When the promises were disproportionate to the value these employees delivered, yes, the contracts will not be enforced. This is about governance, not financial speculation: Vendors ought not be allowed to play the Gotcha! game with the American people.

And if they are, the world will turn to black markets, and taxation be damned.

So what do you –and they– want to have happen?

When the promises were disproportionate to the value these employees delivered, yes, the contracts will not be enforced.

Posted by: Crid

Sorry,

Crid, You just flunked Contracts 101.

Enforceability is never tied to value, the parties agreed ... end of story.

In your world I guess a contract can be reviewed (by whom?) to make an all ecncompassing and after the fact ruling to disavow the contract.

Nope, go for the Psych Masters ... lots easier.

> In your world I guess a contract can be
> reviewed (by whom?) to make an all
> ecncompassing and after the fact ruling
> to disavow the contract.

Kinda. I think there comes a point where people get tied of shit and take steps. Bloody turnips and all that.

You can yell about contracts all you want, but broke is broke.

If you have the contract, when the turnip is dry, you'll go hungry, and the mob that you brought down with you will eat you.

In the process, contract law will be set aside - again. It's already been done, and the American people are stupidly and enthusiastically supporting it because today's victims are those eeevil rich executives.

You, the public, actually cheered when those slugs had to ride cars to Washington instead of the seperate jets mandated by contract law and corporation charters. You're probably cheering that government gets to determine what their compensation is.

And all the time, you've never noticed that you're in the same pen, waiting for your compensation to be determined by others.

You make too much money. You're not driving the "right" car. You don't even need a car. You sure don't need to talk to a doctor on your own.

This is what happens because people think of themselves first in complicated social nets. Putting an idiot in office because of what they promise is just one gaffe.

Sure you can revise contracts Ken. It happens all the time here in the USA. Its called the family/divorce courts. Pre nups often end up being absolutely not worth the paper they were printed on.

I'm not cheering the goverment determining the compensation/bonus deal, because obviously they've been talking to extending it beyond the companies the Fed. Gov. has a direct stake in now (big surprise). Gov. still has a fair right to control those companies it bailed out though.

To be honest, this sounds all too much like the Progressive's mantra of the rich are evil, and must be taxed until they repent and become poor. Or something.

So what's your "fix?" What is are "appropriate" retirement benefits for someone who works 20 or 30 years with a company, that wouldn't strike you as "gold plated to the nines?"

I am SOOOOOOO looking forward to BigEducation.com. The NEA is in for one cold bucket of water for a wakeup call. Gov. Christie is right; you can't pay a few tens of thousands of dollars into a pension plan and feasibly expect to recover over a million dollars in benefits. That's just a Ponzi scheme funded by the taxpayers.

Bankruptcy and Privatization are the solution.

In bankruptcy court, a judge can re-write the municipality's contracts.

Municipalities and States can just privatize most of these services; private companies normally won't be stupid enough to offer benefits they can't afford.

Bottom line is, I'll be working until I drop dead. And so will a LOT of other people. o.O

Public employees are able to elect their own management, so it's not surprising that they've been able to obtain excessive compensation w/ minimal accountability.

This is what motivates the argument against allowing them to form unions. These force the public to finance political advocacy and electioneering. What emerges is a pattern of collusion between public employees unions and the political establishment that distorts policy development and tends to result in an accelerating cycle of government spending.

I do think that we're going to see pressure to throw out these contracts, especially as the general public begins to understand how corrupt the process of negotiating them has become.

"private companies normally won't be stupid enough to offer benefits they can't afford"

One point: it is important that the government change the regulations here. Too many companies have gone bankrupt, plundering the retirement fund of their employees on the way. Current law allows the employer to owe a debt to the retirement fund, but they don't actually have to pay the money until "later". If the company goes out of business before you retire, it may just be tough luck...

Retirement contributions should be paid by the employer to a legally separate fund that the employer subsequently has no access to.

Jojo hits upon the point the contract law formalists are trying to argue. When it benefits the unions, the unions scream that they have a promise from the state, and the state cannot renege. But the unions did not arrive at those promises in a true arm's length contract bargaining process.

