Oh what tangled webs we weave…..an MSHA postscript

Do any of you remember Rosa Scarcelli, the oh-so-rational sounding independent in the race for Governor of Maine during the election run-ups in 2010?

We had completely forgotten about her until the study of the MSHA topic reminded us of ‘affordable housing.’

Take a look at this, from her web site:

Rosa Scarcelli

Chief Executive Officer

Rosa Scarcelli currently owns and manages over eighty affordable housing complexes in Connecticut, Maine and Pennsylvania and continues to grow Stanford Management’s affordable housing portfolio.

She has managed the development of over $500 million in real estate assets throughout the Eastern United States, and oversees a large staff in several regional offices.

Affordable Housing Finance ranked her company as one of the fifty best affordable housing providers and as one of the ten fastest-growing housing providers in the country.

From the start of her career in 1992, Rosa has passionately devoted herself to real estate. She has since gained well-rounded experience in her industry, mastering such diverse areas as affordable  housing, the restoration of historically significant properties and urban renewal.

She has developed properties for both residential and commercial uses, in small rural towns and major metropolitan areas alike.

She received her Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College.

Would it surprise you to learn that even we are astonished by what we find when we start to turn over rocks?

And we’re especially heartened by the connection to our own local Ivory Tower.

Pogo, please call Poppycock Media at your earliest convenience; we’d like to schedule an interview.

And excuse me if I don’t answer your emails in a timely fashion.  I’ll be outside behind the barn barfing my brains out.

Technorati Tags: Cronyism,SOBs,affordable housing

MSHA….let the borrowed OPM roll

(Ed. Note: For the unitiated, ‘OPM,’ pronounced like o-pi-em, is an abbreviation for other people’s money.)

(Ed. Note: the above photos are of various ‘affordable housing’ projects around the country, which is to say government subsidized housing.  Their relevance will become clear, hopefully, in what follows.)

Let’s begin with two questions to stimulate your curiosity:

1)  Do you know what the Maine State Housing Authority (MSHA) is and does?

2)  Do you know how big a purse they control the strings of?

We’d be a bit surprised if you do know about them, and we damn well expect you to be surprised when you find out how much funding they control.  We were beyond surprised ourselves…we were stunned.  And we don’t stun all that easily, given where we’ve been and what we’ve seen over the years, both in Washington and Augusta.

MSHA is an ‘Authority.’  Where have we heard that term before?  Oh yeah, right here locally, where we have the MRRA – the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority.  In it’s former life, you may recall, MRRA was an Agency, but has been promoted to government big league status: an AUTHORITY!

To explain what the Maine State Housing Authority is, let’s go right to the source, Maine Statute (State Law, that is), which begins with these foreboding words:

§4722. Maine State Housing Authority established; powers, duties and restrictions

The Maine State Housing Authority is established and is a public body corporate and politic and an instrumentality of the State. [1987, c. 737, Pt. A, §2 (NEW); 1987, c. 737, Pt. C, §106 (NEW); 1989, c. 6, (AMD); 1989, c. 9, §2 (AMD); 1989, c. 104, Pt. C, §§8, 10 (AMD).]

1. Powers and duties.  In addition to the powers granted by section 4741, the Maine State Housing Authority shall have the powers and duties to: (said powers and duties are enumerated in sub-paragraphs A thru Z followed by AA thru DD; see link above to read the item in totality)

(don’t fail to take a glimpse at section 4741, titled “Powers generally,” which lists 18 separate items under that heading.)

If you want your head to spin, your eyes to cross, your tongue to twist, your hair to catch on fire, your knickers in a knot, and your stomach to wretch, try reading and understanding all referenced and relevant sections.  And when you’re finished, please send us a 500 word taxpayer summary. 

We know there are qualified counsel among our readers; what a great little homework exercise for these “interested students.”  We promise to publish worthy submissions.

We ourselves haven’t read all the statutory language, because the details are not germane to the points to be made here.  Just the references in each sub-paragraph, parenthetical or otherwise, are enough to keep a law-school class busy for a year, let alone the overworked staff here at Poppycock Media.

Can you imagine how many state and federal bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists, ‘non-profits,’ assorted do-gooders, busybodies, law firms, and government hangers-on were involved in the construction of this set of ‘powers and duties,’ complete with all the references? While at the same time making sure the Authority was not subject to the oversight of the Governor or the Legislature?

Now multiply that thought by 50, since we’re confident that every state in the Union has a similar ‘Authority,’ a ‘body politic’ and ‘instrumentality of the state,’ that operates beyond the oversight of the elected representatives of the people.

Maybe it’s just us, but this seems like the Fantasyland version of a recipe for abuse, just waiting to grow government, make new friends, and pick winners and losers.  And perhaps, just perhaps, a healthy dose of crony capitalism thrown in for good measure.  Along with tax loopholes, tax breaks, and other forms of ‘corporate welfare.’

Take note, please, all you big government social and economic justice advocates.  And those concerned about the 99% v. 1% ‘debate.’

As fate would have it, we know some people who are ‘in the know’ on this subject and many others, and on your behalf, we’ve dug  into the facts attaching to the MSHA.  It turns out the results of last year’s election have caused eyes to be cast on government activities that have been operating with out much interest by our leaders for decades, like the MSHA, the Maine Turnpike Authority, and others.  Which is a very good thing, given their scale and reach both politically and fiscally.

