This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The Blame Game?
William S. Lerach reports in the Huffington Post, Blame Wall Street, Not Hard Working Americans, For The Pension Funds Fiasco:
The
confrontations in Wisconsin and other states are the opening salvo of a
political blame game -- who is responsible for the gigantic public
pension fund deficits that threaten states' solvency and workers'
retirement savings? The conservative spin machine blames public
employees, claiming their greedy unions extorted extravagant and now
unaffordable benefits which justify pension cutbacks and union-busting.
This is a false. The real cause of
the pension fund debacle is the greed of Wall Street and its corporate
allies. It's a result of their dismantling of our nation's regulatory
safeguards and Wall Street's capture and abuse of America's public
pension funds -- charging them huge management fees, while losing
trillions of dollars of pension fund assets in risky investments.
Wall
Street developed with no regulation. Abuses abounded. Financial
markets were corrupt. Then came the 1929 Crash, a wealth destruction
event that ended the dreams of an American generation. The Pecora
hearings exposed self-dealing and fraud by Wall Street bankers. Wall
Street faced ruin. But instead of wiping out Wall Street or
nationalizing the banks, we chose to save capitalism and protect
investors -- by creating a new system of highly regulated financial
markets.Congress created the SEC to oversee stock exchanges,
require honest accounting and disclosure by corporations and broke up
(and strictly controlled) the Wall Street banks. In time, this new
regulatory framework created the greatest age of economic growth and
prosperity in history. Despite periodic recessions and bear markets --
there were no more investor wealth destruction events.
As the
U.S. became the world's financial powerhouse, no one got more powerful
than the Wall Street banks and their corporate allies. Then they set
about undoing the very regulatory framework that had saved them. As
politics came to depend on massive infusions of cash, no one provided
more of it than corporations and Wall Street banks. They complained
that regulation was restricting American competitiveness and economic
growth -- our citizenry was seduced by promises of greater growth and
prosperity. Government, which had actually been the key to the
solution, became portrayed as the problem. They captured Congress.
And then came the regulatory teardown.
Congress deregulated the
S&Ls. Then it enacted severe cut backs on investor protections and
curtailed their right to sue. Glass-Steagall was repealed -- allowing
the long forbidden financial giants -- investment and commercial banks
-- to recombine. The Wall Street/ Corporate alliance used its power
to see that regulatory agencies passed into the hands of appointees who
were hostile to the regulations they were supposed to enforce.
Investor protection rules were diluted. A pro-corporate Supreme Court
curtailed suits against banks and corporations. The result was
behemoth banks, less regulatory oversight and less accountability.So,
what came from this era of de-regulation? Increased competitiveness,
economic growth, wealth and prosperity? No -- instead we got repeated
waves of financial fraud and wealth destruction events.
First
came the S&L blowup of the mid-1980s. Over 3,000 S&Ls
collapsed. A few years later it was the 2000-2001
dot.com/telecommunications meltdowns epitomized by WorldCom and Enron.
Most recently, our major financial institutions were rocked by scandal
-- the worst crash since 1929. Investors lost over $20 trillion in
these three massive wealth destruction events, which were the result of
the teardown of the regulatory framework that had been erected over the
prior 70 years to control our financial markets and protect investors.
America's public pension plans -- guardians of the life savings of
countless working people -- were the biggest victims of these wealth
destruction events.
A pension system is a bet on the future --
some money is set aside currently, but not enough to pay all the
promised benefits. So, how pension funds are invested and safeguarded
is key. Originally, many states required pension funds to invest in
safe, interest-bearing bonds. But Wall Street could not make a lot of
money from that, so it bank-rolled initiatives and legislation to
repeal these protections and permit pension funds to be invested in the
stuff they make big profits by peddling. Then Wall Street money
managers captured pension funds' investment portfolios by assuring
trustees that ever-higher stock prices would pay for the retirement
promises. Charging enormous fees, they made risky stock market bets,
putting up to 80% of pension plan assets in the stock market. The
Wall Street wisdom that ever-rising stock prices would fund pension
plan promises was wrong. In fact, we have seen three major equity
wealth destruction events in last 20 years.
