LETTERS
LETTERS Our Jennifer judgment For shame! The Monthly now has committed the same venial sin it accuses other media of, in your April “Who’s Who” squib about “Jennifer” and Gennifer. The...
...What’s more, many employees have switched to the new system by choice in spite of its lower “replacement ratio” because of the supremely generous new 401(k) plan it allows as a kicker...
...But what really burned me was the reference to the Unitarian Church, Episcopal Church, and Jewish faith as “affluent” religions...
...The reason for that interest is the HUD scandal...
...From there he should go to St...
...He also backed up what he was saying with concrete evidence...
...LETTERS Our Jennifer judgment For shame...
...He continues by saying that those who retire before 55 do so “at a percentage of preretirement pay that dwarfs that of the programs in the private sector...
...I thought WI: were supposed to discourage the idea that any one elected official, or bureaucrat, is indispensable, as this leads to an elitist mentality...
...It includes those federal employees who retired before age 55, as well as those who went on disability...
...JOE DUSEK Orland Park, Illinois The author replies: The “two out of five” figure I cite is for current pensioners, who are covered by the Civil Service Retirement System...
...The only exceptions are involuntary separation or voluntary separation during a major reduction in force...
...The Monthly isn’t The Star or the Enquirer...
...Your readers can buy those tabloids if they want to...
...Before 55...
...So if I make it to upper management and gross an average of $50,000, with 30 years of service my retirement will be $16,500...
...The innuendo is obvious: that there is a lady named Jennifer who might surface to make allegations about George Bush like those Gennifer Flowers made about Bill Clinton...
...Fisher is a city council member for the 33rd district of New York...
...If there’s a story, and decent sources to back it up, print it...
...Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly...
...WILLIAM A. DOBROVIR Sperryville, Virginia The editor replies: If Jennifer were a private citizen, we would agree with Dobrovir...
...Finally, if this is the first time Dusek has heard about any government pay or benefits outstripping the private sector comparables, that’s probably because he believed his job description...
...in July 1989, while returning from an official trip to Argentina...
...But don’t be fooled into thinking that those pensions are no longer bloated...
...Retiresome I would like to thank Matthew Miller for his amusing “Raison Debt” sidebar in your January/February issue...
...First came the gratuitous comment that New York is “beyond saving...
...In his position as a GS-15, he witnessed a lot of “interesting” practices during the Reagan years...
...attorney dropped the remaining cases after Rather’s performance...
...The new, “leaner” system applies only to employees hired after 1983, and thus won’t fully click in until 2013...
...My father approached Common Cause, The Washington Post, a prominent liberal senator for whom a friend worked, and the investigative reporter for a Chicago television station, WBBM (CBS...
...After all, she’s getting more than six times the payoff Gennifer got...
...What Dusek may not realize is that virtually everyone in the workforce was grandfathered when the new system was introducedmeaning the “old” system will be with us at least another 20 years...
...As page seven of the handbook says, my annual retirement will be calculated as follows: high-three average yearly salary, times my number of years of service, times .011...
...However, it was was not “sexy” enough for television...
...The U.S...
...He gave specific details to these people...
...As a former official of one government investigative agency, I watched “60 Minutes” botch up more than one serious ongoing investigation...
...The line about federal employees being taken care of by “the government’s generous retirement programs” demands a belly laugh at least...
...Although Jennifer’s past affair with Bush remains a rumor that we can’t prove, if we had to guess on the basis of the evidence available, we would opt in favor of saying it’s true...
...While we have more than our share of problems, we don’t need additional excuses for a lack of federal commitment...
...The senator’s office told him that since: he was making allegations of illegal activities, it would tum the matter over to the FBI...
...As he alerted the American public to this threat, he was standing in the very place where we were conducting the investigation, which, by the way, was completely disrupted by Rather’s presence and “revelations...
...Otherwise, please don’t dip your toes into the hog wallow...
...thus it’s hard to believe she got the job on a merit basis...