Here’s some summary data we’ve obtained. The numbers that follow are from a report prepared by the MSHA titled "Federal Housing funds at work in Maine".

MEDIAN HOME PRICE:  Maine:  $177,500.  First Congressional District:  $221,900.  Second District: $138,000

MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME:  Maine: $45,734. 1st District: $52,328: 2nd District: $39,365.

INCOME NEEDED TO AFFORD MEDIAN HOME PRICE:  Maine:  $60,450; 1st District: $75,550; 2nd District: $47,000.

HOUSEHOLDS UNABLE TO AFFORD MEDIAN PRICE:  Maine: 63%; 1st District: 69%; 2nd District: 58%.

AVERAGE TWO BEDROOM RENT:  Maine: $722; 1st District: $840; 2nd District: $611.

HOUSEHOLDS UNABLE TO AFFORD AVERAGE TWO BEDROOM RENT:  Maine: 55%; 1st District: 55%; 2nd District: 54%.

TOTAL FEDERAL DOLLARS SPENT THROUGH MSHA DURING 2010 IN MAINE:  $1,105,593,552.

(Ed. Note: yes, that’s BILLION with a B, and that works out to an average of roughly $850 per person for every man, woman, and child in Maine.  That’s just federal dollars; we’ve got homework to do to determine how much other funding they spend per year!)

TOTAL NUMBER OF HOMES SERVED:  84,730.

(Ed. Note: Brunswick, in round numbers, is about one-sixtieth of Maine’s population.  If the ‘homes served’ were evenly distributed across the population, 1,400 of them would be in Brunswick.  That’s about 6 times the number of housing units in the former Navy housing complex on McKeen Street.  Think about that as you drive around town, and what it means about the scope of state and federal government involvement in our existence.  1,400 homes in Brunswick alone!)

AVERAGE PER HOME SERVED:  $13,048.

MAJOR LOW INCOME PROJECTS USING, OR PROPOSING TO USE, MSHA FUNDING:

   -ELM TERRACE, PORTLAND:  Projected cost of $314,000 per unit.

   -ASH ST., LEWISTON:  Projected costs of $273,000 per unit.

   -EMERY PROJECT, BIDDEFORD:  Cost per unit  $284,000.

   -MAINE HALL, BANGOR:  Cost per unit:  $214,000.

   -GILMAN PROJECT, WATERVILLE:  Cost per unit $292,000.

   -LOFTS, BATES MILL, LEWISTON:  Cost per unit: $199,375.

Think about those numbers for a long, hard moment; government “affordable housing” whose price puts it beyond the reach of more than two-thirds of Maine residents!  And keep in mind that 40% of every dollar the feds spend these days is created out of thin air (printed, or borrowed.)

The units referred to above are estimated to run in the range of 1,000 to 1,200 square feet each.  (We’d hope that “lofts” are less than that, but hey, when you’re the government, why skimp?)

In round numbers then, the price per square foot runs in the range of $200 to about $300 per square foot.  And this is in keeping with MSHA’s mission of creating ‘affordable housing,’ at least in government terms, we must note. 

We invite you to consider what your own domicile might be worth at say, $250 per square foot, and then ask how that compares with what you paid for it, and what you think it could sell for today.  As for us, we would take the money and run if we could get it, and we bet you’d gladly do the same. Our number would be well beyond what we imagined we might get in our wildest dreams, before the housing market tanked.

If you had a Billion dollars a year to dispense in Maine, plus as yet unidentified additional sums, do you think you’d have lots of good friends?  And people gathering around your door at all hours of the day and night, promising to ‘go forth and do good’ if you’d just send them some of that little nest-egg?  And maybe building careers that allow them to prosper off the un-overseen flow of OPM?

Now some seemingly obvious questions.  What about mobile homes, the preferred affordable housing for many Maine citizens? 

Or factory built apartment modules?  What are the protocols for moving people along once they’ve had some number of years in these units, or is this a permanent ‘entitlement?’  Etc, etc, et cetera.

What about excess vacant housing stock on the open market?  Including vacated base housing here in Brunswick?  Why isn’t that good enough?

Now the real burning question: just how deep do you think the fiscal, monetary, and economic hole we are digging for ourselves goes?  And what chance do you think we have of ever getting ourselves out of the hole?

For those of you with the gumption to follow  up on the subject, here’s an article to read: http://www.sunjournal.com/news/state/2011/10/27/affordable-housing-project-overrun-raises-stakes-maine-housing-mccormick/11067

And then there’s this:

http://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/METREAS-1a4863

This item contains this info:

The first MSHA board meeting with its new members is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, November 15 at the MSHA offices at 353 Water Street in Augusta.  All Authority board meetings are open to the public.  For the first time in memory, the meetings will be audio recorded. (Ed. Note: street address has been corrected.)

We hope you’ll consider coming to this meeting; we intend to do so, and we know others who plan to as well.  We expect this to be an ‘ah-ha’ moment for the leadership of MSHA, which has in all likelihood gotten a free pass from the taxpaying public for more years than you can count on your hands and feet.

We expect the entertainment and enlightenment level to be in the upper decile of such events.  Please join us, and bring some friends.

If only Frosty’s were still in business, we’d bring donuts for everyone, affordable or not.

Technorati Tags: MSHA,affordable housing,big government

Just too good not to pass along…

We have no idea who this guy is, but we came across this item in our morning ‘travels.’  We thinks he has something here.

Don’t let the term asymptote scare you; if you weren’t a math & science groupie, you may never have heard it before.  Think of it as a line or limit you keep getting closer and closer to, but never quite reach.  (Kind of like how the last two minutes of a football game never seems to end, right?)

As the entire office staff watched it, we were reminded of a quote we heard a few years back:

In our founding years, we said ‘give me liberty, or give me death.’  Years later, that changed to ‘give me liberty.’  Now we’re at the point of ‘give me, give me..”

Anyhow, enjoy the show.

Technorati Tags: Occupy wall street,today's youth

Trains? Oh yeah…..and other tidbits….

In keeping with what has become the typical ‘walking-back’ of grand projections by government agencies, or even more likely, their highly prized ‘consultants,’ we pass along this recent update on the outlook for Amtrak service to Brunswick.  Note, of course, if you read the article, that the decline in outlook is because of selfish Brunswick residents, who have graciously provided an alibi for the usual suspects and their typically overblown sales jobs.

For a few years now, official bloviators have been promising 35,000 visitors a year to Brunswick, or an average of 100 per day, via trains from Boston.  Looks like that will have to be scaled back to 20,000 or fewer.  Lots of credibility here from all fronts, at least if you believe government agency spokespersons.

From the Forecaster: 

Update: Maintenance facility delay means fewer Amtrak Downeaster trips between Portland and Brunswick

We’re too worn out from fall yard clean up chores to comment at length on the news contained herein, with the following exceptions:

According to Quinn, a preliminary schedule has northbound trains passing through Freeport just before 12:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Trains heading south from Brunswick will stop in Freeport just after 7 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

Are you kidding?  Are these times supposed to make sense from any point of view?

He (Wayne Davis, chairman of the rail-advocacy group TrainRiders/Northeast) also expressed concern about the impact of decreased service on the Brunswick business community, especially new businesses at Brunswick Station that were expecting more than two daily round trips.

We’re trying our best to recall the “new businesses” at Brunswick Station, and all we come up with business-wise is Scarlet Begonia’s, Byrnes Irish Pub, and Park Row Interiors, none of which really qualify as ‘new businesses.’  If any of these chose their current location because they believed customers would come to Brunswick in droves by train from Boston to patronize their business, they have their collective heads up their collective…well, you get our drift.

Oh, we know, there’s the recently opened Mid-Coast walk-in clinic, and the orthopedic medical practice.  Are we supposed to believe they made their decision to open because of expected train passengers from Boston?  We were born at night, but not last night, to use the old bromide.

Look – it’s very simple; government agencies, their enablers, their consultants, and their assorted Kool-Aid sippers are all to willing to sell us pigs-in-a-poke, bills-of-goods, and fantasy land dreamscapes. 

It’s what they do, and it’s why we are at the brink of economic collapse from which there is no escape.

Teacher Pay

You already know where we stand on this subject.

That doesn’t mean we can’t burden you with our views yet again.

The most frequent shibboleth we hear on this subject is that ‘teachers are underpaid.’  Our view is that SOME teachers are UNDERPAID, and SOME teachers are OVERPAID.

in other words, we believer firmly that union contracts that reduce all teachers to a homogeneous group of nameless, faceless ‘members’ are an affront to the concept of professionalism, and more importantly, mock the very concept of teacher ‘excellence.’

We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: any system that pays the very worst teachers the same as the very best teachers is unfair, unjust, and an insult to those who teach our children.  We cannot, for the life of us, understand how the vast majority of ‘educators’ have allowed themselves to be roped into such an arrangement.

And until they extract themselves from said arrangement, their protestations and equivocations will fall upon deaf ears at these offices.

Enough for now.  Here’s a recently published commentary on the subject.  Form your own opinions.

As for us, we will not waver from our conviction that the teachers’ loyalty to their unions and their anti-education agenda is their own worst enemy.  We will not change our opinion until the teachers’ change their allegiance.

Technorati Tags: trains,teachers,unons,government predictions

Worried about your job?: post script

We came across this quote recently, and were fascinated by it.  The words speak to our own affliction: 

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. -William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863)

With this as prelude, we remind you of a post we published yesterday that included these words:

Assuming the figures are valid, there was one school employee for every 8.47 students ten years ago, and one employee for every 6.47 students in the most recent fiscal year.  In so many words, department employment has remained largely flat in the face of a 27% decline in enrollment. 

Can you think of any other ‘profession’ that would be able to hold employment steady with a 27% decrease in ‘clients?’  Keep in mind we’re operating two fewer schools than just a few years ago.

As we laid our head upon the pillow last night, we realized that the government school ‘profession’ is unique, because even though the client base is down 27%, the revenue base is not.  Ten years ago in Brunswick, the school budget was $24 million; now it’s $33 million.  It’s been flat in the last few years despite major enrolment (‘client’) declines.

Jobs are not at risk because the revenue base for the school department is completely adjustable, independent of the number of students.  It’s a simple matter of using the ‘power of persuasion’ over a largely clueless, fawning, or scared public taxpayer base. Combined with the force of law to secure the revenue.  Property taxes are raised as necessary to provide the revenue the schoolies demand.

This situation is akin to the “he’s an SOB, but he’s our SOB'” concept we’ve been discussing in recent posts.  In so many words, “schools in Maine may be underperforming, but this underperforming school is OUR school.”

