Bankrupt California Paying Lifeguards $150k a Year In Retirement

A Tsunami Approaches: The Beginning of the Great Deconstruction
by Robert J. Cristiano 09/05/2010, New Geography

By 2010, the general public received a series of shocks. The first shock was the jobless recovery of the Great Recession that cost 8 million jobs. Most of the job losses occurred in the private sector yet the majority of the $800 billion Stimulus Bill went to “save and create” public sector employment. The second shock was learning that civil servants earned twice that of private workers. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal workers received average pay and benefits of $123,049 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation. The third shock was revelation of incredible retirement plans doled out by politicians since 1999. In 2002, California passed SB 183 that allowed police and safety workers to retire after 30 years on the job with 3% of salary for each year of service, or 90% of their last year’s pay. During the Great Recession, fireman began retiring with $150,000 pensions at age 52 despite a life expectancy approaching 80. In Orange County CA, lifeguards, deemed safety workers, retired with $147,000 annual pensions. The Orange County sheriff, recently convicted of witness tampering, will receive $215,000 annually while in jail. Bob Citron, the Treasurer of Orange County who pushed the county into bankruptcy in the 1990s, receives a pension of $150,000 per year. A tsunami of anger and resentment is building.

New Geography is a great site with lots of interesting material on the front page and in the archives. Highly recommmended. Read the whole thing here.

I wish I was a retired lifeguard making $150,000 a year. When California goes before the judge and asks for a federal bailout we are going to have to all pay for that lifeguard's lavish retirement.

I will do whatever I can to fight bailing them out for that type of spending. When you read the numbers it blows your mind. Sphere: Related Content

Bed Bug News ~ Use Malathion!

From the AP:

US grapples with bedbugs, misuse of pesticides

The problem has gotten so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency warned this month against the indoor use of chemicals meant for the outside. The agency also warned of an increase in pest control companies and others making "unrealistic promises of effectiveness or low cost."

The Agency may be warning against it, but if you have bedbugs that is exactly what you should be doing. Buy some Malathion. They still sell it. It was used for years against bed bugs indooors. It is still recommended by the World Health Organization. See this.

Ohio authorities, struggling against widespread infestations in Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and other cities, are pleading with EPA to approve the indoor use of the pesticide propoxur, which the agency considers a probable carcinogen and banned for in-home use in 2007. About 25 other states are supporting Ohio's request for an emergency exemption.

The Federal Government is to blame for Bed Bugs coming back, and they won't let you do anything about it. A majority of states support teh repeal of the EPA ban of propoxur, but it doesn't matter to the EPA. So buy some Malathion instead. Get some at Lowes or the Home Depot.

Here is an article from Jonathan Strong at the Daily Caller:


Is the EPA to blame for the bed bug ‘epidemic’?
By Jonathan Strong - The Daily Caller

Eradication can take months and cost thousands of dollars. There’s also the stigma — many high-end New York residences, for instance, keep their bed bug infestations secret to avoid embarrassment.

But why are bed bugs back? Though they’ve been sucking humans’ blood since at least ancient Greece, bed bugs became virtually extinct in America following the invention of pesticide DDT.

There were almost no bed bugs in the United States between World War II and the mid-1990s.

Around when bed bugs started their resurgence, Congress passed a major pesticides law in 1996 and the Clinton EPA banned several classes of chemicals that had been effective bed bug killers.

The debate isn’t over long-banned DDT, since modern bed bugs have developed a tolerance for that chemical. But in the pre-1996 regime, experts say, bed bugs were “collateral damage” from broader and more aggressive use of now-banned pesticides like Malathion and Propoxur.

And now that we have banned our most effective course of action, Bed Bugs are becoming more resistant to the remaining available pesticides:

the economic impact to victims can be severe. In many cases, victims discard most or all of their furniture and other belongings in a desperate push to rid themselves of the problem. There are extermination costs and expensive preventative measures like mattress encasements as well.

Compounding the spread of bed bugs are several factors other than EPA regulations, including the increased levels of travel and growing resistance in wild bed bug populations to the pesticides that are still allowed by the government.