...She continues in the job at her annual salary of $112,000...
...Father knew best I read with great personal interest Christopher Georges’ story [“Confessions of an Investigative Reporter,” March...
...Our “innuendo,” by the way, was not that Jennifer might decide to make allegations against Bush...
...He could start by visiting the Satmar Jewish community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, home to approximately one quarter of the 130,000 New York City Jews who live below the poverty line...
...Then there was the shot at D.C...
...Saving grace Tilting at Windmills has been my favorite feature for almost 20 years, but the November column had me seeing red...
...I admire Charles Peters, but I think he needs to get beyond the Beltway for some air...
...But she works as a high federal official-a position she was given by the Bush administration-under one of Bush’s closest personal friends...
...Mary’s Episcopal Church in nearby Clinton Hill, a predominantly black, working-class congregation that continues to strive for a better society, even in the face of cruel and outdated stereotypes...
...Miller writes, “Two out of five civil servants retire before age 55...
...Younger bureaucrats can now shelter up to 10 percent of their income from taxes annually and have Uncle Sam add 5 percent to boot-a deal hard to come by in the private sector...
...If that’s dwarfing private sector pensions, you may call me a Democrat and I won’t say a word...
...Incredibly, she was also caught abusing her diplomatic credentials to smuggle furs into the U.S...
...Page six of the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) handbook clearly states that the minimum retirement age is 55, and that’s only if you were born before 1948...
...Put up or shut up...
...ROBERT HORWITZ Chicago, Illinois Georges clearly showed how nei:work television, for all its pretensions, contributes little more than third-party reporting on any serious matter...
...In one case, Dan Rather pontificated on the failure of my agency to do something about a situation involving widespread bribery and fraud...
...He failed to mention that we had already caused the indictment of 79 individuals and firms involved in the situation he had “discovered...
...Readers eager for more details should call Hastings Keith, a former congressman who now passionately leads the lonely fight against bloated public pensions at the National Committee on Public Employee Pension Systems at (202) 293-3960...
...WILLIAM J. GOULD Washington, D.C...
...Finally, the television investigative reporter told my dad that he did have a very important story...
...The Post reporter who spoke to him said it did not sound like anything worth looking into...
...My father, a career civil servant, retired from HUD in 1986 after serving the agency since its founding in the Johnson administration...
...Certainly, because of Jennifer’s job, the rumor bears examination by the rest of the press...
...He named names and told them where to look for questionable deals...
...This is a position that requires considerable diplomatic skill, which she lacks...
...While his comments on the social security system hit the bull’s-eye, he missed the side of the mountain with his opinions on the federal retirement system...
...Dwarfs...
...KENNETH K. FISHER Brooklyn, New York Mr...
...He felt secure from retaliation because of his retirement...
...Dressing up this old canard of traditional anti-semitism by reference to two other groups hardly gives it any firmer a base in reality...
...And retirement ages-starting at 57-will remain absurdly low for government workers compared to people in the real world...
...Common Cause sent him a 1ette:r commending him for good citizenship, but it did not have the manpower to look into his allegations...
...That was the first time I’d ever heard that any kind of government pay dwarfs its private sector counterpart...
...Instead of criticizing her for taking vacations dressed up as business trips-a favorite Monthly targetyou complained that she had left town when her city was facing difficult times...
...When he made the decision to take early retirement, he went to four different organizations that had the power to bring the scandal to light...
...Instead of being fired or prosecuted, she was fined $648 by th& Customs Service for “misdescribing” the value of a fur-lined raincoat and failing to declare a silver fox cape...
...It’s true that the newer FERS system Dusek mentions has lowered the pension “replacement ratio” from 56 percent of highest salary to the low thirties, which is closer to private sector pensions...
...I can’t imagine your suggesting that Moscow or Beirut is “beyond saving,” although the problems there seem far more intractable than ours...
Vol. 24 • May 1992 • No. 5
