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Jennifer Aniston's mother, Nancy Dow, was reportedly hospitalized last week after suffering from her second stroke in the past 15 months.
"Last week on Wednesday or Thursday, her mom had another stroke. This was her second one in a year," a source close to Dow was quoted by Celebuzz.
The 76-year-old suffered from a serious stroke in 2011 and has dealt with various injuries as well. She broke a bone in her hip, bruised her shoulder and now has limited movement. The effects of her original stroke now require her to have 24-hour care.
The source close to Dow said that this stroke was minor compared to the one she suffered from last year saying, "She went to the hospital, but she's already back home. But she's having trouble talking and is still shuffling around."
Despite her rocky relationship with her mother, Aniston is reportedly still paying Dow's medical bills, according to Entertainmentwise.
"Jennifer is paying her medical bills... So she's involved to an extent in her mom's life and well-being, and they're getting friendlier than years ago," the source continued.
Aniston and her fiance, Justin Theroux, also reportedly visited Dow together last year in September when she was in the hospital. There have been reports that Dow will be invited to their wedding as well.
And although she suffered a minor stroke this time, Dow's family is still worried about her and fear "it may not be long until a bigger stroke comes along."


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This video has been posted by several other blogs/websites over the recent weeks, but I wanted to re-post it here:
Brent Toderian, former City of Vancouver Chief Planner:
His 3 principles to Doing Density Right:
1. Alignment of Land Use and Transportation
Some great quotes from this section:
- "To often in most cities we are separating these functions and failing at both"
- "The best transportation plan is a great land use plan"
- Transportation options have to be "viable and inviting"
On Vancouver's decision to rank and plan for modes of transportation in all planning for their downtown:
Brent highlights it as the game changer namely, that instead of trying to "balance" modes they prioritized them as walking > cycling > transit > goods movement > cars.
"We stopped talking about balancing modes (of transportation), because when you balance modes the car wins, and if the car wins you have a car dominated environment because the other choices aren't viable let alone inviting"
"We know that if you prioritize modes this way that all modes work well, including the car. That is the game changer. There is no city that has ever been successful at planning for the car and making it work well for the car".
On Cycling Infrastructure:
"If your going to be serious about cycling you need to separate out your bike lanes, full stop".
2. Consistently High Design Quality
"Designing is about place-making, and an artful mix at eye-level" it isn't about "vertical sprawl", which is having high towers that empty people out onto the streets. Vancouver does both high vertical towers and human-scale development at street level as well as mixing retail (even big box retail) with residential. The "key is liner shops along the street so you have no dead space and no blank walls on your urban street edge, which is so important"
3. Amenities and Diversity make Density Enjoyable
Brent explains that Vancouver is able to leverage "the activity of the market place to build a great city" by incorporating parks, heritage preservation, civic spaces, community centres, and daycare into the design process they are actually paid for by the developers (who are happy to do so).
Anyhow, watch for yourself:

subset: commoncrawl


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وانظر هل
Karon Beach, Phuket
Star Rating :
Location : Karon Beach
Address : 224/21 Karon Road, Karon Beach, Muang, Phuket 83100, Thailand
Contact Details :
+66 7639 6767-9
+66 7639 6793
Ideally located in the heart of Karon Beach, Waterfront Suites Phuket by Centara is one of our most recent additions to Centara Residence & Suites Collection. This iconic 21 storey Sino-Portuguese serviced apartment building offers modern living with space and comfort, along with quality facilities including a large swimming pool, tennis and squash courts, library with internet access, billiard and table tennis tables; all only 100 metres from the white sands of the spectacular Karon Beach. Offering 39 well-appointed one bedroom and two bedroom suites equipped with kitchen and separate lounge, Waterfront Suites Phuket delivers excellent value for money whilst providing a quality holiday experience.
No. of units : 39
High Season : November - April
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The closest destination to this result :
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Hi fellow foodies,
I wanted to point out a new and easy way to share recipes with our online community on SavannahNow. They all go into one searchable database so you always know where to find them. Click here to get started: http://savannahnow.com/node/529556
Once you share a recipe you can enter to win a free dinner to a local restaurant of your choice.
Happy cooking!


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Testing for Tenure
December 02, 2009
Marcus A. Winters
Mayor Bloomberg pushes to hold teachers accountable for student performance.
While everyone else was putting the final touches on their Thanksgiving-dinner grocery lists, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was picking a fight with his state legislature and the teachers unions. His insistence that the school district use standardized test scores when evaluating teachers for tenure promises to keep New Yorks schools moving in the right direction and provides an important example for lawmakers across the nation.
New Yorks state legislature gave teachers a gift last year by banning the use of student test-score data in tenure decisions. Many expect the legislature to allow the law to expire next year, but Mayor Bloomberg refuses to wait. Last week, he ordered schools chancellor Joel Klein to use the data anyway, arguing that the teachers up for tenure this year were hired in 2007, and a careful reading of the law suggests it applies only to teachers hired after July 1, 2008.
Bloombergs action is laudable because reforming tenure is an important step toward keeping bad teachers out of classrooms. The protections granted to a tenured teacher essentially guarantee a job for life. In 2006–07, only ten of 55,000 tenured public-school teachers in New York City were fired. Such low firing rates for tenured teachers are typical nationwide.
Offering job protections to proven teachers isnt necessarily a bad idea, but in todays public schools, tenure is treated as a right rather than a privilege. Nearly every teacher who decides she wants to stay on past the three-year mark receives the rubber stamp of tenure.
According to the citys Department of Education, only 2 percent of teachers eligible to receive tenure last year were denied it (another 5 percent had their probationary period extended a year). Thats actually quite an improvement and reflects the Bloomberg administrations push for a more accountable education system. In 2005–06, only 25 of the more than 6,000 eligible teachers (about 0.4 percent) were denied tenure.
While most public-school teachers are doing fine, not every person who ends up in a classroom deserves a lifetime job guarantee. We should do everything we can to remove the bad apples before they receive tenure. When bad teachers get tenure, they harm decades worth of students unlucky enough to be assigned to their classrooms.
A school should carefully consider as many factors as possible when deciding whether a teacher deserves lifetime employment. The performance of a teachers students on standardized exams surely deserves the evaluators attention.
No one argues that test scores should be used in isolation to make tenure or any other employment decisions about teachers. Test scores are imperfect measures of student proficiency, and it is difficult to distinguish a teachers independent contribution to a students test-score gains.
But standardized-test scores can raise red flags. If a teachers students consistently perform poorly on standardized exams, the principal should pay close attention to whether the teacher is the issue or another factor is at work. If it is the teachers fault, then tenure should be denied. It seems so obvious, who could oppose this?
The teachers unions, thats who. New York Citys teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, pushed the legislature to adopt the test-score ban. It did so while under the leadership of Randi Weingarten, now president of the national American Federation of Teachers.
The unions are wedded to a system that treats all teachers as if they were uniformly effective, even though both research and common sense tell us that this is simply not true. Real information about teacher quality threatens the worldview these unions advocate, and they are willing to pull every string available to stop it.
Whether Mayor Bloombergs gambit is legal will be decided in the courtroom. But he should be commended for taking on what is sure to be a brutal fight. State and city lawmakers across the nation should look to Bloombergs example and push for tenure reform of their own.
