Government [Non]Accountability Scream Room

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Steve Ballmer is pretty bummed out about the election. A self-proclaimed "numbers guy," Ballmer said the truth is getting lost in the political rhetoric, and he wants to arm citizens with data to defend against lies by the campaigns. "Nobody seems to care about the facts," he said.

When not jumping around on the sidelines of Los Angeles Clippers games, the former Microsoft Corp. chief executive officer has been spending his retirement on the inside of an Excel spreadsheet. Ballmer and a team of about 25 data geeks have been poring over more than three decades of government documents to create a comprehensive accounting of U.S. spending. The goal is to treat the nation like a company and create what Ballmer describes as a "10-K for the government," like the one publicly traded businesses are required to file with regulators each year.

Ballmer's project, called USAFacts, exists in the form of hundreds of Excel files and 385 PowerPoint slides, many of which require a magnifying glass to read. While the complete report won't be ready in time for Election Day, he's using the research as the basis for a class he teaches at Stanford University. His group of 19 sophomores are getting a peek at what Ballmer plans to publish early next year in the form of a 10-K filing, investor presentations, charts, graphics and a dedicated website.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... readsheets

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Greedy, cash-starved states are snatching billions of “abandoned” dollars a year from Americans. States are hording an estimated $42 billion to help fund government services.

The scheme has proven to be so profitable that states are continually gaming their regulations to shorten the time limits used to define “abandonment” and give short shrift to searching for “rightful owners.”

Consider California’s law, which went into effect in 1959 to allow the state to confiscate “unclaimed property” after 15 years. In 1976, the limit was moved back to seven years; in 1988, to five years; and in 1990, to three years. With these changes came rollbacks of requirements to notify owners to claim their property. Seizures have skyrocketed from $2.7 billion in 2001 to $7.6 billion today.

...

Search online databases to locate “abandoned” money and assets that may be held by California and other states. Useful databases include: missingmoney.com; metlife.com/policyfinder; California’s ucpi.sco.ca.gov/UCP/ and the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators’ www.unclaimed.org.

The association website lists many more resources.

Input all the names you have used and the places you have lived when you search a database. Also check the databases for Maryland, Massachusetts and Delaware, where many company headquarters are located.

http:/bit.ly/2fc0euh%20%20ity-voices-greedy-states-grabbing-americans-savings/article_dfc7cbb8-5bf9-547c-85f3-788be2241d18.html

[MachineGhost]

The billionaire Koch Brothers lost. Woo hoo!

Washington State and South Dakota voters gave a split decision on Tuesday on sweeping ballot initiatives that would reform campaign finance, lobbying and ethics in their respective states. The initiative in South Dakota won while the initiative in Washington lost.

Josh Silver, CEO of Represent.Us, the lead national reform group supporting the initiatives, called them “the most transformative money in politics reforms” in the country and hailed the passage of the South Dakota initiative as having “happened because progressives and conservatives led the charge.”

Represent.Us supported the two initiatives and empowered local groups and actors on the ground. In Washington, the unsuccessful campaign to pass I-1464 was led by a bipartisan coalition called Integrity Washington. The Yes on 22 campaign in South Dakota also featured bipartisan support and was chaired by a Republican ex-state senator and a Democratic former state representative.

The initiative language was packaged to attract this bipartisan consensus. This included tying together public campaign financing with strong lobbying and ethics reforms and transparency rules.

It also involved tailoring the public campaign finance system to make it more amenable to conservatives. The South Dakota initiative will create a system of “democracy vouchers,” providing each registered voter with a certain number of $50 credits to use as campaign contributions to candidates who choose to participate in the publicly funded system. Voters in Seattle approved a ballot initiative that created such a system for the city’s elections in 2015.

