All the Democrats and lefties I know are pretty confident that Obama will win the election on Tuesday, just from watching the polls.
At the same time, many Republicans seem awfully confident that Romney will win. My friend Jack at Ethics Alarms, in comments, wrote:
[Obama’s not] going to be elected to a second term. […] I am sure. I have my own formula and parameters, just like Nate Silver. The difference is that I know what I’m talking about.
I’m pretty certain that Jack, in fact, knows a lot less about probability and polling than Nate Silver does. But Jack would presumably feel certain I’m wrong.
Jack’s view is shared by many on the right. Check out this reader poll at Battleground Watch (click on “view results”), or look at what folks like Michael Barone, George Will and Dick Morris are saying.
If Romney wins in a close race, that won’t blow my mind. But if he wins by a landslide, as some conservatives are predicting….
Anyhow, feel free to use this thread to discuss anything elections-related.
UPDATE: Ted Frank has the best argument for thinking that the polls are overstating Obama’s chances, that I’ve seen.
And at Ethics Alarms, Jack explains why he thinks Romney has it in the bag: It all comes down to Strong! Leadership! My response: Oy.
My theory is that the ones predicting a conservative landslide will be the ones most loudly accusing Democrats of rigging the election come Wednesday. Ironic, but they’ve followed that pattern many times to date….
I am so stressed out about this election it’s not even funny. Between the Presidential race and Question 6 in Maryland, I find myself wishing I could take a mental health day on Wednesday.
Nate Silver has a long, long history of excellent analysis and prediction using statistical models. He analyzed baseball very, very well before starting 538 and he was one of the most respected in the field. He was right on the money in 2008. I’ll go with Nate on this one. Which isn’t to say that Obama will undoubtedly win. As he explained over the weekend, Romney could win if the polls are statistically biased towards Obama. He puts that at about 16% probability. Small, but not insignificant.
A lot of the conservative blogosphere thinks that the pollsters that favor the Democrats are based on D+ turnout numbers based on the 2008 election that will not turn out to be valid. They’re thinking it’ll be more like the 2010 election. There’s also thinking that there’s skew in the polling favoring the Democrats on the basis that conservatives, thinking that the MSM and their polls are hopelessly biased, are refusing to participate in the polls.
Me, I don’t know. This “working for a living” bit has left me insufficient time to spend the hours it would take to read everything and come up with an informed position. So I’m thinking that I’ll put two TV’s up, one on Fox and one on MSNBC. I figure the slants will cancel out. Plus, afterwards, one will be having a victory party and the other will have a meltdown.
There’s an Amendment for the State Constitution on the Illinois ballot that, if approved, would require a 3/5 majority in both houses of the Illinois General Assembly to increase public employee pension benefits. Illinois’ public employee pension system is a horrendous mess. The GA has refused for years to fund it properly – I speculate it’s because that would divert money from payoffs to various businesses owned by either the politicians themselves or by their political supporters. When the State income tax was raised a couple of years ago from 3% of Federal adjusted gross income to 5.5%, every single dime went to the State’s public employee pension fund – nothing for bridges, nothing for roads, nothing for more cops and firemen, etc. But even then it’s still horribly underfunded. Depending on who you talk to it’s owed somewhere between $85 billion to $210 billion. To put that in perspective, Illinois’ entire FY 2013 budget is ~$33 billion.
This amendment will not fix that. That’s the main reason why there’s widespread opposition not only on behalf of the unions but on behalf of the good-government folks as well – it doesn’t solve the present problem. But I’m still going to vote for it on the premise that it will at least slow down a process that could make it worse. Yes, it would be preferable that something like this would be handled through legislation rather than a Constitutional amendment. It would be preferable if the Illinois General Assembly had actually diverted the proper amounts of money to the pension fund instead of to other things that had a more immediate political payoff. But, they didn’t, and the culture that got us into this mess hasn’t changed, is unlikely to change, and is in fact likely to just blithely go on as it has.
But there’s also the issue of the polls only getting to landline phones, and specifically to people who have landline phones who will pick up the phone if they don’t recognize the number on Caller ID (or they don’t have Caller ID) which I suspect would skew much more toward older people, who tend to be more conservative. “People who haven’t figured out how to avoid telemarketers” is a weird demographic to base anything on.
RonF:
I’d like to point out that funding the state’s public employee pension fund IS more money for cops and firefighters … as long as cops and firefighters participate in that state public employee pension system.
Cops and firefighters are not idiots, on average. They actually average a bit smarter than the population norm, because both jobs require specialized job knowledge and personal discipline. The cream of the crop can make money in the private sector, but they CHOOSE to work as cops and firefighters. The better the benefits, the more will make that choice, for obvious reasons.
I went through a very bad patch in my career (lots of job-related and non-job-related stuff coming together at the same time). I hung on because I was almost vested in the retirement system. By the time I was vested, things were getting better and I stayed in my career, and it was after that point that I experienced ALL of the major successes of my career, and most of the best career and personal development, all of which made me much better at what I do.
Recently, in my state, the Republican-led legislature, driven mainly by the Tea Party types elected in 2010, tried to “fix” the chronic under-funding of my state’s system, in which towns, for years, were permitted to pay less than their planned share. How did they plan to fix it? By reducing benefits to all people currently vested in the system but not yet retired, despite the fact that those people had based their financial planning on the deal they made when they were hired. I watched a lot of good, experienced senior officers and firefighters choose to retire before they wanted to so that they could lock in benefits which almost got taken away by the legislature.
It took lawsuits to get the legislature to figure out that it was illegal to change the deal on someone who was vested in the system.
Other officers, who have been working for eight or nine years and aren’t yet vested, are now having the deal changed on them, and they’re understandably bitter about it.
Throughout my career, I have watched my state draw officers from a neighboring state which has no state retirement system. Very few officers go the other way. I can think of only one.
So, it’s true that pension money does not go directly to pay for new cops and firefighters. But it’s an important part of recruiting and retaining GOOD cops and firefighters.
And we all want excellent cops and firefighters, right?
I’m not saying that we can’t tweak pension systems. Of course they need adjustment from time to time. But there are no quick fixes – all the “fixes” which benefit the short-term, election-cycle bottom line invariably amount to reducing benefits for the oldest public employees, who are least able to start over, change retirement plans, or what-have-you.
In other words, these “fixes” target the people who have worked longest and are most vulnerable.
People like to bitch about state pension systems. But really, what they’re saying when they propose short-term fixes is that they have benefited from the work of these public employees for many years and now don’t want to pay the piper.
Grace
@Grace: From working in the field of public employee pensions, I observe that the opposition has more to do with (1) the perceived unfairness (I don’t get a pension that good, but my taxes are raised to pay for their pension so I am double-penalized) and (2) the genuine stickiness of most state’s public employee pension plans. In my state (Oregon), for example, the Supreme Court has more than once decided that these contracts, once made (that is, once the employee starts working), are a vested right that cannot be changed without negotiation. That means that unlike private sector employment, where your employer can change your terms of employment virtually at will (and thereby keep the business running, albeit on the backs of employees), public employers may not reduce or balance their budgets by reducing retirement benefits (changing how pensions are calculated, changing COLA, etc.).
Add that to the double whammy from the population bubble we call the Baby Boom, which has started to retire and will continue to retire in large numbers over the next 15-20 years–which means both reduced number of workers paying into the retirement systems and increased number of beneficiaries drawing benefits–and public employee pensions really look like the biggest budget problem.
Of course what most people overlook (intentionally or not) in this conversation is the stock market, where most pension funds are invested. If the stock market were soaring, nobody would care how much public employees received in pension benefits, because those dollars would be earned in the market instead of budgeted from increased tax rates. The real villain in the public employee pension problem is the market, not the retirees.
Kai Jones @8: Most people also overlook the bargain we make with public employees: we pay you crap, but you get decent working hours and defined benefits. It always amazes me to hear the same people who want better service from public agencies but also want to cut salaries and benefits to make it more like the private sector: y’all think that service will get better if nobody wants to work for a public agency?
