Fat People De-Couch and Line Up For Food

I submit that food stamps minimally should be for starving people rather than sedentary gluttons...

They should probably tell them there is *free money* atop a different Poconos peak every day....but then really have nothing there but perhaps a salad bar (vinaigrettes only).

Best Visual Metaphor Ever...

...for Social Security, Medicare, legacy national debt and the overall generational theft occurring these days.

During the high five she's no doubt yelling, "I PAID IN..."

Entitlement Bombs, Everywhere

That's the balance sheet of the Port Washington Library here on Long Island. It's perhaps one the most well-funded libraries in the country with a $6.5 million budget but you can see it's *retirement benefits* line is exploding.

In just the past 3 years it's projected to jump from 237k to 516k!

How much of the operational budget are these entitled 'old coots' and 'old bags' going to be usurping in say 5 years? In 10 years?

How much expertise is required to shelve books anyway?

Rightfully, these places should be run by volunteer high school-age kids...

The question is, "How long after the internet and e-readers like Kindle make libraries obsolete will they and the people who used to work in them continue to be funded by spineless property tax payers?"

'Old Coots' Enslaving Their Grandchildren

Alright, watch the first two minutes of this:

Ms. Palin - A pension is a promise that must be kept...

A pension is a *promise*?

That's a bull$hit metaphor if I ever heard one.

Alright it was a promise in the sense that our lazy ancestors voted for politicians who PROMISED to steal their retirement funds from the next working generation...

If I was giving such a speech to a hypothetical, enlightened, younger crowd I'd be bellowing, "A pension is a CONFISCATION..."

The 'old coots' and 'old bags' that effectively run the government are of course over-simplifying the argument.

Just because they paid-in....that doesn't mean they didn't do a whole slew of other negative things (e.g. elect corrupt, wasteful pols) to cancel out, if I can channel Colonel Jessup, "...what they think they are ENTITLED TO."

They built this country?

Oh really?

Did they ever work past 6pm? Did they work weekends?

Did any of these 'old coots' ever have to jet all over the globe to earn their paycheck?

Were any of them permanently tethered to the grind via Blackberry?

The notion that they even worked hard is sketchy at best.

And whatever it was they did build - the 'worst generation' - well they're doing a heck of demo job on it now with their self-serving politics.

So the bleep what if Grandma took you to McDonalds...

She and her 'old coot' jabronis plan on confiscating half of your lifetime wages!

Realize that pension-pandering is hardly the sin of just one organized political party. And it's only going to get worse from here on.

Big Government - Too Ridiculous To Keep Up With!

Check out John Stossel's blog post.

And he has another stomach-turner on Native Americans.

Of course the one party that most people think might have fought this junk HASN'T or HASN'T SUCCEEDED anyway....too worried about being called *racist*, too incompetent to get the job done.

Big Government - Marginalizing Work

With Welfare It Makes Sense To Work Less

Remember when Mississippi used to have new manufacturing plants popping up weekly? What happened?

If you ask the business leaders, the problem is a lack of skilled labor. People don’t want to work. Especially in the Delta, people just won’t show up on time and often fail drug tests.

"How can this be?" you may ask. You have to work to eat. Well, that’s really not true anymore. In fact, our welfare state rewards not working. You can do as well working one week a month at minimum wage as you can working a $60,000-a-year, full-time, high-stress job.

"The line at 50 South Clinton Avenue is crazy -- people get there early in the morning, a lot of the people are cursing, yelling and screaming," Hernez said.

Hah! That's an *assistance line* in New Jersey; and it's two years old.

How long are the lines now?

You'd be angry too if you were 250 lbs, 5 feet 6 inches, and had to stand out there in the winter!

Now check this out - South Carlina's food stamp calculator.

I entered *family of 4*, *monthly rent of $300*, and *monthly utilities of $100* (satellite color TV).

And you can click the image, enlarge it, and read the GOOD NEWS - an idler like that qualifies for $588 of food stamps per month.

I don't care what anyone says, that's a LOT of money for food. I've seen infomercials late at night that declared kids could eat for 17 cents a day...

Property Tax Death Spiral - Rotation Has Begun!

That was an article in today's Boston Globe.

Of course, nowhere in it do the authors mention *pensions* - the elephant in the over-mortgaged room. I emailed one of them about that oversight and he just said that it *was a separate issue for the future*.

