O.T. Clueless in Seattle

[RJ_Daley]

Pat, I'm sure glad I followed that tip on page one and invested in East Asian Green Ink Inc.  You are putting me over the top.  Keep up the great green 'next financial bubble'.  Your replies are better than tulips in Holland. 

Something tells me there are a few guys who follow our ramblings that are going to come in here and rip you a new one.  I can wait.  I do see that the pension shenanigans that you are bemoaning the Fed Gov caused this mess and all those benevolent owners were just trying to make their employees rich, is beyond suspicious.  I was always under the impression the the G came in with the 50% excise tax on corps or entities taking excess profit out of deals so as to curtail the orgy of "corporate raider" activity that was stealing from employee pensions with creative balance sheet gymnastics, bloating the pensions as tax avoidance schemes, playing a now you see it now you don't game with pension contribs and benefits for the workers.  I thought they bloated the funds, sent them into artificially high overfundedness, then through help from the bought and paid for congress on both sides of the aisle, used 'reforms' to convert the funds with accounting gimicks, via inflated sales from one cozy corp with another corp or raider, using a form of 'kick-back' compensations to reward the 'not at arms length' deal aimed at skimming or siphoning the artificially high projected numbers in the fund, and then paring down the work force, cutting contrib rates in the new 401Ks, and the execs and owners and raiders went home flush, and left the workers dependent on that retirement income security, in the soup line.  Ms Schultz explains the machinations that are over my pay grade to expound on here.  But, as you know, I'm a trained professional with instincts to spot a robbery, and this was the biggest robbery of all.  To sit here and tell me or anyone reading that we should be so gullible as to believe your corporate clients had great plans to enhance and reward their workers with a better set of practices before the G came in and put a stop to it, is well.... a stretch too far for my sorry old flatfoot arse to fall for.  All they were doing is further lining their pockets at the expense of revenue avoided to be paid to the US treasury.  A common worker hoping for a little retirement security just don't have that sort of elaborate scheme to be able to manipulate.  As Willie Sutton said to the question, 'why do you rob banks' his reply, "that is where the money is".  And, my friend, the money is clearly in pension funds, and too big a pile of it to not tempt sharpies who think they are masters of the universe and can rob and skim them with impunity.

So I'll wait for one of our amazing GCA.com brainiacs to come here and explain it with far greater expertise and authority than I.  Too bad Ms Ellen Schultz isn't a golfer architecture nut case... 

On your notion that unions tend to mute the merit system, well unions and workers don't actually care to work with incompetent people either.  There are many instances where a union member will file grievance against another, and unions (including teacher and cops and nurses and firefighters) work on committees all the time trying to improve their service and find efficient ways of getting things done.  I and my colleagues have spent 1000+ hours in a career sitting through endless meetings on quality and improving service or evaluating our performance fairly or training recruits.  That goes for all these other professions as well.  There are mentoring programs sponsored by unions, and many reach-out to management efforts to develop standards for hiring, and standards for evaluation.  I can't help it however when some stock broker wants to come into the PD and tell us what is the best professional practice, or a butcher attends the school board meeting and starts telling the lifetime professionals what the standards should be.  And that seems to be the teatards go-to play, griping about standards and quality service they haven't a clue what the working condition or knowledge base requires to provide such service.  And really, when it comes down to questioning these rocket scientists about what quality service and competence means to them, couched in merit pay, they get down to they want lower taxes, and a champagne product with a beer budget.  When the bosses hire their half-wit nephews it is hard for the union to defeat that, yet when the nephew pays dues and screws up, they want and are entitled to their rep.  That is the law. 

You can make good points in isolation with good examples, as can I.  But the problem is that we have to craft policies that aren't merely one-off and arbitrary/capricious autocratic edicts of power drunk administrators, managers and supervisors, and therein lies the rub.  You have to have a collective voice to make good rules for a group of people with each side having authority to defend and project their best ideas.  The Mussolini model of labor management relations and work rules promulgation don't cut it in a democratic free society. 

And, if I had an extra $mil I'd bet you that A.R. doesn't give to craps if any of his lineman took a hit on a doobie the night before a game or after.  Believe me I'm no pot head, but we are talking about pot, not heroin.  Appropriate drug testing is not resisted in the union world I know, based on safety and health at work.  Just fair standards and fair enforcement are at issue.  I could be wrong, as one fellow once said... 

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat, I'm sure glad I followed that tip on page one and invested in East Asian Green Ink Inc.  You are putting me over the top.  Keep up the great green 'next financial bubble'.  Your replies are better than tulips in Holland. 

Something tells me there are a few guys who follow our ramblings that are going to come in here and rip you a new one.  I can wait.  I do see that the pension shenanigans that you are bemoaning the Fed Gov caused this mess and all those benevolent owners were just trying to make their employees rich, is beyond suspicious. 

RJ, it's not suspicious, it's reality.  I set up about 100 of those plans for employers and their employees and everyone benefited until the Federal Government intervened and basically destroyed the pension/profit sharing world, just like they stepped in and destroyed the yacht and private aircraft industry with their surtaxes.

I was always under the impression the the G came in with the 50% excise tax on corps or entities taking excess profit out of deals so as to curtail the orgy of "corporate raider" activity that was stealing from employee pensions with creative balance sheet gymnastics, bloating the pensions as tax avoidance schemes, playing a now you see it now you don't game with pension contribs and benefits for the workers. 

You're really living in a dream world, once confined to Hollywood movie screens.
Most employees in the U.S. are employed by small businesses, private companies, not public companies.
Keep drinking the class warfare Kool-Ade put out by the left.

In the downturn in the economy I know business owners who agonized over lay offs, especially when long term employees were involved.
One went to his employees and told them that he had to either lay a number of people off or have everyone take pay cuts, including himself, and that he would do whatever the employees voted on.

The demonizing of companies, companies who employ people is mind boggling.
You come from a union backround where your employer was a department of a municipality/city, where the municipal/city executives went through a revolving door every time their was an election.  You were never exposed to the entepreneurial business owner, the guy who built his business with a family loan, who started in his garage, all by himself or with his spouse and relatives as his first employees.  Then, as he profited, a dirty word to you, he expanded his business and hired more people.  But, you continue to demonize him and his efforts.


 I thought they bloated the funds, sent them into artificially high overfundedness, then through help from the bought and paid for congress on both sides of the aisle, used 'reforms' to convert the funds with accounting gimicks, via inflated sales from one cozy corp with another corp or raider, using a form of 'kick-back' compensations to reward the 'not at arms length' deal aimed at skimming or siphoning the artificially high projected numbers in the fund, and then paring down the work force, cutting contrib rates in the new 401Ks, and the execs and owners and raiders went home flush, and left the workers dependent on that retirement income security, in the soup line. 

Who are you talking about, what fictional characters and companies ?
You're now accusing Small private companies, which employ the great majority of people in this country, of acts so far removed from reality that it's pathetic.

I thought you were above smear tactics, especially where honest hard working self made businesses are involved.
You're off on some rant that's meaningless to 95 % of the businesses in the U.S.   

Ms Schultz explains the machinations that are over my pay grade to expound on here.  But, as you know, I'm a trained professional with instincts to spot a robbery, and this was the biggest robbery of all.  To sit here and tell me or anyone reading that we should be so gullible as to believe your corporate clients had great plans to enhance and reward their workers with a better set of practices before the G came in and put a stop to it, is well.... a stretch too far for my sorry old flatfoot arse to fall for. 

The problem with you and your ilk is that you can't believe the facts when they're not convenient to you.

Those are the facts, look up the number of defined benefit and defined contribution plans in the U.S. prior to the cap on compensation, then look at the diminishing number of defined benefit and defined contribution plans after the enactment of the restriction.  Use the Government's own tables.
You'll see what you don't want to believe.

All they were doing is further lining their pockets at the expense of revenue avoided to be paid to the US treasury. 

How did they avoid paying taxes ?
The income was taxable as ordinary income and NO ONE escaped paying taxes.
In addition, each year the defined pension and defined contribution plans had to file documents detailing plan status.

A common worker hoping for a little retirement security just don't have that sort of elaborate scheme to be able to manipulate.  As Willie Sutton said to the question, 'why do you rob banks' his reply, "that is where the money is".  And, my friend, the money is clearly in pension funds, and too big a pile of it to not tempt sharpies who think they are masters of the universe and can rob and skim them with impunity.

I'm afraid you're out of touch with reality again.
Funds from Defined benefit and defined contribution plans couldn't be touched by anyone, corporate or individual.
And funds in defined contribution plans were vested quickly.
The common worker you refer to had 25 % of their compensation, let me repeat that, 25 % of their compensation, contributed to their qualified retirement plan, where it earned interest and/or enjoyed appreciation.  Some of those common workers walked away with $ 250,000, $ 500,000, $ 1,000,000 and more at a time when that was really alot of money.

So I'll wait for one of our amazing GCA.com brainiacs to come here and explain it with far greater expertise and authority than I.  Too bad Ms Ellen Schultz isn't a golfer architecture nut case... 

Nobody, neither Ms Schultz, nor you or anybody else can change the facts.
Employers were putting away as much as 25 % of their employee's compensation, year after year after year, and those funds grew, as the property of the employee, until they retired and either took a lumb sum or annuitized payment.

On your notion that unions tend to mute the merit system, well unions and workers don't actually care to work with incompetent people either.  There are many instances where a union member will file grievance against another, and unions (including teacher and cops and nurses and firefighters) work on committees all the time trying to improve their service and find efficient ways of getting things done. 
I'm sure the number is miniscule, rare at the very best.

I and my colleagues have spent 1000+ hours in a career sitting through endless meetings on quality and improving service or evaluating our performance fairly or training recruits.  That goes for all these other professions as well.  There are mentoring programs sponsored by unions, and many reach-out to management efforts to develop standards for hiring, and standards for evaluation. 

So, there's no hint of poor performance by union employees in any union ?  Everyone works incredibly hard, enrolls in CE classes and is as efficient as possible ?  Where did the term "featherbedding" come from ?   Why did Bush and now Obama try to address the educational problem starting with the teachers unions ?   As I said earlier, you're only capable of seeing things from one generic perspective, you can't examine issues on their specific circumstances.

I can't help it however when some stock broker wants to come into the PD and tell us what is the best professional practice, or a butcher attends the school board meeting and starts telling the lifetime professionals what the standards should be. 

Those are different issues, let's stay on track.

And that seems to be the teatards go-to play, griping about standards and quality service they haven't a clue what the working condition or knowledge base requires to provide such service. 

I don't adhere to the notion that knowledge only resides within those providing the service.
That's what oversight is all about.
I'm not content to have the fox guard the hen house, financially or with respect to evaluating service.
Sure, there are those who don't have a clue about the issues, but, their are alot of concerned citizens who do have that knowledge, and the wisdom with which to apply it.

And really, when it comes down to questioning these rocket scientists about what quality service and competence means to them, couched in merit pay, they get down to they want lower taxes, and a champagne product with a beer budget. 

RJ, you're repeating a tired defensive mantra.

When the bosses hire their half-wit nephews it is hard for the union to defeat that, yet when the nephew pays dues and screws up, they want and are entitled to their rep.  That is the law. 

Nepotism affects the private and public sector, and often negatively.
I understand those issues, but, they tend to be more the rare exception than the norm.
I think of the movie, "Casino" where all Sam "Ace" Rothstein had to do was hire Pat Webb's brother in law, Don Ward and a number of his problems would have been over.  "When Pat Webb asks, him if there's a place, further down the trough where old Don could be employed, Sam should have said yes.  Nepotism is an age old problem.  But, I understand it.  Who doesn't want to help out their family ?  Even if the family member is incompetent.  But, again, this is more the rare exception than the rule.

You can make good points in isolation with good examples, as can I.  But the problem is that we have to craft policies that aren't merely one-off and arbitrary/capricious autocratic edicts of power drunk administrators, managers and supervisors, and therein lies the rub. 

That's where term limits would be beneficial.

You have to have a collective voice to make good rules for a group of people with each side having authority to defend and project their best ideas.  The Mussolini model of labor management relations and work rules promulgation don't cut it in a democratic free society. 

Sadly, our democratic principles as envisioned by our founding fathers, don't seem to be working well in today's environment.
Term limits might help fix the impasses we face.

And, if I had an extra $mil I'd bet you that A.R. doesn't give to craps if any of his lineman took a hit on a doobie the night before a game or after.

And the sad part is, that if you had that extra Million, it would be in my pocket now.
They do care.  It's incredibly hard to win and NFL game and they want their players in the best possible condition, mentally and physically. 

Believe me I'm no pot head, but we are talking about pot, not heroin. 

So you don't mind pilots, ship captains, surgeons and air traffic controllers indulging ?

Why ?  Will it diminish their mental accuity, their judgement and their performance ?
If I'm paying someone $ 10,000,000 aren't I entitled to expect them to be able to perform, mentally and physically, at their best ?
If I'm having major surgery and I think all surgery is major surgery.  Minor surgery is surgery on someone else.

Appropriate drug testing is not resisted in the union world I know, based on safety and health at work. 

You're not in the NBA, and the NBA is the real world

Just fair standards and fair enforcement are at issue.  I could be wrong, as one fellow once said... 

"Fair" ?  How about "prudent" ?

[RJ_Daley]

gotta go for the day, but not to be left unanswered... 

[Kalen Braley]

Holy Cow,

Even a harmless thread about hack football officials can't avoid being turned into political fodder.

FFS, the real zebras are back now...so lets put this thread to bed!

[RJ_Daley]

Kalen, not to worry.  Pat and I are having a little scrimmage and it is completely intra-mural at this point.  So, if you don’t read any further, I think you can escape with you sensibilities, unscathed. But, since Pat was nice enough to come in here at the end and spill two barrels of fine expensive East Asian Green Ink, I can’t possibly allow such an effort go unrecognized….

Patrick, a theme that it seems to me to be woven in your litany of anecdotal accounts of ‘your clients’ good will and benevolent provisions towards their employees regarding their pension plans seems to suggest that if only the big bad government hadn’t come in to create further rules and tax consequences for certain pension balance sheet maneuvers, these nice small business owners could have made all their employees financially well beyond their wildest imaginations.  Hmmmm.  I wonder why any big bad old government would make new rules to curtail certain practices that you claim mitigated against the common worker?  Let’s just take as a given truth that some regulations curtailed the manner some of your small business clients approached pensions to workers detriment.  Would government re-regulation via taxation excise imposed on certain pension methodology make any sense if it were harmful to multitudes of small business workers?  I hardly think so.  Even these dumb and corrupt politicians had to have a motive and wouldn’t risk willy-nilly destruction of vast numbers of worker pensioners, unless something precipitated the new rules.  Could it be that prior to these rules and new tax applications on pension asset conversions you say burdened small business were really a last ditch effort to stop an egregious series of corporate raiding of pension practices that was so dastardly that it shocked the conscience of even the most hard boiled of the congress that something had to be done? Were these shenanigans also robbing the US Treasury in tax evasive activity, and further burdening the rest of us suckers that have to pay for our government, while the elite in a position to ply these practices got off with barrels of money and no taxes or very reduced tax burdens?

I think you are re-characterizing the effect you say your small business clients felt or resorted to, as an excuse to ignore the millions of hard working Americans that were robbed by pension pirates who used exotic merger and acquisition maneuvers  (not dozens or hundreds of small shop individuals working in a rare circumstance of a benevolent employer that gave high priority to pension considerations) and these practices had to be stopped in the name of holy hell breaking loose as the public caught more wind of the elaborate schemes, and found themselves grifted by a few Wall Street sharpies and corporate execs that figured out how to take hard earned pension assets out of the worker pool, and convert them into lavish golden parachutes and other perks for the execs through recharacterization on balance sheets and loopholes called “for other corporate purposes”. 

All these practices are fully expounded upon in the book I mentioned, “Retirement Heist” by Ellen Schultz.  I challenge anyone to just read the first 50-75 pages of that book and then come back here and tell us that the variety of pension piracy schemes amounting to not millions, or 10s or 100s of millions, but high billions and into trillions of dollars of wealth transfer out of the accounts of hard working American employees and into that good old top 1% corp execs, and M&A artists.  You talk about class warfare… that war was a wipe out for the working pensioner class, and a total confiscation and pillaged plunder by the 1% sharpies. 

I am neither against corporations nor people that earn and create wealth by honest work and fair play.  A multitude of great American entrepreneurs and successful business people and ethical investors have accumulated good honest and deserved wealth.  But, that is not what has and continues to happen in too large a swath of our economy and wealth strata.  There are dirty rotten practices, like pension pirates have practiced for too long now.  And, yet there are decent hard working ethical and effective fund managers and associated consultants who we should admire.  I choose to not have any sympathy or respect for those pirates, and more folk should read that book and understand the difference, in my opinion. 

You end you last with the question “Fair?  How about prudent”
I ask; what is the matter with both fair, prudent and include ‘ethical’ and ‘honest’?  Can we not come to a point in our society that holds these virtues as incumbent upon business and labor practices as part of the recipe for success and yes, profit?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Kalen, not to worry.  Pat and I are having a little scrimmage and it is completely intra-mural at this point.  So, if you don’t read any further, I think you can escape with you sensibilities, unscathed. But, since Pat was nice enough to come in here at the end and spill two barrels of fine expensive East Asian Green Ink, I can’t possibly allow such an effort go unrecognized….

