While we are waiting for the republicans to cut social security
Colorado is getting ahead of the game by cutting the government worker's pension benefits. Wait it gets worse. They are also going to continue hiding the fees that they pay banks to manage the funds. These funds could be as much as $1 Billion Dollars!
Legislature Slashes Pension Benefits for Government Workers
Colorado lawmakers passed landmark legislation late Wednesday, May 9, reducing pension benefits for thousands of teachers and other government workers. But the measure also included language designed to give lawmakers more information about controversial investments that have delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in fees to Wall Street firms.
The narrow disclosure language in the pension bill — which still keeps fee details hidden from the general public — was added following our investigation showing that in recent years, Colorado's Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA) has paid more than $1 billion in such fees even as the pension fund has delivered returns that have significantly trailed a low-fee stock index fund.
The bill slashes cost-of-living increases and requires higher pension contributions from educators, firefighters, cops (we have been telling the cops that one day they will come for them too) and other public-sector workers covered by PERA. The changes — opposed by the state’s largest teachers' union and approved after recent teacher protests at the Colorado State Capitol — were designed to shore up the finances of PERA, which faces a $32 billion gap between what it has promised retirees and what it has in the bank.
Add this legislation on to the republicans tax bill and we can see how we have arrived at inverted totalitarianism where money is transferred from the working class to the elite bastards class.
Gawd Bless America!
Comments
From the investigation link
At PERA, Retirees Face Cuts While Wall Street Gets Millions
Both articles are worth a full read
The eulogy for we the little people is close to being written.
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
- Kevin Alfred Strom
Public employees
and their pensions are the last big pot of money, outside Social Security, left for the banksters to rob. Our society is being systematically dismantled before our very eyes.
Once charter schools were pushed upon us, using public funds to pay a private entity to educate our children spelled the end to quality public education. This allowed the system to pay lower salaries and to bypass public retirement plans while enriching the operators of these charter schools.
What we are seeing is the complete sucking dry of society's last vestiges of safety net programs. Neoliberalism is working exactly as it was designed to do...the rich get richer and all the rest of us are being systematically impoverished. We are disposable to them.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
A better name for it would be end-stage capitalism.
Of course, since we aren't allowed to question, or , elements forbid, look for alternatives to capitalism, we just keep going around in circles. Even if we were to revive or modernize New Deal regulations, we'd be right back here in another 20 to thirty years.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Criminality, CalPERS Style. Big Club robs CA pensions too
Naked Capitalism keeps writing about CalPERS thanks goodness, and nothing keeps happening as expected. "That's the system."
Board Members Misappropriate Public Funds by Signing Blank, Undated Expense Forms
D-Values? lol
It makes sense... in a Heist movie kind of way.
See, I get it. It's an ingenious plan for an evil psycho. Hire a bunch of guys, rile up the public, and then, right before the people revolt, you steal your thugs pensions and hightail it to Singapore or Beijing.
The thugs will take the heat, and you'll take the money!
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAYhNHhxN0A]
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
The kochs went after our (my) teachers pension
http://realkochfacts.com/koch-funded-johnson-centers-mission-to-destroy-...
First they funded a division at Troy University and hired their faux researcher hit men
https://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/08/the_truth_behind_the_big_mo...
Then they lied and misled the purchased and owned legislators.
https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/08/...
...but fortunately, for the present, we fought off their lies with facts. Our system is not only solvent but conducts great social and economic good for our state.
Why is it the elites hate that?
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Because all money is their money.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Ding, ding, ding!!!
We have a winner!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
This is terrifying to many of us on fixed incomes tied to state
Pensions.
This should be viewed as a breech of contract and I'm at a loss as to why it's not being treated as such.
We agreed to give the majority of our productive years to state service, frequently at salaries lower than those in the private sector with the understanding that in exchange for the lower wages now we will recoup it in the back end via our pensions (Which by and large are not great).
Basically we did what we were told was the best way to proceed, make less now but be prepared for the future by doing so.
Now they want to strip away the very incentive that got so many of us to take those positions in the first place.
"Paging Dr. Guillotine, will Dr. Guillotine please report to congressional aisle one for a clean up ?"
"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me
It is absolutely terrifying
and they should not be allowed to do it! As you and others have stated, you made a contract with the government on your pensions and they shouldn't be able to claw it back. Especially when they are hiding the fees to how much you are being charged for the banks and hedge funds to manage it. I think it's in the second article that shows that the legislature made this law in 2004 that allows them to do it. This means that no one could see if the banks are doing fraudulent activities. There should always be transparency on financial matters!
This is exactly what would happen if congress lets the banks take control of social security. They certainly don't have a good track record.
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
- Kevin Alfred Strom
Yep!
I am on a local govt. pension and this whole thing scares the heck out of me. My husband has paid into Social Security his entire working career, the majority of which was when he was paying both as an employer and employee.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy