[Roy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')hould we buy guns? Concealed carry?

[seahorse2]

Sacramento laying off 300 deputies, and now a county in Alabama cutting services. These are just the beginning.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')labama County Set to Halt Services, Shut Buildings Over Budget
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By William Selway

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- Alabama’s most populous county is preparing to stop road maintenance, close courthouses and shutter services for the elderly after a court struck down taxes that pay for about 35 percent of its budget.

Jefferson County, which includes Birmingham, released a plan to cut $52 million from its budget as it appeals the ruling against its business and occupational taxes to the Alabama Supreme Court. Without that revenue, the county has said it is at risk of running out of money as soon as this month.

The loss of the tax money was another blow to a county that has been struggling to avoid bankruptcy since last year, when Wall Street’s financial crisis caused its interest bills to soar on more than $3 billion of bonds.

The proposed cuts, released today by county Commission President Bettye Fine Collins, would slash deeply into the government’s services and also include closing a nursing home for the indigent, declaring a moratorium on enforcing zoning and littering laws, and scrapping local development contracts.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Selway in San Francisco at wselway@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: June 5, 2009 14:29 EDT

[seahorse2]

Collapse of California is a harbinger of things to come.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')alifornia: Harbinger of Fiscal Doom
What the Golden State's bleak future means for America

Brian Doherty | June 3, 2009

California is famously considered a bellwether state for social and political trends, from the positive (hot rod and surf culture, the human potential movement, tax revolts, digital culture) to the regrettable (murderous cults, carbon reduction mandates). With that in mind, a simple—yet terribly difficult for our political class—contemplation of the state's current cash crisis is both instructive and scary for the future of our nation as a whole.

California now confronts a roughly $24 billion deficit. Recent attempts to get voters to approve various fiscal shenanigans and cost-shifts got smacked down at the polls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is now making a big show of proposing heavy spending cuts that will, we are told by the state’s journalistic and political mavens, destroy the state, beggar its sick and young, and leave just enough cash to forcibly keep people out of various state parks, though not to “operate” them.

Of course, nowhere among the “serious options” under consideration is legalizing pot and other controlled substances, which would likely give the state an extra billion dollars a year in tax revenue. That simple act of political sanity would also save the state the $43,000 a year per inmate now spent incarcerating drug criminals, of whom a fresh nearly 19,000 were added in 2008 alone.

Finding places to cut costs without reducing the state to post-apocalyptic squalor shouldn’t be such a big deal, of course. As explained in California’s political newspaper Capital Weekly last week:

[N]ew revenue estimates released by the Department of Finance this week place the state’s general fund revenues at $85.9 billion—nearly $4 billion higher than they were just five years ago.

Even with the depleted funds caused by plunging home prices and a global economic slowdown, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s budget is still larger than his first budget in the 2004-05 budget year.

But in that first budget year, state spending was at $79.8 billion. Over the next two years, state spending jumped by more than 21 percent, to more than $101.4 billion in the 2006-07 budget year.

Current revenues, then, would allow for more spending than five years ago, a time in which state parks were open, schools functioned (though, as always, not very well), and the streets were not knee-deep with the neglected sick and poor.

As budget analyst Fred Silva told Capitol Weekly, solving California’s budget woes is not as simple as turning back the budget clock to 2004, largely because of locked-in—and crippling—pension and health care spending obligations. Certain cuts in health care, for example, would lead to the loss of federal revenue. And unions and state employees have no intention of making the state's solvency any easier.

Still, education spending has, according to state Sen. George Runner (R-Antelope Valley), writing at the California Policy Report news web site, “increased by $15 billion over the last decade even though there were 74,000 fewer students over that same period." State contributions to the government pension fund have, as Reason Foundation Policy Analyst Adam Summers notes, “jumped from $321 million in 2000-01 to $7.3 billion last year." It costs California nearly twice as much to house a prisoner per year as it costs Florida. Contemplating those facts, it’s obvious that the basic survival of the accoutrements of civilized living are not at stake in California’s fiscal crisis.

Indeed, living within the current income of the state should not be impossible, nor should it mark the end of civilization. Adjusted for inflation, California’s fiscal year 1991 revenue of $38 billion is still $25 billion less than their current revenue. As Summers explains, “If California had simply limited its spending increases to the 4.38 percent average increase in the state's consumer price index and population growth each year since FY 1990-91, the state would be sitting on a $15 billion surplus right now.”

