Grow Old With Me

Yesterday, the Oregon Supreme Court issued its long awaited opinion in the case Clarke v OHSU. The particulars of this case aren't terribly relevant to our situation, but there is an eerily familiar tempo to the case that supports my claim that the PERS cases, in particular Arken and Robinson, are unlikely to be finished in any material way until the Supreme Court rules in about 2012. I may be overestimating how quickly the Court will act. The original case Clarke v OHSU was filed in 1998 in Judge Kantor's Circuit Court in Multnomah County. It was a particularly complicated case and by the time it was finally filed, depositioned, tried, and ruled on by a jury, the decision - in favor of OHSU - was issued in 2001. It then went to the Oregon Court of Appeals where the ruling - overturning Judge Kantor's decision - was in favor of the Clarke family. That ruling came down in 2006. The Supreme Court heard arguments in Clarke v OHSU earlier in 2007 and took nearly a year to issue its ruling - affirming the Court of Appeals and remanding the case back to Judge Kantor for final disposition.

If we use this case as an example of how long it takes complex cases to be litigated through the court system, it is unlikely that our cases will rush speedily to final judgement. Ours *is* a complicated case. It only seems easy and obvious to us, but to Judges and those specializing in administrative and contract law, our cases are quite complicated and rulings rarely come quickly. That said, Judge Kantor is especially slow in issuing his rulings according to several former court reporters familiar with the workings of the Multnomah County Circuit. Judge Kantor is apparently regarded as one of the Judges who takes quite some time to issue rulings. He is not overturned all that often, certainly no more than the speedier judges, and the OHSU case should not be taken as a harbinger of Judge Kantor's record with the OSC. But, anyone who thinks final resolution of our cases will come quickly will be in for a rude and unpleasant shock. Justice delayed may be justice denied, but the wheels of our justice system just plain move slowly. I suspect we'll all grow old together waiting for a final decision.

The only good news in all this is that we will have some political change in both the Courts and the Governor's office by the time these cases get to the Oregon Supreme Court. Perhaps the next Governor will decide to cut the PERS Board loose and put in his/her own chosen ones. Perhaps if that happens, we might see some movement towards a settlement rather than waiting for the Supreme Court again. It will be 2010 before that happens, but since we're only 3 days from 2008, 2010 doesn't seem that far away anymore. So, let's grow old together, but let's do it with vim, vigor, and a never say die conviction. We will not give up.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Make that yuletide bright.

Gimme Some Truth

Sometime last week the PEW Charitable Trust published a document entitled "Promises With A Price: Public Sector Retirement Benefits". The document can be found here. The Oregonian, as well as the website BlueOregon have been touting this document as definitive proof that Oregon's system is the best in the country, and using the PEW findings to emphasize just how much the reforms enacted by the Oregon Legislature in 2003 are working. Here are the facts: Oregon is 110% funded. That means that there is enough money set aside right now in the fund to pay for the retirements of every public employee in the system as well as their beneficiaries and still have a billion or two left over when all is said and done. Of course, we all know that the funding level varies like the weather in response to the workings of the stock market. But the claim that the reforms of 2003 are "doing the trick" are as bogus as a $3 dollar bill. A look at the historical funding levels dispels any claim that Oregon's system was ever in trouble. While the rightwing nutcases along with a couple of democratic nutcases - the Governor and Representative Macpherson - were running around claiming the sky is falling, the worst Oregon was ever funded was in 2002, and its funding level, according to PEW, was at 92%. If you recall the 2003 Legislature, the claims were that Oregon was below 80% and falling like a rock. On this basis, the Legislature argued that it was necessary to reform PERS off the backs of the working stiffs and recent retirees. Consequently, we all took a substantial hit from the legislative reforms and as a result of the reforms, at least 18 lawsuits were filed. Eight of them were consolidated into a single case, the "Strunk". There are several federal cases, as well as cases still pending - Arken, Robinson, Robertson, White, Bell, and several more that haven't reached the filing stage. All this litigation is costly, and PERS hasn't won a single case, although they are acting as though they've completed a trifecta and a slam dunk, while billing retirees for benefits presumed (by PERS) to be paid, "in error". They've been rebuked by the court, they've been slapped with an injunction, and PERS continues to skate over the edges of these and interpret things in a light most favorable to them. They have very expensive outside counsel, whose knowledge of public pension law is, at best, questionable. In fact, a brief look at the Orrick website tells any reader that they don't even have anyone in their firm in "public" or "private" pension law.