As a result,
the financial situation of our public employee pension funds is
precarious. These funds lost hundreds of billions in the S&L
disaster and the 2001-2002 market crash. After the 2001-2002 wipeout
-- guided by Wall Street -- fund trustees took much greater risks to
try to make up for the prior losses. They poured billions into hedge
funds, private equity, speculative real estate and that special Wall
Street invention -- collateralized debt obligations. Then, in the
2008-2009 financial crisis, the losses of public funds were stupendous.
109 state funds lost $865 billion
in about one year. CalPERS lost $72 billion! Now virtually all of
these funds are now grossly under-funded. New Jersey and Illinois are
each over $50 billion underwater.
Why
are our public pension systems and plans in such precarious financial
condition? Of course there are some examples of excessive pensions, of
double-dipping and of "gaming" the system to "goose" the pension
amount. But these are few in number. And, even in the aggregate, the
financial impact of these excesses pale in comparison to the gigantic
investment losses of these pension funds. So let's place the fault
where it really belongs -- not with working people -- but with Wall
Street banks. Who made money on these risky investment gambles? Who
takes pension fund trustees to play golf and on so-called "educational"
junkets at lush resorts to enjoy lavish dinners? Wall Street.
The
inappropriate investments that caused these massive pension fund
losses were not an accident. The pension fund field caught the Wall
Street contagion -- financial corruption. It's called "Pay to Play."
The SEC saw it years ago but, controlled by anti-regulation political
appointees, it did nothing. So a nationwide system of political
contributions to elected officials who sit on fund boards and payoffs
and kickbacks to politically well-connected "Placement Agents" to steer
fund money to Wall Street became widespread. Not surprisingly, the
investments obtained by "pay-to-play" kickbacks and contributions have
generated horrific losses.
An investment officer of the California Public Employee Pension Fund was forced to resign
-- he got an all-expense-paid trip to NYC from an investment group
that got $600 million from the fund. The middle men on that deal --
two former top CalPERs officials -- got some $20 million to arrange
this placement. Two other former CalPERS officials have been sued by
the Attorney General for taking $50 million in placement fees to steer
pension investments. CalPERs lost hundreds of millions on such
investments. Alan Hevesi -- the former head of the New York State Fund
-- pleaded guilty to
doling out billions in that Fund's assets to favored managers in
return for benefits. The SEC has finally outlawed this system of
bribes and kickbacks. But too late -- the damage has already been done
to the pension funds. Nationwide, public pension funds lost billions
on these types of corrupt investments with Wall Street types.
The
horrible deficit numbers funds admit to actually hide a far more
terrible reality. To determine how well a fund is "funded" it uses an
assumed rate of return. It estimates how much the fund will earn on its
investment portfolio in the future. For decades, public pension funds
have assumed 7.5%-8%, even 9% annual growth, i.e., over 100%
compounded over 10 years. Fat chance!
Today,
pension funds are engaged in massive deceptions to conceal the true
extent of their funding deficits. They are concealing the massive
black holes that haunt public budgets. These ridiculous 7.5%-9.0%
assumed rates of return are not "little white lies" -- they are
Everest-sized whoppers. If the three big California Public Funds used a
4.5%-5% rate of return instead of the 7.5%-8% they now use, these
funds would be $500 billion under-funded -- 10 times the $50 billion
shortfall they admit to. Since this is a nationwide deception going on
in virtually all public plans, try extrapolating that out. Public
employee funds are probably $3 or $4 trillion underwater. The massive
shortfalls we now face exist despite prior "Bull Markets" and the
current rally. And the next round of excess of a still under-regulated
Wall Street will produce another wealth destruction event that will
erase recent gains.
This is no academic matter. The time to
keep the retirement promises is now upon us. In the next several
years, some 77 million U.S. baby boomers -- including millions of
teachers and public service workers -- will enter retirement.
Unfortunately, the U.S. public pension system has become a
fraud-infested house of cards. Wisconsin shows us this house of cards
is starting to collapse, sparking a major political battle.
The
conservatives will "scapegoat" public employees as a privileged --
protected -- class. But it was not firemen, cops, clerks, or teachers
(or their unions) who lost trillions of dollars in risky investments in
an under-regulated stock market over the past 20 years. The Wall
Street money managers lost it in investments acquiesced in by the
pension fund trustees they had wined and dined. It's the same old
story. The bankers pocket gigantic fees. The privileged few get fat.
