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Dem Party Disaster: Subservience to Wall St. Is Destroying Its Foundations
http://www.alternet.org/economy/dem-party-disaster-subservience-wall-st-destroying-its-foundationsIn this web extra, John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper’s Magazine, talks to Bill about an obscure provision attached to the $1.1 trillion dollar spending bill passed by Congress this week. A section on “other matters” on page 1,599 of the spending bill would dramatically increase the amount of money that wealthy political donors could give to political parties.
MacArthur calls the provision “incumbency insurance” adding that “the two parties are most interested in getting themselves and their regular members re-elected and this is a way to prevent competition.”
MacArthur also talks about the serious fallout from politicians protecting Wall Street, his views on a Clinton-Bush rematch and the “most hopeful” moment he saw in politics this year.
http://vimeo.com/114383064
64 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
didn't you ...
to shore up the past and current failures of private corporations to fund costs about half a billion on taxpayers to operate, but as insurance it has in the past paid out ten times that amount.
It really has been blowing in the wind for a while. It's been running in the red a long time, without sufficient funding. And while it was not that great a deal we can't ignore those it was set up to help:
Underfunding Clouds the PBGC's Future
$170 billion is the PBGC's estimated exposure for reasonably possible terminations of single-employer plans, according to its 2010 Annual Report. While this exposure has been relatively steady in recent years, the agency's estimate of its multiemployer reasonably possible exposure increased significantly from $326 million in 2009 to $20 billion in 2010, due primarily to the addition of two large plans.
As of September 30, 2010, the PBGC had single-employer assets totaling $77.8 billion, compared to single-employer liabilities of $99.4 billion (measured in present value though they will be paid over decades). The net single-employer deficit is $21.6 billion. The multiemployer insurance program had a FY 2010 deficit of $1.4 billion, with $1.6 billion in assets to cover about $3 billion in liabilities.
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Pension-Benefit-Guaranty-Corporation-and-ERISA&id=6299285
A failure has been in the making since the founding of the PBGC due to reductions in income to corporations. The underfunding is from the private sector, as they were operating on 'pay as you go' for pensions, dependent on the health of the businesses, not the same as an entitlement by government to act as a safety net. Here is how they are funded:
Revenues and expenditures
The PBGC is not funded by general tax revenues. Its funds come from four sources:
* Insurance premiums paid by sponsors of defined benefit pension plans;
* Assets held by the pension plans it takes over;
* Recoveries of unfunded pension liabilities from plan sponsors' bankruptcy estates;[4] and
* Investment income.
PBGC pays monthly retirement benefits to approximately 631,000 retirees of 3,800 terminated defined benefit pension plans. Including those who have not yet retired and participants in multiemployer plans receiving financial assistance, the PBGC is responsible for the current and future pensions of about 1.3 million people.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corporation
My pension is a defined benefit that was under threat of being turned over to them because the company did not think it could pay due to loss of income and hundreds of thousands of retirees. Actually, Social Security was, for me, and for many others still is, the best return on monies paid and the most reliable. After a few years of being threatened by the loss benefits if the pension was given over to the PBGC, the corporation I worked for who had placed the money in a Wall Street investment fund, felt it had to take control back.
They had to make an offer to the Department of Labor with an infusion of billions of dollars and it took half a year to get us away from what appeared to be a failing government agency that would have paid a fraction.
That's just an anecdote, it sure does not apply to everyyone. My piece of pension money was not much anyway. Social Security will be my main income, as I paid into both. All these things are a PITN.
I've almost convinced an aging bagger that the Scandinavian version of social social net with it's 'we are all together' society, is the way the USA should go. Those baggers don't want to lose their pensions and would adopt 'socialism' if they got theirs out of it, they've proven that already. They are coming to see that destroying everything for ideology will not serve them. I have explained to them why raising the miminum wage is a winner as people currently jumping through hoops for food, housing and medical care would prefer to have enough income to pay for it themselves. Those were both nice little light bulb blinking moments, but then it was still a way they saw they would benefit...
I don't know if Congress has repealed ERISA in its entirety or if the PBGC will disappear and people won't be compensated in by increased Social Security funding to take care of this shortfall if it occurs. The current KOCH/GOP plan is for private charites, churches and families, which failed before and SS to eliminated in total, along with food, medical and all public agencies set to administer the same to everyone. There would be no Social Security, UE or any other such, to be primary for the elderly, disabled and the poor as it is now on the back of government as a universal right.