So here we are, approaching 5 years after the Legislature's trashing of PERS, and we come to find out that all the numbers that were presented to the Legislature were just plain made up. The real numbers, cited by PEW in its study, make it clear that Oregon was, and continues to be, one of the best public pension systems in the country. If the true numbers had been made public, the level of changes to PERS could have been small, relatively uncontroversial and almost assuredly without all the litigation, uncertainty, and anger that prevails among members, retirees, unions, attorneys, the media, and the public. It took a completely outside agency with absolutely NO agenda to get to the truth. Oregon's system was never broken, and it could have been made more efficient with a few minor changes. But the rightwing wingnuts and some gullible Democrats wanted to "make their bones" off of a gigantic lie. May they now drown in their lies. Ted only has a few years left in his term and he can't run for re-election, and Greg Macpherson has some credible opposition for his run at the Oregon Attorney General's position. He is one politician that I can't wait to see gone. We have the truth now. It speaks louder than any campaign "sound bite". Let's send Greg Macpherson back to his private law practice for good. We don't need politicians who build their reputations on an outright lie.

Kolomeykes

This one is for Cantor Kantor. Happy Hannukah and may your festival of lights bring us light in the form of a decision this week. I realize that as I light my own candles that this is one wish that only you, not a higher being can bring. So bring it on.

Behind With The Rent

Got my notice today that PERS is "considering" my appeal. They were kind enough to acknowledge my challenge of their recalculations of my benefit. I used everything I could think of in my challenge, but I sincerely doubt they will find anything original, nuanced, or even clever about my approach. I figure that they'll either turn me down or Judge Kantor will issue his ruling before they get a chance. That way, there will be no doubt about how they will proceed. Either they'll fall further behind with the rent of my money, or I'll continue to fall further behind. Somehow, this whole process leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I subjugate myself for 32 years to the company store, accepting lower pay for that elusive promise of a good retirement plan and then at the end, when all of us boomers hired in the late 60's and early 70's start to retire, they say, "oops, just kidding about that retirement. We don't have the money so you'll have to suck it up." Fortunately, I didn't get my nickname for no reason. If they think I'll just take their bullshit and go away, they haven't worked closely with me. My former boss used to hate seeing me coming because he knew that I had a congenital inability to accept "no" for an answer and he knew that my request would be well-formulated, reasoned carefully, and did not promise anything more than what would be delivered. I always got my way - except on salary issues that were constrained by union and OUS guidelines. I do not intend to go quietly into this night. So PERS, if you're listening, just remember that you'll never get the chance to say that we'll not have Fearless to kick around anymore. That will happen only when I take my last breath and my personal fitness trainer tells me that my work with him will add quite a few years to my life. So I'll be around to hector, pester, and ask all those annoying questions until I get what is owed me. I got the time, I got the patience, and a mean streak that usually makes people afraid, very afraid. So, I'm looking forward to doing business with you for many, many years to come.

Late Night Shopping

While we're waiting for Santa and doing our last minute shopping, we've discovered a hole in our document library that we'd like to fill. We've heard stories of people appealing PERS' recalculation notices, but we've not heard about PERS' final responses to the same. We've decided to collect copies of appeal letters (not yours, PERS' response letters turning you down). If you have one to share, we'd like to post it (appropriate redacted of all identifying information). You can send a copy to me back channel, you can contact me back channel for a FAX number, or you can email an electronic copy to info@oregonpers.info. Be assured that nothing you send will ever be posted with identifying information. What we're doing is trying to see whether PERS is actually reading these appeals, or whether they are simply categorizing them and then sending a form letter response denying the appeal. I've appealed and will post my response when PERS finally gets back to me. If ANYONE wins an appeal, please let me know. Either dinner in person will accompany my response, or there will be a gift card for a restaurant local to you forthcoming. Keep me informed people. I'm off to do a bit of late night shopping on the net.

Live Out the String

Don't expect a decision from Judge Kantor in the Arken/Robinson cases before sometime in 2008. Unfortunately, Judge Kantor seems to have drawn the short straw again and has been assigned the Criminal Docket for the remainder of 2007. Apparently this started not long after he had the status conference. My worry is that he will continue in that capacity into early 2008, thus delaying the decision even longer and letting PERS have free rein over my retirement benefits for even longer. They are definitely living out the string. I can only hope that when Judge Kantor finally gets time to write and to issue his ruling that it smacks PERS so hard that their collective heads are coming out their collective arses. Growl.

Here it Goes

PERS should get my appeal today. I dropped it off at the post office yesterday. I waited 54 days before filing it, hoping that it would be smack in the middle of the pile about the time Judge Kantor issues his final rulings in the Arken and Robinson cases. I based my appeal on the Supreme Court's ruling in the Strunk case, concluding that PERS had no legal authority to do what it did and that, instead, PERS owed me a considerable amount of money. I used my own calculator (see left) to estimate the amounts of error and adjustments in my favor. I doubt that this will sway PERS. I'm just perplexed about the system for appeals. PERS gets to rule on the wisdom of its own wisdom. It follows that if they didn't think they were right, they wouldn't have sent out the letters in the first place. I'm not sure how one is supposed to get a fair, impartial, and unbiased review of the facts of the cases. Indeed, PERS has never been known to be fair and impartial in contested cases. I've been attending Board meetings on and off for more than 15 years. Not once during an open meeting did the PERS Board ever overrule the staff recommendations, and not once has the staff ever recommended in favor of the appellant. This does not mean that there aren't cases where PERS has ruled against itself, but I'm not aware of them. Thus, I doubt that we'll see even the smallest victory in any of these pro forma appeals. The only reasons for filing them - and I encourage everyone to do so - is to protest the way PERS has treated retirees, and to clog up their system. (Of course, if they don't bother to read the appeals and just rubber stamp reject them, then it won't do much in the clogging department either.)

There is nary a peep from Judge Kantor about when his ruling in these cases might be forthcoming. If he doesn't issue them within the next 10 - 14 days, it won't be until after January 1 before the rulings come out. And, frankly, if that happens, I wouldn't even hazard a guess when he might actually rule. I had heard that he was slow, but he's rapidly redefining that word for me. Look to the left at my counter and you'll see how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds it has been (real time) since Judge Kantor had the status conference to clarify his ruling.

Turn, Turn, Turn

My posts here are not usually personal. This weekend I celebrated my 60th birthday. My birthday present was a visit from all my children and my granddaughter. At dinner last night, the entire crew enjoyed a meal at one of Portland's nicest restaurants. I am very proud to share with you the entire Fearless clan - the only time I will digress from my routine to report on PERS-related news. I took a vacation this weekend and these are the 8 reasons why:

P.S. The two handsome guys in the top row are the "outlaws". The girls are mine, with the granddaughter being the one in the middle of the top row. The rest are either my daughters or my wife. Forgive me if I beam a bit at this group. I love them all dearly and they are all the source of incredible pride and joy.

Looking for Elvis

That's an ugly rumor started to explain what Judge Kantor is doing instead of making his final ruling in the Arken/Robinson cases. It has been quite awhile since the last status conference (see over to your left and you'll notice this little counter that keeps ticking off the seconds, minutes, hours, and days since that status conference in August). At the time I'm writing this, Judge Kantor has managed to tick off more than 103 days since hearing the latest arguments. That works out to about 3.5 months so far. I *hope* he's not trying to best his previous record for delaying a preliminary ruling in those same cases - almost 8 months if I recall correctly. In the meantime, Judge Kantor, if you are really looking for Elvis, here's a tip direct from the source. Elvis is dead. Kicked the bucket. Pushing up daisies. Singing to the Lord. In short, it's a great snark hunt in which nothing ever will be found. Stop looking already and rule.

Livin' in the Future

This post is a reprint of an earlier post. The FUTURE is NOW, TODAY. PLEASE GIVE SERIOUS THOUGHT TO DONATING. WE ARE GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER TO OUR GOAL. HELP US PUSH PAST THE TARGET AND GIVE US SOME BREATHING SPACE. WE NEED ABOUT $500 MORE TO REACH OUR GOAL
For the past three months, a small group of PERS retirees have been working to construct a comprehensive library of Oregon PERS material in an attempt to address the public information access problem. This repository will eventually include more than 1,000 documents containing material related to litigation, legislation, studies, communications, audit reports, administrative rules, internal but public e-mails, and articles. The site currently offers a manual search of a limited number of documents. The manual process has many limitations especially when trying to follow a sequence of events about an issue over time.

Team members (myself included) have volunteered time, expertise, and money to get us to this point. Now the library development group has contracted with a developer to construct a database that will greatly simplify and amplify the process for locating records. Other database options have been considered and rejected. We believe this is the best and most cost effective solution. The cost of the database is estimated to be between $3,000-4,000. Half of this amount has already been pledged by members of the development group and generous donors have contributed nearly $2000. We're so close to our fund raising goals that I'm hoping another repeat of this message will send us over the top.

In the past, many PERS retirees have expressed interest in contributing to the struggle to preserve retirement benefits. While not directly related to current litigation, the PERS document library will be an important resource of information for the public about PERS decisions.

Contributions can be sent to:

OPDG Library Project
c/o PEG
6550 Huntington Cir SE
Salem OR 97306-1481

Make checks out to: OPDG Library Project. Credit card donations may also be made through a Pay Pal link at the library site.

For a better understanding of this project and for a view of the density of material already collected, visit the library web at:
http://oregonpers.info/

I have written previously about this in my entry "Power To The People" (October 5, 2007). Support for this grass roots effort affords all PERS workers and retirees an opportunity to make a difference in the struggle for our retirement benefits. No donation is too small. We will publish a final accounting of the project when work on the database is complete. Questions should be directed to :
info@oregonpers.info
In the information age, documents are the raw material that fuel research, analysis, and understanding of decisions and events. Complex issues unfolding over many years produce a flood of documents. Often these originate from many sources and are stored in many forms. Access can be difficult under the best of circumstances which means that most people don't know where to go or how to locate needed records. Over time, documents are destroyed, lost, archived, or otherwise made unavailable. With critical information unavailable the media and public are often unaware about key facts in events which can lead to skewed perceptions of events and decisions. Your support for this effort is one direct way you can make a difference.

PERS Library Development Team:

JRS, Marc (mrfearless47), PEG, & Greg

**Post appeal footnote:
When the project is complete, any balance in the donated development funds will be returned to contributors on a proportional basis. The only exceptions will be for refunds that are less than $1. To be eligible for a refund, contributors will need to provide a return mail address with their donation.

P.S. If this note looks familiar to subscribers to OPDG, it is because Greg, our chief cook and bottle washer, entered a variant of this appeal on the OPDG newsgroup. We are looking at empowering as many PERS members, retirees, legislators who do not always have a clear view of history, journalists who also do not always understand the central issues or the seemingly peripheral elements that make the trivial seem meaningful and the reverse, lawyers, indeed anyone with an interest in PERS history over the past dozen years. We hope you'll contribute to this incredible asset and we hope you'll use it. It is there, and once the new searching suite gets posted, will be quite simple to use for complex searches.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

One of the last of the true believers, Steve Delaney, has announced his resignation from PERS effective soon. He will become the Director of the Orange County (California) Public Employee Retirement System. I always found Steve to be one of the nicest, most courteous, and most helpful PERS employees. He never failed to answer a question, was always helpful whenever I had meetings with senior PERS staff (not recently, alas), and has been a true professional during this entire period where PERS has been "front and center" in the news. I wish Steve nothing but the best in his new position. It sounds like his experience within the Oregon PERS System will prepare him well for the Directorship in the land of Disney. Goodbye and good luck, Steve.

Give Me Something

Anything. According to my little widget PERS has been failing to comply with state law for 1599 days, 19 hours (for those who don't think that way, that has been since 7/1/03). While PERS would argue that they HAVE been following the law, the key elements of HB 2003 were overturned March 10, 2005 and specified that PERS members be restored to their position on 7/1/03. To date, that has never happened, and if PERS has its way, it never will. If I were you, I'd be angry, very angry. But being angry isn't enough. You have to be willing to do something about it. Electing the right candidates is one approach. Organizing a large constituency to petition Judge Kantor to hold PERS in contempt f Court would be another matter. Sitting on your hands is not, in my opinion, an option. The more inactive you are, the flatter you will be when the PERS steamroller runs over you. Use every lick of intellect you have. Fight back and get others to fight along side you. The PERS Coalition can't do all the heavy lifting. At some point personal responsibility comes into play. As we rapidly approach 1600 days of willful disobedience of the law, now is as good a tiime as any to start kicking ass and taking names. Better late than never.

Changing of the Guards - Part 2

I was sorely tempted to title this post "Alas poor Orrick", but I decided that was stretching artistic license too far and would break my music oriented theme. In any case, I finally have my answer about how Orrick came to be the attorneys of record for the PERS Board. Rather than try to rephrase the complicated story, I'll let David Crosley's answer speak for itself:

"In August 2003, acting upon a request by PERS, the Attorney General granted approval for PERS to retain fiduciary and litigation counsel independent of DOJ pursuant to ORS 238.657. An answer or other first appearance to the Oregon Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court was due by August 21, 2003 in response to lawsuits relating to PERS Reform.

The request for proposal (RFP) required each firm to provide a statement of qualifications and answers to questions regarding its background and qualifications.

Using the authority granted in OAR 125-247-0295, the PERS Board received responses to the RFP from Lane, Powell, Spears, Lubersky LLP (Lane Powell); Bullivant Houser Bailey PC (Bullivant); and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP (Orrick).

The factors in choosing Orrick were based on the selection criteria in OAR 125-247-0295: (A) The knowledge, skills and ability of the Firm that will provide Authorized Legal Services. The Firm's ability to provide Authorized
Legal Services includes the training and expertise of the Firm attorneys, including Outside Counsel. Outside Counsel must be a member of the Oregon State Bar pursuant to ORS 180.235(2);

(B) The Firm's experience, level of expertise and suitability to perform the Authorized Legal Services; (C) Whether the Firm's available personnel possess any required licenses or certifications required to perform the legal services for the Authorized Legal Services, such as licenses to practice law in the appropriate jurisdiction, or to appear in a certain forum; (D) The Outside Counsel's availability and capability to perform the Authorized Legal Services and meet the Agency's needs; (E) The commitment the Outside Counsel and Counsel's Firm can make to the Authorized Agency to meet the Agency's needs; (F) The value of the Firm's legal services, taking into account the cost of the Firm's legal services; and (G) Other factors the Authorized Agency considers relevant to accomplish an optimal, timely outcome. "

So there you have the story of how Orrick came to have the contract with PERB to represent it in the ongoing litigation. I'm particularly interested in how Orrick met criteria (B) and (D) and how (F) and (G) can be reconciled with the actual costs being incurred. I still have this visceral feeling that the deck was stacked in favor of Orrick and nothing in the responses to the RFP would have changed that outcome. I don't know what leverage Orrick has over State agencies and why it has insinuated itself into almost every level of state and local government. I *know* the firm specializes in certain fiduciary instruments, such as bonds, but I still cannot find a whit of evidence that they are experts in public employee pension law. And so, for $750 an hour, PERS (and its members) are paying for a firm that specializes in bonds and high stakes litigation. Draw whatever conclusions you wish. I'm still not buying the argument that the RFP process produced a level playing field. This was a time for a changing of the guards and I suspect Orrick was right there ready and willing to jump into the fray. They acted just like Willie Sutton, the infamous bank robber, who robbed banks because that's where the money was. Orrick robs our public employee pension fund because that's where the money is in the State of Oregon. Nice work if you can get it.

