Why Does Perry Get To break The Rules ?

You may have heard by now that Texas Governor Rick Perry has become a "double-dipper" -- someone who collects both a salary and a retirement pension from the state. Last January, the governor "retired" and began receiving about $7500.00 a month in a retirement annuity -- in addition to his $150,000 a year salary as governor.

When this became known publicly (thanks to a financial disclosure form that presidential candidates must submit), Perry's aides were quick to point out that he had done nothing illegal. A quirk of Texas law allows any person who's age and years of state service add up to 80 to retire and begin collecting their pension. They may then be rehired by the state if their boss considers it to be in the best interests of the state. Perry is not the first "double-dipper" and certainly won't be the last.

But that does not mean he didn't break the rules that are in place for retirees. Unless the governor doesn't have to obey the same rules that all other state employees must abide by, there are a couple of regulations that he seems to have ignored.

1. No employee can access his retirement pension until he has been out of government service for a minimum of 90 days. Anyone who returns to working for the state before 90 days will not receive his pension annuity. I know this is the law because I worked for the state of Texas for over 25 years, and when I retired my pension annuity did not start for 90 days.

2. There is no special right to return to government service, even after waiting the 90 days. It is up to the returnee's boss as to whether he/she will be rehired or not.

This naturally brings up a couple of questions. When did the governor retire serve the 90 day waiting period before returning to work for the state? Frankly, I don't remember him doing this at all. And when after his retirement did his bosses (the people of Texas) rehire him? Wouldn't that have required an election? I don't remember any election to restore a retired governor to power.

It seems quite obvious that Perry doesn't think he needs to abide by the rules the legislature and retirement system have put in place for state employees. Why not? Do we really want our governor to have special privileges to avoid obeying the rules and laws that everyone else must obey?

Abolish Military Retirement ?

One again the nuts in Washington are considering doing something completely ludicrous. They are thinking about doing away with the military pensions (which have worked well for many years to keep a lot of experienced people in the military). They want to replace this with 401k's -- making it a crap-shoot whether a soldier will have enough money to retire on (after the money guys on Wall Street get through playing with it).

I was going to blast this ridiculous idea but fellow blogger, Badtux the Snarky Penguin, has already written a piece that I doubt I could improve on. Here is what he said:

Pentagon budget-cutters looking at ending military retirement. You'll walk away from your military service with the same worthless shrinking 401(k) to be stolen by Wall Street as the rest of us have. Which means people will put in their 20 years... why?

As with all attempts to take pensions away from public employees, the end result is going to be no (zero) cost savings. College-educated public employees currently accept wages approximately 20% lower than they could make in the private sector with their education and experience because of the expectation that they'll get a pension at the end of their service. Military "lifers" stay in the military, accepting far less money than they could make in the private sector, because they expect that pension at the end of their service. Take away that pension, and you'll have to pay them far more to stay, or else risk losing critical expertise, because the "lifers" are the institutional memory of the military, the propagators of a military culture that has proven to be extremely effective at killing lots of America's enemies with relatively little loss of American life. Destroy that military culture, and you destroy the military -- you end up with the sort of barely organized rabble that is a typical non-American military (otherwise known as TARGET PRACTICE if they dare take on the U.S. military).

In short, this is a bad idea on top of a bad idea, and just another example of how our Republicans in office (including Republican Obama) mouth platitudes about supporting our troops, but when the rubber hits the road.... uhm... not so much. But hey, yet more taxpayer money needs to be funneled to defense contractors for yet more jets that don't fly and other such nonsense... ignoring the fact that what makes our military so effective is its people, the advanced weapons are just the icing on the cake. But hey, we have CEO presidents now, who like the CEO's who destroyed American industry believe people are fungible... SIIIIIiigh!

TTRS Is Considering A Risky Investment

"They should not gamble with the money they are charged with protecting not only for the retired teachers of this state, but for all of those active teachers who are contributing to the fund with every paycheck." These are the words of Linda Bridges, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers. She is talking about a risky investment being considered by the Texas Teacher Retirement System [TTRS].

The TTRS is discussing at this time whether to sink part of its multi-billion dollar portfolio into the Emerging Technology Fund, established in 2005 by Governor Perry to make investment capital available to companies in Texas who are trying to get a foothold in the high-technology market.

I'm all for the TTRS making good safe investments to grow the retirement fund established for teachers. But this sounds more like gambling than the making of a sane investment for teachers' retirement. Especially in light of a TTRS staff memo that states, "The historical returns for venture capital investments possess substantial volatility. It is not uncommon for an early-stage venture capital fund to have nine losses for every home run investment."

This means they are considering an investment that has a 90% chance of failure. What the hell are these guys thinking? The TTRS is charged with growing and PROTECTING the teacher retirement fund, not gambling it away with high-risk investments [even in a fund created by the governor of Texas].

I have no problem with the Emerging Technology Fund. In fact, it is probably a good idea that could help Texas gain a larger share of companies in the high-tech marketplace. But it is far too risky to fund it with money earmarked for teacher retirement. And while I'm on this subject, it is also too risky a venture for the retirement fund of state employees.

There is the possibility of enormous profits from investing in high-tech firms, but it must be done with money that we can afford to lose, since the chance of failure is far greater than the chance for big profits. We cannot afford to deplete the retirement funds of teachers. This would endanger the future of our Texas teachers, and therefore our schools.

The TTRS should not even be considering this kind of investment.