"Bad Mood"

My letter to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch concerning the May 7 editorial "Bad Mood":

The May 7 Dispatch editorial "Bad Mood," concerning the results of a Reason Foundation-Rupe poll regarding concerns of Americans did indicate, as the editorial noted, that "Americans have not lost their common sense, but seem to have lost patience with politics as usual."

The article piqued my interest in the poll, so I decided to check the Foundation's website for more detailed information on the poll. And there I discovered one poll result which, not surprisingly, was omitted from the Dispatch editorial: "Half of all respondents say that public sector workers receive better benefits that (sic) those with similar jobs in the private sector, but only 37 percent support cutting those public employee benefits to help balance state budgets."

Perhaps the respondents realize something that the Dispatch editors refuse to admit: that while public employees generally receive better benefits than their private sector peers, these higher benefits are usually offset by lower pay rates, a fact that has been substantiated in numerous studies comparing total compensation of public and private sector workers.

Don't balk?

My letter to the editor of the Columbus Dispatch concerning the May 1 editorial "Don't balk":

Once again the Dispatch, in a May 1 editorial, calls for Ohio’s public employees to “take part in the sacrifices required to set the state’s finances right,” claiming that “Ohioans in private-sector jobs are already sacrificing, and will sacrifice more…”

Haven’t state employees already sacrificed by being hit with ten unpaid furlough days per year? Don’t the proposed pension revisions which reduce the benefits that have been promised, and in some cases require contribution increases, entail sacrifices? Haven’t thousands of public employees been laid off? Aren’t many more likely to lose their jobs as funds for local government operations are slashed? Don’t public employees and their families also suffer at least as much as private sector employees when “government services across the spectrum…bear cuts to help balance the budget?”

The Dispatch frequently mentions the “excessive pay and benefits” of public employees and the sacrifices of private-sector employees without ever providing specifics. I realize that many folks in the private sector have lost their jobs – but so have many public employees. Would it be too much to ask that the Dispatch provide some evidence that pay and benefits in the private sector have really been affected more adversely than those in the public sector, or that public employees pay and benefits are really “excessive?” Have pay rates at Nationwide Insurance or Chase Bank been frozen for years? Are Limited Brands employees paying a higher share of their health insurance premiums? Have Dispatch Broadcasting Group employees been forced to take unpaid furlough days? In short, exactly how have private-sector employees sacrificed more than public employees?

New Photos: Route of the Maya (El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize)

I recently returned from at trip to El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize, and have posted 855 new photos from the trip online.

Select item #2 at under "Favorite Links" at right to access all my online photos at Picasa.

Keeping Retirees in Ohio

Ohio Gov. John Kasich and his party have lately expressed concern over the fact that many of our state's retirees are leaving Ohio for other states, particularly Florida. The principal reasons for this outmigration are apparently a desire for warmer winter weather and the fact that Florida has no estate or income tax. Of course we can do nothing about the weather, but keep in mind that Ohio's weather is as good as or superior to Florida's for at least half the year - think heat, humidity and hurricanes!

I suspect that it's primarily Ohio's income tax that leads Ohio retirees to decide to become Florida residents instead of just wintering there. The estate tax may also have some bearing, but I believe that most retirees are much more concerned with maximizing their incomes while they're still living than they are about a tax that will be paid after they're gone. So instead of making the abolishment of the estate tax a priority I suggest the GOP instead do something about the income tax paid by retirees.

For at least ten years the maximum Ohio tax credit for retirement income has been $200. Why not increase it significantly, to an amount that would eliminate the income tax liability on most retirees? I suspect that were this to be done the outmigration to Florida would decrease dramatically. Seniors could still spend the winter months in Florida avoiding Ohio winters, but they would have no reason to change their residency. It's an idea worth considering.

