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Pensions

Update: PBS Backs Down On Anti-Pension Program, Returns Millions

February 15, 2014 Staff, www.rt.com , ,
A member station within the Public Broadcasting Service announced Friday that it would return a $3.5 million grant to a former Enron executive who first provided the money to fund an anti-pension series. WNET, the New York City affiliate of PBS, said production on the planned series, dubbed “Pension Peril,” would be suspended indefinitely after journalist David Sirota of PandoDaily revealed the money was coming from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. John Arnold, a former executive at the disgraced Enron before who became one of the youngest billionaires in the US, was once the leading financial backer of a political movement to slash retirement benefits for firefighters, teacher, police officers, and other public-sector workers.

New PBS Series Pushes Pension Cuts

February 14, 2014 DSWright, www.firedoglake.com , ,
"Ask why. Like why is a former Enron trader covertly funding a public television series on pension systems? According to David Sirota over at Pando Daily, billionaire and Enron alum John Arnold has financed a new two-year news series entitled “Pension Peril.” A program that, not surprisingly, pushes an agenda that companies like Enron would love. The series, promoting cuts to public employee pensions, is airing on hundreds of PBS outlets all over the nation. It has been presented as objective news on major PBS programs including the PBS News Hour. However, neither the WNET press release nor the broadcasted segments explicitly disclosed who is financing the series. Pando has exclusively confirmed that “Pension Peril” is secretly funded by former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire political powerbroker who is actively trying to shape the very pension policy that the series claims to be dispassionately covering."

Boeing Workers Vow To Fight ‘Wholesale Attack’ On Union

February 4, 2014 Jason Redrup, www.facebook.com/iamreform , ,
It's important for the labor movement across the country to understand that this Boeing contract in Washington state is detrimental to all of labor. Our contracts up here have been the bellwether to measure others against. Our members have fought very hard and struck -- in 2005 and 2008 -- for pensions and for rights benefiting people who don't even work here. Now the road is clear for the bosses to get rid of pensions for public and private sector unions nationwide. When you go out and try to organize a new shop, you'll be told, "Hey, the Machinists gave up their pensions, why do you want to fight for pensions?" We are not just talking pensions for new hires, but giving up pensions for all Machinists under this Boeing contract in 2016. Also, keep in mind that this is not a company that was going bankrupt; it's a company that's extremely profitable, with record sales and profits.

Congress Cuts Pensions, Food Stamps & Essentials Increases Israel Funding

December 21, 2013 Staff, www.jewishjournal.com , , ,
The final version of the congressional defense budget triples the Obama administration’s request for funding for joint U.S.-Israel defense cooperation. The $284 million in the budget released jointly on Dec. 10 by the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate budget committees — up from the $96 million requested by the Obama administration — includes funding for the Arrow long-range anti-missile system and the David’s Sling and Iron Dome missile defense systems. The full National Defense Authorization Act for 2014 is virtually assured passage. Defense cooperation fundin

End The Assault On Social Security And Medicare

December 17, 2013 Dean Baker, www.truthout.org ,
What is most desperately needed for middle income workers is a new retirement system to replace the failed 401(k) system. There has been much work on this issue over the last two decades at both the state and federal level. The outlines of such a new system are clear. It needs to have low administrative costs so workers can maximize the amount that they earn relative to financial intermediaries. It has to be portable so workers can keep the same plan when they change jobs. It should be simple and ideally offer something like a cash balance system where workers can be guaranteed a minimal return. And it should allow for easy, if not automatic, conversions to annuities in retirement. There would be lots of support for this sort of system from across the political spectrum.

Open Letter to MoveOn: Time To Change Course On Obamacare

November 19, 2013 Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , , , ,
It is with great sadness that I watch you making last-gasp desperate attempts to save Obamacare and Obama’s reputation. You look foolish when you say that “Of course, it’s a good law” at the same time as your constituents see through the Obamacare illusion. The law is becoming less popular because people are beginning to see through the false partisan claims of Democrats. And worse, you are actually playing right into the Republican’s trap, really the trap of Wall Street and big business interests. It’s time for honesty. Obamacare is policy that has roots in the Nixon administration, was updated by the Heritage Foundation, a Right-wing think tank, and supported by people like Newt Gingrich. It was first put in place by Republican Governor Mitt Romney in Massachusetts (where it has not worked).