According to research at the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, academic headquarters for studying the six-legged beast, some strains of bed bugs can survive, zombie-like, for up to 16 days after being directly sprayed with currently used pesticides.

Do yourself a favor and break out the Malathion! Don't listen to the government!

If you consider that in most instances insects are intended to die shortly after coming into brief contact with pesticide residue, that’s pretty dramatic.

Meanwhile, tests at the University of Kentucky show the EPA-banned pesticides are still deadly effective at bed bug mass murder.

Notably, pest controllers can still rid your house or apartment building of bed bugs. It’s just way more expensive and time consuming since they’re using nerf guns instead of nukes.

Malathion is still deadly effective at bed bug mass murder! You can buy it at the hardware store for outside use. It is better than anything your exterminator is allowed to use. Call an exterminator and expect to pay hundreds or dollars for multiple treatments with a nerf gun, or just pay $8 for some Malathion at Lowes and kill them all in one application. It really is that simple.


Previously on the Cesspool:

Malathion Will Kill Your Bed Bugs!

Cincinnati ~ Bedbug Capital of the World! ~ Blame the EPA!

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Links

Spank Your Kids and they could be much better off.

American "Islamophobia" -- the MSM/left-liberal contribution - Sometime Powerline hits it just right. It was the first blog I ever read and I still read it today.

If the mainstream media promoted moderate Muslims, Americans would be thinking Muslims are moderate. When they trot out people who say that America was to blame for 9/11 and treat them as moderate, then Americans could skew their opinion.


One Liberal Voice Dares to Say, Cut the Budget

This shocked me coming from the New York Times:

The coalition bases its case on the idea that Social Security is actually in fine fiscal shape, since it has amassed a pile of Treasury Bills — often referred to as i.o.u.’s — in a dedicated trust fund. This is true enough, except that the only way for the government to actually make good on these i.o.u.’s is to issue mountains of new debt or to take the money from elsewhere in the federal budget, or perhaps impose significant tax increases — none of which seem like especially practical options for the long term. So this is sort of like saying that you’re rich because your friend has promised to give you 10 million bucks just as soon as he wins the lottery.

Amen to Matt Bai on that. Sphere: Related Content

Health Insurance is a Human Right!

From Cato:

Making a Joke of Human Rights
Posted by Michael F. Cannon

Earlier this year, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama signed legislation that threatens U.S. residents with prison if they fail to purchase health insurance.

This week, his administration told the United Nations that this legislation shows the United States is making progress on human rights.

Now that is progress. Sphere: Related Content

Malathion Will Kill Your Bed Bugs!

I would like to preface this post with a disclaimer: Using Malathion indoors is not allowed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. I don't want to advocate breaking US Law in a way that could get me into trouble. So this post is for all of my readers who live outside of the United States. For those readers, I would advocate that thy buy some Malathion and use it to kill their bed bugs.

BUY MALATHION! MALATHION WILL KILL YOUR BED BUGS!

I bought some today that looks like this:



Ortho makes some that looks like this:




Malathion is BETTER THAN DDT!

Here is a Scientific Study of Malathion & Bedbugs. It compares Malathion to DDT.
The conclusion? Malathion will kill all of your Bedbugs!



The World Health Organization advocates using Malathion against Bedbugs.

Table 4.1
Residual insecticides for use against bedbugs
Insecticide Concentration in spray (%)
malathion 2.0
fenitrothion 0.5–1.0
propoxur 2.0
carbaryl 1.0
diazinon 0.5
bendiocarb 0.2–0.3
fenchlorvos 1.0
pirimiphos methyl 1.0
propetamphos 0.5–1.0
permethrin 0.5
cyfluthrin 0.01
deltamethrin 0.005
lambdacyhalothrin 0.005

On May 12th, of 2000, The New York Times reported that the E.P.A. Finds Malathion Poses Low Risk

Here is a letter to the Editor to the New York Times from Gilbert L. Ross,ROSS, M.D.

It is dated May 16, 2000 and it notes that Gilbert Ross is "medical director of the American Council on Science and Health".