Ordinary people get run over. And now are even to be blamed -- even
punished -- for a mess they did not create.
We cannot allow
these public pension plans to collapse. Nor can we break our promises
to workers who relied in good faith on promised pensions. Fortunately,
there is a solution that could help protect retirees and at the same
time help finance our huge federal deficit -- if we act fast.
- First
-- stop allowing Wall Street money managers to speculate with workers'
retirement savings in risky equities and other crazy investments.- Second
-- create a new 7% or 8% inflation-indexed U.S. Treasury bond only for
retirement funds, in staggered 10-30 year maturities. Require all
pension plans to buy and hold these bonds. To allow an orderly
transition -- require that over the next seven years -- 80%-90% of all
pension plan assets must be put in these safe, high-yield bonds.These bonds will provide low-cost returns for pension funds. This
will stop Wall Street's gouging the funds with huge fees and speculating
with workers' retirement savings. This solution will also help
finance our huge federal deficit. While the interest rate is high --
we taxpayers are going to end up paying to solve this problem one way
or the other. And, at least this way, the interest payments will go to
support our fellow retired citizens -- not the Chinese. It's a
simple, elegant solution -- but Wall Street and the politicians they
control will never permit it.
While I empathize with the
spirit of this article, Mr. Lerach fails to mention a few things. First,
an agreement between the Clinton administration and congressional
Republicans, reached during all-night negotiations on October 22, 1999
introduced the most sweeping banking deregulation bill in American history.
It's simply wrong to blame "Conservatives" for deregulation of the
American financial system. Both major parties catered to the financial
elite to introduce sweeping banking deregulation.
Second, as I wrote back in January,
while a large part of the blame lies with Wall Street, it's too easy to
use greedy bankers as scapegoats for the pensions fiasco. Poor
governance, rosy investment assumptions, bad asset management (which
didn't focus on protecting the downside) and bad political decisions all
played a role too. Nobody forced pension fund managers to buy the crap
Wall Street was aggressively peddling to them and other institutional
investors. So many people fell for the utter nonsense that the Street
was selling back then. They hired "rocket scientists" to slice and dice
risky mortgage debt, turn it into "AAA" tranches which the rating
agencies certified and presto, these investments became eligible for
pension fund managers to invest in (sigh!). Anyone who's read Michael
Lewis' The Big Short
must be appalled at how pension fund managers totally abdicated their
fiduciary duties by not questioning what was actually backing these
"AAA" investments.
Third, while I like the idea of introducing more inflation-sensitive US
Treasury bonds, I don't like the idea of forcing pension plans to invest
the bulk of their assets in these bonds. This idea has been floating
around for years (I believe Zvie Bodie came up with it), but it flies in
the face of good governance and exercising fiduciary responsibility.
There are no guarantees that inflation-sensitive bonds will outperform
in the future, especially in a deflationary environment. That's why it's
better to invest in a diversified portfolio of private and public
markets.
Finally, as I mentioned in an update to my last comment on California pensions,
there is a concerted effort going on right now to weaken public pension
plans or abolish them altogether. I'm of the school of thought that
this is pure fear mongering and total nonsense. While Wall Street
continues to enjoy record bonuses, private and public pension plans are
getting decimated. But instead of blaming people, we got to get on with
it and start introducing meaningful regulations and reforms which will
bolster pensions and the financial system.
The damage is done. We're not going to change the past, so let's focus
on building the future. We can address the pension funds fiasco as
responsible adults, recognizing that changes will require sacrifices
from all stakeholders, or we can continue down this ridiculous path of
public and private pensions attrition ensuring more pension poverty down
the road. Keep this in mind as the political rhetoric on pensions heats
up.
»
- advertisements -
The first thing in the morning ZH read makes me wonder? Is the confidence and faith in the Government and Media so destroyed that it can not be rebuilt? Not to say that I believe any one of the sons of bitches. Just sayin that some how some way, trust has to be re-invented.
florida home insurance
The former execs that ruined the company for 50 years with meritless, non-achievement, nepotistic hiring practices, have been and now are living without having to work, being paid billions, the life of Riley.
cheapest car insurance
The only solution is the final solution : Gas all the baby-boomers. What a marvelous end to debate. Only problem : I'm one of them. Yikes! But then I'm not Hilly billy Clinton nor mad dog Dubya, our most iconistic representatives, nor the Steve Jobs/Bill Gates crowd who outsource, what their political pals made legal/very-ultra-mega beneficial, to China/india. Never mind you lout, you are one of them by date of birth. You also go to 'Ausweis'! These boots are made for walking...walk!! As I walk to that lovely place I sing to myself :
"Laughing like children
Living like lovers
Rolling like thunder
Under the covers
I guess, that's why they call it the blues!"