It still exists, according to the website. Wonder what the GOP dares to do without replacing it:
http://pbgc.gov/
A yahoo source to the full of the PBGC only yields CNN (whom I trust their financial news as much as I do a Republican) and FOX (less so) and the WA Times, another shady outfit to tell people all is lost. Weird that even in the search results, they make it sound like a positive:
Congress moves one step closer to allowing pension cuts
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
...While those sponsoring the pension proposal say it is "the only available option" to save failing multiemployer pension plans, other groups -- like the AARP and the Pension Rights Center -- are crying foul.
Multiemployer pension plans cover more than 10 million workers and retirees in the trucking, manufacturing and other industries. But many of these plans have struggled in the last decade as they grapple with an aging workforce and major investment losses from the recession. Plus, many larger employers have pulled out of the plans.
That has put a major strain on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government agency that insures pension plans, which last month said its reserves are dangerously low.
The Congressional proposal would allow plans that are projected to run out of money in the next 10 to 20 years to cut the benefits they pay to both current and future retirees. Benefits would not be cut for disabled pensioners or those 80 years and older, while cuts would be lessened for those between 75 and 80.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/12/retirement/pension-cuts/index.html?section=money_latest
The PBGC were set up in the seventies to protect people in the face of failures of the private sector, which were coming due to demographics. I feel that while many are being hurt right now, especially public sector and other workers, we're being played or rather conditioned as the GOP has always done since the advent of the New Deal to give up on government leveling th playing field. None of the private sources of welfare are without huge strings and they are very undependable without help from government.
I've posted before Hartmann's video and transcript posted here at DU explaining the generations of propaganda of which you are likely aware:
Thom Hartmann: Conservative Millennials, Boomers & Libertarians all being Conned
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=44227
And that was back in the JBS days all the way through to some of the CT sites that still spout all of that. This was and is the agenda of the Koch brothers as revealed by Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders:
The David Koch Libertarian platform since 1980. Sanders put the whole thing online:
http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/1014833821#post10
The GOP has not deviated from that plan and their media has promoted it since then. I urge people to share the piece posted by xchrom last night from Alternet:
True History of Libertarianism in America: A Phony Ideology to Promote a Corporate Agenda
http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda-0
to xchrom:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025970827
Please excuse me, that is my first post of the day and I likely won't take that much time on the rest of them today, having already been shit on for making neutral statements last night that were not answers, just shit. That's what is driving people away from DU. Have a nice week in Minnesota, I think...
It really has been blowing in the wind for a while. It's been running in the red a long time, without sufficient funding. And while it was not that great a deal we can't ignore those it was set up to help:
Underfunding Clouds the PBGC's Future
$170 billion is the PBGC's estimated exposure for reasonably possible terminations of single-employer plans, according to its 2010 Annual Report. While this exposure has been relatively steady in recent years, the agency's estimate of its multiemployer reasonably possible exposure increased significantly from $326 million in 2009 to $20 billion in 2010, due primarily to the addition of two large plans.
As of September 30, 2010, the PBGC had single-employer assets totaling $77.8 billion, compared to single-employer liabilities of $99.4 billion (measured in present value though they will be paid over decades). The net single-employer deficit is $21.6 billion. The multiemployer insurance program had a FY 2010 deficit of $1.4 billion, with $1.6 billion in assets to cover about $3 billion in liabilities.
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Pension-Benefit-Guaranty-Corporation-and-ERISA&id=6299285
A failure has been in the making since the founding of the PBGC due to reductions in income to corporations. The underfunding is from the private sector, as they were operating on 'pay as you go' for pensions, dependent on the health of the businesses, not the same as an entitlement by government to act as a safety net. Here is how they are funded:
Revenues and expenditures
The PBGC is not funded by general tax revenues. Its funds come from four sources:
* Insurance premiums paid by sponsors of defined benefit pension plans;
* Assets held by the pension plans it takes over;
* Recoveries of unfunded pension liabilities from plan sponsors' bankruptcy estates;[4] and
* Investment income.
