The remarkable part of a recent story about use of the "N" word in a Houston school was not that it was allegedly done by a Teacher's Aide, nor that the student and his parents were so offended that they demanded that the Aide be fired, nor that the school district inevitably complied. The remarkable part of this story was not even the fact that the Teacher's Aide involved was Black.
No, the remarkable part was the letter of dismissal sent by the Houston Independent School District to the employee, portions of which were shown on TV (around the 2:10 mark of the video link above). In addition to recognizable phrases like "your contract will not be renewed", was the following declaration: "....use a racial epitaph while addressing......"
Racial epitaph?
Without knowing or caring about the age, race or gender of the letter writer, of one thing I am absolutely certain: they were a product of HISD or its thousands of clones nationwide: obsessed for two generations now with political correctness, self-esteem, fairness and opportunity, and not at all concerned about syntax, grammar, spelling - or the limitations of Spellcheck when composing a letter in Microsoft Word.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 3
SUNDAY MORNING:
It's 4:30 a.m., and just as promised, Continental rolls out their version of Reveille, turning the lights on at the service end of their huge tent, accompanied by the Volunteers (who had been up since 2:30 a.m. prepping breakfast), moving into the tent, mixing Gatorade and doing the dozen other things Volunteers do to make the Riders' lives easier. Progressively, the lights rolled on throughout the Tent, with a dozen or so folks covering their heads or burying them into their sleeping bags, determined to forestall the inevitable approach of dawn.
From the great height of his velour-covered Luxaire Power Inflatable Air Mattress (with 144 individual air pockets to ensure a good night's sleep), my Bunk Mate to the left with the earplugs (apparently designed to block out the sound of his own snoring) complained that he "slept like crap", a sentiment echoed by my Bunk Mate to the right, also from the lofty heights of his cushy air mattress. I offered to check under their mattresses for a pea, but neither of them got the cultural reference. In two minutes flat I had my sleeping bag rolled up and stowed in my luggage, as the whine of a dozen small electric motors being used to deflate air mattresses filled the tent, no doubt to the great distress of those doggedly trying to sleep in, not to mention the sensibilities of those who worry about the carbon footprint of a device as controversial as an air mattress deflator motor.
Maybe the government could come up with a wind-powered version, with the appropriate subsidies, of course.
In quick order I threw on my bike togs, brushed my teeth and prepped my bike. The temperature felt like it was in the mid-fifties, but that could have been the 100% humidity. Suffice to say it was chill, and with the exception of the roads, the campground was a muddy bog.
Over the years I have enjoyed the traditional MS-150 pancake orgy early Sunday morning, where local volunteers turn out a Google of pancakes, producing the batter in containers that - I kid you not - look exactly like small cement mixers. The cooks are an interesting mix of young and old: hulking high school boys to muscle the 50 lb sacks of flour, the older folks flipping flapjacks and filling the trays, and teenage girls taking the trays out to the serving area. It is a machine of efficiency, and I'd guess they serve close to half of the 11,000 or so Riders. And what a treat it is to step inside the kitchen. There's just nothing like walking through a building with the smell of hundreds of pancakes cooking to make you forget about your own aches and pains.
I was always a little concerned about those cement mixers, though. I mean, assuming they're dual use, how clean could they really get them? Reminds me of another disturbing aspect of MS-150's past, where the huge tankers that supplied water to the mobile showers had "Roto-Rooter" emblazoned on the side. As to the cement mixers at Breakfast, I was prepared to rationalize whatever amount of concrete I was ingesting, having recently read that cigarette manufacturers now include concrete in my Marlboro Lights. Bizarre but true, per the anti-smoking Fascisti, who assure me it's so mostly because they say so, the same indisputable argument they use to document the 470 other known hazardous chemicals and carcinogens that Big Cig supposedly pumps into my Smokes along with the concrete, purely out of spite. I suspect this is more of the same rationale that allows people to be absolutely certain that Global Warming exists and is caused by people, but most particularly cigarette smokers.
Not that I'm saying that cigarettes are not harmful, mind you, but I fully expect to read in the coming months that cigarettes will also be discovered to contain the effluent from chemical plants, waste dump methane, depleted uranium, that silvery scratch-off lottery ticket coating and Soylent Green, whereafter somebody who looks like Charleston Heston will run through the streets shouting: "People!........cigarettes are made from peeeeople!"
But I digress.
Either way, if I can endure a little concrete in my cigarette, I guess I can handle a little bit in my pancakes, and the pancake line is always open by 4:30 a.m. so I can get in line early. As I finish stowing my gear, though, I discover that Continental has breakfast ready by 4:45 a.m., so I won't even need to hazard the LaGrange breakfast line. Mere steps away is a veritable banquet, including Taquitos with all the trimmings, great coffee, orange juice and Danish. I'm third in line and chow down. There doesn't appear to be any organized plan for the Team to assemble en masse for Sunday's start, so I mosey over to the Starting Gate around 5:15 in my Road Runner bike jersey, and there's already about 100 people in line.
Within minutes it starts to rain, and for the next hour it varies from a downpour to a drizzle, the Riders either rolling up the collars of their rain gear, running for shelter, or simply hunkering in place and getting thoroughly soaked, knowing full well that this too shall pass. When it really started coming down, one guy rushed into the single Port-a-John conveniently located at the start. After about five minutes, the coffee started working on me, so I walked over to wait my turn to use the facilities. A few more minutes passed, and I saw that a line had formed behind me, with a few of the Riders shifting their weight from one foot to the other, a sure sign of their urgency. After a few more minutes, I knocked on the door. It immediately popped open and the first guy asks "do you need to use this?".
He was using the single toilet available to 500 Riders as his personal rain shelter. You can't make this stuff up.
In several past posts, I have complained about the Sunday Morning Line Cutters; you know who I'm talking about: the people (almost all men) who sleep in until just before the Start, and then try to force their way to the front of the line on some bullshit premise or another, such as "my team is up front, we have to start together". I am proud to report that not one of them has ever gotten past me, but this year, I encountered a whole new scam. Around 6:45 a.m., one slightly overweight guy came blustering up on the right shoulder, demanding that all the riders that had been sitting there patiently since 5:15 a.m. "shove over on the left, dammit, shove over on the left!". "Why?", somebody asked. "Because the right two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Express Lunch Route, and the left two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Challenge Route! We need to make room for the Express Lunch Route!". This time I didn't even need to raise my voice. Several dozen heads of the people around him who had endured 50 degree temperatures and steady rain for the prior 1.75 hours swung in his direction, looked at him briefly, then ignored him.
He grumbled over to the right shoulder, looking sullen, and no doubt composing a sharp memo to the Ride Committee, or whatever portion of the MS-150 bureaucracy that was devoted to the special needs of self-appointed Entitlement Scrounges. Not that I'm besmirching Express Lunch Route Riders. Truth be told, any route that promises to limit your saddle time whilst simultaneously getting you to Lunch early looks mighty attractive at Dark Thirty Sunday morning, the day after riding 100 miles.
This reminds me that a handful of our friends went Cowboy and did the entire Houston to Austin route on Saturday, with another friend leapfrogging in a car to provide support, food and fluids along the 75 mile second leg from LaGrange to Austin. I wonder how they did? I also wonder what ten kinds of crazy you have to be to venture 175 miles in one day, with no traffic cops to separate you from the traffic? The relentlessly cheerful MC at the Start Line interrupted my meditation, announcing over the PA system that we were ready to go. As we moved forward, I thought: it takes all kinds to make this Ride the unique thing it is, and maybe they're not so crazy.
After all, they avoided standing in the cold and wet for 2 hours on Sunday morning.
It's 4:30 a.m., and just as promised, Continental rolls out their version of Reveille, turning the lights on at the service end of their huge tent, accompanied by the Volunteers (who had been up since 2:30 a.m. prepping breakfast), moving into the tent, mixing Gatorade and doing the dozen other things Volunteers do to make the Riders' lives easier. Progressively, the lights rolled on throughout the Tent, with a dozen or so folks covering their heads or burying them into their sleeping bags, determined to forestall the inevitable approach of dawn.
From the great height of his velour-covered Luxaire Power Inflatable Air Mattress (with 144 individual air pockets to ensure a good night's sleep), my Bunk Mate to the left with the earplugs (apparently designed to block out the sound of his own snoring) complained that he "slept like crap", a sentiment echoed by my Bunk Mate to the right, also from the lofty heights of his cushy air mattress. I offered to check under their mattresses for a pea, but neither of them got the cultural reference. In two minutes flat I had my sleeping bag rolled up and stowed in my luggage, as the whine of a dozen small electric motors being used to deflate air mattresses filled the tent, no doubt to the great distress of those doggedly trying to sleep in, not to mention the sensibilities of those who worry about the carbon footprint of a device as controversial as an air mattress deflator motor.