Achtung! 'Ausweis' next stop! Sieg heil!
Once upon a time people just saved what they could for their retirement from their wages. Then employers realized they could get people to take less now against a promise for the future and seem like good guys for helping people save. Of course they did make a little money while they had custody of those funds. So while total compensation might not decline the cost to the employer would.
Then in 1971 the gold window was closed. The resulting instability in the purchasing power of the monetary unit and in interest rates made it impossible to save or invest. Most employers stopped offering pensions particularly of the defined benefit type as soon as they realized this. Apparently public employers felt that they could still offer those benefits as the number of employees/contributors had always grown and anyway they could always get more revenue from the public. These were also excuses not to fully fund those pensions. And the employees agreed.
Just about the time people began to realize that might not be the case some innovative ways of trying to mitigate the problem were developed and sold to the pension managers. Unfortunately they didn't work out. The pension managers were now even further behind.
Interestingly it was the same folks who closed the gold window so no one could save for themselves who also sold the new investments to the pension managers.
Yet the private banking establishment whose 'public' arm, the FED, made saving impossible and whose private arms sold the 'new and improved' ways to solve the problem is not blamed and the greedy pensioners are blamed.
What has happened to the pension systems in this country is what happens anywhere that currency does not also serve as a store of value. Over time, everyone must buy assets to try and get yield. And when everyone is in the same trade, ie, the financial markets, then they fail.
The greatest cohort in history is starting to retire. The Baby Boomers. And from now on, we will be taking money OUT of the markets not putting money in.
Who do we sell to?
Answer: Ourselves. We print the money for ourselves.
And everybody IS still in the market. It is the only way to save for retirement. Ask anybody how they are saving, and they will say IRA, 401k, pension fund, or Soc.Security. And they are all "financial instruments" that generate yield. So, when the markets crash, guess who wants them to be made whole again? Yes, EVERYBODY.
And that is the reason for the bailouts and the money printing and the artificially low interest rates. And that's why we will do more of the same next time.
cheers,
gh
Pensions: Because what could possibly go wrong with locking your money up for a career lifetime with unaccountable strangers who profit whether you do or not?
"The damage is done. We're not going to change the past, so let's focus on building the future."
OMG...please Leo...that kind of equivocation and can kicking is EXACTLY what got us here.
Hold the Banks and Corporations responsible, NO BAILOUTS, jail time, and public hanging are the only thing that will help.
I've heard the "let's focus on the future" bullshit over and over and over as I've been bent over and over and over for over 30 years.
No more.
Until the late 40s, most pension funds were required to put the bulk of their money into low-risk investments, particularly into government bonds.
If public service employees can’t stand the risk, they need to stay out of the stock market.
This constant need for public service union members and their spouses –of which there seem to be untold millions – to force someone else to support them from cradle to grave, risk free, is getting too much for the taxpayers of this nation. Already, Bernanke has reduced little old ladies to penury with 1.5 percent interest earnings on their savings versus 9 percent inflation on their living expenses to pump the stock market for these people.
Do we taxpayers not only have to pay for their above average salaries, but now we have to guarantee them 8% or more on their Big Retirements? Already government salaries are 30 percent higher than those in the private sector and their benefits 70 percent higher, according to BLS.
Do these people have no shame?
There is no heads-I win-tails-you-lose clause for those of us who manage our own Defined Benefit Plans.
Do the teachers think that those of us educated in their system are so stupid we don’t know what they’re up to? Blame game, indeed! Have they walked Easy Street so long that they know not how the rest of the world has to live?
You are falling prey to the "we-they" argument, when the "they" is Washington and Wall Street.
