The Jaffe Briefing - May 8, 2019
TRENTON - Lots of surprises for some retired state workers, who now have to pay back retirement plan loans that they had taken more than decade ago, while they were still working. Maybe they remember the loan. Maybe they don't. But NJ.com reports it doesn't matter for these 698 retirees, who collectively need to cough up about $7.8 million, plus interest. State treasury officials discovered the blunder when the numbers just didn't add up for these retirees. Yeah, yeah, the state should have alerted these retirees much earlier about these "irregularities." But shouldn't it be the job of the borrower to pay the money back?
ATLANTIC CITY - Volunteers are the core of a program that tries to ensure someone is there for people who otherwise would face death alone. The program, No One Dies Alone, has been operated by the AtlanticCare health system in South Jersey for the past three years. The original program was started in Oregon by Sandra Clarke, a nurse who once promised a dying man that she would return to his hospital bedside and stay with him to the end. Other duties prevented her from keeping that pledge and she never forgot the encounter. So much healthcare news nowadays is stressful or alarming, here's a heartwarming dispatch for a change. NJ Spotlight has it.
TRENTON - The good news for the state's corrections officers is that overtime is up. The bad news is that they have to earn OT while stuck in a prison. State lawmakers are now questioning why overtime has soared $38 million last year and is up more than 15 percent over the past five years. NJ 101.5 reports that overtime hours are expected to hit 775,000 this year, or equal to the amount of money it would cost to hire 370 more jail guards without overtime. State corrections officials say it's been really tough to find people to voluntarily work in state jails, dealing with the state's most hardened criminals. More than 20 percent of the guards quit after three years. One jail guard earned close to his $78,445 salary in overtime. With so many hours behind bars, no question he earned it.
ATLANTIC CITY - In other overtime news, it looks like conductors on NJ Transit's Atlantic City Rail Line earned plenty of overtime since September. Only one problem: the rail line has been closed down. The Press of Atlantic City reports the total overtime bill from September through January was $164,138 for these 18 conductors who worked long hours as "ambassadors" on a rail line that wasn't running. The conductors will be back in trains this Sunday, when the Atlantic City Rail Line is set to resume. But who then will serve as "ambassadors"?
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
PRAGUE - Sometimes you feel like you live in a world of excrement. Or sometimes - if you choose - you can actually visit it. You don't want to miss the newest, permanent exhibition at the Prague Zoo, where you can cast your eyes on the greatest piles of poop from many exotic and/or extinct animals. Check out fossil turds (officially known as "coprolites"), as well as a full selection of crap from all your modern-day animals, like gorillas, lions, elephants, horses, turtles, wombats and camels. Marvel in the various sizes, shapes, textures and colors. This is all according to Zoo director Miroslav Bobek, whose surname just happens to literally mean "poop" in Czech. An added bonus.
LONGWOOD, Fla. - Matt Morgan becomes only the latest in a long line of professional wrestlers to make the move from the wrestling ring to the political arena. We all remember Minnesota Gov. Jesse "The Mind" Ventura, and some of us may even remember that three-time WWF world champion Kane (real name Glenn Jacobs) is currently serving as the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. Now, despite a tough and expensive race in this quiet Orlando suburb, 7-foot-tall Morgan has pinned incumbent District 4 Commissioner Mark Weller, sending him back to the locker room by a whopping 8-point margin. Morgan says his priority now will be upgrades for the city's police and fire departments; rumors of a large increase in the city's spandex budget remain uncomfirmed.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
One year ago, it was announced there is no "chamber of secrets" in King Tut's tomb, as scholars, archaeologists and Egyptologists have suspected for centuries. Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities finally fessed up that scientific tests, ground-penetrating radar and plenty of poking around inside Tutankhamun's tomb by researchers from Italy's Polytechnic University turned up zip, zero and zilch. Or maybe it is a big conspiracy that will consume "experts" for another 1,000 years or so.
WORD OF THE DAY
Menagerie - [mə-NAHJ-ə-ree] - noun
Definition: A collection of wild or foreign animals kept for exhibition
Example: Ok, I may have a weird hobby, with my growing menagerie of eight Icelandic sheep, eight Bantam chickens and a collie.
WIT OF THE DAY
"I intend to live forever. So far, so good."
- Steven Wright
|
|
WEATHER IN A WORD
Enjoy
THE NEW 60
A Jaffe Briefing Exclusive
by Andy Landorf & John Colquhoun