The Selfish Rich are Killing People

[Hannah Bell]

We have a huge crisis in the country. The private pension system is collapsing. The public pension system is on the brink of collapse, and people are beingpitted one against the other. But, what we often fail to do is connect the dots: between the collapse of the public pensions system and the robbery of the country by the richest people. Here's another example.

This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.

Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.

Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy... Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. "When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house," said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. "He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help."

Let me repeat that last emphasis: the man was too proud to ask for help and so he died alone with no electricity and no running water in his house...

It is astonishing that both these stories, and I presume, the rest in the media, ignore the obvious:

The careful and decades-long obliteration of a fair tax system has brought these pension plans to the brink... In New York States, and virtually, every other state, we could wipe out fiscal deficits and continue to have decent pensions for people if the wealthiest paid their fair share...By abandoning their responsibility in society, the richest among us have consigned millions of people to a retirement of poverty and a struggle to survive...

There is absolutely no economic reason--NONE--that we could not have real, defined benefit pensions in America. ZERO ECONOMIC REASON, I REPEAT.

The only reason our pension system is collapsing is because of POWER--the power of the ruling elites in the business and political worlds to simply decide that people should not get decent pensions--defined benefit pensions. They decided that it was more important to drain the lion's share of our wealth into the hands of a few: that has happened because of an unfair tax system AND a decision to drain real pension money into the 401k sham system...which meant more profits for Wall Street. This, btw, is the entire motivation behind Social Security privatization--to put more money in the hands of Wall Street firms.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/23/931159/-The-Selfish-Rich-Are-Killing-Retired-People

[freshwest]

1. Ah, but the Tea Party pundits screamed about Obamacare Death Panels...

And the suckers bought it.

[Hannah Bell]

2. what do "obamacare" or "death panels" have to do with pension funds?

[COLGATE4]

9. I think what he's trying to say is that the TeaIdiots are screaming

about 'guvmint wasteful spendin', which to their pea brains equates to pensions for public servants.

[glitch]

16. I call them Tediots (same pronounciation as yours, but from tedious) but they're more like TVidiots

since they get all their information from TV.

[Kievan Rus]

19. And from Glenn Dreck at that

[freshwest]

17. Yes, anything the gummint does is lethal, all that the Koch family and their supporters do is good!

It's a full media press from their think tanks and propagandizers to vilify and point fingers at unions and public workers.

The public employees are not perfect, but their salaries and everything are public record and voted on in that nasty, mob mentality that is democracy. And they speak about things like benefits, wages, overtime, keeping public options for health care and other means of putting sunlight on how government is run.

(sarcasm alert)

They even advocate the care of the unworthy poor and disabled and put their own money into making up the shortfalls. How very stupid of them.

Don't they know how wrong it is to help those groups, who are just parasites according to Ayn Rand, Tea Party goddess?

And not only that, they are union which means they are familiar with the words of Marx, aren't they? Which means they are for that fillthy collective the goddess warned them about that which must be destroyed!!!

(sarcasm off)

For that and the rest of their statist, liberal and progressive crimes against 'liberty,' they are traitors to the McCarthyism we are being inundated with by the Koch funders of the John Birch society, whose members are now being listened to with respect the 'patriot movement' on conspiracy radio.

So-called progressive media has encouraged us to mock and laugh, but I've heard this stuff and the code words are what they rallied about. That and Obama's Kenyan citizenship and his family full of communists. And they voted in droves to prevent the New World Order but ironically empowered the groups they feared. Their slavish devotion to corporatism through destroying the commons and privatization is bringing it about.

The Tea Partiers cross their fingers in front of their eyes like the peasants in a Monty Python skit, because such frightening words as socialism, working class, labor, overtime, etc. are all anathema. Now, if we'll just privatize and get rid of them, we'll be right in that fascist (per definition) utopia for unbridled capitalism, free trade out the kazoo world they're dragging us back to.

Now the push is on to finish the last vestiges of environmental and worker safety in the name of cost-cutting and de-regulation. All roads lead to death with them, not protecting anything alive, yet they've brushed these public employees with their own terrors learned at the hands of corporatism and cronyism and endless wars to devour their young taking us to their Crap Sack World trophism.

Oh, and they are going to continue to honor only one spark of life, in the womb, even those are subject to the free market, as we should not give pre-natal care because those unborn babies need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. After that, better hit the ground running. And your mom, if her life wasn't lived according to the scriptures, deserves nothing but disdain and so do their young. Those kids are starting out with a lot of strikes against them in a world that doesn't value their lives except for the money that can be made off of them.

Honestly, the public worker has seen the writing on the wall for a long time now. I've known teachers and other people who put in long hours and their entire working career helping children grow up with a sense of hope and belief in equality, now see that their dream is being destroyed.

One such man told me in shock, I wonder if I should have done this with my life at all, as I could have a retirement and more money if I'd devoted my life to something that paid a lot more and gave me more economic freedom. That was after 40 years of giving disabled children a way to go, to have dignity and a worthwhile life, to treat well those who are among the 'least of us.'

So now after all their heart and their love for their fellow man, they are being discarded and spat upon at the same time, so it's easy for me to see how it all became way too much.

Okay, off the soap box. I enjoy both your and Hannah's posts and threads a lot. We've got the fight of our lives on our hands, but then it always was this way, every generation. Later, folks.

[Hannah Bell]

20. thanks. i didn't get it.

[blindpig]

3. k&r

[me b zola]

4. K&R

[GeorgeGist]

5. If the Rich weren't selfish ...

they would be Middle class.

[FormerDittoHead]

6. The lower classes get what they deserve...

That's what the rich think. Their conscious is clear.

They think that because they know that if we rose up like the French do, things would be different. But we don't.

If you don't fight over it, you must not really want it.

Our inaction equals acceptance, and so what we get is what we deserve to get.

[ladjf]

13. The conditions that allowed the French Revolution to succeed

don't exist in America today. I can't imagine how any amount of street demonstrations could actually overthrow the U.S.Government and elections seem to have very little use.

[JustAnotherGen]

15. Not to mention

The Bourbons ended up back in power when all was said in done. Took a little while - but the Emperor got his clothes back.

Anyhoo - Hannahbell - many thanks for posting this.

[kctim]

7. What if

we just quit buying the things that make those people rich and pay it in taxes? Instead of paying for internet, cell phones, cable TV, another DVD, another TV or a newer car, We the People could distribute our money amongst ourselves and help each other.

[oldhippie]

10. If you want to pay extra taxes .....

.... it will only go thru the gov't and into the hands of the rich.

How about I just send you my address and you send your extra money here. Cut out the middleman!

[kctim]

11. That isn't 'progressive'

[DemoTex]

8. Prichard is in Alabama's 1st Congressional District - just about as right-wing as districts come.

"The careful and decades-long obliteration of a fair tax system has brought these pension plans to the brink .."

Prichard and the Alabama 1st Congressional District are true to the GOP model: screw the little people.

[ladjf]

12. Good post. nt

[Sheri]

14. and water is wet.

but what can we do about it? :shrug:

[Nye Bevan]

18. I wasn't aware that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation did not cover public sector workers

If these unfortunate people had worked for *any* private company which went under, they would have been fine, as the PBGC would have taken over the pension obligations. As it is, these folks would have been much better off with 401k's.

[mdmc]

21. ..