No, “they” are the enormously powerful government-employee unions; “we” are the formerly powerless taxpayers. Here’s a little competition for Huffington/AOL from LewRockwell.com…
The Political Economy of Government-Employee Unions | Thomas J. DiLorenzo | Febuary 26, 2011
EXCERPTS :
The main reason why so many state and local governments are bankrupt, or on the verge of bankruptcy, is the combination of government-run monopolies and government-employee unions. Government-employee unions have vastly more power than do private-sector unions because the entities they work for are typically monopolies…
Thirty years ago, the economist Sharon Smith was publishing research showing that government employees were paid as much as 40 percent more than comparable private-sector employees. If anything, that wage premium has likely increased….
As taxpayers in California, Wisconsin, Indiana, and many other states are realizing, the future has arrived. The Wall Street Journal reports that state and local governments in the United States currently have $3.5 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. They must either raise taxes dramatically to fund these liabilities, as some have already done, or drastically cut back or eliminate government-employee pensions…
Every government-employee union is a political machine that lobbies relentlessly for higher taxes, increased government spending, more featherbedding, and more pension promises – while demonizing hesitant taxpayers as uncaring enemies of children, the elderly, and the poor (who are purportedly "served" by the government bureaucrats the unions represent).
It is the old socialist trick that Frédéric Bastiat wrote about in his famous essay, The Law: The unions view advocates of school privatization, not as legitimate critics of a failed system, but as haters of children. And the unions treat critics of the welfare state, not as persons concerned with the destruction of the work ethic and of the family that has been caused by the welfare state, but as enemies of the poor.
This charade is over. American taxpayers finally seem to be aware that they are the servants, not the masters, of government at all levels. Government-employee unions have played a key role in causing bankruptcy in most American states, and their pleas for more bailouts financed by endless tax increases are finally ringing hollow.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo203.html
+1 good points. don't forget wall st. caused the other half of this mess
I couldn't even read this crap. Coming from the Huffington Post, it can only be crap! The politicians/unions have been running a friendly, money-laundering scam for decades. Game over, level the playing field.
You guys can argue the point of "blame" to infinity. It really doesn't matter at this point, EVERYONE that has/had a nickel in the game is to blame. The games over, someone lost, someone won. The ones who lost in the game will get another haircut by paying the coming higher taxes with worthless frns, and inflation. If you've got money in a 401k, get it out and buy 90% US silver coinage by the pound, Maples, or Libertads. No telling what direction you might have to flee to when the REAL SHIT HITS the preverbial fan. Remember, you heard it here first....anarchy forever.....
Someone promised pensions with an 8% return and that was a lie.
Someone said the house you bought for $250,000 was worth $500,000 and that was a lie.
Someone said globalism and outsourcing was good for America and that was a lie.
Blame 2 people:
1.) Yourself because when you let your eyes turn into dollar signs its hard to see an obvious lie.
2.) Wealthy bankers and CEOs who lied to you in order to steal from you.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/arrests-starting-in-wisconsin.htm...
Handcuffs bitchez!
About fucking time.
There were no arrests on Sunday afternoon/evening.
Check the news.
Bring an actuary in and 'balance the pension books' and you'll see at least a 50% reduction in benefits. The money is not there.
"the opening salvo of a political blame game "
Wake me up when it turns in to a reality game. The money is not there, blame is cheap.
Ah, yes. So, are you for the Spotted Owl, or do you want to cut down all the forests? (Huh?) So, do you think O.J. killed his wife, or do you think the police planted evidence? Not mutually exclusive. Just as it is not mutually exclusive that, yes, Wall Street stole a bunch of public employee retirement funds, and, yes, the beaurocrats in charge made a lot of bad decisions (probably in exchange for bribes, kickbacks, favors, and future employment), and, yes, the public employees and their unions were greedy to point of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. Fact is, every single public employee contract, whether for wages and salaries and/or benefits, was procured by bribery and fraud. Every one is grotesquely generous, and it is nothing more than organized crime to extract money by force from people who make $30k or $50k to give to people who make many multiples of that, especially when the victims did not agree to any of this crap. No, there's plenty of blame to go around, but just fixing Wall Street and the compromised politicians and beaurocrats ain't gonna make the problem go away. And, finally, even if it did, how do you justify stealing money from people who did not agree, people who are less well off, to give to a bunch of overpaid parasites, especially when they obtained their cushy pay and benefits through bribery and fraud?
I agree. It's not a blame game (Leo is way off as usual).