Good Times Bad Times

As Dickens once wrote, "these are the best of times, these are the worst of times." In the latter category, more people than ever are being invoiced and readjusted from PERS and more people are waking up after 5 years of somnolence to discover that while they slept, the Legislature and PERS did a whole big bad number on them and now they're pissed. I'm glad to have these folks now at the party; I just wished they'd been paying attention in school when the Legislature was giving them their assignments. Just keep reading folks - the party isn't over until the fat lady sings (or until Judge Kantor gives his opinion, whichever comes first).

On the best of times department, I am happy to report that the subject of one of my blog entries "Linda" has finally won her victory over PERS. "Linda" persisted until PERS accounted for every penny of her account, correcting error after error along the way. You'll recall that I told Linda's story back in September ("Fixing a Hole", September 26). Hers was a case of impeccable records butting heads with sloppy files. "Linda", the CPA, wasn't going to back down and, with my encouragement, tracked down some helpful people at PERS who *finaly* got her account straightened out. It only took her two and a half months, not 30 days, but would have been impossible without some intervention. What Linda's case communicates to me is that PERS is shooting itself in the foot over and over again, pissing members off, making others suspicious, and contributing to a culture of incompetence and/or malignity. It is awfully nice to hear of these stories of victory. They are all too rare these days.

On another note, our database project is growing daily. We're getting good community support with donations coming in nearly daily. We haven't reached our $4000 project goal, but we can make it with your donations. If you read this blog, please consider giving a donation as recognition of what this blog contributes to your information content. Now, imagine the information level times 50, which is what the document site is. It is a collection of a staggering array of documents to help you understand this entire mess and help you to understand how things got where they did. It costs money to build a first rate search engine. People have asked what they can do for ME to repay ME for my hard work. Donate to the library. I'm involved there and it is a project that I've contributed many documents from this site to. You can get all the information you need at OregonPERS.info

Excitable Boy

I woke up this morning and checked in with the blog to see if there were new comments to moderate. I hadn't been paying attention to the hit counter for quite some time. Today I see that we're past the 499,000 mark and closing in rapidly on 500,000 hits since October 2003. That's pretty amazing and I'm excited. Half a million page views in 4 years is pretty impressive. Not CNN and not Jack Bog, put compelling nonetheless. Either PERS members have nothing else to do, or the site has proven to be a valuable source of unexpurgated opinion, facts, and (occasionally) humor. The information never stops flowing; my brain never stops working overtime trying to figure out this whole mess. I guess I'm just an excitable boy who's enjoying retirement. Keep up the entertainment PERS. If I didn't have you to kick around, I guess I'd have to kick my dog. She's too cute to kick, so I guess I'll have to console myself that you're not cute, you're not cuddly, and your actions are ugly, mean-spirited, and illegal.

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

We had a pretty good turnout for yesterday's poll. About 77% of the respondents wanted Governor Ted Kulongoski to advise the PERS Board to settle the litigation with the PERS Coalition and be done with this mess. I'm not really surprised by those results, as that has been what the PERS Coalition has been aiming for all along. We want OUR settlement agreement along the lines of the City of Eugene settlement agreement, only in reverse. This time we want what we have won, legally, in court. If we happen to win the Arken case outright, that is icing on the cake, but we've already won and people just can't figure out why we have to keep fighting to get what is already ours.

