"SIDE-NOTE: How is it fair that we ask people to lay down their private lives, serve in government, yet as an employer of these folks, not provide health and pension plans that attract and keep good people in most other professional jobs, not to mention state jobs? If there is abuses with the state's plan on this, let's talk about that instead of preying on the public's frustration with the golden parachutes of Congress. That's them, not us. Perhaps what he deems good for the legislature, he'll deem good for himself as well, but I doubt it."

Never in any of this do I define any pension plan, whether it be for a legislator, another state employee, or a private professional. I merely make the point that retirement plans should exist as a part of overall compensation to be competitive in an active job market seeking the best candidates, which went to the point Bouchard made about "pensions" in his press release. Reading anything more into what was written is simply dishonest. As to the vernacular of "pension", in the general sense (when not specified) it may mean any retirement plan, including 401(k)'s.

Meantime, you erroneously claim that there are "lifetime" benefits for legislators after only one term, which you recant later; and this is after claiming that I'm out of touch or having some great sense of entitlement. You would be hard pressed to find a more conservative person than I in today's politics, but you don't know that and assume too much. As for Republicans, they need to move back right from their run left and get back to historic Republican values.

If you want to discuss what I think of actual details of legislator benefits, perhaps you should ask what my views would be. Wouldn't this be much more reasonable and civil than trying to read something into my words that they do not say? You still haven't stated your motivation for jumping to such conclusions, and you still haven't provided any citation for your claims about pseudo-facts about what legislators receive that taxpayers pay for. And you're not even in my district. Perhaps you should have less loyalty to the Detroit political machine and actually evaluate criticism for Bouchard's policies, especially when your critique mirrors my own, except for your erroneous claim about my points on prudent competitive compensation.

Are you agreeing with Bouchard in that we should not offer a benefit package to our legislators? Why would anyone ever leave their job to go to Lansing then? I think you need to wrap your mind around how labor markets work. Conservatives are free-market thinkers, and this exchange is very much applicable as the issue to be examined is the interaction between the public and private sectors as to attracting candidates from the private labor pool.