The same holds for the United States as a whole: Federal revenues for 2007 ($2.6 trillion) are sufficient to have spent twice as much as federal outlays in 1975, adjusted for inflation, with no deficit at all. While life in these here United States was hellish on many levels in 1975, not least the fashions and food, even those with a much bigger appetite for government than I might agree that a government twice as big as what we enjoyed/suffered that year should be able to manage its necessary functions. (And no, there is no convincing reason that in a growing economy the government’s cash grab as a percentage of GDP should remain stable.)

When contemplating California’s fiscal present and the U.S.’s fiscal future, it’s not quite right to say that where California is now, the U.S. as a whole will follow. The U.S. is already in a deep hole, much deeper than California's, and has been for some time. Even President Barack Obama knows it. He told C-SPAN recently, with wonderfully disarming frankness, “we are out of money now.”

The U.S., unlike the state of California, when faced with a dearth of cash, can just make more, which is in essence Obama’s plan—for a while, at least. As in his most famous movie role as the Terminator, Schwarzenegger is metaphorically a visitor from a dangerous and unpleasant future that awaits the rest of the United States. The Golden State is absolutely a political bellwether now in the sense that the crisis-induced fiscal seriousness Schwarzenegger is at least pretending to attempt will be essential to the U.S. in the near future—and should be seen as essential this very second.

But while California can hold out hope that the federal government might bail it out of its troubles, the U.S. government, alas, has no higher power to which it can direct its own appeals. The buck stops there. The only problem, as Obama himself claims to understand, is they are all out of bucks.

Senior Editor Brian Doherty is author of This is Burning Man (BenBella), Radicals for Capitalism (PublicAffairs) and Gun Control on Trial (Cato Institute).

[seahorse2]

Some counties in Michigan returning roads to gravel rather than re-paving them.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ural Mich. counties turn failing roads to gravel
Comments 61 | Recommend 36
June 12, 2009 - 4:43 PM

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Some Michigan counties have turned a few once-paved rural roads back to gravel to save money.

More than 20 of the state's 83 counties have reverted deteriorating paved roads to gravel in the last few years, according to the County Road Association of Michigan. The counties are struggling with their budgets because tax revenues have declined in the lingering recession.

Montcalm County converted nearly 10 miles of primary road to gravel this spring.

The county estimates it takes about $10,000 to grind up a mile of pavement and put down gravel. It takes more than $100,000 to repave a mile of road.

Reverting to gravel has happened in a few other states but it is most typical in Michigan. At least 50 miles have been reverted in the state in the past three years.

[seahorse2]

States shutting down in budget crisis.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-shutdown30-2009jun30,0,1912245.story?track=rss

California prepares to issue IOUs.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db20090629_258094.htm

[seahorse2]

Seven states in severe budget crisis due to dropping tax revenues.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')LUMBUS, Ohio – Some states are facing their worst fiscal crisis in decades as a prolonged recession collides with historic drops in tax revenue.

Several states are entering the first weekend of the fiscal year and July Fourth holiday without a budget in place. California is set to begin issuing IOUs to vendors because it's out of money.

The sputtering economy has ravaged all forms of tax collections. Taxes ranging from sales to personal income to property are all down.

New York State's Rockefeller Institute of Government says last year's drop in sales tax revenue was the worst in 50 years and early data this year suggests the problem has worsened.

The National Association of State Budget Officers says 42 states wrestled with budget deficits this spring, the most since the organization began tracking budgets 30 years ago.

[seahorse2]

Interesting paragraph in a WSJ article about why politicians like Palin are not the caliber republicans or any of us need for the future.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ere's why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.

Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

It's not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won't be that way.

We are going to need the best.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')f course, nowhere among the “serious options” under consideration is legalizing pot and other controlled substances, which would likely give the state an extra billion dollars a year in tax revenue. That simple act of political sanity would also save the state the $43,000 a year per inmate now spent incarcerating drug criminals, of whom a fresh nearly 19,000 were added in 2008 alone.

[Ayoob]

Are you sure laying off the police and going BK is the same thing as turning into Zimbabwe? In Zimbabwe, you had ethnic war with one group hacking the other up with machetes, people running from one place to the next in total desperation and starvation mode and willing to kill or die to get food, inflation at a million percent, complete savageness with no bottom.

California's issuing IOUs and some cops are getting laid off.

Homelessness is on the rise.

We're not seeing suburban soccer moms running into homeless encampments with machetes.

I see where you're going with this, but the Great Depression of the 1930s was nothing like Zimbabwe.

[eXpat]

Lol, talk about protest
French workers threaten to blow up factory
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')PARIS, July 12 (Reuters) - Workers at collapsed French car parts maker New Fabris threatened on Sunday to blow up their factory if they did not receive payouts by July 31 from auto groups Renault and Peugeot to compensate for their lost jobs.

