plp spending-debt orgy worsens! interest cost$263,000/day

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Bermuda Taxpayer's feel the pain

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“Desperate times call for desperate measures,

job seeker resorted to handing out flyers to East Broadway traffic. just the tip of the iceberg in plp's race to the bottom ,don't expect anything but platitudes ,promises & empty rhetoric from the pigs at the trough ,they get a pay check regardless of being grossly incompetent & are highly paid for it

plp twist facts & keep their sheeple stuck on STUPID, Goebbels would be proud !

February 4, 2011, Heather Jacobs Matthews, the Auditor General, had this note of caution: "They do not include the financial results or the financial position of other government-controlled organizations such as the Bermuda Hospitals Board, the Bermuda Housing Corporation and the Bermuda College."

economist Bob Stewart has stated that from his research of actuary reports that Government's pension plans show deficits. It is not unthinkable that these plans can become bankrupt. According to Mr. Stewart who has read the actuary reports:

• The pension fund for members of the House of Assembly is 46.8% funded, representing a deficit of $8 million;

• The civil service pension which includes Police Officers, Prison Officers, teachers, blue collar workers as well as civil servants is 34.2% funded, representing a deficit of about $760 million;

• Social Insurance is a pension fund which everyone who works in Bermuda is obliged to join. The fund is 29.0% funded which means that there are insufficient assets to meet the obligations to the members, who are everyone over 65 in Bermuda. Social insurance is underfunded by $2.83 billion.These pension fund obligations are not being reported in Government's overall financial position.

Murder probe after teen's death
21-year-old still in ICU after being shot multiple times in a drive-by attack on Monday night just around corner from today's stabbing death !
travel costs back in 2000 for the "plp pigs at the trough "civil service and plp politicians was $80,000 per week or $4 million /yr plp government just spent $2.8 million on a pilot boat yet they cut funding to the social services /charities , sunshine league and the mirrors program. Now we see resulting violent dysfunction of youth,as crime explodes


Revenue's flat but we're borrowing more:
Unless Paula Cox still believes in the tooth fairy, the total debit is increasing at approximately $203M per year, which doubles the debit in 5 years
Government's DAILY interest cost is $263,000 a day.
(interest for the current fiscal year is $70 million.  sinking fund payment budgeted at $25.8 million, which adds another $71,000 a day. Total=$263,000)

PLP Pigs at the trough "let em eat cake"Marie Antoinette" Cox, is not suffering, or going hungry: she's fatter than a butcher's dog !!

PLP Government has led us into a classic debt trap
obscene amount of money spent on consultants and bureaucrats

who's running this shop?
In this economic climate, Government's actual spending has fallen. It has fallen by $183 million. From $1,167 million [net] actually spent in 2008 to $984 million planned [net] spending in FY 2011/12.

Government's revenue was a low $917 million in 2009. In 2010, Government revenue will likely come in around $965 million. For 2011/12, Government has said it is hoping to take in about $940 million in tax revenue.

So in a real-world national situation of non-rising revenue and falling expenditure, Government has agreed a pay raise of 1.25 per cent to the Civil Service, and 1.65 per cent to Government's BIU workers.

After the BPSU gets its 1.25 per cent, and the BIU gets it 1.65 per cent, will the Fire Services Association, the Police Association, the Prison Officers Association, the Bermuda Union of Teachers, and the Association of School Principals, all turn altruistic and forego any pay raise at all? Or will they also queue up for a matching pay raise? Human nature and commonsense says that they will queue.

Result? All 6,000 plus Government workers will be getting pay raises. However, this pay raise cannot be funded by robbing Peter to pay Paul. Instead, in Bermuda's economic climate — and remember that Bermuda's unique problem is largely self-inflicted — it can only be done by raping Peter and bludgeoning Paul so as to pay Lucifer. Because we are now beginning to pay Lucifer.

National debt

Reported in Government's own Revenue and Expenditure book, Government's own figures tell the full story*.