Maybe the government could come up with a wind-powered version, with the appropriate subsidies, of course.
In quick order I threw on my bike togs, brushed my teeth and prepped my bike. The temperature felt like it was in the mid-fifties, but that could have been the 100% humidity. Suffice to say it was chill, and with the exception of the roads, the campground was a muddy bog.
Over the years I have enjoyed the traditional MS-150 pancake orgy early Sunday morning, where local volunteers turn out a Google of pancakes, producing the batter in containers that - I kid you not - look exactly like small cement mixers. The cooks are an interesting mix of young and old: hulking high school boys to muscle the 50 lb sacks of flour, the older folks flipping flapjacks and filling the trays, and teenage girls taking the trays out to the serving area. It is a machine of efficiency, and I'd guess they serve close to half of the 11,000 or so Riders. And what a treat it is to step inside the kitchen. There's just nothing like walking through a building with the smell of hundreds of pancakes cooking to make you forget about your own aches and pains.
I was always a little concerned about those cement mixers, though. I mean, assuming they're dual use, how clean could they really get them? Reminds me of another disturbing aspect of MS-150's past, where the huge tankers that supplied water to the mobile showers had "Roto-Rooter" emblazoned on the side. As to the cement mixers at Breakfast, I was prepared to rationalize whatever amount of concrete I was ingesting, having recently read that cigarette manufacturers now include concrete in my Marlboro Lights. Bizarre but true, per the anti-smoking Fascisti, who assure me it's so mostly because they say so, the same indisputable argument they use to document the 470 other known hazardous chemicals and carcinogens that Big Cig supposedly pumps into my Smokes along with the concrete, purely out of spite. I suspect this is more of the same rationale that allows people to be absolutely certain that Global Warming exists and is caused by people, but most particularly cigarette smokers.
Not that I'm saying that cigarettes are not harmful, mind you, but I fully expect to read in the coming months that cigarettes will also be discovered to contain the effluent from chemical plants, waste dump methane, depleted uranium, that silvery scratch-off lottery ticket coating and Soylent Green, whereafter somebody who looks like Charleston Heston will run through the streets shouting: "People!........cigarettes are made from peeeeople!"
But I digress.
Either way, if I can endure a little concrete in my cigarette, I guess I can handle a little bit in my pancakes, and the pancake line is always open by 4:30 a.m. so I can get in line early. As I finish stowing my gear, though, I discover that Continental has breakfast ready by 4:45 a.m., so I won't even need to hazard the LaGrange breakfast line. Mere steps away is a veritable banquet, including Taquitos with all the trimmings, great coffee, orange juice and Danish. I'm third in line and chow down. There doesn't appear to be any organized plan for the Team to assemble en masse for Sunday's start, so I mosey over to the Starting Gate around 5:15 in my Road Runner bike jersey, and there's already about 100 people in line.
Within minutes it starts to rain, and for the next hour it varies from a downpour to a drizzle, the Riders either rolling up the collars of their rain gear, running for shelter, or simply hunkering in place and getting thoroughly soaked, knowing full well that this too shall pass. When it really started coming down, one guy rushed into the single Port-a-John conveniently located at the start. After about five minutes, the coffee started working on me, so I walked over to wait my turn to use the facilities. A few more minutes passed, and I saw that a line had formed behind me, with a few of the Riders shifting their weight from one foot to the other, a sure sign of their urgency. After a few more minutes, I knocked on the door. It immediately popped open and the first guy asks "do you need to use this?".
He was using the single toilet available to 500 Riders as his personal rain shelter. You can't make this stuff up.
In several past posts, I have complained about the Sunday Morning Line Cutters; you know who I'm talking about: the people (almost all men) who sleep in until just before the Start, and then try to force their way to the front of the line on some bullshit premise or another, such as "my team is up front, we have to start together". I am proud to report that not one of them has ever gotten past me, but this year, I encountered a whole new scam. Around 6:45 a.m., one slightly overweight guy came blustering up on the right shoulder, demanding that all the riders that had been sitting there patiently since 5:15 a.m. "shove over on the left, dammit, shove over on the left!". "Why?", somebody asked. "Because the right two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Express Lunch Route, and the left two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Challenge Route! We need to make room for the Express Lunch Route!". This time I didn't even need to raise my voice. Several dozen heads of the people around him who had endured 50 degree temperatures and steady rain for the prior 1.75 hours swung in his direction, looked at him briefly, then ignored him.
He grumbled over to the right shoulder, looking sullen, and no doubt composing a sharp memo to the Ride Committee, or whatever portion of the MS-150 bureaucracy that was devoted to the special needs of self-appointed Entitlement Scrounges. Not that I'm besmirching Express Lunch Route Riders. Truth be told, any route that promises to limit your saddle time whilst simultaneously getting you to Lunch early looks mighty attractive at Dark Thirty Sunday morning, the day after riding 100 miles.
This reminds me that a handful of our friends went Cowboy and did the entire Houston to Austin route on Saturday, with another friend leapfrogging in a car to provide support, food and fluids along the 75 mile second leg from LaGrange to Austin. I wonder how they did? I also wonder what ten kinds of crazy you have to be to venture 175 miles in one day, with no traffic cops to separate you from the traffic? The relentlessly cheerful MC at the Start Line interrupted my meditation, announcing over the PA system that we were ready to go. As we moved forward, I thought: it takes all kinds to make this Ride the unique thing it is, and maybe they're not so crazy.
After all, they avoided standing in the cold and wet for 2 hours on Sunday morning.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 2
Part 2, Saturday.
THE START
So after fighting through the traffic mess leading up to the start of the Ride, my lovely wife Sharon dropped me off a quarter mile from the start, and I made it to the starting gate incident free, with the exception of the excruciating rendition of our National Anthem I mentioned previously. Within minutes of getting there, the Teams were already starting to take off North on Eldridge, with thousands of Riders snaking their way in a generally northwesterly direction, strung out ahead of and behind me for as far as I could see. The ground was damp, and we soon came on our first accident, a female rider flat on her back, but not apparently much the worse for wear. We drove past this scene two more times in the first hour, but to all appearances the injuries were minor, or so we all hoped. Strange to think that falling off your bike could be less painful than riding the entire 175 miles over two days, but small consolation to the Riders who went over their handlebars.
As usual, the Ride Marshalls were everywhere, motivating people to stay in their lanes of traffic, ride safe, and rendering aid to dozens of Riders in the first several miles. The Ride Marshalls are an interesting combination of Cyclist, Cop, Cheerleader, Mentor and EMT, and there is no way an event of this magnitude keeps from coming unraveled without their constant attention. They were relentlessly cheerful, but they could bite when they needed to, such as the time I ventured into the opposite lane of traffic to pass a gaggle of four-abreast socializers. To paraphrase, they are the Sticky Goo that holds everything together.
The first 35 miles were otherwise uneventful, then about ten miles before the Bellville lunch stop, I saw a truly strange and wonderful sight: A 1977 two-tone Ford F-150 Pickup towing an exact duplicate 1977 two-tone Ford F-150 Pickup. They're even the same color combination: brown and white, their paint jobs are equally faded, with exactly the same amount of dirt on both. Now what - I'm thinking to myself - could cause a person in this day and age to own two 23 year old pickups of exactly the same type? Did this guy not get the memo about the Cash For Clunkers program? Was this Citizen thumbing his nose at his generous government's offer to simultaneously improve the environment, fuel economy and the Flyness of his Ride?
I'm thinking with that gun rack, he's probably a Tea Partier, and his name surely must go on a list. Not saying that he'll be harassed, mind you. Let's just say that he might get some extra attention come tax time, or at the 10,000 security checkpoints our government has established throughout the land to guard against people who "get bitter, cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations".
Or so sayeth the 44th president of the land.
On the other hand, if one assumes that the working 74 Ford F-150 got 17 miles per gallon by it's ownself, and, say, 14 miles per gallon towing its twin, then those two vehicles collectively were getting 28 miles per gallon. And per capita fuel economy is off the charts if both trucks are occupied, with a maximum safe occupancy of 11 people per vehicle, plus dogs, which gives him a better fuel-to-passenger ratio than Houston Metro by a factor of about ten to one, and all without a dime of taxpayer subsidy.