Another way to look at it is through the 99% vs 1% paradigm currently in vogue. Let’s describe the  99%, or more, in the terms mentioned above.  To whit:

• The clueless:
• “you mean we pay taxes to support the schools?”
• “what are you gonna do; taxes are always going up.”
• “I don’t have any idea how much we pay; our taxes are impounded as part of our house payment.”
• “who knows what the right amount to pay for schools is?”
• “I don’t have the time or the interest to worry about this; how much could it cost?”
• The fawning:
• “We moved to Brunswick because the schools are the absolute best.”
• “People buy homes here because the schools are so good.”
• “My child’s teacher is the best we’ve ever had.”
• “There’s no amount of money that’s too much when it comes to the schools.”
• “You simply can’t measure teacher effectiveness; it’s way too complicated to judge in such simple terms.”
• “These are professionals, and we need to give them the latitude and compensation they deserve, even if we can’t measure their results.”
• “I don’t care how much more the schools want; I'll gladly pay it.”
• “The school board doesn’t have to disclose contract negotiations with the teachers’ union; we elect them to do that and we shouldn’t question what they do.”
• “The children are our future; if you aren’t for the children, you should move elsewhere.”
• The scared:
• “I don’t want to speak up because I’m afraid of what might happen to my tax bill.”
• “I spoke up in the past, and it didn’t make a bit of difference, other than my neighbors said I was anti-school and anti-children.”
• '”What’s the use?; they’re just going to do what they always do, and why should I bother getting scorned in public?”
• “If I speak up, they’ll take it out on my kids.”
• “Who wants to be written up in the local paper as against ‘school excellence?’”

After you account for the above, you’re left with what might seem like the 1%, but is actually far less, who are willing to stand up and challenge the powers that be and the annual theatrics surrounding the budget.

Which is why our annual per student cost has grown from less than $7,000 to more than $13,000 in the last ten years. 

‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that’, to borrow a phrase from Seinfeld.

And judging by what we read in the press about the current field of school board candidates, we can count on more of the same, or more.

No one seems interested in managing the school enterprise on behalf of property taxpayers.  Instead, they seem only to be interested in who can spend the most to prove they care the most. 

Or more.

Technorati Tags: Brunswick,schools,budgets,taxes,jobs

Fin-centric post script

For you hot car groupies out there, here’s a link to a car very, very close to the one this reporter had.  Same color, same engine.  And only $175,000!

Same color, but does not have the Chrysler 300 markings.  And exact same engine; make sure you look closely at it.  The carburetor on the left fuels the cylinders on the right, and vice versa.  THAT was some engine.

When we drove across country, and stopped at service stations and had the oil checked, it caused quite a stir when the gas jockey first saw those tubes and the carburetors outside the cylinder banks.

But they loved selling us gas!

Tuning up this SOB was quite a challenge.  To change plugs, you had to take off the front wheels and remove panels inside the fenders to get acess to the engine and the plugs.  You could not reach them from the top.

What fun.

Technorati Tags: memories,rare cars

Oh, don’t you just love those ‘nice young people’ protesting down there on Wall Street?

Here in Maine, where we’re blessed with the oldest population of any state in the country, we often hear such kind and tolerant language when it comes to civil unrest and various other indiscretions from young and not so young ‘activists.’  And we often see very visible signs of such activists from many decades ago, who simply can’t resist plastering the back end of their Subarus and Volvos with the chicest bumper stickers du jour.

Good for them, we say.  At least if they’re sincere and act with integrity of purpose.

Like everything else these days, ‘protesting’ has evolved to become something more than meets the eye.  In this context, the notion of ‘useful idiots,’ often attributed to Lenin, is more apropos than ever.

(Just so you know, we’re Marxists here at Side.  Our favorite is Groucho, whose sense of humor was closest to our own.)

Who knows when things will turn violent…they already have, to some degree, and crime is rampant…and how violent for how long?

As Michelle Malkin said in her recent speech in Portland. the OWS protesters “want all the benefits of socialism, without any of the costs, and they want all the benefits of capitalism without any of the costs.”

Here’s some news you should find ‘amusing:’ those nice young people have attracted support from some very, very interesting corners.  Read here to have your eyes opened.

For those who don’t have the time, the patience, or the inclination to do so, here’s a list of prominent supporters, complete with reference links to back up the assertions:

===================================================

The 99%: Official list of Occupy Wall Street’s supporters, sponsors and sympathizers

Communist Party USA

Sources: Communist Party USA, OWS speech, The Daily Caller

American Nazi Party

Sources: Media Matters, American Nazi Party, White Honor, Sunshine State News

Ayatollah Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran

Sources: The Guardian, Tehran Times, CBS News

Barack Obama

Sources: ABC News, CBS News, ForexTV, NBC New York

The government of North Korea

Sources: Korean Central News Agency (North Korean state-controlled news outlet), The Marxist-Leninist, Wall Street Journal, Times of India

Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam

Sources: video statement (starting at 8:28), Black in America, Weasel Zippers, Philadelphia Weekly

Revolutionary Communist Party

Sources: Revolutionary Communist Party, Revolution newspaper, in-person appearance

David Duke

Sources: Talking Points Memo, video statement, davidduke.com

Joe Biden

Sources: Talking Points Memo, video statement, Mother Jones

Hugo Chavez

Sources: Mother Jones, Reuters, Examiner.com

Revolutionary Guards of Iran

Sources: Associated Press, FARS News Agency, UPI

Black Panthers (original)

Sources: in-person appearance, Occupy Oakland, Oakland Tribune

Socialist Party USA

Sources: Socialist Party USA, IndyMedia, The Daily Caller

US Border Guard

Sources: White Reference, www.usborderguard.com, Gateway Pundit, Just Another Day blog

Industrial Workers of the World

Sources: IWW web site, iww.org, in-person appearances

CAIR

Sources: in-person appearance, Washington Post, CAIR, CAIR New York

Nancy Pelosi

Sources: Talking Points Memo, video statement, ABC News, The Weekly Standard

Communist Party of China

Sources: People’s Daily (Communist Party organ), Reuters, chinataiwan.org, The Telegraph

Hezbollah

Sources: almoqawama.org, almoqawama.org (2), almoqawama.org (3), wikipedia

9/11Truth.org

Sources: 911truth.org (1), 911truth.org (2), 911truth.org (3)

International Bolshevik Tendency

Sources: bolshevik.org, Wire Magazine

Anonymous

Sources: Adbusters, The Guardian, video statement

White Revolution

Source: whiterevolution.com

International Socialist Organization

Sources: Socialist Worker, socialistworker.org, in-person appearance

PressTV (Iranian government outlet)

Sources: PressTV, wikipedia

Marxist Student Union

Sources: Marxist Student Union, Big Government, marxiststudentunion.blogspot.com

Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Sources: FightBack News, fightbacknews.org

ANSWER

Sources: ANSWER press release, ANSWER web site, Xinhua

Party for Socialism and Liberation

Sources: Liberation News (1), pslweb.org, The Daily Free Press, Liberation News (2)

====================================================

Which proves once again just how irresistible the innocence and good intentions of ‘nice young people’ is to even the most hard-hearted among us.

And how many problems we can expect to have visited upon us from this ‘movement.’

We’re felling better already.  How about you?

Technorati Tags: activists,occupy wall street

Worried about your job? Or know someone else who is?

Most of us who are vertical and taking nourishment know that the dominant theme of public discourse these days is jobs.  Millions have lost their jobs, unemployment is stuck at 9% plus, massive government spending is fixing nothing, and first time unemployment applications run about 400,000 a week.  Week after week.

In the midst of this economic goat rope, we’re forced to suffer the inane comments of our elite ruling class, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (or as we think of him, the Senate Mortician) and VP Joe (Joey Plugs) Biden prominent among them.  They want us to believe that things in the private sector are just peachy; it’s the public sector that is suffering.  Yah, shure, Oley.

We won’t bore you with source quotes; we have too much respect for your gastrointestinal well-being.  You can read the essentials here, complete with links to reference material.

As for the facts, you can go here to find figures based on the federal government’s own census data.  To put it mildly, Reid, Biden, and anyone else who backs them up on their claims are bald-faced liars, and should be brought up on charges for fragrant violation of the public trust.

Enough already.  We want to move on to local issues, the kind you’d expect to see discussed in the local press. If you believe in the tooth fairy and free lunches, that is.

We’ve reported on Brunswick School enrollment figures many times in the past, and most recently discussed it here.  Matched to budget figures, the net result is that per student expenditures have risen from less than $7000 per student in the first year of the new century to more than $13,500 per student in the current school year, or virtually double in a decade.

We had more than 3300 students then, and have less than 2500 now.  While not as severely, statewide enrolment has been declining steadily due to Maine’s demographic decline, a major problem in its own right.

Let’s move on to related school system employment.  Data received from town offices shows School Department employment of 398 early in this decade, rising to a peak of 415 three years ago, and a total of 396 in the fiscal year just passed.  These figures “represent the department’s best estimates of full time positions” according to a note on the data page.

Assuming the figures are valid, there was one school employee for every 8.47 students ten years ago, and one employee for every 6.47 students in the most recent fiscal year.  In so many words, department employment has remained largely flat in the face of a 27% decline in enrollment.  Can you think of any other ‘profession’ that would be able to hold employment steady with a 27% decrease in ‘clients?’  Keep in mind we’re operating two fewer schools than just a few years ago.

Here’s the ‘money fact:’ if the employee to student ratio had been held constant at 8.47, the department would have 303 employees now, or 93 fewer than the current total.  How much lower would that make your property tax bill?  Simple answer: a bunch.

Now the ‘money question:’ if enrolment had stayed flat over this time, how many employees might the department have added?  Would it be 93?  Actually, it could be considerably more if you go by the numbers alone.  At a ratio of 6.47, employment for 3350 students would be about 517, or over 120 more than the current figure and the head count a decade ago.

The pregnant puzzler, it goes without saying, is just how many new employees the department will demand if, against all odds, enrolment should start to rise again?

The underlying message here is that if you want to be immune from prevailing economic conditions, go to work for the government, and especially, the government schools.  Guaranteed raises, no performance standards, Cadillac benefits, and virtually lifetime employment no matter what.

We can only wonder when Harry the Undertaker and Joey Plugs will regale us with these inconvenient realities. 

And in a related story, hell freezes over.

Technorati Tags: school department,Brunswick,budgets,taxes,jobs,unemployment

Memory flogger, fin-centric variety

It’s a fairly well kept secret, but in some quarters around town, your humble correspondent is known as the Brunswick Fury, as in ‘a fury of creative energy.’ In other quarters, we’re known as the old fart, which is, in a manner of speaking, a ‘Fury’ that is well past it’s prime.

There is, ironically enough, another ‘Fury’ in our CV.  It’s a 1960 Plymouth Fury convertible.  We owned one for two years, the first of which was our senior year in college (Rutgers University.)

