Snowy RCC?

mazorj wrote:
"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
mazorj wrote:
"oly" wrote in message
...

...
In the last twenty years, Garth Brook's "The Dance" is a great
original C&W song. Johnny Cash's last big hit "Hurt" is an
example of a super-fantastic cross-over "cover" (excellent music
video too). These things are far and few between.

Some purists don't consider Brooks a "real" C&W singer, just a
pretender in a cowboy hat whose recordings happen to play on country
stations. Coming late to C&W, I sing along lustily to tunes like
"Friends in Low Places" and don't worry about his credentials.

And let us not forget Pork and the Havana Ducks great original hit
"Your Old Lady's been Cheatin' on You and Me".

My favorite title is the presumably mythical "You Done Broke My
Heart, Stomped It Flat Into The Ground, And Drove It Over A Cliff
In My Pick-up Truck With My Guitar And Ol' Blue".

I thought it went,
"Ya done stomped on ma howrt,
And ya mashed that sucker flat.
You just sorta,
Stomped on my aorta..."

James the Hillbilly

You may be right if it's an actual song. I'm just remembering it as a
standing joke on a local (non-C&W) radio show decades ago. If it's a
purely mythical title then I suspect that like the original lyrics to
Mademoiselle from Armentieres, it's taken on its own life in the wild
with the endless invention of local variants. "Hinky, dinky,
moonshine too..."

The quoted song was on an early John Denver album.

James "Granny Glasses" the Pholksingar

oly wrote:
On Feb 13, 12:15 pm, oly wrote:
On Feb 13, 10:49 am, "Petronius" wrote:

On Feb 11, 7:55 am, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com
wrote:
What 'redistribution of wealth' policy? Oh, you mean the one that
is threatening to take away my state teacher pension? The one I
had no choice about tithing to for 33 years?

You could have chosen not to work in that field...

Petronius,

The thing that all these retired public servants WILL NOT DO is tell
you how much money they were "forced" to put and then compare that to
what they expect to get out of the system during their usually
lengthy retirements, both in cash payments and healthcare benefits
recieved.

For somebody who has already been retired a while, you will find that
their payout is frequently 30 to 1 (thirty dollars in benefits for
every dollar paid in).

Note that people who retire now or soon won't get that much, ratio-
wise, because they have been forced to put in a bit more on the front
end.

OTOH, if you have lived an unhealthy lifestyle or are just unlucky,
you still might hit the jackpot in health benefits.

Public servants are among the few who still get these "defined
benefit" retirement schemes. It is one of the big reasons for staying
on the last decade or so of such a public career (after the
inevitable burnout of doing the same thing for twenty five years or
more).

BTW, I am doing my damndest to get to the same point as a public
annuitant. 3 years, 2 months.

Many days, I don't think the western financial system will last that
long.

oly
...the hypocrite

The new Governor of New Jersey, the Hon. Mr. Christy, gave a great and
scathing address to that State's Legislature just this week on the
very subject of disproportionate retirement benefits for former NJ
public employees.

OF COURSE, there was ZERO national mainstream media attention.

I just found the text of his speech online and read it in its entirety. OF
COURSE, in it there was ZERO mention of any sacrifices that he, his family,
or the legislators would be having to make. OF COURSE, there was ZERO
appeal to corporations and their executives to change any of their ways for
the benefit of society. OF COURSE, there was ZERO suggestion that religious
organizations start paying their fair share of taxes on what they own.

James "PARDON MY CAPS" the Equal Opportunity Skeptic

Richard L Hall wrote:
"oly" wrote in message
...
On Feb 13, 12:15 pm, oly wrote:
On Feb 13, 10:49 am, "Petronius" wrote:

On Feb 11, 7:55 am, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com
wrote:
What 'redistribution of wealth' policy? Oh, you mean the one that
is threatening to take away my state teacher pension? The one I
had no choice about tithing to for 33 years?

You could have chosen not to work in that field...

Petronius,

The thing that all these retired public servants WILL NOT DO is tell
you how much money they were "forced" to put and then compare that to
what they expect to get out of the system during their usually
lengthy retirements, both in cash payments and healthcare benefits
recieved.

For somebody who has already been retired a while, you will find that
their payout is frequently 30 to 1 (thirty dollars in benefits for
every dollar paid in).

