Farming Danaus plexippus

Summer 2017: Danaus plexippus

My wife Susan has become a farmer this summer.  And under her careful husbandry, she’s produced at least 50 progeny and is on the way to over one hundred. 

One hundred Monarch butterflies. 

Unlike other species of butterflies, Monarchs are more like birds than insects.  They migrate great distances (50-100 miles each day) to get to over-wintering grounds in Mexico and southern Texas/California.  The journey itself, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, can take up to two months.  The farthest ranging Monarch ever recorded traveled over 250 miles in one day.  That’s generally against the wind which pushes back from the south and west.  Total distances traveled can reach well over 3000 miles. 

Consider the butterfly, flying against the wind for two months over 3000 miles.  That’s not a math problem; it is a metaphysical miracle.

“The eastern population of North America’s monarchs overwinters in the same 11 to 12 mountain areas in the States of Mexico and Michoacán from October to late March.

“Monarchs roost for the winter in oyamel fir forests at an elevation of 2,400 to 3,600 meters (nearly 2 miles above sea level). The mountain hillsides of oyamel forest provide an ideal microclimate for the butterflies. Here temperatures range from 0 to 15 degrees Celsius. If the temperature is lower, the monarchs will be forced to use their fat reserves. The humidity in the oyamel forest assures the monarchs won’t dry out allowing them to conserve their energy.”

https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/Monarch_Butterfly/migration/

The Monarchs you and I see up here are the result of three or four generations of travelers making the pilgrimage north.  After mating, a single female deposits about 700 eggs on the underside of common milkweed leaves, and she expires.  Waiting for those 700 eggs are a rogues’ gallery of aphids, beetles, flies etc., looking for a choice meal.

This is where my wife steps in.  She collects the eggs she finds – small elliptical off-white cylinders about the size of a period at the end of this sentence, and she brings them home to be hatched.  Placing them on a wetted paper towel, which she keeps moist, she’ll await their almost microscopic hatching.  Often their “birth” is announced by the small pinholes on the leaf, which gives away something nibbling at the blade.  They are infinitesimally small at first. 

In the great outdoors, Monarchs are still the prize “quarter-pounder” for scavenging insects. 

So, yes, nature can be cruel, but as hard as those odds are, Scott Pruitt and the EPA have made sure that even greater odds will be stacked against their chances of surviving, much less making the epic journey back to Michoacán.  Enter stage far right: Posion. Monsanto.  Dow. 

As early as the 1990’s, the theory that encroachment and the increased farming of open fields used by Monarchs as the central issues to their devastating decline was replaced by the realization that the overwhelming use of glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup) was responsible.  In short, Roundup was specifically lethal on common milkweed. 

“Recently… a dramatic change in farming practices — the widespread cultivation of genetically engineered, glyphosate-resistant Roundup Ready corn and soybeans—has triggered a precipitous decline of common milkweed, and thus of monarchs.

Glyphosate, sold by Monsanto under the name of Roundup, is one of the very few herbicides that is effective on milkweed. Unlike many other weedkillers, once absorbed it is translocated (moved internally) to root tissue, where it kills milkweed at the root and so prevents regeneration.

Glyphosate is particularly lethal to milkweed when used in conjunction with Roundup Ready crops. It is applied more frequently, at higher rates, and later in the season — during milkweed’s most vulnerable flowering stage of growth — than when used with traditional crops.

The increasingly common practice of growing Roundup Ready crops continuously on the same fields means that milkweed is exposed to glyphosate every year, with no opportunity to recover.”

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/02/24/monarch-butterfly-glyphosate.aspx

Stopping monetarily on a hemlock

Our first release occurred last month, when my wife Susan held a trembling young male on her outstretched hand on an early July afternoon.  He made a fluttering pass around us and landed momentarily on the hemlock in the back of our yard. You can tell a male because he has two markers on the lower part of his top wings – like an enlarged dot on the already black vein.  Once he’d gathered himself together, he launched into a sometime fluttering and gliding flight over the neighbor’s trees to the west.  Vamos con dios, amigo.  

This is a great year for us and other “farmers.”  Last year, overwintering colonies in Mexico and elsewhere were hit with an ice storm that depleted huge numbers of Monarchs, just when population numbers were already down.  Some overwintering grounds lost nearly 50% of their populations.  In fact, last summer, my wife was unable to propagate a single butterfly. 