On our recent trek to the family reunion, we encountered almost a carbon copy as we were coming back into North Jersey from Pennsylvania.  Like any good reporter, we had our Flip camera at hand, and shot this video over the dashboard of our chauffeured SUV.

You’ll note that the fins on the convertible are amongst its most prominent features.  As best we can tell, the security team tailing the Fury is in an early 60’s Oldsmobile Starfire convertible; it may be a 1962.

The good memories came flooding back as we followed the Fury.  Ours had a white top, and the paint was a medium red, lighter than the ‘Candy Apple Red’ popular in those days, and the apparent color on the trailing Olds.

Many will think the the car was a ‘chick magnet,’ but the most fun we had with it was cruising the summer boardwalk scene along the Jersey Shore.

Our particular vehicle was equipped with the Chrysler 300 package, which made it very rare.  We bought it from a fraternity brother in 1962, whose father owned a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership, which explains the unique version.  And the fact that the engine had been balanced and blueprinted at the dealership.

It also had an RCA 45 rpm record player mounted upside down under the center of the dashboard.  You took your favorite 45’s and pushed them up onto the spindle.  It was great fun to pull up next to someone else at a stoplight, or in traffic, and have them yell over to you ‘hey, what station are you llistening to?’  Replying that it was  not the radio, but our record player, always elicited double takes and looks that were priceless.  We especially remember playing ‘Big Boy Pete,’ which seemed to get the biggest interest.

The Chrysler 300 package meant the various emblems on the body, and the hubcaps, were all 300 logos.  More important, we had the 383 cubic inch hemi engine with ram induction and dual fours.  And stick shift to get the most from the engine.

She got about 8 miles per gallon, at about 30 cents or so per gallon back then.  Tire technology was not up to the power at our command, and the gentlest tap on the gas pedal, in any gear, would burn rubber, as much as you might want.

We paid $1850 for the car in 1962, with 20,000 miles on it, and after graduation in 1963, drove cross country in it to begin our pursuit of fame and fortune on the left coast.  And as they say, the rest is history.  Untold and undistinguished, but history none-the-less.

God, how we’d love to have that car back.  What an idiot we were for trading it in on a brand new 1964 Corvair for about $350 because we were getting married and needed a more ‘practical’ car.  It had only 40,000 miles on it.

Such is the ill-considered impulsiveness of youth, we suppose.

(Ed. Note: the assertion that we are known as the ‘Brunswick Fury’ is pure poppycock.)

Technorati Tags: memories,cars,lost youth

No-bid naughtiness: the details so far….

You’ve probably already forgotten, and frankly, we wouldn’t blame you, that we introduced this subject here.  And then we teased you to be ready for a follow-up here.

We’re now ready to provide that follow-up.  Our only reason for the delay is that we were busy enjoying life, if you don’t mind us doing so.  We visited North Jersey, where we were born and raised, to visit our daughter and family, who relocated there in recent months.  And to join in a partial family reunion in the Lancaster, PA area, heart of Amish/Pennsylvania Dutch country.  It was an enjoyable and rewarding several days.

Back to business; we promised we’d update you with specific information once we had it, and here we come.  We also need to tell you that the activity level in this subject area is far higher than we had anticipated.  As so often happens, once you start looking into things, new insights and information start coming your way.

Before we report on what we’ve found, you might want to read this article: teacher's health insurance.  Serendipitously, we got the link from a friend; it’s ‘right in the wheelhouse’ of our discussion, and you should find it illuminating.

As to specific information, here’s what we have so far:

Brunswick School Department insurance figures, provided by their Finance Director, are as follows:

Total: $4,805,000, of which $4,430,000, or 92% goes to MEA coffers, and 3.4% goes to the MMA.  (MEA is the Maine Education Association – the state teacher’s union; MMA is the Maine Municipal Association – the state ‘union’ of municipal governments.)

Employee Medical $4,430,000; from MEA benefits trust; these are ‘public funds only.’  Employee contributions for medical insurance are $533,154 in addition to employer share  of $4,430,000.  In other words, total funds to the MEA for Brunswick school department employee health insurance are a shade under $5 million.

Employee Dental $150,732; from Securian.

Workers Compensation $136,934; from MMA.

Motor Vehicle  $7,595; Kyes Agency, Farmington.

Liability  $19,985; Kyes.

Property Casualty  $60,024; Kyes.

Let’s extrapolate those figures to statewide totals.

Brunswick has less than 2500 students, in a state that  has about 180,000 total.  If the per student payments to the MEA and MMA were equal state wide, the school departments would be spending a total of nearly $360 million on insurance with the MEA, and $9.8 million  with the MMA.  Here in Brunswick, we’re sending the MEA about $2,000 per student on employee medical alone.

Wow times twenty! 

On the municipal side, here are the figures:

MMEHT – Health Insurance - $1,646,576.79 of which $1,332,621.00 is paid by the Town of Brunswick, and the remainder paid by employees.  (This is the health insurance program run by the MMA.)

MMA Worker’s Compensation Pool - $183,032.83 all paid by the Town of Brunswick.

MMA Property & Casualty Risk Pool -  $156,654.30 all paid by Town of Brunswick.

(Everything else is down in the noise for or purposes here.)

Summing up, from what we know, our municipal government spends about $2 million on insurance annually with the MMA.  If Brunswick is typical, the MMA does about $140 million in total insurance business state-wide.

