I work for a governmental entity. I have for over 20 years. During that time I have made and saved hundreds of millions of dollars. I did not come to the government for security, it was my career choice and that is why I took the courses I did in school.
Over the course of my career I have had numerous opportunities to leave the government and make more money in private industry and make more money, I chose to stay. I am well paid and have few complaints about that. When my life came apart I almost left. I almost quit to become a consultant. I had a half million dollars in contracts in under 30 minutes and wasn't trying to get any.
The people who know me, know this to be true, the people who do not probably cannot believe it. It is what it is. Most people that work for government cannot just take a job on the outside and make four times as much. I know this. They stay because of their pensions and benefits.
Part of the reason I stayed was because of my pension. In five years I can begin to draw my pension and retire. Only one problem, half goes to the ex. It would be better for me to leave, make more and start a 401k or invest in stock. I have many options. Best case scenario would be for me to go into consulting and create a new self made pension. I plan on staying for a bit, as long as my health is manageable.
When I went into government, I was told that I would get a specific benefit, a pension calculated and guaranteed. I was told the government would put aside a specific amount each year. I didn't, few did. They made the promises; but, when times were good counted on making large returns on the pension investments. Markets go up and down, the bets failed eventually.
Nationwide government pensions are under scrutiny. Few, very few, governments put the money in the pension funds that they promised and instead turned to riskier and riskier investments. Government pension funds were then also used for political ends. Government Pensions invested in things that the government wanted to achieve, in exchange the government allowed them to do insider trading, constructively.
The Federal government turned a blind eye to all of what was happening as long as the pensions invested in things that the fed wanted to see grow. A problem occurred, a culture of corruption was created. That culture led to graft and bribery. Now we have the outcome, failed government pension systems nationwide.
Because of the underfunding of the pensions, the failure of governments to put in the amount needed at the time, the pensions will fail. If the governments were to make up for what they did not pay at the time, they will be unable to pay their present employees. That is the reality we are facing.
As a consequence of the above, we are now faced with a choice. We can, as a society, not provide the promised payments we made for service done, we can put the burden on future government employees or find a hybrid solution. Doubling taxes to pay for the promises made to government employees, including me, is not a viable solution in this economy.
I have been cheated. I and many others have already given our time, spent our careers in government service in exchange for a promise. That promise is now a lie. I gave up making more, making different choices based on a societal promise. I am being asked to screw future employees or accept that I was cheated and find an alternate situation.
I cannot get back the career options, choices of the past two plus decades, I cannot redo my life. I cannot have married someone different. Government employees are being asked to make the decision about their pensions. They are being asked to condemn the future employees to working 40 years, rather than 30, or insist upon tax increases.
Private company employees are in a similar situation. Social Security is also $1 trillion underfunded. The government did not put the money aside to pay for social security. That means privately employed people are being asked to pay for public pensions or their own. Keep your promises and go without or fail to meet your promises and take care of yourself.
The question is how we solve these problems. It will determine the type of society we create in the future. If we choose to cheat future employees, they will steal you blind, private and public. It is not a solution you will like and future employees will not help retiring ones if that is our societal answer.
ON AVERAGE, people are living longer. That does mean that we will have to change the pension systems because of the actuarial tables. It does not mean that we have to make upcoming employees pay for our pensions. Rather than allowing ourselves to be conquered and divided, what if we all compromised. I will gladly allow the next ten years of my pension to be based on a new formula if it will allow the new employees to only work an extra five years rather than 10+. I will not ask taxpayers, I pay them also, to not have services in order to meet the promises they made to me completely.
Everything I have said applies to Social Security, which I do not recieve but have paid into, and how we will deal with people on the private side. Will you saddle your children with working an extra ten years to get what you were promised?
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
News of the Day
Previously I had posted about how Putin had shown a new world currency. Here it is. Bloomberg announces that Medvedev shows off new world currency. Hey, maybe he is just kidding. Maybe he is a conspiracy theorist. I mean he is also calling for a New World Order with a one world economic basis and global government.