As a public health scientist, I applaud you for pointing out that malathion poses ''no health threat to people'' (news article, May 12).

In its new report, the Environmental Protection Agency, generally no friend to pesticides, agrees with the overwhelming body of scientific evidence. While malathion is possibly a threat to mice at very high doses, the trace levels to which New Yorkers would be exposed via spraying should cause no alarm.

Why then do we still hesitate to use our most potent weapon to prevent the recurrence of a potentially lethal mosquito-borne epidemic? Could it be because of pressure from activist groups, whose agendas are based on unfounded fear, not science?

GILBERT L. ROSS, M.D.

New York, May 12, 2000

The writer is medical director of the American Council on Science and Health.

More Times Articles:

Pesticide Spray Is Said to Pose Almost No Risk To Humans (1999)

Malathion, a pesticide commonly used in mosquito control programs, is the compound that the city Department of Health is using in aerial spraying to stop the spread of encephalitis. First registered in the United States in 1956, malathion is one of the most widely used home and garden pesticides and is also used to control pests in agriculture, according to reports from the Internet site of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Neal L. Cohen, the city's Health Commissioner, released a prepared statement yesterday that said that the spraying ''poses virtually no health risk to humans or pets.''

THE BIG CITY; Public Beliefs, Global Politics And Pesticides

How about this one from 1986?

Q&A (1986)

Q. Is the jingle ''Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite!'' just a silly rhyme, or do bed bugs really exist?

A. Dr. Stanley G. Green, an entomologist with the Pennsylvania State University Extension Service, said there is an entire family of insects called bed bugs that feed on the blood of birds and animals. These insects are oval, chestnut brown in color, flattened from top to bottom, and about one-fourth of an inch in length. The common bed bug, Cimex lectularius L., attacks man. Bed bugs are active only at night, usually just before dawn, Dr. Green said. When only a few bed bugs are present, they live close to human sleeping areas, he said, but when numerous they can be found in many rooms of the house. Their bite produces irritating itching and burning sensations. The insects feed rapidly, becoming engorged in less than 10 minutes. The act of biting is not usually felt, but later there is an allergic reaction to the protein found in the bed bug's saliva. A colorless lump develops at the bite location. Discomfort from bed bug bites may last a week or more. To get rid of them, Dr. Green suggests using malathion or pyrethrin insecticide in upholstered furniture, cracks and crevices in floors, walls, baseboards, in the seams of mattresses and bed coils, and behind wall pictures and loose wallpaper.

Not only does Dr. Green suggest using Malathion, he suggests spraying it all over the place...cracks and crevices, on your furniture, on the floors and walls, on your mattress! Dr. Green wants you to spray the holy hell out of your place with Malathion and you will be just fine.

Malathion was banned in 1996 for INDOOR use. It is still used outdoors and it is still available for purchase at Lowes, The Home Depot, other department stores, and even on the internet. I do not sell Malathion, nor do I own stock in any company that makes or sells Malathion.

To recap:

Malathion was developed in the 1950s and used for decades.

Malathion is more effective than DDT against Bed Bugs. It is probably the most effective chemical pesticide against Bed Bugs that we have.

The Who Health Organization recommends Malathion against Bed Bugs.

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Cincinnati ~ Bedbug Capital of the World! ~ Blame the EPA!

I don't know if it is Bed Bug or Bedbug, but I do know that our fair city has some new citizens in the last few years.

Time Magazine:

For reasons still unknown, bedbugs really seem to like the state of Ohio. The problem is so dire in Cincinnati that some people with infested apartments have resorted to sleeping on the streets.

Cincinnati created a Bedbug Remediation Commission in 2007 and, like other local and national governments around the world, the city is trying to mobilize strategies to control infestations of the resilient insects, which can hide in almost any crack or crevice and can go a year or more without eating. On Aug. 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a consumer alert about off-label bedbug treatments, warning in particular of the dangers of using outdoor pesticides in homes. The Ohio Department of Agriculture has mounted a more unusual response to the crisis: it petitioned the EPA for an exemption to allow in-home use of propoxur, a pesticide and neurotoxin banned in the 1990s out of concern for its effects on children.

