Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Illinois Legislature Sucks Hens Teeth

Admittedly I have a big bias (my wife is a teacher) in the discussion about public employee pensions, the current shortfall, and what should be done to solve the problem. I propose that every legislature member and governor that caused the problem should have their pensions reduced / eliminated to restore the public employee retirement funds to their proper levels.  

Consider the facts . . . 

Teachers do not get Social Security.  The get TRS - Teachers Retirement Service.

Private Sector Employees contribution of gross income into Social Security: 6.5%
Teachers contribution of gross income into TRS:  9.4%

State of ILL (old school abbreviation on purpose) gross income contribution match for each teacher is: 6.5%
Employers gross income contribution match for each employee: 6.2%

TRS was set up to never run out of funds.

State of ILL has NOT made a full payment to TRS in 40 years.
IMAGINE if a private sector employer did not make full payment to Social Security.

The State of ILL, on several occasions, has "borrowed" from TRS to fund projects and cover budget shortfalls.
The "borrowed" money has never been paid back.
IMAGINE if a private sector employer plundered employees retirement accounts.

The Illinois legislature and governors are the cause of the current problem.
They failed to make required contributions. They stole from the TRS fund.

PS: When a teacher works in the private sector they contribute 6.5% of their private sector income into SSN just like everyone else.  HOWEVER, when they draw SSN benefits, the benefit is cut by 67% due to the income received from their TRS.

Monday, May 23, 2011

First Line of Defense - FAIL

This past Saturday morning I was a the Libertyville office of the Illinois Secretary of State. I was renewing my drivers license. Imagine a big "help" desk with about 8 stations. Your number gets called and you go up to get help and move on to the next station.

The lady I was working with paused in mid-sentence as we heard her colleague say to the gentlemen she was helping, "Oh, your name is flagged. It says you are being flagged as a potential terrorist threat. I need to get my supervisor.". The man appeared to be in his mid-20's and seemed a bit surprised. The lady continued with saying . . . "Sometimes this happens because of a name match, or similar sounding name. My supervisor will ask you a couple of questions. If he can't clear you then we'll have you speak with someone else".

So she picks up the phone and calls the supervisor. His office was about 5 feet in back of her. I'm thinking "this will be interesting" and wondered what Home Land Security means in suburbia.

Well, I found out - and it isn't good.

The supervisor walks over and asks, "Where's the form?" The lady hands him a piece of paper, he grabs a pen out of his shirt, scribbles something on it, turns around and heads back to his office.

Never asked the guy a question, didn't even establish eye contact.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Where Am I?

A situation at work today reminded me of an exchange my wife and I had a few years ago.  My son had basketball practice one evening and I had told my wife rather than come home and then drive to practice I would just meet her at the gym. 

Practice started and my son and wife were no where to be found.

My cell rang a few moments later and it was my wife. Frantic. Stressed.

She asked me how to get to the gym. I asked where she was. Her answer. "I'm lost".

I asked her what street she was on. She didn't know.

I asked her what intersection did she pass. She didn't know.

I asked her if she could see any landmarks. She couldn't (it was a very dark night).

With each of my questions her tone became more frantic and stressed.

I asked her which direction she was headed in. She didn't know.

I told her that since she didn't know where she was, where she had been, or where she was going it was impossible for me to help her find the way to the gym.

She hung up on me. 

I wondered if I'd be allowed to sleep "in the big bed" that night.

About 10 minutes later they arrived at the gym.

So what got me to recall this little bit of history is today one of our clients asked us to stop promotion to their offer because of "poor quality" leads. 

We have several publishers promoting the offer so we asked which ones were the source of the poor leads.

Simply - our client doesn't know. They don't track the publisher sources.

We asked for feedback on the specific lead data. Is it bad phone numbers? Bad postal addresses? Bad email addresses. Our client replied "we don't share that information with our vendors" .

They then asked us what we could do to improve lead quality.

And thus I recalled the exchange my wife and I had several years ago.