After a day of exhaustion following my return from the Buffett Cup, I am finally back. I paid little heed to the dramatic turmoil in the markets. Several of my bridge friends, however, are Big Players on Wall Street. Thus, I did get a bit of inside perspective from them.
No comments on that topic in this post. Cataclysmic, though, to say the least.
But whatever you think of the federal bail-out, good, bad or indifferent - make no mistake. Multiply something like this horror, by God only knows what factor - and you will see why the maw of government needs more and more dollars from you, me and our neighbors.
Virtually every career employee — as many as 97 percent in one recent year — applies for and gets disability payments soon after retirement, a computer analysis of federal records by The New York Times has found. Since 2000, those records show, about a quarter of a billion dollars in federal disability money has gone to former L.I.R.R. employees, including about 2,000 who retired during that time.
two formerly influential figures at the L.I.R.R. — a married couple, one from management and one from labor — are retired and drawing about $280,000 annually in combined disability and pension payments, according to estimates based on public records.
Railroad officials say that as far as they know, most of the disabled workers were able-bodied until their early retirement, and only then filed papers seeking occupational disability payments.
“How is it that somebody is occupationally disabled the day after he retires when he wasn’t occupationally disabled the day before he retired?” asked Gary Dellaverson, chief financial officer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the railroad’s parent.
The answer, according to government records and dozens of interviews, stems from a combination of factors, including highly unusual L.I.R.R. contracts that allow longtime workers to retire with a pension as early as age 50, federal rules that let railroad retirees claim disability for jobs they no longer hold, and an obscure federal agency called the Railroad Retirement Board that almost never says no to a disability claim.
Read the whole thing. Do, however, have some convenient air-sickness type receptacle nearby. You will need it.
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