Pension Theft Crime Wave

November 11, 2013 Mark Brenner, www.labornotes.org , ,
The nation’s union-haters have a juicy new target, Detroit’s public employees, ever since the city became the largest in history to file for bankruptcy. Detroit unions will wrangle with a bankruptcy judge this fall over how to handle $3.5 billion in pension obligations for 12,000 retirees. City retirees receive a princely sum of $19,213 per year on average. Pension obligations to these workers account for less than 20 percent of Detroit’s debt. But the facts haven’t kept retirees from bearing the brunt of the bankruptcy fallout. In fact, politicians across the country are seizing on Detroit’s hard times as an excuse to trim public pensions closer to home. For them—and for bankers angling for a piece of the action—this could be the breakthrough they’ve been waiting for. Lawmakers from both parties have climbed onto the same noisy bandwagon as right-wingers who complain that public pensions are too fat, ballooning out of control because of unions run amok. They throw in the fact that retirees are living longer, and tout the soon-to-be swollen ranks of retiring baby boomers, to add some statistical cover to their judgments and finger-pointing.

How Obamacare Will Destroy Our Social Insurances

October 30, 2013 Michael Lind, www.salon.com , ,
Unlike conservatives, who are right-wingers first and Republicans second, all too many progressives put loyalty to the Democratic Party — most of whose politicians, including Obama, are not economic progressives — above fidelity to a consistent progressive economic philosophy. These partisan Democratic spinmeisters are now treating Obamacare, not as an essentially conservative program that is better than nothing, but as something it is not — namely, a great victory of progressive public policy on the scale of Social Security and Medicare. In doing so, progressive defenders of Obamacare may inadvertently be digging the graves of Social Security and Medicare.

Pension Theft Crime Wave

October 21, 2013 Mark Brenner, www.labornotes.org , ,
The nation’s union-haters have a juicy new target, Detroit’s public employees, ever since the city became the largest in history to file for bankruptcy. Detroit unions will wrangle with a bankruptcy judge this fall over how to handle $3.5 billion in pension obligations for 12,000 retirees. City retirees receive a princely sum of $19,213 per year on average. Pension obligations to these workers account for less than 20 percent of Detroit’s debt. But the facts haven’t kept retirees from bearing the brunt of the bankruptcy fallout. In fact, politicians across the country are seizing on Detroit’s hard times as an excuse to trim public pensions closer to home. For them—and for bankers angling for a piece of the action—this could be the breakthrough they’ve been waiting for.

The Plot Against Pensions

September 29, 2013 Staff, ourfuture.org , ,
This report evaluates both the general state of the national debate over pensions and the specific effects of the partnership between the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Public Sector Retirement Systems Project and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Here is a summary of the report’s findings: Finding: Conservative activists are manufacturing the perception of a public pension crisis in order to both slash modest retiree benefits and preserve expensive corporate subsidies and tax breaks. Finding: The amount states and cities spend on corporate subsidies and so-called tax expenditures is far more than the pension shortfalls they face. Finding: The pension “reforms” being pushed by conservative activists would slash retirement income for many pensioners who are not part of the Social Security system. Additionally, the specific reforms they are pushing are often more expensive and risky for taxpayers than existing pension plans.

VIDEO: Taibbi, How Wall Street Hedge Funds Loot Pension Funds

September 27, 2013 , , ,
Number one, how did these funds come to be broke the first place? I think everyone realizes that states are in fiscal crises or having trouble paying out their obligations to workers. One of the reasons is that at least 14 states have not been making their annual required contributions to the pension fund for years and years and years. So essentially, they have been illegally borrowing from these pension funds, sometimes going back decades. Another focus of the piece was the solution that a lot of sort of Wall Street funded think tanks are coming up with now is to get higher returns by putting these funds into alternative investments like hedge funds. In a lot of cases what I’m finding is that the fees that states are paying for these new hedge funds and these new types of alternatives investments are actually roughly equal to the cuts that they are taking from workers.
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