The TRUMP POTUS "Tribute" & "Tribulations" of the Politically Incorrect....!

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I'm sure that Preet Bharara is chuckling at the irony of this.....

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/geoffrey-berman-trump_us_5acc09dce4b0337ad1eb041c

U.S. Attorney Behind The Michael Cohen Raid Is A Trump Appointee
Geoffrey Berman even donated to Trump's campaign.

By Amanda Terkel
04/09/2018 11:14 pm ET Updated 2 hours ago

President Donald Trump was clearly furious Monday about the news that the FBI had raided the office and hotel room of his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen.

“I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys ― a good man. And it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday evening.

Trump has long maintained that special counsel Robert Mueller needs to end his investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election ― and whether there was collusion with the Trump campaign.

While the Cohen raid came as a referral from Mueller’s team, it was not officially part of his investigation. It was executed by the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. And the man running that office, interim U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman, is a Trump appointee whom the president personally met with.

Mueller is required to consult with his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, if he comes across information worth investigating that does not officially fit with his mandate of looking into Russia’s role in the 2016 election. Rosenstein then can refer the matter to a U.S. attorney’s office.

It’s not easy to search a practicing lawyer’s office. As The Washington Post reported, “To serve a search warrant on a practicing attorney, federal prosecutors are required to obtain approval from top Justice Department officials. That means the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, ... as well as Justice Department officials in Washington, probably signed off.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed Berman to the job in January. Berman has a reputation among his friends and co-workers as a sharp, hard-working lawyer. And he’s certainly not part of any Democratic cabal out to get Trump: He donated $5,400 to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Berman also met personally with Trump when he was up for the job, according to CNN.

Trump fired the previous U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, just three months into his presidency. Bharara rejected Trump’s overtures to establish a direct line of communication, and he told the White House he did not find the contact appropriate. Less than a day later, Trump fired him.

Bharara said that he has confidence that if his old office is handling the investigation into Cohen, it won’t be the partisan hit job the president is trying to claim it is.

“If the reporting is true, particularly the part about this being approved by the Southern District of New York Attorney’s Office, which I used to lead, are all people who are Republican, and all people who have basically been handpicked by Donald Trump,” Bharara said.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Cohen is under federal investigation for possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations ― likely in connection with his payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Cohen has acknowledged paying her $130,000 shortly before the election. Daniels has said the money was so that she would not talk about the sexual relationship she claims she had with Trump in 2006.

The president has said he knew nothing about the payment.
 

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It's a WITCH HUNT!

Forget about my Attorney-client privilege. What about all those broads I paid off?

On a side note. Hello. Hope you are okay. I have been away.
 

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His payoff to CBS TV is apparently still being honored, since they cut the part about Trump's, um, small hands :p from their Stormy Daniels interview.....
 

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"...In reality, Trump’s criticism of Amazon has nothing to do with its business practices. What really irks Trump is its CEO, Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, which dings Trump repeatedly in its journalism. Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, doesn’t own any news organizations critical of Trump, and the small amount of money he’s donated to politicians in recent years has all gone to Republicans. Walmart is probably safe from Trump, even if it shouldn’t be....."


https://finance.yahoo.com/news/maybe-trump-attacking-walmart-not-amazon-195710761.html

Maybe Trump should be attacking Walmart, not Amazon

Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance
April 6, 2018

If President Trump really cares about small businesses threatened by giant retailers, the proper target isn’t Amazon (AMZN). It’s Walmart (WMT).

Trump, of course, has been on a tirade against Amazon, essentially complaining about 3 things: 1. It doesn’t pay the US Postal Service enough for package delivery; 2. It doesn’t collect sales tax on third-party products sold on its site; 3. It hurts small businesses.

Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, joined in the fight on April 6, telling CNBC that Amazon has “absolutely dominated the retail business; they’ve put tons of retailers out of business. The president is focused on Amazon and the economic issues that are impacting retailers all around the country.”

The true titan of retail

But Walmart, not Amazon, is the true titan of retail, and it’s also a scarier small-business bogeyman. Walmart’s 2017 revenue was $486 billion. Amazon’s was just $178 billion. That makes Walmart 2.7 times larger than Amazon. Walmart employs 2.3 million people, 1.5 million of them in the United States. Amazon employs 566,000 (and doesn’t break out US numbers). Walmart isn’t growing as fast as Amazon, which is the biggest retailer online, but Walmart still has a much bigger footprint in the US economy.

Walmart probably hurts small businesses more than Amazon does, as well. The Walmart effect is well-known, by now. When a Walmart opens up, nearby retailers go bust by the dozens, because they can’t match Walmart’s scale or low prices. To preserve local businesses, some communities won’t even let Walmart open stores.

Amazon’s effect on small businesses is more mixed. It certainly does pressure local shops on both price and convenience, because it lets shoppers buy thousands of everyday items without even leaving home. But many small businesses sell through Amazon, reaching a nationwide or even global market they’d never find on their own.

Walmart also uses the US Postal Service to deliver packages, and if it doesn’t get rates similar to what Amazon pays, then somebody at Walmart screwed up. Yet Trump hasn’t complained about Walmart (or any other retailer) using the Postal Service as its “delivery boy.” Only Amazon.

Third-party tax collection affects both retailers. Amazon collects sales taxes in two states, Washington and Pennsylvania, that have passed laws requiring it to do so. Walmart’s “marketplace” program allows third-party vendors to sell on its web site, similar to Amazon, and collects taxes if the vendor wants it to. But Walmarts leaves it up to the vendor to decide. This is basically a situation where state laws need to catch up with technology, which they probably will. More states are likely to pass laws requiring shoppers to pay sales tax on online purchases, just as they do in stores. That will settle it.

Trump might use his position as president to call for better state laws, or even a federal one, solving the tax-gap problem regarding online retailers. But he’s not. Instead, he’s claiming that Amazon is harming small businesses by not collecting sales tax on their behalf. Um, what?

Presumably, he means that small businesses selling on Amazon (Group 1) have an advantage over small businesses not selling on Amazon (Group 2), because the first group sells without a sales tax, while the second group does charge a sales tax. So a product ordered on Amazon from a Group 1 seller would effectively be cheaper than the identical product bought in a store from a Group 2 seller, with the entire difference being the amount of the sales tax. But if it were really this simple, then Group 2 would level the playing field by joining Group 1 and selling on Amazon! Trump dismissed.

In reality, Trump’s criticism of Amazon has nothing to do with its business practices. What really irks Trump is its CEO, Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, which dings Trump repeatedly in its journalism. Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, doesn’t own any news organizations critical of Trump, and the small amount of money he’s donated to politicians in recent years has all gone to Republicans. Walmart is probably safe from Trump, even if it shouldn’t be.

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect the fact that Walmart lets third-party vendors sell products on its web site, similar to the way Amazon does.
 

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From "fake news" CNN.....

http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/09/technology/fake-black-lives-matter-facebook-page/index.html

The biggest Black Lives Matter page on Facebook is fake

by Donie O'Sullivan
@CNNTech
April 9, 2018: 4:59 PM ET

For at least a year, the biggest page on Facebook purporting to be part of the Black Lives Matter movement was a scam with ties to a middle-aged white man in Australia, a review of the page and associated accounts and websites conducted by CNN shows.

The page, titled simply "Black Lives Matter," had almost 700,000 followers on Facebook, more than twice as many as the official Black Lives Matter page. It was tied to online fundraisers that brought in at least $100,000 that supposedly went to Black Lives Matter causes in the U.S. At least some of the money, however, was transferred to Australian bank accounts, CNN has learned.

Fundraising campaigns associated with the Facebook page were suspended by PayPal and Patreon after CNN contacted each of the companies for comment. Donorbox and Classy had already removed the campaigns.

The discovery raises new questions about the integrity of Facebook's platform and the content hosted there. In the run-up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress this week, Facebook has announced plans to make the people running large pages verify their identity and location. But it's not clear that the change would affect this page: Facebook has not said what information about page owners it will disclose to the public -- and, presented with CNN's findings, Facebook initially said the page didn't violate its "Community Standards."

Only after almost a week of emails and calls between CNN and Facebook about this story did Facebook suspend the page, and then only because it had suspended a user account that administrated the page.

The discovery also raises questions about Facebook's commitment to change, and to policing its platform, even in the midst of its PR offensive leading up to Zuckerberg's testimony. Not for the first time, Facebook took action against a major bad actor on its site not on its own but because journalists made inquiries.

Indeed, Facebook was told of concerns about the page some time ago. Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, told CNN that Black Lives Matter had, suspecting the page was a scam, contacted Facebook about removing it a few months ago.

Almost 700,000 users followed the page, which was not disabled by Facebook until several days after CNN brought it to the company's attention.

The Facebook page was -- separate from Facebook's suspension of it -- apparently taken down by a person who administrated the page shortly after CNN contacted one of the Australian men who may be associated with it. "Black Lives Matter" appears to have been set up some time in 2016.

The people behind the page also ran a hugely popular Facebook Group also titled "Black Lives Matter." With almost 40,000 members, it appears to be the biggest group on the platform professing to be supporting Black Lives Matter. Facebook Groups are similar to traditional discussion forums, and unlike pages, people normally need to request to join.

The page consistently linked to websites tied to Ian Mackay, a National Union of Workers official in Australia. The union represents thousands of workers across various industries.

A spokesperson for the National Union of Workers said Tuesday that it has suspended Mackay and one other official while it investigates the situation.

The union "is not involved in and has not authorized any activities with reference to claims made in CNN's story," National Secretary Tim Kennedy said in a statement.

Mackay has registered dozens of websites, many on issues tied to black rights. In April 2015, Mackay registered blackpowerfist.com. Mackay's name, email address, phone number and other details appeared in the registration records for the site until July 2015, when the website enabled a feature that allows site owners to hide their identities and contact information.

The Facebook page continually drove traffic to websites associated with blackpowerfist.com, which was eventually turned into a Reddit-like discussion forum. One of the websites included blacklivesmatter.media, for which Mackay is listed as the administrative and technical contact in at least one archived internet record.

A few days after Mackay registered blackpowerfist.com, an anonymous Facebook profile under the name "BP Parker" shared a link to the website. This same profile was an administrator of the "Black Lives Matter" Facebook page until the page was suspended, a Facebook spokesperson has told CNN.

Another anonymous account, under the name "Steve Parks," linked to another site first registered by Mackay -- again, just a few days after internet records indicate he registered it.

As recently as last month, both BP Parker and Steve Parks were listed as administrators on the Black Lives Matter Facebook group tied to the Facebook page.

The people behind the websites and the Facebook page also encouraged people to donate through various online fundraising platforms, including Donorbox.

"Our mission is to raise awareness about racism, bigotry, police brutality and hate crimes by exposing through social media locally and internationally stories that mainstream media don't," a message on the group's Donorbox page read.

"We have built a following through hard work, dedication and the generosity of supporters like you that pitch in a what they can to help us promote or share our page and also pay to boost the stories the mainstream media try to suppress through paid ads," it added.

Facebook did not comment when asked if ads were purchased to boost the page on its platform.

Another fundraiser removed by Donorbox, which the company confirmed was run by the same people, billed itself as an "Education And Training Portal Sponsorship Fund" that promised "online courses that educate people about the struggle of civil rights leaders and activists."

Fundraisers also ran on PayPal, Patreon, and Classy.

A source familiar with some of the payments processed said at least one of the accounts was tied to an Australian IP address and bank account. At least one fundraising account was tied to Ian Mackay by name, according to the source.

Another source also familiar with some of the payments processed told CNN that the group had raised around $100,000 that they were aware of. The source also said the fundraisers were linked to Australia.

Both sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because their companies' policies prohibit the sharing of some information about fundraisers.

The websites associated with the group are currently registered using common features that keep the identity and contact information for the people behind the website private.

CNN reached out to Mackay last month to ask about his involvement with the "Black Lives Matter," Facebook page. He denied running it. "I once bought the domain name only and sold it," he told CNN when asked about a Black Lives Matter website that was once registered to his name.

Within a few hours, the Facebook page had been deactivated.

It wasn't the first time the Facebook page changed after Mackay was asked about his involvement in it.

In December, after a freelance investigator, Jeremy Massler, who was the first person to publicly note Mackay's apparent links to the page, wrote a blog post about Mackay, the page was taken down for a brief period before re-emerging.

Massler reached out to CNN about the Facebook page following CNN's reporting on fake Black Lives Matter pages run by a Russian government-linked troll group. Massler pointed CNN to the internet records for websites linked to by the page.

After an investigation of its own, CNN presented its findings to Facebook last week. Despite CNN outlining the page's links to fundraising accounts that had by then been suspended on other platforms, Facebook initially said its investigation into the page "didn't show anything that violated our Community Standards."

On Monday morning, Facebook disabled the BP Parker profile for violating its community standards. The company disabled the page as a result, a spokesperson told CNN.

