What the Hell?!? Friday -- Judgement to Rush

If you have an appetite for hate-filled, self-aggrandizing demagoguery, thrice divorced, Viagra toting, Hispaniola visiting misogynist Druggie Limbaugh never disappoints.


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This man is syndicated on over 600 radio stations, nation-wide, has over 20 million listeners, and influences the policies of the Repugnicant party.

We are SO screwed.

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We're All Donner Party Now

Clearly, the best (perhaps the only) solution is to start eating the grandparents.

While California has an even bigger budget hole to fill, Illinois ranks dead last among the states in terms of negative net worth compared with total expenditures. The state's liabilities, including future pension payments, exceed its unrestricted assets by $39 billion, more than 72% of its total expenditures as of mid-2008, according to Richard Ciccarone, managing director and chief research officer at McDonnell Investment Management LLC, an Oak Brook money manager that invests in bonds. "It's probably higher now," he adds.

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In addition to its day-to-day budget, Illinois faces rising pension expenses in coming years. Lawmakers have skimped on required contributions to employee pension funds and even borrowed to make those smaller payments. Unfunded liabilities and pension debt are projected to reach $95 billion by June 30. The state must contribute $5.4 billion to the pension funds next year, and more than $10 billion a year in the future. Required contributions will soon start increasing dramatically because the state has repeatedly pushed back a payment schedule enacted in 1995 to set aside enough to cover 90% of its pension obligations by 2045, up from 43% today, one of the worst unfunded liabilities in the nation.

The sharp rise in pension payments is the biggest factor pushing Illinois toward what a legislative task force last November called "a 'tipping point' beyond which it will be impossible to reverse the fiscal slide into bankruptcy." The little-noticed report on the state's pension problems warned that "the radical cost-cutting and huge tax increases necessary to pay all the deferred costs from the past would become so large that many businesses and individuals would be driven out of Illinois, thereby magnifying the vicious cycle of contracting state services, increasing taxes, and loss of the state's tax base."

While the Illinois Constitution protects vested pension benefits, that promise, like all the state's obligations, is only as good as its ability to pay. The Civic Federation warned lawmakers last fall that "there is mounting evidence that a judge could find the state is already insolvent. If the state is found to be insolvent under the classical cash-flow definition of insolvency, which is 'the inability to pay debts as they come due,' it is not only the pension rights of non-vested employees that will be in jeopardy.

Emphasis added.  Hat tip to Calculated Risk.
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Grounded Eagle

Great eagle, with an

Injured wing can't fly away,

But has a good home.

At the Virginia Zoological Park, 11/16/09
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Collapse Continues

There has never been a better time to be retired and on a fixed income.

As long as my pension fund is solvent, and the SS Admin keeps its promises, my income will be fixed.

Not so, people who have to work for a living.

Nancy Pelosi to Jazzbumpa: Drop Dead

Not really. Though Mitt Romney is another story.

I received this e-mail today from one of my former colleagues who retired along with me and several others last fall. (Note the apostrophe after "morons." Whoever wrote this is as ignorant as he is dishonest.)

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LET'S IMPEACH HER NOW BEFORE SHE DOES FURTHER DAMAGE!! WHAT AN IDIOT!!

IF YOU DON'T AGREE JUST DELETE--IF YOU DO--PASS IT ON!! WHERE DO WE GET THESE MORONS'


Windfall Tax on Retirement Income

Adding a tax to your retirement is simply another way of saying to the American people, you're so darn stupid that we're going to keep doing this until we drain every cent from you. That's what the Speaker of the House is saying. Read below...............

Nancy Pelosi wants a Windfall Tax on Retirement Income. In other words tax what you have made by investing toward your retirement. This woman is a nut case! You aren't going to believe this.

Madam speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to put a Windfall Tax on all stock market profits (including Retirement fund, 401K and Mutual Funds! Alas, it is true - all to help the 12 Million Illegal Immigrants and other unemployed Minorities!