Patrick, a theme that it seems to me to be woven in your litany of anecdotal accounts of ‘your clients’ good will and benevolent provisions towards their employees regarding their pension plans seems to suggest that if only the big bad government hadn’t come in to create further rules and tax consequences for certain pension balance sheet maneuvers, these nice small business owners could have made all their employees financially well beyond their wildest imaginations. 

That's true.
AND, some of them walked away with very, very large retirement benefits, which were stifled once the government restricted compensation.
This isn't conjecture or projections, this is reality.
Just imagine that for 20-30 years that your employer put away 25 % of your pay, and the impact of compounded interest and salary increases over those years.

I wonder why any big bad old government would make new rules to curtail certain practices that you claim mitigated against the common worker? 

The answer is simple, it's because the morons passing this law never contemplated the unintended consequences

Let’s just take as a given truth that some regulations curtailed the manner some of your small business clients approached pensions to workers detriment.  Would government re-regulation via taxation excise imposed on certain pension methodology make any sense if it were harmful to multitudes of small business workers? 

RJ,  you don't get it.  It's a fact, shortly after the passage on the restriction on compensation, defined contribution plans evaporated.
That those in government didn't have a clue that this might happen shows you how obtuse they are and how they were focused on the wrong issue.

I hardly think so. 

No, you just don't want to believe the truth, supported by the facts.

Even these dumb and corrupt politicians had to have a motive and wouldn’t risk willy-nilly destruction of vast numbers of worker pensioners, unless something precipitated the new rules. 

It's got nothing to do with corruption, it's got to do with stupidity.
They thought that they'd get more tax revenue by limiting compensation to $ 200,000.
That business owners couldn't shelter more than $ 50,000 per year and thus would pay taxes on the 25 % compensation in excess of $ 200,000.
They never dreamed that business owners would do a cost benefit analysis and determine that they were better off curtailing their plans, and taking the money that they would have contributed to the qualified retirement plans for themselves and their employees, paying he taxes on that money and investing the net amount of after tax funds in municipal bonds.  They discovered that they would accumulate more money by embarking on that route rather than contributing $ 50,000 on themselves per year to the retirement plan, plus the monies that they would be contributing for the rest of the employees.

So what happened, defined contribution plans were converted to 401 K plans, which as I stated, don't allow employees to accumulate significant funds.

Now, i'll go you one better, the government decided that if an employer contribute to defined contribution plans, and employees stayed with the employer and the qualified plan did really great with their investments, that if they were really successful, an additional surtax was levied against retirees who took out too much money.

In other words, put aside money, invest it prudently and after you've done this for years and years and built up significant balances, we're going to penalize you for doing exactly what we wanted you to do. 


Could it be that prior to these rules and new tax applications on pension asset conversions you say burdened small business were really a last ditch effort to stop an egregious series of corporate raiding of pension practices that was so dastardly that it shocked the conscience of even the most hard boiled of the congress that something had to be done?

RJ, you don't get it, defined contribution funds couldn't be accessed by "corporate raiding".  They were inviolate.
They were vested in and the property of the individual employee.
They couldn't be touched by anyone.

You have this fixation on "corporate raiding" but have a total lack of understanding of the laws applicable to defined contribution plans.

You keep making phantom excuses, rather than accept the cold hard facts[/color]

Were these shenanigans also robbing the US Treasury in tax evasive activity, and further burdening the rest of us suckers that have to pay for our government, while the elite in a position to ply these practices got off with barrels of money and no taxes or very reduced tax burdens?

Are you nuts ?  There was no tax evasion.  Since when is funding retirement plans tax evasion ?
Defined contribution plans allowed employers to put money away for the employees and owners on a tax deferred basis, it allowed those funds to grow, tax deferred, but, when the employee or owner took their retirement funds they were fully taxable at ordinary rates.
In other words the IRS collected taxes on every penny contributed and every penny earned

I think you are re-characterizing the effect you say your small business clients felt or resorted to, as an excuse to ignore the millions of hard working Americans that were robbed by pension pirates who used exotic merger and acquisition maneuvers  (not dozens or hundreds of small shop individuals working in a rare circumstance of a benevolent employer that gave high priority to pension considerations) and these practices had to be stopped in the name of holy hell breaking loose as the public caught more wind of the elaborate schemes, and found themselves grifted by a few Wall Street sharpies and corporate execs that figured out how to take hard earned pension assets out of the worker pool, and convert them into lavish golden parachutes and other perks for the execs through recharacterization on balance sheets and loopholes called “for other corporate purposes”. 

The cold hard statistics are that small and private companies employed millions more than public corporations
There are no exotic merger and acquisition maneuvers for private companies
Do you know the difference between a private and a public company ?

AND, the practices you allude to have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH CAPPING COMPENSATION. [/b][/size]

All these practices are fully expounded upon in the book I mentioned, “Retirement Heist” by Ellen Schultz.  I challenge anyone to just read the first 50-75 pages of that book and then come back here and tell us that the variety of pension piracy schemes amounting to not millions, or 10s or 100s of millions, but high billions and into trillions of dollars of wealth transfer out of the accounts of hard working American employees and into that good old top 1% corp execs, and M&A artists. 

RJ,  I'm going to repeat this for you again, because you can't stop repeating your rant, irrespective of the facts.

NO ONE, repeat, NO ONE, could access funds in a defined contribution plan, not the employer, not an acquiring employer, not even the employees spouse in a divorce action until that law was changed.
The funds were vested with the employee and sacrosanct, inviolate, they couldn't be touched.
So all of you're railing against these phantom raiders is pure horseshit,  and, it has nothing to do with capping compensation at 200,000.

You talk about class warfare… that war was a wipe out for the working pensioner class, and a total confiscation and pillaged plunder by the 1% sharpies. 

RJ,  the funds in a defined contribution plan couldn't be accessed by anyone, so your incessant rant is totally invalid.
Quite frankly, you just don't know what you're talking about.
You're making wild, reckless statements that are totally invalid.
And, they have nothing to do with capping compensation

I am neither against corporations nor people that earn and create wealth by honest work and fair play.  A multitude of great American entrepreneurs and successful business people and ethical investors have accumulated good honest and deserved wealth.  But, that is not what has and continues to happen in too large a swath of our economy and wealth strata. 

That's pure horseshit, especially when it comes to defined contribution retirement plans.
Your espousing the politics of envy, the notion that anyone who built a successful isn't entitled to the fruits of their labor.
Cite for us if you will, where the owners of closely held family businesses have engaged in the practices you've cited above.

Truth be told you're upset because funds or stocks owned by you and/or your retirement fund took hits because they invested in firms that perhaps they shouldn't have invested in

There are dirty rotten practices, like pension pirates have practiced for too long now. 

Defined contribution plans CANNOT be pirated by anyone.
You just don't know what you're talking about.
The funds are the vested property of the employee, and can't be accessed by anyone else.
In addition, access has nothing to do with capping compensation

And, yet there are decent hard working ethical and effective fund managers and associated consultants who we should admire.  I choose to not have any sympathy or respect for those pirates, and more folk should read that book and understand the difference, in my opinion. 
You're more fixated on the book than the specifics I cited.
NO ONE CAN PIRATE DEFINED CONTRIBUTION FUNDS

You end you last with the question “Fair?  How about prudent”
I ask; what is the matter with both fair, prudent and include ‘ethical’ and ‘honest’?  Can we not come to a point in our society that holds these virtues as incumbent upon business and labor practices as part of the recipe for success and yes, profit?

My clients treated their employees fair, prudently, ethically and honestly.
In addition to paying them a fair wage, they also provided them with group life insurance, group disability insurance, group dental insurance and group health insurance AND they CONTRIBUTED 25 % of their pay to defined contribution retirement plans, UNTIL the government stepped in and made those plans financially unrewarding for the business owner by capping compensation at $ 200,000.

Had the government not done that you wouldn't have seen the mass migration to 401K plans.

The government screwed those employees, not the phantom "pirates" or employers you like to demonize.

This thread should be retitled, "clueless in Milwaukee" 

[corey miller]

RJ says

"Would government re-regulation via taxation excise imposed on certain pension methodology make any sense if it were harmful to multitudes of small business workers?  I hardly think so.  Even these dumb and corrupt politicians had to have a motive and wouldn’t risk willy-nilly destruction of vast numbers of worker pensioners, unless something precipitated the new rules"  


I don't presume to know as much as Pat on this issue but based on the actions of present day politicians I can whole-hardheartedly say "yes" to the question above.  Many in the government believe their own concept of fairness, they were/are more concerned with the politics of envy than the positive benefits to the average worker.

So, it was so repellant for a small business owner to have a $10 million pension that they had to change the rules for all thus making the plans not viable even though the same plans were providing great benefit to the majority of the workers.  I guess they were not "spreading the wealth enough".  All they could see is the highly paid people having "too much"

Wish they had fixed the way public employees pensions were calculated at the same time they threw the wrench in the private employees.

