Taibbi Rips Banksters: Looting the Pension Funds

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http://assets-s3.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/looting-the-pension-funds-20130926/1000x600/20130924-nattaff-x600-1380050191.jpg

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/looting-the-pension-funds-20130926

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Dan Loeb Simultaneously Solicits, Betrays Pension Funds
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/dan-loeb-simultaneously-solicits-betrays-pension-funds-20130411

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Looting Public Pensions: A New Think-Tank Study

Former Providence Journal reporter Mike Stanton also extensively covered the issue – you can see an example of his work here (http://www.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/content/20130810-r.i.-pension-talks-continue-behind-closed-doors.ece).

There are really three main themes to follow in this pension scandal:

1) Many states and cities have been under-paying or non-paying their required contributions into public pension funds for years, causing massive shortfalls that are seldom reported upon by local outlets.

2) As a solution to the fiscal crises, unions and voters are being told that a key solution is seeking higher yields or more diversity through "alternative investments," whose high fees cost nearly as much as the cuts being demanded of workers, making this a pretty straightforward wealth transfer. A series of other middlemen are also in on this game, siphoning off millions in fees from states that are publicly claiming to be broke.

3) Many of the "alternative investments" these funds end up putting their money in are hedge funds or PE funds run by men and women who have lobbied politically against traditional union pension plans in the past, meaning union members have been giving away millions of their own retirement money essentially to fund political movements against them.

There are many other themes, but those are the three that I found most interesting in this complicated story. David and I both will likely be doing media appearances on the topic in the upcoming weeks.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/looting-public-pensions-a-new-think-tank-study-20130926#ixzz2g6uarzSx

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at first i thought that read: Top Rabbi Tips Banksters: How to loot the pension funds

[DMX7]

at first i thought that read: Top Rabbi Tips Banksters: How to loot the pension funds

Dats racist.

[TDMVPDPOY]

public sector could give 2 shits about them, working on taxpayers money with all these benefits and shit, enjoy it while you can, but when shit hits the fan they start begging...fck them come work in the private sector

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public sector could give 2 shits about them, working on taxpayers money with all these benefits and shit, enjoy it while you can, but when shit hits the fan they start begging...fck them come work in the private sector

you right-wing assholes always want to tear down better compensated union workers (duped mostly while shilling for VRWC that wants to kill unions as source of Dem funding), rather raise non-union workers to union level.

Right to Work States = Right To Work for Less :lol

[TDMVPDPOY]

you right-wing assholes always want to tear down better compensated union workers (duped mostly while shilling for VRWC that wants to kill unions as source of Dem funding), rather raise non-union workers to union level.

Right to Work States = Right To Work for Less :lol

if ur that good, u wouldnt be or wasting ur time and money each paycheck staying in a union which you dont even use....

there are certain professions out there that doesnt have a union

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if ur that good, u wouldnt be or wasting ur time and money each paycheck staying in a union which you dont even use....

there are certain professions out there that doesnt have a union

With few exceptions, ALL US jobs have had stagnating real incomes since the late 1970s when the VRWC War on Employees got going, and have even declined in the past 10 years, the main cause of the Wold Champion Financial Inequality in the USA. 1945 to 1975 had strong USA based on a strong middle class. That's gone now, and the bottom 2 quintiles are truly fucked and unfuckable.

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Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks A Labor Debate

After 25 years of teaching French at Duquesne, the university had not renewed her contract. As a part-time professor, she had been earning about $10,000 a year, and had no health insurance.

"She didn't want charity," Kovalik says. "She thought that after working 25 years for Duquesne that she was owed a living wage and some sort of retirement and benefits."

Vojtko died Sept. 1 after a heart attack at the age of 83, destitute and nearly homeless.

After her funeral, Kovalik submitted a biting to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, critical of how Duquesne had treated Vojtko. Almost immediately, a bigger debate unfolded on Facebook, and listervs.

In large part, the story struck a nerve because compensation and treatment of adjunct professors has been a simmering issue since the early 1970s, when campuses began to see a shift from full-time to part-time faculty.

Today, these itinerant teachers make up a whopping 75 percent of college instructors, with their average pay between $20,000 and $25,000 annually.

The shift toward adjunct teachers has helped institutions save lots of money. But Duquesne Provost Tim Austin says it's unfair to cast his school as "heartless and greedy."

"First of all, I don't accept that the arrangements that we make with part-timers are dictated by cost savings," Austin says.