Original Source: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTFlYzI4MzRlYWNjOWUyOTkyMjU3ZTI3ZGU2NmZjOWI=
America's Legal Order Begins to Fray Heather Mac Donald, 09-14-15
Ray Kelly, Gotham's Guardian Stephen Eide, 09-14-15
Time to Trade in the 'Cadillac Tax' on Health Insurance Paul Howard, 09-14-15
Hillary Charts the Wrong Path on Wage Inequality Scott Winship, 09-11-15
Women Would Be Helped the Most By an End to the 'Marriage Penalty' Diana Furchtgott-Roth, 09-11-15
A Smarter Way to Raise Paychecks Oren Cass, 09-10-15
Gambling with New York's Pension Funds E. J. McMahon, 09-10-15
Vets Who Still Serve: After Disasters, Team Rubicon Picks Up the Pieces Howard Husock, 09-10-15
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ACLA type Mercedes leaves the production line of the new factory of... Foto di attualitàArtigiano,Automobile,Catena di montaggio,Composizione orizzontale,DaimlerChrysler,Economia,Fabbrica,Finanza,Mercedes-Benz - Marchio depositato,Nuovo,Partire,UngheriaPhotographer AFPCollection: AFP 2013 AFPACLA type Mercedes leaves the production line of the new factory of German car maker Daimler AG Mercedes Benz in Kecskemet, Hungary on January 25, 2013. German luxury car maker Daimler has completed construction of an 800 million Euro factory in Kecskemet. The project is the largest new investment by far in recent years in Hungary and one which highlights the government's ambivalent relationship to investors. AFP PHOTO / STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)


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- 800.878.7323
New Trade Paper
Ships in 1 to 3 days
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Other titles in the Teach Yourself Visually series:
Teach Yourself Visually Adobe Photoshop Cs6 (Teach Yourself Visually)by Mike Wooldridge
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Gets visual learners up to speed on the newest enhancements in Photoshop
Photoshop is constantly evolving, and the newest version offers great new tools for photographers. This popular guide gets visual learners up to speed quickly; previous editions have sold more than 150,000 copies. With colorful screen shots illustrating the step-by-step instructions, this book is perfect for Photoshop newcomers and for visual learners who are upgrading from an earlier version. It covers setting up the software, importing images from the camera, using all the tools, creating an online gallery, and more.
Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop CS6 gets visual learners ready to take advantage of everything the newest version has to offer.
Are you a visual learner? Do you prefer instructions that show you how to do something — and skip the long-winded explanations? If so, then this book is for you. Open it up and you'll find clear, step-by-step screen shots that show you how to tackle more than 160 Photoshop CS6 tasks. Each task-based spread covers a single technique, sure to help you get up and running on Photoshop CS6 in no time.
You'll learn to:
Designed for visual learners
A full color, step-by-step resource for getting acclimated to the Photoshop CS6 environment. This book guides users through basic Photoshop CS6 tasks and also introduces some intermediate techniques to help them create images with impact. The book covers the most important features of Photoshop CS6 including: importing photos from digital cameras and scanners, using the new creative options, retouching and repairing damaged photos, enhancing digital images, add custom 3-D effects, editing images for posting on the Web, creating a Web photo gallery, incorporating graphics into desktop publishing programs, color management, using palettes, compositing, using layers, applying gradients, and setting type and filters.
About the Author
Mike Wooldridge is a writer and web developer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has authored dozens of books for the Visual series. For more information about him and his books, visit www.wooldridge.net.
Brianna Stuart is an author and busy mom based in the Seattle area. She is also the author of Teach Yourself Visually Photoshop Elements 10 and Creating Web Pages Simplified.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Getting Started
Work with Images 4
Understanding Photoshop 6
Start Photoshop on a PC 8
Start Photoshop on a Mac 9
The Photoshop Workspace 10
Find Images for Your Projects 11
Set Preferences 12
Save a Workspace 14
Open an Image 16
Browse for an Image in Bridge 18
Sort and Filter Images in Bridge 20
Display a Slide Show in Bridge 22
Import Images from a Camera in Bridge 24
Create a New Image 26
Exit Photoshop 27
Chapter 2 Understanding Photoshop Basics
Chapter 3 Changing the Size of an Image
Chapter 4 Making Selections
Chapter 5 Manipulating Selections
Chapter 6 Painting and Drawing with Color
Chapter 7 Adjusting Lighting and Colors
Chapter 8 Working with Layers
Chapter 9 Applying Layer Styles
Chapter 10 Applying Filters
Chapter 11 Drawing Shapes
Chapter 12 Adding and Manipulating Type
Chapter 13 Automating Your Work
Chapter 14 Saving and Printing Images
Index 328
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29062 Misty Point Ln in Menifee CA is a STANDARD SALE, absolutely turn-key! This gorgeous newer home was built in 2005 offering more energy efficient materials to keep your energy bills down. This Menifee home has no strings attached. It's a simple process of write the offer, get it accepted, close escrow and move in! It's that easy. This Menifee home is located in the beautiful and highly desirable Community of Heritage Lake. Homeowners in Heritage Lake enjoy access to an Olympic Size pool, clubhouse that can be rented for weekend parties, playgrounds, 2 schools, and several parks including a children's spray park. This turn-key Heritage Lake home is in perfect condition and ready for entertaining. Since it's a standard sale we can close escrow in as little as 21 days with one of our preferred lenders.
This Heritage Lake home in Menifee features: Large master suite with walk in closet, open floor plan, beautiful kitchen with new stainless steel appliances, dark corian countertops, a huge family and living room, new custom paint, new upgraded carpet, new blinds throughout the house, 4 bedrooms with 3 up and one down, 3 full baths, 18″ tile floors, custom lighting, new front and backyard landscaping, and a loft area for upstairs entertaining. This house has been completely redone! You will not be disappointed.
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Mystery House Comics Is Taking Submissions For Upcoming AnthologyJanuary 07, 2014 DarlingDork No comments
Written by John Barrie
January 7, 2014 (Boise, ID) – Back in October I was lucky enough to meet Jon Keithley, a Boise comic book writer who was doing a signing to promote his brand new comic, Shivertown. In addition to writing Shivertown, Keithley created the book's label, Mystery House. At the time, he mentioned that they would be looking to start 2014 by producing an anthology of writers and artists, but details were vague, so all I could do was promise DarlingDork readers that I would keep an ear out and deliver the specifics as soon as I had them.
Well, that time is now. In conjunction with Corvid Tear Media, Mystery House is taking submissions for an anthology based on the theme "Feral."
Artists are asked to provide five sample images displaying a range of work—for example, a figure, a landscape, motion—while they are looking for writers to provide a completed five page script on the theme. Whether you are providing art or story, they ask that you include a cover page with your name, address, phone number, online contact information, and sixty word personal /professional biography.
Submissions are due by the first of February and can be sent (along with any additional questions you might have) to email@example.com.
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Breakthrough Advertising
Advertising by Eugene M. Schwartz — the greatest book ever written
on direct marketing and advertising — has just been republished.
Why a new edition? Martin Edelston,
Boardroom's CEO, says "The book was recently selling online for $900
(used), so I felt we had to reissue it. After all, we built a wonderful
business with these concepts — so can others."
late Gene Schwartz used to marvel that people came to him regularly to
say they directly credited Breakthrough Advertising with
their making millions of dollars.
That's when Gene realized his book was
about much more than just "advertising." It's about a way to develop an
entirely new market for a new or an old product. It involves a number
of clearly defined steps. Breakthrough
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single one of those steps.
simply, Gene's masterpiece addresses the universal problem of all
copywriting: How to write a headline — and an ad that follows it — that
will open up a whole new market.
Advertising," Gene said, "is not about building better mousetraps.
It is, however, about building larger mice — and then building a
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text:
LAST MEETING: The 49ers, starting six rookies, managed just 217 yards of total offense in a 10-9 loss in Jacksonville, Fla. Running back Frank Gore gained 79 yards on 19 carries, but Alex Smith completed just 8 of 24 passes for 123 yards, as the 49ers were held to three Joe Nedney field goals.
JAGUARS: CB Rashean Mathis (groin) is out; RB Maurice Jones-Drew (knee), WR Mike Sims-Walker (knee) are probable.
49ERS: CB Nate Clements (shoulder), T Joe Staley (knee) are out; WR Isaac Bruce (ankle), RB Michael Robinson (shoulder) are doubtful; LB Takeo Spikes (hamstring), WR Arnaz Battle (ankle) are questionable; WR Brandon Jones (thumb), G David Baas (ankle), CB Tarell Brown (knee), CB Marcus Hudson (back), S Michael Lewis (quadricep), S Reggie Smith (abdomen), T Adam Snyder (shoulder), S Curtis Taylor (knee), LB Patrick Willis (shoulder) are probable.
JAGUARS (6-4): Jacksonville has struggled against the NFC West this season. The Jaguars lost to the Arizona Cardinals (31-17) and the Seattle Seahawks (41-0) and only managed to defeat the St. Louis Rams in overtime (23-20). But the Jaguars are in position to battle for a spot in the AFC playoffs with six games remaining. Running back Jones-Drew makes the team go.