“In the best-case scenario of a 7.4 percent mortality, the monarch population that actually migrated north was just 139 million, not 150 million, and so only decreased by 22 percent rather than the 27 percent based on pre-storm population numbers. In the worst-case hypothetical scenario of 50 percent mortality from the storms, only 75 million monarchs would have survived to migrate north in 2016 but were able to build up their population to the current number of 109 million, showing a possible 45 percent increase in population.”http://blog.nwf.org/2017/02/new-numbers-show-monarch-butterfly-populations-still-in-trouble/

So, my wife and I are taking advantage of an increased population this year, but we do not fool ourselves.  The recent March 2017 push-back by Pruitt’s EPA team on the previous administration’s concern on possible dangerous effects of pesticides like glyphosate on humans – especially developing young brains – should give us all pause. See the press release from his office where no one is allowed to bring cell phones, recording devices, or take notes. 

“Sheryl Kunickis, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Pest Management Policy, was among those who applauded Pruitt’s decision, which she said was “grounded in evidence and science.”

“It means that this important pest management tool will remain available to growers, helping to ensure an abundant and affordable food supply for this nation and the world,” Kunickis said in a statement.”http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scott-pruitt-pesticide-chlorpyrifos_us_58dd331de4b0e6ac7092fbd8

And, my wife’s task becomes more difficult as it also rewards her sense of doing something.  Many of the local growers and producers of seeds, plants, flowers, etc., are selling neonicotinoid-treated plants.  That is, a “new and improved” pesticide that is applied to seeds and taken up through the plant’s vascular system as it grows, where it is expressed in the pollen and nectar that pollinators like bees and butterflies consume. 

We carry on in our micro-environment.  In the macro, we hope and wait for the people to rise up against this assault on our air, earth, and water. 

In Illinois, Garden Clubs of Illinois provides common milkweed seed and information on helping restore the populations of Monarch’s, which were so common in our youth.  Palos Heights has become the first village to embrace an action plan to help grow and sustain the development of populations in Illinois.  What used to be an elementary classroom project is now a call to all of us for the preservation of a species.

https://www.gardenclubsofillinois.org/milkweed-for-monarchs

Wish you all well.

  

When Do I Break Even?

Will Your Contributions to TRS Ever Match Your Eventual After-Retirement Earnings?

Or

When Do I Break Even?

Or

What Will Tier III Do To Me?

Have you ever wondered just how many contributions to your retirement plan it would take before you broke even?  Breaking even would be that point in a teacher's career where her contributions would match the value of her benefits in retirement?  "Value" is an actuarial measurement of the returns or benefits of the pension, including life span expectations and other factors. 

If you read the Chicago Tribune, listen to the administrative support team of Governor Rauner (Illinois Policy Institute), or have a family member or neighbor who works in the private sector and abhors taxes of any kind – well, you’d think you would get a sweet return which would always wash over what you put in, wouldn’t you?

But you’d be wrong.

Nearly 3 out of 10 teachers leave the profession within the first five years, and we can expect their contributions to the pension systems will never match any real return. In fact, they’d be wise to take it with them.

Pension contributions are back-loaded.  That means that teachers put in increasing amounts as they gain experience and raises (salary) in the classroom.  In Illinois, 9% of $25,000 starting salary is much less than the later multiple-degree salary of $60,000.  In fact, only about half as much. 

Somewhere out there in the future, the meeting between what teachers have given and what they will earn in benefits crosses. 

According to a recent research paper looking at all states, that moment of contributions' and benefits' equivalence may be longer away than any teacher thought, and it will be VERY dependent upon the specific state’s retirement program. 

Two significant findings occur in this brief, “Negative Returns: How State Pensions Shortchange Teachers.”

https://www.teacherpensions.org/resource/negative-returns-how-state-pensions-shortchange-teachers

“First, in the median state, teachers must serve at least 25 years to receive a pension worth more than their own contributions. Teachers with shorter careers get no school-financed retirement benefit despite their many years of service. They may be better off taking back their own contributions when they quit rather than waiting to collect a pension.

“Second, the authors estimate that more than three-quarters of new teachers will earn less in pension benefits than they contributed to the plan. Instead of benefiting from their pension plans, most teachers are net contributors."

Why?  Because new plans in many states – known in Illinois as Tiers – will push the intersection of contributions and expected retirement earnings far into the future.  In Massachusetts, for example, recent changes for new hires have made it IMPOSSIBLE for any of them to ever meet the parity between contribution and retirement benefits/earnings. 

According to the authors, Aldeman and Johnson, Tier I teachers in Illinois can expect to achieve a “breaking even” point after 28 years of teaching. 

The plan for Tier II in Illinois, which passed the General Assembly in less than 24 hours, asked new hires after January of 2011 to pay the same contribution as Tier I for less in retirement benefits:  a simple rather than compounded annual cost of living increase, a capped retirement annuity at $112, 408, a retirement age of 67 and with severe deductions for an earlier exit,   

This means that actuarially, Tier II teachers will need to provide classroom instruction for 35 years before the “break even point” in deserved benefits.

Only Hawaii and Ohio match our current adverse calculation.  All other states are less.