Anyway, this guy is my hero. May his trucks last another 50 years each.
With this little meditation completed, we're just shy of Bellville at this point, and your correspondent pushes it up to 22 mph in the hopes of getting to lunch that much sooner. Within minutes, I ride up on the "FMC Twins", two Hotties on the FMC team riding side by side, with exactly the same body shape (pleasing), matching jerseys, bike shorts, helmets and socks, their long red hair streaming in the wind. Were they actually twins? Sorry to say that safety prevented any closer examination, much less conversation, and within minutes, thousands of hungry riders were turning into the campground.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON:
Lunch in Bellville is uneventful. I meet up with Shawn again, but we lose each other along the way. Continental has these wonderful tortilla wraps for lunch, along with sundry other goodies. Let's just say that airline passengers don't eat this good. I hit the road after lunch, refreshed and searching for the elusive Bluebonnet, which has been scarce at best for the first 50 miles. The rest of the ride into LaGrange is strangely devoid of the State flower, their season having apparently peaked the week before. There is, however, a ton of Indian Paintbrush, the official flower of the Kinky Freidman For Governor campaign. I wonder if this is auspicious?
That reminds me that Kinky promised in his last campaign to make Willie Nelson his State Energy Czar, and if memory serves, Willie had advocated Hemp in lieu of Wind turbines to solve our energy problems. Never did understand how one could be the replacement for another, but Hemp sure would be a lot kinder to migratory birds.
I get some starch in my legs, and with a slight tailwind, I'm able to sustain 20 mph for the last 25 miles. I'm finally into LaGrange, those cheering crowds once again bringing a huge smile to my face, and the ubiquitous professional photographers once again clogging the finish line. Two of them are actually sitting in chairs directly in the path of the Riders, and I wonder how much of a piece of this action MS actually gets. Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time Commerce trumped common sense.
Sharon manages to get a snapshot of me at the finish, and I save $51.99 the Brightroom photogs would have charged me for a CD, notwithstanding that they got some fairly cool action shots of me on the Ride, generally with a smile on my face, and looking right sharp in my Continental jersey. I gimp over to the Continental tent, get the bike parked, sign in, and sit down with Sharon, gratefully, with a Shiner Blonde and a ciggy, waiting my turn for a massage. Life is good.
Sharon takes off a couple hour's later, and it's off to the showers. The lines are moving slower than year's past, despite a massive increase in the number of buses that ship Riders offsite to the high school showers across town. I see Shawn pile out of the trailer I'm in line for, and we exchange some pleasantries. He's none the worse for wear despite the hundred miles and some mechanical difficulties. Way to go, Shawn.
Once I get into the trailer, I see the reason for the delays. It seems they've replaced the Locker Room style trailers of old with the kind where each shower stall now has its own little changing room. Unfortunately, this has the effect of increasing the wait-time on each shower from five minutes to ten minutes. WTF is going on? Since when did men need private changing rooms attached to their own personal shower stalls? Since 1998 (my first year on the Ride), it was a simple routine: walk into shower trailer; hang up your crap, strip, get into shower and clean yourself; get out, dry yourself off, put your change of clothes on and make room for the next Rider.
Why the change, I wonder? Nobody seemed to mind the old system, cramped though the changing area was. At least everybody got in and out quickly, which I would think was the objective. Once I get in the shower, however, I catch a clue: the rack hanging off the shower head is loaded with half-empty bottles of Axe Body Wash, moisturizers and conditioners. Now, like it or not, we are all Metrosexuals. Anyway, I finished my Toilet and slogged on back to the Continental tent. When I got there, they had just started the Wine & Cheese party, as well as the drawing for various Continental prizes, and this went on for some time. The prizes included:
- Two standby round trip airfares* good anywhere in the continental United States except during holidays, weekends and other blackout periods as designated by Continental airlines.
- A voucher good for one piece of checked luggage* on any domestic flight with purchase of two non-refundable round trip tickets, a $50 value.
- Free headset, pillow, blanket and unlimited bathroom privileges* on any Continental flight with the purchase of a full price non-refundable airfare.
- Free meal upgrade* from "Sandwichette and crackers" to "Salisbury Steak and Carrots" meal on any flight greater than 2,000 miles.
- "Divorcee's Special" Unaccompanied Minors discount voucher* of $50 per travel segment, with a minimum of two segments. Good for children 12 or younger; booster seat cost not included.
* Certain conditions and restrictions may apply.
Ha, ha, ha. Of course, your correspondent is having a little fun at Continental's expense, probably because he didn't win anything. The prizes were actually much cooler than that, and there were at least 15 of them.
For the first time, I've left my tent at home and opted to sleep under the big tent. Pretty soon, I'm off to my sleeping bag, one of the very few without an air mattress. Strange as it might seem, I like sleeping on the ground. You merely perfect the art of pounding out all of the dirt clogs and other irregularities under your bedroll, and Mother Earth makes an excellent mattress. Since I snore, for the sake of my fellow riders, I've brought my Breathe-Right Nasal Strips, and loan one to the guy on my right. Seems the guy on my left also came prepared, and had earplugs to fend off the noise, the irony of this being that he turned out to be the loudest snorer in the entire tent. It didn't matter. I was so tired, Keith Olbermann couldn't have kept me awake.
It's lights out around 9:00 pm, and just as predicted, the rain starts directly thereafter and keeps it up until around midnight. Nothing more soothing than the sound of rain on a tent. One last thing: over the course of the night, folks would get up - no doubt for bathroom breaks - and walk carefully down the narrow aisles that separated the sleeping bags. When they got close to my spot, I would hear most of them stop, and hear a pronounced "thump". Curious, I waited for the next one, and sure enough, a leg reached out to kick the air mattress of the Chronic Snorer next to me.
Funny.
THE START
So after fighting through the traffic mess leading up to the start of the Ride, my lovely wife Sharon dropped me off a quarter mile from the start, and I made it to the starting gate incident free, with the exception of the excruciating rendition of our National Anthem I mentioned previously. Within minutes of getting there, the Teams were already starting to take off North on Eldridge, with thousands of Riders snaking their way in a generally northwesterly direction, strung out ahead of and behind me for as far as I could see. The ground was damp, and we soon came on our first accident, a female rider flat on her back, but not apparently much the worse for wear. We drove past this scene two more times in the first hour, but to all appearances the injuries were minor, or so we all hoped. Strange to think that falling off your bike could be less painful than riding the entire 175 miles over two days, but small consolation to the Riders who went over their handlebars.
As usual, the Ride Marshalls were everywhere, motivating people to stay in their lanes of traffic, ride safe, and rendering aid to dozens of Riders in the first several miles. The Ride Marshalls are an interesting combination of Cyclist, Cop, Cheerleader, Mentor and EMT, and there is no way an event of this magnitude keeps from coming unraveled without their constant attention. They were relentlessly cheerful, but they could bite when they needed to, such as the time I ventured into the opposite lane of traffic to pass a gaggle of four-abreast socializers. To paraphrase, they are the Sticky Goo that holds everything together.
The first 35 miles were otherwise uneventful, then about ten miles before the Bellville lunch stop, I saw a truly strange and wonderful sight: A 1977 two-tone Ford F-150 Pickup towing an exact duplicate 1977 two-tone Ford F-150 Pickup. They're even the same color combination: brown and white, their paint jobs are equally faded, with exactly the same amount of dirt on both. Now what - I'm thinking to myself - could cause a person in this day and age to own two 23 year old pickups of exactly the same type? Did this guy not get the memo about the Cash For Clunkers program? Was this Citizen thumbing his nose at his generous government's offer to simultaneously improve the environment, fuel economy and the Flyness of his Ride?
I'm thinking with that gun rack, he's probably a Tea Partier, and his name surely must go on a list. Not saying that he'll be harassed, mind you. Let's just say that he might get some extra attention come tax time, or at the 10,000 security checkpoints our government has established throughout the land to guard against people who "get bitter, cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations".
Or so sayeth the 44th president of the land.
On the other hand, if one assumes that the working 74 Ford F-150 got 17 miles per gallon by it's ownself, and, say, 14 miles per gallon towing its twin, then those two vehicles collectively were getting 28 miles per gallon. And per capita fuel economy is off the charts if both trucks are occupied, with a maximum safe occupancy of 11 people per vehicle, plus dogs, which gives him a better fuel-to-passenger ratio than Houston Metro by a factor of about ten to one, and all without a dime of taxpayer subsidy.
Anyway, this guy is my hero. May his trucks last another 50 years each.
