If you want to get really indignant and pissed off...

... read this. It is the amazing story of how Unions and the govt have come together to become an astoundingly inept drain on the taxpayer, called the Long Island Rail Road. The full article is worth the read, but the quick synopsis in copy and paste form is below:

The L.I.R.R.’s disability rate, which since 2000 has ranged between 93 percent and 97 percent for retired career employees, is three to four times that of the average railroad.

A worker, for example, could be considered disabled with “moderately severe antisocial ideas.” What constituted an antisocial idea was open to interpretation.

The board, with about $34 billion in assets, had not met formally in nearly two years, and no new meeting was scheduled. The three board members, all full-time presidential appointees, rarely met even in private,

The rail unions, which have remained powerful even as the nation’s labor movement has ebbed, have aggressively defended their interests at the retirement board. Management has largely avoided a showdown, choosing to spend its political capital in other areas, including contract issues, according to current and former board officials.

“It is a program that works,” said James M. Brunkenhoefer, national legislative director for the United Transportation Union.

"Under a 1951 law, the burden of paying most of these benefits has shifted to Social Security. Of the $3.6 billion that Social Security transferred last year to the retirement board, $418 million was for disability payments."

a federal commission studying the board’s solvency recommended that new employees be placed under Social Security and private pension plans, and that occupational disability benefits be limited to 24 months. Those recommendations were quickly discarded after the board solved its money problems by raising taxes on workers and employers.

“They can actually look at what the patient can or cannot do, rather than speculate,” she said. Should the right situation arise, Dr. Berendi said, she would ask for the test even though it is expensive. So how many tests did Dr. Berendi order last year? Zero.

“That board should not exist,” said Richard Parker, an economist who teaches at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Mr. Parker said there was nothing structurally unique about the rail industry that merited a system separate from Social Security.

“They succeeded in creating this board,” he said, “that has essentially been self-recreating for no good purpose other than bureaucratic entropy.”




but the best part is this:

Since its inception, the board has been so riven with conflicts that it took a half century to update what were supposed to be temporary disability standards, leaving in place until 1998 archaic diagnostic terms like “cretinism,” “imbecility” and “middle-class moronism.” Simply having a “repugnant” scar could qualify someone as disabled.

I believe imbecility should still be allowed, along with "middle-class moronism:" you should just be paid what you deserve. Nothing.

Full article, from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/15rail.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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