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Archive: August, 2010
Notice that trend. Not only is the law on the side of justice, but a recent CNN poll, for the first time ever, showed that a majority believe gays should have a constitutional right to marry (with the question phrased differently, 49 percent favored gay marriage itself).
Mark my words: Within a generation, those who want to deny marriage, adoption and anti-discrimination rights and military service to people solely on the basis of their sexual orientation will be regarded the way we regard George Wallace and Strom Thurmond and their segregationist ilk today.
As I wrote in my master's thesis on the subject (download, read and dissect the entire, 147-page thing here, if you're so inclined/really bored; ignore any typos, please):
Relatedly, gay rights activists might also take comfort in the fact that demographics appear to be working heavily in their favor: Among those under 50 years of age, and especially among those between 18 and 30, we see high support for gay rights and gay marriage. Through attrition, as the older — and more traditionally oriented — generations die and exit the voter pool, the increasing support for (and affect toward) homosexuals shown in the data looks only to continue increasing, thus making it entirely likely that, unless anti-gay rights activists can convince future generations that gay marriage will infringe upon societal cohesion, state gay marriage policies may become the norm, rather than outliers, in the foreseeable future. Even since 2004, when Republicans championed an anti-gay marriage amendment to the US Constitution, we have seen the saliency of this issue appear to dissipate: opposition to gay rights was not a central plank of John McCain's platform; and while court decisions regarding gay marriage in California brought an outcry from religious conservatives and an ultimately successful effort to overturn the court's ruling, it did not manifest in another full-throated bid to amend the US Constitution. Similarly, recent Democratic proposals to abolish âDon't Ask, Don't Tellâ and the federal Defense of Marriage Act have not been the clarion call of conservative opposition, the way they might have been a few short years ago.
It's a shame our supposedly liberal president is so decidedly on the wrong side of history — or at least, too politically timid to admit otherwise.
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^ God damn it, you beat me to it!
It looks like a penis.
No, CP and Ralph Cipriano don't really get the fawning mad props and bouquet of flowers we think we deserved in Radio Times' piece on the DROP program this morning, but hey, we're glad people are still talking about it (and confident knowing that until we dropped Cipriano's "Billion Dollar Boondoggle" in April, nobody was even thinking about talking about it). Guest host Tracey Matisak had the Inky's Jeff Shields and Miriam Hill and Committe of 70's Sean Scully on this morning to discuss the political hot potato in the wake of Boston College's long-awaited DROP study (read it here). Particularly entertaining is the Scully's response to Council's call for more studies: "How much more do we [study] this?" Speaking of studies, Cipriano will have a piece in tomorrow's paper (on the site later today) in which he fills in the gap between BC's $258 million price tag and his $1 billion.
I would suggest that someone take a closer look at Ralph's piece, which ran earlier this week in the Inquirer. He doesn't quite get DROP and his math is wrong.
"until we dropped Cipriano's "Billion Dollar Boondoggle" in April, nobody was even thinking about talking about it"? I'll give credit where credit is due - and Cipriano's piece was excellent - but DROP was all over the papers this spring, well before the piece came out. March 3: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq_ed_board/86274017.html March 8: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/86796652.html March 9: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/cityhall/87112287.html Heck, even Byko wrote a DROP column on March 4: http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/86312297.html
So, we didn't make the Byko political comedy charity thing last night because, well, we have this little ritual we do on Tuesdays night called putting out a newspaper. But we did read all about it on this morning's always excellent Capitol Ideas blog from the Allentown Morning Call. And here's what we've learned:
- Manan Trivedi, who we totally have a hetero man-crush on, is still fucking awesome:
Trivedi, who's running against Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, got off some of the best lines of the night. His set was a reminder that the best comedy always comes from experience. "I was the only kid who would go cow-tipping [in Berks County] and the have to worship the cow afterwards," said Trivedi, the son of Indian immigrants. In high school, he was voted "most likely to run a convenience store," and his senior quote was "Thank you, come again." (It helps if you do that last one, like Trivedi did, in the best stereotypical Indian accent you can muster).