Isn't this philosophy still in play in our present tax policy debate?  It is not about raising money or paying down debt but rather about  as "fairness" as I am pretty certain that is what the President argues from time to time.  Perhaps in an effort at "fairness" now we will harm the average worker you champion through higher tax rates that stifle business. growth, and job creation?  just a thought as I am not sure the government is good as figuring out what the unintended consequences of their actions are but then again they can always create more laws and rules and regulations to deal with unintended consequences, which of course create even more unintended consequences.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Corey,

If private pensions funded their benefits like the public sector has, they'd all be in jail.

One of the biggest disgraces in this country is the unfunded pension liabilities on the books of municipalities, counties, states and the Federal government

[RJ_Daley]

I don't wish to put words in your mouth Pat, but you mentioned 'defined contribution plans' and their conversion to 401K plans about 6 times.  Did you mean 'defined benefit plans'?  I'm not in Milwaukee, Pat.  I'm in Green Bay, Titletown... USA.  

I'm debating whether to type out some of the various case studies that demonstrate how so many corps monetized their pension assets and then through mergers and acqs, and accounting gimmicks, they ripped off their pension beneficiary workers to the great gains of their exec's and the consultants and goniffs that devised these schemes.  The easiest thing is to urge anyone seeking the facts on these matters to read the damn book.  Your tales and interpretations Patrick, are the ones that don't square with the facts detailed in the book.  It will take a person with far more knowledge than me to take apart the green blizzard of dissassociated scenarios you are posing here, Pat.  But, in a way one can get a sense that something is being obfuscated from your repetitive rant and continued pot calling a kettle black technique.

BTW, on this notion of how public employee pensions are ripe with unfunded liabilities, I don't suppose you guys care to talk about how States like N.J. didn't contribute the designated employer shares of the agreed upon contrib rates, and 'borrowed' on their current obligations to fund more tax breaks for 'business development' and all the euphamistic expressions of giving the wealthy more breaks, then found their pensions decimated by the great reckless financial collapse these same characters got us into with their funny money techniques in banking and Wall St.  Yeah, you guys are right someone should go to jail in some of these muni, state and county fund short funded cases.  That would be the politicians that decided they could skip the obligations of current and maintained funding as called for, in the first place.  Our Wisconsin Retirement System, BTW is fully funded, and has been properly managed.... that is until the great putsch of the Walker pirates who are also trying to do the same thing as the NFL and downtalk the so called lush benefits of the public employee pensions and how they should be converted from defined benefit to defined contrib plans, putting the burden and onest of management on the individual, never mind that our professional in-house managers have done such a good job our fund is rated the best in the nation.  The NFL has no real pension emergency, nor does WI.  But you wouldn't know it to hear the snake oil the pension pirates are spinning, looking to get a whack at those juicy fees that conversion would entail.  Not to mention pension fiduciary mandate that as constituted the fund can only have one sole function, to be operated for the sole and exclusive benefit of the participants, not the Walker regime.   

Maybe more tomorrow, if we must... zzzzz

[Patrick_Mucci]

I don't wish to put words in your mouth Pat, but you mentioned 'defined contribution plans' and their conversion to 401K plans about 6 times.  Did you mean 'defined benefit plans'?  I'm not in Milwaukee, Pat.  I'm in Green Bay, Titletown... USA.  

NO, I meant what I typed, "defined contribution" plans.
You couldn't put 25 % into a defined benefit plan for each participant/employee, you could and my clients did in their defined contribution plans.

I'm debating whether to type out some of the various case studies that demonstrate how so many corps monetized their pension assets and then through mergers and acqs, and accounting gimmicks, they ripped off their pension beneficiary workers to the great gains of their exec's and the consultants and goniffs that devised these schemes.  

You CAN'T do that with defined contribution plans.
Stop trying to change the subject.
I was crystal clear, my corporate clients contributed 25 % of every employees compensation into their retirement plan until the government capped compensation at 200,000.

The easiest thing is to urge anyone seeking the facts on these matters to read the damn book.  Your tales and interpretations Patrick, are the ones that don't square with the facts detailed in the book.  

My facts are rock solid.
You just don't know what you're talking about.
I cited how defined contribution retirement plans work and you don't understand that, or you don't want to accept that.
Instead you want to cite a book that has nothing to do with defined contribution retirement plans.
You're so rigid, so ideologically driven, so anti-business that you refuse to accept the facts, you refuse to accept that the government screwed the workers in their misguided effort to punish the owners

It will take a person with far more knowledge than me to take apart the green blizzard of dissassociated scenarios you are posing here, Pat.

NO ONE can take it apart because it's factual, the assets in defined contribution plans couldn't be accessed by anyone, they were inviolate, and my clients contributed 25 % of the employee's pay into these plans until the government attempted to punish the owners and screwed it up for everyone

 But, in a way one can get a sense that something is being obfuscated from your repetitive rant and continued pot calling a kettle black technique.
Yeah, RJ, the truth hurts, so let's cast dispersion on my repetitive attempts to get the real facts through your thick skull.
The plain and simple truth is that you're wrong.
You won't accept the fact that these employers were incredibly generous to their employees and that the government, vis a vis, the politics of envy tried to punish the successful and in so doing, ruined it for the workers

BTW, on this notion of how public employee pensions are ripe with unfunded liabilities, I don't suppose you guys care to talk about how States like N.J. didn't contribute the designated employer shares of the agreed upon contrib rates, and 'borrowed' on their current obligations to fund more tax breaks for 'business development' and all the euphamistic expressions of giving the wealthy more breaks, then found their pensions decimated by the great reckless financial collapse these same characters got us into with their funny money techniques in banking and Wall St.  Yeah, you guys are right someone should go to jail in some of these muni, state and county fund short funded cases.  That would be the politicians that decided they could skip the obligations of current and maintained funding as called for, in the first place.  Our Wisconsin Retirement System, BTW is fully funded, and has been properly managed.... that is until the great putsch of the Walker pirates who are also trying to do the same thing as the NFL and downtalk the so called lush benefits of the public employee pensions and how they should be converted from defined benefit to defined contrib plans, putting the burden and onest of management on the individual, never mind that our professional in-house managers have done such a good job our fund is rated the best in the nation.  The NFL has no real pension emergency, nor does WI.  But you wouldn't know it to hear the snake oil the pension pirates are spinning, looking to get a whack at those juicy fees that conversion would entail.  Not to mention pension fiduciary mandate that as constituted the fund can only have one sole function, to be operated for the sole and exclusive benefit of the participants, not the Walker regime.   

RJ, it's obvious that you got burned, either in your retirement plan or individually.

The reality is that if you don't provide business with a favorable environment, including the tax environment, business and all the jobs that come with business will go elsewhere, to another state, or to another country.  Surely, even liberal minded, union stomping YOU see and understand that.

The facts and the truth are that clients of mine used to put 25 % of their employee's pay into defined contribution retirement plans until the government capped compensation at $ 200,000, then, the employers/owners  converted those plans to 401K plans.

The government, in their misguided attempt to punish the successful owners and executives, ended up screwing the workers.

Maybe more tomorrow, if we must... zzzzz


I doubt that facts and logic will be able to penetrate your thick skull, especially when you raise your union and anti-business force shield to blindly deflect and disclaim the documented reality I described.

I cited the facts.

You cited a book that has nothing to do with defined contribution retirement plans.

I cited more facts.

You cited a book that has nothing to do with defined contribution retirement plans and the inviolate nature of their assets.

America was built on small and family businesses, but you want to demonize them and the people who run them, people who make profits and expand those businesses by hiring more workers.

Never forget that if business is good, labor is good and when business and labor are good, the tax base is good.

Punish business and labor is punished and the tax base shrinks

You seem to prefer the latter

[Mark Bourgeois]

Interesting photo about the back judge who "officiated" that play:

NEWS IN PHOTO: Back Judge From Packers, Seahawks Game Returns To Job As Air Traffic Controller http://tinyurl.com/cg9chcn

[Patrick_Mucci]

Interesting photo about the back judge who "officiated" that play:

Mark,

The official who signaled "touchdown" is NOT an air traffic controller, but an executive who works for BofA in Santa Maria, CA

In addition, I believe other regular officials indicated that the call made was the right call.

Seattle fans would tend to agree, Packer fans would tend to strenuously disagree.

Hail Mary's have typically been jump balls where the normal rules regarding pass interference, defensive and offensive, seem to be ignored.[/b][/size]

NEWS IN PHOTO: Back Judge From Packers, Seahawks Game Returns To Job As Air Traffic Controller http://tinyurl.com/cg9chcn

[Mark Bourgeois]

Patrick, it's The Onion, enjoy it!