This woman is frightening.

She quotes...' We need to work toward the goal of equalizing income, (didn't Marx say something like this?), in our country and at the same time limiting the amount the rich can invest.' (I am not rich, are you?)

When asked how these new tax dollars would be spent, she replied:
'We need to raise the standard of living of our poor, unemployed and minorities. For example, we have an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in our country who need our help along with millions of unemployed minorities. Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a long way to guarantee these people the standard of living they would like to have as 'Americans'.'

(Read that quote again and again and let it sink in.) 'Lower your retirement, give it to others who have not worked as you have for it'.

Send it on to your friends. I just did!! This lady is out of her mind and she is the speaker of the house!

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It contained a lot of colored fonts, bolding, etc. that I am not going to bother to reproduce here.


I sent this response to my former colleague.

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Agreeing or disagreeing has nothing to do with it. And it's a bit late for an April Fool.

What you need to do is send a retraction to everyone you have sent this to, and insist that they do the same. In fact, just forward my note.

Feel free to hate Pelosi. I don't think much of her either, but probably for an entirely different set of reasons.

And I'm all for holding politicians hairy feet to the fire, irrespective of party affiliation..

But, God damn it, let's spend the ten seconds it takes (that's how long it took me) to do the necessary fact-checking to reveal this as total bull shit.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/pelosi/windfall.asp

And do a little critical thinking. Does the claim even make any sense?

Frex: Does this note give any indication of when or where these ridiculous statements were alleged to be made? Or who they were made to?

Of course not, because it's a combination of distortions, misquotes out of context, and shit that someone made up.

Oh - and don't you think the retired generation is big enough to have some political clout, probably shouldn't be screwed over, en mass, and that the Speaker of the House might almost be smart enough to realize that?

Jesus, people - we're educated. Use your brains.
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But, you see, this is what conservatism has been reduced to.

They have nothing to offer. Nothing. That's why we get: Obama is a Muslim, Obama made the stock market fall, he hangs out with terrorists, and Pelosi wants to confiscate my 401K.

I've said before that we need a a thoughtful, responsible conservatism in this country. If it exists at all, it is somewhere in the Democratic Party.

Upate (4/08, 11:30 a.m.): There was some blowback to my note. Here is my response.
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So Snopes is liberal and therefore a liar. I get it.

How about this from a true-red conservative.

He goes on to rip Pelosi to shreds. Draw your own conclusions about bias.

Here it is from urban legends.

Now I'm up to 30 seconds.

Bullshit is still bullshit.

I'm not in favor of Pelosi. I'm in favor of the truth, and using critical thinking skills.

What I'm against is the approach to partisanship that pretends that anyone on my side is right and virtuous and must be defended/protected, but anyone on the other side is scum and any manner of lie and distortion to make them look evil is OK by me..

All this does is get in the way of rational discourse.
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We Are So Screwed

This via Paul Krugman:

Just as stocks were peaking, and poised to tank, the Federal Pension Guarantee Board, under the BRILLIANT governance of the departed but not lamented Shrub administration, switched from bonds only to lots of stocks.

All hail the ownership society!

Non-informative Letter from HowWhat

In the mail yesterday came a letter from Bennie's Expresso (delivered by HowWhat.) This is what it said.
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You chose to receive your Qualified Annuity Payment benefit as an annuity payment.* The initial calculation of your benefit was based on the information we had on file about you at that time.

We've recalculated your benefit based on updated information. Please note that these benefit amounts don't reflect deductions, such as tax withholding, healthcare coverage or life insurance.

For more information yadda yadda yadda . . .
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Since they neglected to include any numbers, or a description of what this "update information" might be, my first thought was: "What changed, my months of service, or my date of birth? Whatever it is, I'm about to get screwed."

The new information might be the occurance of my 62nd birthday in December, which changes everything. But, who knows? At this point, I'm guessing.

I'm going to have to call HowWhat, which is probably not going to be helpful. I'm gearing myself up, but it probably won't happen today.

