Public Employee Retirement Systems is a highly informative contribution to the literature on pensions. It will be valued for its abundant statistical data and for its straightforward treatment of a subject that is often burdened with technicalities.
Intense media coverage of the public pension funding crisis continues to fuel heightened awareness in and debate over public pension benefits. With over $3 trillion in assets currently under management, the ramifications of poor oversight are severe. It is important that practitioners, researchers, and taxpayers be well-advised regarding any concer
Arkansas Hillbilly is the account of a country boy’s experiences growing up in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains in Cleburne County, Arkansas. The story will make you laugh and cry, and it will certainly warm your heart. Author Carl J. Barger shares his memories of the hard times as well as the good. He tells about the struggles of a migrant family of thirteen who survive the Great Depression through hard work and faith. He describes his inward drive to rise above poverty, succeed as a school administrator, and be a good husband, father, and provider. This touching story spans the early 1900s to present day, as Barger shares what kept him motivated to achieve his goals and dreams of a better life. He details his roles as a husband, and the father of one biological child and two adopted children. The memoir includes the author’s successful search in finding his children’s biological parents. Barger credits his relationship with God as the number one reason for a life of blessings. He considers his story a blessing of God and a story that needed to be told.
UNSUSTAINABLE is packed with information that is vital to every taxpaying American. It reveals shocking information that has long been hidden from the public. It exposes how governments at every level hide the pay and exorbitant pensions they provide to themselves and use accounting trickery to keep taxpayers from knowing of the enormous costs and long-term liabilities. MacDougald shows how the federal government keeps $106 trillion of debt hidden from taxpayers, and how state and local governments hide another $3 trillion. He exposes exactly how governments often trick taxpayers into agreeing to pay more and more taxes to "save schools" or "provide police protection" when the money really goes to more pay and bigger pensions. UNSUSTAINABLE details how public sector unions have become a "money pump," taking taxpayer dollars paid to public sector workers, then given as union dues, and then used for political contributions to politicians who will support the extraction of even more taxpayer dollars. The provocative and controversial book also documents and exposes the huge financial catastrophe that is about to befall Social Security, "baby boomers" and our younger workers and how it will threaten our economy for decades. UNSUSTAINABLE addresses the "jobs squeeze," detailing how the private sector lost 1.5 million jobs in the last decade even as government grew by 2 million. And it reveals how Congress passes laws that they know violate our Constitutional rights and gets away with it. It is a book that all Americans, no matter what their politics, must read.
Since its first edition in 1988, The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act has become the standard reference for the bench, the bar, and journalists for guidance in interpreting and applying the state’s open-government law. This sixth edition, published fifty years after the passage of the Act in 1967, builds upon its predecessors, incorporating later legislative enactments, judicial decisions, and Attorney General’s opinions to present a synthesis of the law of access to public records and meetings in Arkansas.