District Owes $1 Billion on $100 Million Loan

A reader sends me this item from NPR about school districts in California. Here’s the gist:

Collectively, the districts have borrowed billions in loans that defer payments for years — leaving many districts owing far more than they borrowed…. In the West Contra Costa Schools’ case, that $2.5 million bond will cost the district a whopping $34 million to repay…. Perhaps the best example of the CAB [capital appreciation bond] issue is suburban San Diego’s Poway Unified School District, which borrowed a little more than $100 million. But “debt service will be almost $1 billion,” Bill Lockyer, California state treasurer says. “So, over nine times amount of the borrowing. There are worse ones, but that’s pretty bad.”

Scott Weisman

Even more absurd, this $2.5 million was used to get a $25 million LOAN, so the total interest due will be far higher. I could understand the logic if it was for a grant, as $34 million due in several decades for $25 million now seems like a pretty good deal. Typical government idiocy considers forgoing a $25 million loan like leaving money on the table.
kirk

This is incredible! It is obvious no one in charge is capable of rational thought. Or simple mathematics.
kusokurae

These districts are managed by their own graduates, no doubt.
Jim

Actually, I’d say just the opposite is true. Remember, these officials are all transient officials. They are inclined to milk the system for all it is worth for the short time they are there. When they leave their positions, it’s not their problem anymore. When the next guy comes in, he either kicks the can further, or blames the old guys in charge. And if he gets left holding the bag, he becomes just the right man to clean up this mess and aren’t we lucky to have him! So again, the opposite is true – they are actually very capable of rational thought and simple mathematics. Government has different goals and values than sane human beings.
J Fournier

I’ve recently been calling school districts and asking them about their bonds for the work that I do. It seems like every school district that I call has a 3-4 hundred million in bonds.
http://plenarchist.wordpress.com/ plenarchist

Yes. People need to stop thinking of politicians as boobs, clowns, incomps, etc. They are none of those things but are quite satisfied knowing people think of them as such. They are in truth diabolical and dangerous – all (with few exceptions) are dark triad personalities.

Their actions can seem idiotic as would likely be the case of someone who leads people to believe they are doing X while all along doing Y – the classic confidence game but with impunity.

Politicians insinuate themselves into positions of power by masquerading as honest, sincere, and patriotic but their true intentions are hidden behind a smiling mask. For all the rhetoric, they and their crony pals always seem to get better off and those they promise to “serve” worse off.

Politicians are to the body politic what the lancet fluke parasite is to the ant – they beguile society into harming itself to advance their dark ambitions.
Evgeny

May be that’s simply money nobody is going to pay back?
Mr. M

For once I blogged about a topic before Mr. Woods. Usually, I’m about 15 years behind the guy – in ideology, ideas and thought. Today is my day.
Anonymous

God willing …
Doug

And that is why we have to get rid of politicians and politics alltogether. Push it back where it’s place lies: between thieves, rapists and murderers. How?
http://plenarchist.wordpress.com/ plenarchist

With sortition (selecting public officials by lottery) as was done in ancient Athens (in real democracy). Sortition eliminates the political class, political parties and campaigns. It puts a statistical sample of the population in power. Aristotle described democracy (sortition) as “rule and be ruled in turn” while elective gov is just “rule or be ruled.”

Sortition would not eliminate factionalism so it would need to be carefully worked out if these people have law making authority (which no one should IMO). But it would put an end to interest-driven politics and the culture of corruption in gov. Wouldn’t fix other problems inherent to gov but would increase accountability, transparency and eliminate institutional criminality if done right. There’s no way for elections to do this IMO.

I’m (slowly) developing a political model for a voluntary free state that uses sortition for courts and to provide governance over the state authority in an anarchic state (and yes, you read that right).

http://plenarchist.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/process-of-selecting-citizen-councilors-through-sortition/

Or Étienne Chouard who is leading an effort in France to rewrite their Constitution to be based on sortition (a constitutional democracy – not so-called “republic”). He seems to have a large following but unfortunately I think he’s a socialist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0e22oUvDSwM

There are other efforts to use sortition for selecting public officials but Chouard has taken it the farthest. I don’t speak French (the video is subtitled in English) so I’m not able to track his progress too well but he’s spoken at TED and has thousands of supporters.

If we want transparency and accountability in government or any state authority, IMO it can only be achieved through sortition – not election.

This is an involved topic but you can read more about how I would apply sortition (in combination with the autoselect) on my blog or Google ‘sortition.’ Here’s the Wikipedia article -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition