Congressional pay facts
E-mails claiming ridiculously high retirement benefits for congressmen have been circulating for years. The most recent one claimed they received full salary for life after one term of service.
The facts:
Congressmen pay 8 percent of their first $98,000 in salary into their retirement fund.
The pension formula is as follows:
Average of three highest salaries multiplied by years of service multiplied by .025 (2.5 percent).
The Web (and TV & radio) is full of misinformation (if not outright lies) designed to achieve some political end or demonize something or someone.
The truth is easily available. When you read or see or hear something that sounds fishy go to Google or FactCheck.org and check it out before you perpetuate erroneous information.
I Googled "Congressional retirement benefits" It is all right there.
Gerald Jehle
Beulah
Vote no on SB1074
We are writing this letter to encourage you to please call or write your Michigan legislators and ask them to please vote no on Senate Bill 1074, which would force public schools to privatize their support staff.
It is hard to conceive that one senator, John Pappageorge, R-Troy, would propose a bill that would result in so many people losing their jobs, their benefits, and their retirement that they have been paying into for so many years.
It is just as hard to comprehend that one would want to do this in a state that has the highest unemployment rate in the country. This will be devastating for us (one public school maintenance worker and one unemployed person) personally, but I am sure it will be just as devastating for thousands of others, who will be losing their jobs, benefits and retirement if this bill passes.
Again, please call or write your Michigan legislators and ask them to vote no on SB 1074.
Dennis and Cindy Choike
Kalkaska
Build new dams
Biomass? What they really are is clear-cut power plants. We who depend on wood heat to survive will be bidding against every power company in the state buying 10 semi loads a day per plant year around.
As the available forests melt away, the price of wood will hit the roof. Maybe that's the plan, make wood scarce and expensive and you'll be forced to use their gas, oil and electricity to heat with or freeze.
At that point I bet they'll magically convert those plants to coal in the public's interest, of course.
Forests the world over are being leveled at an unprecedented rate. Trees, remember, are the things that make the oxygen that makes all life here possible. Cut enough and someday we all may be hauling around little oxygen bottles.
Stopping the plants here is a start, but what we need is a statewide moratorium because these forest-eating Frankensteins will send trucks where ever there is a tree left in the state.
Coal plants with scrubbers are almost pollution-free. If it's a choice between leveling our forests or building new dams, build the dams.
Keith Lints
Traverse City
Keep up the good work
I want to express my appreciation to the Record-Eagle for recent investigative activity to expose possible violations of the public trust.
I have heard complaints about "muckraking" at the R-E that are not warranted. My personal experiences have demonstrated remarkable restraint on behalf of the R-E. I can personally relate situations where "string-pullers" (as described recently by Bill O'Brien) were NOT cited publicly for misconduct -- where they could have been.
There is little doubt now about the official failures in handling the situation with the police officer who was not cited for the accident on Cedar Run Road. However it is less clear about the situation where the NMC Board agreed to purchase a building where an NMC Trustee served as the listing agent for a property owned by a business partner of the Trustee. We don't know if it just smells bad, or indeed is rotten, but it is essential that the NMC Board understand that they will be held accountable.
One has only to look at the membership of the Board to see that insider deals could easily lead to a situation like the debacle at the septage treatment facility. Please keep up the good work.
Dan Tholen
Traverse City
Check on contractors
I recently had a vintage china set (never used, still in the box) and Franklin Mint sterling coins in a box go missing. I had no break-ins and no visitors with the exception of a builder/contractor in my house.
I am writing to recommend that all who hire a builder/contractor do six things:
1. Get three references and call them.
2. Ask the builder for receipts for all material. Don't get fooled by talk like, "no one has ever asked me before; you have injured my integrity."
3. Be watchful and check all boxes and bags carried out of your house.
4. Don't stop this policy because they have worked for you for a while.
5. Don't think because the ad was in a newspaper or they have a license all is well (verify license number).
6. If asked, don't make out the contractor's checks for work done to others.
If something does turn up missing, call the sheriff or police. Without a security camera in your home, it's doubtful it will help you, but somehow it might help someone else. Also, call where the ad was placed.
Forewarned is forearmed.
Sara Roberson
Traverse City
Hold the sexism
On the glass door that leads into a local Burger King is a poster that stands about the height of a preschooler. Down the middle of the poster is a white line that separates the predominately blue side from the predominately pink side. The blue side of the poster says, "Four toys for boys," in bold block letters above images of NASCAR racers. On the pink side of the poster is a smiling princess below the words, "four toys for girls," written in thin, curly cursive.
The girl side boasts a plastic "pinkalicious" tiara among the so-called girl toys. In the center of the poster is the phrase "Cute Pursuit." "Cute," of course being written in frail pink cursive, and "Pursuit" in a dominating shade of dark blue, printed in square letters that slant to show speed and towering strength.
I'm not in the field of visual communications. I don't have a degree in marketing, or gender studies. It doesn't take an expert to see that Burger King thinks that it can cleanly divide feminine and masculine traits with a single white line.
What I want to say is, "I'll take a kid's meal, hold the sexism."
Tim McDonald
Traverse City
