NYT: Schwarzenegger Aims at State Pension System (Arnold privatizing)

[DeepModem Mom]

Schwarzenegger Aims at State Pension System
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: January 23, 2005


LOS ANGELES, Jan. 22 - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, echoing language used by those who claim Social Security is headed for a crisis, contends that California can no longer afford a generous traditional pension plan for state employees and teachers and should force all new workers into a 401(k)-style plan of private accounts.

California's $300 billion pension system for its public employees is the largest state system in the nation and as early as this summer, Californians will be asked to vote on the proposed changes. The change that Mr. Schwarzenegger has endorsed is supported by a number of Republican state lawmakers and is driven by the same ideology behind the effort to transform Social Security....

***

The impetus for Mr. Schwarzenegger's plan comes from some of the same antitax advocates, free-market enthusiasts and Wall Street interests pushing President Bush's Social Security initiative. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, a Washington lobbying and research group, has endorsed the plan. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, in California, is sponsoring a similar measure. The Jarvis group plans to put its proposal on a statewide ballot if the State Legislature does not act on the governor's plan....

***

Some opponents of privatization also detect a subtler agenda among those pushing private accounts - to silence the voice of workers and their pension fund managers, who oversee some of the largest institutional investment accounts in the nation....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/national/23calif.html

[roguevalley]

1. California, recall him. You've done it once. Do it again. Now.

[shanti]

4. don't worry

when the state workers get pissed, you'd better watch out!

[NuttyFluffers]

8. they have no political clout... but they do run the state :D

poor state workers in california are seriously pissed on. it's been that way from all the republican governors we kept putting in. and the state workers take it because no one has their back.

y'know, let the state workers just sit back and let california decay in the space of a month. just let all the roads collapse, let all the water be contaminated, let all the rates rise through the roof, let the utilities just die. just let it all die. just gut this state for their betrayal. go ahead, let some scabbie noob try to replace them. but that's only if they finally get sick up to their eyebrows and decide to revolt. i'd support them by applauding the whole time.

ahhnold is gonna get this through, too many stupid people here blinded by celebrity. these people are essentially supporters of domestic terrorists. terrorists couldn't have done a better job in destroying america...

[Erika]

2. Does Arnie own stock in the private prison

If private business can profit for handling prisoners, and the lawmakers own a piece of the pie, you can expect hefty prison sentences. Integriity only goes so far.

[The Zanti Regent]

18. Now you know why Wall Street paid $500,000 a table to hear Ahnold

They can't wait. They want a rturn on their steroid snortin investment NOW!

[shanti]

3. gropenator

shove it up your freaking ASS.

[Dirk39]

5. I'm so proud of Arnie to emigrate to the U.S.A.

Another Austrian with political ambition did emigrate to Germany not too long ago.

It's so funny to sit here in Germany and watch others, who have to cope with Arnie.

I still cannot believe that one more time the american dream shows that it really works.

Schadenfreude,
Dirk

[The Zanti Regent]

19. Yes, and this Jew remembers the last time an Austrian ran a great power

and he remembers his grandmother telling him that she pleaded with 36 relatives who would not leave because they did not believe the Nazis would kill them.

The only one who listened was her father. All the others perished.

[PROUDNWLIBERAL]

6. Arnie a Duel Citizen of USA and Austria

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/0,2106,3164508a6428,00.html
Just got this information from the Christchurch Press in New Zealand. Were are his loyalties?

[TahitiNut]

17. Swords or pistols?

:eyes:

[TahitiNut]

25. (shucks)

... and I sorta though this was really funny. Hmmm... legend in my own mind, I guess.

[xchrom]

7. he may get his way

if there is not an aggresive, positive plan coming from whatever constitutes the opposition.
arnie has played the game very well.
his voice is the one out in front, the offensive.
hard to play defense in the political arena.

[Maria Celeste]

10. I tend to think he will win this one.

1) What he his discussing is a defined contribution plan, 401 like (defined contribution vice defined benefit). Its what most retirement plans are today, including the Federal Gov.
2) He is proposing it just for new employees, not current ones. Exactly how the Feds set up FERS almost 20 years ago. However you can bet there will be incentives to change from CALPERS.
3) Most people are under defined contribution these days so the voters will support it. State government workers are not held in high regard in CA. Rightly or wrongly, most people think every office is like the DMV. CALTRANS is not helping here either.
4) Existing workers will go for it if they believe their retirements will not be touched. 2 tier compensation plans are quite common. Its easy to sell out the people you don't know or aren't hired yet.
5) Defined contribution makes budgeting much easier and takes the liability issue off the table. In private industry that appears to have been a good thing.
6) Makes direct corporate raids on "over funded pension plans" much harder since its not really company money anymore. IIRC, CA raided CALPERS a while back and there was an initiative to stop it. I have family who are retired on CALPERS, but did not follow the details closely. If someone does have the details, it may be helpful.
6) This does NOTHING to eliminate the power of the CALPERS board, since CALPERS should remain intact with for another 50 years. However, close attention must be paid to how the investment mechanism is set up for the new plan. Politicians lost control of CALPERS and they are not going to make that mistake again. FERS is much larger than CALPERS in terms of participants, and maybe capital. You never hear about them pushing changes in companies. Wonder why?

Not saying I like it or agree, but I think its going to sail through.

