More Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Shenanigens

Thanks to KFI 640 am's John & Ken Show, more details are coming out about the relationship between the City of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power, of which I have previously written.

Now we learn that over the past 6 years, LA has passed off some 1600 useless city workers over to DWP instead of laying them off. As a result the city and DWP signed an agreement covering the pensions of these employees.

Now DWP has figured out that they are on the hook for some 183 million dollars in pension costs for these folks, and their board voted to cut off the pensions. This was supported by LA's playboy mayor, Tony Villar (who most of you know as Antonio Villaraigosa because when he married a girl whose last name was Raigosa, he changed his name to Villaraigosa, but now, his wife has divorced him because he was having an affair with a Univision reporter who was covering him at City Hall,....)

But I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes; then the LA City Council stepped in and overruled that decision. According to one politician, Richard Alarcon, "we need those workers. It's the job of the city to hire people." Indeed.

Alarcon needs somebody because he has recently been indicted for perjury because he wasn't really living where he was supposed to be representing constituents, so he lied about the whole thing under oath, and so he is likely on his way to jail, and furthermore.......

But I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes; you see, Alarcon identified the problem. When government thinks its their job to hire people who don't have jobs, all that creates is a bunch of useless bureaucrats sitting in pods, drawing  a salary and eventually, a nice fat pension. In California, those chickens are already coming home to roost due to the inordinately huge number of state and local government workers who we know know are making more in salaries and pensions then those in the private sector.

Can you say "Bell" (as in Bell, California)?

Another huge part of the problem is the power of the state government worker unions, who basically call the shots in Sacramento. That all started a couple of decades ago when the then-governor allowed the unions to organize state workers. The governor's name? Jerry Brown.

But I digress.