Based on figures we’ve seen in recent years, this insurance business yields about $8 million in excess revenue (“profit” in business terms) for the MMA.  If the MEA has the same ‘profit’ margin, their insurance business would turn a ‘revenue excess’ of more than $20 million.

In both cases, since neither is a public corporations with stockholders, these profits are available for use as the organizations see fit – most typically, in partisan political activism and lobbying efforts.

These figures set the stage for examining activity in the Maine legislature in recent months.  Two bills have been passed and signed into public law that address the conduct of MEA insurance operations.

The first began as LD 1326, “An Act To Allow School Administrative Units To Seek Less Expensive Health Insurance Alternatives.”  You can find the status summary for the bill here.  If you do, the most important thing to note is that the bill passed on a largely party line vote.

The law, as passed, is not a mandate of any sort; it simply requires that school districts be given access to claims experience information they need to pursue the option of competitive bids for health insurance; information that the MEA and their selected insurer have been able to legally withhold in the past.

The second bill, which began as LD 404, also became law, and is entitled “An Act To Assist School Administrative Units In Providing Health Insurance to Their Employees.”  In basic terms, this law requires that school department administrators seek competitive bids for health insurance for their employees at least once every 5 years, rather than being permanently locked in to the MEA statewide plan.  Pretty radical stuff, huh? 

According to reports we’ve received, the MEA devoted considerable effort to lobbying against these bills.  They were unsuccessful, as the new legislative majorities were supportive of competition as a fundamental method for delivering best value for taxpayer dollars.

This did not sit well with the teachers’ union, and the MEA is therefore pursuing further legal action to have the laws overturned.  You can read about it here.  This press release reads, in part, as follows:

Maine Education Association Challenges New State Health Care Laws

10/14/2011 03:23 PM ET

The MEA's Health Benefit Trust, which covers tens of thousands of Maine educators and their families, contend that the new laws will weaken its system.

The Maine Education Association's Health Benefit Trust is challenging two new Maine laws it says will weaken the system that covers tens of thousands of Maine teachers and their family members.

The Health Benefit Trust filed a suit in federal court Oct. 12 aimed at blocking the implementation of LD 1326, which requires the Trust's insurer, Anthem-BlueCross and Blue Shield, to release the claims history or "experience rating" for any school unit that requests the information.  (Oh the horror!)

In addition, the MEA's board of directors has authorized a legal challenge to LD 404, a new law which requires the Health Benefit Trust to use a competitive bidding process and to create a lower-cost insurance option by July 1 of 2012. 

The full statement is loaded with the equivocation and stereotypical rhetoric of politically protected special interest groups; we choose not to confront you with all of it, lest you suffer gastric unrest.  But you can go for the full Monte if you wish; just click on the link above.

Hence we come to this: what is our point in discussing all of this? 

Lacking anything more compelling, we suppose it’s to ask these questions:

1) Why would one party join forces with a special interest, very powerful union, to block ordinary taxpayers from being able to access the benefits of the competitive open market?

2) Why would the Maine Teachers’ Union be so willing to go to the mat, and invest big lobbying dollars, to protect their established monopoly in school department health insurance coverage?

The questions, we believe, answer themselves.  It’s to make sure the union can keep funding THEIR sons-a-bitches, in order for them to maintain privileged status over ordinary tax-paying citizens who are tired of more money in education buying less and less in the way of results.

When will you conclude we’ve had enough?  With all the news breaking lately on favored interests getting their way, how much longer do you think we can endure this flagrant abuse of common sense and the true public interest?

Technorati Tags: Teachers' Union,school budgets,MMA,MEA,health insurance legislation

We simply have no room to cut….

On Monday, we spoke about big government excess, speculation, and moral hazard, among other things.

Care to see the numbers associated with these concepts?  Give these a look-see:

The table is from this article:  A New Spending Record

It’s our view that these clearly destructive and unsustainable numbers are in large measure due to government speculation dripping with moral hazard:

• Speculation that massive increases in food stamps will eradicate poverty. 
• Speculation that huge increases in unemployment insurance will increase employment. 
• Speculation that mortgage rules that encourage the unqualified to buy a home, and then when they fall off the cliff, that mortgage subsidies will somehow make them qualified. 
• Speculation that car companies that are no longer viable can be made viable with government subsidies. 
• Speculation that otherwise non-viable alternative energy approaches have only failed because the right people were not encouraging them with other peoples’ money. 
• Speculation that federal money to pay for teachers, policemen, and firemen, historically locally funded, will not cause a crisis when the money runs out. 
• Speculation that big money firms that have no chance of long term success will succeed if only the government subsidizes them. 
• Speculation that capitalism is a failed system, and that collectivism, which has a dismal record, can suddenly become workable and sustainable, and generate more wealth.
• Speculation that pork distribution trumps responsible governing.

And these people say that cutting a measly few percent from these budget levels is virtually impossible, and would cause needless suffering?

The really sad thing is that the nearly billion dollar mistake that is Solyndra doesn’t even make round off error scale in figures this big.

Think about that: a billion dollar boondoggle that doesn’t even reach the level of ‘a drop in the bucket.’

BA, BVA.  (can you guess what these stand for?)

Technorati Tags: big government,speculation,moral hazard

Solyndra: the moral hazard of big government excess, corruption, and corporate cronyism, not to mention ‘fair share’ duplicity.

Our lavish spending big government is afflicted with a multitude of pathologies that threaten the core founding principle of ‘self-governance,’ and hence the American experiment.  There may be no finer exemplar of the phenomenon than the recent Solyndra fiasco.

