Archive for the ‘Pensions’ Category
Sunday, July 30th, 2023
VIDEO
www.prageru.com/video/the-biggest-bully-in-school-why-public-education-is-failing-in-america?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_7367411
What do you know about teachers unions? If you think they support educators by negotiating better wages and working conditions, you may be shocked and disturbed to find out that today’s teachers unions are well-funded, highly politicized organizations that are hurting—not helping—the public education system in America and keeping even the worst teachers protected. PragerU’s short documentary investigates how these once well-intentioned teachers unions have become the biggest bully in school.
If you have not yet done so, please sign the petition to tell America that you want PragerU in schools.
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Posted in Administrative State, American History, Big Government, Cancel Culture, Censoring, Child Endangerment, Corporate Cronyism, Corruption/Crime, Deep State, Democracy, Democrats, Dennis Prager, Education, Election 2024, Free Speech, Indoctrination of students, Joe Biden, Justice Department, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Marxism, Pensions, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Protestors, Radical Left, Social Justice, Socialism, Totalitarian, Transparency, Videos, Women's Issues | No Comments »
Saturday, September 24th, 2022
Heads up everyone! This is quite an eye opener of how dangerous ESG’s are to our country. The treasurer of West Virginia, Riley Moore, explains why. ESG’s (Environmental, Social and Governance) will reach into many aspects of our lives, including our investment accounts. Nancy
VIDEO
“So, there’s a big game kind of going on here, but they’re making a killing off of these ESG products. And why are they able to do that? Well, they’re charging you a little bit more to make you feel better and you’re doing something about the environment. … But they’re raking it in.”
ESG stands for “environmental, social, and governance”: a collection of corporate performance criteria that exist outside of fiduciary responsibility. Money managers such as BlackRock, arguably ESG’s biggest champion, are increasingly using them to determine investment. Riley Moore, treasurer of the state of West Virginia, sees ESG as a destructive force. He is leading a movement of state governments that are terminating contracts with companies that adopt ESG policies, and blocking them from bidding on them.
“For us here in West Virginia, it is something that would ultimately destroy our economy, our people, and our way of life,” Moore says.
September 22, 2022 AMERICAN THOUGHT LEADERSViews 20K
ESG Could ‘Become Part of Our Credit Scores’: W.Va. State Treasurer Riley Moore on Ending Contracts With Companies Adopting ESG
Posted in Administrative State, Agenda 2030, Agenda 21, Banking, Big Business, Big Government, Bill Gates, China, Congress, Corporate Cronyism, Corruption/Crime, Cultural Marxism, Democracy, Democrats, Diversity, Economy, Election 2022, Election 2024, Elitism, Environmental Issues, Environmental Protection Agency-, Equity, Foreign Policy, Fracking, George Soros, Global Warming, Globalists, Globalization, GOP, Government Regulation, Government Waste and Fraud, Great Reset, Green New Deal, Industry, Infrastructure, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Marxism, Media, National Defense, Nationalism, Obama Administraiton and Policy, One World Government, Pensions, Political Correctness, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Regulations, Russia, Social Justice, Social Media, Socialism, Soros, Sovereignty, Sustainability, Transparency, Videos, Wall Street, Wokeness, Women's Issues, World Economic Forum | No Comments »
Monday, April 4th, 2022
VIDEO
Adam Andrzejewski: NIH Slow-Walking FOIA Requests for Fauci’s Finances; Potential Conflicts of Interest Among Scientists
AMERICAN THOUGHT LEADERS
“Fauci is the director of a sub-agency of a sub-agency of Health and Human Services. So how can he outearn everybody else at the federal level, including the president, including four-star generals in the United States military with millions of men and women underneath their command?”
I sit down with Adam Andrzejewski, the CEO and founder of the government watchdog organization OpenTheBooks.com, which tracks and publicizes government spending. In the last year alone, they filed over 47,000 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
On behalf of OpenTheBooks.com, Judicial Watch sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for documents on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s financials. They are also investigating conflicts of interest at the NIH and have filed a lawsuit demanding information on the roughly 1,000 NIH scientists, currently employed or retired, who receive royalties from third parties, such as pharmaceutical companies, for co-inventions.
But the NIH is slow-walking their requests, and only releasing documents covered in redactions of useful information, he argues. The NIH is releasing 300 pages a month over the course of 10 months (3000 pages total).
He breaks down what he and his team have found so far, and what else needs to be uncovered.
Posted in Big Business, Big Government, Big Pharma, Censoring, Center For Disease Control, Center For Disease Control - CDC, Coronavirus, Corruption/Crime, covid vaccines, Deep State, Dr Fauci, Government Regulation, Government Waste and Fraud, Judicial Watch, Legal Issues, Medical/Drugs, Pensions, Political Corruption, Politics, Transparency, Videos | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 15th, 2022
The brilliant Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com, is an amazing source for detailed information on the depth of the swamp in Washington. He is a numbers man and exposes exactly where our tax money goes. For background information, I have included in this email a video of his presentation at Hillsdale College entitled Depths of the Swamp. I sent this video out several years ago but we all need to see all the information that he exposes once again. Truly enough to make your blood boil ! Nancy
Forbes columnist says he was ‘canceled’ over Anthony Fauci coverage
By Joshua Rhett Miller February 15, 2022
A longtime Forbes contributor claims he lost his job over investigative stories on Dr. Anthony Fauci, including his looming $350,000 retirement package.
Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of OpenTheBooks.com, told Fox News Monday he was “canceled” by the magazine after eight years and more than 200 columns due to his coverage of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director.
“Clearly, Forbes’ editors did not want our oversight of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s finances on the website,” Andrzejewski told Tucker Carlson.
Andrzejewski said six top executives at the National Institutes of Health recently sent him and the magazine’s top content officer an email on his coverage.
“It was couched as a corrections email, but the corrections — there was basically no substantial corrections — and they quibbled about small things in my column,” Andrzejewski said. “But that was the excuse that Forbes used to cancel the column.”
PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE
VIDEO – ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI – THE DEPTHS OF THE SWAMP (Speaking at Hillsdale College) March 5, 2020
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQDEDR0JXdE
Posted in Big Business, Big Government, Big Pharma, Censoring, Center For Disease Control, Center For Disease Control - CDC, Coronavirus, Corruption/Crime, Deep State, Democracy, Democrats, Dr Fauci, Education, Elitism, FDA, Free Speech, Globalists, Government Regulation, Government Waste and Fraud, Great Reset, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), Intelligence, Joe Biden, Legal Issues, Media, Medical/Drugs, One World Government, Pensions, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Social Media, Spending, Taxation, Taxes, Totalitarian, Transparency, Tyranny, Videos, Wokeness | No Comments »
Thursday, October 1st, 2020
This is the bottom line for many Americans in how they vote ! Nancy
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Trump-Biden Stakes: Your Life Savings
Millions of Americans have 401(k)s, making high stock values a boon for Main Street—even in Scranton
By Grover Norquist Mr. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.
October 1, 2020
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: There is no idea proposed by the Democratic Party that will increase the value of your savings.
In Tuesday’s debate, President Trump mentioned his greatest gift to the American people—but if you blinked you might have missed it. “When the stock market goes up, that means jobs,” he said. Then he added, crucially: “It also means 401(k)s.” That point hits home among the millions of Americans with savings in a tax-advantaged investment vehicle, who watched their retirement funds rise in the prepandemic stock surge.
On stage, Joe Biden had nothing to say to this point. But in a Pennsylvania town hall this month, he pooh-poohed the stock market as a concern only of the distant rich. “All that Trump can see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about is the stock market, and telling them, ‘We’re going to do all right, everybody owns stock.’ How many of you all own stock in Scranton? In my neighborhood in Scranton, not a whole hell of a lot of people own stock.”
Mr. Biden’s critique might have made sense when he began his political career. But today, more than 100 million Americans save in 401(k)s, up from 19 million in 1990, along with many others using individual retirement accounts, 403(b)s and 529 college savings plans. And this growing “investor class” is increasingly aware. They receive frequent reports and can check their statements online anytime to see how their savings have grown, fallen or rebounded. They watched the Trump presidency drive up the value of their life savings.
“Wealth” is a slur to the left. Yet if you ask ordinary Americans not about their “wealth” but about their savings in a 401(k) or IRA, many can tell you its value to the penny. Skeptics argue that the market’s performance matters only to investors with the biggest stakes, but that argument gets things backward. Younger Americans, just beginning to save in an IRA or 401(k), have an even greater interest in pro-growth economic policies. They have more years to reap the benefits.
President Trump’s tax cuts, deregulation, energy policies, and appointment of self-restrained judges have put Americans on a faster course toward savings growth. On Election Day 2016, the last day when many Americans and Wall Street believed that we would be living under Obama-style economic policies, the S&P 500 stood at 2140. By this February, after three years of President Trump’s policies, the S&P peaked at 3385 right before the Covid shutdown—an increase of 56% since Mr. Trump was elected.
