TheAgitator.com
Don’t Cry for David Paterson
Friday, March 5th, 2010…or any other corrupt New York state public official for that matter. ProPublica reports that under New York law, there’s nothing a state employee can do that’s so bad he won’t be able to collect his pension.
This means that politicians receive their pensions even after they become convicted felons, such as State Sens. Joseph Bruno ($8,007.11 monthly pension) and Guy Velella ($6,251 monthly pension). (Messages to the former senators have not been returned, but we’ll update you if we hear from them.) Pensions are determined by averaging the largest salary of three consecutive years…
Harry Corbitt, the State Police superintendent who resigned this week following revelations that he knew that state troopers had visited a woman who was intending to file assault charges against one of Paterson’s aides, will receive a $7,064 monthly pension from the state, according to the state comptroller’s office. Even if he had been fired, it wouldn’t have made a difference.
According to the article, more than half the states have similar laws.
Just a great way to start my weekend, Radley. You always know what will cheer us up!
I live in New York state.
I meant for the first 2 sentences to be enclosed with “” tags. Oh well.
God damn I need to get into public service. What a fucking gravy train. You can be a complete waste of O2 and still clean up when it’s all said and done. Sheesh.
Don’t Cry for David Paterson … or any other corrupt New York state public official …”
But you repeat yourself.
Still getting the pension is not necessarily all that ridiculous. Odds are the contract signed didn’t include a morality clause, so as long as they fulfill their duties under their contract they will get the pension. The real problem is that govt officials are getting 8000 a month pensions.
Am I the only one who, after reading these stories, gets too pissed off to contribute in any worthwhile way to the discussion? Every day there are stories like this where we find out that the country is being run by a bunch of scam artists who are using our wealth and earning potential, as well as that of our kids and grand kids, as collateral for cash that they are extracting right now. Then, to add insult to injury, we also read that it is going to continue, probably getting worse, and there’s not a thing we can do about it.
In the latest Reason magazine, there is an article about the state of the financial “recovery” which makes me think we’re all living on borrowed time and at some point (probably on the day I retire) the entire house of cards is going to come crashing down and the only people who will come out the other side in reasonably secure position are the people who produced the disaster. The rest of us are going to have our savings wiped out leaving us as destitute as the poorest of undeveloped countries.
I have visions of receiving an eviction notice written in Chinese telling me I have until the end of the month to move out (not just out of my house, but out of the country).
So, someone please remind me once again why I shouldn’t just pick up a couple of pallets of Reese’s Peanut butter cups and eat myself into an irreversible diabetic coma. You’ll notice I have modified my solution of last resort to exclude any explosive destruction of my person. I consider that an improvement worthy of note in my general attitude toward my own extinction.
“So, someone please remind me once again why I shouldn’t just pick up a couple of pallets of Reese’s Peanut butter cups and eat myself into an irreversible diabetic coma.”
Because we love you Dave!
Just remember, Dave, it’s always darkest before dawn. We just don’t know how many more hours of night are left, but it’s got to be finite, right???
I definitely definitely agree that pensions are both too rich and start too early (with guys retiring between 50 and 55 with full eligibility), but these pension benefits are generally in lieu of a 401(k) plan, right? So getting fired – or even convicted – shouldn’t necessarily mean forfeiting any entitlement.
Governments need to transfer active employees over to a 401(k)-type plan, with their own contributions (and a reasonable match). Then we avoid the perverse incentives like in California where the highest paying position in departments is regularly passed around to nearly-retired employees so that they can adjust their pension basis upward on their way out the door, or the retire-then-take-the-same-job-double-dip that is popular everywhere.
I suspect there are quite a few folks wishing they had Spitzer back – at least he was actually paying his own entertainment expenses.
“So, someone please remind me once again why I shouldn’t just pick up a couple of pallets of Reese’s Peanut butter cups and eat myself into an irreversible diabetic coma.”
Don’t move to Washington State because you probably couldn’t afford that way out. The Govenor is pushing a new sales tax on candy (among other things) as part of a plan to deal with our state deficit. No doubt so we can continue to pay for things like these pensions…
We had someone knock on our door WAY too early on a Saturday morning. Nice guy, but I’d only had 4 hrs sleep so I was muttering things like “I guess I shouldn’t tell him that I’m a light sleeper who collects antique firearms, huh?”
For the record: the former is true, the latter is false.
Hey Dave, sit back with a case or two of Reese’s PBC’s and ponder this;
Many years ago the Massachusetts State Legislature passed one of those ridiculous ‘trigger lock’ laws for firearms that very nearly shut down the Patriots Day reenactment. You see, on the day when we remember Paul Revere’s ride, the Battle of Lexington and Concord and “the shot heard ’round the world”, the whole thing was almost called off because they wanted to put trigger locks on friggin’ *muskets*. When we were supposedly celebrating the day when we took up arms to defend our hidden *cannons* and gunpowder and shot (CANNONS! GUNPOWDER! SHOT! GAAAH!) and killed the men of the British Army, the most powerful fighting force in the world at that time!
Now imagine pointing out the sheer shrieking irony of it all and being laughed off as a GUNL@@N repeatedly and told that, “it’s the law. If you don’t like it, work to change it. That’s what democracy is all about.”
John Hancock is just some insurance company, now. Sam Adams is just some brand of beer (okay, not “just some brand”; probably the best in America, or maybe even the world), and Paul Revere,… well, at the time Paul Revere risked has life as the head of the spy ring that kept tabs on all the King’s troops in Massachusetts and regularly made trips on horseback in the dead of winter from Boston to Philadelphia to keep the Continental Congress informed of the situation. Now Revereware is copper-bottomed pots and pans,…
…and that whole remembrance was being hamstrung by craven weasels on Beacon Hill, and not one person I spoke to (ranted at, raved at, reasoned and argued with) could grasp the horrific inversion of character that had occurred.
It sucks being a libertarian in Massachusetts, and I’m hoping you get a bulk rate from Reese’s. Count me in when you order the next pallet.
So in other words, a soldier can lose all pension and benefits simply for being gay (if he’s booted before he retires but after he achieves the requisite service time to apply for retirement), but a state offical can’t lose his pension for actually committing a felony?
And people wonder why I’m so cynical about government.
What are all of these people going to do when there aren’t enough gainfully employed taxpayers left to keep the system going?
Sadly, I think that I already know the answer.
What Cynical said.
First off Dave, you have never ever not “contributed any worthwhile way to the discussion” And second off, a couple of pallets of Reese’s would at least be a fun way to go!
Perhaps all privately employed workers should quit and apply for jobs in government or public assistance on the same day. It would be interesting to see how the news was covered.
Rubber rooms for politicians.
Don’t Cry for David Patterson? No fucking worries there.
Eric has it right – the problem is not letting them keep their pension, it is the pension system itself. We need to abolish all public sector pensions and move to 401k (or 403b) style investment accounts. Just because some 53 year old policeman screws up and gets busted for smoking pot doesn’t mean he should suddenly loose his life savings.
Similarly, these overly-generous civil servant pension packages have no justification. They were originally extra-generous to entice workers in lieu of better pay, encouraging long-term employment. But really, those days are over now. Right now many public sector jobs are higher paying than private sector counterparts, plus you get to retire 10-15 years earlier with a much, much more generous compensation package. It really defies reason.
Agitator Readers should like candidate Warren Redlich whois running to replace Patterson as Governor of New York. Redlich’s platform of Stop Wasting Money would cap pay and pensions of state employees and eliminate several deparments.
But if public employees were shifted to 401K’s, the legislature could no longer conceal the real cost of government agencies by contracting to pay the pensions, but not setting aside funds for them.