The real game is how to fix this mess. Unions may find that they are in the same position that of some of the holders of corporate bonds found themselves two years ago; pennies to the dollar or just plain SOL.
So why are corporate pension funds not in the same boat? This is whole piece is a non-sequiter. For scholarship on the subject go to Mises.org article The Political Economy of Government Employee Unions.
Where you been living for the past 40 years, Gen'l Grant?
The Pension Benefit Gaurantee Corporation has been picking up the pieces of broken pension plans for at least that long.
Most of those unfortunate retirees have had to settle for 40-60% of what had been promised to them and the PBGC has been steadily slipping into into their ocean of red ink (like Freddie and Fanny)
But the point is that corporate pension funds should be in the same deficit conditions as the public pension funds if Wall St. were the cause and they are not. There have been corporate failures and of course legalized fraud in takeovers where the pension funds were raided but for solvent companies the pension funds are not as bad off as the public pension funds are.
That's because they are so, so much smaller. Who ever heard of a non-executive getting a $100,000 per year pension? And they are managed by people who are responsible for funding them.
In some cases public employees by "buying in" or whatever could get 80-100% of their last year's wages versus 40-50% for corporations. And some corporation such as GE with good pensions have a policy of getting rid of 10% of their employees per year and if you are over 50 you have a bullseye on your chest. I have heard for GE as recompense you would get about $2000 per year of service with the company but this limits pension liability. And generally there may be no garantee for retiree medical benefits and with Obamacare medical costs should skyrocket and I assume I will lose my benefits.
It doesnt matter who is to blame. They are all to blame. Joe made a pension promise to Bob, and Joe and Bob both agreed that Jim, who wasn't even old enough to be in the labor force yet, would pay for it.
Now Jim the taxpayer is beginning to think this isnt fair.
So then 'splain why, after the workers agreed to fiscal cuts, the Imperial Walker still wanted their bargaining rights. This isn't about 'taxes' anymore.
If the TeaPotDome Express Republi-thugs think America isn't hip to their end-run tactic, they've got another thing coming. 'Hope' you're interested in another term for Obama, because that's what the Koch-suckers are enabling with their bullshit.
Dumb as Q'Daffy on Dutch weed.
because a failed structure led to the current problems. any "solution" that does not change the equation is nothing but kicking the can down the road a few more years.
part of that structure involves that wall street/washington axis, another part is the equally dangerous organized extortion/washington axis. both must be fixed.
CALPERS based their pension payout on Dow what again, and got a state guarantee to cover any discrepancies? that is armed robbery of the taxpayer, no better then TARP.
the enemy of my enemy can still be just another enemy
So the solution to broken pensions is to make sure that public school teachers can never ask for health benefits again?
'Fixed' like my cat.
Somebody stole the tip jar....so we've decided no waitresses can ever accept tips.
Wow ... thank you for this simple, elegant analysis
That's right, Leo, "The damage is done." And it can't/won't be "fixed". Thing is, we are all - through the coercive power of tyrants, thieves and murders - unwilling "stakeholders" in this farce.
So, we take what small measures we can to protect ourselves. On occasion, I take my "pension" and spread it out on the kitchen Table. It's shiny and it feels right.
These "public sector pension funds" were financed at gunpoint. The loot was squandered by politicians and bureaucrats - sucked up by their slick masters, the banksters. Well...surprise, surprise!
Like the man said, soon (and not soon enough) it will be, "It's not when can you afford to retire, but how will you survive when you're too old to go to 'work'?"
Blame? Want to blame someone? Blame this, bitch!
The drive to cut back on state worker's benefits is part of the general "race to the bottom" between the states.
ALL kinds of state programs and services are being cut, as the social burdens from upward concentrated wealth, the distortions from a warfare economy, and a parasitic financial sector are passed to the local level.
Every state government attempts to beggar its neighbor, practicing what is essentially the debilitating domestic equivalent of foreign wage, tax, and regulation arbitrage as practiced by global corporations.
Meantime, the national government continues to fritter away the nation's wealth on financial cartels, wasteful overseas militarism, Homeland overpolicing, counter-productive "drug wars", and protection of insurance/pharmaceutical profiteering which doubles our GDP expenditure over what others pay for similar health care.
And that misallocation and misdirection of national wealth beggars and precludes useful domestic investment in the physical, social, and educational infrastructure.