- Bob Brady can veer dangerously close to racism. Shocking.
"You know why the Mexican team is not so successful at the Olympics?" [Brady] cracked. "Because everyone who can run, jump or swim is already in America."
- Tom Corbett could definitely not write for Bell Curve.
"I read the police blotter and found that two drunks had knocked over the statue of the Philly Phanatic," Corbett joked. "Now you know why I'm for the death penalty."
- Ditto Pat Toomey.
Referring to the bills that Congress is rumored to be considering during its post-Election lame-duck session (this includes the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, legalizing marijuana, and immigration reform), Toomey observed: "If you're a gay Mexican drug dealer looking to sneak across the border to join the Navy, then this is your year," he said.
Referring to the bills that Congress is rumored to be considering during its post-Election lame-duck session (this includes the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, legalizing marijuana, and immigration reform), Toomey observed: "If you're a gay Mexican drug dealer looking to sneak across the border to join the Navy, then this is your year," he said.
- Chaka Fattah took the opportunity to voice some venue-inappropriate but totally justified (in our view) righteous indignation at the Republican Party:
Fattah, the veteran Philadelphia Democrat, nearly silenced the room with a lengthy rant about the evils of Republicanism. He never quite achieved the Rickles-like Zen needed to accomplish truly funny insult comedy. "Do not give them the keys to the car back. We don't want this cast of characters in charge," Fattah said at one point. "I think it's very funny that Republicans put their names on the ballot given the performance of the previous president."
- And Dem gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato took a shot at Toomey that referenced us:
Onorato, who was running late because he was holding a fund-raiser at the Philadelphia Convention Center with former Prez Bill Clinton got off a crack at Toomey that required a little explaining:
"I found out he worked for the Club for Growth," Onorato said. "So I read an advertisement on the back of the Philadelphia City Paper to find out exactly what that was."
The back of the City Paper, readers, is where you'll find the adverts for ... ahhh ... "adult" services and entertainment. If you have to explain the joke ...
Onorato, who was running late because he was holding a fund-raiser at the Philadelphia Convention Center with former Prez Bill Clinton got off a crack at Toomey that required a little explaining:
"I found out he worked for the Club for Growth," Onorato said. "So I read an advertisement on the back of the Philadelphia City Paper to find out exactly what that was."
The back of the City Paper, readers, is where you'll find the adverts for ... ahhh ... "adult" services and entertainment. If you have to explain the joke ...
Yeah, we have hooker escort ads in the back. This required explanation to the buttoned-up crowd that, apparently, has never picked up an urban alt-weekly anywhere, or whatever. (Hell, at my last employ, three of our sales reps were actually arrested for selling ads to cops posing as hookers. But that was Florida. And those charges were pleaded down to nothingness.)
But anyway, props to Onorato for a at least making a stab at a boner joke, even if it didn't resonate with the Byko crowd. Pat Rapa would be proud.
Interesting situation here. The bicyclist was going the wrong way. On Market Street. And wearing some sort of helmet cam. Meanwhile, the businessman was stepping into Market Street without looking both ways and not at a crosswalk. Hence this wonderfully shot video of the two colliding.
Most remarkably, mere moments after both get knocked on their asses they get up and are only 20% mad. They kinda fess up to their breaches of bike/pedestrian etiquette. And go their separate ways. It's really... not how we usually do things around here.
There's a minor discussion brewing on Reddit about which guy could sue the other, should they want to. Judging by the video, neither party was feeling litigious about the whole thing, but who knows?
Most people ONLY look in the direction of oncoming traffic when they cross a one-way or multilane street. There's normally no reason to check the other way as none is suppose to be coming from that direction. That's why Americans in London tend to get hit by buses. I had someone grab me by the collar as I was about to step out into traffic because I had checked the "American" direction instead of the "British" direction. On a 2-way street you check the other direction as you approach that side of the street. There normally isn't any reason to waste your attention looking in the direction no traffic should be coming from. Although I guess with these salmoning bike messenger types who go against traffic we might have to change our behavior.
Yeah, he took it down because he realized he was "wrong." Maybe it was only posted for friends who found the incident comical that both parties agreed upon their mistakes. I am willing to bet the rider did not post this because they care what you think. The important thing about the content is that both parties ACTUALLY INVOLVED in the incident are fine, end of story. No one cares who Susie Philadelphia thinks is wrong or who Larry the Lawyer thinks would win the civil suit. Keeping in mind that the pedestrian states in the video that he is "okay," there is no injury, and no legal action. Maybe a $15 non moving violation for both people? Would that make everyone happy, or should it be left as the parties ACTUALLY INVOLVED in the incident left it? As a daily cyclist I am aghast that someone would use the word aghast.
I guess the cyclist who posted this video took it down because he realized he was wrong?
got another link? The video is private now.
Well, if a car did what the bike guy did then the driver of the car would get sued. Since bikes are considered moving vehicles and are supposed to follow ALL the rules that cars are, bike guy is at fault. No question.
Nice moustache.
yeah looking both ways before crossing the street...err um jaywalking...is a CRAZY notion. just look one way and walk into traffic and hope for the best.
bike cops ALWAYS ride the wrong way down the street and often cause accidents.
Bicyclist totally at fault. The second part of the title ("absent-minded pedestrian?") is wrong. It looks to me that the pedestrian DID look in the direction of oncoming traffic before stepping out. Why would one normally look in the "wrong" direction for a rouge bicyclist?I saw this yesterday, and as a cyclist, I am totally aghast at this guy's idiotic riding.
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Biker is a condescending asshole. I sure hope he dies and does the world a favor.
As a former NYC bike messenger: 1. The biker is a tool 2. He actually takes his eyes off the road (looks far right) 1.5-2 seconds before the crash, eliminating any chance for reasonable reaction time to miss the guy to the right OR left (Left, no immediate danger, my choice) 3. You know pedestrians are not paying attention--cell phones, texting, looking up/down. 4. As a cyclist you have to assume invisibility, especially if you are going THE WRONG WAY on a one-way street. 5. He makes all cyclists look bad. Maybe the next time there will be a truck pulling out of an alley, and with his riding skills in traffic, we will see Natural Selection at work... Good Luck Loser.
On Monday, the Washington Post ran a glowing, page one profile of US Rep Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who has offered what he terms a "roadmap" to financial sustainability. It paints him as one of the few serious GOP voices on budget issues (since, let's face it, legitimate policy formulation is not exactly their forte of late).
Ryan is running a campaign of a different sort, one his party has so far refused to adopt: He is determined to persuade colleagues to get serious about eliminating the national debt, even if it means openly broaching overhauls of Medicare and Social Security.
...
His ideas are provocative, to say the least. They include putting Medicare and Medicaid recipients in private insurance plans that could cost the government less but potentially offer fewer benefits; gradually raising the retirement age to 70; and reducing future Social Security benefits for wealthy retirees.
...
Ryan has not helped to make it easy for his leaders. He is a loyal Republican, but he is also perhaps the GOP's leading intellectual in Congress and occasionally seems to forget that he is a politician himself.
Wow. So the WaPo has drunk the Ryan Kool-Aid, huh? And hey, on the one hand, can you blame them? It's not like the modern GOP — you know, the one currently debating the 14th Amendment and responding in Pavlovian form to whatever pops up on Glenn Beck's Chalkboard of Doom — is packed with particularly bright lights these days. And the Congressional Budget Office has made the press's job easy: After all, Ryan's roadmap would, supposedly, cut the deficit in half in 10 years. That's something we can all get behind, no?
Sure. If you read the top lines. If, however, you're a Nobel Laureate economist, say, Paul Krugman, you're a bit more likely to poke around the fine print.
One thing that has been overwhelmingly obvious in the discussion of Paul Ryan's roadmap is that lots of people who should know better — including, alas, reporters at the Washington Post — don't know how to read a CBO report. They think you can just skim it and get the gist; and people like Mr. Ryan have taken advantage of that misconception.