Who was at the table representing the taxpayers when this "contract" was negotiated and agreed upon? From what I can see, far too often the unions were far too involved in selecting the politicians they "negotiated" with. And as a ressult, there was no arms' length bargaining with a truly disinterested taxpayer representative. Therefore, taxpayers should not feel bound by the resulting "contract" that was often simply negotiated between a union and a union-friendly political official.

Much like Ms. Alkon and frequent commenter Crid cannot mutually agree for me to pay Ms. Alkon's retirement without my consent at some point, taxpayers are not obligated to fund retirements when they had no real say in the matter.

These are political arguments, not legal ones, mind you. And this debate is a political one, not a legal one.

In the end, as someone notes above, even a valid agreement is worth jack squat where the debtor simply cannot pay. If a state is facing fiscal ruin, the first place to cut is the current workforce (what, you really think *they* have any private sector alternatives to a pay cut?). Next comes retirement benefit increases.

But the unions will try to close every state park and hospital before letting one nickel of raises and COLA adjustments go away from their checks.

Bradley,

The PBGC exists to protect private sector pension funds. Wiki could explain the basic outlines of it if you are unfamiliar with it.

Also, if I remember correctly, once a company put funds into a pension fund, it must treat those funds as a trustee, not as though the money is available as a sluch fund to the funding entity. Criminal and civil sanctions are imposed upon businesses (and executives) that fail to follow the many, many, many laws that control the management of pension funds. Companies are also required to maintain certain funding ratios for their pension as part of the PBGC premium charges.

So contrary to your suggestion, the oversight and management of private sector pensions is not without extensive oversight and regulation already.

Hence part of the disinterest of most private businesses in maintaining them. Compliance costs a lot of money.

Look for municipalities and states to go bankrupt, or for these "benefits" to be inflated to the point they are worthless. They simply cannot be paid.

In the past decade, my school district has lost over 6,000 manufacturing jobs that paid decent wages. There are far fewer than that number of jobs in total remaining. Yes, it's a suburban district, and a lot of people work elsewhere, but incomes are down. Tax rates are up, and revenues are down. There is no more money to take.

The teachers passed up higher pay in order to have better benefits. Teachers don't make a huge mint.

"Teachers don't make a huge mint."

Relative to whom? And what are their alternatives if they didn't teach?

Most teachers I know--and I know many, including family members--have a mistaken impression that they would earn as much or more working similar hours in the private sector.

They would not.

Kinda. I think there comes a point where people get tied of shit and take steps. Bloody turnips and all that.

Posted by: Crid

Crid,

Sorry, but I am a beneficiary of that contract. Somebody who doesn't know what a conract is, that would be you, is not going to cut off my money.

Not going to happen.

Trust me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6-Snl4a1RI

Nicole I don't think that that's the case any longer in many districts. For instance, in mine a teacher with a masters and more than 7 years is guaranteed $100K + benefits + pension. It's the same in the adjacent districts, one of which is very working class and is being driven into the ground by these costs. They couldn't afford to plow their residential streets this year, but the teachers union wouldn't budge. None of the teachers live there anyway, they can afford the more affluent townships.

"Somebody who doesn't know what a conract is, that would be you, is not going to cut off my money. Not going to happen. Trust me."

Mmm hmm. Right. Everyone talks tough about such things, right up until the Federal bankruptcy court's gavel falls, and then the matter is over. And guess what, people lose their "contract".

At that point, if you want to argue some more, you pretty much need bombs and bullets, not just tough talk.

Crid is right: if there is no money to pay, there is no money to pay. In the private sector, people understand that simply getting broke people to agree to pay is irrelevant, those people need to possess the ability to pay. And if taxpayers will not fund the debt via tax payments, teachers and other civil servants are screwed.

Eh, who cares if you work until you are literally too old to work? This idea of retiring at age 60, in good health, and spending your remaining years idle is a rather recent one, and would never have come to seem like an entitlement to people if it weren't for the great ponzi schemes of Social Security and Medicare.