What I meant to say by that was “money for MORE police and firemen”, as opposed to giving it to the existing ones. I have no problem with the latter, by the way, both in the way of current compensation and in pensions. What I do have a problem with is the Illinois General Assembly’s habit of making commitments they don’t keep. Various voting blocs have been promised the benefit of public funds, but the income from taxes, fees, etc. is insufficient to keep those commitments. It is the understanding of the politicians that lowering those commitments (or not making them in the first place) would cost them the votes of the people who consume them. So they don’t lower the commitments, they just keep promising to pay the same dollar to two or 3 different people.
I don’t know what they’re waiting for. The numbers are stark. They’ve raised the State income tax to 5% of AGI. Property taxes are at record highs (I pay ~$6,000/year on a property I’d be lucky to get $200,000 for). Sales tax in my area is 9.5% on just about all purchases. The State’s pension fund would take up the entire State budget for the next 2.5 years minimum to get it funded properly.
And that’s just the State workers. The City of Chicago’s public employee pension funds are underfunded to the tune of $27 billion – and the State taxpayers, who outside of the boundaries of City of Chicago and the Chicago School District had absolutely no say over the people who voted these things in and signed the contracts, are on the hook for whatever the City decides it can’t pay. It’s a classic example of taxation without representation. Oh, and again for purposes of comparison, the City’s proposed budget for FY 2013 is $6.5 billion.
I have no quarrel with the concept that a good pension system helps to attract and retain good cops and firemen. But at least the Tea Party folks that got voted in are acknowledging that there’s a problem and they are trying to solve it, even if you don’t like the solution. Who was in charge when it was determined that it was a good idea to divert money from the pension funds to other uses – and make it legal to do so? Should they be the people that are put back in charge?
mythago @9: Plus, most of the time when people deal with public employees, the people are angry, frustrated, or scared! So the public employees have to deal with people who are often at their worst, socially. Yet we expect the best, because we are dealing with “the government,” which we pay taxes for. The mismatch in expectations leads to disproportionate disappointment.
Again – I point out that the Illinois Constitutional Amendment that’s been proposed will not take one dollar from current public employees’ pensions. It will just make it harder for the General Assembly to add to those benefits unless they have a very good answer to the question “Where will the money come from?”
Ron, if the goal were to make sure that any increase to benefits is paid for, then they would have made it a paygo rule, not a supermajority rule.
A supermajority rule actually makes it LESS likely that any increase in benefits will be paid for, since it’s easier to find votes for a benefit increase than it is to find votes for either a tax increase or a cut to programs.
Makes sense to me. RonF makes a sound argument for requiring a supermajority to increase expenditures or to reduce taxes. Where is the corresponding commitment on the revenue side? Therein the partisan bias lies.
I’m just going to share this picture.
Mythago:
Yes. Also, while many public employees have decent hours, cops generally don’t (and, to a lesser extent, firefighters, who can often sleep on duty and not be violating policy, while cops generally can’t). I generally have not had decent working hours. I was in special assignments for a total of perhaps 4 years in my career, and during much of that time I got to work 8-4 or 9-5. The rest was and is rotating shifts including evenings and overnights, weekends, holidays, and so on. I am not as young as I once was, and I’m finding overnights, in particular are getting harder and harder. For time-on-the-job, I’m now quite senior in my department, which in most departments would mean a greater say in work hours, but other factors often negate that, in my department particularly.
Kai Jones:
Yup. In fact, in New Hampshire there is case law that police officers on duty are legally incapable of being offended. You could shout the vilest thing imaginable at a police officer on duty, something which would cause an ordinary person to punch you, and there is no crime. The police officer has to check with bystanders to see if anyone was offended before there can be a charge of Disorderly Conduct. Shout the same thing at a non-police-officer, and there’s your Disorderly Conduct charge right there.
There are good reasons for that ruling; police officers must be able to resist provocation, or what good are we? But it doesn’t make the job any easier.
I acknowledge Ron’s point that there is a fiduciary problem, and I agree. The numbers are stark. I just don’t think that I, and those like me, should be on the hook for it. As much as possible, the people who pay the piper should be the people who hired and benefited from the piper.
Yes, you can construct a scenario where it’s simply not possible. I’m skeptical that we’re there yet in the United States. Perhaps I’m wrong. I’m certain I’m not wrong about my jurisdiction.
This job is worth doing, and if I were independently wealthy I’d do some of it for free (though I wouldn’t be working any more 70-hour weeks). But I’m not wealthy, and I have a family to support. I have earned my pension, and I deserve to have honored the deal I made with the taxpayers when I decided to take the risks which earned it.
Grace
P.S.: I have completely de-railed Amp’s thread, with an assist from Ron. From finish-line Presidential election statistics to a discussion of public employee pensions in 7 replies. Yes! Thanks, Ron. Take that, Robert.
Awww. Elusis, I think I love you.
Also: darn
nozzleheads, ahem, firefighters. They always get all the glory.Grace
When people complain about public employees, it’s usually not cops and firefighters./ It’s usually administrators or other people than those two particular professions.
Moreover, we don’t actually pay crap. To use my home state as an example, the starting salary for a Boston police officer was $46,000, with government benefits and overtime on top of that; if you have (or get) an advanced degree it goes way up from there.
Perhaps police are worth more, perhaps not. But that isn’t chump change. And while I don’t think cops and firefighters are below the average, it doesn’t really seem accurate to assume that they’re the top of the heap and are “settling.”
And of course the salary for the executive secretary of my town is pretty damn high as well: can’t I complain about her? Or the toll booth folks? Or any number of public employees who are almost never fired, and who have sought-after jobs, and who get lockstep raises, performance be damned? And who sure wouldn’t be at the top of the heap if we looked at all employees?
We have tons of unemployed people in my state. We have a limited number of government jobs. We have a limited amount of public funds.
It sure would be nice if we could pick and choose the good ones.
gin-and-whiskey: How much do those jobs pay compared to their private-sector equivalents? How likely are holders of those jobs to get the kind of raises and bonus and other benefits they would get in private-sector equivalents?
Grace – You mentioned not a single pastry product, whether mass-produced and shoveled onto the shelves by the ton-lot, or handcrafted in artisanal pastry shoppes for the delight of young and old alike. So your derail does not count.
It is true that there’s a tacit understanding, government job = crappy pay but more security and better conditions. I am not sure that this tacit understanding (which did, in my understanding, once exist in fact) still holds. I’ve seen figures on Federal civil service indicating that those jobs are now, in general, higher-paid than the private sector as well as being fire-proof, etc. In fairness, I’ve also seen credible arguments that the Federal employment model has shifted to hiring BETTER people; i.e., yeah, the GS-XX running the field office gets paid 10% more than someone running a similar office in private industry, but the GS-XX has more qualifications and is better trained and handles more duties than the private equivalent, too.
State by state, it seems like it would be very difficult to draw an overall picture. I know that in Colorado (state motto: fuck the state) civil service people are paid in Pop-Tarts, strawberry ones if they’re lucky. (See, Grace? SEE???) I have seen stories about other states where public service sector folks are doing well, whether through deliberate policy or because the private sector sets its wages in the market, which is down, while the public sector accrues raises at a statutory rate not necessarily correlated to what the economy’s doing.
But, using the power of PopTarts to drag the discussion BACK to the election and thus un-derailing the thread (re-railing?), I think that we are either going to get an extremely close, stroke-inducing bloodbath of a very near tie (which could end up going either way unless its a bona fide electoral college tie, in which case, Romney), or a quite modest Romney win. I think there are a LOT of bubble partisans, of both parties, who just cannot conceive of the other guy winning anywhere because they don’t really know anybody voting for him, and I think we are seeing a fair amount of this kind of bubble-prognostication.
Amp:
Heh.
Grace
Robert:
Robert, very shortly thereafter:
Not only did I derail it, I derailed it so efficiently that you couldn’t deny it even when you tried!