Jacksonville owns the league?s sixth-ranked ground attack. Jones-Drew has rushed for 926 yards and 13 touchdowns. He has also caught 36 passes for 238 yards. Quarterback David Garrard has proved to be a good game manager. In 10 starts, he has thrown eight touchdowns but he also has been intercepted just six times. Garrard?s favorite target is third-year player Mike Sims-Walker, who has 47 receptions for 694 yards and six touchdowns.
49ERS (4-6): Time is running out on the 49ers in their quest to return to the NFC playoffs for the first time since the 2002 season. The 49ers have lost five of their past six games, but might have to run the table with victories over Jacksonville, Seattle, Arizona, Philadelphia, Detroit and St. Louis to close out the season to assure themselves a spot in the playoffs. Quarterback Alex Smith has shown signs of progress but he has yet to put together a complete game. The 49ers have issues in pass defense, too. Detroit and Tennessee are the only teams in the league that have surrendered more passing yards per game than the 49ers.
Coach Mike Singletary benched cornerback Tarell Brown for today?s game and replaced him with veteran Dre? Bly.


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EXCLUSIVE: "Deadpool Secret Comic" Plays Out Over 20 Variant Covers
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Ruth S. Noel, The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980)
It is somewhat sobering to realize that an author of fantasy literature, no matter how much he may deserve the sobriquet "great," has generated his own genre of scholarship. And in the scholarship of literature, one is often left asking very nearly the same question that arises when contemplating research funded by the U.S. Department of Defense: "Was this book really necessary?"
Ruth Noel's The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth does have a number of things to recommend it. The introductory chapter, "Tolkien the Linguist," expands on the general and somewhat cursory knowledge of Tolkien's life and career that might reside in the more-or-less casual reader of his fiction, and offers some fascinating tidbits: I had no idea Quenya, the language of the High Elves, was based on Finnish. (But then, I don't speak Finnish.) Of course, now that the connection has been pointed out, I begin to see it. (I once had a Finnish intern.)
Tolkien's love of language, and of languages, is apparent to anyone who has read his books, especially those of us who come back to them again and again for the heady richness of it. What may not strike the reader immediately is his genius with language as a means of universe building, his uncanny ability not only to create languages that make sense in themselves, but that make sense in relation to each other and mold the context. Noel, who adheres to Tolkien's fancy that The Lord of the Rings is translated from the Red Book of Westmarch as a metaphor to frame her book, does provide a helpful description of the relationship between, for example, Westron, the language used by the hobbits, and the language of the Rohirrim, which is to Westron as the language of Beowulf is to modern English. (She also does a good job of clarifying the idea of "based on" as opposed to the idea of "stands in relation to.")
Noel does make some assertions of which I am suspicious. Her contention that "a linguist can reconstruct a culture from its language just as a biologist can reconstruct an animal from a bone" is one that does not completely satisfy. Aside from its not being an exact analogy (a linguist can reconstruct a language from a sentence, or even a few words), a linguist can develop a sense of a people's priorities, the importance of various social relationships, even an idea of the basic economy, but after that, it becomes too tenuous to rely exclusively on language as the primary indicator. Thus, her notion that the creation of Quenya necessarily led to the description of the Elvish cultures in The Silmarillion is more than a little suspicious. (And in this light, it is interesting to note which Noel does not that Tolkien's languages are relatively "pure" in that there is no evidence of the borrowings back and forth that are common in the languages of this Earth vide the staggering number of words that have been adopted whole into American English from almost every other major language living and dead and the occurrence of terms such as "le cocktail" in languages as xenophobic as French. Considering the historical interactions between the various peoples of Middle-earth, this is more than a little odd.)
The reconstructions of the evolution of the languages of Middle-earth are such that one can appreciate the patient research, if not any particular flashes of insight. Indeed, given that Tolkien himself did not pursue this topic in any detail (quite rightly, from some points of view), it is no surprise that they are more than a little sketchy. Considering that statement, I find myself led back to the first question: if one is not a Tolkien scholar, how is one to identify flashes of insight anyway? And, unless the reader is one of those who, as described on the jacket copy, writes love letters in Elvish, why should one care? Noel includes a chart of the lineages of the Kings of Men, both of Numenor and the later kingdoms of Arnor, Gondor, and the Mark. This is information which is easily obtainable (and less confusing) in Tolkien's own appendices to The Lord of the Rings, and does not really bear out her contention that it helps explicate the development of Westron. Of more likely use to those who want to write love letters in Elvish (or any of the thirteen other languages extant in Tolkien's works) are the English-to-Elvish glossary and the Tolkien Dictionary. For the rest of us, they are of moderate and transitory interest.
I can't honestly say the book is captivating in places it is downright tedious. What The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth makes apparent, if one had any doubts, is Tolkien's passion for, and deep understanding of, language. Given its focus, this is only appropriate. However, taking into account Tolkien's own tendency to gloss over the importance of the linguistic aspect of his fiction (and ask any writer of fantasy: yes, this sort of thing is important; so are the braces that hold the painted canvas walls of a stage set, but you don't want the audience to see them), the real problem becomes apparent: what makes Tolkien a major figure is not his work in linguistics (indeed, the core of scholarship in the evolution of language is far beyond the Eurocentrism of Tolkien's day) but his place as a storyteller of extraordinarily rare artistry. His linguistic abilities, in this event, are really just a tool.
Noel doesn't seem to have made the decision as to whether this book should be a scholarly dissertation in which case it is thin or a popular book designed to appeal to fans in which case, it is dull. In the final analysis, one can only say that it is probably of interest to hobbyists.
[Robert Tilendis]


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No. 82 October 2013
Twenty Myths About Public-Sector Pension Plans
Richard C. Dreyfuss,
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Executive Summary
Three More Myths About Public-Sector Pension Plans, Burypensions, 10-25-13
Linked on RealClearPolicy.com, 10-28-13
Twenty Myths About Public-Sector Pension Plans, Public CEO, 10-24-13
State and municipal governments across the United States know that they are facing a looming financial crisis because of their pension obligations. Politically popular yet financially reckless decisions have left many of these governments with rapidly escalating pension costs. The situation is clearly unsustainable in the long term, which is why the issue of public-sector pensions is now front-page news from California to New York to Illinois (where legislators' wages recently were suspended for their perpetual failure to resolve that state's pension crisis).
These days, everyone knows that public-sector pension reform is essential. But what kind of reform? And how is it to be achieved? There is no shortage of debate (and a number of jurisdictions claim that they have put reforms in place). Much of this discussion, though, is marred by misinformation and half-truths. These misconceptions are confusing the public discussion about pensions and facilitating the enactment of pseudo-reforms that are politically attractive but financially inadequate.
This paper identifies these nuggets of misunderstanding and inaccuracy—the myths of public-sector pensions.
After outlining the requirements for real pension reform—how states and local governments can operate pension plans that do not threaten today's taxpayers with ever-increasing contribution levels or pass the costs of today's workers on to future generations—we describe the 20 myths that make such reform more difficult. Some are myths of fact (those commonly believed assertions about pensions and pension reform that are incorrect) and some are myths of analysis (interpretations and prescriptions that are seriously flawed). They range from misinterpretations of commonly used terms (such as "actuarially sound" and "cash-balance plan") to claims about the relative merits of defined benefit plans (exaggerated) and the risks of defined contribution plans (also exaggerated).
The goal of this paper is to facilitate a fact-based and analytically sound discussion of pension reform—a discussion that cannot succeed until these widespread myths are dispelled.
About the Author
Richard C. Dreyfuss is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for State and Local Leadership and a regular contributor to PublicSectorInc.org. Dreyfuss is an actuary and business consultant. He worked for the Hershey Company (formerly Hershey Foods Corporation) for 21 years, and held numerous positions there, including director of compensation and benefits, prior to his retirement in 2002. He was also involved in the establishment of the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council in 1986 and was its chair in 2001-02. This independent state agency is responsible for developing comparative information about the most efficient and effective health care providers to individual consumers and group purchasers of health services. Dreyfuss is a pension and health care expert who has written and testified before Congress and the Pennsylvania General Assembly on strategies to effectively manage long-term employee benefit costs. His op-eds have appeared in major newspapers including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and he has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He holds a B.A. in mathematics and economics from Connecticut College and an M.A. in actuarial science from Northeastern University.