Even though the vast majority of people under the age of 45 have never thought they would get Social Security, they are still buying into the retirement myth. You're supposed to work day and night through all your best years, try to enjoy your life with (if you are lucky) two or three weeks off, put 10% in your 401K, and by golly the stock market will allow you to retire even if SSI isn't there. I think it's pure hogwash, and doesn't even sound like a rational or healthy way for human beings to live. It's no wonder these people get old and discover they have no hobbies or interests. When did they have the time?

Much to the chagrin of my money management guy, I pulled a bunch of money out of investments and paid off my house. Granted, my mortgage balance was already pretty low, and it's not like this leaves me with no savings. But my investments haven't earned jack during the 14 years I've been investing (in fact they have lost money), and I have no hope that there will be sufficient future economic growth to reverse that trend. In retrospect, I wish I had paid off my mortgage before ever putting a dime into investments, and I've decided to rectify that situation.

So now I have a paid-for home and no bills. I enjoy doing temp/contract-based work, and even on the low end of the hourly rate I can make, I can still afford to take three months off each year. At the high end, I can save up a month off for each month I work. Suddenly life just got a lot brighter. I'll be semi-retired before reaching my 40th birthday next month, looking forward to doing the kind of work I enjoy, taking plenty of time off for cycle touring, educational pursuits, and volunteer work, and not giving a crap how the stock market performs. It doesn't bother me a bit that I will have to work longer. I am going to enjoy a healthy work/life balance through the rest of my life. I can easily go to work, sit behind a desk, and crunch numbers when I'm 75. I may not be able to ride my bike across the United States at that age, though.

I am SO over the idea of retirement.

Somewhat akin to Radwaste's point above - if the government is allowed to institute "clawback" legislation against bailed-out execs or companies, or dictate what kinds of bonuses CEOs and employees recieve from taxpayer-supported corporations, why should it be any different with public sector employees?

If anything, government workers are even more directly accountable to the taxpayers than employees of taxpayer subsidized corporations. If they government can rip up one set of contracts for private companies, why not for public employees?

Another suggestion: Offer pension-eligible employees a one-time lump-sum cash buyout offer in exchange for giving up future pensions/benefits. I bet a lot of folks would take, say $150,000, tax-free, at age 40 over the promise of incremental payouts when they retire, particularly when those payouts are hardly guaranteed at this point.

Private-sector unions and public-sector unions are very different creatures. If GM and the UAW agreed to terms that made their cars too expensive (before the government bailout/takeover), or that resulted in poor quality, you could buy your next car from Honda instead.

In the case of your local public schools, however, you are legally required to pay for whatever terms the school board and the teachers union agreed to...and if these terms resulted in low-quality education (by prohibiting the firing of incompetent teachers, for instance) your only choice is to basically pay *double*, by sending your kids to private school which still paying off the teachers union through your taxes.

I don't think the UAW ever insisted that GM continue the employment of (say) a welder who didn't know how to weld and refused to learn...but teachers unions do the equivalent all the time.

D. Foster: "I don't think the UAW ever insisted that GM continue the employment of (say) a welder who didn't know how to weld and refused to learn...but teachers unions do the equivalent all the time"

While I agree with your larger points, this made me smile. Clearly, you are not familiar with how UAW shops run. Anyone who spent time in such venues can usually dine out for free by offering to tell the eye-popping tales of waste demanded by UAW union reps.

Bankruptcy. Then the cities and towns can "reneg" on their contracts.

It's the coming tsunami. Calif, Illinois, NY + NJ are up first.

The city of vallejo declared bankruptcy after cutting everything to the bone. According to the Mayor it wasn't so much the salaries and benefits of the Police + Fire departments, it was the fact that 2/3 of those budgets went to pay benefits and pensions of retired Police + Fire.

It used to be that public sector employees took less pay for the long term security of pensions. Now, Unions have bid up the pay and correspondingly, the pensions follow.

Calif has somewhere over 15,000 public sector retirees collecting pensions more than $100K per year. With benefits included, a private sector chump like the rest of us would need to accumulate more than $3.5 million in order to generate that level of salary/benefits in retirement.

It's unsustainable.

My daughter and her husband are teachers in Southern Texas near the border. With two of them, over 18 years on the job, they make less than $75,000 a year, last time we discussed it before she went half-time, which will stop next year.

Her mom and I were making almost that much before we retired in 1997, as factory workers.

And, if my daughter is widowed, her very low pension benefits will not allow her to keep her house, current value $150,000, because she won't be able to pay the taxes from her pension income and still eat.

Wow, jj, that's pretty good. When i worked in a wealthy public school district, I started at $40, with an EdM, which in the Boston area is not much. If I had a PhD and been working about 15 years or so (dont remember the exact number), I would have made around $80. That's the max out. It is decent, but not huge. Compared to other jobs for which a PhD and that many years of experience is required, it sucks.

However, we had good benefits. Which I will not benefit from as I am no longer teaching.

This was SY 2006-07.

Spartee, I made more straight out of college than I did after I got my EdM. Misplaced idealism.

Spartee wronte:

Crid is right: if there is no money to pay, there is no money to pay. In the private sector, people understand that simply getting broke people to agree to pay is irrelevant, those people need to possess the ability to pay.

To which I say:
Someone tell that to the Wall Street guys who are getting the bonuses. Apparently, the government will bail out private workers, but not its own.

Crid is right: if there is no money to pay, there is no money to pay. In the private sector, people understand that simply getting broke people to agree to pay is irrelevant, those people need to possess the ability to pay. And if taxpayers will not fund the debt via tax payments, teachers and other civil servants are screwed.

Posted by: Spartee at February 22, 2010 6:55 AM

Spartee,

Crid is wrong.

You are wrong.

My contract is with the feds.

If the feds don't honor my contract, we don't have a country any more.

Screw the teachers.

Nicole you should move to Bucks County PA.

FWIW many Phd's don't make much. IIRC a Phd in Physics is worth about $90K/yr on average. The really well paying ones seem to be in pharma, biosciences, .. - i.e. fields w/ commercial applications.

Well, Amy, all these lavish union benefits could probably be afforded if we just got rid of all the ENTITLEMENT spending. For example, something like 4/5 of California's state budget is entitlements, IIRC. Get rid of those, and all the pensions will be fine.

Qualifier: I heard the thing about entitlements from Jonathan Hoenig on FNC's business block. He's a libertarian, so it wouldn't surprise me if he's including edumakayshun along with all the health and welfare bennies.

> If the feds don't honor my contract, we don't
> have a country any more.

I was pretty sure you speaking as one who was part of the problem.

if Obozo is allowed to finish his term, Ken's contract becomes a moot point. Also, California has been overrun by "takers" and not "givers". Too many people sucking on the government tit, it will also colapse.

ALL OF YOU,

PUT THIS IN YOUR PIPE, AND SMOKE IT.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89612

> If the feds don't honor my contract, we
> don't have a country any more.

Did everyone closely read that? This is the mentality we're dealing with, this is how these people think. Their first argument is never 'I provided superior value!'.... Their first argument is always 'I have a contract!' And then, it becomes 'Unless my needs can be met through abject manipulation, the whole enterprise is worthless.'

Wanna know another place we see this kind of approach? Divorce. Spouses will go to the judge and talk about how the other partner hasn't lived up to the contract, when the aggrieved party has done no better.

Martina Navratilova's girlfriend did it with a video camera: She sat down in front of the lens with the tennis star and coached her to verbally, explicitly consent to sharing all her tennis winnings. It was one of the most gruesome pieces of tape I've ever seen. Paraphrasing—

Girlfriend: And you agree that all your prize money will be shared by us equally forever...?"

Martina: Sure... Whatever you say.)

The judge voided this "contract".

We see that Navratilova's struggles continue... But could any later lover doubt that Martina is the kind of pushover who will promise anything? Paglia had some fun with this:

Ironically, it may have been super-Amazon tennis star and lesbian poster girl Martina Navratilova who first kicked off this trend with her sobbing youthful tantrum into a towel at courtside. In "Vamps & Tramps," in fact, I maintained that old-school, goody-goody Catholic girl Chris Evert, who never displayed self-pity or petulance about a bad call, was ultimately a better feminist role model than the blubbering, spiteful Martina, who was always mooningly searching the stands for the reassuring eyes of Big Mama (her blond lover, Judy Nelson).