Mouahahahaha.
—
But seriously,
gin-and-whiskey:
Since I maxed out in my grade, I haven’t gotten an annual raise. Unless you count cost-of-living, but see below:
Robert:
My cost-of-living raise is tied directly to an index, within a range.
Maybe you folks should move to New Hampshire. Sounds like we’ve got your kind of public employees up here: paid reasonably but not extravagantly, including a pension the fund of which the legislature only tries to raid every other year, limited raises, performance-based incentives, AND able to win arguments with Robert by hoisting him on his own petard (quotard?).
Truly, public employment at its best. Hm…
Grace
The little states seem (perhaps anecdotally) to run things pretty well, maybe because there’s nowhere to hide giant Republican graft or Democratic union bloat; theres only like eight guys on any given payroll and if one of them is getting a kajillion dollars there’s nowhere to disguise that. “Why’s Carl getting a kajillion dollars? Carl is an OK guy and everything but he’s not worth that kind of money.”
That said, I’m a conservative, and I’m not going to New Hampshire until someone shows me definitively that there was something wrong with regular Hampshire.
I’m not convinced on the subject of public employee pay versus private sector, but I want to point out that public employees, at least in Oregon, are also being forced to take furlough (unpaid) days. The government office just shuts down some days. That’s a lot like private sector, a lot more like private sector than claiming you trade high pay for job security implies.
Kai – I think there is huge variation between the states. Not to get all union-bashy, but I’d wager that the states with strong public sector unions are also the states where government jobs compare more and more favorably overall with private sector jobs. I don’t think it’s automatically a bad thing for a government job to be a good job…but I think the old tradeoff had a certain merit to it. I definitely think that state government jobs ought to bear some recognizable relationship to similar jobs in the local economy, rather than being “model jobs” of what right-thinking people think all employment should look like. Jobs like that end up being plums, and the government should get stuff done, not be a plum tree.
There are a few people in government service who are undervalued. Those people might make more in the private sector, though they would also have higher risk: although it is nonzero, the # of public employers that go into bankruptcy and can’t make payroll; or have unexpected layoffs; or get bought out and consolidated… well, that’s tiny compared to what happens in the private sector.
There are MANY people in government service who are overvalued, primarily because it’s so damn hard to fire them, and very difficult to avoid giving them raises. Those people would be far worse off in the private sector and would make less overall.
Bonuses? Never. But frankly most of them wouldn’t get bonuses in the private sector either.
Raises? Much more likely. We have never–literally NEVER–reduced a salary. We have given “cost of living” raises even in economic times where a huge section of the populace is unemployed and poor.
And of course I can count the number of people we’ve fired for performance on one hand, without holding up any fingers at all.
Also: baseless snark that I do not back with conviction, but present merely because the wordplay is too temptingly easy:
“Your half CAN’T collide with reality, Amp, they were much too far away from it to begin with.”
Thank you. That was gonna bug me all day.
Robert:
Taxation without representation? I thought our forebears made that case in 1776 and all that.
And you call yourself a conservative…
Grace
Okay, everyone! Today’s the day! Amp, Elusis, Mandolin, mythago, Ruchama, and all other Right-Thinking People, get out there and vote!
RonF, gin-and-whiskey, Robert, and all other Wrong-Thinking People … gee, have you noticed what a beautiful day it is? Might be the last good day of autumn weather. Lovely day for a hike in the wilderness, or a bit of hunting, or a really long day at the range. And that private business you’re running won’t run itself without you at the helm!
Grace
Grace Annan @29: too late, I already voted–Oregon is all vote-by-mail. Or drop-off. But no polling places, no booths, just fill out your ballot wherever and mail it or drop it in the box at the county clerk office/library/city hall depending on your county.
In northern New Hampshire, the first town to finish voting is always Dixville Notch, because they stay up until midnight to do it. This year, it took them 43 seconds to vote, and 60 seconds to count the vote. Result:
Obama – 5
Romney – 5
Oh, the SUSPENSE!
Grace
Kai Jones:
Ah, but are you Right-Thinking, or Wrong-Thinking?
