd afford the homes in addition to their previous debts?  Are you serious?  I don't have a lot of sympathy for such people.

I applied to 4 universities back in the '82-'83 school year.  Two were military academies, two were public universities.  I got accepted into one of the military academies and both of the public universities, but couldn't afford UCLA or Purdue.  Before I got the acceptance documents from West Point, and being financially responsible even at that young age, I considered postponing college for a few years; the plan was to join the military, then get a degree using the GI Bill.  

Some might say that the GI Bill route and West Point both required someone else to pay for my schooling, and that would be correct.  It would also be irrelevant.  In both cases I agreed to work for the government in order to get my education.  There was an agreement, not an abdication of my own responsibility.  I worked within the system, I didn't expect the system to accommodate my whims as those mentioned above have done.

As for the high school students, I encounter too many for whom a community college is beneath them.  It costs a lot to be housed and fed--just ask any parent!--so yes, going off to college is going to be an expensive proposition.  I'm forced to ask:  what are you doing to mitigate this cost?  Anything?

Having a sense of personal responsibility can be a heavy burden in today's society, as we look in awe at those who have no such sense and wonder how they can be so shameless in their sense of entitlement.

Class Action Lawsuits

Until recently I was a plaintiff in 2 class action lawsuits, the first against Yahoo! for a data breach, and the second against Qualcomm for what seems to be some monopolistic behavior.  To be honest I don't really understand the Qualcomm case, but if they violated the law, there should be a penalty for that.

Today I received my share of the settlement for the Yahoo! case--$61.08.  Not a gargantuan sum, to be sure, not one that will allow me to retire early, but not a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, either.

Maybe I can retire after the Qualcomm settlement.

Pay Your Own Damn Debts

There is no logic at all behind the "pay off my student loans for me" argument, especially since I have no doubt that there is significant overlap between the "I didn't understand what I was getting into when I took out loans as an adult and now can't pay off my debts" crowd and the "12-year olds are mature enough to decide what sex they want to be" crowd.

You'd think FoxNews would be the last place you'd hear sympathy for the "pay off my loans for me" crowd, but you'd be wrong:

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration's $400 billion student loan bailout in response to a legal challenge by Job Creators Network Foundation. This ruling sets the stage for long-overdue bipartisan action to address the underlying reason for this debt crisis: unaccountable colleges that have raised tuition by more than double the inflation rate over the last generation...

Broader reforms such as requiring colleges to take over some responsibility for making student loans will incentivize them to ensure students don't take on too much debt and graduate with skills to succeed. Talk about a win-win.

Win-win?  Uh, no. 

Universities are not job training sites, they're institutions of higher learning.  No one is going to make a lot of money with a degree in Medieval Uzbeki Film Studies, but if someone wants to study it and a university is capable of teaching it, why not?  

There are plenty of degrees out there that don't lead to many high-paying jobs, Aggrieved Victim Studies being one such field.  Still, that doesn't mean that the courses shouldn't be offered if they're academically rigorous and someone wants to take them.  It's not a university's place to determine what any individual might earn or to say "no, you can't afford that course/major."

Yes, tuition has increased much faster than inflation over the last couple decades.  But let's be honest, a good part of that happens at public universities--in other words, government institutions.  And who do most people get student loans from?  Government!  Notice a similarity there?

Perhaps government should get out of the student loan business, and put lending money back in the hands of institutions that know about lending money.  If that means a poor black kid can't get a loan to go to USC to study art, well, a poor white kid won't be able to get a loan to go to USC to study art, either!  No one has a right to go to USC, any more than they have a right to fly first class or a right to own a Tesla.  I have to believe that my proposed policy would exert a downward pressure on tuition, as I can't see at all how it could possibly be inflationary.

I do think that incoming students should better understand loans and interest, and should probably have some idea of how much they'll earn to determine how much they'll be able to pay.  I can't understand how any adult could take out such loans without that information, but apparently many have done so!

Under the status quo, where the federal government backs all student loans, there's little check on such college profligacy. Yet smart reforms can reverse runaway college tuition and spending.  

Recent legislation introduced by Senate Republicans helps get to the root of the problem by imposing student loan transparency and eliminating inflationary Graduate PLUS loans, but more needs to be done.