Color me shocked!

The story says increasing property taxes are to *pay for new buildings* and *services*.

Okay.

Here's pretty much all one needs to glean from this poor excuse for journalism:

Since 2000, average property taxes on single-family homes in Massachusetts have increased about 64 percent.

Ouch!

People my age haven't felt that squeeze as we're relatively young and still in the ascendant part of our careers.

But for those who rely on a fixed income, the done-nothing stock market, or interest income....these rising property tax bills are killers AND, often, one-way tickets to cinder block homes in lower cost states.

Abusive Logic

The de-fanged muckrakers of Big Media, there're all out there these days decrying *pension abuse*.

They are finally drawing attention to the fact that corrupt politicians and their cronies have been looting the treasury for years.

But big deal. These complaints are too little and too late. AND the focus of their criticism is dangerously off-point.

Clowns at the Boston Globe and elsewhere, by only attacking the worst examples, they are tacitly conceding that the bulk of government pension obligations are in fact nothing to be concerned about. No, we only need curb the *abuses*.

But guess what, the abuses are not the fundamental problem, they are merely the sympton of a larger disease.

And by shedding light only on the big little crooks, it sets up any forthcoming reform to be hopelessly narrow. In other words it'll do nothing for the financial viability of states or municipalities. Politicians will pass some nothing bill and say, "Hey, we curbed the abuses....now leave us alone."

In short, *pension abuse* is not golden parachutes for big wigs, the ABUSE is on taxpayers for the entire system.

There's just no reason why all government employees shouldn't be on *defined contributions* like everyone else.

Another thing that annoys me about Big Media coverage of this subject is the expression *unfunded pension liabilities*. They can't just say these pensions are broke - they are merely unfunded. I guess then, by that logic, that my Moronic landlord isn't a deadbeat criminal....he just has $4 million in UNFUNDED mortgage obligations!

See also - Worcester, MA - Old, Dumb, and Broke.

Rare, Modern Muckraking

This is a blog post from an anonymous blogger, in one of the South Shore's tony towns:

HPD Chief Mills, Bozo-Extraordinarious

Did you know Hingham Police Chief Mills doesn’t know a spreadsheet from a bed sheet?

Unfortunately that is true. That is why Chief Mills, simpleton that he is, has to have three chiefs unlike every town in America – who has just one. The reason, he is so lazy, so brain-deficient he must have somebody to tell him what to do.

The latest Hack-a-Drama at the HPD is Charlie Souther, former Deputy Chief and currently retired with full life time pension, life time healthcare and life time police details – and that is still not enough!

In 2009 Hingham Police had three (3) Chief’s not one.

Charlie Souther now is a paid dirt-bag-no-nothing-consultant to install the new consolidated dispatch center. Typical of Taylor Mills, although Souther knows all about spreadsheets and budgets he has no knowledge of systems integration of disparate devices.

Soothers’ education and technical expertise relating to radio frequency integration and methodologies is limited to his use as a police officer when he used to call in and broadcast: This is car 54 where am I.

Yet, The Mills termites get the job regardless of their knowledge base. We understand Charlie is getting $50.00 an hour to do Mill’s budget; just like he did when he was s one of two assistant fake-chiefs. Why not use someone with no knowledge to accept the job - The fed’s paying, right?

It appears that Souther who has zero expertise in systems integration is performing his old job of kissing Mills buttocks, doing his budget, and telling Mills what and when to say nothing. Was he the shill that wrote Mills famous letter to the editor equating Weed with heroin?

This is one of the many reasons Mills must be laid-off. Now get this: Mills is last-in and first out every day.

So Charlie retires to get a bigger pension, and Mills goes whining to The Selectmen asking for a stipend for the bogus increased work load and he gets it! Rumor has it Mills has Reily and Rabuffo in his back pocket; when he says jump they say how high?

Hah! The guy's pretty funny and he seems, after reading several posts, to be *wired* into local politics.

But there's a significant problem with his most refreshing sunlight.

Most of the people that participate in local politics are off-line 'old coots'! And the ones that can use a computer....they most likely don't even know what the bleep a *blog* is!

The fact remains, if we had even the slightest bit of muckraking from Big Media over the past several decades....the municipalities, and states(!), wouldn't all be so irretrievably broke today.



Don't know what a muckraker is? Click here and educate thyself. The image I always had, was that journalist who discovered rats falling from the rafters into meat grinders in Chicago.