The move towards globalization is open, it is in your face, it is real and it is now. You can bury your head in the sand or make believe that it is not real; but, in the end you will live under it. If you do not know what the G20 is, it is the meeting of 20 major governments to discuss and set policies for the economy. A link to their website, you should get to know what they are saying.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Fascinating Times
I cannot help myself. Watching the changes in the world is just too fascinating for a Political Scientist. The Chinese have a blessing and a curse that says, "May you live in interesting times". We are living in such times. As a Political Scientist (while I have a doctorate in Law, I have always considered myself a Political Scientist and have a degree in it).
It is like being a physicist and looking at new planets. We live in a time of great risk; but, I cannot help but focus on the possibilities and implications politically. It is just my nature. I am sure that someone who studies spiders, if bit by a violin spider, would be unable to help themselves from observing and studying the effect on his body even when in pain.
Political Science at it's most fundamental is a fascination with understanding how societies manage themselves and attempting to determine what the best form of government is. Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbs, St. Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, Marx, Jefferson, they all come rushing back to me as I watch the world transform around us. I cannot leave out Arnold Toynbee.
I also believe one should read Oswald Spengler. Both Spengler and Toynbee were fascinated by the question of the rise and fall of societies. When I refer to societies, I am not speaking about ethnic groups or nations, we are referring to people working together as a group regardless of the ethnic, religious, gender or other criteria. The group can consist of anyone who works with the group. The issue of the failure of societies has to do with when they stop working together and the society fails.
The question is do all societies fail? That is the issue for all societies. How do we prevent eventual failure? My answer is that we cannot. Nobody ever likes my answers. Failure is an option, it is inevitable because change is not an option. Philosophically, the necessity of failure is hated by most. The eternal struggle between stasis and growth.
The vast majority of people want comfort, stasis, a lack of change or challenge. Change and challenge lead to advancement. Because the majority want predictability and comfort, change agents (outliers, creative people) are held back. If they are effectively held back, no change occurs and societies eventually fail, that is unavoidable. If they are allowed to make too many changes, too soon, society cannot handle it and people refuse to adjust, things fail.
The key to the length of the survival of a society is their ability to deal with change agents, outliers. Both a lack of change and too much change destroy societies. Societies must move forward with some sort of consensus on how much change is acceptable and at what rate. The proper balance allowing for continual change to meet a changing environment is the heart of political science. The proper formula has yet to be found or proven.
The death of societies is always the same. Towards the end, they see that they are losing what they worked for, then they seek to be more restrictive and kill off dissent and difference. The world has changed and societies that had been dominant seek to prevent change. Rather than adjust, they resist and thereby ensure their own end.
We are witnessing the end of a way of life. The end of a civilization, a way of organizing society. Our concept of freedom, privacy, capitalism, religion and family is changing. How we organize ourselves and inter-relate to one another is changing. Western civilization, as we knew it, is undergoing many fundamental changes all at once. Few understand how it is changing; but, most can tell it is happening.
Is this planned by a few or just a natural cycle? Maybe both, it is however inevitable. How will we manage the change and what will we attempt to change into, that remains to be seen.
It is like being a physicist and looking at new planets. We live in a time of great risk; but, I cannot help but focus on the possibilities and implications politically. It is just my nature. I am sure that someone who studies spiders, if bit by a violin spider, would be unable to help themselves from observing and studying the effect on his body even when in pain.
Political Science at it's most fundamental is a fascination with understanding how societies manage themselves and attempting to determine what the best form of government is. Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, Locke, Hobbs, St. Thomas Aquinas, Voltaire, Marx, Jefferson, they all come rushing back to me as I watch the world transform around us. I cannot leave out Arnold Toynbee.