The EPA doesn't want people using off label products, or products that the EPA has already banned. The fact that the EPA has banned our most effective pesticides is something at the heart of the problem. The Ohio Department of Agriculture realizes this, so they petitioned the EPA to remove the ban. The EPA refused.

This is how the article finishes:

For home infestations, the EPA recommends reducing clutter, sealing cracks and crevices, vacuuming often, drying infested clothes at high heat and using a special mattress cover so you can sleep tight without letting the bedbugs bite. Travelers should inspect hotel mattresses, box springs and headboards for the pests and the inklike streaks of their droppings.

In other words, a dose of vigilance — if not outright paranoia — is the best preventive.

"We are looking at what we did a hundred years ago," says entomologist Miller. "We need to develop an individual consciousness, like we had then. You should think twice about leaving your purse on a seat in the movie theater and storing your kids' college furniture in the basement when they come home. We need to be conscious that anybody from a group-living situation may come back with bedbugs."

What a great forward-thinking solution. We need to look at we did 100 years ago! That is quite telling. Also, don't trust other people or other families! That is just great. Bedbugs hit the black population harder than the white population, so make sure if you are white not to let you kids play with black kids, let alone a sleep over. I can see this is going to go over real well. Why not just give the mostly poor people with bed bug infestations the proper chemicals and advice on how to use them?


Some more articles:

Bed Bug Battle Escalates
Crisis Meeting Held In Cincinnati

Many experts said the U.S. EPA has the ultimate weapon by bringing back insecticides, like DDT, that got rid of the problem decades ago, but were banned due to environmental concerns.

Meanwhile, Cincinnati created a bedbug remediation commission three years ago that's overseeing all crisis meetings with federal officials as they hope to come up with a solution.

That article talks about infested hotels in Cincinnati. The headline should be "DON'T TRAVEL TO CINCINNATI!!!!" Meanwhile, Cincinnati created a commission on bedbugs three years ago and nothing has been accomplished. That doesn't surprise me. If you have bedbugs you have to get rid of them yourself. I will teach you how later.

Interesting that the article brought up the EPA's banning of pesticides, which is the real reason that bedbugs are back.

Bedbugs becoming major U.S. nuisance

A plague of bedbugs spreading across the United States prompted a federal conference and calls for vigilance by the hotel industry.

The nation's worst cities for bedbugs are Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Chicago; Denver and Detroit, according to data from Orkin Pest Control reported by the Detroit Free Press.

It is great to be a leader in something. I hate being on any list that involves Detroit.

From ABC News: Eeek! Are Bedbugs Becoming National Security Issue?

At least five states have called on the Department of Defense pleading for money to get rid of the pesky bloodsuckers.

Cincinnati is the latest city forced to deal with the tiny reddish-brown insects that are mostly found near one's bed in cracks and crevices. These scratch-inducing pests can even live without feeding for 18 months.

"Hopefully, we're going to see more resources devoted to things such as educational things, resources to perhaps to help pay for treatment," said Camille Jones, assistant health commissioner for the Cincinnati Health Department.

The state of Ohio was so desperate that it petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to allow in-home use of a pesticide called propoxur, which was banned out of concern for its effect on children. That request was denied.

On Wednesday, the EPA, decided the problem was serious enough to warrant hosting a meeting in Columbus, Ohio, today to conjure up a solution. And while bedbugs are not yet a national security issue, the meeting did include representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense.

The bugs were eradicated from the U.S. around the end of World War II, but in the last decade have been making a comeback.

Why and how were the bugs eradicated from the US? I know why. Pesticides! Then the EPA banned the pesticides and now we have the bugs back. If you want to get rid of the bugs, give us back the pesticides!

Do we really need the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture, The Center for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency? Do we really need a increase in Federal Funding? Is that always the answer? Think about the salaries of all these people on the taxpayer dole sitting around on their commissions. I bet they don't have bedbugs. What a waste of time and our tax dollars. Just give us back the ammo for the gun. For the love of God, release the Lions!

