Related:
"Public employee unions on the defensive
June 13, 2010|By Peter Scheer
For public employee unions - those representing police, firefighters, teachers, prison guards and agency workers of all kinds at the state and local levels - these are the worst of times.
Despite record high membership and dues, and years of unparalleled clout in state capitols, public-sector unions find themselves on the defensive, desperately trying to hold onto past gains in the face of a skeptical press and angry voters....Public unions' traditional strength - the ability to finance their members' rising pay and benefits through tax increases - has become a liability. Although private-sector unions always have had to worry that consumers will resist rising prices for their goods, public sector unions have benefited from the fact that taxpayers can't choose - they are, in effect, "captive consumers."
At some point, however, voters turn resentful as they sense that:
-- They are underwriting, through their taxes, a level of salary and benefits for government employment that is better than what they and their families have.
-- Government services, from schools to the Department of Motor Vehicles, are not good enough - not for the citizen individually nor the public generally - to justify the high and escalating cost.
We are at that point....
The biggest blow to unions' public support has come from revelations about jaw-dropping compensation and pension benefits. Police have received unwelcome attention for budget-busting overtime and the manipulation of eligibility rules for "disability pensions," which provide higher benefits and tax advantages. Other government employees, particularly managers, have been called out for "pension spiking": using vacation time, sick pay and the like to boost income in the last years of employment, which are the basis for calculating retirement benefits.
--more--"Also see: The Massachusetts Model: Municipal Health Mess
Towns to Pay Health Tax For Public Servants
Locking Up a Pension in Bristol
Legislating Your Own Looting
Yeah, Massachusetts is rife with the s***.
"States face crushing pension costs, study says; Underfunding is now pegged at about $1 trillion" by Mark Scolforo, Associated Press | February 18, 2010
HARRISBURG, Pa. - States may be forced to reduce benefits, raise taxes, or slash government services to address a $1 trillion funding shortfall in public sector retirement benefits, according to a study that warns of even more debilitating costs if immediate action is not taken.
No wonder your country is falling apart, America.
The Pew Center on the States released a survey today of state-administered pension plans, retiree health care, and other post-employment benefits in all 50 states that blamed a decade’s worth of policy decisions for leaving them shortchanged.
The result for some states will be “high annual costs that come with significant unfunded liabilities, lower bond ratings, less money available for services, higher taxes, and the specter of worsening problems in the future,’’ the study said.
The cost of the trillion-dollar shortfall, which will be paid over the coming decades, is about $8,800 for each US household. The study did not include many city, county, and municipal pension plans, which are thought to have similar underfunding....
Are the TAXES WORTH IT, America?
Are you BEING WELL-SERVED by this LYING, LOOTING GOVERNMENT?
As of 2008, states had $2.4 trillion to meet $3.4 trillion in promised pension, health care, and other post-retirement benefits, according to the report.
The true gap may even be wider, because the study did not account for the full impact of investment losses in late 2008, during the stock market downturn, and because many plans employ multiyear smoothing techniques to lessen the effect of a single year’s losses. But more recent stock market returns could help - yesterday, for example, Pennsylvania’s $47 billion public school pension plan reported it had earned about 12 percent on investments in the 2009 calendar year....
I noticed stocks are the only area the econo0my has improved.
The exploding financial burden could be a bitter pill for taxpayers, many of whom will not be collecting similar pensions or other benefits when they retire, said David Kline with the California Taxpayers’ Association. About one in five private-sector workers have traditional defined-benefit pensions, compared with about 90 percent of public-sector employees - including some who do not get Social Security.
Right. The defined-benefits not subject to market sways is NOT FOR YOU, dear Americans. That is NOT a GOOD SYSTEM for YOU, but it IS for the POLITICIANS!!
“Taxpayers in the future will be paying for people who worked decades before they may have even lived in the area or begun paying taxes, because the obligation for these benefits is just snowballing,’’ Kline said.
You now, the SAME as your SERVICE CUTS, America!!!
The study graded states on how well they have managed employees’ retirement benefits. Florida, Idaho, New York, North Carolina, and Wisconsin began the current recession with fully funded pension systems, while eight states have left more than one-third of their pension liability unfunded.
Illinois was rated the most troubled pension system during the study period....
The report said policy makers have exacerbated the problem by expanding benefits, relying on overly optimistic assumptions about investment returns, and failing to sufficient fund the programs.
Pew calculated a $587 billion national cost for current and future retiree health care and other nonpension retirement benefits, with only about 5 percent of that amount funded as of 2008. The cost of health care and the number of retirees are both on the rise, adding to the pressure on states....
Smells like ANOTHER BAILOUT NEEDED, taxpayers!!
And NOTHING can be DONE ABOUT IT!
"With severe budget troubles, states are taking aim at pensions" by Mary Williams Walsh, New York Times | June 20, 2010
NEW YORK — Many states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions they cannot afford and are cutting once-sacrosanct benefits, to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits.
Oh, you are being appeased, taxpayers. The NYT must have a clause that says an insult must be present in the first paragraph of any story.
Illinois raised its retirement age to 67, the highest of any state, and capped public pensions at $106,800 a year.
That is still too much!
Let them gamble with a 401k and make their own contributions like the rest of us.
Arizona, New York, Missouri, and Mississippi will make people work more years to earn pensions.
As if state employees actually worked.
Related: Gulf Oil Overseer Sees Smoke From Pipe
Some Vt. workers misused computers
Tough work, huh?
Virginia is requiring employees to pay into the state pension fund for the first time. New Jersey will not give anyone pension credit unless they work at least 32 hours a week....