With this little meditation completed, we're just shy of Bellville at this point, and your correspondent pushes it up to 22 mph in the hopes of getting to lunch that much sooner. Within minutes, I ride up on the "FMC Twins", two Hotties on the FMC team riding side by side, with exactly the same body shape (pleasing), matching jerseys, bike shorts, helmets and socks, their long red hair streaming in the wind. Were they actually twins? Sorry to say that safety prevented any closer examination, much less conversation, and within minutes, thousands of hungry riders were turning into the campground.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON:
Lunch in Bellville is uneventful. I meet up with Shawn again, but we lose each other along the way. Continental has these wonderful tortilla wraps for lunch, along with sundry other goodies. Let's just say that airline passengers don't eat this good. I hit the road after lunch, refreshed and searching for the elusive Bluebonnet, which has been scarce at best for the first 50 miles. The rest of the ride into LaGrange is strangely devoid of the State flower, their season having apparently peaked the week before. There is, however, a ton of Indian Paintbrush, the official flower of the Kinky Freidman For Governor campaign. I wonder if this is auspicious?
That reminds me that Kinky promised in his last campaign to make Willie Nelson his State Energy Czar, and if memory serves, Willie had advocated Hemp in lieu of Wind turbines to solve our energy problems. Never did understand how one could be the replacement for another, but Hemp sure would be a lot kinder to migratory birds.
I get some starch in my legs, and with a slight tailwind, I'm able to sustain 20 mph for the last 25 miles. I'm finally into LaGrange, those cheering crowds once again bringing a huge smile to my face, and the ubiquitous professional photographers once again clogging the finish line. Two of them are actually sitting in chairs directly in the path of the Riders, and I wonder how much of a piece of this action MS actually gets. Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time Commerce trumped common sense.
Sharon manages to get a snapshot of me at the finish, and I save $51.99 the Brightroom photogs would have charged me for a CD, notwithstanding that they got some fairly cool action shots of me on the Ride, generally with a smile on my face, and looking right sharp in my Continental jersey. I gimp over to the Continental tent, get the bike parked, sign in, and sit down with Sharon, gratefully, with a Shiner Blonde and a ciggy, waiting my turn for a massage. Life is good.
Sharon takes off a couple hour's later, and it's off to the showers. The lines are moving slower than year's past, despite a massive increase in the number of buses that ship Riders offsite to the high school showers across town. I see Shawn pile out of the trailer I'm in line for, and we exchange some pleasantries. He's none the worse for wear despite the hundred miles and some mechanical difficulties. Way to go, Shawn.
Once I get into the trailer, I see the reason for the delays. It seems they've replaced the Locker Room style trailers of old with the kind where each shower stall now has its own little changing room. Unfortunately, this has the effect of increasing the wait-time on each shower from five minutes to ten minutes. WTF is going on? Since when did men need private changing rooms attached to their own personal shower stalls? Since 1998 (my first year on the Ride), it was a simple routine: walk into shower trailer; hang up your crap, strip, get into shower and clean yourself; get out, dry yourself off, put your change of clothes on and make room for the next Rider.
Why the change, I wonder? Nobody seemed to mind the old system, cramped though the changing area was. At least everybody got in and out quickly, which I would think was the objective. Once I get in the shower, however, I catch a clue: the rack hanging off the shower head is loaded with half-empty bottles of Axe Body Wash, moisturizers and conditioners. Now, like it or not, we are all Metrosexuals. Anyway, I finished my Toilet and slogged on back to the Continental tent. When I got there, they had just started the Wine & Cheese party, as well as the drawing for various Continental prizes, and this went on for some time. The prizes included:
- Two standby round trip airfares* good anywhere in the continental United States except during holidays, weekends and other blackout periods as designated by Continental airlines.
- A voucher good for one piece of checked luggage* on any domestic flight with purchase of two non-refundable round trip tickets, a $50 value.
- Free headset, pillow, blanket and unlimited bathroom privileges* on any Continental flight with the purchase of a full price non-refundable airfare.
- Free meal upgrade* from "Sandwichette and crackers" to "Salisbury Steak and Carrots" meal on any flight greater than 2,000 miles.
- "Divorcee's Special" Unaccompanied Minors discount voucher* of $50 per travel segment, with a minimum of two segments. Good for children 12 or younger; booster seat cost not included.
* Certain conditions and restrictions may apply.
Ha, ha, ha. Of course, your correspondent is having a little fun at Continental's expense, probably because he didn't win anything. The prizes were actually much cooler than that, and there were at least 15 of them.
For the first time, I've left my tent at home and opted to sleep under the big tent. Pretty soon, I'm off to my sleeping bag, one of the very few without an air mattress. Strange as it might seem, I like sleeping on the ground. You merely perfect the art of pounding out all of the dirt clogs and other irregularities under your bedroll, and Mother Earth makes an excellent mattress. Since I snore, for the sake of my fellow riders, I've brought my Breathe-Right Nasal Strips, and loan one to the guy on my right. Seems the guy on my left also came prepared, and had earplugs to fend off the noise, the irony of this being that he turned out to be the loudest snorer in the entire tent. It didn't matter. I was so tired, Keith Olbermann couldn't have kept me awake.
It's lights out around 9:00 pm, and just as predicted, the rain starts directly thereafter and keeps it up until around midnight. Nothing more soothing than the sound of rain on a tent. One last thing: over the course of the night, folks would get up - no doubt for bathroom breaks - and walk carefully down the narrow aisles that separated the sleeping bags. When they got close to my spot, I would hear most of them stop, and hear a pronounced "thump". Curious, I waited for the next one, and sure enough, a leg reached out to kick the air mattress of the Chronic Snorer next to me.
Funny.
Government Employment Ripoff - Overtime
It's a shock when the folks that are supposed to be paragons of ethical conduct act for years like they don't know the meaning of the word. I am referring to overtime abuse by the police and fire departments documented in the Houston Chronicle Wednesday front page article "Mayor has police, fire overtime on agenda".
- Police officers and their spokesmen have been silent on the abuse of overtime, no doubt due to the fact that overtime averaged over $10,000 per officer. At what point is such conduct abusive? Have they even asked themselves this question?
- The overtime is partiallly justified because of "excessive absenteeism" and mismanagement of "holiday time" by police and fire commanders and the rank and file, but in another portion of the article it is documented that most police officers and firemen "banked sick and vacation time that can result in a hefty check" upon retiring. Banking sick/vacation pay while racking up unconscionable OT is a classic double-dip, and it's depressing that so many officers and firemen are participating in the scam.
- Per the article, police officers, firefighters and their spokesmen seem to feel that overtime is an Entitlement. The closest they come to wanting to bring it under control is their agreement with Mayor Parker that it "needs to be spread more equitably".
- Surprisingly, the article failed to make any mention that this abuse happened throughout the White administration, and he did nothing about it. For one example, he presided over a 50% increase in HPD funding during his six years without putting a single additional cop on the streets. Did he simply bury his head in the sand?
- It's ironic that just half of the $50 million in yearly OT for HPD could have been used to hire another 600 policemen, greatly reducing crime, human misery, and not coincidentally, the burden on taxpayers, since every crime avoided saves at least $100,000 on the costs of investigation, apprehension, prosecution and incarceration. The Overtime scam keeps our police force artificially small, enables more crime - and not coincidentally - is then used as justification for more Overtime.
It's disappointing that apparently most of Houston's Finest and those who govern them prefer the status quo, with nary a concern for overburdened taxpayers, many of whom will have to postpone their own retirement so as to pay the excessive wages and retirement benefits for a generation of cops and firefighters, virtually all of whom will retire between the ages 45 and 55, living large and apparently guilt-free on the taxpayer dime.
It's a crying shame, is what it is. But do you suppose any of them feel that way?
- Police officers and their spokesmen have been silent on the abuse of overtime, no doubt due to the fact that overtime averaged over $10,000 per officer. At what point is such conduct abusive? Have they even asked themselves this question?
- The overtime is partiallly justified because of "excessive absenteeism" and mismanagement of "holiday time" by police and fire commanders and the rank and file, but in another portion of the article it is documented that most police officers and firemen "banked sick and vacation time that can result in a hefty check" upon retiring. Banking sick/vacation pay while racking up unconscionable OT is a classic double-dip, and it's depressing that so many officers and firemen are participating in the scam.
- Per the article, police officers, firefighters and their spokesmen seem to feel that overtime is an Entitlement. The closest they come to wanting to bring it under control is their agreement with Mayor Parker that it "needs to be spread more equitably".