I also believe one should read Oswald Spengler. Both Spengler and Toynbee were fascinated by the question of the rise and fall of societies. When I refer to societies, I am not speaking about ethnic groups or nations, we are referring to people working together as a group regardless of the ethnic, religious, gender or other criteria. The group can consist of anyone who works with the group. The issue of the failure of societies has to do with when they stop working together and the society fails.
The question is do all societies fail? That is the issue for all societies. How do we prevent eventual failure? My answer is that we cannot. Nobody ever likes my answers. Failure is an option, it is inevitable because change is not an option. Philosophically, the necessity of failure is hated by most. The eternal struggle between stasis and growth.
The vast majority of people want comfort, stasis, a lack of change or challenge. Change and challenge lead to advancement. Because the majority want predictability and comfort, change agents (outliers, creative people) are held back. If they are effectively held back, no change occurs and societies eventually fail, that is unavoidable. If they are allowed to make too many changes, too soon, society cannot handle it and people refuse to adjust, things fail.
The key to the length of the survival of a society is their ability to deal with change agents, outliers. Both a lack of change and too much change destroy societies. Societies must move forward with some sort of consensus on how much change is acceptable and at what rate. The proper balance allowing for continual change to meet a changing environment is the heart of political science. The proper formula has yet to be found or proven.
The death of societies is always the same. Towards the end, they see that they are losing what they worked for, then they seek to be more restrictive and kill off dissent and difference. The world has changed and societies that had been dominant seek to prevent change. Rather than adjust, they resist and thereby ensure their own end.
We are witnessing the end of a way of life. The end of a civilization, a way of organizing society. Our concept of freedom, privacy, capitalism, religion and family is changing. How we organize ourselves and inter-relate to one another is changing. Western civilization, as we knew it, is undergoing many fundamental changes all at once. Few understand how it is changing; but, most can tell it is happening.
Is this planned by a few or just a natural cycle? Maybe both, it is however inevitable. How will we manage the change and what will we attempt to change into, that remains to be seen.
I Was Wrong - Sort of
Today was quadruple witching hour. It has come and gone with light trading. This is unusual and may be a very bad thing. Today was the day when options and futures for the next three months expired.
Options and Futures are bets on whether or not a stock will go up or down over the next three months. Lets say your pension fund (the largest investors on Wall Street) needs to make 6 to 8 percent per year. They may sell options that say if the stock increases or decreases beyond a certain amount, the person who bought the option takes the risk. It is a sort of insurance policy for institutional investors. If nobody buys the options than the pension has no insurance policy and cannot limit it's risk.
I had thought that the market was going to crash today, it did not, it did nothing and much fewer than normal trading was done. That means that the institutional investors are basically without insurance. So why weren't the options sold?
My best guess has to do with something the Federal Government announced very recently. They stated that if the market became too volatile that they would halt options trading. This makes options a bad investment. Options make the most money and lose the most when volatility is extreme. It is a question of possible return on investment. No point in buying a lottery ticket if the the odds are 1 in a million if my return is limited to $20.
I personally believe options are a bad thing. I understand the insurance value to the institutional investor; but, it turns the market into a casino rather than an investment. It also leads to people intentionally playing the market and stock values not being representative of the underlying value. I am not against what the government has done, per se. Problem is, the system is built around it and to change it without allowing people to change their format for protecting themselves from risk causes greater risk in the short term.
Now comes the real question, how do the pension funds avoid the risk of volatility at a time when greater numbers of people are retiring, how do they pay them? They end up having to sell off stock. Most likely consequence of this is to drive the price of stock down.
Long term, I think regulating stock trading as promoted by Warren Buffet is a great idea. Eliminate options and limit CEO pay. Base CEO pay on profits and not on stock valuations. These changes force CEOs to make companies work rather than making changes just to increase the short term value of the stock. To threaten to halt stock option trading days before quadruple witching hour; however, is wrong as people have not had an opportunity to find other insurance policies.
