Actually Russ, the factcheck answers are not complete and shift the argument.
The salary collection point is pointless - of course Congress critters only collect a salary while in office. factcheck is correct about the Social Security contributions. This happened with the change-over from the Civil Service Retirement System to the Federal Employee Retirement System. The factcheck article sidesteps the retirement point by shifting the argument to whether ordinary citizens contribute to their own pensions. Currently, Congress is covered under the Federal Employee's Retirement Act, which is quite generous in it's pension guarantees (and costing the taxpayer quite a large percentage of the budget for all the retired federal employees). No matter how one shifts the argument, the fact is that Federal employees have generous pension plans - Congress-critters or not. Federal employees fall into the top 25% of workers when it comes to retirement benefits. As factcheck points out, Congress has voted themselves an automatic pay raise unless they vote to decline it. They have voted it down the last two years. The process is based on cost of living in DC, which is a somewhat circular process, and started after the base salary had been increased to a point high enough that public criticism forced Congress to act. Basically, they had voted themselves such high salaries that the public objected - so they started from those high salaries and kept adjusting them up, automatically, in response to the high cost of living in DC. The health care issue is a non-issue with the understanding that Federal employee health-care benefits are much better than the average American worker. factcheck is correct that Congress has grudgingly made themselves subject to the same labor and employment laws as the rest of the country - that process is still incomplete. However, Congress critters have not been subjected to insider trading laws - which raises the valid point of whether any laws which are strictly enforced on the rest of us can be enforced on the people holding the purse strings of the enforcers. To answer the corporation point - I, personally, believe that corporations should not be legally defined as persons - the shareholders are persons. I also believe that the answer to campaign reform is to limit contributions and discourse (i.e. union and corporate PAC ads) to those eligible to vote in an election. I would place no limit on the amount of contribution and allow contributions funneled through voters from others - but those funds would be considered income. Also, no entity funneling money through a voter could contract with them to do so - thus, they had better trust their "contributors". On Jan 8, 2012, at 8:23 PM, Russ Abbott wrote: According to this<http://www.factcheck.org/2011/03/congressional-reform-act/> most of the "problems" in the chain letter aren't true and don't need fixing. -- Russ On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 7:15 PM, Gary Schiltz <g...@naturesvisualarts.com<mailto:g...@naturesvisualarts.com>> wrote: Care to elaborate on 'we created small "crises" to create change.'? Don't remember where I saw it (bumper sticker, email...), but "I'll consider thinking of a corporation as a person when Texas puts one to death." Gary On Jan 8, 2012, at 3:21 PM, Paul Paryski wrote: And as long as corporations are considered to be legal persons who can make unlimited political contributions and create super pacs, nothing will change. I believe that, unfortunately, real change will only come with tragic, painful crisis and perhaps "collapse" (ref. Jarred Diamond). This was one of the conclusions a number of us in the UN came to and we sometimes created small "crises" to create change. cheers on a snowy day, Paul ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org<http://www.friam.org/> ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Program Manager V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.gov<mailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov> SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov<mailto:rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov> (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.gov<mailto:dopa...@doe.ic.gov> (send NIPR reminder)
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