Kasich's staff salaries

I sent another "letter to the editor" of the Columbus Dispatch today concerning an editorial published today; the last letter I sent was actually published - something I never expect. We'll see if this one does:

I was amused by the lead sentence of the Jan. 11 Dispatch editorial "Labor pains" - amused because the sentence extols "Gov. John Kasich's determination to confront the swollen compensation and influence of public employee unions in Ohio ..." If the Dispatch editors are so concerned about "swollen compensation" in state government (a "fact" they apparently expect readers to accept without any supporting evidence), why has there been no criticism forthcoming on the salaries Gov. Kasich will be paying his office staff? Beth Hansen, Kasich's chief of staff, will be paid $170,000, $47,000 more than Gov. Strickland's chief of staff. Gov. Kasich's old pal Jai Chabria - his number two in that two-man Lehman Brothers Columbus office - will receive $145,000 per year as a "Special Assistant," a new position created for him. Communications director Scott Milburn will get $120,000, 35% more than the previous director. The governor justifies these high salaries as necessary to keep top caliber people from taking jobs in the private sector. But the State of Ohio needs top caliber folks throughout state government - not just for the governor's political cronies.

The Big Con

In their apparently successful effort to continue tax cuts for upper income taxpayers the GOP managed to pull of a con job Bernie Madoff would be proud of. It seems they've convinced a majority of Americans that all these folks with incomes over $250,000 per year (and that's after exemptions and deductions) are "job creators." and if their marginal tax rates return to the levels of the 1990s they'll be unable or unwilling to create enogh jobs to get America back on its feet.

Of course they offer no evidence that a slightly higher marginal rate will have this effect, nor do they see a problem with the millions of folks in these tax brackets who will never create jobs under any circumstances - think Wall Street traders with their multi-million dollar bonuses, or corporate executives who earn enormous salaries while exporting jobs overseas. But they too will continue to enjoy the lowest tax rates in over 50 years because we must protect those "job creators."

My question is this: why can't we reward "job creators" when they live up to their name? Why not provide a tax credit for documented job creation? That way real "job creators" are rewarded, while folks who merely make a lot of money pay taxes at the same rate they did in the "good old days" of the 1990s.

Letter to the Editor

I sent a "letter to the editor" of the Columbus Dispatch today concerning an editorial published today; the letter probably will never see print, but here it is for my vast blog audience:

Editor:

I applaud state's retirement systems' managements for refusing to provide the group of eight newspapers with "records of salaries, benefits, ages, years of service and contributions to the systems for each of the 400,000 people receiving benefits." (Dispatch editorial August 11)

While the Dispatch asserts in the editorial that "Statistical detail on salaries, payouts, age of retirement and the like isn't personal when no names are attached," in many cases it would be quite easy to determine an individual retiree's name from that information and public information available from employers. To cite an obvious example, consider former Columbus Police Chief James Jackson, who retired March 16, 2009 with 51 years of service. Armed with this information, how difficult would it be to determine "personal" information on Chief Jackson's retirement benefit?

Other items requested by the newspapers include each benefit recipient's age and last place of employment. Since in many smaller entities only one or two employees retire each year, identifying such individuals would also be quite simple.

Have there been "abrupt changes in pay that could signal manipulations of pay that could signal manipulations to boost benefits?" Of course there have been! But such changes could also signal a promotion to a higher-paying position. And there's no way the Dispatch could investigate further without determining the individual's identity! In any case it's the employer who increased the employee's pay, not the retirement system. And the retirement systems have already proposed changes to how final average salary is calculated to address "spiking."

The news media and the public are right to be concerned about the operations of Ohio's retirement systems. However, I suspect the detailed information requested appears more likely to be used for still more sensationalized articles concerning individuals receiving "exorbitant" pension benefits rather than an honest evaluation of the systems.


Tom Severns
Westerville

Addendum: Surprise - the Dispatch published the letter on Aug. 16.

Peru

I recently returned from Peru, and have posted 800+ photos from the trip online.