- Surprisingly, the article failed to make any mention that this abuse happened throughout the White administration, and he did nothing about it. For one example, he presided over a 50% increase in HPD funding during his six years without putting a single additional cop on the streets. Did he simply bury his head in the sand?
- It's ironic that just half of the $50 million in yearly OT for HPD could have been used to hire another 600 policemen, greatly reducing crime, human misery, and not coincidentally, the burden on taxpayers, since every crime avoided saves at least $100,000 on the costs of investigation, apprehension, prosecution and incarceration. The Overtime scam keeps our police force artificially small, enables more crime - and not coincidentally - is then used as justification for more Overtime.
It's disappointing that apparently most of Houston's Finest and those who govern them prefer the status quo, with nary a concern for overburdened taxpayers, many of whom will have to postpone their own retirement so as to pay the excessive wages and retirement benefits for a generation of cops and firefighters, virtually all of whom will retire between the ages 45 and 55, living large and apparently guilt-free on the taxpayer dime.
It's a crying shame, is what it is. But do you suppose any of them feel that way?
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 1
As many of you know, I've inflicted my account of the MS-150 weekend charity bike ride from Houston to Austin on my friends and family for several years now. Sorry to say, this year will be no different!
PRELUDE
It's April 3rd, two weeks before the Ride, and all is well. My bike is checked out, and the training rides with friends Shawn and Dave have got me road-bike ready (props to Northwest Cycle for their excellent rides from Zube Park in Hockley, an easy 15 minute drive from 290 and Beltway 8). I decide to do the CychoHash ride that takes place the first Saturday of every month. It's the bicycle version of Hashing, which is to say a cross-country jaunt of sorts, and a trail marked with flour. I get in about 28 miles with a bunch of friends, and we end up at a park on Lake Houston. After some refreshments and general foolishness, I'm thinking to myself: "What a great opportunity for a refreshing swim". My third step into the water, I impale my left heel on something. I pick up my foot, and firmly attached is a crab, and not a small one. It's about double the width of my foot and nearly as long, with a stalagmite about an inch long sticking in my foot. I fling him off and hobble out of the water. "I just stepped on a crab", I tell my friends. A couple of them say "there are no crabs in Lake Houston". Really? Tell that to the crab.
I socialize for a couple more hours, and the foot seems OK. I head on home, and by Saturday night it starts to swell. By Sunday, it's a balloon, and I'm on crutches. Monday morning, I call my doctor's office, a call I have come to dread. Over the past few years, his Screener has developed to a fine art the practice of scheduling your visit for the convenience of the doctor, nurses, insurance lady, the Screener herself, a bevy of complete strangers, and for all I know, Jarod The Subway Guy. You as the patient, however, are somewhat lower on the old Priority Tree. Poison Ivy? "The doctor can see you next Tuesday". Head cold? "The doctor can see you next Tuesday". Stomach pains? "If your stool isn't bloody, the doctor can see you next Tuesday". Secondary infection in chest due to Head Cold not treated promptly? "Tuesday".
I've learned over the years, though, to describe my symptoms to The Screener in such a way as to score an appointment that doesn't require me to put a Reminder on my frigging Outlook Calendar, but even that has been hit and miss. See, this girl is a pro. She's heard it all, and if I oversell the symptoms, she pulls out the heavy artillery and tells me: "You need to go to the emergency room". True story.
I'm ready for her this time, though: I quickly describe my symptoms and then declare that I can be there in 30 minutes. The Assumptive Close (as they call it in Sales) takes her off her game, she stumbles for a moment, quickly recovers and tells me that "the earliest the doctor can see you is 3:30". Score. Not only is my appointment in the same week, but it's on the same day! I gimp in that afternoon, Doc looks at my wound, prescribes two antibiotics and pain medication, and I'm out of there, but not before he says "I didn't think there were any crabs in Lake Houston". I end up being on crutches until two days before the MS-150, but discover that I can ride a bike relatively pain-free, so I'm good to go. And Crutches being a regular ice breaker, conversation-wise speaking, I'm asked repeatedly by friends, acquaintances and even the checkout girl at Krogers "what happened to your foot"? I soon discover that telling the truth does me no good at all. None of them believe there are any crabs in Lake Houston.
In year's past, I've frequently written about my travails in getting the registration folks that organize the MS ride to correctly process my application, with the end result being that when I would go to packet pickup in the days before the Ride, they would have no record of a Peter R. Smith, or try to convince me that I was actually Peter J. Smith from Pasadena. No such problem this year. I was in and out in of packet pickup in record time, my bag full of goodies and rider number 7024 in hand. But as fate would have it, one problem was replaced with another, albeit that this one affected everybody.
It's very early Saturday, April 17th, and Sharon is driving me to the start, heading south on Eldridge to the new (temporary) starting point at the Omni Hotel. Seems that the regular starting point at Tully Stadium has some kind of construction going on. Three miles before we get to the Omni, the cops divert all traffic off of Eldridge heading west towards Highway 6, then south to I-10, then East to Dairy Ashford, then west on I-10, then East on I-10 again, and finally North on some sidestreet that will supposedly get us close to the Continental Team.
The starting point was at Eldridge and Dairy Ashford. Continental's team truck for luggage was located in the parking lot at - you guessed it - Eldridge and Dairy Ashford. Out of time and options, Sharon dropped me off as close to the start as we could get, and I biked towards the starting gate with several dozen others. Since Sharon was driving up to meet me in LaGrange later in the day, she ended up hauling my luggage - all forty pounds of it - to LaGrange. At least I had a Fallback. Various other riders were not so lucky.
As we were working our way towards the start, I heard what I thought was somebody singing the national anthem. I couldn't be sure, though, since the rendition was, how shall we say, unique? Now, maybe the weather and acoustics were playing some tricks on us, but this version seemed to be rendered by an older gent who sounded - not to be unkind - like a drunken Scotsman who mistook his cat for a set of Bagpipes (Insert Mental Image here). The high notes were indescribable, and when he hit "and the land uh-huv the Free-heeeee!", it spooked Cyclists, Motorists and stray dogs alike, with several near-accidents as a result.
In reply, a coyote howled in the distance.
Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3!
PRELUDE
It's April 3rd, two weeks before the Ride, and all is well. My bike is checked out, and the training rides with friends Shawn and Dave have got me road-bike ready (props to Northwest Cycle for their excellent rides from Zube Park in Hockley, an easy 15 minute drive from 290 and Beltway 8). I decide to do the CychoHash ride that takes place the first Saturday of every month. It's the bicycle version of Hashing, which is to say a cross-country jaunt of sorts, and a trail marked with flour. I get in about 28 miles with a bunch of friends, and we end up at a park on Lake Houston. After some refreshments and general foolishness, I'm thinking to myself: "What a great opportunity for a refreshing swim". My third step into the water, I impale my left heel on something. I pick up my foot, and firmly attached is a crab, and not a small one. It's about double the width of my foot and nearly as long, with a stalagmite about an inch long sticking in my foot. I fling him off and hobble out of the water. "I just stepped on a crab", I tell my friends. A couple of them say "there are no crabs in Lake Houston". Really? Tell that to the crab.
I socialize for a couple more hours, and the foot seems OK. I head on home, and by Saturday night it starts to swell. By Sunday, it's a balloon, and I'm on crutches. Monday morning, I call my doctor's office, a call I have come to dread. Over the past few years, his Screener has developed to a fine art the practice of scheduling your visit for the convenience of the doctor, nurses, insurance lady, the Screener herself, a bevy of complete strangers, and for all I know, Jarod The Subway Guy. You as the patient, however, are somewhat lower on the old Priority Tree. Poison Ivy? "The doctor can see you next Tuesday". Head cold? "The doctor can see you next Tuesday". Stomach pains? "If your stool isn't bloody, the doctor can see you next Tuesday". Secondary infection in chest due to Head Cold not treated promptly? "Tuesday".
I've learned over the years, though, to describe my symptoms to The Screener in such a way as to score an appointment that doesn't require me to put a Reminder on my frigging Outlook Calendar, but even that has been hit and miss. See, this girl is a pro. She's heard it all, and if I oversell the symptoms, she pulls out the heavy artillery and tells me: "You need to go to the emergency room". True story.
