CalPERS earns 1.1% on investments in 2011

It falls short of the 7.75% average that actuaries say CalPERS needs to meet obligations.

Shortfalls on investment results must be made up with contributions from taxpayers and ratepayers.

In order to get our elected officials to remember who the “We” in “We The People” are, we may have to rearrange their furniture and confiscate their toys.

I don’t know when exactly it happens, but not long after getting elected, our various representatives start to use terms like “we” when discussing the people we elected them to keep an eye on.

We don’t send our representatives to Washington to make friends or party. We send them there to watch our money and to make sure our employees (and yes … if you work for the government you are our employee) are doing their jobs (once it has been determined that those jobs are worth the money it’s costing us).

But as soon as they take office, many of those elected officials start to sound just like the people they are supposed to be watching.

If you want to see how that might happen, go to a meeting of the Nevada County Board of Supervisors sometime over at what some call the “Rude Center,” which was actually named after a former county supervisor and first-rate gentleman named Eric Rood.

The five county supervisors sit in high-backed leather chairs elevated at the front of the chambers, looking down on the citizens they are supposed to be serving. If you want to speak to them you must approach a podium that sits just below the chairman. If you look up at the right time of day you can actually see nose hairs. It’s kind of like the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow and Dorothy standing before the Wizard of Oz.

“Who stands before the all-knowing and all-powerful Oz?”

“Well,” says the shaking and quivering taxpayer. “I was just wondering why you decided to spend a trillion dollars on a roundabout when a $200 stop sign would have served the same purpose.”

“Do you presume to criticize the great Oz, you ungrateful creatures? Consider yourselves lucky I am giving you an audience tomorrow instead of 20 years from now!”

The poor taxpayer scurries back to her seat while the five elected officials snicker, roll their eyes and cough in agreement.

I don’t know who designed those chambers, but they got it all wrong.

The five elected officials ought to be sitting in the front row of the audience and the county department heads ought to be sitting in a row facing the audience, at floor level (with the CEO in the middle). Our elected representatives, then, should be asking questions (provided by their constituents) of those department heads.

Read the rest here: Jeff Ackerman: The great and powerful board may just have it backward

Thank you Aaron Klein for bringing the editorial to my attention.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -- Benjamin Franklin

Handouts for Hippies is a term of endearment that outsiders use to describe Placer County Water Agency’s spendthrift ways whenever an enviro-charity passes the hat.  In my three years on the board, I have never seen PCWA turn down anyone who asked for a grant, handout, sponsorship or other goody.  Placer County Water Agency regularly pays one group to bus kids in from Sacramento County to learn about global warming and the environment, PCWA sponsors the Extreme Precipitation Symposium in Davis,California, and subsidizes the Calling Back the Salmon Festival in Lincoln.  To be fair, PCWA also writes taxpayer and ratepayer backed checks to Chambers of Commerce whose members aren’t traditionally hemp-wearing flower children.

I’m glad community service groups exist to promote things like responsible stewardship of the environment and to support local businesses.  Private charities are an important and valuable part of any community, but they ought to get their money from donations, which are voluntary gifts, rather than from taxes and water rates, which are collected by force.  Free people choose to donate to causes they deem worthy, just as they choose to buy products and services they value.  When a government appropriates basic decision-making power, that government becomes a dictatorship.  The actions of the current Placer County Water Agency Board of Directors reflect poorly on the agency in this regard. 

Prior to my election, requests for handouts never appeared on board agendas. One of my first actions was to have the individual items placed on our agenda so that each board member could have the chance to support or oppose each item.  They now appear on our consent agenda, so unless somebody present at our meeting requests the item be pulled for a separate vote, it is approved without discussion.  In my three years on the board I have pulled each and every one of these handouts from the consent agenda for discussion and a public vote.  In every single vote I have been alone in my opposition as well as my desire to discuss the issue.

I must be getting more crotchety and cynical, because this game is getting old. So at our last meeting when another request for cash was on the agenda I pulled it and gave this statement:

Every time one of these requests for grants or handouts or whatever you want to call them comes before our board I oppose it, and I am completely alone in my opposition.  There are many good causes, even great causes related to water.  But we, as a government body, have no business financially supporting good causes.  The money we give these groups comes out of the pockets of taxpayers and ratepayers.  It’s wrong for the federal government to subsidize pet projects or organizations well connected to politicians; it’s wrong for the state government to do so, and it’s wrong for local government to confiscate the money of its people to redistribute to good causes. 