Bedbugs have forced people out of their apartments in Lexington, Ky.

In Fort Worth, Texas, the city housing authority spent half a million dollars in an unsuccessful attempt to rid an apartment building of the pests.

Also, in Seattle, calls to exterminators are up 70 percent in the last two years.

But it seems as though the Big Apple has seen the brunt of the bedbug attack, with the city receiving nearly 11,000 complaints last year.

Just this week, one of the largest movie theatres in New York City, AMC Empire 25 in Times Square, announced that it was closing its doors to deal with an infestation problem. It since has reopened.

Look at all the taxpayer money they are spending with no credible results. Pesticides are cheap. Give us the pesticides and then go away and bother somebody else on the public dole.

Homeowners also can choose extermination, but it's a process that easily could cost anywhere from $800 to $1,200.

No it won't, not if you have cheap and effective pesticides. What happened to Dursban? What happened to Diazinon? Those two products were banned in the last decade. DDT was banned by the EPA in 1972. The EPA came into existence and opened its doors on December 2nd, 1970. The first thing they did was go after pesticides and they have been doing it ever since. Now that the evidence is in I am sure we have gone way too far. It is time for them to back off. People are suffering because of the EPA. I am not even going to go into the millions in Africa that die of Malaria (more than AIDS). This is about common sense policy for suffering Americans.


Here is local News 5 on the story as well:

Time Dubs Cincinnati 'Bedbug Capital Of U.S.'
DOD Experts Called To Ohio To Help Combat Problem

I am going to put together a post on how to deal with Bedbugs. You can kill them and it is easier than you think.

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Forbes 535 v. the US Congress

This post is a blast from the past. I remember reading it and thinking about it and from time to time it crosses my mind. So I thought I would just put it out there.

This post is stolen from Robert Lawson, Bengals Fan, and Econ professor at Auburn. WHO DEY! It was posted at the Division of Labor blog on October 1st, 2008.

Forbes 535 v. the US Congress

Comparing the concentration of financial power in the hands of the 535 members of the United States Congress with the concentration of financial power of the 535 richest people in the United States.

According to Forbes, the 400 richest people had a combined net worth of $1.57 trillion. Let's simply assume the next 135 richest people had the same net worth, though they surely didn't, as the 400th person--$1.3 billion each. That brings our estimate of the combined net wealth of the richest 535 Americans to $1.75 trillion.

But wait, this is net worth, which is a stock, not income, which is a flow. So let's figure the annual income flow from the ownership of $1.75 trillion to be 10% of that amount. (I don't know if this number is high or low. On the one hand really rich folks probably are good at making high rates of return. On the other hand much of that $1.75 in net worth is likely to be speculative, consumptive, and/or illiquid assets like real estate, yachts, artwork, etc where the return is difficult to determine without selling the item. It turns out, you could double or triple this estimated return and still make the point I'm going to make.) Our estimate therefore is that the richest 535 Americans have about $175 billion (10% of $1.75 trillion) to spend on an annual basis.

Ok, let's compare this group with the 535 members of the US Congress. According to the latest Economic Report of the President, the annual outlays of the federal government amounted to $2.73 trillion in fiscal year 2007.

So I estimate that the 535 members of the US Congress enjoy over 15 times the financial power of the 535 richest Americans.

But do note how charitable I am being here. Unlike the 535 richest Americans, the US Congress also reserves the right to regulate the hell out of practically ever aspect of our lives. Furthermore, unlilke the 535 richest Americans, who hardly know each other and who certainly never hold meetings to coordinate their decisions, the US Congress does in fact meet regularly to decide exactly how this vast financial power is to be spent. Furthermore, I have failed to say anything about the various state legislatures in the land who annually spend an additional $1.9 trillion.

Why do we worry so much about the supposed concentration of economic power in the hands of "the rich", a group of strangers who don't coordinate their actions in any way, but care so little about the vastly greater concentration of economic power in the hands of Congress?

Brilliant. I extend a thank you and a WHO DEY! to Robert Lawson, who provided today's blast from the past... Sphere: Related Content