That seems far more reasonable than holding colleges and universities "accountable" for loans they aren't even making:

Biden can’t forgive student loan debt, so it’s time for Congress to hold colleges accountable

What, exactly, are they to be held accountable for?  Why aren't the adults who took out the loans held accountable?

Let's now take a trip to the other side of the media's ideological spectrum, to CNN:

For my whole adult life, debt and financial hardship has dictated my path, first through a cycle of generational poverty and now in the form of student debt. With Friday’s Supreme Court decision, it looks as if I have many years ahead of student loan repayment. It could take, quite literally, the rest of my working life before my student loans are paid off. 

Why did you assume such loans?  Why is it my responsibility, along with the 2/3 of Americans who don't even have a degree, to pay off loans that you voluntary took out?  There is no logic in such an appeal, only emotion--which is what most leftie arguments are based on.  Note the title of this article:

Opinion: It’s hard to break free of generational poverty. The Supreme Court just made it harder

Why is it the Supreme Court's responsibility to make your life easier?  Answer:  it's not.  It's their job to determine what is constitutional and lawful, regardless of who the decision helps or hurts.

 

The author, Rachel, opens with her family story and about how she got loans to enter college.  She made some poor choices (imnsho) and didn't understand financial aid, but she made good economic decisions once she graduated, right?

After college, I took a position as a teacher at a non-profit preschool in my community, where I was employed for the first decade of my working life. I then got a job as a classroom teacher and eventually moved into the role of studio arts teacher at the same school.

The school where I worked was an incredible community of dedicated and innovative educators, hardworking, curious children and committed families. I felt lucky to be working with them. As a community, we came together to problem-solve around societal issues like the abysmally low pay for teachers, the lack of government support for early childhood education and insufficient health care options for school staff.

Attitudes about early childhood education are such that most workers in the field know they will never be paid what they truly deserve.

So she took on debt she didn't understand (but should have), and instead of prioritizing paying off that debt, she went to work in a "non-profit preschool" knowing about the low pay.  Sorry, Rachel, you can follow your bliss, but you're not entitled to do so on my dime.

The rest of her article is in the same vein--no logic or principle to what she says, just "pay off my loans so I can envision a better financial future for myself in spite of my choices".  I'm not as hard-hearted as I sound, I do have sympathy for her plight, but I don't accept any moral or financial responsibility for that plight.

Let me share with you my own experience from 40 years ago.  I was estranged from my mother, and my dad made just enough to support his family but not enough to put me through college even at the relative bargain it was compared to today.  I was accepted into three of the four schools I applied to (I never received a nomination to the Air Force Academy), but in 1983 there were no scholarships for a poor, smart, white kid.  I was arrogant and hadn't even applied for an ROTC scholarship.  I had to give up on UCLA and Purdue.  West Point offered me early admission in November but I turned it down because it was my last choice and I was still counting on Air Force; come March, West Point was the only school I had any chance of attending.  Doors were closing fast in the spring and I ended up with only 2 options:  either West Point offers me regular admission, or I enlist in the Army and go to school later on the GI Bill.  It was a big day, in Mrs. Gordon's 4th period class, when I got a note from the office:  "Call home, thick envelope from West Point."

As you can see, I made some bad decisions, too.  But nowhere in those decisions was there a thought that someone owed me anything I hadn't earned, I made plans that would allow me to get an education despite my financial situation.  Of course, no one should have to join the military in order to go to college, but it's certainly one option.  Going to a community college would be another.  Getting a job that has higher education benefits (a la Starbucks and the University of Arizona) is another.  My point is this:  take responsibility for yourself.  Make good decisions.  Accept the consequences of your actions.

Mine is the dad-like, toughlove approach that conservatives tend to favor.  Anyone want to guess Rachel's political leanings?

California Approaches "Failed State" Status

Governor Newsollini is a hypocritical failure.  Twice during his draconian 'rona lockdowns he appeared in large settings without a mask.  He travels to states to which he's banned state travel--they're good enough for him but not for the government?  He whines about the Supreme Court's anti-affirmative action ruling while governing a deep-left state that has twice voted against affirmative action in recent years.

And it's not like California presents a shining example of good governance.

Recall the state's "travel ban" and his flouting of it:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday appeared to flout his own state’s laws by speaking at an event in Texas, one of 22 states for which California has banned official government travel...

