Showing off

Good Charlotte - Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous

I guess some state employees are just better than others.

As a former state employee who’s married to a state employee and has known a lot of talented, hard-working state employees, I know it’s not cool for me to say this but some of the paychecks that some of these folks bring home are ludicrous.

Having said that, the effort by Michigan’s top dogs to take away state employee benefits and force union concessions while paying themselves enough to afford champagne wishes and caviar dreams is really offensive.

Governor Rick Snyder, a multi-millionaire, makes almost $160,000. His lieutenant, Brian Calley, is paid $111,500. Lawmakers make $71,685, not including their supplemental salaries. (The Speaker of the House gets an additional $24,300; the Senate Majority Leader brings home an additional $23,400; and even the Minority Floor Leader enjoys a $9,000 supplement.) Snyder's minions are doing okay too:

• John Nixon, the 38-year-old state budget director from Utah, makes almost $115,000 more than what his predecessor earned.

• Agriculture and Rural Affairs director Keith Creagh and Environmental Quality director Dan Wyant are being paid $5,000 more than their predecessors.

• Transportation director Kirk Steudle got a $5,000 raise.

• The highest earner in the Executive Office is chief of staff Dennis Muchmore at $171,000. Deputy chief of staff Jeff Barnes makes $145,000; senior advisor Dick Posthumus is paid $170,000.

• Communications director Geralyn Lasher, strategy director Bill Rustem, external relations director Terri Reid, legal counsel Mike Gadola, and Washington, D.C. office director Bill McBride are paid $140,000 each.

• Office manager Allison Scott is pulling down $120,000 and administration director Marsha Quebbeman is raking in $100,000.

Will someone please tell me why the governor’s office manager needs to be paid $120,000? No wonder state employee morale is low and many of the common folks are opting to retire. Maybe someone can conduct a study to determine how the mass exodus is going to impact the quality and availability of the government services that taxpayers demand but allegedly don’t want to pay for.

Now the State Officers Compensation Commission (SOCC) – the body charged with determining the salaries and expense allowances of the governor and lieutenant governor, legislators, attorney general, secretary of state and Supreme Court justices – is recommending that the Supremes receive a three percent raise in 2013 and another three percent increase the following year. Their salaries would go up to $169,548 in 2013 and $174,634 in 2014. And since the salaries of the more than 600 other state judges are tied to the Supreme Court level, they also receive increases.

The seven members of the SOCC are appointed by the governor.

I’m tired of hearing that we need to pay exorbitant salaries in order to attract top talent. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Michigan’s unemployment rate is over 10 percent. I’m willing to bet employers don’t need to struggle too hard to find applicants in today’s economy who are qualified and would accept less than a king’s ransom to take the jobs.

By the way, there’s a website run by the Lansing State Journal that allows you to find out what most state employees are paid. I made the mistake of looking up what Ex-wife Number One makes one time. That’s when I learned there is no god.



Sources: Detroit Free Press, Gongwer News Service, Michigan Department of Civil Service, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Natalie Merchant - These Are Days

Why whine about Weiner and not Wall Street?

It turns out that Anthony Weiner is a real dick.

So?

Have the residents of New York’s 9th congressional district suffered from Weiner’s inappropriate online liaisons? Was he on the clock or did he use government property to bend his marital vows? Was he collecting kiddy porn or trying to entice underage boys to meet him at seedy Brooklyn motels for twisted trysts?

No. He lied. He made a mistake and he lied about it.

And even though the only person to whom he needs to answer is his spouse, Huma Abedin, whom he married last year, he’s being excoriated on the radio and online. I can’t scroll down my Facebook wall without being inundated with Weinergate-related headlines:

• Pelosi Calls For Ethics Investigation Of Weiner In Wake Of Sexting Scandal

• Republicans Look To Tar Democrats With Weiner Scandal

• Anthony Weiner's Survival Chances Deemed Slim By Insiders, Experts

• Anthony Weiner's Twitter Sex Scandal: 9 Theories on Why Men Cyber Cheat

• Weiner Fesses Up to Online and Phone Relationships, Won't Resign

• Anthony Weiner Finds Few Close Allies in His Party

I’m not Weiner’s Number One fan – he voted for the Iraq war in 2002 and is pro-Israel to a fault – but I respected his eloquence and toughness until this earth-shattering scandal broke. Now I’m just annoyed that a man as smart and helpful at times as this SUNY Plattsburgh graduate allowed himself to be neutralized by conservative blogger and right-wing smearmeister Andrew Breitbart.