Adjudication of contract fulfillment includes consideration of the 'spirit' of the contract, and this will be popular chatter in the years ahead, especially with unions and other workers in 'public' services. They were employed for the benefit of the commonweal: If their contracts were in fact detrimental to others, they will be expected to accept adjustments. They can't now reduce this to the 'Bobby's the one who started it!' squabbles of their childhood. This is about us, not them, and only then is it about them as well, as ours is the shared country that needs rescue.

The law is not about assisting illusionists and scoundrels, be they naive or crafty.

Something to keep in mind is that these contracts aren't perpetual. They lapse and need to be renegotiated. So the pensions of current employees can be restructured w/o breaching contracts. For instance, moving these from defined benefit to some form of defined contribution w/ individual accounts would probably go a long way towards mitigating future liabilities, which currently stand at about 1 trillion in aggregate by some estimates.

The public pension crisis has been looming for some time, but was concealed by good investment returns. I wouldn't be surprised if the feds end up absorbing state and municipal pension obligations. And if they do, they're going to reduce payouts.

Ken - whaddaya gonna do, come to my house and take it from me?

If the federal government decides to "nationalize" pensions, you're Fucked.

If tax revenues drop, or the currency undergoes a massive devaluation, you're not gonna get what is in your "contract".

Socialism (and by extension all government programs and employment) only survives so long as there remains other people's money.

And we're running out of OPM.

In other words, don't take that contract to the bank, Ken. It might not be worth the paper it's printed on.

> I wouldn't be surprised if the feds end up absorbing
> state and municipal pension obligations. And if
> they do, they're going to reduce payouts.

Fun to imagine, but it suggests deftness and competence, for which our government is not well-known, else it wouldn't have signed the deals in the first place.

> Wanna know another place we see this
> kind of approach?

Should I apologize? Do you hate rhetorical questions as much as I do?

What came over me?

If a company becomes insolvent and files bankruptcy, it no longer is required to fulfill monetary obligations. There's just no money to pay the pensions. If the economy improves, they can reinstate the pensions, but as of now the state is going under.

@ Nichole G

For privatized plans, they have the ERISA Act:

http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/health-plans/erisa.htm

ERISA page from wiki too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Retirement_Income_Security_Act

Govt doesn't really need ERISA protection, they have us, the poor-sappy-exploited-tax-payer to fish them out.

Okay, one more cuz I am on a roll.

Be sure (Ken?) to check out what it says about unions in the Wiki posting on ERISA. Unions chose to opt out of ERISA enjoying less stringent pre-ERISA requirements for the funding of plans and pensions. Private companies are required to have adequate funding (and insurance) but the unions and government aren't.

Precious, ain't it?

I would love a tax revolt to ensue if these pension plans went bankrupt. 'Bout time you folks start earning your share like the rest of us.

Well I still wonder what it is that people think they are going to do all year long if they quit working while they're still healthy and have another thirty years to live. Why would people even want this? Just cease all productivity altogether? Come on. Are you really going fishing every day for the rest of your life?

A lot of people keep working, they just pick up a fun job doing something they like. They still need some income, they just don't have to worry about it as much. My bike mechanic is in his 60's, used to be a schoolteacher, and started fixing bikes on the side. After he retired from teaching, he kept driving schoolbuses during the school year, and then was able to quit doing that and just keep his bike shop going as his sole source of income.

I guess my point in this post and my previous one is that it's not the end of the world if you do something for pay in your later years. Do most people even have a good grip on how much they spend each month? If they had $100,000 saved, do they have any idea how long that would last, if they weren't working at all? How much would you need to live on for 25 years of not working? And where is that money supposed to come from, if not from yourself? If you can't pull together that much change on your own, what makes you think someone else can do it for you?

Clearly this idea of being self-supporting has been abandoned. Between ERISA for private pensions, plain old vanilla tax-and-spend for government plans, SSI, all of it - people really feel entitled to a lot of years of loafing at the end of their lives. Sorry, but if you blew your money on kids, McMansions, and new cars throughout your life, why is that my problem? It all boils down to this one thing - the feeling of ENTITLEMENT to a long retirement. If you aren't willing to save for it yourself, or if you accepted a false promise from an employer that was always just a little too good to be true, let the taxpayers pick up the tab.