[leesa]

13. He has not played the game well, he simply has the RW media idolizing

and praising his every word and move. The man's as dumb as a doorknob.

[xchrom]

22. dumb or not -- lots of democrats voted for him

and will again.
you can take credit away from him -- i'd rather not.
i'd rather get smart about how to beat these characters with good left wing politics and ideas -- go on the offence and win.
underestimating him virtually guarantees his success.

[shanti]

23. yes

i know dem STATE WORKERS (stupid ones, yes) who voted for this asshat, but guess what? they won't get fooled again! take their pensions away and there will be a revolt. state workers could be making much more on the open market, but they chose future gratification over immediate. why should they be punished for it??

[lovuian]

9. Welcome to Republican ownership California

aren't ya glad you voted for him!!!

[Pachamama]

20. Wonder how long it will take those folks on Min Wage who voted for him to

figure out that their "car tax refund" of $100, would have been paid for in less than a month of them having a $1.00 increase in the Min wage that Arnie the Governator rejected several months back...

Things are worse in CA since he became Governor...he attacked Gray Davis in the "Recall" for pandering to special interests and raising money, yet Arnold has now exceeded Davis on that front...He criticized Davis for the Deficit of CA, yet we are in no better shape now and only with less services for the state and for those in need. Last week he refused Clemency for a man on Death Row who while being a convicted murderer is brain damaged....now this privatization of the state pension system....

Looks like the Governator is well on his way to becoming like his idol "W" and doing to Kalifornia what the lil' boy king is doing to Amerika....

:grr:

[farmbo]

11. Err...Arnie...CALPERS is already invested in the stockmarket

This headline should read: "Schwarzenegger Plans to Require New Brokerage Commissions to be Paid by California Workers".'

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Sniff, sniff. I smell Karl Rove nearby . . .

[The Zanti Regent]

21. ...and don't forget Grover Norqui$t

If there was a God, Norqui$t would have had a crippling stroke by now!

[olddad56]

14. Arnie's reasoning behind disarming Calpers...

I think that Arnie is going after Calpers because they own so much stock in so many companies that they serve as a corporate watchdog over many companies. Arnie wants to weaken their power.

He also wants to more than double current state employees contribution to the pension system. I'm guessing this is to avoid paying the billions that the state owes Calpers from a deal that Gray Davis negotiated with the unions and Calpers. Davis got the unions and Calpers to buy off on a plan where, instead of a pay raise, the state would pay the employees contribution for a year or 18 months and Calpers would give the state 10 years to pay the money. Now Arnie wants the employees to pay that money. Arnie is a front man for a group of corporate pigs.

[DeepModem Mom]

15. Kicking for more input from the Coast -- n/t

[AirAmFan]

16. Fear of 'pension fund socialism' drives the 'Social Security reform'

effort too, but the White House and Rethuglican Congress have been much less candid about this than Ahnold's allies. Most people still don't realize just how radical Dubya's second-term agenda has become.

For Rethuglican ideologues, much more is at stake in Social Security "reform" than a huge payoff to greedy Wall Street supporters (20 percent of FICA as "management fees" for privatized Social Security).

For ultraright economic thinkers, including especially Alan Greenspan, designer of the currently up-for-grabs 'Social Security Trust Fund', nothing is more frightening than the prospect of workers' collective ownership of voting rights affecting the governance of large US corporations. As Social Security moves toward negative cash flow in ten or fifteen years, the right fears pressure from baby boomers will become overwhelming to "pre-fund" their retirement benefits with centrally-managed investments in stocks as well as T-bonds. When Greenspan was in charge of Reagan's Social Security Commission 24 years ago, he was very careful not to create any structure that would assure his 25 percent FICA tax increase would actually be invested to pay Baby Boomers; Social Security benefits.

The ultraright is incredibly afraid of repetition of successful progressive efforts, like South Africa Disinvestment, to use ordinary Americans' economic power against continued control by wealthy stockholders over the world's pursestrings. This is an aspect of the Social Security "reform" debate that has gotten very little attention so far. For this reason, I found this passage from the NY Times article especially informative:

"Some opponents of privatization also detect a subtler agenda among those pushing private accounts - to silence the voice of workers and their pension fund managers, who oversee some of the largest institutional investment accounts in the nation.

Calpers has been a leader in an effort to bring greater accountability to corporate boardrooms. It pulled its money out of tobacco companies in the 1990's, voted its shares against Michael Eisner, chairman of The Walt Disney Company and leaned on the Philippines to do more to protect worker health and safety.

Critics say the role of pension funds is to safeguard their members' money, not make social policy. "There is an overriding issue of what happens when you have these superlarge retirement systems straying from bottom line of the benefit of members and straying into corporate governance, even social engineering," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. "A motivation for us, as you move to a system of individual accounts, is that over time you will depoliticize the retirement system in the state of California."

(From http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/23/national/23calif.html?pagewanted=2&oref=login )

[Robert Oak]

24. Grover Norquist ----- know thy enemy, he is them

This guy has literally written he wants to outsource the government.

The whole agenda is to continue to take away any power, financial
or otherwise from the middle class.

If you don't know who this guy is, check him out...
http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/grover_norquist.htm

especially read some of his latest agenda papers
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/norquist.html

check out the outsourcing of government in the papers links!

he's about the most frightening figure ...kind of an economic
"Stalin" who wants a "purge" of middle class America.