Note that people who retire now or soon won't get that much, ratio-
wise, because they have been forced to put in a bit more on the front
end.

OTOH, if you have lived an unhealthy lifestyle or are just unlucky,
you still might hit the jackpot in health benefits.

Public servants are among the few who still get these "defined
benefit" retirement schemes. It is one of the big reasons for staying
on the last decade or so of such a public career (after the
inevitable burnout of doing the same thing for twenty five years or
more).

BTW, I am doing my damndest to get to the same point as a public
annuitant. 3 years, 2 months.

Many days, I don't think the western financial system will last that
long.

oly
...the hypocrite

The new Governor of New Jersey, the Hon. Mr. Christy, gave a great and
scathing address to that State's Legislature just this week on the
very subject of disproportionate retirement benefits for former NJ
public employees.

OF COURSE, there was ZERO national mainstream media attention.
---------
Maybe the NJ state employees should hold out for parity with the
private sector.

After all, the CEO of Wells Fargo who retired in January of last year
got a mere $183 million or so in retirement benefits. When the
government was handing out TARP funds, he seemed more concerned about
how it would affect his retirement funds than how it would affect his
bank.

And, of course, there is also the CEO of Merrill Lynch, who succeeded
in running the company into the ground before he was ousted. He only
walked away with $142 million or so in retirement benefits. It would
take quite a number of incompetent govenment employees to do as much
damage as this guy did.

Well, now, there's a refreshing point of view that we don't hear very often.
Isn't it funny that those who yell the most loudly about government excess
never get around to yelling about corporate excess.

James the Old Turk

"Richard L Hall" wrote in message
...

"oly" wrote in message
...
On Feb 13, 12:15 pm, oly wrote:
On Feb 13, 10:49 am, "Petronius" wrote:

On Feb 11, 7:55 am, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com
wrote:
What 'redistribution of wealth' policy? Oh, you mean the one that is
threatening to take away my state teacher pension? The one I had no
choice
about tithing to for 33 years?

You could have chosen not to work in that field...

Petronius,

The thing that all these retired public servants WILL NOT DO is tell
you how much money they were "forced" to put and then compare that to
what they expect to get out of the system during their usually lengthy
retirements, both in cash payments and healthcare benefits recieved.

For somebody who has already been retired a while, you will find that
their payout is frequently 30 to 1 (thirty dollars in benefits for
every dollar paid in).

Note that people who retire now or soon won't get that much, ratio-
wise, because they have been forced to put in a bit more on the front
end.

OTOH, if you have lived an unhealthy lifestyle or are just unlucky,
you still might hit the jackpot in health benefits.

Public servants are among the few who still get these "defined
benefit" retirement schemes. It is one of the big reasons for staying
on the last decade or so of such a public career (after the inevitable
burnout of doing the same thing for twenty five years or more).

BTW, I am doing my damndest to get to the same point as a public
annuitant. 3 years, 2 months.

Many days, I don't think the western financial system will last that
long.

oly
...the hypocrite

The new Governor of New Jersey, the Hon. Mr. Christy, gave a great and
scathing address to that State's Legislature just this week on the
very subject of disproportionate retirement benefits for former NJ
public employees.

OF COURSE, there was ZERO national mainstream media attention.
---------
Maybe the NJ state employees should hold out for parity with the private
sector.

After all, the CEO of Wells Fargo who retired in January of last year got
a
mere $183 million or so in retirement benefits. When the government was
handing out TARP funds, he seemed more concerned about how it would affect
his retirement funds than how it would affect his bank.

And, of course, there is also the CEO of Merrill Lynch, who succeeded in
running the company into the ground before he was ousted. He only walked
away with $142 million or so in retirement benefits. It would take quite
a
number of incompetent govenment employees to do as much damage as this guy
did.

While there is nothing at all fair about CEO compensation, in fairness let's
keep this in the government sector for a moment.

What would the governor's pension be if he were able to remain in office for
30 years? Would he be quite so sanguine in attacking his own accrued
pension benefit if his post-retirement life were almost entirely dependent
on it, after he had devoted 30 years of his life to public service in order
to earn it? I think not.