New Fabris was declared in liquidation in April, so the workers stand to get no redundancy money, although they are entitled to draw state unemployment benefit.

They want Renault SA (RENA.PA) and PSA Peugeot Citroen (PEUP.PA) to pay 30,000 euros ($41,800) for each of the 336 staff at the factory, or some 10 million euros in total, in return for its remaining stocks of equipment and machinery.

"The bottles of gas have already been placed at various parts of the factory and are connected with each other," CGT trades union official Guy Eyermann told France Info radio.

"If Renault and PSA refuse to give us that money it could blow up before the end of the month," he added

A delegation of the workers has a meeting on Thursday with Renault, which had no immediate comment. Police also declined to comment on the threat by the workers, who are occupying the New Fabris factory at Chatellerault, near Poitiers in central France.

[seahorse2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')os Angeles to Close 557 Courtrooms
Cheryl Miller
The Recorder
July 15, 2009

Two trial courts will close most of their courtrooms and furlough staff Wednesday, offering California a glimpse of the once-a-month closures expected to affect courtrooms statewide later this summer.

Leaders of the Los Angeles and Mendocino, Calif., superior courts decided they could no longer wait for a coordinated, statewide closure plan to emerge from the mire of legislative budget negotiations. Instead, they'll shutter hundreds of courtrooms today, keeping a relative few open to handle emergency business.

Los Angeles County Superior Court officials expected to have just 43 of 600 courtrooms open countywide to process restraining orders, in-custody arraignments, juvenile dependency cases and other time-sensitive matters. Ninety-three percent of the court's 5,000 employees will be furloughed, spokeswoman Mary Hearn said.

"We're hoping that everyone's got the word that we're going to have limited services," she said.

The closures have left attorneys like those at the Children's Law Center scrambling. Wednesday is typically the busiest day of the week for the agency that represents more than 20,000 Los Angeles County children in dependency court. Cases brought into the foster care system on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday must be filed in court by the following Wednesday to meet a three-day statutory deadline.

Just two of 20 dependency courts are expected to be operating in Los Angeles on Wednesday. On top of that, the Children's Law Center, faced with its own $1.2 million budget cut, will have only a skeleton crew of 20 attorneys working, said Executive Director Leslie Starr Heimov. Other attorneys and staff will be taking a furlough day, she said.

The Los Angeles court will continue to close courtrooms on the third Wednesday of each month, a move aimed at saving $18 million over the next fiscal year. The judicial branch as a whole is expected to save $102 million through monthly closures in all 58 counties, but that estimate relied on a July 15 start date. With no budget action by the Legislature, however, judicial leaders now hope statewide court closures can begin on Aug. 19.

The branch is relying on worker furloughs and increases in court reporter and security fees, and tapping various reserve funds, to absorb a $393 million budget hit from the state.

Although many courtrooms will be closed, Los Angeles courthouse doors will remain open, in part so attorneys can file papers. The closure is not considered a court holiday, and filings dropped off by 4:30 p.m. will receive filing stamps, Hearn said.

Managers will be stationed at courthouses to assist would-be court users, Hearn said. Some furloughed workers will be there, too, passing out leaflets that urge the public to pressure court leaders to negotiate with labor groups on the closures' effects, said Michael Soller, spokesman for the Service Employees International Union Local 721.

"The concern is, the court hasn't spelled out exactly what this is going to mean," Soller said. "Are there going to be longer lines next week because of the closures? And how's the court going to deal with that?"

While rank-and-file clerks, court reporters and assistants are furloughed, bailiffs will not be. Court leaders have said they cannot renegotiate the current security contract with the L.A. sheriff. So deputies working as bailiffs will either be redeployed to other sites or rearrange their work schedules to take today off, said sheriff's department spokesman Steve Whitmore.

Judges and court commissioners are also expected to work Wednesday, Hearn said. Many Los Angeles judges have said that they will give up a day's pay to show solidarity with court workers. But the Administrative Office of the Courts has advised judges to delay doing so until lawmakers approve legislation that would shield their future pensions from reductions tied to the temporary pay givebacks.

In Mendocino County, courtrooms in Willits and Fort Bragg will be closed Wednesday. One courtroom in Ukiah will stay open a half-day to hear "priority" criminal matters between 8:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. and urgent civil matters from 10:30 a.m. to noon.

Other courts have also announced pending closures to deal with budget cutbacks.

• San Francisco Superior Court has announced that it will start closing courtrooms and furloughing employees one day a month on Aug. 19, no matter what the state does. So has the Orange County Superior Court.

