Senator Nan Rich

February 3, 2011

Senator Nan Rich
777 Sawgrass Corporate Parkway
Sunrise, FL 33325-6256

RE: Promises, Politics, and Pensions – Some comments on your astonishing statement on the parameters of public policy as recorded in the Sun-Sentinel

Senator Rich,

“I understand that we need to do some reform, but a pension is a promise,”
said Senate minority leader Nan Rich. “Maybe the pension wasn’t well thought
out along the way, but it is a promise to people who have worked long and
hard and who have not gotten raises on a regular basis from the state.”

So seldom does as true-blue, card-carrying modern American Liberal pol, particularly one from Broward County, slip up and speak the truth that I was taken aback. I was actually plussed.

I can dispose of the “promise” part post-haste.

A lot of little old ladies, many of whom are widows who are single moms, believed the “promises” made by General Motors and Chrysler. Many of them took their widows’ mite and lent money to those two companies. In return, the companies”promised” to pay them interest on the principal. Further, the companies “promised” to pay them back all the money lent to them. They wrote this down in the form of an instrument of indenture commonly known as a bond.

Lord Barack the Beneficent and Blessed be His name said, “Even though I am a constitutional scholar and the statute [Article 1, Section 10] and the case law [Fletcher v Peck, Dartmouth v Woodward, inter alia] are well known to me I have decided that these contracts are only binding at parties. Not all parties but, rather, only at those parties that I decide to be “good” parties. Thus, the “promise” made by Florida to its workers is hereby rendered null and void. If you don’t like it…too bad. If you complain I’ll send my Brown Shirts – this year the thugs wear purple supplied to them by the fun loving SEIU – to explain the new paradigmatic template to you.”

The first time the government, any government, acquiesces in breaking a”promise” makes breaking the next one easier.

I am reminded of the scene in “A Man for all Seasons” where Thomas More says, “And after you have cut down all the laws to get at the Devil, and he turns on you, were would you hide, the laws all being flat?” Alas, although it was timeless it is not timely.

It is a characteristic common to all modern American Liberals that the Constitution is looked on as big Chinese menu. Pick this one but not that one. Ignore the broccoli and feast on the Crème Brule. After all, it is a living, breathing document, isn’t it? Besides, the people who wrote it were all White males, weren’t they?

As to absence of raises after working “long and hard” there are several solutions.

Lenin, the noted European community activist, said “People vote with their feet”. If the workers feel that they are overworked and underpaid they can, and here’s a new idea, quit. Slavery and indentured servants have long been outlawed in this country. Although Czars and their attendant ukases are becoming popular serfdom never took hold here.

Move on. Start a business. Help Haiti. Fight teenage obesity. Try to improve your condition. Try to teach les merdes de Quebec some manners. One of my favorite Texas saloon songs is “There’s a $5 Fine for Whining”. Cast off your chains!

As to working “hard” I think it is fundamentally unfair that I will not be playing Sunday’s Super Bowl. I can play as “hard” as any of them. Just because I can’t play as well should be no impediment to my suiting up. That’s “fair”, isn’t it? As victim of life’s circumstances I think some provision should be made for old, slow White guys.

On the other hand, a place where you usually find the other glove, a lot of football players say they would play for free. Do you know anybody in the Affirmative Action Outreach Program or the much maligned, under appreciated Department of Motor Vehicles who would work for free?

Neither do I.




Kevin Smith