Allegedly, this particular guy, Upton Sinclair, was paid off by a chinaman hellbent on his own culinary monopoly! That's how the game is played, you know. One industry self-aggrandizes by lobbying, and burdening another with regulation.

For a timely example, just consider the green crowd antagonizing and smearing dirty Big Oil!

Worcester, MA - Old, Dumb, and Broke

My hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, just like every other municipality in America, is broke.

Some ten years ago they issued bonds for the expressed purpose of gambling the proceeds in the stock market. This was done to close a *pension funding gap*. When one is losing, just hit up a bookie and double up, right?

A decade after issuing nearly $220 million in bonds to close its pension funding gap, the city of Worcester’s bet on the stock market is under water.

The gamble by one of New England’s largest cities that it could make enough in the markets to pay back bondholders and generate returns above the cost of the debt has fallen way short. In fact, Worcester’s pension funding gap widened considerably in the past year as a global economic crisis waylaid investment portfolios everywhere.

Worcester’s bogey, as DelSignore calls it, is a true interest cost of 6.31 percent on the bonds. To produce savings for the city, pension investment returns have to beat that target.

But Worcester’s 10-year return through the end of 2008 was 3.79 percent, leaving the city’s pension liability only about 68 percent funded.

These cities and towns were bankrupt 10 years ago....and they are even worse off now.

They simply have no shot at surviving the next leg down on Wall Street.

Here's the most damning excerpt from that article:

Pension-related costs are now Worcester’s third-largest expenditure. Even with some relief from the state built in, the pension cost for fiscal 2010 will be $39.4 million, including $16.6 million in debt service on the pension obligation bonds. That’s more than what the city will spend on police ($38.9 million) and fire ($32.2 million), according to the Worcester Regional Research Bureau.

As you can see, taxes are, more and more, just levied for *income redistribution*. In other words, taxes do not get spent on SERVICES!

There is a simple and elegant solution to this:

Abrogate pension obligations!

Make those free-loading 'old coots' and 'old bags' go live with their kids.

This is what they get for electing and RE-ELECTING all those Morons over the years.

Thanks to aupanner for sending me this link and reminding me of my *roots* - some two months ago!

Give me a break, I've still got 500 unread emails in this inbox.

Christmas Gifts

I am more than halfway through one of last year's Christmas gifts - the Life Application Study Bible. I'm almost through Isaiah.

This year I got a few more books including:



For moi?

I received three more books in this bundle from my Brooklyn Heights uncle. Another title was Dimboxes, Epopts, And Other Quidams - Words to Describe Life's Indescribable People.

My wife got me a winter hat - and that's it!

I told my mother, who usually buys me all sorts of little crap, that if she bought me ANYTHING at all this year (not even a toothbrush) that I would not let her see her grandkids, ever again.

So what does she do? She omitted the trinkets but had my father give me a $100 gift certificate (supposedly from him) to REI. Do y'all know that store? It's a high-end outdoors store for Cambridge trust fund kids. It's got $70 walking T-shirts and whatnot.

I went into REI the other day to try and spend the money but couldn't find one item in the entire store that I fancied - not even a pair of socks. What a waste! Every penny my parents blow now I will have to cover in their dotage. Remember it's not just me; I have three siblings who're eager recipients.

Again, my parents think themselves *rich* because they've got pensions and Social Security money in the pipeline.

But I know I'm *poor* because I have no such financial backstops and because I know I am going to have to pay for theirs one way or another - directly or via confiscatory taxation.

Tomorrow Is The Massachusetts Moron Test

Question 1 on the ballot is a proposal to eliminate the 5.3% state income tax.

I've joked about getting all politically active and standing at the booth with a sign that read "Question 1 Translation - DO YOU HAVE A *$&$ING BRAIN?".

[A "yes" vote would end the tax.]

Who the bleep would vote FOR a state income tax?

Well, my father for one person. He's a retired State employee collecting a thirty-something thousand dollar annual pension for life. He's under the impression that he could lose his pension if the State weren't confiscating HIS money from people like, well, ME.

First of all, I told him that his pension would have to drop by 5.3% for him to lose in the event of an income tax repeal. I wasn't sure he even realized that he paid part of his own pension via income taxes.