The campaign overcame strong opposition from Americans for Prosperity, the main political arm of the billionaire Koch brothers, to win in a conservative Republican state.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/201 ... 0b02ca2f31

[MachineGhost]

President Obama has spent the last eight years governing by executive order and administrative rule. President Trump—aided by a Republican Congress—will have the capacity to dismantle some of the worst of these actions. One Department of Labor ruling especially ripe for scrutiny exempts states from federal regulations on private pensions. It thus allows the states—already responsible for massive problems with government-worker pensions—to begin offering retirement plans to private-sector workers. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

State and local governments have already racked up at least $1.5 trillion in debt in their public-worker pension funds through irresponsible funding practices, including promising benefits that were never funded and engaging in questionable accounting practices. This mess has developed free from federal regulation because state-worker pension plans are exempt from the strict standards of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which imposes stringent accounting standards on private pension plans and makes overseers of such plans liable for mismanaging them.

Incredibly, even as local governments continue to struggle with the public-pension crisis, governors and state legislators around the country have proposed letting states offer government-run pension plans for private-sector workers whose employers don’t provide retirement benefits. However, because they would be for private workers, these pension plans would have to adhere to ERISA standards. States could potentially be legally liable in court for mismanaging them. To get around this, states began petitioning the Obama administration for exemptions from federal law. In August, the Department of Labor created a rule giving states “safe harbor” from the legal risks they might face under ERISA. Under the rule, states can now create 401(K) plans for workers who want to set aside money from their paychecks for retirement—as long as employers aren’t required to contribute their own money to the plans. Several states have begun planning to create these retirement systems, but none have started operating yet.

The safe-harbor rule would make states the biggest players in private-sector pensions. That’s because even as the Obama administration was freeing states from ERISA standards, it was increasing mandates on firms that run private-sector pension plans through the so-called fiduciary rule, issued by the Department of Labor in August —making the plans more expensive and less accessible. The added costs imposed by the fiduciary rule may ultimately wind up discouraging smaller private firms from offering workers their own pension plans. When businesses opt out, the new state plans will be waiting to gobble up that business. California alone has estimated that it would collect some $6 billion in private-sector pension money in the first year of its own proposed state-run plan.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/how-tr ... 14858.html

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Get ready for more emigration! Only the poor and super-rich politicians will be left behind.

The series of tax and fee hikes pushed by Emanuel and approved by aldermen adds up to about $1,692 a year once they take full effect. Here's a breakdown:

*About $994 in property tax hikes for City Hall and CPS. That's based on a $250,000 home.

*$50.40 for the 911 phone tax passed in 2014. That's based on a total of three phone lines, cell or land.

*$355 from water and sewer fees that were doubled in 2011.

*$134 from the water and sewer tax passed in September. That's for metered service. People without meters can expect to pay $229.

*$25 from a 2011 city vehicle sticker hike. The increase was $10 per car and $15 for SUVs.

*$19.40 from a cable tax hike approved in 2014. That's based on an $80 monthly bill.

*$114 a year for garbage pickup approved in 2015. That's based on $9.50 per unit a month for a single-family home.

Much of the money is going to the underfunded government worker pension systems, which are $18.6 billion short. The 911 tax is going to the laborers' retirement fund at about $40 million a year. The city property tax hikes are being poured into the police and firefighters' funds at $543 million a year. Another $250 million or so a year is going to the CPS retirement fund. The new water and sewer tax will result in an additional $239 million a year for the municipal workers' pension fund.

All the major tax, fee and fine increases enacted or set in motion by the city and CPS during the past five years approach $1.9 billion. That doesn't include new sales and beverage taxes approved by the County Board under board President Toni Preckwinkle, which are slated to eventually raise another $698 million.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... story.html

[Cortopassi]

It will have to collapse. I am indirectly affected by Chicago, since I live in Cook County, where they just passed a 1 cent per OUNCE sugary drink tax, supposedly in the name of health. Except it also taxes zero calorie artificial sweetener drinks.

They will get what they are asking for, less people buying sugary drinks, at least in Cook County. So they'll get a little tax revenue, send a lot of business to collar counties, and probably lose jobs in many industries that rely on selling pop and juice.

I will never live in Chicago again, not until after all the pensions and CPS and everything else collapses under their own weight. It will have to, or Chicago will have to declare bankruptcy or something. Continuing to raise taxes will be diminishing returns.

[MachineGhost]

Here's a U.S. Pension Tracker showing market/acturial pension debt/household, capita, etc.

http://us.pensiontracker.org/