Tag "Chris Reed"

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You and what army are going to make me pay?

Dec. 24, 2012 By Chris Reed The city of San Bernardino’s defiance of CalPERS’ demands for payment will be remembered as the first in a very long line of defiant acts from local governments in California as budgets that don’t

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No ‘time out’ for city in rail authority’s cross-hairs

Dec. 21, 2012 By Chris Reed The nervousness is growing in Bakersfield as the California High-Speed Rail Authority moves toward locking into a route that will disrupt the lives of thousands of people — and maybe for no reason. The

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The hardball tactics that got Prop. 39 tax hike passed

Dec. 20, 2012 By Chris Reed In June, California voters rejected a hike on cigarette taxes to fund cancer research. The defeat of Proposition 29 strongly suggested that the general anti-tax beliefs of most of the Golden State electorate remained

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School bond abuses: Ignoring the motive behind the scandals

Dec. 19, 2012 By Chris Reed The California media are finally beginning to figure out that school bonds are being abused, with money being borrowed on horrible terms or with funds being spent on things that school bonds historically have

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Pension reform puts teacher take-home pay in cross hairs

Dec. 19, 2012 By Chris Reed The conventional wisdom about the 400,000 members of the California Teachers Association and the 120,000 members of the California Federation of Teachers is difficult to dispute:  Their unions dominate Sacramento in a way no other

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LAUSD board confirms its union-occupied status

Dec. 18, 2012 By Chris Reed When I heard that the Los Angeles Unified school board had passed a resolution barring its superintendent from seeking grants without board approval, I was 10,000 percent certain it was because John Deasy had

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CalPERS’ new shtick: Ripping CalPERS = ripping retirees. Groan.

Dec. 17, 2012 By Chris Reed The California Public Employees’ Retirement System is a piece of work. For years, it has downplayed the pension crisis, ignored its central role in the crisis by encouraging a 50 percent retroactive giveaway to

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Teacher unions the enemies of ‘social justice,’ not the champions

Dec. 14, 2012 By Chris Reed Here’s the intro to my take for City Journal on the absurdity of the California Federation of Teachers pretending to care about minorities. “The online premiere last week of the California Federation of Teachers’

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George Skelton: 34% is a ‘small minority’

Dec. 13, 2012 By Chris Reed The persistence with which George Skelton writes silly, slanted stuff is hard to exaggerate. He only occasionally tells his L.A. Times readers that unions run Sacramento. He is a constant advocate of the Sacramento

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Bloomberg News breaks new ground on state’s dysfunction

Dec. 12, 2012 By Chris Reed There are so many killer facts in the Bloomberg News story from Tuesday on how California went to hell that I barely know where to start. So many have never been exposed by the

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