As it turns out, those CBO numbers, like all CBO numbers, are based on the assumptions of the House representative who is requesting the CBO's analysis. So, the CBO, for all of the worthwhile stuff it does, can sometimes be a garbage-in-garbage-out kind of place, especially when the rep seeking data feeds in spectacularly misleading data. Ahem, Mr. Ryan.
Well, the Ryan plan as described is a combination of tax cuts and cuts in entitlement spending. So where does this show in the CBO estimate? On the tax side, we immediately see that the CBO finds no effect — revenue with the Ryan plan is the same as without it.
In other words, Ryan plans a massive overhaul of US tax policy, with steep, across the board decreases in income tax rates, but wants CBO to assume that this would have, you know, absolutely no impact on incoming government revenues. The CBO obliged, because that's its job, although it did note, in its own way, the unlikelihood of Ryan's pipe dream coming true:
The proposal would make significant changes to the tax system. However, as specified by your staff, for this analysis total federal tax revenues are assumed to equal those under CBO's alternative fiscal scenario (which is one interpretation of what it would mean to continue current fiscal policy) until they reach 19 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030, and to remain at that share of GDP thereafter.
Even under those assumptions, which, you know, are either willfully ignorant or intentionally deceptive, the Ryan plan doesn't work unless there is an absolute freeze of non-defense discretionary spending at 2009 levels for at least the next decade. And, of course, this sounds nice and all, except it's insane. As Krugman points out:
OK, that's an old, familiar scam — it was used to inflate surplus projections back in 2001 to justify the Bush tax cuts. Keeping nominal spending constant means deep cuts in real per capita terms — about 25 percent over a decade. That's not going to happen: nondefense discretionary spending is already at a low point as a share of GDP, and unless someone can detail how such massive further cuts are possible, they're just blowing smoke.
If this is the GOP's âleading intellectual,â as the Post declares, then the opposition party may be more FUBAR than we could possibly imagine.
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He wants to mess with Medicare? A system that has such a high satisfaction rate? & that's sound policy to WaPO? We could just eliminate Medicare altogether, if we carry this ridiculous plan to its logical conclusion.
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Our very own Dwayne Booth — who cartoons and sometimes writes under the name Mr. Fish, of course — has a new post up on Truthdig, recounting a 2008 interview with provocateur extraordinaire Noam Chomsky, who is, in Mr. Fish's words, "all by himself, The Beatles of smart guys." (Chomsky is also a Philly native, for what it's worth.) It's a worthwhile, if lengthy read, and a bit unlike any interview with Chomsky I've seen elsewhere. A taste:
MF: Was that more about some form of academic freedom than artistic freedom? Are they more or less the same thing?
NC: There are always attacks on academic freedom, but I think it's better protected now than it has been in the past. There is repression and [there are] bad things that happen, but if you look over time it's nothing like what it's been in the past. I mean, take surveillance, let's say, bad thing. What was in the '60s? The FBI was all over the place, the Army had surveillance systems, the CIA had surveillance, way more than what it is now. Now you can do things with electronic surveillance, OK, big deal. I was active in the resistance and took for granted that the phone was probably tapped, but it never constrained us. If you had to do something that you didn't want the FBI to hear, you did it privately. Everybody knew that whatever group you were in was infiltrated, and you could usually guess who the infiltrators were, but if you wanted to do something serious, say help a deserter, you did it with an affinity group. If you think about repression, as bad as it may be today, it doesn't even come close to COINTELPRO. That was running through four administrations—mainly Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, where it was stopped—and it went all the way to political assassination. Is that happening now?
MF: Depends on who you ask, I guess.
NC: And [Woodrow] Wilson's Red Scare made it all look tame. So, sure, bad things are happening, but we shouldn't exaggerate. There have been a lot of gains.
MF: Still, and getting back to my point about the mollification of the artistic community, there seems to be fewer and fewer expectations that an artist will or even should engage in world politics.
NC: Expectations from whom?
MF: From the public, the dominant culture, the government, certainly.
NC: The corporate media aren't going to encourage them to be subversive, but has that ever been the case for art?