From Pop Warner up to the fake refs they're all "regular" officials. Not the same thing as NFL-caliber. Monday night showed refs can be regular and shitty at the same time.

Get it? Regular...shitty...

[RJ_Daley]

Yeah, RJ, the truth hurts, so let's cast dispersion on my repetitive attempts to get the real facts through your thick skull.
The plain and simple truth is that you're wrong.
You won't accept the fact that these employers were incredibly generous to their employees and that the government, vis a vis, the politics of envy tried to punish the successful and in so doing, ruined it for the workers

Patrick, I’d like to explore the stark information I have read about these matters, with your version of incredible generosity of employers towards their employees under your version of things in the pension world.  Since you continue to dump green ink on your absolutist view of how great these pension techniques you state are; (are you obliquely referring to the method of conversion of these defined contrib plans to ‘cash balance’?  Please tell me this isn't what you do... 

“Michael Gulotta, who led ERISA Advisory Council task force as it explored ways to use pension assets (an appointment of the fox to guard the henhouse and example of the insidious manner the basic legal protections supposedly in place to protect beneficiaries – my interjection) was also president of Actuarial Sciences Associates, AT&Ts benefits consulting subsidiary.  In 1998, he helped the company change its traditional pension (one of those involiable defined contrib plans you speak of) to a “”cash balance” pension… which saved the company $2.2billion by cutting the benefits of more than 46,000 long-tenured employees in their 40s and 50s.  Many would see their pensions frozen for the rest of their careers.

Employers can use pension assets to pay the actuaries, lawyers, financial managers, and trustees who provide servies related to the management of the pension plans, and uncounted millions have gone to paythe actuaries who craft ways to cut benefits and to lawyers who defend suits brought by pension plan participants.  For its consulting and administrative services in connection with the cash balance conversion, AT&T paid ASA $8millon from the trust assets of the AT&T Management Pension Plan. 

ASA, set up a separate “cash-balance” plan for itself, using assets from the AT&T Management Pension Plan, which provided ASA managers a 200% to 400% of the value of what they would have if they had remained under the AT&T management plan.

Six months later, AT&T sold the Somerset, NJ, unit, ASA, to managers for $50 million, and transferred $25million in pensions owed.  In 2000, two years after buying ASA from AT&T, Gulotta sold it to the giant insurance and benefits consultant Aon Corp for $125 million.  He remained a principle of the firm until his retirement.

Surplus pension assest have ended up in executive’s pockets in more creative ways.  In late 2005, CenturyTel telecom firm based in Monroe, LA, attached a list to the workers’ pension plan with the names of select individuals who would get an extra helping of pension benefits from the plan.

Normally, Federal law forbids employers from discriminating in favor of highly paid employees who participate in the regular pension plan; everyone in the plan is supposed to have roughly the same deal.  There’s also an IRS limit on the amount a person can earn unddr the plans.  These restrictions are why companies provide separate, supplemental pension plans open only to executives.  But, by using complex maneuvers that take advantage of loopholes in the discrimination rules, many companies do, in fact, discriminate in favor of their executives and exceed the statuatory ceiling on how much they can receive from the plans.

CemturyTel used one of these techniques in its pension plan, which covered 6900 workers and retirees, to boost the peinsions of eighteen executives in the plan.  One of them was CEO Glen Post, who before the amendment had earned a pension of only $12,000 annualy in the regular pension plan, but the increase bumped it up to $110,000 a year in retirement. 

The technique doesn’t increase the executive retirement benefits.  When the swap is made, the supplemental executive pension is reduced by an equal amount.  The goal, rather is to enable companies to tap pension assets to pay for executive pensions – an even their pay.

Intel, the giant semiconductor chip maker based in Santa Clara CA, used this method to move more than $200 million of its deferred comp obligations for the top 3 to 5% of its workforce into the regular pension plan in 2005.  Thanks to this, when these exectutives and other highly paid individuals leave, Intel wont have to pay them out of cash; the pension plan will pay them.  (the plan that was set up for the workers – not management execs, I might add)

Using these methods, companies have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of exec pension liabilities into the regular pension plans,and then have used pension assets originally intended to pay the benefits of rank-and-file employees to pay the additional pension benefits to executives.  The practice exists across all industries: from forest products (Georgia Pacific – Koch Bros) to insurers (Pru Fi) to banks (Comercial Bank Syst Inc). 

The Practice has something in common with the practice of selling pension assets: Employers prefer to keep it under wraps, lest it spark a backlash when employees find out the CEO with millions of dollars in supplemental exec pensions is also getting an extra helpin from the rank and file pension plan”

 

Now Pat, we both know I’m not smart enough to point all this out and thus resorted to quoting from Ms Schultz’s book.  I can assure you that there are many more germaine passages that refute most of what you state about how the government is screwing all these workers with regulations on pension manipulation and ‘techniques’.  But, maybe-just maybe the real fault lies in the unbridled greed of corporations that use techniques to pick the lock on what was supposed to be regulations and this so-called ‘involiable’ protection of pension assets intended for the worker participants. 

You like to assign the term redistributionist to little guys like me (just a former worker representative trying to fight the clever sharks stealing our retirement income security) and somehow we are dangerous Socialists.   But, just in these few examples pointed out from the quoted passage of the book that I am not smart enough to come up with on my own, we see the real redistributionists of wealth in this country.  We are talking of a collective assault on worker retirement income security being robbed from millions of workers to the tune of trillions of dollars of redistribution to a top 1& class of executives via pension accounting and ‘reform of rules’ techniques.  I might add that this is retirement money that would normally be spent by pensioners directly back into the economy as consumers by millions who have had their pensions robbed, and it is not that same money lying in a musty account in the Caymans and hoarded in more tax evasive accounts by that tiny percentage of pension pirates that picked the lock of the involiable.  How does those lost consumer trillions taken from consumer pensioners and hoarded by the top 1% help our economy?

So, you keep coming at me Pat with a blizzard of green absolute proclamations.  I am willing to do the digging to demonstrate there is clearly another point of view and alternative perspective on this drum beat narrative that all us employee representatives are dangerous ‘redistributionists’ and that an alternative narrative does in deed tell a different tale.  Green ink doesn’t make all things truthful or factual. 

So, getting back to the original premise, the NFL is following the same old pension consulting act of ‘picking the lock’ on so called rock solid pension promises and re-characterise and redistribute the now healthy and fully funded pension assets and league pre-negotiated pension arrangements of the Referees, and same as the players of 18 teams have, it seems to me. 

I'd prefer to let this tread die and call a truce, but can continue if you like.  But, it isn't based on my knowledge or ability.  It seems for every premise you have, no matter how much green ink it is written in, there is enough ink spilled by those that are also credible, to allow a fool like me to explore and present alternative realities. 

Back to the Ryder Cup… 

[Cliff Hamm]

   
'Retirement Heist' compiles evidence of plundered pensions
By Steve Weinberg, Special for USA TODAY
Updated 10/17/2011 4:38 PM

    Comments 73

Sometimes the real crime consists of activities considered "legal," despite the damage they cause. That adage has never been more apt than when applied to the termination of pension funds by U.S. employers large, midsize and small. Over and over, loyal, deserving employees with modest incomes have watched their planned retirement savings disappear because of corporate managers and pension industry consultants.

    "Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers" by Ellen Schultz; Portfolio, 256 pages, $26.95.

    "Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers" by Ellen Schultz; Portfolio, 256 pages, $26.95.

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"Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers" by Ellen Schultz; Portfolio, 256 pages, $26.95.
Sponsored Links

Journalist Ellen Schultz has been writing about such shameful behavior for a long time, mostly in The Wall Street Journal. Now she has pulled together the copious, irrefutable evidence between the covers of a book. It is shocking, and demoralizing. But will members of Congress and federal agency regulators stop what Schultz calls "retirement heists"? Probably not, unless voters make it clear the incumbents will lose their jobs unless something changes. Unfortunately, voters are rarely if ever that organized, no matter how much they have been cheated by corporate chieftains.

The book is crammed with heartbreaking anecdotes of retirees suffering (and in some cases probably dying) because of pension-related corporate greed. But the perpetrators have not been charged with any crimes. In most cases documented by Schultz, the perpetrators have escaped widespread blame — except in her investigative pieces and now in this book.

Schultz opens the book with a look at the December 2010 annual outlook investor meeting sponsored by General Electric and CEO Jeffrey Immelt. (She could have focused on another corporation and another chief executive just as effectively, because the pension heists are so numerous.)

Immelt spoke about the problems for the corporation's profitability caused by the pension plan and medical benefits, announcing those benefits would be closed to newly hired employees.

Immelt and other corporate spokespeople have suggested that pension plan shortfalls are caused by out-of-control factors such as the large number of retirees, declining stock market investment returns and competition from foreign competitors that eschew good benefits for laborers.

