Posted on 08/05/2016 6:19:53 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Bernie Sanders isn’t going to be the next president, but one of the bills he has sponsored, the Keep Our Pension Promises Act (KOPPA)could become law during the next president’s term. That ought to worry anyone who knows that the collectivistic instincts of Bernie Sanders mean spreading the costs of bad policies to the entire population.
Here’s the background.
The Central States Pension Fund (CSPF) of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has a troubled history going back to its founding in 1955 by long-time Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. (Carl Horowitz of the Organized Labor Accountability Project looks into that history in this Capital Research study.) It is a multi-employer pension fund. Some 1,500 companies with Teamster contracts from states mostly but not exclusively in the Midwest pay into the fund, which in turn pays defined pension amounts to a huge number of retirees.
For years, however, the fund has been paying out money at a much faster rate than it comes in. Currently, $3.46 goes out for every $1.00 paid in, and that ratio is certain to worsen. It has less than half of the money needed for financial stability, underfunded by some $18 billion. Projections are that the fund will be insolvent in ten to fifteen years.
At that point, as this CNN Money article notes, 407,000 Teamsters pensioners will find their pensions reduced to “virtually nothing.”
Congress has known about the problem of underfunded pension plans for a long time, but has never been able to resist the urge to meddle in a problem that properly belongs to “the states or the people” under the Tenth Amendment. (I would say that pensions are not a matter for government at any level, but entirely a private concern subject to general common law principles.)
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
NO BAILOUTS FOR ANY UNION THAT HAS GIVEN
POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS!!!
Period.
Let the members fire the goons!
Rich Union Bosses?
I guess they gave too much money to Democrat politicians.
So you are for a federal bailout.
Got a mirror?
“So you are for a federal bailout.”
Perhaps but under the condition that:
1. The Unions give up control of the funds to the SS administration; unions can still negotiate the amounts and contributions they just don’t get to watch over the cash. SS is already there so it would not greatly expand the government.
2. Union officials are stripped of the wealth they’ve stolen and that money is placed into the pension funds
3. Union officials go to jail and do hard time for a long time.
4. All states become immediately Right to Work
They’ll never happen.
This makes me smile——
I had the misfortune to have to join the Teamster’s union when I was working in a job in about 1966.
I can clearly remember how angry I was when out monthly Union Dues were raised by $1 each month to help pay for Hoffa’s attorneys——those scumbags who were being paid to defend him for STEALING the PENSION FUND MONIES in the first place.
It felt like paying for my husband’s divorce lawyer!!!
The Tenth Amendment most certainly applies here!
Does the Constitution SPECIFICALLY give the government the power to control pensions, or bail them out? If so, then please cite the exact Article and Clause where that power is expressed.
(No, not if any “law” passed by Congress allows it ... they’ve passed hundreds if not thousands of laws that violate Constitutional limits.)
Under the Tenth Amendment, if the Constitution DOES NOT give that power to the feds, then that power belongs to the states or to the people. Period. Full stop.
And by that, I mean the oligarch's fortunes, personally.
I'm sure the Ivy League Lawyers -- threatened that the endowments of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. would be summarily seized by the government otherwise -- can find a way to get around the explicit Constitutional prohibition on "bills of attainder"...just like they ensconced a mere penumbra into the inviolate right of abortion, and eliminated the "Shall not be infringed" part of the 2nd amendment.
Next recession, another “Stimulus” will fill up their coffers.
The tax breaks that Warren Buffett relies on can also be revised or repealed. After all, he has invited “soak the rich” tax policies. He and the other Lefties can be made to go first, not through bills of attainder but by attacking the tax breaks they exploit.
"Our" pension promises?
I think the wife and I will look up a lawyer next week and sign contracts guaranteeing each other $100,000 a year in retirement. (I'm being modest here.) We'll send Bernie the bill.
Since then Reid has received contributions from various donors connected with the gambling industry, including. . .Ed and Fred Doumani, associated with the Tropicana Hotel, the El Morocco casino, Agosto, and Joey Cusumano, former lieutenant of Chicago Mafia representative Anthony Spilotro; Agosto’s infiltration of the Tropicana was facilitated in 1975 when the Chicago and Kansas City Mafia families conspired to block a Teamsters Central States Pension Fund loan to the Doumanis; when Argent Corporation’s gambling license was revoked in 1979 Argent initially agreed to sell its holdings to the Doumanis; later in 1983 the Doumanis loaned funds to the now-bankrupt Agosto. . .--Kirk Kerkorian, owner at various times of Caesar’s Palace (built with financing from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund), the Flamingo Hotel (sold in 1970 to the Hilton Hotels Corporation, partly financed in the 1940s by Henry Crown, who also financed Chicago mob associate Jacob Arvey, and later associated with mob lawyer Sidney Korshak), and the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino (built on the heels of Kerkorian’s acquisition of controlling MGM shares from Edgar Bronfman, son of Lansky bootlegging associate Samuel Bronfman; Bronfman’s son Edgar Jr. has also been a Reid contributor). . .
Maybe if the Teamsters and other AFofL-CIO unions hadn’t stolen so much money to donate to the DemocRATS, this would not be an issue.
I absolutely agree!
Additionally I’d not have to help my parents because the Teamsters cut my father’s pension
High officials in the unions need to be imprisoned and their assets seized
No bailouts for unfounded Union perks! No more taxpayer bailouts!
I have posted this before. Nothing will change until the money runs out.
What caused the money to run out for USSR?
“RETIREMENT FAIRNESS ACT.”
Lol, hilarious because there’s some truth in it!
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