I'm ready for her this time, though: I quickly describe my symptoms and then declare that I can be there in 30 minutes. The Assumptive Close (as they call it in Sales) takes her off her game, she stumbles for a moment, quickly recovers and tells me that "the earliest the doctor can see you is 3:30". Score. Not only is my appointment in the same week, but it's on the same day! I gimp in that afternoon, Doc looks at my wound, prescribes two antibiotics and pain medication, and I'm out of there, but not before he says "I didn't think there were any crabs in Lake Houston". I end up being on crutches until two days before the MS-150, but discover that I can ride a bike relatively pain-free, so I'm good to go. And Crutches being a regular ice breaker, conversation-wise speaking, I'm asked repeatedly by friends, acquaintances and even the checkout girl at Krogers "what happened to your foot"? I soon discover that telling the truth does me no good at all. None of them believe there are any crabs in Lake Houston.
In year's past, I've frequently written about my travails in getting the registration folks that organize the MS ride to correctly process my application, with the end result being that when I would go to packet pickup in the days before the Ride, they would have no record of a Peter R. Smith, or try to convince me that I was actually Peter J. Smith from Pasadena. No such problem this year. I was in and out in of packet pickup in record time, my bag full of goodies and rider number 7024 in hand. But as fate would have it, one problem was replaced with another, albeit that this one affected everybody.
It's very early Saturday, April 17th, and Sharon is driving me to the start, heading south on Eldridge to the new (temporary) starting point at the Omni Hotel. Seems that the regular starting point at Tully Stadium has some kind of construction going on. Three miles before we get to the Omni, the cops divert all traffic off of Eldridge heading west towards Highway 6, then south to I-10, then East to Dairy Ashford, then west on I-10, then East on I-10 again, and finally North on some sidestreet that will supposedly get us close to the Continental Team.
The starting point was at Eldridge and Dairy Ashford. Continental's team truck for luggage was located in the parking lot at - you guessed it - Eldridge and Dairy Ashford. Out of time and options, Sharon dropped me off as close to the start as we could get, and I biked towards the starting gate with several dozen others. Since Sharon was driving up to meet me in LaGrange later in the day, she ended up hauling my luggage - all forty pounds of it - to LaGrange. At least I had a Fallback. Various other riders were not so lucky.
As we were working our way towards the start, I heard what I thought was somebody singing the national anthem. I couldn't be sure, though, since the rendition was, how shall we say, unique? Now, maybe the weather and acoustics were playing some tricks on us, but this version seemed to be rendered by an older gent who sounded - not to be unkind - like a drunken Scotsman who mistook his cat for a set of Bagpipes (Insert Mental Image here). The high notes were indescribable, and when he hit "and the land uh-huv the Free-heeeee!", it spooked Cyclists, Motorists and stray dogs alike, with several near-accidents as a result.
In reply, a coyote howled in the distance.
Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Obama Obeisance
And the beat goes on. Barack Obama and the Democrats have seen the enemy, and it is us. Their over-the-top reaction to the modest criticisms of the Tea Parties, declaring them racist, bigoted, extremist, Nazi-like and crappy dressers is the New Norm for Democrat dialogue. And why? Because Tea Partiers had the temerity to spotlight the flaws of a government that spends us into insolvency, punishes Americans for saving and investing, confiscates from or competes with Americans for all of the available capital and regulates all other domestic economic activity into stagnation.
The result of 40 years of this nonsense? We're the biggest debtor nation in history, and China could destroy our economy simply by ceasing the purchase of our bonds. A Belgian company owns Budweiser, and a South African company owns Miller, so 90% of all the beer consumed in America enriches foreigners. China is snapping up natural resources in our back yard left and right (the only unencumbered "assets" left in North America, by the way), and Private Equity firms mask the torrent of foreign investment in American companies that is the direct result of Democrat overspending at the city, county, state and federal level. How much longer do we go before Americans own nothing?
If only Obama could do to the rest of the world what he's doing to us, but that's a pipe dream. Kinda makes you wonder who's holding his leash, though. Last year he bowed to the Saudi dictator. Yesterday, he bowed to Hu Jintao of China. Coincidence?
The result of 40 years of this nonsense? We're the biggest debtor nation in history, and China could destroy our economy simply by ceasing the purchase of our bonds. A Belgian company owns Budweiser, and a South African company owns Miller, so 90% of all the beer consumed in America enriches foreigners. China is snapping up natural resources in our back yard left and right (the only unencumbered "assets" left in North America, by the way), and Private Equity firms mask the torrent of foreign investment in American companies that is the direct result of Democrat overspending at the city, county, state and federal level. How much longer do we go before Americans own nothing?
If only Obama could do to the rest of the world what he's doing to us, but that's a pipe dream. Kinda makes you wonder who's holding his leash, though. Last year he bowed to the Saudi dictator. Yesterday, he bowed to Hu Jintao of China. Coincidence?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Government Employment Ripoff Update - Padding Your Retirement
OffHisMeds recalls (and you may too) that back in 2004 and prior, hundreds if not thousands of Teachers all over Texas were defrauding the Social Security system by working the last month or two of their teaching careers as janitors and other non-teacher positions. They were abetted in this criminal activity by Texas education bureaucrats, who provided them bogus jobs so that they could qualify for a lifetime of Social Security - frequently over $5,000 per year plus COLA - while making a contribution of as little as $5.00.
Oh yeah, and the Teachers paid for the privilege: frequently an under-the-table spiff of $500 or more directly to the school where they were "working". By the Mable Caleb school of accounting, this money was never accounted for.
Why are these acts criminal? Simple. Teachers never paid into Social Security their entire careers. Instead, they had sumptuous pensions and post-retirement health benefits, frequently after working as little as 25 years. So, as OffHisMeds has pointed out countless times - and will never tire of pointing out - government employees generally retire around age 50, and as able-bodied adults go on the luxury dole, never to be useful members of society again.
When caught with their hands in the cookie jar, the reaction of of the Teachers' union and most of its members around the state was nearly universal: "We're entitled to Social Security benefits, too". The fact that this practice was conducted in secret kind of puts the lie to this sense of self-entitlement. Were it otherwise, it would have been done completely above-board and proudly displayed to the tax-paying public. Suffice to say, this was not the case. As is the case with so many other aspects of public sector employment, it was implemented behind closed doors and conducted in the stealth of night.
The saddest thing OffHisMeds has to contemplate every day is the comprehensive stupidity of such an outlook, particularly since he counts amongst his friends more Teachers than any other profession - by far. To be blind to the simple math that shows how unsustainable berserk public sector employment proves to be is one thing; to be blind to the Ethics of this issue - and particularly efforts to underhandedly inflate one's income - is another.
These are the folks that are educating our children, and I suspect few of them has ever contemplated how ludicrous it is for government workers to cash in their chips as early as their mid-forties, yet expect everybody else in society to work until at least their sixties or seventies - and all so that they can pay the pensions of a bunch of lazy slackers. For Teachers to instruct our children that such fraud is not only sustainable but morally right is yet another indignity heaped on taxpayers, whose hyper-inflated property taxes are being used to abet such indoctrination.
Which brings us to the latest example of public sector employment fraud: padding your retirement salary base. As should be commonly known, government pensions are calculated based on final salary. Most often, this is based on an average of the last 3 to 5 years' salary, but frequently it is based on the last year of employment. What is coming to light is the practice of "padding" one's last year of employment with excessive overtime, generally abetted by the employee's superiors. If this is sounding like a version of the Social Security Teacher's scam, it's because it is.
With this simple bookkeeping trick, a government employee can jack his base salary up as much as 50% or more, and qualify for a pension far higher that what was contracted for - or deserved. Granted, this story is about state employees in New York, but can Texas be far behind getting the same scrutiny? How many stories do we need to hear about bus drivers and cops knocking down $140,000 per year before folks start connecting the dots? Remember, former Mayor Bill White jacked up police department spending by 60% without putting one additional cop on the streets.
Stay tuned for more details on this latest scandal in public employment. Few of the details are known, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction: not only will this practice be found to be widespread, but much of the so-called "overtime" the employees were credited for will be found to be fraudulent as well, making this practice a veritable "Triple Dipper". You heard that term here first, so let's define it:
Triple Dipper: A government employee who abuses the taxpayer by a) receiving pay and benefits well in excess of what the market will bear; b) inflates his salary with the collusion of superiors by the fraudulent manipulation of overtime; and c) uses that inflated salary to defraud the pension system.
This may well be better than the term "Mable Caleb".
Oh yeah, and the Teachers paid for the privilege: frequently an under-the-table spiff of $500 or more directly to the school where they were "working". By the Mable Caleb school of accounting, this money was never accounted for.
Why are these acts criminal? Simple. Teachers never paid into Social Security their entire careers. Instead, they had sumptuous pensions and post-retirement health benefits, frequently after working as little as 25 years. So, as OffHisMeds has pointed out countless times - and will never tire of pointing out - government employees generally retire around age 50, and as able-bodied adults go on the luxury dole, never to be useful members of society again.
