Open letter to the "Providence Journal"

This letter speaks for itself:

Dear Editors:

After over 35 years subscribing to your newspaper, we must inform you of our intention to cancel our subscription. This action is not taken without significant thought towards what the people of Rhode Island deserve. We have determined that they do not deserve your unbalanced and hateful treatment of public employees. Your incessant use of page one headlines biasing the pension debate was nauseating, especially when scant attention was paid to many important national and world events that required coverage.

Your paper’s cheerleading of the stealing of $billions from the retirees of this state showed a lack of fairness that is required from a major state newspaper. Your intimidating tactic of making sure all readers in the “Letters” section know when a point of view emanates from a public employee is truly classless. Your lack of judicious treatment of the pension debate was obvious even to those without a direct stake in the issue.

Your newspaper continually allowed one-sided arguments in major editorial pieces that demonized public workers until the vote was taken. After the vote, you finally allowed one major editorial writer to provide a defense of the state retirement system. Your newspaper refused to seek the truth regarding the flawed actuarial assumptions made by the General Treasurer, Gina Raimondo which inflated the pension liability to epic proportions (average life expectancy of 87.6 years) (see attached). Your paper refused to make the case that Raimondo’s assumptions were based on recession era math and that through cost averaging, the pension fund will rebound (The pension fund made 20.4% last year).

Additionally, your newspaper refused to investigate the financial assumptions being made by the Raimondo team that the state would have to contribute 35% of salary for the foreseeable future (pure hogwash). Try doing the math yourselves: An absolute lie was forced down the throats of Rhode Islanders and you made decisions to ignore the truth. Working until the age of 67 is also unwise. This requires a new worker out of college to work 45 years before retirement and carries with it many economic realities not properly addressed or debated by decision makers.

One of your pet providers to the “Letters to the Editor”, Karl Stephens, Barrington (December 17, 2011) criticizes your newspaper for not blasting Jon Corzine for the $billions missing from MF Global Holdings solely because he is a Democrat. Typically, Mr. Stephens is concerned about the $billions stolen from investors but could care less about the $billions stolen from the public employees that invested their lives and money in the state retirement system. We are sick and tired of your 3 nut-case letter writers from Pawtucket, Saunderstown and Barrington that you give voice to every month (you know who they are!)

Simply put; your newspaper is no better than Bernie Madoff. At least Bernie Madoff ended up in jail for life. Nobody will do time for the stealing of $billions from the retirees of this state and your newspaper put the blame solely on the shoulders of the public employees. We all cared about the folks that got robbed by Madoff and others but nobody cared about the public employees. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

Now it’s time to pay the piper; so to speak. We will no longer support your biased newspaper to the tune of $416 per year. The debate about loss of funds to “Crossroads Rhode Island” is just the beginning. Have you checked out the demographics of the folks who go to Twin River Casino? Do you think there are a lot of retirees? Do you think they will continue to drop their extra cash there? Not if they don’t get a COLA for 19 years! The economic fallout from the disastrous decision to so radically change the pension system is just in its infancy.

If you think you treated public employees fairly, just ask the person in the street what they think about public employees. We were demonized by Raimondo and others but you folks at the “Providence Journal” did the greatest disservice to the public employees by not seeking truth as journalists should. It is every journalist’s duty to be fair and unbiased in their investigation and reporting.

After over 35 years; farewell!

tomtoak

Is Rhode Island being lied to about pensions II?

OK: The title says it all. We continue to learn about more lies to Rhode Island regarding the proposed pension changes of Governor Chafee and General Treasurer, Gina Raimondo. This article follows a previous article posted on October 4, 2011 in this blog.

First and foremost, we now learn that the General Treasurer is using 87.6 years as the projected life expectancy of the average retiree. No wonder why she says that the state contribution to the pension has to increase to 35% of salary. How truly foolish is this? The U.S. government says the age should be 78 years. (I'm not linking a source because I read this in the Providence Journal and I do not want people to migrate to that site to make more money for that rag). I just attended a Bar Mitzvah where the oldest person was 85. She was frail and had trouble walking because of a previous stroke. While we all know some people that make it past 87.6 years, start counting all of the people you know that did not make it to that age.

