Tag: retirement

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Accountability government transparency incumbents local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

Frail and Disoriented

Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Thad Cochran, term limits, age, retirement, politics, placeholder

Senator Thad Cochran sure is experienced: eight years in the House of Representatives followed by 36 years in the upper chamber. So who better to chair the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee?

Rephrase that: who wouldn’t be better?

“The 79-year-old Cochran appeared frail and at times disoriented during a brief hallway interview on Wednesday,” Politico reported. “He was unable to answer whether he would remain chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and at one point, needed a staffer to remind him where the Senate chamber is located.”*

The senator also allegedly had trouble correctly casting his vote on legislation, i.e. deciding between yea and nay.

The Mississippi Republican “has faced questions about his health for the past several years,” the article noted, adding, however, that “his aides and political allies insisted he was fine.”

Fine?

That seems to be the party line. “Top Senate Republicans say they are not pressuring Cochran to retire or step down as Appropriations Committee chairman,” acknowledged Politico.

Why not? Were Cochran to step down — in 2020 or sooner — his replacement would likely be more aligned with President Trump than with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican congressional establishment.

Super-incumbent Cochran only narrowly survived a 2014 challenge from a more conservative candidate in the GOP Primary. How? By mobilizing Democrats to cross over and vote for the more liberal Cochran.

A statesman steps down when no longer able to perform effectively. But the Establishment, on the other hand, sees Cochran’s role not as a representative but as a placeholder.

For their power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* Opponents of term limits always told us that it would take six or eight years for newbie legislators to find the capitol’s bathrooms. That hasn’t turned out to be accurate, but obviously finding the Senate chamber, even after four decades in the capitol, is no gimme.

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general freedom individual achievement

Hardy at 89

Hardy Johnson, work ethic, retirement, birthday, profile

Hardy Johnson marked his 89th birthday by doing what he’s always doing, working as a cobbler at Custom Shoe Builders in Knoxville, Tennessee. His son, who manages the business that his dad founded in 1953, was out of town. The back orders had been piling up. And Johnson takes only one day off each week anyway.

In a profile for The Knoxville Focus, Steve Williams observes that many people make it to 89, but few “still work six days a week like Hardy . . . or on their birthday.”

Friends dropped by all week long, and on the day itself neighbors at Henson’s Automotive and Alignment swung by with cupcakes and coffee. Johnson also enjoys an ongoing sweet barter deal with the owner: Johnson supplies Steven Henson with shoe and other repair work, Henson supplies brake jobs and oil changes.

Henson testifies to the cobbler’s work ethic, saying he “can set my clock to Hardy every morning at 7:15 when he pulls into the parking lot. He’s the best neighbor I’ve ever had. He’s a great guy.”

Why didn’t Hardy Johnson take it easy on his birthday?

Maybe because doing work that he enjoys and does well is one of the things he’s celebrating as he enters his golden years. Maybe that — and being a great guy — is how you get to be 89 to begin with.

Not that he’s perfect. It doesn’t seem to bother him that his dog is an admitted Democrat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

The Poverty Retirement Non-plan

conundrum, employment, unemployment, Gerald P. O’Driscoll, poverty, retirement

A “conundrum” is “an intricate and difficult problem” or “a question or problem having only a conjectural answer.”*

In his June 8 article, “The Jobs Conundrum,” economist Gerald P. O’Driscoll focuses on a very big problem that we do not have sure answers to, yet.

Unemployment figures are down, but the number of non-working adults in the prime of their lives is up. O’Driscoll explains: “Unemployment” is a term of art and does not mean simply the number of people not working. It comprises the number of people not working and who are looking for a job.” Many aren’t “unemployed” for the simple reason that they are not trying to be employed.

They are, I suppose you could say, in early retirement, mostly a kind of poverty retirement.

Economists call it a drop in “labor force participation.” It used to be that men in the prime of life not looking for work constituted a mere 6 percent of the population. Now it’s 15 percent.

O’Driscoll, I notice, doesn’t engage in much conjecture to explain why. He merely insists, instead, that the trend is big, unemployment figures don’t track it, and that it has huge consequences.

I’ve heard some interesting (and puzzling) theories about the whys, of course. Blame feminism; blame the welfare state; blame the Chinese!

But even before we settle on a definitive answer, many movers and shakers now contemplate establishing — and are even experimenting with — a universal basic income as a way to alleviate this problem.

My conjecture? It would make the problem worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The original, primary meaning of “conundrum” — “a riddle whose answer is or involves a pun” — is not relevant to this pun-free column.

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