Government tells us that it hopes to take in $940 million in tax and other revenue in 2011/12. Out of the $940 million that comes in — all of it in hard-to-earn foreign exchange — Government tells us that it will first use $70,000,000 to pay just the interest on National Debt.

Then a kick-in-the-butt additional payment of $25,750,000 will be piggy-banked in the Sinking Fund to pay down the humongous $1,080,829,000 in Cash Debt that is owed. So $95,750,000 goes straight back out as Debt Service Costs.

Government is telling us that it will take $95,750,000 and use that to deal with the self-inflicted debt burden that it largely built up between 2004 and 2008.

Very, very, simply, this is what happens. Revenue of $940,000,000 comes in. Government then clips off that $95,750,000 to pay interest and pay into the Sinking Fund. That leaves $844,250,000 of revenue left over for spending on pay and pay raises, goods, utilities, services, parliamentary and ministerial pay, and so on.

Daily interest

But $844,250,000 is insufficient to run this Government. So Government has to borrow $139,550,000 to meet the planned net expenditure of $983,800,000 in 2011/12. Proof? Didn't the Minister of Finance announce on Friday, June 24 that she has arranged to borrow another $200,000,000?

When fully taken up — and it will be fully taken up before Santa Claus comes again — this will add $9,920,000 a year to interest costs alone. This will push Government's DAILY interest cost to $219,000 a day.

What? Still borrowing? If, at this point, I seem to have lost you, please do not think that you — or I — have gone crazy, are too stupid to understand, or that you just haven't read this properly. You have read it properly. I am not wrong. You are not stupid. The numbers do work just as I describe them. It is crazy.

Sunshine League

Government made those national financial decisions and other people are implementing and executing them. That is why the Sunshine League Children's Home had its already inadequate $200,000 annual grant slashed to $100,000.

That is why, with the children's grant slashed, 'race consultants' are kept on Government's temporary payroll at over $100,000 a year.

That is why 1.65 per cent and 1.25 per cent pay raises are actually given out.

That is why there will be more pay increases awarded to the five other unions queuing up for matching pay raises.

That is why, sucked down by declining Government spending, Bermuda's national economy will continue trending down.

If this makes sense to you, that's great. However, if it does, it's likely that you and I live in completely different worlds. Mine is a world where two plus two always equals four and where the rules of arithmetic do not bend to politics or angry rhetoric.

Back to my opening question. Who is running this crazy shop?
...............
Paula Cox needs to shrink Government but can't – in fact she's even giving pay increases! Paid for with debt!

Let's face it, the PLP were not elected on the basis of their competence to govern. They were elected because of what they stood for.

After 12 years in power, the chickens are coming home to roost from the PLP's exuberant spending and lack of accountability.

Here is Cox's Dilemma:

The size of Government has ballooned. They can no longer control it … there is no leadership so it interferes where it should let the market work, and fails to help where it should. Even worse, it costs more than we can afford … hence the creeping $1.2 billion in debt we are saddled with. Even with the haphazard cuts in our budgets, it costs nearly half a million dollars a day to run Government than we collect in taxes. Government needs to shed civil service workers and fast.

But it can't because a succession of PLP ministers has so offended our international clientbase that our private sector has shrunk. This means less tax dollars to support Government, less ability for the private sector to hire Bermudians, and a hell of a lot less money trickling down through our economy.

Paula Cox needs to shrink Government but can't – in fact she's even giving pay increases! Paid for with debt! And she needs to expand the economy, but can't bring herself to put down the "term limits" dog she introduced.

There are rumours of a mass exodus of expats this summer. And of additional companies pulling out. And of banks quietly starting to repossess houses. I fear the economic pain is only beginning.

I used to think that Bermuda would go through a rocky period until the PLP learned the ropes. And for the first few years, that looked possible. But then the Ewart a-go-go years happened (with Paula's support I might add). They have blown it. I have no confidence at all in this Government to turn it around.

At the rate we are going, we may soon have a 1998 sized economy that is struggling to support the masssive debt taken on during the past few years.