Fosyth County Health Care Benefits

Forsyth County, GA residents:

what are you doing at 6pm today?

Here's one to get the blood pressure up on a beautiful autumn morning:  Today at 6pm the Forsyth County Commission is going to vote on health care benefits for ex-employees.  Big deal, you say?  Then don't worry about reading any further, don't concern yourself with how much it's going to cost you (the taxpayer) and certainly don't wonder why government workers should get a free ride when the rest of us have to pay.

According to the Forsyth News, today's the day for the vote on health care benefits for officials.  Keep in mind that we are talking about "Elected officials [including] the commissioners, sheriff, clerk of court, tax commissioner, coroner, solicitor general, probate judge, chief magistrate and two state court judges."

If this vote passes, these employees will, once they are out of office, receive coverage for a year or more, depending on how long they were in office.  Well, okay... I can cope with that, maybe.  But that's not where it ends.  They would then be eligible for coverage until they turn 65, which is when Medicare kicks in.

Now, it's one thing to cover some guy who's in his late 50s to early 60s until he reaches retirement age.  But what about, let's say, a 28 year old sheriff who serves one year?  Are we really expected to foot the bill for his medical coverage for the next 37 years?

When someone in the private sector finds him-or-herself out of work, we have to buy coverage through COBRA, at prices which could be seen as akin to extracting a pound of flesh.  And in the majority of cases, after 18 months you're on your own.  But not these folks - apparently they feel we should keep on paying their bills, even after they've been voted out.

Think about it - what's the difference between being fired from the private sector and voted out of a public sector position?  As far as I can see, it's the amount of people who say "You're outta here!"  George Orwell hit the nail on the head when he wrote: "All animals are equal.  But some animals are more equal than others." 

So again I ask Forsyth County, GA residents - what are you doing at 6pm today? Hopefully I'll see you at the Board of Commissioners meeting.

Quit Wasting My Money!

One of the many things Mum taught me was to save up for things I wanted to buy.  It's served me well and likely has something to do with a credit rating of 800+.  Now, I'm not a top mathematician by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems to me that the cash inflow needs to be greater than the outflow if you're going to survive for very long.

So it kind of irks me - well no, let me put that more honestly; it ticks me off no end to see governments violating this basic principle.  Did the leaders' mamas not teach them anything?  It frustrates me badly enough that I'm finally giving in to the urge to write a post on politics.  Oh the horror. You can thank this AP article for getting my goat.

It seems to me that here in the US we have a pretty low tax rate.  And while I don't like seeing how much gets yanked out of the pay cheque, there is a need for it.  (Actually, I once heard Glenn Beck make an amusing comparison of government to Bernie Madoff, explaining that Madoff had to convince people to give him their money, whereas the government forces you.)  But the US is currently running a national debt of $14.7 trillion - that's a lot of 0s, folks.  If you really want an eye-opener, check out the US National Debt Clock.  Have a look at the top left, then the bottom left.  Social Security Liability is even greater than the National Debt.

The government clearly needs to pull more money out of the taxpayer if we're ever going to turn this around.  But it's going to take a long time to undo this damage.  Our children's children are still going to pay for the mistakes of our - and previous - generations.  But - and this is a BIG BUT - if they're going to screw things down tighter, then they also need to be responsible with what we're giving them.  Who's working for who anyhow?  The last I knew, we (in theory) put them in office so they can represent us.  There's a reason they're called civil servants or public servants.  They're supposed to serve us, not the other way around.

I don't mind paying higher taxes IF government stops spending my money recklessly.  I might as well get a pile of cash and burn it myself if they're not going to do their job properly.  At least I would get a little warmth out of it this winter.  And don't even get me started on those bogus incentive bonuses right now.  I'm going to have to save that for another post.

Georgia License Plate Vote

Hands up who got the email that was doing the rounds a little while ago where you could click on a link and vote for the new GA license plate.  It hit my email inbox at least three times.  I voted for one of the three designs that had "In God We Trust" on the bottom where the owner's county of residence would normally be.  Apparently a lot of other people did too.  So many, in fact, that the three finalists were: (drumroll) all three designs that included the words "In God We Trust".  Looks like there are a lot of folks out there who like making this declaration to the world.  And good on them.

However (I bet you knew there would be a "however" to this post), according to this article on Yahoo, we misunderstood what we were voting for.  You see, although three of the pictures of the designs up for vote included the phrase "In God We Trust", what they didn't tell us is that you have to pay $1 extra to get a sticker with these words instead of the county sticker.  As the article says:  "The three online winners happened to be the ones with "In God We Trust" at the bottom, leading the state to believe that voters may have decided on the phrase instead of the design."  Ya think???

So how is the state handling this?  They are holding a second vote involving the three winning plates.  Only this time they are clarifying that the phrase is not part of the plate.  Okay, that's fine.  I don't particularly want to force people with different beliefs to have the phrase on their car.  And the good thing is that I now know that I can buy a sticker for $1 and plaster it over my car.  I guess my complaint/question is - why on earth wasn't this handled better so that we could save some time and taxpayer money?  If I fouled up that badly in my job, I'd likely be out of work.  But then that's the difference between civil servants (US: public servants) and those of us in the business world who pay their salaries.

The amusing part of this story is the claim that a certain gun enthusiasts' website was encouraging its readers to vote for the plate with a design showing a peach which looked remarkably like a horse's patootey.  ""If we win, everybody in Georgia state will be driving with horse's [rear] license plate".  Could be interesting...