The campaign's accounts on Donorbox, PayPal, Classy, and Patreon have all been suspended.

Donorbox told CNN in an email, "This is an organization that we banned months ago. They signed up as the operator of a popular FB page and a BLM social news platform."

"We banned the account after a couple of donors complained that they thought they donated to the grassroots organization."

The company added that most of the donations came from people clicking links on Facebook and on websites run by the people behind the campaign.

One of the Donorbox campaigns that was active as recently as February of this year included an email address for Black Lives Matter Memphis. P. Moses, a member of Black Lives Matter Memphis, said her group had nothing to do with the fundraiser. Donorbox removed the campaign, the company told CNN.

Patreon and PayPal suspended the accounts after CNN asked the companies about them. Classy had already suspended the account on its platform as it didn't make it through its approval process.

PayPal and Donorbox would not specify how much money was raised using their platforms. Patreon said only $194 was raised through their site.

Classy said that the campaign did not make it through its final approval process and no money raised was transferred to the people behind the campaign.

Mackay did not provide answers to multiple questions from CNN about his apparent links to the scheme. "My domain name buying and selling is a personal hobby," he told CNN.

He declined multiple opportunities to clarify his role. "What is the point in speaking to you given that you are going to run your story either way," he wrote in one message to CNN.

Cullors said she found CNN's findings disturbing. She said fake fundraisers diminish the real work the movement does. "We rely on donors who believe in our work and our cause and that money will be used in a way that is respectful," Cullors said.

"It's important to remember the movement was organic and no organizations started the protests that spread across the country," DeRay Mckesson, a prominent black activist, told CNN. "The consequences of that is it hasn't been easy to think about authenticity in the digital space."

-- Carly Walsh contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Donorbox and Classy removed the fundraising accounts after CNN brought them to their attention. In fact, the accounts were removed before CNN brought them to the companies' attention. Additionally, an earlier version of this story misidentified the person who answered questions about the fundraiser purporting to support Black Lives Matter Memphis. P. Moses spoke to CNN on behalf of Black Lives Matter Memphis, but is not its spokesperson.

CNNMoney (New York)
First published April 9, 2018: 4:59 PM ET
 

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...dollar43000-phone-booth/ar-AAw1Qq2?ocid=ientp

UT ROW

SophisticatedShimmeringGordonsetter-size_restricted.gif
 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/14/business/pension-finance-oregon.html

A public university president in Oregon gives new meaning to the idea of a pensioner.

Joseph Robertson, an eye surgeon who retired as head of the Oregon Health & Science University last fall, receives the state’s largest government pension.

It is $76,111.

Per month.

That is considerably more than the average Oregon family earns in a year.

Oregon — like many other states and cities, including New Jersey, Kentucky and Connecticut — is caught in a fiscal squeeze of its own making. Its economy is growing, but the cost of its state-run pension system is growing faster. More government workers are retiring, including more than 2,000, like Dr. Robertson, who get pensions exceeding $100,000 a year.

The state is not the most profligate pension payer in America, but its spiraling costs are notable in part because Oregon enjoys a reputation for fiscal discipline. Its experience shows how faulty financial decisions by states can eventually swamp local communities.

Oregon’s costs are inflated by the way in which it calculates pension benefits for public employees. Some of the pensions include income that employees earned on the side. Other retirees benefit from long-ago stock market rallies that inflated the current value of their payouts.

For example, the pension for Mike Bellotti, the University of Oregon’s head football coach from 1995 to 2008, includes not just his salary but also money from licensing deals and endorsements that the Ducks’ athletic program generated. Mr. Bellotti’s pension is more than $46,000 a month.

“You get to the point where you can no longer do more with less — you just have to do less with less,” Nathan Cherpeski, the manager of Klamath Falls, said. Credit Leah Nash for The New York Times
The bill is borne by taxpayers. Oregon’s Public Employees Retirement System has told cities, counties, school districts and other local entities to contribute more to keep the system afloat. They can neither negotiate nor raise local taxes fast enough to keep up. As a result, pensions are crowding out other spending. Essential services are slashed.

“You get to the point where you can no longer do more with less — you just have to do less with less,” said Nathan Cherpeski, the manager of Klamath Falls, a city of about 21,000 in south-central Oregon.

Klamath Falls’s most recent biennial bill from the pension system, known as PERS, was $600,000 more than the one before. PERS has warned that the bills will keep rising. Mr. Cherpeski has had to cut back on repairing streets and bridges.

