Rupert Murdoch definitely does not like David Sirota.
Sirota is the journalist who broke the story about the Arnold Foundation funding PBS’ pension series. Arnold thinks all those greedy pensioners are bankrupting the country. Can’t have that!
Murdoch rushed to denounce Sirota and defend his fellow billionaire.
What is it with these billionaires? It is ok for them to live in luxury, right? Why do they want to cut the pensions of people who just want a decent retirement?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Most people are probably aware of Murdoch’s ownership of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Almost laughably, Murdoch has called himself a “practicing Christian.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is all-in on supply-side economics, even though it’s been an abysmal disaster for the country (if not for billionaires.)
Study after study finds that “Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources.” That’s by design. The people at Fox, are, to be charitable, terribly confused (and nasty). See, for example:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-24-2013/weak-constitution
And the Arnold Foundation? It is a right-wing organization founded by a hedge-funder who resists accountability and transparency in derivatives markets but calls for them in education. Its executive director, Denis Cabrese was former chief of staff to DIck Armey, the Texas conservative who formerly headed up FreedomWorks, the group that helps to pull the Tea Party strings and is funded by the billionaire arch-conservative Koch brothers.
So, “Why do they want to cut the pensions of people who just want a decent retirement?”
Because they can make some big money off of them.
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They hate pensions, Social Security and Medicare.. Sounds like they hate seniors. How do they stand to profit from millions of old, sick people spending their golden years in destitution?
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Pensions are a HUGE POT of $$$ for the picking. Many, many pots of $$$!
As far as seniors go, it may be a little harder to manipulate, scheme and figure out how to make a ‘killing’ on them. Their, or our, time on this earth is rapidly coming to an end, our savings are spent down rapidly on medical care and nursing homes. Very Rapidly!
PreK kids and for them, their long exploited lives, have earning potential through college. After that, they will have figured out another scheme.
Right now, our kids are the lifeblood of their billions. Greed has no bounds, and therefore must be an obsession at someone else’s expense. Of course they are furious if we resist. Of course, it’s their millions. They are entitled to collect them. We don’t deserve them or would not know what to do with them. They know best! They know best for ‘other people’s’ children’. Just ask them!
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Yes, and once they get control of the education system they will conveniently end “accountability” and “transparency”.
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God bless David Sirota!
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Here’s what they want:
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Would it be that they are sociopaths who exhibit the symptoms of Antisocial personality disorder? Or are they just psychotically greedy? Pete Peterson is another billionaire who has spent decades and millions of dollars propagandizing against Social Security. He was the money behind some of the members on Obama’s late unlamented Cat Food Commission.
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For me it is APPALLING ALSO that people place such credence in Murdoch, the owner of Fox “news”. Do they not understand what has happened to him in England, how he twisted the government there, intimidated the Prime Ministers from Margaret Thatcher on, prostituted Scotland Yard, ad nauseum? Yet people implicitly believe that in Fox “news” they have the only version of truth when Canada, which has laws on the books disallowing a “news” organization to promote lies and as such will not license Fox “news”. When innuendo, distortion, half truths, etc are promoted as “facts” small wonder we have the humongous problems facing us, not only in “education” but in so many fronts.
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“Canada, which has laws on the books disallowing a “news” organization to promote lies and as such will not license Fox “news”.
Confirmed. I moved to Canada in 2012 where the news is much more objective. It helps a lot. Democracy works very well, when it is debating the facts. And that is what Fox News clouds.
Most Canadians know that Fox News is peddling propaganda and wonder why Americans watch it. They don’t realize the number of people who have bought into it like a religion and the power it has to shape “reality” that people perceive. Many of them are confused as to why such a great nation would want to destroy itself the way that it is doing.
Democracy is based upon reason, not greed. There is supposed to be a balance between the two, not a war. If American went back to being a reasoned based democracy, it would do just fine.
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I know facts don’t matter, but does Rupert Murdoch care that PBS admitted that the funding didn’t pass the smell test?
“PBS had a conflict of interest here and were correct in returning the money.”
I don’t know that it gets much clearer than that. The reporter brought it to light and PBS admitted there was a conflict.
Sirota was right.
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Murdoch, wow an upstanding journalist who has been offended by articles he deems to be distorted and untrue. What a joke. He should be sitting in a jail cell for what he has done.
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Why doesn’t this surprise me?
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Teaching children of the wealthy for years, I learned one very important point. They always expect to get their way. No matter what it is! These are wealthy people who also want to get their way and they will do ANYTHING to make that happen. I learned the hard way, so I am warning you to be careful and have your lawyers ready. I would recommend David Boies because he at least went to a Public High School in Fullerton, California and hopefully has some understanding of what Public Schools are like, both positive and negative attributes.
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If it weren’t for large institutional investors like pension systems, there would be nobody to hold publicly held corporations accountable. If you have millions of small-time shareholders, you can get away with anything. To top it off, the beneficiaries of these pension systems are union members and that is even more galling. Being answerable to shareholders and workers is not acceptable to the billionaires.
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“Why do they want to cut the pensions of people who just want a decent retirement?”
I wonder how much of the attack on pensions has to do with changing demographics. Like the Social Security system, the pension system was designed to have the workers support the retirees. It works as long as the system is growing with more teachers adding to the pension system than retirees taking from it.
But the population rate, economy, and the number of teachers are all slowing down and changing the retirement dependency ratio of the pension funds with more retirees taking out than teachers putting in. Unfortunately, the way pension systems are set up, they are doomed to fail if the population stops growing. And apparently, that’s what’s happening. http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/conf/conf16/conf16b.pdf
When is comes to attacks upon the pension plans, how much of it has to do with changing demographics beyond our control? And if so, what is the best way of addressing the larger picture. Like Dwight D Eisenhower said, “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.”
The generation before ours came up with a way to take care of the elderly with a growing population. It seems like our generation could figure out a way to take care of the elderly with a shrinking population. Wouldn’t a whole bunch of elderly people need a a bunch of young people for health care, yard care, or whatever? We should be able to put those two pieces together. Do the Boomers want to be known as the generation that benefited the most from government programs such as social security, but dismantled them for the next generation leaving them essentially nothing, not even a planet worth living on? Is it really that much about the “me generation” thing that we started?
Us American Boomers will be able to proclaim that we lived the grandest lifestyle of any generation in human existence. But is that a blessing, or a curse?
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David Phillips, as more states reduce the number of public sector workers, as they encourage the creation of charters with high teacher turnover, there will be fewer people to pay into the pension system. That is a way to collapse it in time.
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If a pension system is properly funded, it should not matter if there are no new entrants at all. Unless it is being run as an unsustainable ponzi scheme. Why would that be morally acceptable or legal for that matter?
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I believe it is possible to make adjustments to the pension system to make it workable, but there are also ways to destroy it. Pensions are beneficial to the many who want stability, but expensive to those who prefer more wealth for themselves.
Apparently, the people in power would rather enrich themselves and are trying to destroy it, despite what it would do to the masses.
Fortunately, the legislation protecting state pension funds is strong. In a crunch, the state has to pay its retired teachers before it pays its current ones.
Bankruptcy would allow the pension rules to be rewritten. That is why Detroit’s bankruptcy is so important. It will serve as the model for things to come.
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Yes, obviously as Robert Service said, “A promise made is a debt unpaid”, so whatever was promised is what is owed. What I hear about Detroit or Chicago is that the pension money not isolated but was raided for other expenses, or conveniently borrowed but not returned, whatever the word for that is.
But, my point is that in theory and practice, the pension funds paid out must be based on the amount funded during working years. Otherwise it is simply robbing future generations.
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