It's gonna be a real nail biter.

Yesterday I was trying to figure out why absolutely no amount of bad news drags down the stock market. Then it dawned on me.

You don't want to take down the market right before a really important election stopping the gravy train, do you?

Today all I see are the articles about housing inventory rising. I swear half of the articles involve some sort of angina about housing. It's at the critical 6 month supply level. Six months is considered to be a healthy market. (manufactured or not) It was down to about 3 months.

Also - I guess jobless numbers just don't matter anymore. This morning I heard they spiked, but finding anyone that is talking about it is almost non-existent. And those that do all seem to be using these fluffy terms like - Jobless claims surprise on the upside. Or - New Jobless Claims come in Above Expectations. I watch this stuff and even I was asking myself - that means bad. Right? It is, yet it sounds like a nice fluffy cloud.

Coming to a generation near you.

Sometimes with depression - the harder you fight it, the longer it takes to get rid of it. Yet if you give up completely, you're in a whole other ball of shit. The trick is to find that fine line. So, this week I've given into all of my destructive vices. Eating breakfast all week. Out.

Sleeping into 11. Or close to it, on many days. All those things I'd planned to do the Christmas week? Out.

By Wednesday I'd declared I hadn't gotten shit done. And, I was okay with it.

Friday gave me a really productive day. And I was really thinking I'd gotten this thing licked. But then it was sunny. My mood has pretty much risen and fallen with the weather. Today I'm back sideways. But I'm playing catch up to get something done. So we decided to catch some of the sales. By force really. I didn't want to be there.

I thought I was home free. I could just get my stuff done without affect. Then it came. When I was checking out.

The checker - I'm planning to get healthy this year.

Me - I make a nervous pause, I've spent the whole week making sure my heart would explode.

The person in front of me - Oh I plan to get healthy too!

Me - Well, here's to hoping it will last more than a couple of months.

I am not big on resolutions. I'm one of those "I'm going to try the best I can" types of people. If I did better than yesterday. Awesome. If not - I'll try again tomorrow. As a matter of a fact - I resolve to be no better than I am today. I am a fallible person, and I'm okay with that.

There. See.

If I am in fact better. It's all gravy. Anyway.

The checker again - I have to be healthy. I'm poor now. I can't afford to go to Nations or Starbucks.

This of course left me speechless. I was just about getting ready to tell her I thought resolutions were bullshit. Clearly, I misjudged were the conversation was going. I hadn't really felt like talking anyway, so I just let her go on and on.

Still - it's a weird testament to the next year. People you don't even know feel comfortable telling just about anyone they are now poor. Knowing that just about everyone will be accepting. They resolve the deprivation by taking up an acceptable form of deprivation. "Getting healthy".

Me. I'll get back on track soon. When I'm ready. Honestly, I think that would take less time if more people felt more uncomfortable telling me about their subtle suffering.

Sure. All of us have had to alter their worlds in ways. Though the depth is truly hard to adjust to sometimes.

The final days of the gravy train.

It is ironic I got this shot today. When I started bitching about the firefighters, here and way back here, I never imagined the shit storm that was descending on government employees.

How could I know really? It's taken 5 years to gain access to government employee compensation. This is after a supreme court ruled that cities must release the information. Some cities are still holding out.

"More than two years after state Supreme Court Justice Ronald George authored a 7-0 ruling stating that the salaries of all government employees are public record, some local governments still refuse to quickly release data. Pinole in Contra Costa County balked at providing data on overtime and bonuses, releasing only gross pay. The city of Alameda took more than two months to release information on all of its 2008 employees and would not perform calculations to make the data easier for the public to understand. Albany refused to make similar calculations on overtime pay and bonuses."

Read more here from Inside Bay Area.

Which I urge everyone in California to read. It outlines the unconscionable abuses across the board in over time pay. With a ginormous amount of people spiking their salaries 150% with overtime pay. So for example, if your base salary was 100,000 - your take home could be 250,000! And, we'd pay you that for for as long as you live. You might even get a car allowance or bonus thrown in for good measure.

I honestly debated titling this post the 100 thousand dollar club.

They retire with salary plus 150% overtime and deluxe medical. Then they hire someone else for 100+ grand to take their spot. And what is so infuriating - is they could have hired a whole new staff member and still saved us money. Since they are pulling time and a half after all.They rob us all. They make business move out of the state due to the ridiculous tax burden.

No wonder I can run into a firefighter sporting a CLS Mercedes or a series 5 BMW or Volvo or Lexus with reasonable regularity. And the sad thing is - firefighters are only visible because of their license plates. Apparently the abuses are ridiculously rampant in all cities. These are the people who are going to keep health care costs down in a public run system?!

Look at this quote from the article.

"The data show wide discrepancies in pay and sometimes high salaries in government agencies, such as the Port of Oakland, where a semiskilled laborer grossed $123,450 in 2008, and in Newark, in southern Alameda County, where more than half of the 215 city employees were each paid more than $100,000 last year and the average gross pay was $109,027."

Half! Of the city of Newark made over 100k, when the average salary for that city is 80K.

Thank goodness someone had the balls to get this data from the government. I don't know how much traction it will get. Yet, I have seen some bubbling up this past week. At least one official in the East bay has "stepped down to spend more time with his family". Which is code for - you better leave. His pension close to 300k a year. I'll try to find the article.

I hadn't thought much about the whole thing except I'd started seeing more and more stories about it this last week. Then it was on the front page of the newspaper today. They even have a term for it. Pension jackpot.

Strangely when I first started talking about this I attributed the ridiculous pay to 9/11 fallout. However, I've been noticing the comments for these stories change dramatically. From Hero's to thieves.

There's even a website dedicated to the Pension Tsunami. You know, if you wanted to kill all feelings of hope that ever existed in your body.

Or you could read more outrageousness from presstelegram.com
It only gets more ridiculous.

"The dubious honor of collecting the state's highest pension belongs to former Vernon City Administrator Bruce Malkenhorst, who receives $499,675 per year - even though he is currently facing two counts of misappropriating public funds for allegedly taking $60,000 in city money for personal use."

"As grand juries throughout the state are investigating pension systems, former Assemblyman Keith Richman, president of CFFR, said these huge pensions are the result of a "corrupt pension system."

California, Richman said, is the only state in the nation that allows employees to use their highest year of salary - including unused vacation, vehicle allowances, bonuses and other compensation - in calculating their pensions."