Is it reasonable to expect that you will work for a company for thirty years, and then they will continue to pay you for forty more years after that? To pay you for seventy years when you didn't even work for them half that time? Plus health benefits? This is just as nutty as some of the stock market speculation that goes on, yet the government is not bailing out IRAs or 401ks.

And just to head any comments about "blowing your money on kids, McMansions, and new cars" off at the pass. Because I know the next question is going to be, what if I worked all my life and never made any money?

My comment about that is, you cannot work all your life and never make any money. Slavery was abolished here a long time ago. Maybe you can't afford to have kids. Well, then don't have them. You need to be able to take care of yourself and then make extra money besides, before you can afford to have a kid. Do the math. New cars are a waste of money - buy used. You don't have to live a miserable life just to live frugally. Besides, just because you are cleaning toilets for a living while you're taking classes doesn't mean you will be cleaning toilets forever. If you ARE cleaning toilets for a living and are NOT taking classes, why not?

If you DO have kids (oops, should you have balanced the checkbook first?), are they total deadbeats who can't help you out when you're old?

PJ, I'm trying to remember if I posted the bit about "double dippers" before... it used to be pretty common in my industry. You'd get government employees who would retire with full pension at the age of 50 or so. Then they'd go to work in industry. Some companies were anxious to hire ex-government employees as a rather transparent means of buying influence, so they'd make them special pension deals. Then, they could retire again at 65 and receive two pensions plus Social Security.

One company I worked for was rather blatant about this. Their pension contributions were cleverly defined as being dependent on the age of the employee when hired... older hires (who, purely by coincidence were all government retirees) received far larger contributions to their pensions then younger hires. Those of us who hired on in our mid-20s were pretty pissed about it. We had one guy who was a triple-dipper; he had retired from government, gone to work for a company, and retired from that. Then he came to us at the age of 62, and retired at 67 with a full pension from our company.

Cousin Dave, what kind of influence did these ex-government employees have? Why would anyone who worked for the government be an asset to a private company?

(Full disclosure, in current times, if you can make more money by working for the government and can stand the boredom, go for it. Just don't count on the job security they are promising you.)

If these government pension programs fail you will definately see Obama and Co. using Federal taxpayer money to bail them out. You will also see an attempt by the federal government(with Union backing) to sieze private retirement accounts to sure up union retirement funds that have been mismanaged, underfunded and robbed by union leadership. One union SEICU? has already approached Obama to sieze private retirement accounts.

I would not put it past Obama to say if all citizens give up their private retirement funds the government will guarantee you government payouts. Of course it would be short term. It would be just another communist redistribution of income. Otherwise it will just be a confiscation of your retirement money to the federal government.

If I were a governor or state legislator and the money was just not there, I would either offer a buy out or say to the unions either renegotiate these contracts or alot of people will be laid off. The state would have to declare insolvent and the retirees would have to settle for pennies on the dollar just like private sector retirees.
We as a nation cannot go on like this with these handouts, entitlement programs and welfare...it is unsustainable.

The law is not about assisting illusionists and scoundrels, be they naive or crafty.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 22, 2010 11:38 AM

Crid,

I am neither an illusionist nor a scoundrel. I am hardly naive, and if I am crafty, ... so what?

As far as that bullshit of yours applies to contract law , it doesn't, ... so what?

If Uncle Sam reneges on his contract with me, we don't have a country any more.

We have anarchy, you **on. (** = mor)

The law is not about assisting illusionists and scoundrels, be they naive or crafty.

Posted by: Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 22, 2010 11:38 AM

Crid,

I am neither an illusionist nor a scoundrel. I am hardly naive, and if I am crafty, ... so what?

As far as that bullshit of yours applies to contract law , it doesn't, ... so what?

If Uncle Sam reneges on his contract with me, we don't have a country any more.

We have anarchy.

Crid,

Take your pick. :)

Feebie,

Pssssssssssssssssssst,

Don't EVER use Wiki as a definitive source.

When you figure that out, we will talk.

And that's where you're wrong, Ken.

