Saturday, February 14, 2015

Dismantling US Public Pension System

States and municipalities throughout the United States are engaged in a frontal assault on the pension benefits of current and retired public employees. These attacks are proceeding with complete disregard for the law, riding roughshod over state constitutional protections safeguarding pension benefits that employees have earned over decades of toil.

Earlier this month, Judge Christopher Klein signed a confirmation order allowing the city of Stockton, California to go ahead with its plan to slash workers’ retirement benefits as part of a deal to exit bankruptcy. The agreement will eliminate health care benefits for municipal retirees while cutting pension benefits for new-hires and increasing employee pension payments.


In ruling that bankruptcy courts have the authority to slash current retirees’ pensions, Klein could not hide his enthusiasm. He declared that CalPERS, the state’s public employee pension system, “has bullied its way about this case with an iron fist.” But, he gloated, the pension fund “turns out to have a glass jaw.”


In Illinois, where Circuit Judge John Belz last year struck down a 2013 law that cut pensions for state workers, state officials are once again on the war path. Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat, is preparing to appear before the Illinois Supreme Court to argue that, even though the state constitution explicitly declares that public employee pensions “shall not be diminished or impaired,” the state’s “police powers” allow it to slash the benefits of current retirees in the name of “public safety.”


http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/02/14/pers-f14.html


The same thing happened in Detroit, which slashed pensions as part of their bankruptcy reorganization, even though the Michigan constitution prevents such a thing.


The US financial system is going down, and states, cities, and the feds are going to break all their promises, contracts, and laws to stick it to retirees over the new two decades.


Q: Where did all the money go?


A: That's a damn good question, since a LOT of money has disappeared.


The underlying catastrophe is that we let corporations chartered in the US move their operations overseas without penalty. Along with them went our tax base and most "value added" industrial activity. All that is left here is a rentier economy which adds no value and therefore cannot support social programs or pensions for workers.


But it somehow can support more wars. Go figure.


And nothing Obama ad-Dajjal has done or that Hillary-Jeb will do can possibly change any of this, except maybe to make things worse.


By the way, this opinion piece discusses a closely related matter:


http://www.globalresearch.ca/netanyahu-takes-a-step-too-far-as-he-attempts-to-isolate-president-obama/5431038


The casinos of modern Las Vegas were funded by the junk bond monies which Michael Milken and his ilk accumulated by raiding the pension funds of US corporations. One long term result of this was the funding of the political career of Israeli PM NetanYahoo, who appears to be trying single-handedly to destroy the US and our government.

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