A teacher charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct for allegedly molesting and abusing children in his classroom evaded actual termination from the Los Angeles Unified School District enabling him to retain his lifetime health benefits.

Former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt, 61, was exposed for blindfolding children ages 6 to 10 and molesting them after a film processor reported the existence of a film roll of 40 pictures depicting Berndt blindfolding young girls and taping their mouths shut. Police later found 400 more incriminating photos in Berndt’s home. The charges Berndt currently faces are for acts from 2008-2010.

According to a Los Angeles Times report:

Some photos allegedly showed Berndt with his arm around children or his hand over their mouths. Other photos showed children with live bugs the size of hissing cockroaches on their mouths or faces.

Others depicted girls with what appears to be a spoon up to their mouths as if they were going to ingest a clear-white liquid. Children were fed Berndt’s semen from a spoon or on cookies, investigators said.

Kids reported being fed something distasteful. A blue plastic spoon and container found in the trash in his classroom tested positive for his semen, authorities said.

The kids reportedly told police their teacher said it was a game and the substance was “sugar.”

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From USA Today:

Retirement programs for former federal workers — civilian and military — are growing so fast they now face a multitrillion-dollar shortfall nearly as big as Social Security’s, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The federal government hasn’t set aside money or created a revenue source similar to Social Security’s payroll tax to help pay for the benefits, so the retirement costs must be paid every year through taxes and borrowing.

The government paid a record $268 billion in pension and health benefits last year to 10 million former civil servants, military personnel and their dependents, about $100 billion more than was paid a decade earlier after adjusting for inflation. And $7 billion more was deposited into tax-deferred accounts of current workers.

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From the Associated Press:

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is struggling to keep his money-losing organization afloat as more and more people are ditching mail in favor of the Internet, causing the lucrative first-class mail flow to plummet.

Donahoe has a plan to turn things around, if he can get the attention of Congress and pass a series of hurdles, including union concerns.

“The Postal Service is not going out of business,” postal spokesman David Partenheimer said. “We will continue to deliver the mail as we have for more than 200 years. The postmaster general has developed a plan that will return the Postal Service to financial stability. We continue to do what we can on our own to achieve this plan and we need Congress to do its part to get us there.”

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Public outrage over lavish government employee compensation and pensions is becoming more heated as new revelations about excesses seem to crop up every week.  The latest: Newport Beach, California, where some lifeguards have compensation packages that exceed $200,000 and where these “civil servants” can retire with lucrative government pensions at age 50.

Newport Beach has two groups of lifeguards. Seasonal tower lifeguards cover Newport’s seven miles of beach during the busy summer months. Part-time seasonal guards make $16 to $22 per hour with no benefits.  They are the young people who man the towers and do the lion’s share of the rescues.  Another group of highly compensated full-time staff work year-round and seldom, if ever, climb into a tower.  According to the City Manager, the typical Daily Deployment Model in the winter for these lifeguards is 10 hours per day for four days each week, mainly spent driving trucks around, painting towers, ordering uniforms and doing basic office work—none are actually manning lifeguard towers.

Like many communities across California, the city of Newport Beach is facing the harsh realities of budgeting with less revenue after housing values and the stock market plummeted.  Now the city’s full-time lifeguard force has finally come under scrutiny.  Next week the city council will decide if cuts are needed to the full-time lifeguard force where last year the top earner received $211,000 in pay and benefits, including a $400 sun protection allowance.  In 2010 all but one of the city’s full-time lifeguard staff had annual compensation packages worth over $120,000.

Not bad pay for a lifeguard – but what makes these jobs most attractive is the generous retirements.

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The world is backwards. It should be the taxpayers striking in the streets of Wisconsin. But, private sector taxpayers can’t afford to take a day off, let alone a week. Doesn’t that say everything? Only government employees with their powerful unions, lifetime job security, short work-weeks, loads of sick days, nonstop holidays, early retirement, and bloated pensions, can afford to stand in the street protesting. Common sense tells us anyone with this much time to protest and the ability to abandon their work duties, is greatly overpaid.

It’s time for a reality check. These $100,000 per year teachers keep talking about “the kids.” Exactly who is teaching those kids while their teachers abandon their jobs and commit fraud with fake doctor’s notes? If they cared about the kids, they’d be in the classroom. They’d leave the striking and lobbying to their union leaders and lobbyists. It’s the students (and their parents) who should be on strike. Wisconsin teachers are the highest paid in the Midwest, but their students’ performance hasn’t improved. Where’s the taxpayer’s union? Where’s the students’ union? Are students and taxpayers getting their money’s worth? Perhaps they should be on strike.

I’m a small businessman. Like all private sector workers, I have no time to protest or strike. Take a day off? How could I do that? I run a business. People depend on me. I’m on call 24/7/365, weekends, holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. Vacations are “working vacations.” The phones never stop ringing, the emails never slow down. I have to work 16-hour days just to pay my taxes. Who benefits? Those government employees protesting in the streets of Wisconsin.

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I believe that President Obama’s address to Congress, and our Nation, did not go far enough to put the numerous concerns Americans have to rest with the healthcare reform proposals before the House and the Senate.  There are still too many unanswered questions surrounding these discussions and too much at stake to simply pass any bill without intensive scrutiny and review.  After reading the over 1,000 page House Democrat proposal and fielding over 8,000 constituent correspondences into my office, it is clear that there is much work to be done.  

 During the August district work period, I attended numerous meetings across my congressional district and met with hundreds of constituents who made it clear that they are unhappy with the way Congress is conducting the current health care debate.  Democrat Congressional leadership continues to rush health care legislation through both chambers, without any real explanation.  Constituents in Ohio’s Fifth District, in addition to millions of other Americans, have asked Congress to slow this process down and thoroughly examine probably one of the most important pieces of legislation Congress has debated since the New Deal.  No one will argue that our nation does not need health care reform, but it is clear that Congress must start over with real bipartisan negotiations where Republicans can be included and have input into the final legislation.

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