A penny saved is a penny earned said patriot Ben Franklin. A penny you save is one I earn said hedge funder Matt Bevin.
Whoever said there's not much money in politics must have never made it to Kentucky. Right Senator Yertle?
I kid, we all know the good Senator from Louisville made his millions the old fashioned way, by marrying it. But that hasn't stopped him from voting himself plenty of pay raises along the way.
In 1985, when McTurtle entered the U.S. Senate, salaries for senators was around $75,000. By 2009, members of congress were making $174,000. That's a 132 percent increase.
How many jobs can you name that had a 132% increase in salary from 1985 to 2009?
At least the great Yertle releases his tax returns so we have an idea of his worth. The modern carpetbagger, also known as Governor Granite, refuses to release his.
That's because the governor made his money the new-fashioned way, through hedge funds. Just to be clear, hedge funds are not those old tobacco tins of cash buried in the back yard under the fancy bushes.
Hedge funds are a mysterious method of using rich people's money to make money for yourself. Notice I said rich people, not regular people. Minimum investments in a hedge fund are often a million dollars are more.
A hedge fund manager isn't risking their own money. A hedge fund manager, like Bevin, takes other people's money and gambles with it. That person then takes 2% of the total value of the fund and 20% of the profit...if there is any.
A hedge fund manager isn't an investor, a hedge fund manager is a gambler with house money. He wins whether the fund makes money or loses money.
Which brings us back to Ben Franklin. For those of you scratching your head, Franklin was one of those people considered a "founding father" of our country. The way many of us learn about Ben Franklin and other founders is in history class from teachers in schools.
Teachers in our state, like most public employees, work for pennies in salary with the promise of a stable pension including health insurance in retirement. In the time Yertle's salary rose 132%, our teachers' salaries rose about 15%.
Unlike most of us, they are not eligible for social security. Individually, there are no teachers playing the hedge fund game.
Unfortunately, politicians in our state, for a couple of decades, have been playing with public pensions like hedge fund managers would. Let's take somebody else's money and gamble.
The only difference now is we've elected an actual hedge fund manager to run our state. He doesn't like public employees, especially teachers. But he loves that great big fund of money he can play with and share with his friends.
In Bevin's view, money paid to teachers and other public employees is money wasted. Public schools are money wasted. Public assistance is money wasted. Public pensions is money wasted...unless he gets a cut.
He's wrong, but he's not 100% wrong. There is a line item in the Kentucky budget that is the biggest waste of cash in the state. It's called the governor's salary. If you want savings, there's a good place to start.