Here is another lie to confuse the issue, courtesy of the Providence Journal. A recent article listed "myths" surrounding the pension system. One myth that they tried to tackle involves issues surrounding the state's required contributions. The Journal clearly states that this issue is simply not true, the state made all of its contributions except for some $60 million in payouts to rescue the wealthy in this state during the banking crisis (they didn't say the "wealthy" - I did because our Governor chose to meet all obligations in bank accounts that exceeded $100,000). Your public employees paid for your bailout.

Here is the rub! Even the General Treasurer has the intelligence to say the following: "The state made contributions "as required by law" (note the quotation marks). When I was working budgets, I was livid when Governor DiPrete tapped into the pension contribution for the first time. I remember seeing half of the state's contribution disappear. This trickery continued during the Sundlun administration and yes, they cooked the books to please the legislature. Gina Raimondo is right when she says that unrealistic numbers were used to justify the state's robbery of its pension accounts. The robbery continued. Don't tell me that the state always made it's contribution. When union bosses have robbed the pension accounts of its members, people go to jail. Nobody in this country has been jailed for pulling corporate pension funds or public pension funds. The Journal rag is lying to everyone when it refuses to make this point perfectly clear. The Providence Journal was absent from these facts at a time when it needed to let the public know. We all know that the Journal wanted to be absent because they never liked public pensions because it makes their newspaper operation look cheap in their worker's eyes. The state did not meet it's pension contribution for over 2 decades. The employees made every contribution and also took a 20% pay cut to bailout the banks. We bailed out the banks with our pensions and our salaries. Thank you very much!

Additionally, the $60 million that the Journal seems to brush aside today would be approximately $232 million out of the projected $7 billion shortfall that Raimondo is claiming because we are all going to live to be 87.6 years of age. Yea!

tomtoak

Rhode Island retirees win round one.

For those following the pension crisis in Rhode Island, I am happy to say that the employees and the retirees won the first round in court. Now the issue goes directly to the RI Supreme Court. Judge Taft-Carter, in a well thought out argument sided with the workers and retirees. Your pension is in fact a contract!! It is therefore, unconstitutional to change the system for those fully vested employees and the existing retirees. Furthermore the judge ruled that the COLA was in fact part of the contract.

This is not stopping our not-so "Democratic" Treasurer, Gina Raimondo from pursuing her Republican agenda of screwing people out of their hard earned pensions. I have written her office on multiple occasions and have received no confirmation. I even went as far as offering possible concessions (if done right) but made it clear that we have a contract. She still intends to pursue a bastardized pension system of 401K and defined benefits for current employees. This strategy is pure Republicanism. Her intent is to eliminate the COLA for retirees for a period of time until the system is deemed healthy again. Can you see a future politician going before the public and saying; "I'm in favor of re-instating the retiree's COLA"? What kind of drug is Raimondo on?

Let's say that she is successful in removing the COLA. What does that mean for me personally? In my case, I will lose about $2000 per year. My taxes go up, my food costs go up, my fuel costs go up etc. I guess in year one I will make the following changes to my life style: No more Providence Journal rag ($440 savings), We eat out twice a week if not more often, so I will no longer have 2 drinks at dinner only 1 ($500 savings), I'll reduce my Cox cable subscription ($500 savings), I'll reduce charitable contributions ($500 savings). I have now made it through year one and largely maintained my standard of living.

Let's go to year 2. I'll need to economize by another $2000. I guess we will only eat out once per week ($3200 savings), but we still have to eat at home but should be able to count $2000 in savings for year 2.

What about year 3? No more dry cleaning my clothes ($700 savings) (I hate the idea of hurting Barry, my friend), we reduce our trips to the movies to once per month ($700 in savings), no more security system on the house ($480 savings) (Sorry Roger, I love you man, we go a long way back to when you were just a kid) and I'll kill a few magazine subscriptions. I'm by year 3.

What about year 4? I'll still need to find another $2000. Now it is time to really attack the charitable giving by gutting donations and my family Temple membership. Wow! That's great, I got through year 4.

Do you think the COLA will return? Dream on! I'll need to find another $2000 to keep up with inflation. I'm starting to run out of ideas. Maybe it's time for the big move. We could sell the house in Rhode Island where we pay $9,000 annually in property taxes and move to the Cape. A home in Mashpee at comparable value is currently taxed at around $3000 annually (Wow, a $6,000 annual savings). Not only do I save here, I will no longer have to pay income tax on my state pension to Rhode Island ($3000 in savings). I can start to collect my social security and my disposable income has now skyrocketed. I can eat out twice a week, hell four times a week. I can have 2 drinks at every meal and I can go to the movies whenever I want.

Let me see? There are currently 60,000 citizens in Rhode Island that share my predicament and many of them are certainly married. That means that 100,000 people could seek similar solutions.

I feel bad for my favorite restaurants and the wait staff, local businesses that I frequent and the charities that I have faithfully supported. If only the state would return to the tax rates for the wealthy that existed before Republican leadership and tax the yachts that line Narragansett Bay, maybe then the state could acquire the financial resources to meet its' obligations to contracted retirees as required by the state's Constitution.

Here's the final kick: Aren't you glad we have such astute businessmen, brilliant politicians and an exceptional Media rag in the State of Rhode Island?

tomtoak

The saga of getting your opinion before the people

While I'm grateful that the Providence Journal finally published my opinion piece this week, I am distressed about some things that happened along the way. For out of state readers, I know this may be a little boring. I'll head to national issues in my next post. For now, here is the story.

The "Journal" endorsed Linc Chafee for governor who ran on a platform of changes and expansion of the sales tax. His plan was to reduce the tax from 7 to 6% and create a second tier of 1% on some items and services. The "Journal" has continually attacked the plan. Not only had the paper been attacking the plan, they have allowed a stream of opinion pieces for key state figures (two who ran against Chafee and lost) who are well known in political circles. The "Journal" gave these writers almost a half page space.

I noticed that there was absolutely no balance on the opinion page which drove me to write my piece. After over 3 weeks and no luck seeing publication, I wanted Governor Chafee to feel that he had support in the community regardless of the one-sided attempt to control thought by the "Journal". I copied my opinion piece, mailed it with a cover letter to Governor Chafee on a Friday. The following Monday I was contacted by the "Journal" as it had become clear that they would publish. My suspicion is that it took an act of the Governor's office to jog the article forward, but I have no evidence of this.

On Thursday, April 7, 2011, the "Journal" printed the article. That's fine but what really upsets me is a simple change they made to improve their position in this thing. At one point in the article the conversation goes as follows: "The "Journal" writes that " state employees continue to receive annual pay increases"". My response was; "this is not true". The "Journal" changed my response to, " this is grossly misleading" (view my previous post of March 25 2011).

I want to say that "grossly misleading" was not my statement and is not accurate. There have been many years that I could point to where state employees got no pay raises. The "Journal" is trying to split hairs here because in any given year, some employees may receive a longevity increase which happens 4 times in a career. This happens in any given year for a small percentage of employees but should never have been part of the "Journal's" blanket statement. The "Journal" tried to create the idea in the head of the readers that state employees get raises every year and that is absolutely not true.

On the "Truth-O-Meter", the Providence Journal fails this test and rates a "Not True". Enough of this topic already!

tomtoak

Tax cuts for the rich killing the middle class

The title of this article says it all, but nobody could say it better than Berkley Bedell. Berkley is a businessman and former politician that dedicated his life to making things better for other people. You have to read his own story (click here).

Yes, America is badly hurt by tax cuts for the rich. There may have been a time to reduce taxes on the wealthy, but that time is not now. The wealthy are continuing to pay a smaller and smaller percentage of tax while the middle class struggles to pay bills on a daily basis. Reaganomics has gone too far. Supply side economic theory has done nothing but make the wealthy wealthier while impoverishing the middle class. Enough is enough!