This is, we believe, a critical teaching moment.

Do you know what moral hazard is?  And how it relates to ‘Other Peoples’ Money?’

We began to hear ‘moral hazard’ in common usage just a few years back, and although the words ‘moral’ and ‘hazard’ are simple enough in meaning, we weren’t sure what they meant when joined together.

‘Moral hazard’ is easily illustrated by the rental car business.  When someone rents a car from Avis, or Hertz, or whomever, they are not likely to have the same sense of responsibility for the rental car as they have for their own vehicle.  “Hey, it’s not my car!”  “Floor it; let’s see what it will do; hell, it’s just a rental car!”

In other words, moral hazard exists when two parties to an arrangement have widely different personal stakes in the deal. The concept of Other Peoples’ Money dovetails perfectly with the idea of moral hazard.

To expand on this further, here are two principles we’ve posted before, each from a publication of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy:

1) What belongs to you, you tend to take care of;
what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair. 

If you think you’re so good at taking care of property, go live in someone else’s house, or drive their car, for a month. I guarantee you neither their house nor their car will look the same as yours after the same period of time.

If you want to take the scarce resources of society and trash them, all you have to do is take them away from the people who created or earned them and hand them over to some central authority to manage. In one fell swoop, you can ruin everything.

(The best example we can think of locally is how the schools are allowed to slip into deferred maintenance status in favor of rising salary and benefit expenses, and ‘suddenly’ become a crisis.)

2) Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

Ever wonder about those stories of $600 hammers and $800 toilet seats that the government sometimes buys? You could walk the length and breadth of this land and not find a soul who would say he’d gladly spend his own money that way. And yet this waste often occurs in government and occasionally in other walks of life, too. Why?  Because invariably, the spender is spending somebody else’s money.

When you spend other people’s money to buy something for someone else, the connection between the earner, the spender and the recipient is the most remote — and the potential for mischief and waste is the greatest. Think about it — somebody spending somebody else’s money on yet somebody else. That’s what government does all the time.

Nobody — repeat, nobody — spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.

(Add quid-pro-quo to the equation, as in campaign donations in exchange for favors, and the danger increases exponentially.)

Now on to the Solyndra file.  In a nutshell, this case brings into play the wealthy, non-profits, fair share, SOBs ne plus ultra, and all the rest.  In other words, all the wondrous things that have dominated public discourse in recent months, and much of the recent posting here on Side.

Oil magnate George Kaiser: "There's never before been more money shoved out the government's door in world history."

Here are two articles you should read:

Solyndra and a Billionaire’s Guilt Trip, and The Solyndra Economy.

Cutting to the chase, what these articles reveal is:

• Billionaire George Kaiser, who feels a profound sense of guilt for his circumstances, but nevertheless has his family’s fortune set up in a non-profit foundation, which minimizes tax exposure for their vast wealth.
• The Kaiser family fortune derives from oil, the morally depraved energy source that is the villain in the solar/green/renewable energy phantasmagoria.
• Even though paying his ‘fair share’ seems not to be a priority, Kaiser has visited the Obama White House 16 times, or on average, every two months or so.
• The non-profits’ funds are staged in such a way as to be the primary private stake-holder in the failed Solyndra gamble.
• Willful irresponsibility of the administration in matters of due diligence on giving taxpayer money to Solyndra, and allowing said funds to be put in a lower position than private funds should bankruptcy occur, which it has.
• The benefits of having your Son of a Bitch being the SOB ne plus ultra.
• The rampant corporate cronyism practiced in the highest levels of our government.

In a word, the absolute moral bankruptcy of government when it goes so far beyond its legitimate boundaries as to be out of control.  Frankly, the more we think and write about this, the more we are at a total loss of words to express our concerns, and more so, our outrage.

As we said some days ago, be afraid, be very afraid.  We certainly are.

Summary: Speculation vs. Investment

Just the other day, we heard a news report about oil speculators.  Surely you remember them. 

Gasoline prices at the moment are roughly twice what they were three years ago.  When the prices began to rise after the new administration took office, the increases were blamed on greedy and irresponsible private sector ‘speculators.’  Meanwhile, government at both state and federal levels repeatedly told us about the need for taxpayer ‘investments’ to restore economic growth from the doldrums of “the great recession.”  No matter how much it might cost.

The recent report from the CFA said that oil prices now would be between $60 and  $75 per barrel if not for the effects of speculation in the worldwide oil market, which has resulted in 2011 prices of $80 to $100 per barrel.

As we reflect on the speculation in the public sector, that being government, particularly as exemplified by Solyndra and similar wildly unsuccessful uses of other peoples’ money, we are troubled by a nagging question.

Just how much of an effect has government speculation, which necessitates reckless printing of money and lavish issuing of debt instruments, had on the price of government, as reflected in taxes, inflationary loss of purchasing power, and the personal share of the national debt we and our progeny all carry on our shoulders?

And how much lower could our taxes be, and how much more our dollars worth, if not for all this reckless speculation in the name of political cronyism of the vilest sort?

By comparison, those who invest in oil futures look downright innocent, if you don’t mind me saying so.  Somehow, when you’re operating with your own money, not that of anonymous others, and you aren’t looking to guarantee your re-election, things seem much clearer. 

And almost childishly innocent by comparison.

Technorati Tags: SOBs,fair share,non-profits,cronyism,speculation