• In Stanislaus County, the superior court will close its Turlock courthouse indefinitely on Oct. 2. Court employees will be taking 13 furlough days.

• San Bernardino County Superior Court will operate its Big Bear and Needles courthouses only for the first week of every month starting Sept. 8. More pressing matters will be sent to urban courthouses that, for some communities, are located more than 100 miles away.

[Micki]

Talking about Zimbabwe...
An American man was given a taste test of the coming inflation.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gOVmlDfNCUgb-GlK0P7dkUz_dcEgD99F2L880

[seahorse2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'W')elcome to the new America...

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ow-priority crimes like breaking and entering might not be prosecuted and the conviction rates will continue to decline if the proposed budget for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is approved, Prosecutor Kym Worthy told commissioners this morning.

“We can’t even cover our courtrooms anymore,” Worthy said in vehemently disagreeing with the $28-million general fund budget proposed for the prosecutor’s office by Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. “At some point, if the budget continues to be cut, we’re going to have to start making decisions about what crimes we prosecute.”

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')“At some point, if the budget continues to be cut, we’re going to have to start making decisions about what crimes we prosecute.”

[Quinny]

You planning a night out then?

[careinke]

Now that you mention it... Except I'd rather see some quality control regulations first..

[Micki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')“At some point, if the budget continues to be cut, we’re going to have to start making decisions about what crimes we prosecute.”

[eXpat]

Holy shit people is upset
Killing of China steel plant boss halts sale
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he privatisation of a state steel group has been scrapped after an executive was beaten to death by workers angry at the threat to their jobs from a takeover of their company, according to a Hong Kong rights group.

The violent riot in north-east China late last week involved up to 30,000 workers, a reminder of the ongoing sensitivity about lay-offs from state companies in industries targeted for consolidation.
...
The interim general manager sent by Jianlong to run Tonghua, Chen Guojun, had infuriated the workers with his high-handed attitude, according to comments posted on internet bulletin boards in China.

He had reportedly said that he would re-establish Tonghua “under the name of Chen” and lay off almost all the employees.

“With Tonghua Steel’s retired workers each receiving only Rmb200 ($29) a month for living expenses, Chen Guojun was paid an annual salary of Rmb3m,” the rights group reported.

When Mr Chen returned to the plant late last week, a large crowd of workers surrounded his office and beat him unconscious, according to a report issued by the Hong Kong Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

Outside the factory, mobs of workers stopped an ambulance and police from entering the compound to rescue him. The thousands of riot police then mobilised by the authorities took several hours to bring the situation under control.

Staff at Jianlong’s headquarters in Beijing confirmed Mr Chen’s death but declined to give any further details.

[outcast]

So the world is about to descend into total anarchy? Sh*t.

EDIT: I'm going to past an article, I've removed all references to location and time of the event, without cheating (namely searching online for the original) guess the country and the year this took place.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ioting Laborers Disrupt XXXX In Protests over Police Corruption



Police officers fought with rioting workers in this XXXX city late today as protests over what the workers describe as police corruption entered a fifth day.

More than 1,500 rampaging laborers set cars on fire, hurled stones and bottles and tried to lay siege to a police station that has become a target of popular outrage over links between the police and XXXX powerful XXXX gangsters.

About 2,500 riot troops used batons and water cannons to defend the police station in the XXXX slum district of XXXX city.

An XXXX police spokesman said seven police officers and three rioters were wounded today, bringing the total of those wounded in the unrest to 160.

Witnesses reported many more injuries.

''Several plaincothes police were beaten close to death,'' one witness said. Another said he saw the police severely beat several workers and a young man who appeared to lead a group of teen-agers.

The labor riots, XXXX's worst in almost 20 years, were prompted on Tuesday by allegations that a XXXX detective took bribes from the XXXX, who prey on ordinary workers.

'Like One Gang'

The police dismissed the detective on Friday, two days after he was arrested on suspicion that he was paid $74,000 to turn a blind eye to gang activities.

The move failed to calm workers who contend that they have long suffered from cozy links between the police and the XXXX.

The gangsters are involved in syndicates that run offices to recruit the area's 20,000 workers for low-paying manual jobs.

Local sympathy appears to lie with the workers, not the police.

''The police and the XXXX are like one gang,'' said a worker who lives in Nishinari. ''If we need police protection from the gangs, they never help.''

The riots have left dozens of buildings damaged by fire and a railroad station destroyed. Hundreds of cars, motorcycles and vending machines were smashed and set ablaze.

A protester said he saw his co-workers turn on an elderly laborer who was calling on the mob to stop. ''They thought he was betraying them,'' he said.

[lapulapu]

Nishinari is osaka japan don't know the time.