California has banned state-funded travel to states with "discriminatory laws." The state first passed the law in 2017 in reaction to North Carolina preventing transgender people from using restrooms that aligned with their own identity. In the ensuing years, the list of banned states ballooned from four to nearly two dozen.

One of those states on California’s naughty list is Montana, where Newsom vacationed earlier this summer to visit his in-laws. Newsom’s team said he did not violate the law as he was traveling in his personal capacity – despite having a security detail.

Not everyone in California pretends to believe that those two dozen states have nothing to teach us here in California:

San Jose’s homelessness response team visited Houston earlier this year. City and county representatives from the Los Angeles area went last fall...

In April, two city council members from the East Bay city of Richmond headed to Austin to tour a 51-acre tiny home community that provides permanent housing for 350-and-counting homeless residents. Elected officials from Sacramento trekked to San Antonio to see a 1,600-person shelter that offers everything from dental care to counseling – serving nearly the city’s entire homeless population in one place...

[T]he California Legislature and some Golden State cities don’t even allow publicly funded travel to Texas. Some Californians who have made the trip have had to seek exemptions by arguing the travel is in their jurisdiction’s best interest...

Why are these cities sending people to Texas? 

In Texas, 81 people are homeless for every 100,000 residents. In California, the rate is more than five times worse...

“While Austin built 350 small homes, we are putting 1,200 across the state, including 500 in Los Angeles,” she said in an emailed statement sent on behalf of Newsom’s office. “California continues to make unprecedented investments into housing and homelessness which includes shelter and wrap-around supportive services, cleaning up encampments, and creating more housing. The state has invested more to increase housing supply than ever before in our history while holding local governments accountable.”

But the difference in outcomes in Texas versus California is unmistakable. The Houston area’s homeless population dropped 57% between 2012 and last year, dipping to 3,124, according to the federally mandated point-in-time count. A New York Times article published last year highlighted the “remarkable progress,” catapulting the city that was already known in wonky homeless policy circles into the national limelight – and catching California’s attention. 

Los Angeles County’s homeless population increased 106% over the same period. Sacramento County’s jumped a whopping 230%.

We deserve the government we vote for.  Good job, California.

Those of you who vote for these people--what part of California government do you think is well-run?  What programs would you publicly support?

This Isn't Good For My Ford Stock

Years ago I bought Ford stock; I think from now on I'll just buy into index funds and leave the individual stock roulette to others:

Ford Motor plans to lay off at least 1,000 salaried employees and contract workers in North America, people familiar with the matter said, the automaker’s latest effort to defray the heavy cost of investing in electric cars.

In internal meetings Monday, Ford began notifying some salaried workers in North America that job cuts would be coming, a company spokesman confirmed Tuesday morning. The planned layoffs are concentrated in the engineering ranks, where Ford is targeting costs across its business units, he said.

The automaker has made several rounds of global layoffs over the past year, including a 3,000-person reduction in the U.S. last summer and a slightly larger layoff in Europe initiated earlier this year.

Ford has about 28,000 salaried employees in North America. The U.S. automaker’s plan for another round of layoffs was first reported last week by The Wall Street Journal.

I've read that Ford lost $34,000 on every electric vehicle it sold last year.  Ugh.

Too Much Of A Good Thing

Many states used to fund their infrastructure projects in part through gas taxes.  Combine better fuel economy and electric cars and you sell less gas, meaning not as much tax revenue.  How to deal with that problem?

One proposal that seems to be gaining in popularity would be to charge drivers by the mile instead of the gallon. 

Other ideas that have been presented include taxing electricity from public vehicle charging stations.

Another is to tack charges onto door-to-door package deliveries. 

States are now weighing whether to start making the programs mandatory.

The only mistake above is that they'll charge by the mile and the gallon.  No way are states going to get rid of gas taxes.

When They Aren't Pissing It Away On Ideology...

...they're giving it away via incompetence.  My retirement, that is:

We’re talking about names, social security numbers and other personal information of almost 770k retirees potentially being compromised.

Letters from CalPERS started going out to their retired members on Thursday about exactly what happened, and where they go from here...

The concern: A Russian ransomware gang, known as Clop’s, and its worldwide cybersecurity hack. 