To understand the long term impact of these changes will take a little time. I believe that down the road, can't say when, you will see more and more stock in companies being owned by the employees themselves through their pensions. Remember 35% of the stock in GM is owned by the employees own pension funds (50% is owned by the Federal Government).
Basically, what is being created is a new form of large corporation. The employees end up controlling the companies and their retirements are only secure if the company runs well. They end up relying on the future employees to make sure that they have a pension. By ending options trading and tying Management pay to profitability it is believed that the employees and managers will care more about the long term health of the company. That is the logic behind these changes.
I do not believe you can call such a thing socialism unless the government owns 50% of the company. It is more along the lines of true communism where the workers own the means of production. Not a Soviet Union style communism (which was not the workers but the government owning everything). You can call it collectivism of a sort.
Lets say you work for GM. Cars are not selling, will you have the union try and get you a raise if it mean it will tank out your pension fund? Probably not. Will you tolerate lazy fellow employees, probably not. Will it increase animosity between employees, possibly. This is untried territory. How will it effect the relationship between management and employees. Remember the Union will be picking the management. Who will they pick and on what criteria? It will be interesting to see.
What will the managers of tomorrow look like and act like? It will take a little time; but, if this trend continues (and I believe it will) people will be more likely to stay at a job and learn to do it well. I am not promoting this change nor arguing against it, just trying to figure out what the impact will be. My fear is that the employees may be harder on each other than the managers ever were.
We are truly entering a brave new world.
Options and Futures are bets on whether or not a stock will go up or down over the next three months. Lets say your pension fund (the largest investors on Wall Street) needs to make 6 to 8 percent per year. They may sell options that say if the stock increases or decreases beyond a certain amount, the person who bought the option takes the risk. It is a sort of insurance policy for institutional investors. If nobody buys the options than the pension has no insurance policy and cannot limit it's risk.
I had thought that the market was going to crash today, it did not, it did nothing and much fewer than normal trading was done. That means that the institutional investors are basically without insurance. So why weren't the options sold?
My best guess has to do with something the Federal Government announced very recently. They stated that if the market became too volatile that they would halt options trading. This makes options a bad investment. Options make the most money and lose the most when volatility is extreme. It is a question of possible return on investment. No point in buying a lottery ticket if the the odds are 1 in a million if my return is limited to $20.
I personally believe options are a bad thing. I understand the insurance value to the institutional investor; but, it turns the market into a casino rather than an investment. It also leads to people intentionally playing the market and stock values not being representative of the underlying value. I am not against what the government has done, per se. Problem is, the system is built around it and to change it without allowing people to change their format for protecting themselves from risk causes greater risk in the short term.
Now comes the real question, how do the pension funds avoid the risk of volatility at a time when greater numbers of people are retiring, how do they pay them? They end up having to sell off stock. Most likely consequence of this is to drive the price of stock down.
Long term, I think regulating stock trading as promoted by Warren Buffet is a great idea. Eliminate options and limit CEO pay. Base CEO pay on profits and not on stock valuations. These changes force CEOs to make companies work rather than making changes just to increase the short term value of the stock. To threaten to halt stock option trading days before quadruple witching hour; however, is wrong as people have not had an opportunity to find other insurance policies.
To understand the long term impact of these changes will take a little time. I believe that down the road, can't say when, you will see more and more stock in companies being owned by the employees themselves through their pensions. Remember 35% of the stock in GM is owned by the employees own pension funds (50% is owned by the Federal Government).
Basically, what is being created is a new form of large corporation. The employees end up controlling the companies and their retirements are only secure if the company runs well. They end up relying on the future employees to make sure that they have a pension. By ending options trading and tying Management pay to profitability it is believed that the employees and managers will care more about the long term health of the company. That is the logic behind these changes.
I do not believe you can call such a thing socialism unless the government owns 50% of the company. It is more along the lines of true communism where the workers own the means of production. Not a Soviet Union style communism (which was not the workers but the government owning everything). You can call it collectivism of a sort.