A key cause of the recent bankruptcy of the once-great city of Detroit was the overwhelming size of its pension obligations to its employees. Detroit is far from alone. Since 2008, a growing number of public pension plans have abandoned the standard of 100 percent funding (which rests on the bedrock assumption that benefits should be paid for as they are earned, rather than paid by future generations). As the consequences of this underfunding accumulate, more and more governments are facing considerable liquidity challenges, as higher employee pension contributions put pressure on their budgets. On current trends, the next phase of the crisis will bring more Detroits: governments will reach the end of their capacities to pay for pension contributions with financial manipulation and borrowing, and bankruptcies will be the result.
Thus pension finance has become headline news in many states. (In Illinois, for example, the governor suspended legislators' paychecks last summer, saying that they would not be paid until they successfully addressed the state's ongoing pension crisis.) It is now widely recognized that local and state governments urgently need to take steps to reform their pension systems.
But what steps? Too often, policymakers receive descriptions, analyses, proposals, and conclusions based on dubious assertions and interpretations of myriad laws, regulations, accounting requirements, and actuarial parlance. In this environment, financial manipulation and political image management can easily be branded and accepted as "pension reform." The situation is exacerbated by the incentives that politicians have to offer half-measures, where true reform would threaten their reelection chances.
The goal of any reform must be to ensure that pensions are properly funded in both the short and the long term. Yet changes toward those goals are frequently deferred, outright ignored, or predicated on overoptimistic forecasts of asset returns. States and cities must face the truth: they need to reform both the funding and the design of pensions (therefore addressing the question of whether and what benefits can be guaranteed). Only that kind of comprehensive reform will assure long-term sustainability.
Instead, many policy debates, and even so-called pension reforms continue to be based in half-truths, exaggerations, and erroneous but commonly accepted ideas.
This paper seeks to clarify a number of these assertions—we will call them the "myths of public-sector pension plans." Some of these accepted shibboleths of the pension debate are inaccurate; many others contain varying degrees of truth but often mislead because they aren't accompanied by necessary explanations.
Reasonable people will disagree about how best to balance the needs of public-sector retirees and taxpayers, overall—but all should be able to agree on the need for an informed debate based on accurate information and sound analysis. That is the goal of this paper, in which we present 20 myths about public-sector pensions. They are divided into myths of fact (those commonly believed assertions about pensions and pension reform that are incorrect) and myths of analysis (interpretations and prescriptions that are seriously flawed). Our goal is twofold: for those jurisdictions where public-sector pension reform is under discussion, we wish to improve the terms of the debate; and for those areas where "reforms" are in place, we want to help policymakers and the public distinguish between real reforms and pseudo-reforms that fail to address the underlying issues.
The Public-Sector Pension Crisis
The central debate regarding public-sector pension plans typically involves how to support and whether to change a "defined benefit," or DB, plan. Such plans, once common but now less so in the private sector, provide specific formula-based monthly benefit payments once a certain age or number of years of service has been reached. To make good on such a benefit, governments must make regular financial contributions to pension funds—and effectively manage those funds so that returns on investments provide income sufficient to make the expected payouts. Pressure for reform has grown because pension obligations now threaten to outstrip the government's ability to pay, since the investment risk and any resulting deficits are the responsibility of the taxpayer.
Reform proposals usually include an alternative type of pension plan known as a defined contribution, or DC, plan—in which government provides a specific level of contribution to the plan rather than a specific level of benefits. The contributed funds, which could be augmented by the individual employees, are then managed so as to provide income upon retirement. The investment risk in a DC plan is assumed by the plan member.
The importance of moving to DC plans cannot be overstated. Indeed, this paper is significantly predicated on the view that a transition to defined contribution plans is the only way to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of public-employee pension plans and, at the same time, to protect the interests of taxpayers. First, DC plans do not have unfunded liabilities —a gap between the cost of promised benefits and assets on hand to pay for them. Therefore, the employer's contribution is not at risk of increasing because of plan deficits. Second, this change also eliminates the risk of political interference in pension finance. Politics can interfere with sound pension design in two ways: when a pension plan is well funded, political pressure can improve benefits (often retroactively), adding to the cost of the plan; contrarily, when a plan is underfunded, politics can motivate officials to respond with financial manipulation. Moving to a DC plan removes these political incentives while eliminating the threat that ever-increasing contributions pose to government's fiscal health.
DC plans are thus a necessary but insufficient component of true reform. In addition to moving governments to these plans, reformers must close the door on various maneuvers that some governments have undertaken to defer their liabilities and pass pension costs on to future generations: "pension obligation bonds" and similar forms of debt financing should be prohibited.
Achieving sustainable public-sector pension systems will also require implementing new accounting standards adopted by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB), the independent, public-sector entity responsible for establishing financial accounting standards and reporting requirements for state and local governments. While these standards are not funding mandates, they are useful guidelines in establishing more responsible funding policies. These standards require that unfunded liabilities be amortized more quickly than in the past and that plan assets are based on market values and that unfunded pension liabilities be reported on the government's balance sheet.
Finally, true reform will likely ask more of plan participants: increased member contributions, reduced benefits, higher retirement ages, curtailment of early-retirement subsidies, reduced cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) in benefits, and common pension provisions for all public-sector employees. Any reforms must improve the financial health of plans without increasing taxes.
All the myths that we will describe make the achievement of comprehensive and sustainable reforms more difficult.
Myths of Analysis
Myth #1: Many states have adopted comprehensive and sustainable pension reform.
Fact: Other than Alaska and Michigan, few, if any, states and selected local governments have established mandatory DC plans for new hires in the desired cost range of 4–7 percent of payroll, congruent with the private-sector norm.[1] Yet this is the first essential step in pension reform.
Managing the unfunded liability of the previous DB plan and preventing a transfer of cost to the next generation are the paramount challenges for any government seeking comprehensive and sustainable pension reform. This will be particularly challenging given the optimistic asset-return projections of most plans. Earlier this year, the Indiana Public Retirement System became an outlier when it lowered its annual investment return assumption from 7 percent to 6.75 percent—now the lowest of any major public pension plan.[2] Many other pension plans assume 7.5 percent returns.
Instead of facing reality, many governments have enacted what we might call "pseudo-reforms." Some, for instance, have issued "pension obligation bonds" or have used other strategies to borrow to finance their retirement benefit systems, a strategy that fails to address unrealistic benefit promises and, because it offers more resources to pension plans, poses the risk of further benefit increases. Other governments have tried to clear their employment rolls of workers on older, expensive retirement plans by offering incentives to retire early. In doing so, they enhance already generous benefits while often extending the amortization period—the number of years required to pay off obligations completely—for the unfunded liability of their plan. Others "reset" such unfunded liability, extending amortization beyond the duration of participants' remaining working careers. This is a politically expedient solution that appears to decrease pension costs, but it is contrary to proper pension funding (which holds that a pension system should be paid for entirely during the working lifetimes of its members). The reason, of course, is that this strategy passes the cost of employing today's workers on to future generations.
Other governments claim the mantle of reform after they have reduced the cost of a DB plan, introduced a voluntary DC plan, or both. But these approaches do not eliminate DB plans and therefore leave governments still financially vulnerable. The same flaw can be found in the "cash-balance" plan approach (see Myth #10).
Some plans (for example, Rhode Island's) contain provisions making annual COLAs conditional on future funding improvement. While this may be preferable to automatic COLAs, such "contingent liabilities" make it difficult for a plan to reach a 100 percent funded ratio (in which assets are equal to accrued liabilities). It is also unlikely that many plans will be able to enact funding reforms generally consistent with the latest methodology set by Moody's or those found in statements 67 and 68 from the GASB. Such shortcomings may place governments' future credit ratings at risk, in spite of their claims to have reformed their pension plans.
Myth #2: The best measure of success in reforming a DB plan is a reduction in projected employer contribution after reform. This near-term drop represents acceptable and sustainable reform that will withstand the test of time.
