Pensions
A handful of very active people who don’t understand how a policy works can do a great deal of damage, which is an outcome we should be discouraging rather than encouraging.
They just know that imposing a bond is a more-sure way of saddling taxpayers with the payoff to their labor union allies. (Actually, most don’t know much on either front. They just go along because they’ve bought into the baseline propaganda that progressives are always on the side of goodness.)
If we had a healthy civic culture, wherein citizens had been adequately educated in the appropriate use of government power, it would be the stuff of scandal, rather than political bragging, that Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner is abusing his authority over state investment funds for purposes of political activism. As he touts on…
I keep seeing these headlines about RI General Treasurer Seth Magaziner announcing record highs for the pension fund, but shouldn’t that always be the case? Unless the workforce is shrinking, even keeping up with inflation should produce record highs. It seems to me mainly an indication that we have too many people in PR in government.
In another must-read column for the Cranston Herald, Steven Frias applies his historian’s rigor to the step-by-step details of how Woonsocket’s experience with a pension obligation bond (which I mentioned a few weeks ago) managed to make its preexisting pension-fund disaster even worse while giving the two essential elements for a pension obligation bond to…
Not only are pension bonds a bad idea in principle, but Rhode Island has a sharp recent case study for reference. Yet, Dan McGowan reports for the Boston Globe that Providence “Mayor Jorge Elorza’s administration is planning to ask state lawmakers to allow the city to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars through a pension obligation bond,” avoiding…
I ask because in a new press release from Rhode Island’s General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, the progressive Democrat announces his office’s step to divest the state pension fund of investments in fossil fuels: This morning, in advance of Earth Day, Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner announced a nearly 50 percent decrease in the Rhode…
John Hill’s Providence Journal article about Woonsocket’s deficit problem contains two important lessons … The first lesson is that everybody who’s interested in these topics should read the Ocean State Current. An article here from last May explains the problem … … the second lesson of the article: The public is being poorly served by…
Government’s corrupt pension handling; the discount rate scam; fighting off the zoning inspector; government peeking doesn’t count as privacy invasion. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
… that, slightly rephrased, was the reaction via Twitter last night of John Ward to the news that Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter on Tuesday ordered the state and the coalition of public employee unions challenging the General Assembly’s overhaul of their retirement system to meet with federal mediators and see if a settlement can…