MF: No, but the amount of discouragement from the private sector seems new. At one time, it wasn't so outlandish for a person to say that he or she wanted to become a painter or a novelist or a playwright—it was a lifestyle, in fact, that suggested its own spiritual reward, and politics was traditionally considered to be part of the lifestyle, usually dissent.
NC: But that's a different kind of change. The freelance intellectuals, whatever they were, the writers and artists, over the years have drifted towards institutions, so now instead of being a [full-time] novelist you'll be a novelist on the side and teaching creative writing at the university. That wasn't an option in the '40s and '50s.
MF: And that's the loss, the sidelining of passion, of truth-seeking.
NC: Well, it's an institutional change. To some people it may have restrictive consequences, maybe impose internal conditions on the work they do, but it certainly doesn't have to.
[...] via Mr. Fish and Mr. Chomsky :: The Clog :: Blog Archive :: Staff Blog :: Philadelphia City Paper. [...]
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Never maintain anything in your thoughts Many a time individuals keep a number of unwanted questions in their thoughts after which invite anxiety within their existence.
The Juvenile Lifer debate hit City Hall Wednesday morning, and you're not missing much if all you've read on the subject is our reports over the past year. Yesterday's House Judiciary Committee public hearing, held in City Hall's chamber room, broached — as advocates and lawyers and crime victims and, most recently, the Supreme Court have broached for decades — the propriety of sentencing a minor to life without parole.
(For the purposes of the argument, a âminorâ is âsomeone who commits a crime while under the age of 18.â The phrase âjuvenile life without paroleâ is too clunky and therefore regularly shortened to âJLWOP,â pronounced âjail-wop.â)
Pennsylvania has more juvenile lifers than any other state in the country — about 400 — and that stat gets repeated ad nauseum when you attend these kinds of meetings.
The hearing yesterday came in response to the House Bill 1999, introduced by Rep. Kenyatta Johnson, D-Phila., which would abolish JLWOP and give all juvenile offenders, even murderers, a shot at parole after 15 years. Under current state law, there are only two sentencing options for minors convicted of homicides: sentencing as a juvenile (rare) and given freedom at 21, or sentenced as an adult, and given freedom never. Johnson's bill would give some wiggle room to judges and prosecutors: If someone turned out to be a Satan incarnate (hello, Charles Manson), parole boards could turn them down, and they'd stay in prison for the rest of their lives. But at least they'd have a chance to redeem themselves.
Yesterday's meeting was covered sufficiently enough by the Daily News and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Both reporters focused — as daily newspaper reporters are wont to do — on both sides of the JLWOP argument:
1) âKids are different,â as Bradley Bridge wrote in his appeal for the longest-serving inmate in Pennsylvania's correctional system, Joseph Ligon, now 73. This side implies that minors are not mature enough — emotionally or psychologically — to be held accountable for adult prison sentences.
2) âSo what?â Victims of violent crimes — and the families of crime victims — are still victims whether the person who committed the violent crime was a kid or not.
Those sides don't get at the complexity of the JLWOP issue in Pennsylvania, obviously. For one thing, Pennsylvania subscribes to the âfelony murder rule,â meaning that if someone is killed in the commission of a felony, everyone involved in the felony is eligible for a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole — whether or not the homicide was intended, and whether or not a person or group of people pulled the trigger or not. (Party to a drug deal gone bad? Life for you, mister.)
That's just one aspect. In fact, I'm not even scratching the surface. It's probably worthwhile to look over some of the testimonies given to the House Judiciary Committee, posted below. They give some incredible depth of perspective: from victims who have incurred heartbreaking sadness at the hands of violent kids, to advocates who work with men who are growing into middle age in prison because they made stupid decisions while they were in junior high or high school.
Worth a look:
From the Office of the Victim Advocate (against HB 1999)
From the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (for HB 1999)
From the Pennsylvania District Attorney's Association (against):
From Don Romig (against):
From Cully Stimson (against):
From Bradley Bridge (who did not testify, but is for HB1999):
From Anita Colon (for )
From Alyce C. Thompson
From Carol Lavery (against)
From Juandalynn Taylor (for)
From The Sentencing Project (for)
From the Juvenile Law Center (for)
From the Pennsylvania Prison Society (for)
From the National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers (against)
From Dottie Moquin (HB1999)
Thank you Matt, For covering all the different aspects of the hearings. There is no doubt there is a great deal of pain and suffering on both the victim and offender's family in these situations. Any changes that are made, should include all of the positions that Representative Johnson invited to the hearings.