I’m getting tired of pulling items from the consent agenda, and you all are probably tired of me doing it.  We clearly place a different value on freedom and liberty, and we obviously have a widely different view on the proper role of government.  In the future, rather than pull items like this handout to the chamber of commerce from the consent agenda to allow for unwanted discussion, I’ll vote no on the entire consent agenda to save us all the time and consternation.

The only discussion from another board member was, “You’re right, we have a different view on the role of government.” And then we had our usual four to one vote.

Since no other information was provided in the release, I believe a person is justified in wondering if the announcement isn’t just spin for a State raid of the California Public Employee Retirement System fund.

We’ve known for a while that redistricting was coming to PCWA.  By law, water board members’ district boundaries are identical to those of the Placer County Board of Supervisors, and county supervisorial districts are proportionally out of balance because of explosive growth in the Lincoln area. 

I don’t know the whats or hows  involved in the process, but the attitude of elected officials toward this task is disturbing.  Rather than apportion districts by population, geographic, or natural boundaries, elected officials place priority on holding onto their positions.  One of my board colleagues influencing the process told the Auburn Journal, “I can certainly understand the logic in perhaps what they’re trying to do but I’d like to serve at least one more term.”

My view on a host of issues is far different than my board colleagues, so our contrary positions on this are no surprise.  An elected representative’s job is to represent his constituents, not himself.  Manipulating electoral districts to benefit elected officials is a serious disservice to those we represent. I believe elected officials participating in these sorts of shenanigans should be looked on with suspicion and disapproval, corruption and self-dealing have no place in government.

Our electoral system is designed for people to elect representatives, not for rulers to choose who they want for subjects.

Tom Sahaj is one of two plaintiffs contending workers are owed pay for on-call status at lunch.

The workers believe that since they carried cel-phones and pagers with them and were available to respond to water emergencies while on lunch breaks, they are entitled to overtime pay for every minute they spent eating sandwiches and talking to girlfriends. I wonder if he was on lunch break at work when he was interviewed for this story?

They’re pushing for a new federal law requiring all internet service providers to keep a record of all of your internet activity for an entire year, for the viewing pleasure of basically anybody who wants it. 

I have two problems with the bill.  First, these sort of big-government big-brother regulations are a barrier to entry for new companies.  If a person wants to provide internet service to people, he’ll now have to spend more money and buy more equipment to comply with yet another overreach of an out-of-control government. 

My second problem is the invasion of our privacy.  The government is in effect saying we have no right to search the internet for political candidates, churches, or employment without paying somebody to save all of our viewing activity for someone else to see.

Before your broker invests your account he asks you a list of questions.  Every broker has a different list, but they go something like this: 1. What kind of return do you want? and 2. How much are you willing to lose?  And because a broker or an advisor cannot solicit securities that are unsuitable to you, he’ll ask his magic eight-ball or consult his dartboard to see if his favorite stocks fit your profile. OK, so he doesn’t throw darts, but what if I told you it was worse?  The standard practice of investing in the brokerage industry is to put conservative investors in bonds, and aggressive investors into stocks.  The more conservative, the higher percentage of a portfolio goes in bonds, and vice versa.  But why should an aggressive investor who thinks the market is going to tank stay invested in the market?  It doesn’t make sense.  And because they can’t make sense out of it, many investment industry professionals adopt rules of thumb or standard allocations that fit the broadest spectrum of investors instead of finding the right allocation for you.

To help the investment industry and you, Riskalyze has patented technology that can pinpoint a person’s tolerance for risk and match them with a portfolio that fits.  You need only answer 14 questions to teach the algorithm how you make risk/reward decisions.  Riskalyze then matches your economic outlook with a portfolio that is hedged according to your risk tolerance and optimized for growth within those constraints.

The free service is only available for now with a backstage pass, and as bugs/kinks get squished/worked out Riskalyze will send out or unlock more passes.  You can request yours here:  www.riskalyze.com   

Let me know what you think.