Of course that will never happen, so he can afford to scapegoat all those
faceless, nameless "bureaucrats," the majority of which probably weren't
among his supporters to begin with. If he were to be completely fair, he
should point his finger at all his predecessors who "kicked it down the
road" to him, indict them as a class for their political cowardice, and
announce that he will never, ever foist this kind of political chicanery on
the great state and taxpayers of New Jersey.

To round out this utopian dream, I would set up a cumulative public
accounting system to document all the costs and issues that each governor
kicks down the road during his term. All over the state there would be one
of those lighted signs (like the ones that show a running tally of the
national population or public debt) showing voters how much the incumbent
governor has ducked by "kicking it down the road" when these things happen
on his watch.

Yeah, as if. If I smoked a pipe, I'd call this a pipe dream. I don't, so
just put this down as a cranky rant from a PO'd voter who clings to the
quaint belief that elected leaders and business moguls should be held
accountable for their actions, inactions, and hypocritical scapegoating.

BTW, oly, although I can't say whether they specifically covered Christy's
rant, NPR - which last time I looked was a major part of the "mainstream
media" - has given a lot of coverage over all of its various programming to
explain how the legacy costs of DB pensions have affected both the public
and private sector. These presentations have fairly represented the
employers' concerns as well as the workers'. NPR doesn't cover rants except
as occasional sound bites so maybe that's why I haven't heard his speech.
But I've heard plenty about the issue from governors, mayors, independent
financial experts, and even CEOs. From my experience in negotiating the
termination of my union's DB plan in favor of a 401k (my employer was
absolutely determined to eliminate the accumulating legacy costs of a DB), I
can say that NPR's total coverage has been balanced and informative for both
sides of the issue.

Thank you, though, for being frank about your desire to collect your state
pension. IMO you have nothing to be ashamed of and you are not a hypocrite.
It would be different if you had a CEO's golden parachute or were a
politician taking a cheap shot to avoid responsibility. But no one can
blame you for seeking what you are legally entitled to when it comes to
retiring on a modest civil servant's pension that you earned over many years
of work. You should consider foregoing your pension only if and when every
other civil servant foregoes his, and every American taxpayer voluntarily
pays double his state and federal tax obligations, all in a massive
altruistic public uprising by citizens to pay their fair share of making
their state and federal government services more solvent.

Yeah, as if! The "Tragedy of the Commons" rules most of our behavior with
an iron grip and isn't going to go away no matter how hard we try to rise
above it.

- mazorj, Non-Certified Public Accountant (practice limited to political,
religious, and ethics accounting)

mazorj wrote:
"Richard L Hall" wrote in message
...

"oly" wrote in message
...
On Feb 13, 12:15 pm, oly wrote:
On Feb 13, 10:49 am, "Petronius" wrote:

On Feb 11, 7:55 am, "Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com
wrote:
What 'redistribution of wealth' policy? Oh, you mean the one
that is threatening to take away my state teacher pension? The
one I had no choice about tithing to for 33 years?

You could have chosen not to work in that field...

Petronius,

The thing that all these retired public servants WILL NOT DO is tell
you how much money they were "forced" to put and then compare that
to what they expect to get out of the system during their usually
lengthy retirements, both in cash payments and healthcare benefits
recieved. For somebody who has already been retired a while, you will
find
that their payout is frequently 30 to 1 (thirty dollars in benefits
for every dollar paid in).

Note that people who retire now or soon won't get that much, ratio-
wise, because they have been forced to put in a bit more on the
front end.

OTOH, if you have lived an unhealthy lifestyle or are just unlucky,
you still might hit the jackpot in health benefits.

Public servants are among the few who still get these "defined
benefit" retirement schemes. It is one of the big reasons for
staying on the last decade or so of such a public career (after the
inevitable burnout of doing the same thing for twenty five years or
more). BTW, I am doing my damndest to get to the same point as a public
annuitant. 3 years, 2 months.

Many days, I don't think the western financial system will last that
long.

oly
...the hypocrite

The new Governor of New Jersey, the Hon. Mr. Christy, gave a great
and scathing address to that State's Legislature just this week on
the very subject of disproportionate retirement benefits for former NJ
public employees.

OF COURSE, there was ZERO national mainstream media attention.
---------
Maybe the NJ state employees should hold out for parity with the
private sector.