Even as the American economy is humming, many states and cities are still hurting from the 2008 financial meltdown. The crash hammered their pension funds and tax revenues, but didn’t reduce the amounts they owe retirees.

It wasn’t until 2016 that average state tax collections returned to pre-2008 levels. In the meantime, states and cities have had to rebuild pension funds to cover the rising numbers of retirees drawing benefits. That has left less money for the police, school sports programs and everything else. Local residents might not know why, but they are paying more taxes and getting scantier services in return.

Costs are rising even in places that previously acted to defuse the problem. Colorado trimmed pensions in 2010, but a new $32 billion shortfall means more pension cuts and tax increases are likely. Detroit sliced its pension obligations in bankruptcy and persuaded philanthropists to chip in, but it is not clear that the city has an affordable plan.

In San Francisco, the school board wants voters to approve a $298 “parcel tax” on real estate, ostensibly to raise $50 million to pay teachers a living wage.

“That’s a worthy objective, but it’s not the real reason,” said David Crane, a former trustee of the California teachers’ pension system. He said the school district’s retirement costs had grown by $50 million over the last five years, devouring resources that would have gone to teachers.

Obligatory Contributions

Oregon is a blue state, but in its restive red hinterlands, tax increases are politically off limits and financial distress has been severe since 1994, when logging was curtailed to save an endangered owl. Lately, things have been getting even worse.

When a man was reported yelling and firing his gun on the property of a school in rural Josephine County, it took two hours for a sheriff’s deputy to arrive, said Kate Dwyer, chairwoman of the board for the Three Rivers School District.

Evergreen Elementary School, part of the Three Rivers district, operates without a physical education teacher. Credit Leah Nash for The New York Times
The county has cut sheriff patrols, closed its mental health department and kept its jail at less than half capacity because of a lack of guards.

Dave Valenzuela, the Three Rivers school superintendent, traces the latest woes directly to PERS. The system is run at the state level, but it is bankrolled in large part by obligatory contributions from local governments.

This year, Three Rivers was poised to receive its first increase in state education funding in years, a reflection of growing enrollment. But Oregon raised by more than 50 percent the amount that Three Rivers had to contribute to PERS. So Mr. Valenzuela had to lop five days off the school year, ask each school to cut its budget by 10 percent and lay off the district librarian and English specialist.

PERS sets the pension bill for each entity — local government, university system and the like — based on the pay and demographics of its workers. Just about everyone’s bills are getting bigger.

That includes the state, by far the system’s biggest contributor.

Oregon now has fewer police officers than in 1970, is losing foster-care workers at an alarming rate and has allowed earthquake and tsunami preparations to lapse. A 2016 survey turned up “a large number of bridges with critical and near-critical conditions” because of “longstanding inadequate funding.”

Because Evergreen cannot afford a physical education teacher, Tiffany Bonney’s first-grade class uses a video program called GoNoodle to exercise. Credit Leah Nash for The New York Times
Even prosperous communities are being pinched. The Beaverton School District, outside Portland, had to get rid of 75 teachers last year when its mandatory pension contribution rose by $14 million. That was after shedding 340 teachers in 2012.

“I have town hall meetings, and the parents are just confounded by this,” said Mark Hass, a Democratic state senator from Beaverton.

A Golden Touch

Oregon’s unusual method for calculating pensions tends to generate lavish payouts.

For decades, PERS calculated pensions two different ways, and retirees could choose whichever produced the bigger numbers.

The first way was similar to what most states do, basing pensions on each worker’s final salary and years of service. But Oregon’s lawmakers included a golden touch, redefining “salary” to include remuneration from any source.

That was how Mr. Bellotti, the former football coach, came to be the state’s third-highest-paid pensioner, at roughly $559,000 a year.

When he retired in 2010 as the university’s athletic director, the standard pension formula was applied to his salary, plus a share of the outside licensing fees and product endorsements the football program brings in. (His pension details, along with those of other retirees in the system, were first obtained in 2011 from PERS by two newspapers, The Oregonian and The Statesman Journal.)

Mr. Bellotti said he never asked for a supersize pension. In 1995, he said, the university started to include a percentage of all endorsement and licensing fees in coaches’ salaries.

“It was basically to augment the university’s ability to pay a competitive salary to its coaching staff,” he said.

When Mr. Bellotti retired, he was partway through a five-year, $1.9 million-a-year contract, which he said was still below the league average of about $3 million.