Grace
The British have strengthened their parliamentary democracy so I imagine they are represented for their taxes now. I stand for Old Hampshire and the Republic! Oh wait, that was like Cromwell’s lot and they killed everyone. Oh well, screw moral righteousness, ‘Cromwell’ is a badass name. Where the devil is ‘Hampshire’ anyway? Probably no such place, and you wily New Englanders just ginned up some fake ‘New’ place to gull the tourists. Typical.
Ha ha, I’m in Colorado and my vote is worth ten of any of yours. Neener, neener.
“You New Englanders?” SMILE when you call me that. They don’t accept me and I’m not about to claim it against them. My proud heritage is elsewhere. I just married in.
Grace
Grace @32: I prefer not to discuss my vote on candidates, except to say that as always, when I didn’t agree with the presented candidates, I wrote in my own name and voted for myself. If I become a justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, I will be shocked. :) But with Oregon’s initiative system I think the ballot measures are more important, even though we have neither civil rights (gay marriage) nor bodily integrity (abortion) on the ballot this year. I voted against taking away public employees’ right to use payroll deduction to pay their union dues, for example.
I also voted absentee weeks ago, though I will leave it to the Paranoid Wrong-Thinking Conspiracy Theorists to contemplate whether I used my old Colorado address to vote there instead of California so I could cancel out Robert’s Wrong-Thinking vote (hint: I didn’t.)
For all the Wrong-Thinkers, I’ll remind them that the election is TOMORROW because why on earth would anyone hold an election just two days after the return to Standard Time when most people still don’t have their alarm clocks reset properly yet, let alone their microwaves and coffee makers?
Grace: Your early results are stressing me out and I shall pretend I haven’t read them.
Elusis –
One of my closest friends from high school, a dear man who has tragically embraced Democracy, is also a fairly astute poll-watcher and prognosticator. Last night he messaged me with some (reasonable) guesses about Congress, and a batshit-crazy 53-47 Obama popular vote projection. I gently explained about the whole “they did those exact numbers last time honey and he isn’t as popular this time” thing and the starkly 50-50 national polling that would seem to portend a very tight race tonight, but he wouldn’t budge. However, this morning I sent him Dixville Notch’s 5-5 result and that cracked his shell. I think he’s forlornly hitting refresh at DU now, hoping for magic. He really needed that five- or six-point edge as a starting point to be able to face it. ;)
Grace – Let us compromise, in the spirit of the day, when people of all parties come together to elect the richest, tallest, and whitest of the two available candidates President of the United States. You live in some bucolic shire or another, no doubt tended by hobbits, whereas the low spots of my state have an extra figure in their height reading compared to the high spots of yours. That is to say, I live in the mountains, while you are way down there below the clouds, in the land of the little people.
As your neighbors have not yet accepted you as a local (prediction: they will when you fully trans, because that’s just the kind of boneheaded stubbornly independent thing you Shire dwellers go for), I hereby decree that ALL of you are “flatlanders” or, if you prefer, “lowland dwellers”. Since this will enrage every single person in New Hampshire except maybe you, it’s a win for me and you. Deal?
You sure you want that? As a Mass. resident I voted for every democrat on the ticket (go Warren!); in favor of medical marijuana, right to die, and pro-consumer-car-info; and in favor of a symbolic vote against Citizens United (for all the good it’ll do.)
I’m a skeptical liberal, not a conservative or libertarian. But the growing intolerance of liberals is admittedly driving me away a bit.
Lawyers, Guns & Money explains why Nate Silver – excuse me, Sate Nilver – is probably more accurate than anybody else. It’s pretty much the reason I gave at comment #3 but a better story.
Actually, today started out reasonable out here in Chicagoland but is now $h!tty and cold. This could be bad for Republicans, as I heard earlier in the day that Obama was taking a big lead but was expected to lose it when the Republicans all got out of work and voted.
gin-and-whiskey:
Hm… okay. Then I’ll provisionally let you into the Right-Thinking Clubhouse. But only as a probationary member.