Enter stage right: TIER III:

The creation of a “new” Tier III (SB42) was cradled within the bills recently enacted in the Illinois General Assembly to override the potential veto of a new budget.  The bills sponsors – Senator Donne Trotter and Representative Greg Harris – managed a bill of nearly 800 pages, which included the language adopted to create a new Tier III, which provides for a “defined contribution” (403b) in a hybrid arrangement with a lesser-earning defined benefit (pension).

According to Representative Harris, the task of implementing the bill’s language will fall upon the TRS, SURS, and SERS.  Following the outline of language within the bill, they will develop the structure that will assure new hires of a certain date (possibly sometime in 2018) to enter into the new Tier.  Or they may decide not to. 

New hires will also be able to choose Tier II, the plan where working 35 years brings benefit parity with a ceiling cap.  Or they can choose Tier III. 

And so can ALL the Tier II current hires.  They can move from Tier II to Tier III and participate in a part pension and part 403b program.

If you’re confused, imagine what a finalized contract booklet will look like.

Oh, by the way, your selection is irrevocable.  Hotel California, my friend.  

We Are One Illinois provides no information thus far on the new Tier.  Illinois Federation of Teachers does not have anything either.  Go to TRS, and you will find a cogent description of the new bill by Mr. Ingram’s office.  Go to IEA, and you will find a Frequently Asked Questions review of the benefits, which states, “The IEA and all the unions within We Are One Illinois labor coalition took a position of neutrality.”

 https://ieanea.org/2017/07/13/tier-iii-pensions-frequently-asked-questions-and-answers/

For me, a position of neutrality is unsettling.   Here’s why:

Tier III offers some tantalizing differences for the burgled Tier II teacher now 6 years into their profession.  Tier III will raise her retirement earnings ceiling from $112,000 to $127,000.  Contributions for a Tier III teacher will be reduced to 6.2% of salary, rather than the 9% they are now paying.  And they will be provided a defined contribution (think a 403b), for which they will pay 4% of salary and the local will match from 2% - 6%. 

Looks good from far, but it’s far from good.

Tier III reduces the multiplier for final average annuity from 2.2 to 1.25.  This means the break-even point will be moved nearly 40% further into the future.  What took 28 years or 35 years to make parity will take MUCH longer!  Example:  Under 1.25, a teacher will be eligible for 50% of a final averaged salary in 40 years.  The cap of 75% of earnings in retirement will take the Tier III teacher 60 years of teaching.  Start at age 25 and work until 85?

The annual cost of living adjustment will no longer contain a 3% simple rate.  Retired Tier III teachers will receive only will get ½ of the CPI, but nothing below zero.

According to Representative Harris, any teacher electing to move from Tier II into Tier III will have her multiplier frozen at 2.2 for those previous Tier’s years and altered to a 1.25 multiplier from thence on.   Example: Six years at 2.2 will equal more than 13% of final averaged salary.  At 1.25%, a bit over 7%. 

For the people who want “their own” portable investment program – a 403b – this may be perfect.  Not interested really in teaching? Teach a few years before finding another suitable profession.  

Interested in making a career out of teaching? Illinois may not be the place to seek a long-term vocation which honors your commitment with a once-promised retirement.  

In the FAQ section of Tier III for the IEA, leadership in IEA states, “We knew pension legislation of some kind was going to have to pass for there to be a budget.  So, we worked to ensure the unconstitutional model, which had been part of SB16 was not included.  Additionally, we worked to make sure end of career salary increases which could be sued for calculating one’s pension were not reduced from 6 percent to the consumer price index.” 

In Rauner’s outline of the budget, his office identifies the move to a defined contribution as a first priority for our state.  His interest in a consideration model, as proposed by Senate leader Cullerton is extremely valued, but not until some certitude as to its acceptance by the Illinois Supreme Court can be determined.  In other words, to be announced later.  It’s coming.

But, in actuality, don’t we now already have at this point a form of consideration for those people in Tier II and those coming in at Tier III very soon?  Choose a Tier II and pay more for less – even to the point that your funded ratio in Tier II is now 155% - or choose Tier III, where you can be given less for longer service in exchange for a 403b program which can be taken when you realize you’re being ripped off.

The ultimate ramifications of this “new” Tier increase my concern for our beleaguered educational system in Illinois.

Neutrality? 

When Attorney general Madigan argued her "Soveriegn Powers argument" against the IRTA legal team in 2015, she put forth an affirmative defense - an admission of possible illegal action as more acceptable out of a more pressing need for the greater good of the State.  The Court denied that rationale.  The argument from IEA seems a defensive affirmative.  We are maintaining a position of neutrality because it could have been worse.  

It would seem we didn't win this battle, nor did we battle.