The states collectively are on a fool's errand,
believing that by each running backward the illusion that some are moving forward will become real.
so corruption is an either / or proposition? bullsh*t! average working folks in my town make less than average teacher, and they have us two wager earner families over a barrel, and yet we can't vote on the damn union contract, while the union get that privelege for itself.
the statists thought they had a captive population until cheap china labor cut them off at the knees. this is about having a bunch of dependant statists on permanant gov't apron stings. no way to outsource public services, so unions made a nest there. i'll be in poverty in retirement at this rate, so some NEA rat ass can live it up on a Cuba vacation.
this is gonna end badly.
In my town, the police (union) picketted the Mayor's House, not his office. They marched up and down the residential street at 3:00 in the afternoon on a weekday. All the neighbors (local tax payers) were horrified. The mayor was asking for 1.5% contribution( from 0%) to thier health issurance plan per year or he would have to let patrolmen go. You would think they would stick together and accept the 1.5% contribution. No, the union dugin its heels and in the end, they let some go. The union rep was very proud of his actions for not backing down to the local government. I think the Unions will self destruct via their own selfishness. The bankers are another story, they need to be jailed, for their crimes agianst humanity.
Typical union goon behavior.
So those people disrupting the healthcare townhalls were union goons?
I don't normally chime into these conversations, being a member of a private union myself which I am working as quickly as possible to leave.
but, you've sort of made a complete jackass of yourself here
He's talking about people disrupting the man's personal life and neighborhood like a bunch of jackasses, and you're trying to compare it to people at townhall meetings which are exactly the venues designed for heated debate.
FAIL
Of course the protesters should do all of their protesting where nobody has to look at them, think about them, or be otherwise inconvenienced. Do you own a firearm or do you just lay down quietly so the rapist/burglar/terrorist can do his work with minimal disruption?
Says the Kochsucker.
Apberusdisvet,
You're drivel is typical of close-minded, right-wing, corporate trolls ala Fucked News. Of course its not better to lay off hard-working (if not to financially bright) policemen, firemen, etc. But its time for the banksters, defense contractors, and other benefactors of the rampant corruption in this country to cough up. After that, let the beheading begin!
Parasitic relationships: What happens when the remora grows so large/compacent that it can no longer perform it's task?
TARP VII
Patriot Act IV
QEXXIV
FEMA Camps: "For your security"
Or maybe, instead, a repudiation of the welfare-warfare state, and a return to an honest financial system and sound money.
Leo is clearly for Option #1
Where is a FEMA camp?
Where is a FEMA camp?
The remora, which provides some benefit to the host, has transformed into a tapeworm.
When the average Federal workers makes $123,500 and the average private sector worker makes $65,000 ... when my government worker neighbor has 'several million' dollars and makes over $100,000 in annual pension benefits and ppo medical benefits to boot ... and the retired 55 year old cop down the street makes $90,000 in pensions for life ... I sure think that the politicians and the employee unions have been working (together) overtime to protect their own.
So if the author believes that 'greedy Wall Streeters' are responsible for this disparity:
"The real cause of the pension fund debacle is the greed of Wall Street and its corporate allies. It's a result of their dismantling of our nation's regulatory safeguards and Wall Street's capture and abuse of America's public pension funds -- charging them huge management fees, while losing trillions of dollars of pension fund assets in risky investments." (How about including greedy union leader who make millions managing the money managers)
So more government is the only answer!!!! Just as the Washington elite believe that more debt is required to get us out of debt.
My friends, delusions abound.
Government is not the answer, Government is the problem.
Sure, let's pretend that the jobs that make up government and the jobs of the private sector all come in the same shapes and sizes.
How many dishwashers do you know on the government payroll?
Eliminate those menial jobs from the private sector and 'average' again.
Same result? Uh no.
Well lets take out the billionaires in the private sector as well as the menials ... Also, I do know that government do not 'produce' anything so their jobs are all service sector. Also an engineer in the private sector makes less than a government engineer.
You sir, are delusional. Get yourself to Somalia if you want to enjoy the fruits of the lack of government.
There is a difference between anarchy and statism … I would rather have the latter if that were the only choice; however, I prefer liberty over either.
Lets just see who are the anarchists are as the State runs out of money and austerity descends (ala Wisconsin).