Grace
RonF:
You silly Republicans! Just go on the public dole, like me, and you’ll never have to work harder than I do, and then you’ll have time to vote!
(Or, like me, you’ll have to vote a week in advance because you’re working on election day. But shhhhh… don’t scare them.)
Grace
Well, New Hampshire has gone for Obama, who has 65.1% of the vote with 0.7% polling places reporting in so far.
Grace
You misspelled “Flatlander Town”.
“Most people also overlook the bargain we make with public employees: we pay you crap, but you get decent working hours and defined benefits.”
This ‘bargain’ pretty much hasn’t been true in the US for a very long time. At this point, for most US jobs below the level of PhD, you get just about the same level of pay, better working hours and defined benefits. Which is to say you get better compensation and better working hours.
Robert:
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! *wiping tears of laughter from my eyes* Um, no. My transition is not going to increase my acceptance. Nothing increases acceptance hereabouts but (a) leaving people alone and (b) having at least three generations before you born locally. Here’s a bit of local color: “The cat may have her kittens in the oven, but that doesn’t make ’em biscuits.”
I’m not a flatlander, which has a specific meaning in local parlance. A “flatlander” is someone from Away Down South, usually Massachusetts or Connecticut, who moves to northern New England because he likes the ambiance, and then sets about trying to change everything to make it just like where he came from.
I’m not a flatlander because I’m from much further away than that, and I generally leave people alone.
Once I’m an out transsexual, my very existence will be an affront, and as long as I exist, I will have ceased to leave people alone, because I will be bringing my “lifestyle” where people have to see it.
I hope I’m wrong, and that I’ve built up enough local goodwill, but I know where the smart money is.
Yes, you have higher mountains. I’ve hiked and camped mountains like that. And you’d be absolutely right about yours being tougher except that there’s no local word for “switchback” out here, and the slopes can be equally steep, even if they’re lower. Apparently rural New Hampshire folks didn’t believe in dilly-dallying about on the way over mountains. You just forged ahead and got the job done, and that was the trail.
All of which is wildly off-topic, but what the hell, only Sebastian H is still talking about public employees.
Grace
I saw your lips moving and I know a bunch of words came out, but I couldn’t make them out because you were sooooooooooo far down there in the flatland country. I’m sure you locals have your quaint words for things, but only my frame of reference counts. I have like 100 votes right now. (And it may come down to them! Which would be very weird.)
Grace Annan @46, did you ever read John Preston’s account of moving back to the small town in New England where he grew up?
gin-and-whiskey @26: are we back to anecdata? Because you know how remunerative public-sector legal work is. It’s so well-paying that a few years ago, a local columnist trying to argue that PDs are overpaid referred to their total ‘compensation’ (meaning, salary + benefits, in whatever manner he calculated that). Most people understand that to mean “salary” and didn’t really understand that the chief county PD made a lower salary than a first-year hire at BigLaw.
mythago:
I have not. Is it available online?
Grace
If I am remembering correctly, it’s Winter’s Light.
**SPOILER ALERT**
It wasn’t.
—Myca
Dammit, Myca, I was taping that to watch later.
@myca
Spoilers! Jesus. Some of us watch on DVR.
Sure: there are some sectors of the government where whole swaths of folks are underpaid. But those are usually very small and specialized. PDs are paid crap; AUSAs are usually ex partners; and the top analysts at the Fed can makea lot more money elsewhere.But there aren’t many of them.
The Constitutional Amendment in Ill. did NOT pass. It got 55% of those who voted on the question, but it needed either 60% of the people voting on the question or 50%+ of all the voters, and it got neither.
As far as partisan bias goes – it was actually proposed by the Democrats, not the Republicans. It allowed them to look like they were doing something while not actually doing something, for the reasons that both you all and I have discussed.
Funny, it’s actually similar in rural northwest PA, where a flatlander is someone from New York (or possibly southern PA). It’s mainly used to refer to people who come to hunt, though it probably also applies to people who move into the area. (Yes, shooting Bambi is my hometown’s biggest industry.)