I read two items within the same hour that presented a stark contrast.
First was this blog post about the Michigan Legislature’s change in teachers’ pensions. Apparently there are many people who think that teachers’ benefits are way too generous and must be scaled back. Can’t afford them anymore. Tough times.
Then I read in the New York Times that investigators checking into the collapse of the MF Global fund decided there was no criminal liability. The fund somehow misplaced $1 billion of customer money. Just “sloppiness.” No one knows how. It just disappeared. Like that. nobody’s fault. Stuff happens.
The story says: “Just a few individuals–none of them top Wall Street players–have been prosecuted for the risky acts that led to recent failures and billions of dollars in losses.”
Teachers did not engage in risky acts. They didn’t cause millions of people to lose their homes and savings. But they will pay to right the economy.
Guess who won’t pay and won’t be held accountable?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Politicians and their cronies. In this case, Jon Corzine. This is not partisan though. Republicans cover up for their pals also.
The private sector has broken its covenants with employees for decades and those employees are now distraught over the fact that the government is KEEPING its covenants with public employees. See this essay, “Broken Covenants”: http://waynegersen.com/category/essays/page/6/
Amen. And it is truly non-partisan…..which does not bode well for the republic.
Unlike the private sector, public employees pay for their pensions, and their wages are lower. Pensions are deferred compensation. In my state we pay in 9.5% of our salaries every year, it’s the state that hasn’t paid in theirs. They have used our money to fund the public, now they want us to forget this and take less. Here in Rhode Island, we have had our pensions slashed, all because Wall Street gambled with our money and the state underfunded our pensions.
Instead of the private sector taking our pensions away because we seem the visible enemy in a bad economy, the private sector should join unions and fight for what is theirs. BTW, during the Reagan years, and the flush years that followed, suits in the private sector were happy to jump jobs, time and time again, to get the most cash they could, devil may care about saving for tomorrow. People would say to me that teaching in urban schools was “combat pay” and public service was for the unambitious. Now that the economy has tanked, these same people want to know why I have a pension and they don’t. They want to know why I have a “cushy” public job, when they are underemployed.
Yes, YES, and YYEEEESSSSS!
That’s a polite way of saying, you are correct.
There is a lot to be outraged about from the Obama administration these days – from the drone bomb campaign that the president seems to glory in (they killed 13 just this weekend) to his “kill list” (as reported by the NY Times) to his war on whistleblowers (Bradley Manning in captivity for 820 days without charges being brought) to his nightmarish HAMP mortgage program that seems to have been designed to give the banks an opportunity to squeeze more money out of underwater homeowners before foreclosing on them to his support of architects of the ’08 crisis like Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke to his handing of the FDA and the USDA over to Monsanto to his administration’s coordination of the Occupy clampdowns to his DOJ’s giving LIBOR fixers Barclays a non-prosecution agreement to his insistence that teachers not teach to standardized tests even as his USDOE promotes teacher evaluations based upon standardized tests that forces teachers to “teach to the test.”
But the thing that outrages me the most is that they decided early on that not one banker, Wall Street CEO or hedge fund manager who brought about the ’08 crisis was going to go to jail. Not one. Yes, they’ll go after “easy hanging fruit” like Madoff or inside traders, but they refuse to go to the heart of the corruption that literally has rigged the entire system in the favor of the big banks.
Matt Taibbi covers this quite well in this week’s Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/ag-eric-holder-has-no-balls-20120815
It’s all rigged – accountability is for little people, like public school teachers. The bankers and hedge fund managers and former Countrywide CEO’s and the like have a license to steal and rig and fix and then take all their ill-gotten gains and hide them in the Cayman Islands. They have a license to buy elections and politicians and policies and media propaganda campaigns. And they have a license to turn this nation into what Michael Fiorillo calls a “banana republic.”
I once believed the “mythology” they sell you in this country from grade school on about democracy, and freedom and justice and all that.
But not anymore. Not after ’08. Not after Barack Obama. Not after “Change We Can Believe In” became “Accountability For Teachers, Non-Accountability For Goldman Execs.”
Now I see that we live in a plutocracy ruled by an unaccountable financial elite.
Yep, they (the banksters) have been working it since 1913. It’s just they had to get compliant Dims to do the real dirty work, gutting Glass Steagal, etc. . . .
You are dead on with Glass Steagal. We need to make them gamble with their own money, not ours. Here in Nevada they are now saying pensions may be too generous…The Banksters, including Turbo Tax Timmy (Geitner) belong in jail. You or I surely would be for such fraud.
You make me think of another issue that has been troubling me a great deal in the world of privatizing public education – what happens when the sector is no longer appealing or profitable, or another new venture distracts investors. In Camden NJ we have a charter school (Freedom Academy) that used to be a KIPP school. KIPP was responsible for running that school but was unhappy with the leadership and academic results apparently, so they pulled out, leaving the school to struggle (it is now in the midst of a takeover we believe by Democracy Prep). When the education sector is no longer a growth market, or when the next new thing comes along to invest in, or the regulations become too burdensome for these corporations, they will just move on – leaving the students, the teachers, the communities, the buildings, the tax payers – well, where? And while we decimate the public schools in the proces of this new corner of the market, what will be left of the public schools for our children to return to? If we are to see education in the market economy we ought to at least admit that in the market economy what is a hot investment today is not tomorrow and consider the impact.