By the way; my letter to the Providence Journal in support of Governor Chafee's tax plan finally was published. I applaud the Journal for publishing my thoughts, although I must say there is a story within the story that I will not repeat here. I must say that you need a very thick skin to publish these days. Individual opinion seems to mean less in this country. It seems like you have to belong to a "tea party" or something. Offer your opinion and you get swamped by brickbats that do not have a clue about what you are saying. The comments to my opinion piece were largely attacks on my person that had no foundation. The authors of those attacks have probably listened to talk radio for far too long and have no right to question my integrity.

If you have read this blog, you will know that many of Berkley Bedell's comments have been discussed here for some time. Berkley is the age of my mother and he makes me realize that there are still great Americans in this country with the age and wisdom to guide us forward. Thank you Berkley for you service to us all. Please make sure you read Berkley's story (click here).

tomtoak

Chafee's tax plan in Rhode Island makes sense

The following article was a recent letter to the editor of the "Providence Journal" which has not yet been published. It is my hope that they will quickly print this letter as day after day Governor Chafee is taking a beating in this newspaper over his proposals to raise taxes to close a budget deficit. How the hell do the Republicans always think that they can close deficits by reducing taxes for the wealthy? It's refreshing to see a governor take an approach that includes raising revenue as well as reducing spending.

Journal misses the boat on Chafee tax plan

I must say that the “Providence Journal” misinforms when advising citizens on Chafee’s tax plan (Editorial; “Chafee tax plan’s flaws” March 13, 2011). Consider this; Governor Carcieri reduced the number of state workers by 3000, reduced state pensions for future retirees, reduced state income taxes for the wealthiest, furloughed state employees for 12 days, and the deficit grew as did the unemployment rate. Something is not working, but what?

Fewer employees means more outsourcing of government work and privatization costs may very well be playing a significant role in driving deficits. We have seen in past “Journal” reports the exorbitant costs associated with outsourcing work to private concerns by some state agencies. Right-sizing state government may lead to significant savings and assist in improving pension liabilities.

The “Journal” comments that, “state employees continue to receive annual pay increases”; this is not true. Your editorial staff is always looking to balance the budget to the detriment of state employees. This will have a limited effect, and here’s why. From previous “Journal” reports, the estimated annual cost of each state employee is just under $100,000. With approximately 14,000 employees, all salary, fringe and pension cost approximate $1.4 billion. The state budget is estimated to be $7.5 billion this year. Employees account for around 18.5% of total spending. You can’t fix the problem with a focus on only 18.5% of cost, reducing income from the wealthiest while blindly outsourcing government work.

Additionally, you attack the sales tax as being “regressive” and “not exactly what you want to expand”. On the very same day, the “Journal” reports; “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S Bernanke, at the National Governors Association winter meeting …… advised governors that lowering their sales tax rate while broadening the variety of goods and services to which the tax applies would result in a steadier stream of revenues, better positioning states ….” (“Chafee says he’s trying to ‘share the sacrifice’” March 13, 2011).

Governor Chafee is doing exactly the right thing, managing government with his brain and not a lopsided ideology. Does Chafee get it all right? No. The Chafee administration needs to really perform the “Big Audit” of privatized service cost which may be significantly driving deficits and study “right-sizing” government strategies. I would further advise Chafee to reduce the recommended 6% tax on car repairs to 1% and tax the yachts that line Narragansett Bay at the 6% rate. Until the toys of the wealthiest among us are taxed on a par with the taxes facing the middle class, Rhode Island is missing the boat.

Sincerely;

tomtoak

Pathetic Providence Pamphlet

Yes; the Providence Journal (Pro Jo) has become a pathetic newspaper which can't stay in business much longer without major improvements to its news pages. I still subscribe because I don't make all of the decisions in my household. I'm not buying the argument that it is the cost of publication. Hell; the Pro Jo feels as thick as usual on a Sunday morning, there just isn't any news in it. The paper has plenty of pictures, a lot of advertising and little substance.

I actually had trouble finding the front news pages when I picked up my Sunday paper. For a considerable time, I thought the newspaper delivery person had left out the most important part. I was so excited when I found it! Ten pages of nothing. That's right; the entire section was only 10 pages but that's not all, there was a grand total of 3 pages in news items to read. Remove the pictures, advertisements and the special feature and my Sunday paper brought me approximately 3 pages of news from around the world. This is unacceptable and totally disgusting.