Myers said on June 6, CalPERS’ third-party contractor, PBI Research Services, first notified the government agency about a potential data breach.

Then on June 9, PBI confirmed that the information sent for them to verify was impacted...

The California state teachers’ retirement system was also affected. 

A member of CalSTRS spoke with FOX40 and said, “CalSTRS is working with PBI to identify the CalSTRS members whose information was involved in PBI’s incident. CalSTRS will provide notice to any members and beneficiaries whose personal information was involved in accordance with applicable law.”

sigh

They're Playing With My Retirement Money

Do this with your own money, not with mine:

If you think that CalSTRS, the behemoth pension system that supports California’s retired teachers, is focused on pensions, you are wrong. The largest teacher-focused pension system in the country is abandoning its core fiduciary role to chase left-wing political goals. Its mission creep will hurt teachers, taxpayers, and students alike.

In April, CalSTRS issued an extraordinary press release stating their priorities for the companies they invest in, including corporate greenhouse gas disclosures. CalSTRS is interested in achieving a “net zero” emissions portfolio. Of course, CalSTRS is also interested in corporate diversity, and states: “CalSTRS will vote against an entire board of directors that does not include at least one woman and against a board’s nominating and governance committee if at least 30% of its board members are not women. Furthermore, CalSTRS will vote against the nominating and governance committees of Russell 3000 companies that do not disclose their board members’ diversity characteristics.”

CalSTRS’ Board has morphed into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a $300-billion billy club to swing at businesses that aren’t sufficiently Progressive.

If you were scouring the news for a few words about supporting corporate boards trying to grow profits, entering or creating new markets, utilizing innovation, expanding geographically, then CalSTRS is not the investment entity for you.

California Community Colleges Are In The News Lately

A couple weeks ago I posted about how California's incoming community colleges chancellor thinks all 9th graders should be enrolled in a community college course.  Now we learn that the community colleges might perhaps consider doing a better job keeping scam artists from enrolling before they try to enroll high school freshmen:

Months after a mysterious check for $1,400 landed in Richard Valicenti’s mailbox last summer, the U.S. Department of Education notified him that the money was a mistake — an overpayment of the $3,000 Pell grant he had used to attend Saddleback College in Orange County.

“I told them I never applied for a Pell,” said Valicenti, a 64-year-old radiation oncologist at UC Davis who had never even heard of Saddleback.

Valicenti’s name is among the stolen identities used in thousands of fraudulent attempts to enroll in community colleges in California and across the country since classes shifted online during the pandemic. The aim is to steal financial aid. 

Fake enrollments also crowd out legitimate students and create hours of work for colleges trying to eliminate “ghost students.” Colleges that disburse grants to fraudsters are on the hook to repay the feds.

Today, about 20% of California’s community college applications are scams: more than 460,000 of the 2.3 million requests to the state’s online application system since July alone, says the state Chancellor’s Office, which oversees the 116 campuses. Community colleges are required to accept any student in the state with a high school diploma, and a Social Security number is not required to apply.

There's much more at the link, and none of it is reassuring.

Do Shareholders Have Grounds To Sue?

You've no doubt heard about the recent problems Anheuser Busch, Target, Kohl's, and the LA Dodgers are having because of some biased and unpopular marketing decisions made recently.  Given the severe drops in value of the first 3 of those, I wondered today if the shareholders have grounds to sue the Boards of Directors for financial malfeasance.  Wouldn't life be a lot easier if this were the way things worked?

Imagine a beer company that just wanted to make good beer and sell it to you. Imagine if that company wanted to sell beer to everyone but didn’t feel that its job was to make you more accepting of transgender individuals, any more than it felt its job was to warn you about the national debt or teach you the value of standardized testing in public schools or warn you about North Korea’s intercontinental-missile program. Imagine a beer company that liked its existing customer base and didn’t feel a need to reeducate those customers and get them to give up their “fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor.”

Imagine an everything store like Target that wanted everyone to shop there, but that had the good sense to realize that partnering with a brand that had “Satanist-inspired merchandise” was not the way to win over shoppers in a country that is still roughly two-thirds Christian. (Also note that almost every faith has a devil figure, so there’s no reason to think non-Christian religious customers are big fans of Satanic branding, either.) You want to put rainbows and “PRIDE” on your merchandise, go right ahead. It’s a free country. But if you partner up with a “Satan Respects Pronouns”* designer, don’t be shocked when lots of people choose to shop elsewhere.