PERS made up for it with a big pension. “It was pay later as opposed to paying now,” he said.

Dr. Robertson, the former Oregon Health & Science University president, said he had retired and started drawing his pension last fall, after learning he had multiple sclerosis. He said he agreed to stay on through the end of the academic year, without pay, “for the sake of continuity.”

A spokeswoman for the medical center said Dr. Robertson’s pension was based on his salary, incentive payments, clinical pay and unused sick or vacation time.

Oregon’s second way of calculating pensions dates back to 1946: For decades, every public worker got a simulated tracking account. It was credited with 6 percent of each paycheck, then left to compound at a predetermined rate.

In the early years, a low rate was used because the pension system invested in bonds that didn’t yield much.

But in the 1970s, lawmakers started nudging the rate up, eventually to 8 percent. Then, the system’s trustees decided 8 percent should be a guaranteed minimum. In years when markets produced higher returns, the accounts compounded at those rates, after money-management fees. During the 1990s bull market, accounts compounded by up to 21 percent a year.

When workers retired, their employers were required to “match” the account balances, doubling them. Then PERS would base the pensions on the total.

Randall Pozdena, an economist who supervised the pension system’s investments in the 1990s, gave speeches warning that the situation was unsustainable.

“The only way you’re going to get out of this is if the state is hit by a golden asteroid from Planet Tiffany,” he recalled saying.

But efforts to change the system, including a 1994 ballot initiative, were blocked by the State Supreme Court, which ruled that accruals could not be reduced during any public worker’s career.

So, when lawmakers required government retirees to pay Oregon’s 9 percent income tax, as everybody else did, they also increased pensions by 9.89 percent, giving retirees extra money to pay the tax with.

“It’s an affront to everybody who pays taxes,” said Bruce Dennis, a retired carpenter from outside Portland who earned a $54,000-a-year pension by swinging a hammer for 45 years. No one gives him extra money to cover his taxes.

“At every step of the way, they’ve made decisions that went against the interests of the public,” he said.

Starting in 2003, the tracking accounts were phased out. But workers who already had the accounts were allowed to keep them. New hires got a more modest retirement plan.

“The cost of this pension system is not caused by the people we are hiring today,” said Steven Rodeman, executive director of the Public Employees Retirement System. “This is a legacy problem from the 1980s and 1990s.”

For workers with the tracking accounts, PERS dialed back the annual returns to 8 percent, then to 7.5 percent in 2016. That is still more than what PERS’s investments have generated over the last decade. And so the pension fund’s financial hole continues to deepen.

Across Oregon, local officials have been told to brace for 15 to 20 more years of rising pension bills. That’s when the current generation of retirees will start dying out.

“All we can do is wait,” said Jay Meredith, finance director of Grants Pass, the seat of Josephine County.

In the meantime, mounting pension costs mean that a generation of schoolchildren is growing up in the area with no theater program, no orchestra, no wood shop and minimal sports, chorus and art.

That’s if they can get to school.

A county road recently washed out, stranding 300 people. Ms. Dwyer, of the Three Rivers School District, reported the problem to a public-works official.

She recalled his response: “I have trucks, but I can’t put gas in them to come to you and dig it out.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 15, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Strange Pension Math Leaves States in Pinch of Own Making.
 

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^^^^ That's a very wide-spread problem; governments at all levels made outrageous pension promises they can't possibly keep.

BTW, please don't post entire articles in sections accessible to the public (and every bot on the Internet); it's a copyright violation.

-Uwe-
 

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Rep. Maxine Waters was in Oakland Monday with Rep. Barbara Lee and members of the Congressional Black Caucus to push for more diversity in Silicon Valley tech. POLITICO asked Waters about President Donald Trump’s recent touting of African American unemployment numbers and his bromance with Kanye West. Her response:

-- “Kanye West is a very creative young man who has presented some of the most revolutionary material in the African-American community. ... But we also think that sometimes Kanye West talks out of turn and perhaps sometimes he needs some assistance in helping him to formulate some of his thoughts.”

-- “We don’t think that he actually means to do harm, but we’re not sure he really understands the impact of what he’s saying, at the time that he’s saying it and how that weighs on, particularly the African American community — and for young people in general. ... And I think maybe he should think twice about politics, and maybe not have so much to say. “ -

https://www.politico.com/newsletter...e-press-conference-cas-polling-palooza-267043
 
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