When caught with their hands in the cookie jar, the reaction of of the Teachers' union and most of its members around the state was nearly universal: "We're entitled to Social Security benefits, too". The fact that this practice was conducted in secret kind of puts the lie to this sense of self-entitlement. Were it otherwise, it would have been done completely above-board and proudly displayed to the tax-paying public. Suffice to say, this was not the case. As is the case with so many other aspects of public sector employment, it was implemented behind closed doors and conducted in the stealth of night.
The saddest thing OffHisMeds has to contemplate every day is the comprehensive stupidity of such an outlook, particularly since he counts amongst his friends more Teachers than any other profession - by far. To be blind to the simple math that shows how unsustainable berserk public sector employment proves to be is one thing; to be blind to the Ethics of this issue - and particularly efforts to underhandedly inflate one's income - is another.
These are the folks that are educating our children, and I suspect few of them has ever contemplated how ludicrous it is for government workers to cash in their chips as early as their mid-forties, yet expect everybody else in society to work until at least their sixties or seventies - and all so that they can pay the pensions of a bunch of lazy slackers. For Teachers to instruct our children that such fraud is not only sustainable but morally right is yet another indignity heaped on taxpayers, whose hyper-inflated property taxes are being used to abet such indoctrination.
Which brings us to the latest example of public sector employment fraud: padding your retirement salary base. As should be commonly known, government pensions are calculated based on final salary. Most often, this is based on an average of the last 3 to 5 years' salary, but frequently it is based on the last year of employment. What is coming to light is the practice of "padding" one's last year of employment with excessive overtime, generally abetted by the employee's superiors. If this is sounding like a version of the Social Security Teacher's scam, it's because it is.
With this simple bookkeeping trick, a government employee can jack his base salary up as much as 50% or more, and qualify for a pension far higher that what was contracted for - or deserved. Granted, this story is about state employees in New York, but can Texas be far behind getting the same scrutiny? How many stories do we need to hear about bus drivers and cops knocking down $140,000 per year before folks start connecting the dots? Remember, former Mayor Bill White jacked up police department spending by 60% without putting one additional cop on the streets.
Stay tuned for more details on this latest scandal in public employment. Few of the details are known, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make a prediction: not only will this practice be found to be widespread, but much of the so-called "overtime" the employees were credited for will be found to be fraudulent as well, making this practice a veritable "Triple Dipper". You heard that term here first, so let's define it:
Triple Dipper: A government employee who abuses the taxpayer by a) receiving pay and benefits well in excess of what the market will bear; b) inflates his salary with the collusion of superiors by the fraudulent manipulation of overtime; and c) uses that inflated salary to defraud the pension system.
This may well be better than the term "Mable Caleb".
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Government Employment Fraud - The "Mable Caleb"
In the previous Blog, OffHisMeds predicted that HISD (Houston Independent School District) would punt on punishment of principal Mable Caleb and her co-conspirators, variously accused of cheating, theft, misappropriation of funds, nepotism and racketeering. Also, that there would be no criminal charges referred despite clear evidence that all these charges were true.
So imagine my surprise - tinged as it was with suspicion - when the HISD panel recommended Caleb be fired. My suspicion was well-founded: her "firing" is a meaningless gesture, since she will be allowed to retire at $135,000 retirement salary at age 59, and will retain her subsidized health care and 4% COLA raises on her pay every year. Cost to taxpayers if she lives 25 years: $5,000,000.
HISD's internal investigation has been referred to the State AG's office for further investigation, but leave there no doubt: their finding will be to not pursue criminal charges, regardless of how richly they are deserved.
One last final act of cynicism on the part of Terry Grier and HISD is that they ruled on her eligibility for pension before the matter of criminal prosecution was resolved, thus locking her pension in regardless of the outcome of a criminal investigation. If this is Grier's idea of cleaning house, please let his tenure be a short one. We don't need another Saavedra.
That said, HISD has introduced into the lexicon a new term, and it is nothing if not auspicious to pedagogy: Let "Mable Caleb" forever after be the definition of rewarding criminal activity on the part of public sector employees, not with criminal prosecution, but taxpayer funds.......
So imagine my surprise - tinged as it was with suspicion - when the HISD panel recommended Caleb be fired. My suspicion was well-founded: her "firing" is a meaningless gesture, since she will be allowed to retire at $135,000 retirement salary at age 59, and will retain her subsidized health care and 4% COLA raises on her pay every year. Cost to taxpayers if she lives 25 years: $5,000,000.
HISD's internal investigation has been referred to the State AG's office for further investigation, but leave there no doubt: their finding will be to not pursue criminal charges, regardless of how richly they are deserved.
One last final act of cynicism on the part of Terry Grier and HISD is that they ruled on her eligibility for pension before the matter of criminal prosecution was resolved, thus locking her pension in regardless of the outcome of a criminal investigation. If this is Grier's idea of cleaning house, please let his tenure be a short one. We don't need another Saavedra.
That said, HISD has introduced into the lexicon a new term, and it is nothing if not auspicious to pedagogy: Let "Mable Caleb" forever after be the definition of rewarding criminal activity on the part of public sector employees, not with criminal prosecution, but taxpayer funds.......
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Government Employment - The Gift That Keeps On Taking
Life imitates are, or so OffHisMeds is informed about once a day. I was watching a Cop Drama on TV the other night (doesn't really matter which one), when one cop says of another: "he walked away from the job at 44, one year shy of a full pension". The tragedy in the eyes of the speaker was that his compatriot - albeit through his own actions - had been denied full access to the Goodies Bag that is the sine qua non of government employment.
Which brings us to a couple of interesting stories in the Houston Chronicle this past week. The first had to do with a principal accused of Racketeering and twice caught helping her teachers cheat on TAKs exams that measure student progress and - not coincidentally - determine the size of the bonuses that Teachers and Principals earn.
More about that later.
The second story dealt with the smallest of Band-Aids that newly-minted Houston Mayor Annise Parker applied to the spurting arterial wound that is Public employee compensation. Curiously, the front page article "Mayor Hikes Health Care Costs For Retirees" makes it sound like Mayor Parker's proposal is an onerous burden for retired employees, quoting sundry critics including one who declared that "the city is trying to balance their budget....off the backs of the employees".
What the article does - quite unintentionally though - is to yet again point out the absurdity of the compensation and benefits packages available to public sector employees. They offer the following example: "For retirees under 65 with two or more dependents in the most highly utilized benefits plan, costs will increase from $790 a month to $1,179". Parker proposed lowering the City's contribution towards that plan from 64% to 52%, which would cost each retiree $141.48 per month. That sounds burdensome, but it is misleading. The Chronicle article only cited the worst-case scenario of how much a retiree would have to pay, so it's safe to assume that the average increase is approximately half that amount.
This affair also points out one of the most asinine aspects of having a gummint job: On what other planet would retirees have "two or more dependents", much less offer a plan that cuts off the Retirees contribution at two? OffHisMeds and most sensible people think of retirees as folks who are entering their sunset years, the kids raised, moved out of the house and starting families of their own. In Houston - and indeed throughout the country - a government job means having the ability to retire and still have dependents. The math is pretty straightforward: most government jobs allow retirement with full benefits in 25 years. Get a job at 21, retire at 46.
And not to belabor the point, but if as the article states this is the "most highly utilized benefits plan", it is logical to assume that more city of Houston retirees have two or more dependents than, say, One - or None.
That's why it's worth revisiting a Chronicle article from February of 2004, detailing a gross betrayal of taxpayer trust when then-Mayor Lee Brown snuck a huge increase in retirement income for all retirees and employees into the city budget, described in the article titled "$1 Billion Pension Shortfall". In addition to their heavily subsidized health care, retirees all saw their pensions increase from "52.5 percent of income for a retiree with 25 years of service" to.....88.75 percent". Along with Social Security payments and a mandatory 4% cost-of-living adjustment every year, the article documented that municipal employees routinely retire with income well in excess of what they were paid while working, a policy that means that the average city employee is incented to retire at the earliest possible point, in the case of Houston: 25 years and 4 months.
The article stated that the average municipal salary of retirees in 2004 was $32,068. That means that with COLA increases of 4% since then, retirees have seen their annual incomes increase to over $36,000 per year, not including Social Security benefits. By the time a 45 year old retiree reaches age 75, their annual benefit would be almost $90,000, plus subsidized Health Care benefits.