But there is a catch: Nearly all of the cuts so far apply only to workers not yet hired. Though heralded as breakthrough reforms by state officials, the cuts phase in so slowly that they are unlikely to save the weakest funds. Some new rules may even hasten the demise of the funds they were meant to protect.
Lawmakers wanted to avoid legal battles or fights with unions. So they are allowing most public workers across the country to keep building up their pensions at the same rate as ever.
One exception is Colorado, which has imposed cuts on its current workers and even on retirees. The retirees have sued.
Those are YOUR "PUBLIC SERVANTS," America.
Other states may be pushed in this direction. Though most state officials believe they are legally bound to shield current workers from pension cuts, a Colorado victory could embolden them to be more aggressive....
“We’re within a few years of having some of the pension funds run out of money,’’ said R. Eden Martin, president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a business group that has been warning of a “financial implosion.’’
Joshua D. Rauh, an associate professor of finance at Northwestern University who studies public pension funds, predicts that at the current rate, Illinois’s system could run out of money by 2018. He believes the funds of other states — including New Jersey, Indiana, and Connecticut — are also on track to run out of money in less than a decade.
If a state pension fund ran out of money, the state would be legally bound to make good on retirees’ benefits.
Yup, BANKS and "PUBLIC SERVANTS" are always FIRST in the TAX TAKE LINE, notice that?
But paying public pensions straight out of general revenue would be ruinous. In Illinois’s case, it would consume about half the state’s cash every year. Rauh said he thinks any state caught in that trap would have to seek a federal bailout.
So TAXPAYERS will have to ANTE UP so LAVISH POLITICAL PENSIONS may be FULLY FUNDED!
Also see: Corporate Pension Funds Next in Line for Bailout Loot
Bush Bankrupted Pension Insurance Fund
Taxpayers!?!
Many state officials, hoping for a huge recovery in the markets, say that such projections are too pessimistic....
Yes, it is OKAY for SOME PEOPLE to be SELF-DELUSIONAL in our society.
Related: Tax Take Turd
Take those glasses off, will you?
--more--"
You will have to if you are sent here:
Related: Party is Over in Concord
Looks like ALL SERVICES are to be PRIVATIZED other than INTEREST PAYMENTS to BANKS, TAX LOOT TOSSED at CORPORATIONS, and the POLITICAL PENSIONS and PERKS!
LOS ANGELES — Erik Townsend says he prefers the Arizona prison where he’s serving 15 years for robbery to the California facility where he was until August. For one thing, he was getting just two hot meals a day at the other prison.
“We get three hots here,’’ Townsend, 40, said while taking a short break from sweeping the yard at La Palma Correctional Center in Eloy, Ariz., a desert town halfway between Phoenix and Tucson....
And yet 1 in 8 Americans is starving.
La Palma, which houses about 2,900 convicts from California, is one of 65 facilities operated by
As is the case at the company’s other facilities, all the workers at La Palma, from the guards and office staff to the warden, are employed not by a government agency but by Nashville-based Corrections Corp.
The company has grown to become the largest private-prison operator in the nation as states from California to Florida, along with the federal government, turn to corporate America to punish felons and hold detainees.
Related: The Illegal Immigrant Imprisonment Industry
Tired of the hypocrisy yet?
Tightened budgets will probably lead to more contracts, company executives said.
“The fiscal situation on the state side is very dire,’’ said Damon Hininger, who began his career as a prison guard and has been chief executive of Corrections Corp. since October. States have less money for prison construction, meaning more incarceration has to be outsourced, he said.
Yup, the PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX of AmeriKa!!
And WHO BENEFITS?
“We think that is very favorable for the company and for the industry,’’ Hininger said.
This is from the state that is SUPPOSED to be PROTECTING your FREEDOMS?
Conflicts are inherent in shifting one of the government’s gravest responsibilities — punishing and rehabilitating criminals — to private companies, which seek to both expand their business and reduce costs, said Mark A.R. Kleiman, a University of California-Los Angeles, professor and author of “When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment.’’
Anyone have a problem seeing PRISONS as a BUSINESS?!?!
Related: Under House Arrest in Massachusetts
Corrections Corp. has been accused in lawsuits of allowing violence at its facilities and providing inadequate health care to prisoners, resulting at times in preventable deaths.
“It’s a question of how you delegate the really ferocious powers of the state to a private enterprise,’’ Kleiman said.
US states are forecasting budget deficits of $136.1 billion through 2012, according to figures released in February by the National Association of State Budget Officers and the National Governors Association.
Jane Cotroneo, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service who follows prison operators and real estate investment trusts, said decisions by some states to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing and release some prisoners early may hurt Corrections Corp.....
Yeah, WE NEED LESS LAWS!
While private prisons have gained acceptance by states across the nation, opposition remains.
America Civil Liberties Union attorneys in 2007 filed a complaint that says immigrant detainees at the company’s San Diego Correctional Facility, managed for the federal government, were provided inadequate medical and mental health care resulting at times in avoidable death....
Related: Clear the Court: Boning Immigrants
In March, ACLU attorneys, working on behalf of six prisoners at the Idaho Correctional Center, said in an amended complaint that the San Diego prison has become so violent that it’s known as “Gladiator School.’’
I thought they were supposed to be rehabilitating people, not making them worse.
--more--"
AmeriKa: Land of the Free?
Slave Labor Saving AmeriKa
Californian Chain Gang
Americans Paying To Imprison Themselves
Massachusetts Points the Way on Prisons
Massachusetts Justice: Plenty of Money For Prisons
The State of Massachusetts is Mentally Ill