Fact: Politics and DB plans are a toxic combination. Projected pension-plan contributions are simply estimates based upon future assumptions, often placing future taxpayers at significant risk. Even if one is clairvoyant in projecting future experience, the potentially significant costs relating to political forces are never quantified. Specifically, the success of any reform effort is often predicated on at least three key assumptions:
a) The achievement of annual asset returns of 7.5 percent or higher
b) No future benefits improvements (often enacted retroactively)
c) Contributing the actuarially recommended contributions (ARC)
a) The achievement of annual asset returns of 7.5 percent or higher
b) No future benefits improvements (often enacted retroactively)
c) Contributing the actuarially recommended contributions (ARC)
In most cases, it is likely that none of these three assumptions will be achieved. These are examples of the political forces at work, leading to actions accounting for much of the unsustainable deficits in today's plans.
Even contributing the ARC is not necessarily a satisfactory standard, given that this term is unique to each plan's underlying assumptions, funding methods, and amortization periods. Consequently, aside from a subjective debate on the standards for "reasonable assumptions," the amortization periods often extend well beyond a period supported by the plan's own demographics. Most ARCs are also likely to be significantly lower than the separately computed annual pension expense used for accounting and financial-reporting purposes. Such standards were recently revised in the GASB statements 67 and 68.
Myth #3: Uniformed public-sector employees require a defined-benefit plan.
Fact: This myth is a major reason that many pension-reform efforts involving DC plans have failed to include uniformed services. It is often cited to give policymakers a false choice: a DB plan or public safety.
The claim is sometimes stated in moral terms—those who risk their lives for the community should be well protected in the event that their work leads to death or life-altering injury. In other instances, it is made as an argument for practicality: without the assurance of a generous DB plan, government will find it difficult to recruit qualified people for uniformed jobs. Neither assertion is universally correct.
Certainly, those who risk their lives for the community should be afforded significant death and disability benefits. In fact, most states have adopted statutes specifically addressing such contingencies. Retirement benefits for uniformed employees should be similar to those of non-uniformed employees. In the event that such a practice would preclude the hiring of necessary and qualified individuals, any adjustments should be made through base pay.
DB plan advocates also note that some public safety employees do not participate in Social Security. This can be remedied in DC plans by offering higher employee-plus-employer contributions of 18–20 percent, according to a TIAA-CREF study.[3]
The case for DB pensions here, then, is not strong. On the other hand, the argument against such benefits for uniformed workers is convincing. It rests on the fact that DB plans provide full benefits on retirement after a set number of years of service, regardless of health or age. As a consequence, in many states and localities, a healthy uniformed employee can leave the workforce and receive full retirement benefits as early as age 50. This deprives the workforce of much knowledge and expertise and results in extra costs.
In Pennsylvania, for example, the need to replace a significant number of retiring state police, most of whom can retire at age 50, forced the state to create three new classes of recruits.[4]
These generous retirement provisions often conflict with the employees' own preference to remain employed. This has given rise to the creation of costly Deferred Retirement Option Plans (DROPs). These plans effectively allow participants qualifying for retirement benefits payouts to remain actively employed for up to five years while their pension benefits accumulate separately within the plan—as if they had retired on the earlier date. At their deferred retirement date, this accumulation (often with interest added) is paid as a lump sum, in addition to the ongoing normal monthly pension. In a sense, this approach creates a bidding war, pitting an incentive to retire against an incentive to stay on the job. Perversely, both competitors are the government that employs the worker. In other words, this is effectively a bidding war in which government is bidding against itself.
A far less costly solution would be to address early retirement, which removes experienced and knowledgeable people from public service, with more effective human resources polices. This means that employees in the latter part of their careers should be afforded opportunities in staff positions or related career training to capitalize on their acquired knowledge and expertise rather than promised extra payments that most local and state governments can ill afford.
Myth #4: A particular pension plan remains in satisfactory condition based upon the fact that no retiree has yet to be denied a payment.
Fact: Plans are going through three stages of financial distress.
Stage 1: Plans abandon 100 percent funding targets, legalize financial manipulation and underfunding—generally occurring since 2008.
Stage 2: Systemic liquidity challenges; projected higher pension contributions creating budgetary pressures and/or tax increases.
Stage 3: Prefunding is fully compromised; widespread borrowings and more bankruptcies. This will occur over the next five to 15 years.
Stage 1: Plans abandon 100 percent funding targets, legalize financial manipulation and underfunding—generally occurring since 2008.
Stage 2: Systemic liquidity challenges; projected higher pension contributions creating budgetary pressures and/or tax increases.
Stage 3: Prefunding is fully compromised; widespread borrowings and more bankruptcies. This will occur over the next five to 15 years.
Myth #5: The GASB sets requirements on how plans should be funded.
Fact: In 2006, GASB statement 25 ("Financial Reporting for Defined Benefit Pension Plans") established 30 years as the maximum amortization period for unfunded liabilities in determining the ARC. This replaced the previous standard of 40 years. However, this accounting standard is not a governmental funding requirement unless adopted as a funding statute or formal funding policy. Frequently, states have contributed less than this accounting standard, which explains much of today's unsustainable unfunded liabilities. Predictably, some DB advocates have argued that these GASB changes are unnecessary and confusing to the public.
In fact, these new standards are consistent with the principle that benefits should be funded as they are earned, with deficits amortized over durations supported by the demographics of the plan, meaning the average remaining years of active members' employment until their expected retirement date.[5] These standards establish that unfunded liabilities will now appear on the balance sheet of sponsoring employers.
Overall, these new standards are a thoughtful and well-timed update. They will require more appropriate recognition of pension costs and should positively influence the need to better fund these pension systems using the market value of assets. The standards will also create pressure on systems to more seriously consider reforms in the interest of keeping plans current and affordable.
It is significant that Moody's, which analyzes credit risk, has updated its measurement standards supporting reduced amortization periods as well.
Myth #6: The unfunded actuarial liability (UAL) is not important, since it assumes that everyone will be retiring today.
Fact: Under most actuarial cost methods, the UAL is a snapshot of the present value of benefits earned to date, less assets available to pay these same benefits. Some earned benefits are currently in pay status, and other benefits are payable at a later date. Therefore, the UAL does not represent the value of all participants retiring today.
In theory, if a plan were sold to a third party to assume its obligations, the unfunded liability would represent a deficit that would need to be satisfied. Any reasonable observer would find this deficit to be more than that estimated by the plan because plans customarily assume an optimistic annual return rate of 7.5 percent on assets.
Myth #7: New members are needed to sustain DB plans. Without them, plans will incur transition costs that make DB-to-DC conversions unaffordable.
Fact: Pension systems are designed to be self-sustaining. DB plans, if properly designed and administered, should not need new members to sustain themselves. The claim that a plan needs new members to sustain itself, then, is a red flag indicating that basic funding principles have been compromised. Such a contention supports the caricature that pension systems are effectively legalized Ponzi schemes.
In a closed DB plan, it is reasonable to assume that investment returns will eventually decline with an aging workforce and a corresponding declining time horizon. This impact is commonly referred to as a "transition cost."
Nonetheless, the argument is sometimes advanced that DB plans are so unsustainable without new members that governments cannot afford to close their DB plans and move to a DC system. Some pension plans, concerned by this prospect, retain their DB system, even as they offer a DC option. Worse, when these plans calculate the percentage of payroll that the DB plan costs, they sometimes use their total payroll—including the wages of DC plan participants. This makes their accounting process less onerous but hides the real cost of the DB plan. This is a poor funding practice, since it first "mal-assigns" costs and provides no assurance of any date-certain payoff. It is on the road to perpetual amortization.
Most illustrations quantify transition costs by comparing projected employer contributions of the closed plan with those of the current system over a 30-year duration. To properly analyze these costs, the results should be computed on a present-value basis that adjusts for the time value of money. Often, such illustrations presume that the current scenario of 7.5 percent asset returns is a certainty—when, in fact, that presumption is highly debatable.
