Retirement: A Trail of Broken Contracts

Who Raided the Cookie Jar?

The City of Detroit is bankrupt. Michigan GOP governor, Rick Snyder, appointed an un-elected " Emergency Manager" to reorganize the city and return it to solvency. This administrator, Kevyn Orr, has proposed a reorganization plan that would unilaterally cut the pensions of many former  city employees by up to 34 per cent.

Norman, age 70, worked for the city for 31 years, retired five years ago at age 65. He worked for the Street Department and spent most winters clearing snow and ice in the middle of the night and repairing potholes during the day. In the summer he worked on repaving some streets and cleaning others. After retirement, he and his wife, Karen, who was a full time house wife and mother of five, have lived in a modest suburban home. Although he has some health issues, Norman and Karen do volunteer work at their local Catholic church and the St. Vincent DePaul society. Also, since he has been retired, they have traveled to Lakeland, Florida, for three weeks every March to attend their beloved Detroit Tigers spring training. Since they already had made plans, they will go again this March for the last time. Now that Norman will lose 32% of his retirement, travel is one of the luxuries they will have to forego. And, of course, they will not be attending their usual 12 home games at Comerica Park. Karen, meanwhile has begun searching the "Help Wanted" ads in the hope of finding a part time job to partially replace their lost retirement funds.

Norman is a fictional character; but there are thousands of Normans in the Greater Detroit area. Men or women, happy to have a job,  who worked diligently knowing that although they were not making as much as their friends working for the major auto companies, they were assured of "decent" retirement. Every payday they paid part of their paycheck into this system with which they thought they had a contract.

So, what went wrong? What happened to the contract? The politicians and accountants in the city of Detroit did not fund or under-funded the pension plan. They used that money to fund other aspects of government with the vague promise to replace it later. Of course, that never happened; and when the city began its downward spiral, there was no money to put back into the system.

For all practical purposes this appears to be a crime, but have you ever heard of a politician or an accounting firm found guilty of mismanaging a public employees' pension plan?

And Detroit is not a unique case. Pension funds across the US are unfunded or under-funded. 

Politicians and fund managers refer to the fund's obligations as "legacy costs" -- that sounds so much better than "under-funded or mismanaged funds."

The amazing aspect of this whole debacle of under-funded  pension plans is that it has happened previously in the corporate world. The employees regularly paid into the fund, but the corporations "deferred" their contributions. Then when things "went south" for the corporation, they declared bankruptcy and bye-bye "legacy" costs.

However, the real retirement disaster is the rape of Social Security; and since both Democrats and Republicans participated in the rape, nobody talks about it. It's the same old story. Social Security was adequately funded by the contributions, so much so that the system at various times had huge reserves, but politicians being politicians, decided that they would "borrow" that "extra" money to fund their pet wars/projects and then replace the money into the system at a later date. Unfortunately, no one bothered to do that, and now they are saying the system is running out of money and will have to be "downsized." (In fact, some Republicans who consider Social Security to be socialism, want to gradually eliminate it.) Once again, the  working contributors suffer for the mismanagement of politicians. And again, the contract is broken with no consequences for the culprits. 

And now everyone throws up their hands and capitulates. "O woe are we! Too bad; nothing can be done now. Sorry, retirees." 

But, there are things that can be done. For starters we can do what Al Gore proposed during the 2000 election. He wanted to take the entitlement trust funds like Social Security and put them is a "lock box." This would prevent Congress from taking the funds to use for other purposes and expecting future generations to pay it back. George W. Bush won that election (More accurately, the Republicans on the Supreme Court gave him the presidency.) and Bush along with a Republican Congress lowered taxes, raided the cookie jar, spent money like the proverbial drunken sailors, and got us involved in unfunded wars. Now, these same Republicans have the nerve to say the entitlement trust funds like Social Security and Medicare are going bankrupt and have to be down-sized.

If politicians, local governments, and fund managers get away with defaulting on commitments to retired workers, it will be one more nail into the coffin of the middle class.