Information abut my February check is still not posted, though March info is. The March statement shows my post-62 regular pension amount plus my pre-62 SERP amount. Clearly, this cannot be correct. I have yet to see the people at HowWhat get anything right.

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* Like, duh

Problems with HowWhat

I would like to start a dialog with my fellow retirees about difficulties with HowWhat (name disguised, because I'm paranoid) and getting our pension statements and health care information to make sense. As of now, things are far less than perfect.

The people on the HowWhat help lines try, but they don't seem to know much, and from my experience and what has been reported to me, if you are on for more than a few minutes, or need to get put on hold, you run the risk of getting disconnected. At that point, many bad words are spoken.

Here are some facts I've discovered.

On the HowWhat web site, it will always show the Balance in your RHCA as $0.00. This is because they are not privy to the information in your RHCA at Merrill Lynch. Nothing on the HowWhat web site indicates this. Grrrrrr.

When you process a claim on that money, the HowWhat web site will indicate it as "disallowed" until the funds are cleared from ML. They should label it "pending" but would rather have you believe it is disallowed. Grrrrrr.

Now, about me.

I'm in a special circumstance, having hit my 62nd birthday, when everything changes, during the first month of retirement. Here is my experience. It's complicated, so I'm going to go through it in considerable detail, and try to avoid confusing either myself or you.

My first pension check was direct deposited on or about 1/1/09. So far so good. It appears that this check might be doubled to include both December and January pension payments, but I am not 100% certain that is correct. The check stub statement that I got in the mail is sketchy on helpful information. There is a better statement on line at HowWhat, but is also less helpful than it could be, and the numbers for withholding from the two sources do not exactly match.

If the payments classified as "1 Time" do, indeed, represent payment for December, then that much makes sense, though I wish they would actually say so definitively, and make it clear.

Now it starts to get dicey. At age 62 and 1 mo, the interim supplement goes away. If you're already 62, you never saw it, so never mind. If you're younger, this is in your future. For me, the supplement should be included for December and January, then go away, starting in February.

The supplement, which I've called $Int1, ought to be the total of the SERP change and the Basic Pension (BP) change which occur at 62, 1 mo. This part is weird. SERP actually goes up. For me, the bump is about 14%. On the other hand, Basic Pension is reduced. For me, it is a huge bite. Your mileage may vary.

So. $Int1 should = SERP delta + BP delta

Since SERP delta is negative in this reckoning, $Int1 should be less than BP delta.

But, in my January check, they paid me a value of $Int1 = BP delta.

Thus, they overpaid me by 2*SEPR delta, in the absence of other errors.

I didn't discover the discrepancy until I went to the HowWhat website and saw the payment detail for my March check. (As an aside, I'll mention that the detail for my February check is not available at this time. Grrrrrr.) The March check detail, which is available, indicates a substantial reduction, labeled "DB OverPmtDed," which I am deciphering as "debit overpayment deduction."

So I called HowWhat to find out what is up. The nice young man on the phone explained to me that I got overpaid in January. Since I had not yet done the above reconciliation of statements, this was a startling and disturbing revelation. He also explained to me that the Jan. check did indeed include Dec. But, this came after he thought it would be included in Feb. I asked him what my Feb amount would be, and he couldn't easily generate a number. Then we got cut off before he could give me any further explanations. Grrrrr.

Instead of calling back (I was spitting nails by this time) I wrote this.

In attempting to reconcile all of the above information, I discovered:

Tax withholding amount on the website does not match that on the check stub.
There is a lease car deduction withheld, which is almost certainly not the correct amount.
The amount of my January overpayment is different from any number I can generate with information at hand.

Also, if you have question on different topics, like health care benefits and pension, you will have to deal with different divisions at HowWhat. The same specialist will not be able to assist on both topics

I know other people are having difficulties getting sensible, correct information. Maybe we can help each other. Or at least offer crying shoulders.