Juvenile lifers should receive a chance to redeem themselves. I am tired of my tax dollars going to programs and institutions which do not work. Prisioning juvenile to Life has NOT deterred crime. For HB 1999
How about punishing the ones who have committed crimes. Sure, we would want people to be afraid of committing crimes because they see others incarcerated. But there are always those who do not care and commit crimes. Best to keep the ones already incarcerated than to put them out in the streets where you say others continue to commit crimes. Keep as many off the streets as possible.
Caught this piece from the local CBS affiliate on the unions' somewhat predictable reticence to eliminating the city's money-sucking Deferred Retirement Option Plan. Key quote:
But the matter came up today at the regular meeting of the city's pension board, raised by Carol Stukes, one of the four union representatives on the board.
She called Nutter's study âa cut-and-paste jobâ and she joined in the call for a new actuarial study of DROP:
âI don't feel comfortable with the documentation that is used for this report. I firmly do support the union — and I represent District Council 47 — getting another study done.â
Of course, in situations like this, "conduct another study" is nine times out of 10 code for "delay until everyone isn't so pissed, then continue business as usual." Which is what this is.
On the other hand, calling Boston College's study, which you can download here, a cut and paste job isn't necessarily wrong. After all, the city only paid $80,000 for it, which, in the actuary world, isn't a whole hell of a lot. And Boston College was forced to rely on data provided by the city, so there's that, too. As Joe Boyle, the actuary who analyzed the program for our investigation, told us last week: Since it costs at least $300,000 to do an annual audit of the city pension plan, "I don't think Boston College is going to tell us anything we didn't already know. I question why the city had to do this in the first place."
Indeed, the report did tell us what we already know: DROP wastes a bunch of money. But how much? Boston College said about $22 million a year; Boyle came up with a significantly higher figure. The difference in their methodologies: For starters, their report didn't include the 48 VIPs who have "retired" or will soon "retire" under DROP, cash their six-figure bonuses, then un-retire and come back to work the next day (including Council President Anna Verna, whose DROP bonuses alone will cost taxpayers half a million smackers).
Since they were also looking to see if the program had any benefit — the city started the program purportedly to entice high-valued workers into staying on the job longer — they apparently edited out of their dataset thousands of employees for whom city data was incomplete (see p. 10). Anyway, this is how BC researchers calculated costs:
The cost of the DROP program equals the sum of the following: 1) the annual amounts payable by the pension plan to DROP participants, minus the amounts that the pension plan would have paid had the employee retired at his counterfactual retirement age, discounted by a rate of interest and annual survival probabilities, and 2) the expected present value of the employee pension contributions from the date of entry to the program to the counterfactual retirement date.
Later in the paper, they go into more detail:
How much does the DROP program cost the employer? We first illustrate the calculation by reference to a hypothetical employee, and then present our estimates of average and total cost of the DROP program. The employee is a firefighter, born in June 1940, who commenced service in October 1960. He entered the DROP program in June 2001, when he was 61, and left exactly four years later in June 2005. At the time he entered the DROP program, his salary was $40,000 a year. He is a member of the pre-1988 pension plan and is therefore entitled to the maximum pension of 100 percent of salary. He therefore received a lump sum of $174,946 in June 2005, and a monthly pension of $3,333 thereafter.
Using our econometric model, we calculate that in the absence of the DROP, this employee would have retired in December 2003; the DROP program delayed his retirement by 18 months. Assuming 2.5 percent inflation and 1.1 percent real wage growth, he would by then have been earning $42,955, and at the same 100 percent pension, would have been entitled to a pension of $3,580 a month. The effect of the employee's participation in the DROP program is to reduce the pension plan's expenditure by $3,580 a month for the 18-month period from December 2003 to June 2005. The pension plan suffers a one-time outflow of $174,946 in June 2005. From July 2005 onward, the plan's outgoings are reduced by the difference in pension benefits of $247 a month.
