Welcome, Dave, and, yeah, it is very predictable: a government service is privatized and the first thing the MBAs attack is the pension plan. No one thinks about the fact that the President of the United States seems to get along on $400K/year, and a lot of people still seem to want the job. I have to say that $3.5 million is clearly excessive because the head football coach at the University of Florida only make $2 million/year, and that’s the most important job in the world, ask anyone in Florida.
The fact that the timber companies own the majority of land in Alabama and the state constitution limits their property tax to less than a dollar per acre is criminal. How can the government do anything for the people of Alabama with restrictions like that?
The Koch brothers probably have the TVA in their sights after they finish taking over all of the publicly-owned utilities in Wisconsin, their current target. They will break it up, and put the total debt load into one sub-unit and have that unit declare bankruptcy – it isn’t hard to do, and has been done multiple times in the past. How do you think someone like Donald Trump can have three bankruptcies and still be rolling in cash? Paying what you owe, is only for the lower classes, not the high rollers.
It is amazing how these deficit-hawk Republicants never consider the source of the money they suck out of FEMA. If they cut the budget, there is no money for FEMA, and people are on their own. A lot of the people who got hit are unemployed and lost their homeowners/renters insurance when they couldn’t afford to pay the premiums, so coming back is going to be really slow.
I have been through a number of major hurricanes, so I know about the situation, and understand their pain, but they have to stop voting for people who hate them.
]]>It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Alabama took the money for “Gulf Coast recovery” after Katrina, and used it to build high-priced condos in Tuskaloosa, rather than rebuilding Bayou la Batre. Access to luxury rental properties during the football season was more important than the lives of a bunch of poor fisherfolk.
]]>– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
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