A CONSERVATIVE TAKES ISSUE WITH RUSH LIMBAUGH

Having an influence and taking credit are two entirely different things. I had teachers or coaches who influenced me, but wouldn’t dream of taking credit or have the ridiculous notion of getting a part of my earnings when I was older as the author of the article - remember that’s what the thread was initially about - does.

Cut teachers pensions. My brothers served in the military Air Force and Navy 20 + years. O cuts their pensions, even when they served in combat related capacities. Cut the feds salaries and pensions too. gee lets lower the amount owed to crooks and thieves, some teachers are no better than politicians. municipalities Satesand Feds cannot keep up with the obligations, yet if you serve in the military, get shot at exposed to other hazards years later the military pensions are cut but the morons who had made the declaration of war sit on a war chest.

The original intent of public employee retirement systems was to take the funds that would normally be poured down the Social Security drain and put them into a managed investment portfolio.

The base line package in most states takes 7% of the employees salary, and the employer matches that contribution. This money if managed conservatively (7% average return) can easily fund a retirement of 80 to 90% of last year's salary for a 40 year employee.

For many years, states had programs that worked quite well along these lines. Eventually, the unions managed to negotiate Cadillac benefit upgrades and final year salary spikes, financed by all the extra investment returns being pulled in during the boom years.

Then the investment fund managers got arrogant, mandating touchy feely political correctness from the companies they invest in, while at the same time taking on irrational risk in their portfolio.

All that was needed to complete the disaster was a pullback in the economy, and voila, pension meltdown. I have no doubt that all of this was intentional, because if these pensions had been managed properly, they could have been used as a model for privatizing Social Security.

That's how bad the Socialists hate this country, they are willing to destroy all public institutions in order to force a centralized socialist nation.

A school teacher, however, does not have the benefit of having his or her contributions so obviously linked to an eventual profit.

I diagree with the basic concept of no linkable benefit. Every private school teacher in the world has a very strong linkable profit or benefit. A parent can easily tell if their "investment" in the private school or teacher pays off by how well the child enters the real world, and is successful. This tells the parent if the investment was worthwhile, and can be used by the teacher to show their ability. I.E., 75% of my students received max scores on their ACT/SAT/ASVAB/ or was accepted into such and such a college, etc. There is a metric and there is a benefit and people do cost analysis routinely for their chidren. Public school teachers do not want this metric because it is really bad for them.

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