Is sending a photo of yourself clad in tight boxers to a young woman in Seattle who follows you on Twitter.com a criminal act? No. Is lying about it reason to remove you from office and send you to the Slammer? No. Is the whole mess worthy of a congressional investigation, as Nancy Pelosi has promised? Absolutely not. Weiner showed an immature lapse in judgment and a peculiar understanding of what it means to be faithful to one’s spouse. His actions, however sleazy, didn’t result in a single person drowning near Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Weiner didn’t cause anyone’s life savings to vanish into thin air or reveal the secret identity of any covert Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

A few months ago, one of my favorite writers, Matt Taibbi, wrote a report for Rolling Stone magazine entitled, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?” that includes the following:

“Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.”

Taibbi goes on to point out, “The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industry-wide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.”

I bet Congressman Weiner is wishing he stole billions from thousands right about now instead of sending yucky pictures to a few adult women.

I started to bicker a bit yesterday with one of my Facebook friends, an intelligent and opinionated woman who posted judgmental statuses and prosecutorial tweets about Weiner. Then I realized it’s futile. People are going to vilify any public official who does anything wrong because we’re so tired of them doing so much wrong. Our ability to prioritize, our sense of perspective, of what’s Tier One and what’s not, are so skewed and worn down by greedy, scummy politicians of both parties that we’ve run out of patience and we’re ready to crucify at the drop of a pair of gray boxers. We hear so much crap about so many office holders – some true and some not – that rather than take a fresh look at each revelation, we lump all offenders in the same category and move on with our sanctimonious day. And the marketers of sleaze, the Breitbarts and Roves and Limbaughs, who are counting on our fatigue and resultant lack of discernment, laugh all the way to the bank.

Anthony Weiner isn’t a dick because he tweeted suggestive photos. He’s a dick because he reacted the same way my six-year-old does when I catch her in the act of doing something wrong: he denied it, then blamed it on someone else, then confessed when he realized that’s the best course of action. And for that, people on the left lost a powerful spokesperson and gained one more reason to be disappointed.


Sources: New York Times, Rolling Stone.

Sly & The Family Stone - Family Affair

It's better to be loved than loaded.

I used to want to be rich and famous and live in a high-rise apartment right downtown somewhere with lots of glass and stainless steel and cool furniture and window shades that could be opened and closed by remote control and a doorman named Pete who accepted my packages and whistled for taxis when I needed them.

I wanted a job that wasn’t 9:00 to 5:00 and didn’t require a suit and tie, although I wanted a closetful in case I wanted to dine somewhere fancy or attend a premiere or be the keynote speaker at a conference on an island.

I wanted a black Jaguar with a tan interior waiting in my reserved space next to the elevator in the garage underneath my building, and access to the rooftop heliport if I needed to take my chopper somewhere. I used to envision framed magazine covers featuring my photo adorning the walls of my apartment’s foyer, and an automated bar just off the sunken living room with sparkling crystal glasses hanging above.

Then I grew up.

Now I know that it’s better to spend time adjusting a child’s sissy bar than waste a night drinking in one.

Now I know that a guy can be rich without having more than a few hundred clams in the bank, and that a Jaguar is way too small and impractical for a family with four kids.

Fancy dining is overpriced and overrated, I realize now, and home cooking tastes better anyway. There’ll be plenty of time for restaurants when the kids are grown; for now I’m savoring the fact that they still want to eat and talk with me, albeit with food in their mouths.

A helicopter would just take me away from my family, and island conferences wouldn’t be half as fun as the Michigan Athletic Club just ten minutes away. It’s easy to feel like the richest of kings when you’re reclining in a deck chair and your happy, healthy children are swimming and diving and playing a few feet away.

I have more remote controls than I can keep track of, for more televisions than I ought to have, and window treatments that are easy enough to open just by pulling a drawstring.

Thankfully, I can still open my own doors and accept my own packages, and the last time I needed a taxi was when I was too drunk to drive home. I don’t party like that anymore. I’ve grown up. People are depending on me.

I don’t need a closetful of suits or the kind of fame that comes with magazine covers and Hollywood premieres. It’s much more fun to bring home a rented DVD from the family section of the neighborhood video store and make popcorn, and my favorite photos are the ones of my smiling wife and kids.

The grass is sometimes greener on the other side of the fence, to be sure. But rabbits seem to like my lawn and my kids like the rabbits so my grass is green enough. And not everyone is fortunate enough to have to move a scooter or skateboard or soccer ball before they can get their Chevy minivan in the driveway.

Plastic cups hold liquid just as well as crystal.