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 state’s mainstream media. (John Seiler blogged earlier on one of those killer findings from Bloomberg’s investigation.) I urge everyone to read the whole thing. Here is the striking opening:
“Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters. The state’s 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job.
“Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction. Today, the state’s highest-paid employees make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime.”
Pulitzers usually go to much flashier work than exposing government profligacy, but this is Pulitzer-worthy journalism, for sure.
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Actually the prison guard contract was 9+% over 4 years- or 37% as I recall, over just 4 years. And that was average for how fast these so called “public safety” jobs increased form 2000-2010- 97% statewide, or 10% annoaly.
So a mere nine years ago we tossed Governor Gumby out on his ear and now we have elected his superannuated failure of a former boss to do everything Gumby did times ten. If this isn’t stark evidence of the madness of Crazyfornia voters than I don’t know what is. The mentality of this states voters seems to be – If “A” is bad then more of “A” is good. WTF ????????????????
Pack N Ship!
Bloomberg knew all of this before the election. All of those numbers were out there. It’s amazing how all this comes out nationwide AFTER the election.
This was Pulitzer worthy if blogged BEFORE the election.
Hondo…….
Get real, Hondo. There is no such thing as a blog being worthy of a Pulitzer. There is nothing new here anyway.