Secondly, the idea that an income tax repeal would cut his pension is blatant fearmongering. Yes, it could happen, but more likely other crap would be cut first; they'd end defined benefits for *new* state employees; heck, they might even find the revenue elsewhere by taxing Harvard and MIT's endowments. But this is what *THEY* did, those Commis, they went around to everyone who works or worked for the State and tried to spook them into voting "No" on Question 1. Obviously, the tactic works.

Thirdly, I told my father that I would buy his vote. I told him that if he voted "Yes" to discontinue the income tax, I would cover whatever his pension lost because I would likely save WAY MORE THAN WHAT HE'D LOSE. How's that for a win-win deal?!?!?!



But I wasn't taking any chances. Behold what I did:

My wife is in NYC on business this week; in fact, she's gone until Friday so it'll be a long week for me and my precious brats. Yesterday I called my father and asked made him come out to help me for a day (Monday night - Tuesday night). Seventy miles from his assigned election booth, he won't be able to vote at all - he won't be able to vote for the continued confiscation of my wages to pay his!

He just got here at 8pm and right away waxed irate at the fact that he wasn't going to be able to vote this year. He told me that instead, I would have to go and pull the lever for his comrades people.

I laughed. I most certainly would not be doing that.

And another thing, "Dad, since you can't vote on Question 1, I am reneging on that deal we had where I'd cover your potential pension shortfall with my tax savings!!!"



In all seriousness, my *deal* demonstrates what would happen if government pensions bit the dust. Taxes would be lower and kids would do as they've done for millennia....

...they'd take care of their parents in their dotage.

Remember, at root, all the government is....is an inefficient middleman. And a self-perpetuating one at that!

Prediction - I'll bet the income tax DOES NOT get voted down. It'll be 48% to 52% in favor of the "No's". They're that dumb up here.

Calling All Granny Bashers

These are excerpts from an alarming article on the cost of senior entitlements.



Senior benefit costs up 24%
'Health care crisis' leads to 8-year rise
By Dennis Cauchon
USA TODAY

The cost of government benefits for seniors soared to a record $27,289 per senior in 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis.

That's a 24% increase above the inflation rate since 2000. Medical costs are the biggest reason. Last year, for the first time, health care and nursing homes cost the government more than Social Security payments for seniors age 65 and older. The average Social Security benefit per senior in 2007 was $13,184.

"We have a health care crisis. We don't have an entitlement crisis," says David Certner, legislative policy director of the AARP, which represents seniors.

He says seniors shouldn't be blamed for the growing cost of government retirement programs.

The federal government spent $952 billion in 2007 on elderly benefits, up from $601 billion in 2000. It's the biggest function of the federal government. States chipped in $27 billion more in 2007, mostly for nursing homes.

All three major senior programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — experienced dramatically escalating costs that outstripped inflation and the growth in the senior population.

Benefits per senior are soaring at a time when the senior population is not. The portion of the U.S. population ages 65 and older has been constant at 12% since 2000.

The senior boom, however, starts big time in 2011, when the first baby boomers — 79 million people born between 1946 and 1964 — turn 65 and qualify for Medicare health insurance. The oldest baby boomers turn 62 this year and qualify for Social Security at reduced benefits.

•The cost of senior benefits is equal to $10,673 for every non-senior household.

•About 35% of the federal budget is spent on senior benefits, up from 32% in 2004.

Eugene Steuerle, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Urban Institute, notes that the full cost of senior benefits goes beyond Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A complete estimate would include other programs for retirees, such as military and civil servant pensions and medical benefits, he says.




And now, here's the last incredible line from that article:

Economist Dean Baker calls it "granny bashing" to focus on the cost of senior benefits. The elderly paid a designated tax for Social Security and Medicare taxes during their decades of working to support these programs when they retired, says Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic Policy and Research.

It's a tough call - that being which is a more outrageous statement, that from Communist Dean Baker above or the AARP statement that "We have a health care crisis. We don't have an entitlement crisis"???

Personally, I prefer to bash *grandpas* because they at least put up a small fight.

The tragedy is that young people have no clue that they are, and will indefinitely, be working for old people.

There will be no Social Security and probably no Medicare for me when I am 65. My peak earning years will be long past. How high will my quality of life be for my last 3-4 decades on this planet? It's a scary thought.

This is why young people today need to live WELL BELOW their means and save as much dough as they can.

Question - Who's really getting bashed here?

Answer - The young Morons with iPods jammed in their ears.