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December 25, 2011

The Salem Statesman Journal announced that they were going to publish the names of retired State workers who are getting PERS and how much they are getting. State worker advocates took them to court but the Statesman Journal won and then they published a list of not all retired PERS members but just the ones who are getting big bucks. The guy at the top of the list was former University of Oregon football coach Mike Bellotti who gets almost a half million dollars per year.

The Statesman also editorialized that it wasn’t right because it’s hurting the State budget and might lead to increased taxes.

It occurred to me that the Occupy Wall Street movement would agree with the Statesman, but for different reasons. The Occupy movement would say that The Statesman Journal has illuminated the disparity of wealth between Coach Bellotti and average working people or to put it another way, Coach Bellotti is part of the “one percent”. 

I wrote a letter to the editor thanking them for taking the side of the “ninety-nine percent” and I recommended that they also go after some of the really rich people, including billionaires like the Walton family who have a combined net worth of over $87 billion, Bill Gates who has over $50 billion, Charles and David Koch who also have over $50 billion and the Mars Candy family who have combined wealth over $40 billion. All of these billionaires have wealth that exceeds the entire annual budget of the State of Oregon which is approximately $29 billion.

The Statesman didn’t publish my letter so I’ve decided to publish it myself here on my blog. 

The other day in a Doctor’s office I read the October issue of Forbes magazine which listed over 400 people with net worth of a billion dollars or more and I think it’s crazy that we have let that happen.

So I guess if the Statesman isn’t going to go with this then it’s up to me ... more later.

July 10, 2011

Words no longer seem to mean anything.  For example, the word "reform". The dictionary says reform means to "make changes in something in order to improve it." But politicians today are saying they want to "reform" Social Security or Medicare or workers' pensions when what they are really trying to do is not to improve them but to make them worse or even to get rid of them. 

Here in Oregon the legislature talked about reforming PERS when what they really were trying to do was to decrease benefits and make workers pay more. 

I understand tax reform. That means to make taxes fairer and more progressive by changing the rates and eliminating loopholes. But cutting or eliminating benefits for seniors, poor people and working people would not improve or reform these programs. It would only make things worse.