Imagine a sports team that declared everyone was welcome but didn’t formally and publicly roll out the welcome mat for the quasi-pornographic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. (Is the promotion worth it if you’re alienating your team’s star pitcher?) Last year, the Los Angeles Dodgers led Major League Baseball in attendance; with the exception of 2020, the Dodgers have led MLB in attendance for the past nine seasons. Marketing the Dodgers in Los Angeles is like marketing water in the desert. The Dodgers don’t need to reach out to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence fanbase; they’re choosing to reach out, because someone in the organization likes that message. The irony is that a significant chunk of the attending fans, as well as the players, are Christian.

Hey, does any gay-rights group want to dress up as Muslim imams? Nah? Okay. We know the score. It’s safe to pick on Catholics, because Catholics are going to turn the other cheek and ignore you or offer mild protest. Dress up in drag to mock Muslims and there’s a good chance you’ll get firebombed. We saw this with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, we saw this with the Muhammad cartoons, we saw this with Charlie Hebdo magazine over in France, and we see it now. What those who enjoy mocking Christianity ought to fear is the day that certain Christians look at the Muslims and realize intimidation, threats, and violence are an effective way to make their faith un-mockable. American society is perfectly okay with threats of violence in response to blasphemous speech, but we only tolerate it for certain faiths. There are good reasons to doubt that double standard is sustainable.

As Michael Jordan probably didn't really say but the quote still gets attributed to him, "Even Republicans buy shoes."  Just sell your product and make money.

Update, 6/21/23:  Did I call it?

Corporations that wrecked their images in woke marketing campaigns could pay a price for decisions that cost shareholders money.

On May 30, America First Legal took to Twitter on a fishing expedition looking for disgruntled shareholders who have seen their investments flow down the drain faster than a barrel of Bud Light since the beer’s embrace of transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney led to a weeks-long boycott that shows no sign of stopping.

“ATTENTION: Are you a shareholder of @Target @Kohls @abinbev, or other companies that are promoting transgender, LGBTQ and PRIDE products and diminishing shareholder value? We want to hear from you,” the law firm posted...

Newsweek wrote that the strategy appears to be to sue the companies over decisions that led to massive stock declines.

Seniors Are Gone

Today was Senior Checkout Day at school, and my 6th period class had only 2 remaining students.  What shall I do with them?

A couple weeks ago one of them asked if we were going to learn anything about investing in the stock market.  I spent a week on that last semester, but these 2 students weren't in the class last semester.  

Today we started with the basics:  what is a stock, what is a broker, how does one purchase stocks, how does one read financial information about stock performance, and what is a mutual fund.  With just the 3 of us it was a very involved conversation, and at the end of the period one of them said, "that time feels like it went by in 5 minutes."  I'll call that a victory.

What are we going to do tomorrow?  We'll cover the different "sectors" of stocks, and then I'll let them play at finding companies in each sector.

What will we do on "final exam day", given that they already took the final with all the seniors?  I assume they'll get sick *cough* *cough* and call mommy to go home.  If not, I'll come up with something.

Import/Export

California already imports a significant amount of its energy and exports a significant amount of its waste and pollution, but how long can it remain solvent when it exports its jobs?

If there is a similar list of companies that have packed up and moved to California, I'd genuinely like to see it.

Update, 5/31/23:  Here's another one.

Well, There Goes My Retirement

As long as the crazy lefties in California pay for the retirement they've promised me, I guess I shouldn't care what silliness they do--but they won't be able to pay me if they keep up silliness like this:

The California State Senate has passed legislation that would require the state’s two powerful public employee pension funds to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. It would also force them to liquidate close to $15 billion in holdings to aid the nation’s transition to clean energy and reduce greenhouse gas production.

The bill, SB 252, would prohibit the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or CalPERS, and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, or CalSTRS, from making or renewing investments in the 200 largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies beginning Jan. 1.

By July 1, 2031, both funds would have to liquidate investments in those 200 companies, which are defined by the carbon content in their proven oil, gas and coal reserves. Because of underground reserves, companies on the list of 200 are deemed to have the most potential for future emissions if enabled by investment capital.