Schultz knows better from her extensive research. She is a reporter who has become an expert in a relatively narrow subject matter. As she writes, "What Immelt didn't mention was that, far from being a burden, GE's pension and retiree plans had contributed billions of dollars to the company's bottom line over the past decade and a half, and were responsible for a chunk of the earnings that the executives had taken credit for. Nor were these retirement programs — even with GE's 230,000 retirees — bleeding the company of cash. In fact, GE hadn't contributed a cent to the workers' pension plans since 1987 but still had enough money to cover all the current and future retirees."

Then Schultz delivers the clincher: GE was indeed burdened by a pension plan — the plan for top executives. The obligations of that plan, for a minuscule number of individuals compared with the 230,000 lower-level retirees, totaled $4.4 billion and had drained about $573 million from the corporate treasury over the past three years.

When reading an investigative book, the consumer must decide whether to trust those who are exposed, who usually have a major stake in hiding the truth, or those conducting the exposure, who usually have little or no direct stake in spreading the truth. This book is not even a close call. Schultz's evidence is solid, based on her presentations in the text and the end notes.

How such corporate executives and their retirement heist allies sleep well at night is a puzzle to anybody with a conscience and a sense of fair play.

Contributing: Weinberg is the author of eight non-fiction books.
For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Yeah, RJ, the truth hurts, so let's cast dispersion on my repetitive attempts to get the real facts through your thick skull.
The plain and simple truth is that you're wrong.
You won't accept the fact that these employers were incredibly generous to their employees and that the government, vis a vis, the politics of envy tried to punish the successful and in so doing, ruined it for the workers

Patrick, I’d like to explore the stark information I have read about these matters, with your version of incredible generosity of employers towards their employees under your version of things in the pension world.  Since you continue to dump green ink on your absolutist view of how great these pension techniques you state are; (are you obliquely referring to the method of conversion of these defined contrib plans to ‘cash balance’?  Please tell me this isn't what you do... 

RJ,

I stated that the government ruined defined contribution plans by capping compensation.
You challenged my statement and proceeded to go off on a tangent about defined benefit plans, which aren't remotely related to defined contribution plans.

Your attempt to obscure the facts by bringing up something not remotely connected to defined contribution plans is improper.

Read about defined contribution plans and the rules that govern them.
What you describe, that you read in the book, can NOT happen to the funds in defined contribution plans, which vest with the employee.

“Michael Gulotta, who led ERISA Advisory Council task force as it explored ways to use pension assets (an appointment of the fox to guard the henhouse and example of the insidious manner the basic legal protections supposedly in place to protect beneficiaries – my interjection) was also president of Actuarial Sciences Associates, AT&Ts benefits consulting subsidiary.  In 1998, he helped the company change its traditional pension (one of those involiable defined contrib plans you speak of) to a “”cash balance” pension… which saved the company $2.2billion by cutting the benefits of more than 46,000 long-tenured employees in their 40s and 50s.  Many would see their pensions frozen for the rest of their careers.

That's irrelevant.  You keep interjecting totally irrelevant scenarios.  Please read the regulations regarding defined contribution plans.
Funds in a defined contribution plan can't be accessed by anybody other than the employee.  They are inviolate.

Employers can use pension assets to pay the actuaries, lawyers, financial managers, and trustees who provide servies related to the management of the pension plans, and uncounted millions have gone to paythe actuaries who craft ways to cut benefits and to lawyers who defend suits brought by pension plan participants.  For its consulting and administrative services in connection with the cash balance conversion, AT&T paid ASA $8millon from the trust assets of the AT&T Management Pension Plan. 

Irrelevant.
Funds in a defined contribution plan are the property of the employee, not the company.  They are inviolate.

You can keep blathering all you want, everything negative you've stated doesn't apply to defined contribution plans.

ASA, set up a separate “cash-balance” plan for itself, using assets from the AT&T Management Pension Plan, which provided ASA managers a 200% to 400% of the value of what they would have if they had remained under the AT&T management plan.

Irrelevant to my points

Six months later, AT&T sold the Somerset, NJ, unit, ASA, to managers for $50 million, and transferred $25million in pensions owed.  In 2000, two years after buying ASA from AT&T, Gulotta sold it to the giant insurance and benefits consultant Aon Corp for $125 million.  He remained a principle of the firm until his retirement.

Irrelevant to my points

Surplus pension assest have ended up in executive’s pockets in more creative ways. 

There's no such thing as surplus assets in a defined contribution plan.
The asset belongs to the employee.
The only downside was that the government ruled that if the money put away for the employee grew to an amount that the IRS deemed excessive, there was a surtax.  But, no matter how much accrued in the defined contribution plan, it all belonged to the employee, NEVER the company.

The company could NEVER get the money back, it was always the employees, no matter what amount it grew to.

In late 2005, CenturyTel telecom firm based in Monroe, LA, attached a list to the workers’ pension plan with the names of select individuals who would get an extra helping of pension benefits from the plan.

Irrelevant.

Normally, Federal law forbids employers from discriminating in favor of highly paid employees who participate in the regular pension plan; everyone in the plan is supposed to have roughly the same deal.  There’s also an IRS limit on the amount a person can earn unddr the plans.  These restrictions are why companies provide separate, supplemental pension plans open only to executives.  But, by using complex maneuvers that take advantage of loopholes in the discrimination rules, many companies do, in fact, discriminate in favor of their executives and exceed the statuatory ceiling on how much they can receive from the plans.

Irrelevant when it comes to defined contribution plans.

CemturyTel used one of these techniques in its pension plan, which covered 6900 workers and retirees, to boost the peinsions of eighteen executives in the plan.  One of them was CEO Glen Post, who before the amendment had earned a pension of only $12,000 annualy in the regular pension plan, but the increase bumped it up to $110,000 a year in retirement. 

Irrelevant

The technique doesn’t increase the executive retirement benefits.  When the swap is made, the supplemental executive pension is reduced by an equal amount.  The goal, rather is to enable companies to tap pension assets to pay for executive pensions – an even their pay.

Irrelevant

Intel, the giant semiconductor chip maker based in Santa Clara CA, used this method to move more than $200 million of its deferred comp obligations for the top 3 to 5% of its workforce into the regular pension plan in 2005.  Thanks to this, when these exectutives and other highly paid individuals leave, Intel wont have to pay them out of cash; the pension plan will pay them.  (the plan that was set up for the workers – not management execs, I might add)

Irrelevant.
The funds in Defined contribution plans are the employee's funds, not the company's funds and the company can't take them or use them in any manner.

Using these methods, companies have moved hundreds of millions of dollars of exec pension liabilities into the regular pension plans,and then have used pension assets originally intended to pay the benefits of rank-and-file employees to pay the additional pension benefits to executives.  The practice exists across all industries: from forest products (Georgia Pacific – Koch Bros) to insurers (Pru Fi) to banks (Comercial Bank Syst Inc). 


Irrelevant.
You can keep ranting all you want, none of the situations you've cited have anything to do with defined contribution plans

The Practice has something in common with the practice of selling pension assets: Employers prefer to keep it under wraps, lest it spark a backlash when employees find out the CEO with millions of dollars in supplemental exec pensions is also getting an extra helpin from the rank and file pension plan”

 

Irrelevant

Now Pat, we both know I’m not smart enough to point all this out and thus resorted to quoting from Ms Schultz’s book.  I can assure you that there are many more germaine passages that refute most of what you state about how the government is screwing all these workers with regulations on pension manipulation and ‘techniques’. 

How dare you.
There's not one passage, not one iota of evidence to refute what I've stated, which is accurate and factual.
The assets in Defined contribution plans are solely the property of the employee and cannot be returned to the employer or used by the employer.
Your reckless and irresponsible statement that Ms Schultz's book is going to refute what I've stated shows how idealogically you're driven.
It shows that you won't, or better yet, that you can't accept the truth and the accompanying facts.
Your rigid views are part of the problem in America today, you will not accept anything that departs from your liberal mantra or party line, no matter how accurate and true the circumstances are.

You're so desperate to reject the notion that employers look out for and are generous to their employees. that you'll say and repeat anything.
You're so desperate to disprove the facts that you resort to citing circumstances not remotely related to defined contribution plans.
WHY /


But, maybe-just maybe the real fault lies in the unbridled greed of corporations that use techniques to pick the lock on what was supposed to be regulations and this so-called ‘involiable’ protection of pension assets intended for the worker participants. 

Funds in defined contribution plans couldn't be accessed or picked.
They were inviolate.
Stick to the issue, the issue was defined contribution plans
My clients contributed 25 % of their employees pay to these plans until the government capped compensation. 
The funds contributed on behalf of the employee were invested and grew.
Compound interest and ongoing larger contributions, as the employees pay increased, allowed the employee's account to become substantial.
And, to the degree they grew, they were always the property of the individual employee, not the company.
Why do I have to repeat that over and over and over again ?