Select item #2 at under "Favorite Links" at right to access all my online photos at Picasa.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, Serial Liar

Last week in the space of 10 minutes, GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell repeated the same lie concerning the Democrats' financial reform legislation three times:

• It is "a permanent taxpayer bailout of Wall Street banks."

• It is "an endless taxpayer bailout of Wall Street banks."

• It is "a perpetual taxpayer bailout of Wall Street banks."

He claimed the legislation "perpetuates the one thing the American people have said they don't want to happen again, which is to have their tax money used to prop up the a large failed institution."

I looked forward to hearing McConnell explain his assertions when he was interviewed on CNN Sunday, but when asked by Candy Crowley of CNN to respond to President Obama's statement that the bill contained no provision for "taxpayer funded bailouts," observe McConnell's obfuscation:

MCCONNELL: Well, Candy, he ought to talk to his own treasury secretary, who agrees with me, as well as the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, that there is a bailout fund in the bill that was reported out of the Banking Committee, the partisan bill that came out of committee on a party-line vote.

CROWLEY: But that still does not--

MCCONNELL: I don't think that's in dispute.

CROWLEY: But that bailout is funded by the banks themselves, is it not? It is not a taxpayer bailout?

MCCONNELL: Well, Robert Reich, who was Bill Clinton's secretary of labor, says it is a bailout fund. I mean, regardless of how the money is produced, it is a bailout fund that sort of guarantees in perpetuity that we will be intervening once again to bail out these big firms.

Note how McConnell never did address Ms. Crowley's questions regarding who would actually be funding the bailout fund. Instead he simply calls it a "bailout" and ignores the key word "taxpayer."

Of course close followers of the news know that "taxpayer bailout" is a GOP "talking point" recommended by Republican strategist Frank Luntz to defeat any attempts at financial reform legislation. And the fact that taxpayers aren't involved at all funding the process is apparently irrelevant to the GOP, which continues to mislabel the "bailout fund" even though it would be totally funded by the banks themselves. And the $50 billion fund would be used by the government "to liquidate failing financial companies that pose a significant risk to the financial stability of the United States in a manner that mitigates such risk and minimizes moral hazard," not to rescue them. A failing bank would be broken up, sold off, and its executive management fired. That's sure some "taxpayer bailout of Wall Street" Senator!

Canadian Health Care: Fact vs. Fiction

I recently saw an interesting report comparing US and Canadian health care. It's a couple of years old, the figures are for 2005, but it clearly illustrates one of the fallacies perpetuated by opponents of single-payer health care for the US.

We regularly hear stories of Canadians coming to the US for medical treatment because of alleged long waits for treatment in Canada - or even stories of someone dying while on a Canadian wait list. And of course the blame is always placed on the Canadian government's involvement in the process.

Consider these numbers though: in 2005 annual per capita expenditures for health care in the US were $6,401, vs. $3,359 in Canada!* Isn't it likely the shortage of services in Canada is due more to underfunding than to the fact that it's a single-payer system? Wouldn't raising per capita spending by say 50% likely eliminate most of the problem? And at $5,000 that would still be far far less than what we spend in the US.

* http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20071205/

Costa Rica Photos

I posted all (~600) of my Costa Rica photos, some good, some bad, mostly just so-so, on Picasa Web: http://picasaweb.google.com/tom.severns/CostaRica#

More Anti-Obama Trash

So today I receive another unsolicited email bashing Obama - this time for putting his feet up on the desk in the Oval Office. Here are a few choice remarks from the email:

"We should inundate the White House with emails demanding he keep his feet off of our furniture. This arrogant, immature, and self-centered man has no sense of honor, or of simple decency."

"He thinks of himself as a king -- and not as a servant of the people, humbly occupying our White House for his term in office."

Now you can probably guess what I did next: quickly Google "Bush feet on desk," and in a flash I found a photo of Dubya in exactly the same position as Obama. And there was also a nice photo of Jerry Ford doing the same thing. The difference? Well, Obama is a Democrat, and he's an African-American, and I guess that's enough for these right-wing nuts!