Lets say you work for GM. Cars are not selling, will you have the union try and get you a raise if it mean it will tank out your pension fund? Probably not. Will you tolerate lazy fellow employees, probably not. Will it increase animosity between employees, possibly. This is untried territory. How will it effect the relationship between management and employees. Remember the Union will be picking the management. Who will they pick and on what criteria? It will be interesting to see.
What will the managers of tomorrow look like and act like? It will take a little time; but, if this trend continues (and I believe it will) people will be more likely to stay at a job and learn to do it well. I am not promoting this change nor arguing against it, just trying to figure out what the impact will be. My fear is that the employees may be harder on each other than the managers ever were.
We are truly entering a brave new world.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
MK Ultra and Idiot Professors
One reader recently was giving a presentation in a class on a government project known as MK Ultra. He was given an F because his genius of a professor said that the project did not exist. I like my readers and want them to have the best information available.
This link is to the documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act FROM YOUR GOVERNMENT regarding MK Ultra. The documents were obtained by a wonderful young man who is excellent at using the FOIA. His website it called "The Black Vault" and I highly recommend it.
When the information came to public awareness two committees investigated it.
The Church Committee Report
The Rockefeller Report
While it is known that many, if not most, of the documentation was destroyed, enough remained to be horrified. 20,000 retarded children living in state homes fed radioactive cereal, citizens exposed to LSD and viruses to see what would happen. Plenty of bad stuff to go around.
Now, I have previously posted on MK Ultra and did not intend to bring it up again; however, I wanted to provide my reader with all the information necessary to shove it up his idiot of a professor's nose. Clearly the professor didn't even take the time to do an online search or read a history book. That is what is considered a teacher today.
How can students learn when the professors are ignorant and biased. His professor, with no investigation, dismissed it as false and a conspiracy theory. Even a simple Google search would have proven the prof wrong. It doesn't take two seconds. Oh, by the way, search MK Ultra and Unibomber together. That should make your head spin. He was a subject of the program.
Anyways, I do not plan on talking about MK Ultra at present, if you missed the previous post you have the source documents above. What I am more interested in was the "teachers" response. No, wait, he didn't teach, he professed a belief. I would rather be a teacher than a professor. I hate trainers, it is so authoritarian.
MK Ultra was a program that was discovered, partially exposed and investigated by congress. One may reasonably argue that no such program existed and that the government faked that one existed to scare our enemies. That is a possible counter-intelligence move; however, one cannot say that the program was made up by conspiracy theorists and just nonsense. That is stupidity. How could you fail a student without investigating, how can professors be so incompetent?
When I was in University, my professors wanted me to become a Professor and teach Political Science. I was taught the old way, the way of academia. This blog is casual and meant to be amusing, informative, thought provoking and casual. My technical writing is not casual and has more footnotes than writing. I have been a University assistant to Professors, I have taught classes and graded papers in the largest private university in the United States. Apparently, we are now hiring illiterates as Professors.
College should be a place where alternate theories are examined and accepted or rejected based on research, not opinion or bias or stupidity. I offer to my reader who was given the F, I offer to go to that class and talk before it. I will have many handouts and provide information to the students on how to use the FOIA. Professors are not supposed to merely repeat the party line, they are supposed to be eternally investigating, researchers not true believers.
This link is to the documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act FROM YOUR GOVERNMENT regarding MK Ultra. The documents were obtained by a wonderful young man who is excellent at using the FOIA. His website it called "The Black Vault" and I highly recommend it.
When the information came to public awareness two committees investigated it.
The Church Committee Report
The Rockefeller Report
While it is known that many, if not most, of the documentation was destroyed, enough remained to be horrified. 20,000 retarded children living in state homes fed radioactive cereal, citizens exposed to LSD and viruses to see what would happen. Plenty of bad stuff to go around.