Let's move to the paper's local section on Sunday which is 8 pages long. Not counting the obituary page, there was a total of approximately 2.75 pages of local news. A great deal of this newsprint was taken up in community notices which is not really news. Absolutely unbelievable, is my only reaction! I have extreme difficulty talking about the sports page. The Pro Jo thinks that nothing exists outside of the Providence College Basketball team. All year long I had to be subjected to stories of the "glory years"; day after day after day after day after day.... Somebody stop me; please!

I finished reading my Sunday Pro Jo in record time; 4 minutes and that included the editorial pages (2). Sorry Pro Jo; I want more entertainment than that. You just raised the price by 25% and laid of workers; and, I get 4 minutes of reading news on Sunday morning?

I just read that the Huffington Post has started an investigative journalism venture and will be hiring 10 investigative journalists. It was reported that the web site hoped to draw on displaced investigative journalists who have been laid off by the failing newspapers from across the country. This is great news for those of us that go to a computer every day, but not so great news for elderly people that want to stay in touch. The largest and most consistent voting block in this country is no longer getting all of the news that's needed to make informed decisions.

Providence has just hired a consulting firm to come up with a new logo to rebrand the city. The new motto for the city; "Creative Providence", was chosen. The logo is a rather large orange "P". That's right; the city that distinguishes itself because it has the finest design school in the country, the Rhode Island School of Design, has settled on an orange "P". I'm not kidding. Only Sarah Palin could write this comedy. I don't know what Providence paid for this ground breaking venture in self promotion; but next time, save some money and go to one of the local grammar schools.

I think the choice is fitting though; the orange "P" really stands for "Pathetic Providence Pamphlet".

Why orange? I only think of caution signs and road work when I see orange!! Think of Providence every time you think of "P"! I suppose it could have been yellow!

tomtoak

How Long Will Newspapers Last?

How long will Newspapers last? I hope as long as people have puppies. It's been tough times for the industry, trying to adjust to the impact of the Internet. Yesterday, The Rocky Mountain News from Denver, Colorado published its last edition after 150 years. In Rhode Island yesterday, it was reported that the Providence Journal (Pro Jo) was going to lay off over 70 employees. This follows previous downsizing episodes at the paper.

Are these papers failing because of the Internet, or because of cutbacks to their news pages? I can only talk directly about the Providence Journal at this point because this is the only paper that I have read consistently over 35 years. The paper has grown so small that it is now being referred to as the Providence Pamphlet. The nickname demonstrates their problem.

A few years ago, the Pro Jo stopped printing the Wall Street numbers. While providing a broad overview, people could no longer follow their investments. Consequently, they turned to the Internet. Not too long ago, the Pro Jo stopped printing a TV section in their Sunday paper. Do you know how many people really depended on that? I know my wife did; now she gets TV Guide. I used to look forward to the Sports page. Now they cover only the Rhode Island teams with very little mention of other teams around the region (I'm a UMass fan; can't find any news here). Consequently, I'm driven to the Internet again. It seems like every downsizing move they made has driven us to the Internet. Once you're on the Internet for your news, you learn that you get news faster. By the time the paper arrives, it's old news, or no news.

Is the paper making some fundamental mistakes? I think so. The Pro Jo has been against state employees since forever; this doesn't endear them to a lot of readers. They seem to have plenty of print space in some sections; heck, the news seems to only cover 30% of the paper. How long do we have to endure the continuous feature, "Love Stories"? I haven't read one. If I want to read a book, I'll get a good book. This series has taken up miles of newsprint.

People need information that they can directly connect to. The Providence Journal has lost its way and gotten far from things that people want to see in the morning. If it's not in the morning paper, then you know what? We all turn to the Internet. Once there, we have found a way to get our information when we want it and it's free.

At least the Pro Jo finally got one Presidential election right by endorsing Barack Obama. Their support of George Bush through two election cycles had to hurt them. I think they can survive, they just need better leadership. Many subscribers will probably keep buying the paper as long as they have a puppy in their life.

Blog On