Congress can default on all of the US's sovereign debts and we still have a country.

We might not have an economy, but we have a country.

Or were you perhaps thinking of taking up arms when the pension checks stop coming?

PJ, what these companies are trying to do is exploit inside knowledge and/or connections that the ex-government employees might have, in order to influence the awarding of contracts. When the government receives proposals and has to evaluate them to choose who to award to, the procurement official has to draw on the expertise of people from a lot of different areas in order to fully evaluate the proposals. For example, engineers to evaluate the technical parts; accountants to evaluate the pricing, and patent/copyright attorneys to evaluate the intellectual property clauses. They usually assemble a "source selection board" containing people from the various disciplines; these people get sequestered for several weeks (it's not a fun task) and evaluate the proposals using a specified methodology.

So ABC Co. and XYZ Co. are bidding on a contract. Elmer, who is on the source selection board, is golfing buddies with Joe, who retired last year and now works for XYZ. At the very least, XYZ is hoping that Elmer will give them an uptick in his part of the evaluation based on that friendship. From there, it can go from subtle to increasingly less subtle forms of influence. For example, on the 4th green one Saturday, Elmer might casually mention to Joe, "You know, Joe, we really don't understand what you meant on page 149 about how you are going to apply those Kalman filters", and Joe might reply, "Well, we use them to compare the onboard navigation solution to the radar uplink". Sounds innocent enough, but what has happened is that Joe has used his personal connection to add information to the XYZ proposal without going through the proper process (which would include disclosing the question and answer to ABC). And it might result in a better evaluation for XYZ.

From here, you can imagine all the ways in which more overt corruption might occur. Something that often happens with these contracts is that the government receives 5-6 proposals, and from there the source selection board it down to the best two or three. The finalists are then invited to submit a best and final offer. So at this point the board has seen all of the proposals. Cue the golf course again, another Saturday: Elmer: "You know, Joe, you really need to do better on your pricing if XYZ expects to win this thing. You just barely made it to the final stage because of your labor rates. You guys did a good job for us on that lab support contract and I'd hate to see you lose. Those ABC guys are sticklers for contract terms and we don't like having to deal with them." Clearly, Joe has just been given a very valuable piece of inside info; XYZ will go fix its labor rates before it submits its best and final, and likely they will win. Note that there was no overt bribe here; no money changed hands between Elmer and Joe, but nonetheless the competitive process has been subverted.

Y'all keep talking about state jobs and union jobs as if they are the same thing. I work for a university as a computer geek. We have no union. My health benefits cost more and pay less than private sector jobs I've had, I'm REQUIRED to contribute a minimum amount of my income for my pension (not something I had to do for private sector pensions, and I also must contribute to SS, etc), have to pay for parking, and took a several thousand dollar pay cut to do it.

In my mind it was worth it because I have health concerns and needed to take a slower pace job to recover. However, to say that state employees have huge benefits that the private sector doesn't have is delusion. The average state employee doesn't make much more than a bus driver.

-Julie

Ken:

----

When the promises were disproportionate to the value these employees delivered, yes, the contracts will not be enforced.
Posted by: Crid

Sorry, Crid, You just flunked Contracts 101. Enforceability is never tied to value, the parties agreed ... end of story.
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You just flunked Bankruptcy 101.

So, to paraphrase crid: what is the alternative to breaking the contracts? If you think voters who aren't party to the contracts (i.e., those who weren't born yet), and are going to have to pay through the nose to fund them are going to consent to do so, then I predict you will be in for a rude awakening.

I'm not sure where this will all end up. It is frightening to think that SSI just broke even this year. Not only does the government not have that surplus to spend anymore, it will have to start making more payments to beneficiaries than it is collecting through the payroll taxes. It's just not feasible to think the taxpayers can pay for retirement for everyone. People are just going to have to work longer. Although that will be tough with 10% unemployment.

> then I predict you will be in for a rude awakening.

And for some of us, your awakening will be FUN....

...At least it might be, if our economy isn't dropkicked into a nightmare of black markets and unenforceable contracts.

Either way, wiping the aging asses of mediocre clerks with pricey silk is not in our broader interest.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/26/our-own-greek-tragedy/print/