The perverse twist in all this is that we've got this California law firm, called Orrick, that keeps billing PERS at $750 per hour and has no incentive to settle. They've got this cash cow going and they're milking PERS (the members and retirees) for every nickel it can get. Digging deeper into this manure, Orrick has its fingerprints all over Oregon government, dating back to at least the 1980's. So they've been suckling at the public teat for a very long time. What's odd is that if you look at Orrick's legal portfolio, they clearly have little or no experience in public employee retirement plans or litigation thereof. You have to wonder why, of all the law firms in the US, in Oregon, in the Northwest, would a Public EmployEE Retirement System hire a firm with so demonstrably little experience in litigating pension legislation. Head wide boy Joe Malkin, who oozes sleaze from every pore, specializes in "high stakes litigation" and has represented such clients as the tobacco and drug industry. While I realize that the current PERS litigation is "high stakes" (for retirees, chump change for PERS), nothing in it has any resemblance to product liability litigation. Maybe I'm just living in a different world, one where you'd choose your attorney on the basis of his/her skill set in representing your interests in the type of litigation needed. While I haven't a shred of evidence to support my conjecture, I'd almost be willing to bet that there's a Neil Goldschmidt connection somewhere in all this. Orrick just appears, like Minerva from the brow of Zeus, to rescue PERB in about October 2003, about one month after the new PERS Board takes over and not long before the Goldschmidt scandal breaks into the wide open. I've scoured the net and I find all sorts of possible connections and exposure to Orrick by current PERB members. Maybe they just knew Orrick's work and it was the first name that rolled off their collective tongues. Perhaps they didn't think that Stoel, Rives' great pension attorney - Greg Macpherson - might have a recommendation (or maybe he did. Wonder if Macpherson's run for AG is being financed in any way by donations from Orrick? Note to self - check finance lists).

This post is beginning to wander. In any case, the poll indicates that a large percentage of our readers today think Governor Kulongoski should get on the PERS Board's case to settle the litigation and move on. And I suspect that won't happen, not because of what we think or even what the Governor thinks, but because Orrick is milking too much money out of these cases to quit. Ah, I can see the jigsaw pieces falling into place.

Don't You Wish It Was True?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Funny How Time Slips Away

I was bored this morning while waiting for my daughter to get ready for school. I have the new Mac operating system, Leopard. It comes with Dashcode - a very nice developers tool for whipping out Mac widgets. This are little tiny applications that run from OS X Dashboard and do things useful. I have a widget available to pull RSS feeds from this site. I've just built a new widget called "PERS Lawbreakers" just for fun. If you have a Mac running Tiger or later, you can download this widget just for fun from my personal widget factory. Stuffit will unpack the widget. Just click on the widget and it will load into your Dashboard. For your information, the base date is July 1, 2003. Have fun - or get really pissed off, take your pick.

Bodysnatchers

It's revenge of the bodysnatcher's day - Halloween (or is that tomorrow, All Saints Day?). Whatever. PERS seems completely without shame. They are sending out recalculation notices with reckless abandon. Some members have received notices dated as recently as 10/29 (two days ago) announcing benefit adjustments to be effective on November 1 (tomorrow, All Saints Day). The ratio of bad news to minor good news is about 4 to 1. Polls of retirees on OPDG indicate that only one retiree for every four is getting a small benefit increase from the recalculations. This is diametrically opposed to what PERS brazenly told Judge Kantor on August 16, 2007. This qualifies as PERS' sleaziest move to date. Let's cut the benefits of 80% of recent retirees with a day or two's notice. Kinda hard to plan a budget based on a fixed amount that suddenly changes. I hope that Judge Kantor not only smacks PERS upside the head for this blatant flaunting of the law (see e.g. Judge Kantor's June 2007 ruling, or, perhaps, the Supreme Court's Strunk ruling in March 2005), but I hope they leave the entire PERB and senior PERS officials in a room with Jack Bauer or Alberto Gonzalez for some torture for their behavior. If all this doesn't constitute an "abuse of discretion" or worse, I can't imagine what qualifies.

Whatever Judge Kantor does I want him, the PERS Coalition, the Governor, and all retirees to know that it my humble opinion that what PERS is currently doing is blatantly criminal. It rises above the crap floating around about what Ted K knew about Neil's peccadillos (or is that pecker dildoes - sorry if I offended, I'm in a really foul mood today). It rises above Bernie Guisto's sleaze. What PERS and PERB are doing is just plain wrong and criminal. They deserve jail, not merely a trip into a court to have their hands and faces slapped. They deserve a visit from the Bodysnatchers and the Dementors. Please feel free to add your own opinions here. I know PERS is reading....