Greeked

Socialism has turned a noun into a verb, if not an expletive, again by changing the natural impulse of grown men into that of suckling infants. It has worked in decadent Europe because all the people who had the freedom gene got out and came to America over the last 518 years.

Greece is a place where every Democrat dream has come true. The public employee unions rule the country. Every 12 months government employees are paid for 14 months work and they get a month of vacation to boot. Staffs have to be 10% larger to cover. They get bonuses for showing up on time or using computers. National park workers are paid extra for having to work “outside.” No civil service worker can be fired. Many are on make-work projects.

The World Bank does an annual “Doing Business” survey ranking countries in terms of the ease of doing business. Greece comes in at 109, behind such places as: Egypt (106), Zambia (90), Rwanda (67) and Kazakhstan (63).

The Gross Domestic Product is officially $333 billion, but nobody believes it as the government is totally corrupt and data are unreliable. Public employees retire after 35 years of service at 80% of salary for life. In California public employees do this after 30 years of service and their pensions are raised every year to stay abreast of inflation. Paneions are at 100% of top salary in six or seven years thanks to COLAS.

California’s unfunded pension liabilities are $500 billion and growing. 9,111 state employees have six figure pensions for life with the top over $500,000 for the city manager of Vernon, CA, population 96. That must have been one tough little town.

Meanwhile back in the cradle of democracy: Greece is ranked 154 in the World Bank analysis of all nation's safety and security in banking and investing. There are few disclosure laws and none are enforced due to political payoffs; “Sounds like New York City!”

Events in Greece are reverberating across Europe as EU members are expected to support socialist comrads. In the Sunday Dusselforf-Wolfsberg, Germany election Christian Democrats and Free Democrats are expected to lose substantially. This will cripple the Merkel government much as expected Democrat losses here will cripple our Democrats.

Our states most like Greece, California, New York and New Jersey, should pay close attention to what happens in Greece and Europe as a preview of things to come when the people are “Greeked.”

Adrian Vance