One recent illustration involved a 30-year projection of closing the Pennsylvania School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) in favor of a DC plan for new hires. The nominal increase in employer contributions was stated at over $39 billion. However, the author computed the net present value of this change to be just over $6 billion. While such a number is still significant, it needs to be placed in perspective. Over the past four years, PSERS reduced its annual return-rate estimate from 8.5 percent to 7.5 percent. This alone added an estimated $8 billion to its UAL. Yet this change occurred without any fanfare or hyperbole. Therefore, transition costs that are lower than this figure should not preclude serious consideration of a DC plan.
Of course, this modeling assumes that projected employer contributions will be made as scheduled, that the 7.5 percent return will be achieved, and that no new benefits improvements will occur. It is unlikely that all these assumptions will prove true. On the other hand, if there were no political pressure to estimate high returns, or to change contributions, or to add benefits, there would be no need for such assumptions and therefore no risk. In other words, there are significant future savings in removing politics from public pension-plan management. When the costs of transition from DB to DC is discussed, though, these gains are seldom mentioned, much less quantified.
Myth #8: The federal government needs to play a role in state pension-reform efforts.
Fact: Government induces moral hazard when it attempts to manage risk. This unfortunate effect of protecting people from the consequences of their actions applies to federal loan guarantees, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act, among other instances.
Within the domain of private-sector DB pensions, we see the inducement of moral hazard in the actions of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). This entity was established under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to ensure certain levels of pensions while requiring participating plan sponsors to pay premiums. PBGC currently has an estimated deficit of more than $29 billion.[6] The prospect of higher premiums on participating employers, together with the myriad federal regulations affecting DB plans, creates powerful disincentives to discontinue these arrangements.
The concept of requiring private-sector pension plans to have insurance as part of ERISA was sound; not using the private-sector insurance market where risk can be properly managed was the flaw.
In addition to the risk of moral hazard, this myth runs counter to the American tradition of federalism, in which the preferred venue for problem-solving policies is local governments, which are closer to the citizenry and reflective of its diversity of political and economic ideas.
Myths of Fact
Myth #9: Since government entities are perpetual, pension obligations can be deferred indefinitely.
Fact: This is the de-facto funding policy in many state plans because they annually reset their amortization periods. Such a practice is referred to as "open amortization" because this method sets no certain endpoint to payments into the plan.[7] Though this myth is usually tacitly assumed, it is sometimes stated explicitly. For example, a 2004 Pennsylvania state government report actually made such a claim.[8]
As a further example, recent actuarial reports from Montana's two major pension systems[9] reflect a funding policy that "does not amortize" at all. This means that the current contribution schedule is insufficient to ever fully pay off the plan's unfunded liability.
The proper funding standard is to contribute sufficient amounts to provide for accumulations such that the plans are effectively paid up in the aggregate at retirement. For instance, a plan whose participants have an average age of 45—and an assumed average retirement at 60—should establish a funding goal to pay off its unfunded liabilities over a period of not longer than 15 years (to use the technical term, it should have a "closed amortization period" of 15 years). Recent GASB changes have redefined annual pension expense to align better with this standard. This will result in the annual accounting expense significantly exceeding the actual amounts contributed in most states.
Those who favor DB pension plans sometimes invoke the concept of "intergenerational equity" to justify the perpetual passing on of pension costs. This term refers to the claim that the burden of unsustainable liabilities should be equitably shared among generations. For anyone who does not share this philosophy, of course, "intergenerational equity" is simply a term for saddling future generations with the burden of paying for the promises of their predecessors. "We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves," Thomas Jefferson wrote.[10] For many, these words are just as true and just as urgent today as they were when they were written in 1813.
Myth #10: Cash-balance plans offer a route to meaningful reform.
Fact: This myth is predicated on the notion that in addition to DB and DC plans, there exists a third category of pension plans, called "cash balance."
In reality, there is no third category of public-sector pension plan. Cash-balance plans are simply a specific type of DB plan. The Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor regulations explicitly define DC plans.[11] Any plan that does not meet this definition is a DB plan. The Department of Labor's website makes this clear:
There are two general types of pension plans—defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans. In general, defined benefit plans provide a specific benefit at retirement for each eligible employee, while defined contribution plans specify the amount of contributions to be made by the employer toward an employee's retirement account. In a defined contribution plan, the actual amount of retirement benefits provided to an employee depends on the amount of the contributions as well as the gains or losses of the account.
A cash balance plan is a defined-benefit plan that defines the benefit in terms that are more characteristic of a defined-contribution plan. In other words, a cash balance plan defines the promised benefit in terms of a stated account balance.
Further obscuring matters, some have chosen to describe cash-balance plans as "hybrid" or "combination" plans. The term "hybrid" can also refer to separate stand-alone DB and DC plans offered within an employee-benefits program.
The cash-balance plan is effectively a career-average DB plan, where the accrued benefit is expressed as an account balance that grows with "interest" and "pay-based credits." This provides the appearance of a DC plan, as hypothetical accounts are created that are simply liabilities from the plan itself. Depending upon the specific design features, the accrued benefit can also be affected by actual DB asset returns. Frequently, at retirement, all or part of the accrued benefit is required to be taken as an annuity.
Conceptually, cash-balance plans are neither good nor bad. Practically, however, given that they are DB plans, they are subject to the same political pressures as any other form of DB public-sector pension plan: accounts can be retroactively increased; the plans can be underfunded; and their assets are valued with an assumed rate of return that may, for political reasons, be set too high. Most important, as with any DB plan, a cash-balance plan can generate unfunded liabilities. Only DC plans take politics out of pension arrangements.
Not surprisingly, as the popularity of DB plans has faded in the private sector, so, too, have cash-balance plans.[12] Major benchmark employers no longer offer such plans as part of an overall trend away from DB plans. IBM discontinued its cash-balance plan in 2005.[13] Some might consider it surprising, then, that in the public sector eight years later, cash-balance plans are considered viable reforms. (Others, more cynically, might deem this not at all surprising.)
Myth #11: The annual normal cost of a DB plan can readily be compared with the annual employer contribution of a DC plan.
Fact: The normal cost[14] of a DB plan is the present value of benefits earned in the current year. The normal cost is a function of the actuarial assumptions. The accuracy of any particular normal cost can be validated only by future plan experience.
In contrast, the annual DC employer cost is an actual and final cost. If annual cost comparisons between DB and DC plans are considered necessary, these calculations should be made under various scenarios to illustrate the sensitivity inherent in the DB normal cost.
Myth #12: "Actuarial soundness" is a well-defined and commonly understood term.
Fact: This claim is often invoked to preempt probing questions regarding a particular plan design or funding approach. "Actuarial soundness," though, has no rigorous definition. It is a qualitative term referring to whether a debt is ultimately satisfied—not a quantitative term identifying a specific duration with related details.
This issue has proved to be so amorphous that the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA) found it necessary to commission a study in 2012 to clarify matters. That report warned: "At the legislative level, many states also mention actuarial soundness in the context of the funding of their pension plans. In many of these cases, the references presume that the concept is widely understood and generally accepted, without further elaboration. In some cases (such as California), the legislature puts the onus on the independent actuary to certify the actuarial soundness of the funding requirement."[15]
Myth #13: An "80 percent funded" status is the sign of a healthy pension plan.
Fact: A plan's funded ratio is simply the ratio of its assets to its accrued liabilities. The bedrock standard here is that benefits should be funded as they are earned. In such a situation, the ratio of assets to liabilities is 100 percent. Only a 100 percent funded ratio marks a plan that is current in its funding progress toward its ultimate long-term goal.
Yet many stakeholders have come to believe that a funded ratio of 80 percent or more is the sign of a healthy plan. This widely believed myth is a tribute to the persistence of DB plan advocates, who have succeeded in "moving the goal posts" from 100 percent to 80. But the claim that a plan can be healthy or actuarially sound at 80 percent is the precise equivalent of the claim that a family is in good financial shape when it is "only" 20 percent behind in its mortgage payments.
The AAA has weighed in on this issue in a 2012 report: "The 80% Pension Funding Standard Myth."[16] It argues that, in the words of Donald Fuerst, senior fellow with the AAA: "The 80% myth can lead to a dangerous slippery slope. It could evolve into an inadequate target if not challenged. Pension plans should have a strategy in place to attain or maintain a funded status of 100 percent or greater over a reasonable period of time."
