A.G.E's Joint

My name is Another Government Employee and I’m a politics addict. Not really, but I spent 25 years of my life in bureaucratic drudgery keeping various social services running. As part of my job and a survival technique, I paid close attention to the circus that is the State Legislature as they convened every year. A motley crew of moral trapeze artists and clowns they are, too. My co-workers and I would hold contests for the most asinine bills and made book on whether they would pass. Most of them wouldn’t, but spring wouldn’t be complete if there wasn’t a pitch for the Official State Turtle or Squirrel. Of course, there would also be tracking of bills directly affecting my employer and our budget. Anything thing that smacked of entitlement was fought over like a ham bone in a dog kennel. If something really nasty got proposed, I would be tasked with doing the worst case scenario projections and hope the bill would die in Committee (more than half the time, it did.) ...

I promise I'm not copying Tyler. I was thinking up this post this morning while trying to link my work computer to a new server. Several tries later, I was wishing my coffee was whiskey. But, I persevered and did get up and running.  As most of you know, I left my old job in State Government a little over a year ago and am now working in private industry.  Specifically, I am on contract with the largest pension services provider working on one of their largest accounts.  This is best described as a cavalcade of folly .  After a parade acquisitions and divestitures, there are 22 separate pension plans with to deal with. The total number of plan permutations that regularly happen is around 5000. Like every good workhorse, there aren't enough chrysanthemums in the world that could make the parade route smell good.  But, mums really don't smell. They just look pretty and propagate like wildflowers in my front flower bed.  Kind of like the pension plans ...