Republicans' Obsession with War

Republicans have a fascination with war. All of our recent wars have been initiated by Republican presidents. Ronald Reagan's war, however, may not qualify as a real war. After all, invading the small, defenseless island of Grenada is more in the category school-yard bullying and does not deserve to be called a war. More importantly, Reagan sent 12,000 US troops to Lebanon in 1982, only to withdraw them after 241 marines, whom Reagan had ordered not to carry live ammunition, were killed in Beirut.

Then there are the Bush presidents. George H. Bush initiated "The Gulf War' in which the US under General Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait. In this quick and efficient operation  ("Desert Storm") , the military death toll was over 1,900.

Unfortunately, the popularity and perceived success of Desert Storm may have led the younger Bush, George W., to think that war was the best way of saving face after his administration  had been embarrassed by the 9/11 attacks. Dubya, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Neocons, like Paul Wolfowitz,  were gung ho on unleashing a "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq while fighting a major war in Afghanistan. Despite the fact that their reasons for the war were non existent, we suffered the loss of over 50,000 military personnel.  Now, all these years later, after these two wars are finally drawing to a close, a few Republicans are making noises about a war with Iran, but are receiving very little support.

Buck, a friend of mine, is fond of saying a Republican never met a war he/she did not like, but he is mistaken. Although the GOP is all in on the War Against Drugs and the War Against Crime, they turn pale at the mention of Lyndon Johnson's War Against Poverty.

More recently we have a group of Tea Party/Libertarian/ Fundamentalists who call themselves Republicans, and they want to declare war on everyone and everything. And although they swore to uphold the Constitution, their favorite war is The War Against the US Government.

Their bellicose passion knows no limits. They seek war and annihilation of a whole array of imagined enemies. They are intent upon waging:

• The War against Women: fighting women on every possible front. In addition to trying to redefine rape and restricting women's health care benefits, Republicans in Congress refused to renew The Violence Against Women law.
• The War against the Poor: poor workers are poor for a reason, God created them poor. Raising the minimum wage will only encourage the laziness of the working poor.
• The War against Organized Labor: what makes workers think they can negotiate with our friends, the huge corporations? 
• The War against the Homeless: they are an embarrassment; round them up and send them to Mexico or one of  our friends' "privatized prisons."
• The War against the Middle Class: What was Henry Ford thinking, by giving factory workers a just wage he allowed them to improve their lot in life.
• The War against Public Education: we need vouchers and charter schools which can operate like a private school, even promoting a religion, using taxpayer money but without accountability. In fact, some charter schools are seeking to be exempt from criminal law.
• War against Children: legislators in Kansas seek to allow teachers to beat children until they are bruised, and they cut back on the food stamp program which has a major effect on children.
• War against Public Employees: Be they police, firefighters, teachers, or civil engineers, they are socialist "moochers." But we do expect these public employees to put their lives on the line to save our sorry asses.
• War against Homosexuals: homophobic Republicans have introduced bills in various state legislatures which would permit discrimination against homosexuals. So much for the "home of the free."
• War against the IRS: the Internal Revenue Service began  investigating right-wing, tax-exempt "charitable" organizations which were in fact nothing more than political fund-raising groups. Ignoring the fact that these groups were breaking the law, they complained that  they were being "targeted" by the IRS. I think the Mafia should claim they are being "targeted" by the FBI.

Perhaps the most serious threat the Republicans are posing is their War on Democracy. In state after state they are seeking legislation designed to make it more difficult for Americans to vote. In addition to severely limiting early voting, absentee balloting, provisional balloting, requiring identification that many poor and elderly citizens lack, a few wing-nuts have recently suggested that the vote of the obscenely wealthy should count more than that of a working mother living below the poverty line.

Although my Republican friends frequently seek to solve a problem with warfare, I would remind them of Thomas Mann's admonition: "War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."

Catholicism's Woman Problem

Women in Magdalene Laundry

The Catholic Church has always had a problem with women. What to do with them? The Church needs them, and wants to appear as though it respects them, but it does not want women to play any significant role in Church affairs.

Women appear to have been a problem from the very beginning. Although women were a respected part of Jesus' entourage and one or more may have been present for the Last Supper, Peter and Paul, following their Jewish and Mid-eastern roots, seem to have viewed women as hand-servants and wombs to bear offspring -- hopefully a preponderance of male offspring. (After all, a single male can impregnate many women, but a woman's birthing abilities are limited.)