Myth #14: All funded ratios are comparable.
Fact: Pension policy choices are often debated in terms of plans' funded ratios, with the assumption (sometimes explicit, sometimes implied) that different plans' ratios are derived by the same methods and types of data and are therefore easily compared. But the numbers that make up a funded ratio—assets divided by liabilities—are determined in different ways by different pension systems. Indeed, plans are free to make decisions that affect both the numerator (assets) and the denominator (liabilities) in a ratio. There is no required standard.
Without a standard for evaluating the relationship of assets to liability, plans are free to claim funded ratios that are more favorable than reality warrants. Most plans' funded ratios are actually more unfavorable than disclosed because of their tendency to overvalue their assets and to assume an optimistic 7.5 percent per annum return on those assets.
Myth #15: Public-sector employer pension costs are properly reflected in official reports detailing total compensation in studies such as that of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).[17]
Fact: Table 3 of the March 2013 BLS report indicated the following for state and local government employees:
It is noteworthy that average DB pension costs are reported as 12.65 percent of payroll. This figure is presumably representative of employer contributions actually made to the respective pension systems. The trouble, of course, is that pension plans are chronically underfunded. Therefore a result of 12.65 percent significantly understates pension costs and could provide misleading conclusions if used in formal analyses and comparisons.
With mounting unfunded liabilities, these contribution numbers will only increase. Such figures should be restated or footnoted based upon what should be contributed as determined by the latest accounting standards. (For instance, as a proxy, the GASB annual expense figures could be used as well.) However they are estimated, though, the adequacy of annual DB contributions can be determined only in hindsight, when a plan's past performance is measured. Such issues do not exist in DC plans where actual annual contributions reflect the actual and final costs. A similar analysis should take place regarding retiree health-care costs.
Myth #16: Approximately 70 percent of DB fund growth comes from investment earnings, so there is no need to worry about increases in employer contributions.
Fact: This assertion has been offered to mollify the citizenry into readily accepting annual increases in the employer contribution rate in a DB plan, despite the possible consequences for tax rates or government services. What this claim fails to clarify is that DC plans also reap 70 percent of their fund growth from investment earnings. But DC plans, of course, cannot pose the threat of ever-rising employer contributions to address mounting unfunded liabilities.
Myth #17: The state of Michigan incurred significant transition costs with dramatic increases in the unfunded liabilities as a result of closing its DB plan, the Michigan State Employees Retirement System (MSERS), in 1997.
Fact: Another oft-mentioned argument for doing nothing about unsustainable DB plans, this claim is wielded to claim that a switch from DB to DC public pensions will be too costly to pay off. The author estimates a savings of $2.2 billion to $4.2 billion to Michigan taxpayers associated with this 1997 change.18 Nonetheless, the myth persists that the transition costs are significant and have damaged a once-sound pension plan.
It is true that in 1997, MSERS had no unfunded liability when this plan was closed to new members. But it was a combination of underfunding and poor investment performance, which did not live up to the plan's assumption of an 8 percent annual return, that created its unfunded liability in later years. These developments, not the closing of the DB plan, were the source of the plan's later troubles.
Based upon the most recent valuation reports, the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (MPSERS) plan, which has remained open to new members, and MSERS have a nearly identical current funded ratio of approximately 60 percent (using the market value of assets). Both plans continue to use an 8 percent return assumption with amortization periods extended out over 24 years.
MPSERS and MSERS are quite similar and are in similar difficulties. Yet only one closed its DB plan. That closure, then, is not a very likely explanation for MSERS's current situation.
Myth #18: The average annual public-employee pension is $25,000.
Fact: This myth is another piece of information offered without context or explanation, usually to defend the idea that DB pensions are not an unreasonable burden on governments. Statistics such as this are drawn from a wide range of ages, stretching from early retirees in their fifties to surviving spouses in their nineties. Such averages can be, to say the least, misleading.
For an illustration, consider the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS), which permits retiring employees to withdraw their accumulated employee contributions in exchange for a lower monthly annuity (a provision that was eliminated for new hires beginning in 2010). Based upon the most recent actuarial valuation, the average pension overall is $25,323. However, the average pension for a full-career individual retiring between the ages of 60 to 64 with 30 to 34 years of service is $45,349.
A more meaningful analysis would consider the percentage of income replaced at retirement, including Social Security.
Myth #19: DC plans have higher administrative costs than DB plans, and DB plans can provide the same level of income at nearly half the cost of a DC plan.
Fact: In today's competitive environment, DC plans now offer well-diversified low-cost plans, making this assertion dubious, at best. (For details, a 2011 Deloitte and ICI study reports the declining trends in DC plan administration costs and is a useful benchmark study.)[19] In fact, one can find examples of efficient and non-efficient plans in both the DB and DC realms. Differences in administrative costs are not dependent on the type of plan involved; usually, they reflect the presence (or absence) of economies of scale. DC participants can now take advantage of market changes by participating in established competitively priced pooled funds from well-established firms. A high-cost plan, be it DB or DC, should prompt a market search for a better deal.
Opponents of DC plans have another way of claiming that governments would pay more for a DC plan than they would for a DB plan: the claim that DB plans have higher returns on their assets. This assertion is predicated upon two facts.
First, DB plans' investment returns historically have outperformed DC plans by an average of 0.76 percent per year, according to a recent Towers Watson study.[20] However, in today's world of automatic enrollment, target-date funds, optional annuity payouts, and very competitive expense ratios, any such differentials in the future should be minimal.[21]
Second, within a DB plan's group annuity pool, shorter-lived individuals effectively subsidize longer-living members. Every premature death in the pool frees up resources that will help support a surviving annuitant. However, in a DC plan, every participant's remaining account balance at death goes to a designated beneficiary.
The missing context in this claim, of course, is the overall condition of a pension plan. DB plans expose taxpayers to the risk of ever-increasing contributions by government required to sustain the plan. DC plans do not. Governments now contending with rising contribution requirements have not realized—and will likely not realize—any "savings" from their DB plans.
Myth #20: A pension plan with a 30-year amortization should be as readily accepted as a 30-year homeowner's mortgage.
Fact: If the actuarial assumptions are entirely met, employee and employer contributions are made as scheduled, and no unplanned benefit changes occurred, then, in theory, a pension plan should never have an unfunded liability. In reality, this scenario seldom occurs, and most plans incur unfunded liabilities (or, more rarely, surpluses).
How should deviations from the ideal be managed? In the case of unfunded liabilities, the answer is to amortize the amount. The duration of the amortization should be determined by the underlying demographics of the plan—taxpayers should be paying for the retirement of their current employees and should not be passing the burden of those payments on to future taxpayers. Therefore, amortization should not extend beyond the average remaining working careers of employees who will benefit from the plan. Such an approach is the basis of standard actuarial funding approaches. The GASB and bond-rating agencies such as Moody's view this standard as appropriate as well.
Comparisons between pension plan and homeowner amortization periods are a sign that politics, rather than financially sound practice, is at work. The reason is simple: while 30 years may sound comfortably familiar to mortgage-holding voters, it is a term that may be inappropriate, given the demographics of the workers covered by a pension plan.
Public-sector pensions, as a Wall Street Journal editorial observed some years ago, are inherently political institutions. They have been designed, managed, and evaluated according to political criteria, for political purposes, to the detriment of their financial sustainability—and therefore to the detriment of the governments that are responsible for them. This political approach to financial issues has helped foster the myths that we have described in this paper—claims that rosy assumptions are facts; claims about the meaning of commonly understood terms that are not correct; and analyses of proposed reforms that circulate because DB advocates promote them, not because they are accurate.
The public-sector pension systems that have sustained these myths—and that have been sustained by them—cannot be maintained indefinitely. Already, those systems threaten the fiscal health of state and local governments across the country. Real reform—which would eliminate unfunded liabilities, remove politics from pensions, and eliminate taxpayer obligations that extend in perpetuity—is long overdue. But it cannot be implemented until policymakers see past the half-truths and untruths about public-sector pension plans. True pension reform must be based on facts, not myths.