After all, the CEO of Wells Fargo who retired in January of last
year got a
mere $183 million or so in retirement benefits. When the government
was handing out TARP funds, he seemed more concerned about how it
would affect his retirement funds than how it would affect his bank.

And, of course, there is also the CEO of Merrill Lynch, who
succeeded in running the company into the ground before he was
ousted. He only walked away with $142 million or so in retirement
benefits. It would take quite a
number of incompetent govenment employees to do as much damage as
this guy did.

While there is nothing at all fair about CEO compensation, in
fairness let's keep this in the government sector for a moment.

What would the governor's pension be if he were able to remain in
office for 30 years? Would he be quite so sanguine in attacking his
own accrued pension benefit if his post-retirement life were almost
entirely dependent on it, after he had devoted 30 years of his life
to public service in order to earn it? I think not.

Of course that will never happen, so he can afford to scapegoat all
those faceless, nameless "bureaucrats," the majority of which
probably weren't among his supporters to begin with. If he were to
be completely fair, he should point his finger at all his
predecessors who "kicked it down the road" to him, indict them as a
class for their political cowardice, and announce that he will never,
ever foist this kind of political chicanery on the great state and
taxpayers of New Jersey.
To round out this utopian dream, I would set up a cumulative public
accounting system to document all the costs and issues that each
governor kicks down the road during his term. All over the state
there would be one of those lighted signs (like the ones that show a
running tally of the national population or public debt) showing
voters how much the incumbent governor has ducked by "kicking it down
the road" when these things happen on his watch.

Yeah, as if. If I smoked a pipe, I'd call this a pipe dream. I
don't, so just put this down as a cranky rant from a PO'd voter who
clings to the quaint belief that elected leaders and business moguls
should be held accountable for their actions, inactions, and
hypocritical scapegoating.
BTW, oly, although I can't say whether they specifically covered
Christy's rant, NPR - which last time I looked was a major part of
the "mainstream media" - has given a lot of coverage over all of its
various programming to explain how the legacy costs of DB pensions
have affected both the public and private sector. These
presentations have fairly represented the employers' concerns as well
as the workers'. NPR doesn't cover rants except as occasional sound
bites so maybe that's why I haven't heard his speech. But I've heard
plenty about the issue from governors, mayors, independent financial
experts, and even CEOs. From my experience in negotiating the
termination of my union's DB plan in favor of a 401k (my employer was
absolutely determined to eliminate the accumulating legacy costs of a
DB), I can say that NPR's total coverage has been balanced and
informative for both sides of the issue.
Thank you, though, for being frank about your desire to collect your
state pension. IMO you have nothing to be ashamed of and you are not
a hypocrite. It would be different if you had a CEO's golden
parachute or were a politician taking a cheap shot to avoid
responsibility. But no one can blame you for seeking what you are
legally entitled to when it comes to retiring on a modest civil
servant's pension that you earned over many years of work. You
should consider foregoing your pension only if and when every other
civil servant foregoes his, and every American taxpayer voluntarily
pays double his state and federal tax obligations, all in a massive
altruistic public uprising by citizens to pay their fair share of
making their state and federal government services more solvent.
Yeah, as if! The "Tragedy of the Commons" rules most of our
behavior with an iron grip and isn't going to go away no matter how
hard we try to rise above it.

- mazorj, Non-Certified Public Accountant (practice limited to
political, religious, and ethics accounting)

Exactly. I will make sacrifices at the behest of a politician when all (I
cling to the stubborn 100% definition of that otherwise meaningless word)
make sacrifices. When is the last time any politician used the old
shibboleth about us all being in this together and having to make
sacrifices, while being honest enough to reveal that he and his were exempt?

James "Keep Your Eye on the Little Pea, Folks!" the Shell Gamer

"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
mazorj wrote:
"Mr. Jaggers" lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote in message
...
mazorj wrote:
"oly" wrote in message
...

...
In the last twenty years, Garth Brook's "The Dance" is a great
original C&W song. Johnny Cash's last big hit "Hurt" is an
example of a super-fantastic cross-over "cover" (excellent music
video too). These things are far and few between.

Some purists don't consider Brooks a "real" C&W singer, just a
pretender in a cowboy hat whose recordings happen to play on country
stations. Coming late to C&W, I sing along lustily to tunes like
"Friends in Low Places" and don't worry about his credentials.

