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California is always having a fiscal emergency because the Democrats who have controlled the California Legislature for decades spend and spend and spend. Bankruptcy for California is not the answer and I am amazed that it is being considered.

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers

Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign.

But proponents say some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal government’s aid.

Beyond their short-term budget gaps, some states have deep structural problems, like insolvent pension funds, that are diverting money from essential public services like education and health care. Some members of Congress fear that it is just a matter of time before a state seeks a bailout, say bankruptcy lawyers who have been consulted by Congressional aides.

You know, I believe in political accountability and the states are sovereign entities as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. If California or Illinois have a massive insolvency problem, then the states MUST solve them.

I mean, didn’t they cause their own problems in the first place?

A few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times posted an online state budget balance calculator for readers to attempt to balance the California budget. It took me about 3 minutes. In California, Jerry Brown, the new and former California Governor and the Democrat dominated legislature can do likewise – if they have the political will.

A California state bankruptcy would stiff retired older workers and state/city/county bond holders immediately and have other long term effects without delivering the needed political will or reforms – to say NO to excessive government spending. Bankruptcy would simply delay the enactment of appropriate budgetary solutions – like cutting spending and prioritizing government spending.

BK would simply reset the clock for the POLS.

Bankruptcy could permit a state to alter its contractual promises to retirees, which are often protected by state constitutions, and it could provide an alternative to a no-strings bailout. Along with retirees, however, investors in a state’s bonds could suffer, possibly ending up at the back of the line as unsecured creditors.

All of a sudden, there’s a whole new risk factor, said Paul S. Maco, a partner at the firm Vinson & Elkins who was head of the Securities and Exchange Commissions Office of Municipal Securities during the Clinton administration.

For now, the fear of destabilizing the municipal bond market with the words state bankruptcy has proponents in Congress going about their work on tiptoe. No draft bill is in circulation yet, and no member of Congress has come forward as a sponsor, although Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, asked the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, about the possiblity in a hearing this month.

State bankruptcy is a bad idea.

If Jerry Brown cannot balance the state budget, have him call me – I’ll do it for him in about 3 minutes.

As far as an oversight panel for California, as a California voter I reject that idea. If voters don’t like what their POLS are doing, then WE THE PEOPLE will take care of the problem. If insolvency occurs, then the POLS have to go and we will elect others.

No federal bureaucrat or federal judge should be disenfranchising me or other California voters.

Just say NO to State Bankruptcy.

Update:

And, what is Hugh Hewitt pushing here?

Jerry Brown looks like he has begun the kabuki dance to the bankruptcy court by first ordering some cuts and then appealing to voters for a tax hike which will fail.  (Very few people believe that a tax hike will pass.  California is taxed out and any marginal burden will send high income residents and moire businesses fleeing.)

There is as yet no way for the states to file for reorganization, so Congress needs to hurry up.  I will ask Congressman John Campbell of the House Financial Services Committee about this today, but there is no other way to proceed except for a reset.  The Congress isn’t going to print money for the states to pay their union bills.  It is that simple.

Damn Hugh, let Jerry Brown do his job and make the necessary cuts. If the tax increases pass, then that is California’s problem.

I don’t see how a state default or reset, as you call it, will help anyone – except postpone necessary budgetary reforms.

California is always having a fiscal emergency because the Democrats who have controlled the California Legislature for decades spend and spend and spend. Bankruptcy for California is not the answer and I am amazed that it is being considered.

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers

Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign.

But proponents say some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal government’s aid.

Beyond their short-term budget gaps, some states have deep structural problems, like insolvent pension funds, that are diverting money from essential public services like education and health care. Some members of Congress fear that it is just a matter of time before a state seeks a bailout, say bankruptcy lawyers who have been consulted by Congressional aides.

You know, I believe in political accountability and the states are soveriegn entities as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. If California or Illinois have a massive insolvency problem, then the states MUST solve them.

I mean, didn’t they cause their own problems in the first place?

A few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times posted an online state budget balance calculator for readers to attempt to balance the California budget. It took me about 3 minutes. In California, Jerry Brown, the new and former California Governor and the Democrat dominated legislature can do likewise – if they have the political will.

A California state bankruptcy would stiff retired older workers and state/city/county bond holders immediately and have other long term effects without delivering the needed political will or reforms – to say NO to excessive government spending. Bankruptcy would simply delay the enactment of appropriate budgetary solutions – like cutting spending and prioritizing government spending.