Another revelation of these two articles is that municipal employees even qualify for Social Security. How the hell is that justified? When you are paid with tax dollars it is hard to argue that you yourself even pay taxes. A government employee's "contribution" to Social Security is the hard-earned dollars of actual tax payers from the Private Sector.
Private Sector employees who work their entire lives to generate the tax dollars that fund municipal salaries and retiree benefits couldn't dream of a plush compensation package that included a pay rate at least 25% above Private Sector equivalents, an unending variety of extra days off, under-the-table spiffs such as performance bonuses, overtime, per diem, travel allowances, stipends and retirement package that includes 100% or more of their working wage, much less 4% COLA and "Cadillac" style health care plans. I've never understood how politicians - much less the government employees who benefit from such boondoggles - can in good conscience call themselves "Public Servants", when as able-bodied adults they avail themselves of such an unconscionable payout and retire to a life of luxury a good 20 years before the average citizen even qualifies for their puny Social Security benefit.
To my Public Sector brothers and sisters: how does it make you feel to know that your berserk pay forces your fellow citizens to work until they die so as to generate the taxes to pay for it? Have you ever given it even a moments thought?
And before we go patting Mayor Parker or her predecessor Bill White on the back for their criticism of Mayor Brown's criminal giveaway, it's worth remembering that White punted on reforming the program for his entire six year term, and as the article states: "Annise Parker, who was on City Council at the time, said she didn't believe the pension (change) was too generous to employees". Now she has changed her mind, but a measly $7 million dollar annual increase in retirement co-payments sounds like another punt on a billion dollar shortfall.
Meanwhile, our Entitlement Society continues to breed whole generations of public sector employees oblivious of a compensation scheme that is not only immoral, but unsustainable, much less that there is generally no discernable relationship between the work that they do and the wages they are paid. "Munis" are also terrible at math, particularly the aforementioned retiree complaining about Parker "trying to balance their budget off the backs of the employees". She clearly didn't pull out a calculator to determine that former Mayor Brown gave the average retiree a monthly raise in retirement income of over $1,000.00 back in 2004. If I was her, I'd shut my piehole about having to pay an extra $70/month in health care copay, and hope to god nobody noticed the $12,000 per year spiff - plus COLA - that was slipped to me in the dark of the legislative night back in 2004.
Which brings us to the story about the Cheating Principal. The short version of the story is that she and her teachers were accused of cheating on TAKs tests at two different schools since 2005, but didn't draw any serious attention until she was also accused of selling commissary items to students and pocketing the cash, failing to account for a couple hundred grand in missing computers, expense fraud, nepotism and racketeering. As of this writing, not only is she not going to be subject to criminal charges, she will likely be allowed to retire with full pension benefits, at a cost to taxpayers of $125,000 per year.
She's 59 years old, and that payout does not including COLA and Social Security, of course. Those things bump the whole package to $135,000 per month, and she would likely live another 25 years.
You do the math.
Which brings us to a couple of interesting stories in the Houston Chronicle this past week. The first had to do with a principal accused of Racketeering and twice caught helping her teachers cheat on TAKs exams that measure student progress and - not coincidentally - determine the size of the bonuses that Teachers and Principals earn.
More about that later.
The second story dealt with the smallest of Band-Aids that newly-minted Houston Mayor Annise Parker applied to the spurting arterial wound that is Public employee compensation. Curiously, the front page article "Mayor Hikes Health Care Costs For Retirees" makes it sound like Mayor Parker's proposal is an onerous burden for retired employees, quoting sundry critics including one who declared that "the city is trying to balance their budget....off the backs of the employees".
What the article does - quite unintentionally though - is to yet again point out the absurdity of the compensation and benefits packages available to public sector employees. They offer the following example: "For retirees under 65 with two or more dependents in the most highly utilized benefits plan, costs will increase from $790 a month to $1,179". Parker proposed lowering the City's contribution towards that plan from 64% to 52%, which would cost each retiree $141.48 per month. That sounds burdensome, but it is misleading. The Chronicle article only cited the worst-case scenario of how much a retiree would have to pay, so it's safe to assume that the average increase is approximately half that amount.
This affair also points out one of the most asinine aspects of having a gummint job: On what other planet would retirees have "two or more dependents", much less offer a plan that cuts off the Retirees contribution at two? OffHisMeds and most sensible people think of retirees as folks who are entering their sunset years, the kids raised, moved out of the house and starting families of their own. In Houston - and indeed throughout the country - a government job means having the ability to retire and still have dependents. The math is pretty straightforward: most government jobs allow retirement with full benefits in 25 years. Get a job at 21, retire at 46.
And not to belabor the point, but if as the article states this is the "most highly utilized benefits plan", it is logical to assume that more city of Houston retirees have two or more dependents than, say, One - or None.
That's why it's worth revisiting a Chronicle article from February of 2004, detailing a gross betrayal of taxpayer trust when then-Mayor Lee Brown snuck a huge increase in retirement income for all retirees and employees into the city budget, described in the article titled "$1 Billion Pension Shortfall". In addition to their heavily subsidized health care, retirees all saw their pensions increase from "52.5 percent of income for a retiree with 25 years of service" to.....88.75 percent". Along with Social Security payments and a mandatory 4% cost-of-living adjustment every year, the article documented that municipal employees routinely retire with income well in excess of what they were paid while working, a policy that means that the average city employee is incented to retire at the earliest possible point, in the case of Houston: 25 years and 4 months.
The article stated that the average municipal salary of retirees in 2004 was $32,068. That means that with COLA increases of 4% since then, retirees have seen their annual incomes increase to over $36,000 per year, not including Social Security benefits. By the time a 45 year old retiree reaches age 75, their annual benefit would be almost $90,000, plus subsidized Health Care benefits.
Another revelation of these two articles is that municipal employees even qualify for Social Security. How the hell is that justified? When you are paid with tax dollars it is hard to argue that you yourself even pay taxes. A government employee's "contribution" to Social Security is the hard-earned dollars of actual tax payers from the Private Sector.
Private Sector employees who work their entire lives to generate the tax dollars that fund municipal salaries and retiree benefits couldn't dream of a plush compensation package that included a pay rate at least 25% above Private Sector equivalents, an unending variety of extra days off, under-the-table spiffs such as performance bonuses, overtime, per diem, travel allowances, stipends and retirement package that includes 100% or more of their working wage, much less 4% COLA and "Cadillac" style health care plans. I've never understood how politicians - much less the government employees who benefit from such boondoggles - can in good conscience call themselves "Public Servants", when as able-bodied adults they avail themselves of such an unconscionable payout and retire to a life of luxury a good 20 years before the average citizen even qualifies for their puny Social Security benefit.
To my Public Sector brothers and sisters: how does it make you feel to know that your berserk pay forces your fellow citizens to work until they die so as to generate the taxes to pay for it? Have you ever given it even a moments thought?
And before we go patting Mayor Parker or her predecessor Bill White on the back for their criticism of Mayor Brown's criminal giveaway, it's worth remembering that White punted on reforming the program for his entire six year term, and as the article states: "Annise Parker, who was on City Council at the time, said she didn't believe the pension (change) was too generous to employees". Now she has changed her mind, but a measly $7 million dollar annual increase in retirement co-payments sounds like another punt on a billion dollar shortfall.
Meanwhile, our Entitlement Society continues to breed whole generations of public sector employees oblivious of a compensation scheme that is not only immoral, but unsustainable, much less that there is generally no discernable relationship between the work that they do and the wages they are paid. "Munis" are also terrible at math, particularly the aforementioned retiree complaining about Parker "trying to balance their budget off the backs of the employees". She clearly didn't pull out a calculator to determine that former Mayor Brown gave the average retiree a monthly raise in retirement income of over $1,000.00 back in 2004. If I was her, I'd shut my piehole about having to pay an extra $70/month in health care copay, and hope to god nobody noticed the $12,000 per year spiff - plus COLA - that was slipped to me in the dark of the legislative night back in 2004.
Which brings us to the story about the Cheating Principal. The short version of the story is that she and her teachers were accused of cheating on TAKs tests at two different schools since 2005, but didn't draw any serious attention until she was also accused of selling commissary items to students and pocketing the cash, failing to account for a couple hundred grand in missing computers, expense fraud, nepotism and racketeering. As of this writing, not only is she not going to be subject to criminal charges, she will likely be allowed to retire with full pension benefits, at a cost to taxpayers of $125,000 per year.
She's 59 years old, and that payout does not including COLA and Social Security, of course. Those things bump the whole package to $135,000 per month, and she would likely live another 25 years.
You do the math.
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