Public employee pensions

See here for the shell game going on in Olympia, capital of Washington State, about public employee pensions. The double-talk from these state representatives is so disingenuous I wonder how they can keep a straight face. But that's to be expected. What I want to talk about is the stipulation that we must never, never, ever under any circumstances consider modifying pension benefits. Why not?

Well, the argument goes -- you can read it right in the article -- we made a promise to all those public employees, and we wouldn't want to go back on it. The truth, of course, is that "we" didn't promise anything. Those same politicians who can't be trusted to tell the truth about the status of the pensions promised some public employees' unions that they'd make such and such payments. And the truth of that is that they didn't promise "they'd" make the payments, they promised that I would.

Now I get this basic social contract idea that the government speaks on behalf of all of us and we have a responsibility to blah, blah, blah. But look, my own, privately funded retirement account to a 40 percent hit over the last year. I wasn't planning on that. Life is tough, and sometimes it's unfair. I'm not quite ready to accept the idea that I, as a taxpayer, am responsible to make good on the unfairness that affects me as well as the unfairness that affects the public employee. No deal.

Let's not have any talk about putting retired teachers out on the street or cutting off medical care for diabetic retired bus drivers. I'm talking about marginal changes to benefits (especially future benefits) to reflect the reality of the world. Pension benefits are fair game.