The bill next must be approved by the state Assembly and then signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Supporters say they are confident both will happen.

Of All The Reasons For A Strike...

If you're going to go on strike, it should be over pay, benefits, and/or working conditions.  Anything else is just foolish:

Furious parents marched their children across picket lines of striking teachers in Oakland, California, on Friday on the seventh day of a strike in which teachers are demanding reparations for slavery, among other demands.

Even Governor Newsollini is backing away from slavery reparations:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to endorse the cash payments — which could reach as high as $1.2 million for a single recipient — recommended by his reparations task force, telling Fox News Digital that dealing with the legacy of slavery "is about much more than cash payments." 

"The Reparations Task Force’s independent findings and recommendations are a milestone in our bipartisan effort to advance justice and promote healing. This has been an important process, and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country," Newsom said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

It'll be quite "healing" when people who were never slaves are told they're "entitled" to $1.2 million from a state that never allowed slavery, and then they don't get the money.

Race hustling should have no place in American politics, but it has a home--no, a palace--in the Democrat Party.

California Teacher Pay, Working and Retired

Let's start with working:

There’s a bill with bipartisan support to increase teacher pay by 50% by 2030.

The author of the bill, California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, says teachers are paid significantly less than college graduates in other fields. It’s getting more difficult to convince people to enter into teaching if they can’t afford to live on it. 

Pay is only part of the problem.  You couldn't pay me enough to work another year past 2027.

The state is facing a projected $22.5 billion deficit. So even if this does have strong bipartisan support, there are going to have to be some tough decisions made in the capitol.

This article is dated yesterday.  I have been given to believe that the bill has been amended from completing the pay raise by 2030 to starting in 2030.  To be determined...

Now let's go to retired, which I hope to be in 49 months and a few days:

If you think that CalSTRS, the behemoth pension system that supports California’s retired teachers, is focused on pensions, you are wrong. The largest teacher-focused pension system in the country is abandoning its core fiduciary role to chase left-wing political goals. Its mission creep will hurt teachers, taxpayers and students alike.

In April, CalSTRS issued an extraordinary press release stating their priorities for the companies they invest in, including corporate greenhouse gas disclosures. CalSTRS is interested in achieving a “net zero” emissions portfolio. Of course, CalSTRS is also interested in corporate diversity, and states: “CalSTRS will vote against an entire board of directors that does not include at least one woman and against a board’s nominating and governance committee if at least 30 percent of its board members are not women. Furthermore, CalSTRS will vote against the nominating and governance committees of Russell 3000 companies that do not disclose their board members’ diversity characteristics"...

[T]he problem with CalSTRS lifting its leftist political banner above all others is that the organization has an actual role, which is fiduciary. Its job isn’t to be in the political vanguard but to caretake and grow its investments to meet its payout obligations.

CalSTRS pension payments are funded by payments from the state, from teachers and school districts. If investment gains fall short, contributions need to increase.

It would be just my luck that CalSTRS won't be able to meet it's obligations to me just when I need them to.  And soon enough they'll have to come up with 50% more....

Personal Responsibiliity

How is it that lefties think that a 12-year-old can decide his/her own gender, independent of anatomy, but an adult doesn’t understand enough to enter into a legally-binding loan agreement?

The Supreme Court decision on whether or not it allows the Biden administration to move forward with the plan to cancel $400 billion in student debt will have life-changing financial consequences for tens of millions of Americans.

Unfortunately for borrowers, legal experts remain skeptical that the justices will greenlight the relief.

“I expect the court will rule against the Biden administration,” said Paul Collins, Jr., professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Collins predicts the six conservative justices will vote down President Joe Biden’s program, and that the three liberal justices will be in favor of it. “The Supreme Court is an incredibly ideological and partisan institution in 2023 — perhaps more so than at any other point in American history,” he said.

Do you think a professor of political science in Massachusetts might be just a teeny bit biased in his opinions?  I do. 

Anyway, I can find no legal or moral justification for having taxpayers pick up the bill for people who, having graduated high school and being on their way to college, were supposed to have been smart enough to know what they were doing.

My Exact Thoughts On The Student Loan Issue