So, now what?
This is the trend. Even elected officials who bankrupted cities, states and are country are not asked to provide relief, but all public employees who were doing their jobs are suppose to pick up the tab. On a street there mat be one public employee living between two private employees, and the public employee is the only one who has to make concessions?
In NJ, Christie and his buddies in the media (Fox News, NJ 101.5 FM, hate wing radio, CNBC) have done an excellent job stirring up class warfare between public (especially those “greedy” teachers) and private sector workers. Teachers are being portrayed as selfish greedy public workers at the public trough with over-rich health benefits and over-generous Cadillac defined benefit pensions!!! I kid you not. You would think that the teachers and other public employees caused the economic meltdwon of 2008. All those rich teachers with their yachts, condos in Monte Carlo, private jets and fleet of luxury cars. The sad part is that many ordinary working people in the private sector who no longer have pensions or health benefits are taking out all their frustration and anger against teachers and not the actual architects of their financial plight, the economic royalists ( an FDR term) or the oligarchs. Sometimes I get so fed up with all the whining and complaining about teacher pensions and health benefits that I tell these people to stop kvetching and look for a job that offers a pension and health benefits and lay off the teachers. The financial journalist David Cay Johnston makes the argument that teachers and other public employees pay 100% for their pensions and health benefits through something called delayed compensation; he contends and I agree that these benefits are not gifts but are fully paid for by the public employees.
But to play devil’s advocate – teachers do receive more in pension funds than they put in. Although I always make the argument that one of the reasons why I signed on to be a teacher (at nearly poverty levels in SC at the time) was that I knew if I worked hard in my career as a teacher, that earning the very little I did during my working years, I would be able to live comfortably when I retired. This was a respectable ‘carrot’ to me that I am wondering will be around when I actually go to retire. In fact, if states did pull pensions, as Gates and Broad want, how would they deal with all the money we put in over the course of our careers? I would guess they would phase it out? Have any states actually done this?
Here’s the link to the David Cay Johnston article on deferred compensation: http://tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/Permalink/UBEN-8EDJYS?OpenDocument
This has been happening in Illinois, as well. First, the General Assembly has been introducing bills to restructure (and dismantle) the Teachers’ Retirement System pension structure, having actives purchase 401Ks (and–just WHO would this wind up enriching?!).
Current retirees were told that their pensions wouldn’t be touched–BUT WAIT!–NOW the proposal is that they will have to give up either their Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) OR their health insurance (which is NOT “free for life”–it costs around $600/month).
This is because “Illinois is Broke.” BUT–Illinois is NOT TOO broke to
not tax/under tax large corporations. Illinois is one of only six (I believe that’s the number) states that still has a flat tax. AND–the Billionaire Boys’ Club here had come up with all kinds of TV ads on
EVERY channel (yes, on CNN–both before & after Anderson Cooper 360!) Just last week, our governor was booed off the stage at the IL
State Fair by members of WeAreOne (a coalition of public employee unions)–3,000 were reported to have been there. The governor had called the General Assembly to come down last week to vote on a pension reform bill (lucky for us, there was a stalemate), And, unfortunately, the IL Education Assn. hasn’t been of much help to us: they had cancelled our Lobby Day this year. Then, at the last minute this past week, they sent out notice for everyone to come on down, but that they would NOT be providing buses, lunch or mileage reimbursement. WHAT are people getting for their dues?
Anyway– “Pension Reform…Coming to YOUR State Soon!”
When It Reigns It Poors
Corporate-owned financial institutions pull off the most massive theft of the Common Wealth in American history and the corporate-owned media wring their hands about the “economic downturn”. We are told it’s time for “austerity measures” and “shared sacrifice” — all the while we stare a tidal wave of slush funds in the face that corporate lords have been stashing away for a reigny day, the day they finally bust us down to the estate of serfs and guildless peons once again.
Neo-cons, Neo-libs, and their Newspeak economists — their snoots so full of theory they long ago lost the sense it take to “follow the money” no matter how bad it stinks up their audit trails — divert the People with tales of the Invisible Hand while light fingers lift the loot in broad daylight from under their noses. “It’s an Act of God, a natural disaster. No one mugged thee, Nemo did it.”
But the game is up. We see it now. Irresponsibility is its name, it’s out of control, it’s past the tipping point, and it just keeps howling for more, more, more.
One can find quite incriminating evidence of the top .001% having even more wealth than the openly admit. See http://www.bankrate.com/financing/taxes/21-trillion-hidden-offshore/
Yep, the free market has done a great job, for the few! Everyone else be damned.