Don't take my word for it, look it up.

You like to assign the term redistributionist to little guys like me (just a former worker representative trying to fight the clever sharks stealing our retirement income security) and somehow we are dangerous Socialists. 

Stop with the, "pity poor little me."
You were represented by a union.
They had an obligation to protect your interests.
You benefited from a collective bargaining agreement that couldn't be breached.
And, you worked for a municipality, so there were no clever corporate sharks trying to take over your city and access your funds. 

But, just in these few examples pointed out from the quoted passage of the book that I am not smart enough to come up with on my own, we see the real redistributionists of wealth in this country. 

All the examples you provided are IRRELEVANT, they're not applicable to defined contribution plans.
Somehow you can't get that through your thick head.

We are talking of a collective assault on worker retirement income security being robbed from millions of workers to the tune of trillions of dollars of redistribution to a top 1& class of executives via pension accounting and ‘reform of rules’ techniques. 

Again, irrelevant, and also not true.
If a defined benefit plan stated that you were to get $ 4,000 a month, that plan had to have government approval and annual government supervision and, unless the plan was terminated, they had to pay you $ 4,000 per month.
The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, a Federal Agency was supposed to guarantee all pensions as all pensions in the country had to contribute to the PBGC.

I might add that this is retirement money that would normally be spent by pensioners directly back into the economy as consumers by millions who have had their pensions robbed, and it is not that same money lying in a musty account in the Caymans and hoarded in more tax evasive accounts by that tiny percentage of pension pirates that picked the lock of the involiable. 

That's a blatant lie.
Defined Benefit assets could NOT have their lock picked, those funds were inviolate, untouchable.

I stated that my clients contributed 25 % of their employee's pay, on an annual basis, and those funds grew, tax free, until they were distributed to the employee, and NO ONE, repeat NO ONE could touch those assets except the employee, so stop blathering about pension pirates, when there were none concerning defined contribution plans.

How does those lost consumer trillions taken from consumer pensioners and hoarded by the top 1% help our economy?

One method would be to reinvest those funds, but, that has nothing to do with my original statement concerning defined contribution plans.

So, you keep coming at me Pat with a blizzard of green absolute proclamations. 

I will because you're willfully lying and deliberately misrepresenting the facts and the truth.

I am willing to do the digging to demonstrate there is clearly another point of view and alternative perspective on this drum beat narrative that all us employee representatives are dangerous ‘redistributionists’ and that an alternative narrative does in deed tell a different tale. 

You can dig all you want.
When it comes to defined contribution plans, there isn't another point of view, unless you want to continue to lie and misrepresent the facts and the truth.

Green ink doesn’t make all things truthful or factual. 

It sure does.
You can't refute anything I've stated.
Instead, you chose, disingenuously, to go off on a tangent unrelated to defined contribution plansa.

So, getting back to the original premise, the NFL is following the same old pension consulting act of ‘picking the lock’ on so called rock solid pension promises and re-characterise and redistribute the now healthy and fully funded pension assets and league pre-negotiated pension arrangements of the Referees, and same as the players of 18 teams have, it seems to me. 

That wasn't the original premise.
I stated that the NFL wanted the right to terminate inefficient officials mid-season.
I further stated that my clients contributed 25 % of their employee's pay to defined contribution plans and that those plans were curtailed when the government capped compensation, resulting in those plans being terminated or converted to 401 K plans, that the government screwed the employees, not the employer.

I'd prefer to let this tread die and call a truce, but can continue if you like.  But, it isn't based on my knowledge or ability. 

That's the heart of the problem.  You don't have the knowledge.  And you don't have the ability to view the issue objectively, you can only view it through your predetermined biased conclusions.

It seems for every premise you have, no matter how much green ink it is written in, there is enough ink spilled by those that are also credible, to allow a fool like me to explore and present alternative realities. 

I can't argue with you about the fool part, but, there is NO alternative reality when it comes to defined contribution plans.

In addition, there is no alternative reality when the plans were sponsored by private companies.

Back to the Ryder Cup… 

[RJ_Daley]

Thank you Cliff for the inclusion of added commentary and review.  

I would agree with Patrick on one major point, even though I don't think he means it in quite the same way, yet I think the effect is the same.  Pat is generally always down on the government and how it has caused these problems.  I think in reading Schultz's book, one can clearly see how the government has set up the American pension beneficiaries, retired and those hoping for some modicum for retirement income security.  It wasn't that the government was some 'liberal' monster of socialist tax and spend us into deficit oblivion as I think Pat implies. (I could be wrong - ask Pat).  It is because Dems and Republicans took the money for their endless election campaign costs, or took the money from these corporations that flat out bought their votes to 'reform' and 'pick the lock' of original pension protections.  The corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle sold out the American pension participating worker in so many ways, and not only pensions.  The members of Congress have breathtaking pensions they voted for themselves, with hardly any significant tenure to be eligible.  They take the money for campaigns, and the corps buying them will buy on both sides of the aisle.  They take the cushy post congressional jobs and lobby jobs that help the corps continue the relentless onslaught of lobbying their former colleagues for yet more regulation perversion, to allow this sort of wholesale theft from hard working Americans retirement income security to continue. Pension funds are the ultimate honey pot, and it is the bank robber, Willie Sutton syndrom.  They rob them because that is where the money is.  The only other honeypot that rivals the pensions is the health care - pharma - insurance complex.  And, the robbery is never from the top movers and shakers top executives of these corps and this class.  It is always out of the American, Joe sixpack worker's hide.  And, the top 1% have the nerve to call the little workers with their feeble unions (down to about 12% unionization of all workers in U.S.) the redistributionists.

These pensions were once flush and so overfunded, based on honest and effective management of the invested assets, for the most part.  Many of them wouldn't even cost the corps more contributions because some of them had built up enough to literally be self sustaining to pay out all the full promised benefits out of invested earnings.  But that wasn't enough for the corps to be happy they could ease back on feeding the funds, and let the invested assets that belonged to the beneficiaries (for their sole benefit - as the old pre-perverted regulations called for as the fiduciary responsibility of the fund managers).  They had to play the same old 'redistributionist' game and pervert and bribe congress to change the laws, and allow them to pick the lock so they could get busy robbing the once flush asset pools and redistribute them upwards.  

A pox on members of both parties- dems and repubs, that allowed this and continue to ignore this.  In my personal view, the whole ongoing scheme is treasonous.  They are destroying our middle class wealth from within like cancer, and hollowing out America's middle class strength.  

But, it is very complicated to wade through this stuff, just like it is for me to set myself up for ridicule that I don't know what I'm talking about.  Because I don't.  I am regurgitating what I read.  The sharpies buying this complex legislation have made it so hard to understand all their labyrinth of schemes and capers, that a simple fool like me, or 90% or more of my contemporaries who are union members and have to work jobs for a living, can't sit and study this complex stuff, and basically are too worn down and habituated as a class to put up an effective resistance.  They basically don't know what hit them, or that the light at the end of the tunnel is a big corporate train going to run their butts over.  So, they feed their minds with escapism, avoidance of confronting what is tough and complex, and only the really motivated with a sense of justice and ethics like Schultz are delving deep into this on-going heist.  Will the last honest member of congress turn out the lights when the republic goes down.  

[RJ_Daley]

Pat, seriously, you are doing a HAL 2000.  "Irrelevant - irrelevant - irrelevant...your answers don't compute...."

Pat, you keep pounding this notion of the so-called untouchable defined contribution plans, (which you seem to have declared above that  401Ks are not defined contributions plans)  They are DC not DBs.  And, at this point I guess I'll just ask you straight up; did you read the darned book?  Schultz cites plenty of examples of invasion and re-organizing defined contribution plans, even after the mass conversion in the early 80s from defined benefit plans.  The techniques described aren't mere blunt force hitting the pensioners over the head with a club.  They are sophisticated accounting and re=characterizatin of the assets, selling amd inflating those assets and then redistributing them at inflated phony overstated numbers via merger or takeovers, and blending them from rank and file sole beneficiaries pools to changed laws by congress to let the execs get a helping of the new booty asset pools.  And, they lobbied for language to allow the corps to 'unlock' the assets for 'other corporate purposes', like golden parachutes, escape paying FICA with early retirement payouts, rather than bonus and wage, and paying retiree health insurance from fund assets rather than from the corp earnings.  The book describes a myriad of ways that they stole the assets. And the sad thing is, one can only wonder how this money would have filtered into a more healthy economy had it gone to the millions of pensioner consumers rather than the hoarding and evasion crowd.  

As the saying is often skewed but seems to apply; 'methinks thou doth protest too much' .  Or if one is drinking, 'thou doth protethest too mush'    

[Cliff Hamm]

I don't presume to have read  every word on this thread. The real issue is that the right seems to think that the public sector has pensions that are not commensurate with the private sector. The real issue is that the private sector does not have pensions they deserve. Thank you corporate America.