PBGC pays monthly retirement benefits to approximately 631,000 retirees of 3,800 terminated defined benefit pension plans. Including those who have not yet retired and participants in multiemployer plans receiving financial assistance, the PBGC is responsible for the current and future pensions of about 1.3 million people.[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corporation
My pension is a defined benefit that was under threat of being turned over to them because the company did not think it could pay due to loss of income and hundreds of thousands of retirees. Actually, Social Security was, for me, and for many others still is, the best return on monies paid and the most reliable. After a few years of being threatened by the loss benefits if the pension was given over to the PBGC, the corporation I worked for who had placed the money in a Wall Street investment fund, felt it had to take control back.
They had to make an offer to the Department of Labor with an infusion of billions of dollars and it took half a year to get us away from what appeared to be a failing government agency that would have paid a fraction.
That's just an anecdote, it sure does not apply to everyyone. My piece of pension money was not much anyway. Social Security will be my main income, as I paid into both. All these things are a PITN.
I've almost convinced an aging bagger that the Scandinavian version of social social net with it's 'we are all together' society, is the way the USA should go. Those baggers don't want to lose their pensions and would adopt 'socialism' if they got theirs out of it, they've proven that already. They are coming to see that destroying everything for ideology will not serve them. I have explained to them why raising the miminum wage is a winner as people currently jumping through hoops for food, housing and medical care would prefer to have enough income to pay for it themselves. Those were both nice little light bulb blinking moments, but then it was still a way they saw they would benefit...
I don't know if Congress has repealed ERISA in its entirety or if the PBGC will disappear and people won't be compensated in by increased Social Security funding to take care of this shortfall if it occurs. The current KOCH/GOP plan is for private charites, churches and families, which failed before and SS to eliminated in total, along with food, medical and all public agencies set to administer the same to everyone. There would be no Social Security, UE or any other such, to be primary for the elderly, disabled and the poor as it is now on the back of government as a universal right.
It still exists, according to the website. Wonder what the GOP dares to do without replacing it:
http://pbgc.gov/
A yahoo source to the full of the PBGC only yields CNN (whom I trust their financial news as much as I do a Republican) and FOX (less so) and the WA Times, another shady outfit to tell people all is lost. Weird that even in the search results, they make it sound like a positive:
Congress moves one step closer to allowing pension cuts
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
...While those sponsoring the pension proposal say it is "the only available option" to save failing multiemployer pension plans, other groups -- like the AARP and the Pension Rights Center -- are crying foul.
Multiemployer pension plans cover more than 10 million workers and retirees in the trucking, manufacturing and other industries. But many of these plans have struggled in the last decade as they grapple with an aging workforce and major investment losses from the recession. Plus, many larger employers have pulled out of the plans.
That has put a major strain on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government agency that insures pension plans, which last month said its reserves are dangerously low.
The Congressional proposal would allow plans that are projected to run out of money in the next 10 to 20 years to cut the benefits they pay to both current and future retirees. Benefits would not be cut for disabled pensioners or those 80 years and older, while cuts would be lessened for those between 75 and 80.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/12/retirement/pension-cuts/index.html?section=money_latest
The PBGC were set up in the seventies to protect people in the face of failures of the private sector, which were coming due to demographics. I feel that while many are being hurt right now, especially public sector and other workers, we're being played or rather conditioned as the GOP has always done since the advent of the New Deal to give up on government leveling th playing field. None of the private sources of welfare are without huge strings and they are very undependable without help from government.
I've posted before Hartmann's video and transcript posted here at DU explaining the generations of propaganda of which you are likely aware:
Thom Hartmann: Conservative Millennials, Boomers & Libertarians all being Conned
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=44227
And that was back in the JBS days all the way through to some of the CT sites that still spout all of that. This was and is the agenda of the Koch brothers as revealed by Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders:
The David Koch Libertarian platform since 1980. Sanders put the whole thing online:
http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/1014833821#post10
The GOP has not deviated from that plan and their media has promoted it since then. I urge people to share the piece posted by xchrom last night from Alternet:
True History of Libertarianism in America: A Phony Ideology to Promote a Corporate Agenda
http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda-0
to xchrom:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025970827
Please excuse me, that is my first post of the day and I likely won't take that much time on the rest of them today, having already been shit on for making neutral statements last night that were not answers, just shit. That's what is driving people away from DU. Have a nice week in Minnesota, I think...
glad to see you get your days posting in on one post
a lot of good info
It is Wall $treet or the rest of the country, and the banksters know it.