Now, I have previously posted on MK Ultra and did not intend to bring it up again; however, I wanted to provide my reader with all the information necessary to shove it up his idiot of a professor's nose. Clearly the professor didn't even take the time to do an online search or read a history book. That is what is considered a teacher today.
How can students learn when the professors are ignorant and biased. His professor, with no investigation, dismissed it as false and a conspiracy theory. Even a simple Google search would have proven the prof wrong. It doesn't take two seconds. Oh, by the way, search MK Ultra and Unibomber together. That should make your head spin. He was a subject of the program.
Anyways, I do not plan on talking about MK Ultra at present, if you missed the previous post you have the source documents above. What I am more interested in was the "teachers" response. No, wait, he didn't teach, he professed a belief. I would rather be a teacher than a professor. I hate trainers, it is so authoritarian.
MK Ultra was a program that was discovered, partially exposed and investigated by congress. One may reasonably argue that no such program existed and that the government faked that one existed to scare our enemies. That is a possible counter-intelligence move; however, one cannot say that the program was made up by conspiracy theorists and just nonsense. That is stupidity. How could you fail a student without investigating, how can professors be so incompetent?
When I was in University, my professors wanted me to become a Professor and teach Political Science. I was taught the old way, the way of academia. This blog is casual and meant to be amusing, informative, thought provoking and casual. My technical writing is not casual and has more footnotes than writing. I have been a University assistant to Professors, I have taught classes and graded papers in the largest private university in the United States. Apparently, we are now hiring illiterates as Professors.
College should be a place where alternate theories are examined and accepted or rejected based on research, not opinion or bias or stupidity. I offer to my reader who was given the F, I offer to go to that class and talk before it. I will have many handouts and provide information to the students on how to use the FOIA. Professors are not supposed to merely repeat the party line, they are supposed to be eternally investigating, researchers not true believers.
Just read the articles
The following articles are all about watching you and me. I have been aware of the first one for awhile now. I spoke to a relative about it, he told me the project had been abandoned because it only worked if everyone was chipped. I cannot comment on that as I do not know, I just know it is being assembled now.
ISIS - The all seeing eye in the sky
ISIS renewed
LEMV - Watching the rest of you.
Now, just in case you don't understand the name choice. ISIS and Osiris were Egyptian Gods and their son was Horus. The eye of Horus is called the all seeing eye. It is the same as Satan in a way. The all seeing eye is part of the mystery school traditions. You can look up the eye of Horus online, go anywhere.
Now, read the articles and look at the language used. They talk about how God would love this and use the terms "unblinking" and "all seeing eye". They do not explain where these terms come from. There is a club and you are not a member. Only members immediately understand. Ask any Mason and he will know immediately what the terms referred to, ask and Satanist, ask any Rosicrucian, ask any Wiccan.
ISIS - The all seeing eye in the sky
ISIS renewed
LEMV - Watching the rest of you.
Now, just in case you don't understand the name choice. ISIS and Osiris were Egyptian Gods and their son was Horus. The eye of Horus is called the all seeing eye. It is the same as Satan in a way. The all seeing eye is part of the mystery school traditions. You can look up the eye of Horus online, go anywhere.
Now, read the articles and look at the language used. They talk about how God would love this and use the terms "unblinking" and "all seeing eye". They do not explain where these terms come from. There is a club and you are not a member. Only members immediately understand. Ask any Mason and he will know immediately what the terms referred to, ask and Satanist, ask any Rosicrucian, ask any Wiccan.
And Princesses
Apparently the Swedish royal family is not amused by a new Barbie. It is the princess Barbie. One of them said, "Royal families have a hard enough time being taken seriously as it is without being turned into dolls. It is undignified." It is just too funny, not taken seriously, undignified. I am sorry, they spend millions on "dignified" weddings while people go hungry in "their" country. Royals are leeches. They no longer rule and still suck the money out of "their" countries under the belief that they are better than the rest of us.
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