And then when the writers of the Gospels came along, they had to deal with Mary, the mother of Jesus. They could not eliminate her. A human being, in this case, Jesus, has to have a mother; the father on the other hand can be ambiguous. The Gospel writers chose to make her a birth-mother, the concerned mother at the wedding feast of Cana, and a grieving mother at the crucifixion. Was she Jesus' educator and instructor or was she simply the woman who changed his diapers? The Gospels avoided that issue.

After the Church decided which Gospels to go with, it still had a woman problem. And since then the Church has wavered between making Mary a goddess on one hand, and a hand-servant on the other. There is a reluctance in the Catholic Church to admit that men and women are equal, but perhaps we should not be too surprised since the Catholic Church, a Medieval monarchy, does not understand democracy.

It appeared the Church had solved this problem with the "authorization" of Catholic Women's Religious Orders -- groups of women popularly known as "nuns"-- a term that has dubious connotations. (What does "nun" mean? Not male? Not significant?) But as it turned out, the women's religious orders took over the responsibility of fulfilling some of the Church's major social justice responsibilities by educating youth, tending to the sick, helping the impoverished, and caring for the elderly, the imprisoned and the mentally ill. The women of the Church excelled in carrying out the Christian mission.

Although women's religious orders seemed to provide a "place" for women in the Church, their "place" was one of subservience. The male pontiff and the male hierarchy were in charge and told the women what to do and how to live their lives. And it was within this context that abuses such as Ireland's Magdalene Laundries occurred.

Then in the 1950's Pope Pius XII told the women religious to modernize, to do away with outmoded practices that kept them from being in touch with the world around them. Along with the promise and encouragement of Vatican II, many of the women religious phased out their old habits -- their former mode of dress, and whole-heartedly embraced carrying their mission in the modern world They were free to use their talents and abilities and still be sisters in a religious organization. They became professors, scientists attorneys, community organizers and doctors while still practicing their religious and prayer life.

But then, in more recent history, under the rule of Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican felt threatened by the independence and courage of the Women's Religious Organizations in the United States and appointed a few males (bishops) to investigate these women with an eye on keeping them from questioning some of the practices of the Church. Now it appears unclear what Pope Francis is going to do with this "investigation."

Pope Francis, in spite of his inclusive and democratic inclinations, also has a problem with women in the church. Recently, in a speech to Italian women, he spoke elegantly of the dignity of women, their "gifts of delicacy, ...a special sensibility and tenderness, ..feminine intuition,..and the richness of the feminine spirit,"  and then he goes on to speak " of women in the domestic ambit." He envisions  "capillary and incisive roles" for women in the Church. He fails to elaborate what these roles might be; and in fact  "capillary" tends to suggest secondary and subservient roles. Given the limitations the Church places on women, one has to conclude that the Church will continue to treat women as second-class citizens.

But we can still be hopeful. After all, we were told a black man could not be elected President. Then we were told it would not happen again, and he was re-elected. We were told that Benedict 16 had stacked the College of Cardinals to insure ultra-conservatives would be be chosen pope for the next fifty years. No one saw what was coming with Papa Francis. There is always hope.

The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarity

My inclination is to describe The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarity as "chick lit," but I hesitate to do so because that may give the impression I am dismissing it. Let's just say it is a serious and clever novel which will have special appeal for women. I can imagine women's book clubs discussing this into the wee hours of the morning -- or until their supply of wine runs out. There are frequent analyses  which sound like they were taken from Dr. Phil -- not a bad thing, but face it, Dr. Phil's audience is predominantly women. That being said, most men, I suspect, will enjoy the novel as well.

The story, set in Australia, deals with an interesting confluence of events involving three suburban middle-class families. Each family is struggling with their own problems, only mildly interested in each other, but all somewhat involved with St. Angela's school.

The plot begins with one woman accidentally discovering a letter written to her by her husband with directions that it should not be opened until after his death. And thus Cecilia's problem. What does one do with such a letter? The decision to open it or not is laden with all sorts of implications.

Most readers will appreciate Moriarity's wit. "Marriage is a form of insanity; love hovering permanently on the edge of aggravation."

Other readers may be dissatisfied with the novel's ending, but I submit that the conclusion was not important. They story is the thing.