Over the last decade, local debt in the Lone Star State has more than doubled, growing at twice the rate of inflation plus population growth. At the moment, Texas localities owe $63 billion for education funding — 155 percent more than they did a decade ago, though student enrollment and inflation during that period grew less than one-third as quickly. The borrowing has also paid for a host of expensive new athletic facilities, such as a $60 million high school football stadium, complete with video scoreboard, in the Dallas suburb of Allen.
August 5th, 2013 at 12:14PM
UD, I haven’t read all of your posts, but of the ones that I have read, I have to put this at the top of most important. The amazing amount of public debt that has accrued in the last decade is biblical in scope, and, imo, the reason that public pensions are going to be destroyed. No other remedy can be found, when the bondholders, who are the most powerful interests on earth, demand that their interests come before any public pension holder’s interest, that will become destiny. No public union, not LEO, not fire nor teacher, nor their attack dog PERS functionaries, can withstand the aggregate energy of Wall Street investment houses, insurance companies, or any of the other assorted public debt investors. And as tax revenues quickly dwindle, those financial interests are making in known just who is the real muscle in this debate. It’s one thing for LEO/fire unions to overwhelm local, state and even FED political bodies, it’s a completely different thing to go up against deep money interests.
August 5th, 2013 at 2:55PM
I’m old enough to remember when Allen was a piss ant intersection on US 75. There was a hokey, hand-painted sign that read “Allen: From Schooner to Lunar.”
August 5th, 2013 at 2:58PM
JND: LOL. Schooner to Lunar. Wonderfully lame.
March 1st, 2014 at 12:55PM
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