Marc Comtois
The nominees: Markeesha Odom: Works at St. Louis DMV. At 24 years old, already twice name Missouri’s surliest and least cooperative state employee. Dennis Cosgrove: School custodian in Queens, NY. Set a record with 3200 hours on the job. All on overtime! Like many NYC custodians, Dennis is a year round resident of Florida. Anthony…
In Utah (h/t), incumbent Republican Senator Bob Bennett is running in third place with a couple weeks to go before the Utah GOP winnows the field down to two candidates. The Utah GOP is dominated by members of–or those sympathetic to–the Tea Party movement and Bennett has come under fire for proposing that individuals be…
In today’s ProJo story about the General Assembly and pension reform, one sentence jumps out and explains the root problem at the heart of trying to change things here in Rhode Island: At least half, 55 of the 113 lawmakers, have a publicly-financed pension, or between 1 and 33 years of credit toward a possible…
General Treasurer Frank Caprio has released a cliff-notes version of his pension reform plan. It’s composed of two options for future retirees and will not affect current retirees. To summarize: Plan 1 – Combination Play or “Hybrid” Plan: Mimics the Federal plan: most of the plan consists of a fixed pension and his supplemented by…
ProJo’s Ed Achorn agrees that the unions have a big hand in running the state. But he emphasizes that they aren’t to blame. If there is a public enemy number one, it’s not [AFL-CIO President George] Nee. He’s just exploiting the system to enrich himself and the people who empower him. He does a very…
As Rich Lowry explains in his latest column, we Americans are perpetually paranoid about our government, whether it’s the liberal paranoia throughout the Bush years (Patriot Act, world hegemony) or the right wing paranoia amongst conservatives in the Clinton years (Waco, domestic anti-terrorist laws post-Oklahoma City). Lowry explains that our paranoid view of government has…
There have been rumblings that President Obama was looking at pushing for a VAT (value added tax) to help pay for the growing government under his watch. While many people, including conservatives, have theorized about (and even supported) the institution of a VAT, they have done so with the idea that it would replace the…
So the RI Senate threw the supplemental budget back at the House because they didn’t want to re-amortize the pension plans. And suddenly, we’re told there was a “sense of urgency”! “They clearly threw off any timetable,” said House Speaker Gordon D. Fox, advised of the Senate’s plans Wednesday afternoon. “That’s what we were always…
Ok, vent over this: The police chief of Central Falls is drawing criticism for collecting a $43,000-per-year pension while also continuing to work and draw an annual salary of $72,000….Moran “retired” two weeks ago, then signed a five-year contract under a deal approved by the city retirement board, city lawyer, and mayor….Moran says he made…