All Americans deserve to retire with dignity and with a solid pension. It is unfortunate that the public sector has become a target.

I will leave it at that as Mr. Mucci will  certainly attack representing the 1% who don't need a pension.

[Patrick_Mucci]

I don't presume to have read  every word on this thread.
The real issue is that the right seems to think that the public sector has pensions that are not commensurate with the private sector. The real issue is that the private sector does not have pensions they deserve. Thank you corporate America.

Cliff, not only have you not read every word, you don't understand the respective histories of pensions/benefits as part of the overall compensation packages, and how pensions or rather retirement plans are funded.

All Americans deserve to retire with dignity and with a solid pension.
It is unfortunate that the public sector has become a target.

Cliff, obviously you don't understand the problem.

Everybody agrees that it would be preferable for people to retire with dignity and a good pension.

The reason that public sector has come under fire is because of the unfunded liabilities.
The fact that people were promised what the entity couldn't afford in conjunction with the fact that those structuring the pensions were catering to get the votes of those the pensions were intended for.  It's a clear conflict of interest.

I will leave it at that as Mr. Mucci will  certainly attack representing the 1% who don't need a pension.

The above statement is proof positive that you're ignorant on the facts and circumstances surrounding retirement plans and how they're funded and who funds them.

Stick to a topic where you have some degree of expertise.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat, seriously, you are doing a HAL 2000.  "Irrelevant - irrelevant - irrelevant...your answers don't compute...."

That's because NONE of your rants are relevant to defined contribution plans.
You don't understand them, how they're funded and how they're administered and who owns the assets.
Instead you continue to rant about issues that aren't applicable to defined contribution plans where 25 % of an employees pay is put away for them, and can't be touched by the employer.

In addition, you have absolutely NO CONCEPT of the "prohibited transactions" regulations.

Pat, you keep pounding this notion of the so-called untouchable defined contribution plans, (which you seem to have declared above that  401Ks are not defined contributions plans)  They are DC not DBs.  

They're not defined benefit plans, but, they're a far cry from defined contribution plans where 25 % of an employee's pay could be put away for them.  401IK plans are irrelevant by comparision and mostly rely on employee participation with much lower contribution limits.

And, at this point I guess I'll just ask you straight up; did you read the darned book?  

Not yet.
It's irrelevant when it comes to defined contribution plans.
It has NO bearing on defined contribution plans

Schultz cites plenty of examples of invasion and re-organizing defined contribution plans, even after the mass conversion in the early 80s from defined benefit plans.  

RJ, there's NO WAY that a defined contribution plan can have it's assets invaded and acquired by an employer or any other party.
The assets in a defined contribution plan are SOLELY the assets of the employee, and NO ONE ELSE.

The techniques described aren't mere blunt force hitting the pensioners over the head with a club.  They are sophisticated accounting and re=characterizatin of the assets, selling amd inflating those assets and then redistributing them at inflated phony overstated numbers via merger or takeovers, and blending them from rank and file sole beneficiaries pools to changed laws by congress to let the execs get a helping of the new booty asset pools.

RJ,

I'll repeat myself, the assets in a defined contribution plan are SOLELY the assets of the employee.
They can NOT be accessed by anyone.
And, if a defined contribution plan was converted to another plan, at the time of the conversion, the assets in the defined contribution plan VEST 100 % with the employee and NO ONE ELSE. 

And, they lobbied for language to allow the corps to 'unlock' the assets for 'other corporate purposes', like golden parachutes, escape paying FICA with early retirement payouts, rather than bonus and wage, and paying retiree health insurance from fund assets rather than from the corp earnings.  


It can't happen to a defined contribution plan.
Once the contribution is made, from the employer to the defined contribution plan, that money becomes the asset of the employee and NO ONE ELSE.  NO ONE can unlock and access that money, it's strictly employee money.

Each year, a statement is provided that lists the prior year account balance, contributions for the current year, earnings for the current year, and a new end of year employee asset statement is issued.  That money, can't be touched, so read all the books you like, the law prohibits the assets in a defined contribution plan from being returned to the contributing corporation.

The book describes a myriad of ways that they stole the assets. And the sad thing is, one can only wonder how this money would have filtered into a more healthy economy had it gone to the millions of pensioner consumers rather than the hoarding and evasion crowd.  

I'll make it a point to read the book, but, I'll guarantee you that it's not about defined contribution plans

As the saying is often skewed but seems to apply; 'methinks thou doth protest too much' .  Or if one is drinking, 'thou doth protethest too mush'    

Nah, I just saw employers establish these plans, contribute 25 % of everyone's pay, only to have the government put an end to them by capping compensation at $ 200,000.   Had the government not capped compensation the employees would have benefited tremendously.
The government screwed the employees in their attempt to punish business owners.  Such is life.

[RJ_Daley]

If anyone is actually reading this thread and interested in the subject, just read the book; "Retirement Heist" by Ellen Schultz.  Pat hasn't. I can't imagine how red his face will be if he does....  This is my last comment on the matter.

[jeffwarne]

Ironically, no one mentions that if the defensive back had done his job and merely batted the ball down (as you're supposed to on 4th down or game enders), there'd be no discussion, and they would have won.

Also, it is not a catch or interception until the ball is controlled AND the foot hits the ground.
The ball was fair game until the two conditions above were satisfied, and by the time his foot hit the ground, he no longer had control and it was also being held by the Seahawk, thus simultaneous possession, and a touchdown.

The refs got it right, the GB defensive back got it wrong, but then I'm sure he has a bonus clause for interceptions.

[Patrick_Mucci]

If anyone is actually reading this thread and interested in the subject, just read the book; "Retirement Heist" by Ellen Schultz.  Pat hasn't. I can't imagine how red his face will be if he does....  This is my last comment on the matter.

RJ,

There's nothing in that book that can change the laws applicable to defined contribution plans, thus, that which I stated about my clients contributing 25 % of their employees annual pay to a defined contribution plan/s, and that money being vested solely with that employee's account and inviolate from any outside source, including the sponsoring company, is 100 % accurate.

If anyone will be red faced it will be you for discovering the errors of blindly applying what may have happened to some public company's defined benefit plans to private company's defined contribution plans.  You'll be further embarrassed when you discover that vested account balances in defined contribution plans can't be accessed by anyone other than the employee, that it's impossible for the corporation to reclaim those assets under any situation.

And you'll be further embarrassed when you see the numerical decline in defined contribution plans once the federal government imposed a cap on allowable compensation of $ 200,000.

I now see that you're ideologically driven an incapable of viewing issues in an objective light.

You can keep repeating inaccurate statements and quoting your book to your heart's content, but it won't change the laws applicable to defined contribution plans and the fact that the government, vis a vis the politics of envy, is responsible for screwing the employees who were participants in defined contribution plans

Did you ever ask yourself why the federal government took over various locals of the Teamsters union and appointed a trustee to run them because they were so corrupt  ?  

I'm sure, that 20 years from now, if there's a sitting democratic President that screws something up, that you'll blame Bush for that screw up

Jeff,

Yet, in another game, the defender batted the ball down only to have a receiver catch it and fall into the end zone for a TD.

Football is so difficult to officiate because you have 22 players moving at incredible speeds and interacting with each other.
You could probably call a penalty on every play.
Just like the officials would be throwing yellow flags on every one of RJ's posts

  

[corey miller]

RJ is a little too frustrating on this thread  so I will make a few comments on something I might be a little more "expert" on in that I have been a sideline official for the NFL/Jets for over 25 years.  My job is to help the head linesman in his administrative duties during the game.

First and it was a notion advanced by Mark

"The execution fail was the replacements didn't huddle, an automatic for the real guys. In the huddle the real guys could have come up with a ruling that was at least reviewable. So that's three chances the real guys would have had to get it right." 

I could not agree more strongly, even with replay, the officials need to officiate the game and not decide a play based on what may or may not be reviewable.  When you go this far you may as well not have the game officiated on the field at all.

I also would strongly disagree with Jeff, I think you are always better off intercepting the pass.  Just my opinion.

As for the officials, who I work very closely with....well they make a lot more than I would have thought.   That said, they are highly combatant and are officiating a game that is very difficult to officiate with a bunch of rules (relative to college) that make it even harder. 

I would also argue that having a review process (I am against) created a climate where they had to rejigger the rules and definitions to get a process under which review could even be used.  Do you really think Larry Fitzgerald, when he jumps and catches a ball, does not have possession until both his feet land and he has made a football move?  Please.  And don't get me started on the difficulty in enforcing  all these new player safety rules.  You talk about arbitrary. 

I have no clue on what each side has argued, but I have a hard time accepting that making all the referees (as opposed to all the officials) full-time will help in any way.