Quote of the Day
On July 1, California’s Assembly Appropriations Committee advanced AB 1383, a bill that guts the pension reform Sacramento passed in 2013 to keep its own promises honest. It would drop the public safety retirement age from 57 to 55, invent a new 3%-at-55 benefit formula, and let cities bargain away the cost-sharing rules that reform required. CalPERS already carries more than $179 billion in unfunded liabilities. California’s total state and local pension debt tops $200 billion. Sacramento’s answer, apparently, is to promise more.
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Congress has already written one pension bailout check. In 2021, it authorized $97 billion in Special Financial Assistance to prop up failing multiemployer union pension plans, and even that money did not close the gap. Roughly $745 billion in unfunded multiemployer promises remain today. State and local public pensions carry nearly $1.27 trillion in unfunded liabilities nationwide, according to the Equable Institute’s most recent accounting, more than 15 times the multiemployer shortfall Congress already covered.
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Sacramento just showed Washington what happens without a floor. The next state to test Congress’s resolve will not file a request. It will simply run out of cash and dare anyone in Washington to watch retirees lose their checks on television.
Jay Rogers
July 23, 2026
California doubles down on pension debt — and dares Congress to bail it out
Either these politicians do not understand numbers, and/or they are deliberately trying to destroy the country. It is not difficult to make the case it is deliberate.
Socialists may not care about numbers but numbers care about them.
The numbers don’t care at all, about anyone. They just are what they are.
The numbers also do not exempt socialists for being socialists.
“Socialist Do Not Understand”
There, fixed it for you. It would be shorter to list the things they DO understand than the ones they don’t. “Useful idiots” are generally very, VERY impressive in the “idiot” portion, not the “useful” portion save for very specific circumstances.
You are not wrong.
This is nothing more than the Cloward–Piven strategy in action. They laid out their game-plan back in the 1960s, and they’ve been busy with it ever since.
They PLAN on destroying the system and participating a crisis to crash everything and “force” a government take-over and bailout of everything, i.e, commie takeover.
It’s deliberate. Stop calling them ignorant or stupid. It’s evil. They all need to be hung for it, or else named and doxed so the mob take care of it after not bailing them out. Ugly, but it’s the only way to deter others from doing it.
Oh, certain parts of the leadership, absolutely.
But I think most of the politicians are just “what can I get RIGHT NOW” types who aren’t looking ahead. “How much can I bribe people with their own money?”
Short-sighted, sleazy, self-centered idiots.
In other words, the classic “useful idiots” who will be first among those up against the wall if The Revolution ™ succeeds.
“the classic “useful idiots” who will be first among those up against the wall”
Well, not FIRST, that’s saved for the people they hate, the people that dared to oppose them, but as soon as THOSE people are all murdered with malice aforethought? Yes, very many of them are part of the second wave.
Yes, for them, reelection is the name of the game. The only game.
Hanged for it.
Horses are hung; traitors are hanged.
The next state to test Congress’s resolve will not file a request. It will simply run out of cash and dare anyone in Washington to watch retirees lose their checks on television.
It would be nice if someone in D.C. would be willing to call that bluff and issue a statement to the effect of, “We bailed you out once, not that long ago, and a lot of the people responsible for needing the bailout are still making decisions. That was your warning that your financials needed to be fixed. You didn’t fix them. It’s your responsibility.”
I feel sorry for the retirees and pensioners getting caught in the middle of all this, but I reiterate that the feds already bailed out California’s retirement system once — in 2021, not that long ago — and California refused to address the underlying problems; instead, they doubled down. What happens next is on California’s political leaders.
And those “multiemployer unions” with the failing pension plans? They’ll still stump for the Democrats that are running this mess. Who else would they support? A Republican? Hah!
It’d be nice if someone called that bluff, but until the Feds actually let somebody collapse everyone will ‘know’ it’s the Feds who are bluffing.
And for good reason, given their history.
Eventually the same thing will happen with Social Security, food stamps, etc.
Unfortunately, I doubt that the Great Awakening of understanding on this issue will preceded the Rude Awakening of the crash of this system.
Too many people have a vested interest in the way things are now to plan for the long term; they want to get as much as they can now, either assuming that things will get fixed eventually or assuming that they’ll be dead when the problems come home to roost.
Personally, I am not planning on Social Security being financially useful when I retire – I’m sure it will be there in some form, at least in name, but I doubt it will be useful, at least to those who have worked and done well.
They understand numbers just fine, and they’re not specifically TRYING to destroy the country. They realize that the people voting for them don’t understand numbers and don’t care if they destroy the country as long as they keep their money and power.
They understand numbers just fine, and they’re not specifically TRYING to destroy the country. They realize that the people voting for them don’t understand numbers and don’t care if they destroy the country as long as they keep their money and power.
Hanged for it.
Horses are hung; traitors are hanged.