Second, says Austin, Duquesne pays adjunct professors more than most institutions.

"The least that an adjunct professor could be paid is $3,500 for a course, $7,000 for a given semester," he says. "Whether those are appropriate in a yet larger context is ... a matter that the academic world has not yet found a decisive answer."

The answer is staring university leaders in the face, says Maria Maisto, head of New Faculty Majority, which advocates for adjunct professors: Pay college presidents and coaches less, and part-time professors more.

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/224946206/adjunct-professor-dies-destitute-then-sparks-debate?utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20130929&utm_source=mostemailed


So the Uni's pay shit (but $100K+ salaries to presidents, admin, coaching staff), but students pay up to $60K/year to attend? :lol

IIRC, the asst football coaches at UTx make $600K!

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THERE WAS A CROOKED COUNTRY


http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/B7/esq-wall-street-bull-0913-xlg.jpg


A study by noted economist Dean Baker at the Center for Economic Policy and Research bore this out. In February 2011, Baker reported that, had public pension funds not been invested in the stock market and exposed to mortgage-backed securities, there would be no shortfall at all. He said state pension managers were of course somewhat to blame, but only "insofar as they exercised poor judgment in buying the [finance] industry's services." \

In fact, Baker said,

had public funds during the crash years simply earned modest returns equal to 30-year Treasury bonds, then public-pension assets would be $850 billion richer than they were two years after the crash.

Baker reported that states were short an additional $80 billion over the same period thanks to the fact that post-crash, cash-strapped states had been paying out that much less of their mandatory ARC payments.

So even if Pew's numbers were right, the "unfunded liability" crisis had nothing to do with the systemic unsustainability of public pensions.

Thanks to a deadly combination of unscrupulous states illegally borrowing from their pensioners, and unscrupulous banks whose mass sales of fraudulent toxic subprime products crashed the market, these funds were out some $930 billion. Yet the public was being told that the problem was state workers' benefits were simply too expensive.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/looting-pension-funds-092613

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Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks A Labor Debate

After 25 years of teaching French at Duquesne, the university had not renewed her contract. As a part-time professor, she had been earning about $10,000 a year, and had no health insurance.

"She didn't want charity," Kovalik says. "She thought that after working 25 years for Duquesne that she was owed a living wage and some sort of retirement and benefits."

Vojtko died Sept. 1 after a heart attack at the age of 83, destitute and nearly homeless.

After her funeral, Kovalik submitted a biting to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, critical of how Duquesne had treated Vojtko. Almost immediately, a bigger debate unfolded on Facebook, and listervs.

In large part, the story struck a nerve because compensation and treatment of adjunct professors has been a simmering issue since the early 1970s, when campuses began to see a shift from full-time to part-time faculty.

Today, these itinerant teachers make up a whopping 75 percent of college instructors, with their average pay between $20,000 and $25,000 annually.

The shift toward adjunct teachers has helped institutions save lots of money. But Duquesne Provost Tim Austin says it's unfair to cast his school as "heartless and greedy."

"First of all, I don't accept that the arrangements that we make with part-timers are dictated by cost savings," Austin says.

Second, says Austin, Duquesne pays adjunct professors more than most institutions.

"The least that an adjunct professor could be paid is $3,500 for a course, $7,000 for a given semester," he says. "Whether those are appropriate in a yet larger context is ... a matter that the academic world has not yet found a decisive answer."

The answer is staring university leaders in the face, says Maria Maisto, head of New Faculty Majority, which advocates for adjunct professors: Pay college presidents and coaches less, and part-time professors more.

http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/224946206/adjunct-professor-dies-destitute-then-sparks-debate?utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20130929&utm_source=mostemailed


So the Uni's pay shit (but $100K+ salaries to presidents, admin, coaching staff), but students pay up to $60K/year to attend? :lol

IIRC, the asst football coaches at UTx make $600K!




I live in Pittsburgh and get the Post-Gazette and read the story on this lady not too long ago. Your quote didn't really go into detail of what she was going through. She was completely broke mainly because she was getting radiation treatments for cancer that had hit her for a second time. Of course this incurred huge medical costs from UPMC which she couldn't afford to pay. During the winter she couldn't even keep the electricity on in her home. She did her work at Eat 'N' Park every night and slept in her office before she was discovered by the Duquesne University staff and kicked out. Even with all that going on she never missed a class until they let her go last spring.