And let us not forget Pork and the Havana Ducks great original hit
"Your Old Lady's been Cheatin' on You and Me".

My favorite title is the presumably mythical "You Done Broke My
Heart, Stomped It Flat Into The Ground, And Drove It Over A Cliff
In My Pick-up Truck With My Guitar And Ol' Blue".

I thought it went,
"Ya done stomped on ma howrt,
And ya mashed that sucker flat.
You just sorta,
Stomped on my aorta..."

James the Hillbilly

You may be right if it's an actual song. I'm just remembering it as a
standing joke on a local (non-C&W) radio show decades ago. If it's a
purely mythical title then I suspect that like the original lyrics to
Mademoiselle from Armentieres, it's taken on its own life in the wild
with the endless invention of local variants. "Hinky, dinky,
moonshine too..."

The quoted song was on an early John Denver album.

James "Granny Glasses" the Pholksingar

Ah, John Denver. Another putative musical pretender. A self-proclaimed New
Ager and Air Force brat, born under the unfolksy moniker of Henry John
Deutschendorf, Jr. ("John Henry" would have been a much more felicitous
choice). Singing paeans to country roads and cakes on the griddle and
getting high on rocky mounts, while overflying them all as the pilot of his
personal airplanes, winging his way to massively lucrative recording
sessions and concerts in the big city. The truth is, he did pay his musical
dues; but some critics apparently feel that folk music should come from the
downtrodden and isn't supposed to make you rich.

Thanks for the info, I stand corrected. Must have been a memory fart on my
part because the same radio show guys who joked about this as a C&W song
title - this was in the late 1970s or so - also pointedly pointed out that
Denver wasn't exactly a po' hillbilly country boy They probably used the
correct title you cited, having gotten it from Denver's playlist. Memory is
a terrible thing to waste on erroneous factoids.

Mr. Jaggers wrote:
in wrote:
In article , "Mr. Jaggers"
lugburzman[at]yahoo[dot]com wrote:
Jud wrote:
On Feb 12, 5:46 pm, "mazorj" wrote:

- mazorj - Disappointed with your inability to show whatever you
learned while you were a poli sci major and in later life.
Your misrepresentation of what I have stated is either a straw man
argument of your own, or perhaps it comes down to simple
misunderstanding. You may perceive it as an apples/oranges situation
from your point of view - upon numerous occasions, but I don't, and
your failure to acknowledge that others may have different opinions
than your own is a disappointment to me. Yes, I know that the
presidential term is 4 years, but I am of the belief that no
president can accomplish any major changes within the first 2 years
in office. This gives a chance for the voters to either show their
support, or lack of his policies in the next off-year elections, a
chance for the president to enact policies of his own, and for the
president to put his own mark on his administration and not blame
the previous one.

Yep...I am done with this thread. It has gotten to the point where
further discussion would be meaningless. Nice dig in your sig line
too, by the way.
People ocasionally post to this newsgroup complaining about how
often we go OT and how bitter things can get, but this group merely
reflects what is going on in our society at large. Radio stations
that used to play music all day long now feature political content
all day. Cable "news" now has political content all day. Our local
newspaper's online version has a "comments" feature, and every day
the same two guys go at it, verbal guns ablaze, no matter what the
issue being reported. Unfortunately, the newspaper has recently
begun excerpting that feature in its print edition, so now it's in
our faces there as well. Some of the staid periodicals I read have
joined in the fray.

Over the past month I've been noticing it on Facebook as well. A
venue that proposed to foster and celebrate friendship has its
"comments" feature as well, which often leads to the same sort of
thing we see here. Our population is on hair trigger 24/7, it
seems. Whether or not he said it I can't prove right at this
moment, but I remember learning in school that Abraham Lincoln said
something about our nation never being conquered from without, but
rather falling from within. Even if he didn't say it, someone said
it, and that person could not have been more correct. Everywhere I
look I now see American against American.

James


you know it's bad when "jugs" magazine is including pics of local pol
ladies.

Hey, where can I get a hold of "Jugs"? Be careful how you answer that.

James the Handy


http://www.juggs.com/

--
Government is a voracious monster that must have your labor to control
YOU! Your money is your liberty. The taxes you pay gently enslave you,
and eventually destroy any human liberty you have. Fear government, pray
for the country.