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BUFFALO, NY -- They say knowledge is power. That's especially true for women when they're first diagnosed with breast cancer.
Doctors say it helps to learn about cancer, so you know more about it, and what your options are. That's why Roswell Park Cancer Institute has a breast resource center right on campus filled with books, videos, pamphlets, even wigs to help women who lose their hair from chemotherapy. The resource room opened 15 years ago with lots of help from breast cancer support groups around the area. You don't have to be a patient at Roswell to use it and the help there goes beyond books and pamphlets.
"The most important thing that women find in the breast cancer resource center are the people in the breast resource center. Because more than getting a book, or a videotape, or direction to a computer, they need to have an interaction with someone who understands how to help them with those things, who've seen other people go through the same thing that they've gone through," said Dr. Stephen Edge at Roswell Park.
Joanne Janicki with the Breast Resource Center talked about how they deal with patients who need advice.
"We take the time to ask them what's important to them right now. What would be the most helpful thing for them right now. What's their biggest priority right now. For some people, they want to move straight forward, have surgery. Other people are more concerned about their children, their spouse, their caregiver," said Janicki.
The center is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. You can make an appointment to stop by in the evening too.
The phone number for the WNY Breast Cancer Resource Center at Roswell is (716) 845-4432.


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The World's Largest Coalition of Nontheists and Nontheist Communities!
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My aim_deagle7k was a hit for source. I'm pleased to announce my CS:GO version of the map
Hope you guys enjoy, Happy Fraggin
In RAR File
Map with NAV file and Map Radar
Do to a discrepancy in name with another map, I have taken out the "GO" at the end.
Download 13 mb


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Kambali S, Orellana-Barios M, Alalawi R. "Endobronchial Stent Placement in Management of Massive Hemoptysis". CHEST Meeting, October 25-30, 2014.
Fuller A, Sigler M, Kambali S, Alalawi R. "Successful Treatment of Post-Intubation Tracheal Stenosis with Balloon Dilation, APC Electrocautery and Application of Mitomycin C". CHEST Meeting. October 25-30, 2014.
Orellana-Barrios M, Yepes-Hurtado A. "Use of a Dual Lumen Endobronchial Tube with a Bronchial Blocker to Treat massive Hemoptysis". CHEST Meeting, October 25-30, 2014.
Copeland S, Konala V, Alalawi R, Warraich I. "Pleural Effusion as the Only Manifestation of Lymphoma". CHEST Meeting, October 25-30, 2014.
Islam E, Test V. "Accuracy of Point-of-Care Multiorgan Ultrasonography for the Diagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism".KOPPA Conference. August 9, 2014, Hunt, TX.
Test V. "Update in Pulmonary Embolism and DVT". KOPPA Conference. August 9, 2014, Hunt, TX.
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IRSC Update: IRSC Power Plant Institute named one of nation's top training partnerships
With urgent national demand for college programs that lead directly to good-paying jobs, the Power Plant Technology Institute at Indian River State College has been recognized by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) as one of the Top Five College and Corporate Training Partnerships in the U.S.
Developed by IRSC with Florida Power and Light (FPL) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the Power Plant Technology Institute was honored April 23 at the AACC Conference in San Francisco as a top Award of Excellence finalist out of more than 1,500 community colleges nationwide. The award recognizes innovation, collaboration and best practices in higher education that merit replication by other colleges and universities.
Recognition as one of the most effective College and Corporate Training Partnerships in the U.S. is the latest in a series of recent accolades for IRSC's Power Plant Technology Institute, which has emerged as a highly respected industry leader in the nuclear and alternative energy sector.
The Power Plant Technology Institute was instrumental in IRSC's success in attracting a $3.1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to form an extensive training network involving 46 colleges and university and 35 industry partners, as well as a recent scholarship initiative with the United Negro College Fund to provide financial assistance for minority students who wish to prepare for careers in the energy industry.
"The Power Plant Technology Institute exemplifies IRSC's commitment to education that directly links to industry needs and prepares students for high-skill, high-wage jobs," said Dr. Edwin R. Massey, IRSC president. "We are honored and proud to be recognized with Florida Power & Light at the national level for this outstanding partnership."
Since many nuclear energy technicians began their careers in the 1970s and '80s and are now approaching retirement, FPL and other energy firms are focused on preparing the next generation of energy professionals. More than 100 graduates of IRSC's Power Plant Technology Institute have been hired by FPL at salaries averaging $55,000 and benefits. Students have also been hired by other energy firms, with more than 90 percent of graduates placed in highly paid energy-related positions.
The Power Plant Technology Institute is designed to create a pipeline of graduates who have not only received extensive hands-on training in IRSC's state-of-the-art Brown Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Main Campus in Fort Pierce, but have also participated in intensive paid internships at FPL's St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant.
The IRSC Brown Center houses a dynamic flow loop, a highly sophisticated two-story simulator that replicates key aspects of power plant operations. Graduates of the Power Plant Institute, now employed as journeymen at FPL, are back on-site at IRSC completing final stages of construction of the flow loop, which features an industry-standard control room, two training stations and an external water injection station.
The highly successful Power Plant Technology Institute also serves as the core of the Regional Center for Nuclear Education and Training (RCNET), an NSF-funded training network headquartered at the Brown Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. A consortium of higher education and industry partners, RCNET utilizes the Power Plant Technology Institute as the foundation for curriculum, training methods, and student internships.
More than 120 nuclear energy industry, education and agency experts from throughout the U.S. and several other countries met at the RCNET National Conference at IRSC on April 19 and 20 to share best practices that standardize, enhance and expand training of nuclear energy technicians in response to the nation's shortage of these highly skilled workers. The event engaged representatives from the U.S. State Department, Navy, Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), CASEnergy, Florida Power & Light, and Center for Energy Workforce Development, as well as representatives from the United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom and colleges throughout the nation.
"Our goal is to meet the industry's workforce demand in a consistent, reliable, safe and systematic manner," said Dr. Kevin Cooper, principal investigator and director of RCNET and IRSC director of Advanced Technology.
During the RCNET meeting, Sherry Paramore of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) announced a partnership between RCNET and UNCF to raise $120,000 for yearly scholarships to increase the number of African-Americans trained for nuclear technician jobs. FPL launched the fundraiser by committing $5,000 towards the scholarships.
RCNET is funded through a $3.1 million National Science Foundation grant in response to the nation's need for over 40,000 skilled nuclear workers in the next decade. For more information, contact the IRSC Call Center at 1-866-792-4772 or visit www.irsc.edu.
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Wisconsin PoWer Athletic Club
Wisconsin PoWer Athletic Club is an athletic club that offers basketball and volleyball in eight cities throughout Wisconsin.
Wisconsin PoWer Athletic Club
PoWer Green Bay offers three different programs to athletes in the Green Bay area.
Fusào Volleyball Club
Fusào Volleyball Club based out of Sun Prairie, WI and offers different programs to it's athletes.
Wisconsin PoWer has been in existence for 16 years. In that time we have seen many changes in athletics, in the economy, in WIAA, in USAV and in the JVA. Parents and players are busier than ever, gas prices are higher than ever and club athletics are bigger than ever before. Wisconsin PoWer is dedicated to providing training at as high a quality as ever before while keeping the mentioned issues foremost in our plans. Wisconsin PoWer reviews and adjusts our programs each year to assure there is an opportunity for everyone's commitment level; whether it be a financial commitment level or a time commitment level. We are eager to continue the growth and success of Wisconsin PoWer Athletics and have you be a part of it. Look for specific satellite information on their website, links are above.


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California farmers to get millions in aid from federal government
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. - The federal government has thrown a financial life line to California farmers.
There are two pieces of federal funding on the way for California farmers.
First, Congress has approved the new farm bill that will provide hundreds of millions of dollars in farming aid nationwide.
The bill will provide money for citrus research, farmer's markets promotion and a pest and disease program.
At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave the state $20 million to help farmers deal with the drought.
The money will help California farmers develop sustainable irrigation systems and plant ground covers to retain soil health.
It is unclear when farmers will actually see the federal aid money at work.
But, California farmers need any help they can get especially after state officials announced that they will not be sending water to agriculture customers.