Activist’s Ballot Initiatives Goes After Public Employees

Typical Libertarian. Lanny-boy should check the actual facts regarding these retirement plans before he exposes his ignorance any further. Unfortunately, because the economy is in such dire straits, everyone is looking at public employee retirement compensation as a way out. Here are all these public employees who are weathering this storm pretty well because, instead of taking pay raises, they bargained for better retirement benefits. Pretty smart I'd say. And just for the record, I'm not one of the public employees, I just happen to know how the system works.
Again, because of the tough times, people will see Lanny's Ballot Initiative as a way to get somebody, anybody, who's making more money than they are. If it hasn't dawned on the rest of the voters out there yet, here's some advice: Start saving/investing for your retirement NOW. Right now. That's how the public employees have been able to get the benefits, they begin saving on day one of employment with funds that otherwise would have been used for salaries.
Good Luck Lanny!

A couple things about the California Center for Public Policy (could it be Lanny Ebenstein's personal tax deduction?):

- Claims to be a 501 (c) 3 organization, but is nowhere to be found, under that name, in the online database:
http://www.irs.gov/app/pub-78/search....

- and the Usual Suspects are on the Board:

BOARD OF ADVISORS

Joe Armendariz
Jean Blois
Jerry Dixon
Brooks Firestone
Steve Forsell
Tony Fox
Frank Hotchkiss
Robert Kallman
Robert Lagomarsino
Walter Mead
Catherine Miller
Dan Secord
Mike Stoker
Tom Watson

Ah, the usual suspects indeed ...

As an economist, Ebenstein should know that the root of this current financial crises are the big financial institutions that were allowed to foist highly-leveraged mortgage-based securities derivatives disguised as high quality investments on the world (and I do mean the entire planet).

Perhaps Lanny will find this stick-figure cartoon helpful:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2190705/CDO...

These Collateral Debt Obligations and related Credit Default Swaps, enabled by free-market champions like Libertarian hero Alan Greenspan (who later admitted guilt, albeit reluctantly), were weapons of mass financial destruction unleashed on the world. Of course, a small select elite of bankers profited from this, but most have already forgotten.

As a result, most everyone's investment portfolios have suffered (including those of local governments, private and public pensions, private individuals, etc.), jobs have been lost, and the housing market is still severely depressed in many part of the country.

Now ideologues like Ebenstein and his ilk are trying to make a name for themselves by scapegoating public pensions. The public pensions aren't perfect but don't deserve the blame Wall Street and their financial engineers has avoided.

Oh yeah let's vote for a ballot initiative put up there by these clowns. Lanny thinks no one knows who "Alan Oliver Ebenstein" from Eureka is.

"The records indicate that Ebenstein owns at least five properties in the county -- all purchased between 2005 and 2007 -- and that notices of default have been entered on properties he owns in Eureka, Arcata and Manila, including the Victorian on Hillsdale Street that is at the center of the civil case. One of the properties -- located in the 1300 block of Gibson Street in Eureka -- is scheduled to go up for a trustee's sale Monday. http://www.times-standard.com/localne...

Scumlord home owner and foreclosed on how many times??? I don't care if he did graduate from the London School of Economics and writes about his political agenda in the News-Joke this guy and his cohorts have no credibility.

Thanks for the list Chester. When the dust settles we'll remember who these players are.

That's quite a link YOU have provided, Validated.

There were a lot of people angry with Mr. Ebenstein up in Eureka!

"Landlord-neighbor lawsuit settles; small claims grow house lawsuit settles on eve of trial
Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard
Posted: 04/06/2011 02:20:16 AM PDT

"A small claims lawsuit brought against a Eureka landlord by neighbors of one of his residential properties scheduled to go to trial this week has settled out of court.

"A total of 14 neighbors living in the area surrounding the 200 block of Hillsdale Street in Eureka sued Alan Oliver Ebenstein, of Santa Barbara, each seeking $7,500 and claiming that a marijuana growing operation in one of Ebenstein's rental properties posed a nuisance that he failed to abate."

Here's the url to the article referred to: (http://www.times-standard.com/ci_1778...). Amusing that his lawyer claims that Lanny didn't settle the case, that his insurance company did. LOL.

Well, if Lanny wants to talk about feeding at the public trough as he so frequently likes to...or in his particular case, having been the recipient of public services and public servants, I seem to remember his sorry butt getting rescued a number of years ago up by Cathedral Peak. Wonder if he reimbursed the County for the expense of the search, which undoubtedly included the efforts of numerous public employees and public tax dollars. Just sayin'.

who gives this guy a box to stand on? We are supposed to believe, after spending trillions on war, war contractors (jobs in Iraq and Afganistan), Wall st., tax breaks for the stinky filthy, and this ____ is saying this? He is lucky we don't cut the tongues off of self serving, lying, anti-americans in this country. He deserves a one way ticket to guantanamo.