BK would simply reset the clock for the POLS.

Bankruptcy could permit a state to alter its contractual promises to retirees, which are often protected by state constitutions, and it could provide an alternative to a no-strings bailout. Along with retirees, however, investors in a state’s bonds could suffer, possibly ending up at the back of the line as unsecured creditors.

“All of a sudden, there’s a whole new risk factor,” said Paul S. Maco, a partner at the firm Vinson & Elkins who was head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Municipal Securities during the Clinton administration.
For now, the fear of destabilizing the municipal bond market with the words “state bankruptcy” has proponents in Congress going about their work on tiptoe. No draft bill is in circulation yet, and no member of Congress has come forward as a sponsor, although Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, asked the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, about the possiblity in a hearing this month.

State bankruptcy is a bad idea.

If Jerry Brown cannot balance the state budget, have him call me – I’ll do it for him in about 3 minutes.

As far as an oversight panel for California, as a California voter I reject that idea. If voters don’t like what their POLS are doing, then WE THE PEOPLE will take care of the problem. If insolvency occurs, then the POLS have to go and we will elect others.

No federal bureaucrat or federal judge should be disenfranchising me or other California voters.

Just say NO to State Bankruptcy

Patricia Krenwinkel should spend the rest of her life in prison. The California Parole Board concurs at least for another seven years.

In a decision suggesting that the brutal Sharon Tate murders are unforgivable, a parole board panel refused to consider releasing Patricia Krenwinkel, who told the board she killed for the love of Charles Manson.

The two-member panel made clear Thursday that it was the horror of the killings, one of the most notorious of the 20th century, that led them to reject the bid for parole in spite of Krenwinkel’s efforts to change her life.

They said that the murders of seven people in an extremely atrocious manner had impacted the entire world as evidenced by letters which came in from around the globe urging that she be kept behind bars.

“These crimes remain relevant,” said parole commissioner Susan Melanson. “The public is in fear.”

Melanson and Deputy Commissioner Steven Hernandez issued their decision after a four-hour hearing and more than an hour of deliberations at which Krenwinkel wept, apologized for her murderous deeds and said she was ashamed of her actions.

Members of victims’ families also cried and recalled their suffering after the murders and called for her to be kept behind bars. Melanson said the notoriety of the crimes and their viciousness weighed heavily in the decision.

Cult leader Manson, now 75, refused to appear at his most recent parole hearings where he was denied a release date. His multiple disciplinary violations and refusals to participate in rehabilitation activities make it likely that he will never be released.

At times he has said that he does not want his freedom and considers prison his home.

Krenwinkel, who has been imprisoned longer than any other woman in California, told the parole board earlier Thursday that she threw away everything good in herself and became a “monster” after she met Manson.

Krenwinkel, 63, one of Manson’s two surviving female followers, has maintained a clean prison record in her four decades behind bars, but her chances for release appeared slim following parole rejections in other Manson cases.

Krenwinkel was convicted along with Manson and two other female followers in seven 1969 murders, considered among the most notorious crimes of the 20th century.

Leslie Van Houten is the youngest of the Manson followers at 61 and is considered the only likely one to ever be released from prison. She was denied parole last summer.

The two-member parole board said after a Thursday hearing in Los Angeles that the 63-year-old Krenwinkel will not be eligible for parole again for seven years, the longest such period handed down to any of the Manson Family convicts.

The panel said they were swayed by the memory and of the crimes, along with 80 letters which came from all over the world urging Krenwinkel’s continued incarceration.

As far as I am concerned, Krenwinkel can rot in prison and should be thankful that she was NOT duly executed decades ago.

• Tammy Bruce and Sarah Palin: Why an openly gay, ex-NOW official is Palin's biggest fan.
  When Sarah Palin encounters a P.R. problem, she often takes to Twitter or Facebook, as she did to thudding effect last week following allegations that her gun-heavy rhetoric might have encouraged the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. But this time, Palin's first response came via a less familiar source: An aide, Rebecca Mansour, defended her boss on conservative pundit Tammy Bruce's podcast the day after the shooting. It was the third time Bruce has recently figured into the Palin storyline: This fall, Mansour appeared on Bruce's show to respond to an unflattering Vanity Fair profile of Palin.

  ++++++

  Read it all.

  Having met Tammy, I find her an interesting and intelligent pundit

  (tags: Tammy_Bruce sarah_palin)