In other words, they calculated how much the pension plan might save over the employee's lifetime by having them freeze in their lifelong annual pensions four years before retirement. Because they would get smaller annual pension checks, the report reasons, the long-term costs to the city go down. Boyle, for us, took a more straightforward tact: Since the program's inception, the city has paid out $725 million in DROP bonuses already, and is scheduled to shell out $338 million more in coming years. Basic math tells us that's more than $1 billion. That's not counting the interest on the loans the city has taken out to float its DROP payments.
I'm not an actuary or an economist, or skilled at next-level math. I've e-mailed Boyle for his take on the city report; if he responds, I will post it here.
Meanwhile, let's stop to consider what the city got for it's $258 million (or $1 billion, depending on whom you believe):
âWe find that on average, municipal workers delay retirement by over 1.25 years.â
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| Evan Lopez |
All the juicy news you'll miss if you don't pick up today's paper.
— Your A Million Stories correspondents go to last weekend's Uni-Tea rally, where "organizers have rounded up every single non-white right-winger they could find and put them on stage, in front of God and everyone, to prove, once and for all, that the Tea Party and racism are not synonymous." Also, AMS looks into SEPTA's possibly dangerous, 10-year-old track circuits, and then gets excited about Boston College's DROP report.
— Dwayne Booth, our newest contributor, muses on former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Aretha Franklin making music, among other shitty things that happened last week.
— ManOverboard! knows the difference between those clean-cut, bad-cops stories that Mayor Nutter and Police Chief Charles Ramsey love to tell, and the ones that are a tad more complex ⦠like the three times (at least) that police killed homeless and mentally ill individuals in 2009. Do you?
— Jeffrey C. Billman urges you Dems to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, even if the party isn't exactly perfect.
— Bell Curve makes fun of Mayor Nutter, the Gaming Control Board and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
— And lastly, don't miss the bang-up cover story Matt Stroud wrote this week, about the allegedly horrific conditions of a prison in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
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| Neal Santos |
Brett Mandel, the onetime city controller candidate/good-government advocate, is the last person we'd expect to stand up for the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP). But in his latest blog entry, Mandel argues that Mayor Nutter's recent announcement to get rid of DROP may be rash:
DROP has once again landed on the front pages with the release of a city-commissioned report from a consultant that claims the program has increased city pension costs by $258 million over a decade. While that number sounds extreme, considering our pension fund is underfunded by billions, it is literally a DROP in the bucket of a much larger problem. The impact of DROP on the city's annual budget is much more complicated and unsettled. Predictably, there are calls from the Mayor to do away with the program, but such a reactionary response betrays a lack of managerial skill and a lack of a reformer's will. Used correctly, the tool of DROP could save the city millions and allow the city to best configure its workforce to respond to the challenges that confront us.
He goes on to say that rather than drop DROP altogether (OK, we swear we we're never gonna say that again), the city should make three changes to the program:
First, rather than a guaranteed return of 4.5 percent, DROP participants should earn a much-smaller guaranteed return of, say, 1.0 percent plus a variable rate of return tied to the performance of the pension fund. This way, the pension fund is not devastated during slow-growth periods and DROP participants can share in the benefit when the investments perform well.
Second, the city must shut, lock, and bolt the door after employees enter DROP and ultimately leave city service. No more retiring and rehiring. No more post-DROP consulting arrangements. No more wink-and-nod shenanigans. Every time the program is misused, it becomes harder and harder to justify its proper use.
Finally, and most important, the city must use the tool of DROP much more effectively. Informed with the certainty created by the DROP participants' timetable for retirement, the city should reassess workforce planning to best manage our organizational approach toward fulfilling agency missions. We should use the tool of DROP to ensure that we have a lean management structure overseeing a workforce that is deployed effectively to meet the needs of the citizenry.
Thoughts, Cloggers and Cloggettes?
finally someone who gets it!!!!!!!!!!!!
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