“[Romney’s] campaign is very good at tactics. It has taken each challenger, found his weakness and pounded it home. But Romney’s candidacy remains short on aspiration. His public appeal, at this point, is a combination of emphasizing his business experience, criticizing Obama’s record and reassuring conservatives. This is a campaign — but not a cause.” Michael Gerson, Washington Post, Feb., 17, 2012
Gotta find that cause…
Gary Carter RIP. Way too young. (Great final hit video.)
Pension Bomb: NYC is Paying More for Services Already Rendered Than Services it Provides Today
Great piece in Real Clear Markets today by Manhattan Institute scholar Diana Furchtgott-Roth on the growing state pension crisis across America. This was an issue prominently raised in 2010 by a friend and former client Harry Wilson when he was running for New York State Comptroller.
In short, the amount cities and states owe their retirees is growing every year — it’s well over $3 trillion now — and they don’t have the money to met those obligations. What’s worse, states are vastly overestimating rates of return on their pension fund investments in order to justify giving public union employees generous benefits. The bubble will soon pop unless the stock and bond markets boom to extraordinary heights, which not a single reasonable investor believes will happen.
What does that mean to you and me? It means more of our tax dollars will go toward paying for services already rendered than those currently needed. We will be paying for retired teachers at the expense of present day educational expenses. New York City has already reached that mark. City taxpayers now pay more for retiree pensions and fringe benefits than they do for present day services. And it’s only going to get worse. It’s an issue Harry Wilson 100% convinced me to be very, very worried about — and he’s wicked smaht. Can’t keep kicking this can down the road.
I really liked Whitney Houston. And, as someone who knows the animal, I rooted as much as anyone for her to overcome her addictions. But flying the flag at half mast for her in New Jersey?
Governor Chris Christie has done a lot of things right as chief executive. This isn’t one of them.
Whew! Man-of-the-people Michael Moore just sued his way into another $2.7 million for his work on 2004 conspiracy flick “Fahrenheit 911.” I feared he was getting down to his last $50 mil or so. (Moore has now made $22.7 million from the film on the 9/11 attacks.)
What’s the next money maker for the self-proclaimed anti-greedster? Fukishima? The Haitian Earthquake? “The Black Death, Part IX”?
Or does Moore only make films when Republicans are in office?
It’s incredible that some people still buy into this guy’s shtick. Truly incredible. As the Italians say, “watch the hands, not the mouth.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a wimp. He should resign. For the fourth straight year, the Nevada Democrat is refusing to issue or pass a budget plan for the country, Congress’s principle job. The result is a rudderless nation.
Mr. Reid refuses to propose a budget because he will be criticized politically for suggesting any cuts. The Republicans last year got skewered for proposing the austere “Ryan Plan,” and they knew they would before doing it. But that’s what leaders are supposed to do — make tough calls and endure the consequences.
Republicans aren’t always brave. They chicken out all the time. But never to the extent of what Harry Reid is doing. He should be ridden out of Washington on a rail for cowardice.
I watched my daughter fall headfirst from a staircase when she was a baby, just a little more than a year old. Time, somehow, impossibly, stood still. She hung in the air for an extra beat — only God knows how — giving me enough time to rush and catch her before she hit the ground. To this day I don’t recall moving toward her. It just happened. The tumblers of the universe were mercifully aligned for us that day.
I thought about that this morning while watching children bathe in a tiny tributary to the Amazon River in Yuka, Ecuador. The water coursing through its banks is chemically fouled. It runs thick with petroleum and chemical “production water” from carelessly built pits used to hold discharge from nearby oil wells. The pits were dug years ago by Texaco, now Chevron, and their toxic discharge was specifically routed into local streams to save money from which, they knew, local villagers bathe and drink out of necessity. I cannot imagine what company officials were thinking.
The parents of the children a colleague and I watched today know the water causes severe illnesses — cancer, intestinal disease, respiratory illnesses — but there is nothing they can do about it. There is no other source of water for them. These parents are poor and powerless, but they love their children just as intensely as all parents do — as I do. Indeed, their children are all they have. The thought of that dug a pit in my stomach while watching the scene.
I tried to imagine what such abject helplessness must feel like to these parents and I could not. The best I could do, thank God, was think back to that staircase. To them, having a son or daughter drinking from and bathing in the river must be like watching ones’ child fall off stairs over and over again — while being tied to a post. The tumblers are not aligned for them. And if that’s not bad enough, these parents then have to watch the long-term effects of the chemical pollution develop in their children, over a period of years, without having the financial resources to medically treat them.
Through the most improbable circumstances, my company has been given the opportunity to help the children a colleague and I saw today — and thousands of others in their same situation. I’m all in on the effort. But it will be the parents, foremost, I’ll be thinking about when doing the work. Because as bad as the illnesses are — and will be going forward — there is something worse: Watching one’s child in danger without being able to save her.
Have to head out to an interesting part of the world for a few days. Hopefully some good posts to bring back. Take care in the meantime.
–Bill
Only in New York.
The state just ranked 49th nationally in business friendliness is at it again — this time harassing a Papa John’s Pizza restaurant in Colonie, NY. Veteran Albany Times Union reporter Rick Karlin broke the story yesterday, and it’s got to be an embarrassment for the State Department of Labor. One hopes it is anyway.
The Papa John’s owners are being fined $5,500 for — get this — not providing employees enough company polo shirts. Under state labor law, they are technically required to get five, even if they only work a couple of hours a day. Who knew? No restaurant employees were complaining about it. The Labor Department hard-ons just decided to impose the penalty during an inspection.
Papa John’s will probably have to sell about 10,000 slices of pizza to net that money back. That or fire an employee.
The State Department of Labor. We’re just doing our job, mam.
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