US Action News

Long term Democrat/progressive/socialist control has brought California to bankruptcy. Unions unholy alliance with Democrats, environmental wackos, and acclaimed victimhood of every group has brought the utopian state of California to ruin. Higher costs, higher taxes, ever increasing tyranny of regulations and thought police have made the state dysfunctional. The first to flee were businesses. Now people are seeing the results of their welfare state.

Together with an unsustainable $500 billion public pension overhang and $28 billion current budgetary shortfall, the effort to cap all energy production dooms the state to bankruptcy.

Fears that municipal bonds could spark a renewed financial crisis have been growing as the gargantuan size of many US states’ budget deficits has begun to weigh on the market.

“Throughout the country, 90 percent of cities and states are going to go bankrupt within the next five years, many of them sooner.” So says former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh sat down with Riordan to discuss state and local budget crises, public-sector unions, and why Riordan recently became a fan of current LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said Illinois was one of the states whose debt he would avoid. “Illinois is probably in the worst shape,”

Politically outrageous promises have hit the wall of limited resources. Reality is here. No amount of bluster or legislation can alter this fact. The laws of economics and mathematics are controlling.

California and Illinois would be first in line. David Skeel, University of Pennsylvania Law professor, on if it is legal for states to file for bankruptcy to deal with pension issues.

A recent estimate put these unfunded public employee pension liabilities at as much as $3.574 trillion. As frightening as that estimate is, it is probably unrealistically low.

Rep. Tom McClintock discusses whether the Golden State should get a government bailout. He says hell no. You have to tell the public employees to go pound sand.

These are the parts of America where the public employee unions have been calling the shots, insisting on expanded payrolls, ever higher pay, hugely generous fringe benefits and utterly unsustainable pension promises.