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Posted in Anti-Capitalists, Banking, Big Business, Big Government, Conservatism, Coronavirus, Democrats, Donald Trump, Economy, Election 2016, Election 2020, Free Enterprise, GOP, Government Regulation, Green New Deal, Grover Norquist, Industry, Joe Biden, Liberalism, National Debt, Pensions, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Redistribution of Wealth, Socialism, Transparency, Wall Street, Women's Issues | No Comments »
Monday, March 16th, 2020
This is an incredibly shocking video of a talk that Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of openthebooks.com gave regarding waste, fraud, corruption and abuse in all levels of our government at a Hillsdale College event . He names all those that are involved in the abuse of our taxpayer money. This is not a Republican or a Democrat issue as the corruption is widely spread throughout our government. If this level of corruption is allowed to continue, our country will be greatly damaged. Please share with all your contacts. Nancy
VIDEO – CULTURE OF CORRUPTION IN THE DEPTH OF THE SWAMP
Adam Andrzejewski | The Depth of the Swamp
Posted in Administrative State, Bernie Sanders, Big Business, Big Government, California, Congress, Conservatism, Constitution, Corporate Cronyism, Corruption/Crime, Culture Rot, Deep State, Defense Budget, Democrats, Dept of Defense, Donald Trump, Economy, Election 2020, Elitism, Entitlements, GOP, Government Regulation, Government Waste and Fraud, Healthcare, IRS, Joe Biden, Liberalism, Lobbyists, Medical/Drugs, Military, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Pensions, Political Corruption, Politics, Social Security, Spending, State Department, State Governments / Deficits, Taxation, Taxes, Transparency, Videos, Wall Street | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 29th, 2019
VIDEO – PUBLIC PENSIONS – AN ECONOMIC TIME BOMB PRAGER U
Who cares about public pension liability? Well, you should – after all, it’s the reason entire cities and even states are facing bankruptcy. Joshua Rauh, professor of finance at Stanford and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, paints a startling picture of just how broken the public pension system really is, and what will happen if we continue to ignore it
Posted in American History, Bankruptcy, Big Government, California, Democrats, Dennis Prager, Entitlements, Legal Issues, Liberalism, Pensions, Political Corruption, Progressive Movement, Seniors, Transparency, Unions, Videos | No Comments »
Saturday, July 13th, 2019
The Secure Act which is before the U.S. Senate for a vote can impact the taxes of many of us and our children and grandchildren. Take the time to look at this information and contact your senators if you would like to comment on how you want them to vote on this bill. Nancy
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Congress Is Coming for Your IRA
The Secure Act would upend 20 years of retirement planning and stick it to the middle class.
By
Like grave robbers opening King Tut’s tomb, Congress can’t wait to get its hands on America’s retirement-account assets. The House passed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act, known by the acronym Secure, in May. The vote was 417-3. The Secure Act is widely expected to pass the Senate by unanimous consent. While ostensibly helping Americans save for retirement, the bill would actually reduce the value of all retirement savings plans: individual retirement accounts, 401(k)s, Roth IRAs, the works.
The main problem with the Secure Act is that it eliminates the stretch IRA,the fixed star in the financial-planning firmament since 1999. The stretch IRA lets savers leave their retirement accounts to children, grandchildren or other beneficiaries. Under current rules, the recipients can parcel out the required minimum distributions from the accounts over the course of their actuarial lifetimes. Payouts tend to be relatively small for children but grow in size over the decades until the inherited IRA might comfortably provide for the child’s retirement through the power of tax-deferred compounding. A parent could die with the knowledge that, whatever vicissitudes their children might experience in life, they won’t have to worry about retirement.
Congress wants to kill this. The Secure Act gives nonspouse beneficiaries 10 years to pull out all the money in an IRA. The effect would be to make more of an IRA subject to higher taxes sooner, as distributions are made in supersize chunks. As much as one-third more of an inherited IRA would get gobbled up by taxes than under current rules. When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expires in 2025, taxes will rise across the board. If President Trump signs the Secure Act into law, the stage will be set for a taxpocalypse sometime in the next decade.
In exchange for its windfall under the Secure Act, Congress will push back the age at which retirees must take their first required minimum IRA distributions from 70½ to 72. This isn’t the deal American savers were promised when they made contributions to their IRAs the last 20 years. Before, the optimal approach was for savers to leave their IRAs to their children or grandchildren and stretch the payouts over decades.
Posted in Big Government, Congress, Legal Issues, Pensions, Senator, Seniors, Taxation, Taxes, Ted Cruz, Transparency, Wall Street | No Comments »
Sunday, December 31st, 2017
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
A Big, Beautiful Trump 2018 Issue
Civil-service reform could get bipartisan support, even in a rough election year.
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: We live in an administrative state, run by a left-leaning, self-interested governing class that is actively hostile to any president with a deregulatory or reform agenda.
It’s Lois Lerner, the IRS official who used her powers to silence conservative nonprofits. It’s the “anonymous” officials who leak national-security secrets daily. It’s the General Services Administration officials who turned over Trump transition emails to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the absence of a warrant. It’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Leandra English, who tried to stage an agency coup. It’s the EPA’s “Scientific Integrity Official” who has taken it upon herself to investigate whether Scott Pruitt is fit to serve in the office to which he was duly appointed. It’s the thousands of staffers across the federal government who continue to pump out reports on global warming and banking regulations that undermine administration policy.
More broadly, it is a federal workforce whose pay and benefits are completely out of whack with the private sector. A 2011 American Enterprise Institute study found federal employees receive wages 14% higher than what similar workers in the private sector earn. Factor in benefits and the compensation premium leaps to 61%. Nice, huh?
President Trump is on the hunt for a 2018 issue—a strong follow-up to his tax-cut victory that will motivate voters and gain bipartisan support. Democrats are pushing for an infrastructure bill, inviting the president to spend with them. House GOP leaders are mulling entitlement reform—a noble goal, if unlikely in a midterm cycle.
Fortunately for the president, there’s a better idea out there that’s already a Trump theme. It’s also a sure winner with the public, so Republicans ought to be able to pressure Democrats to join.
Let 2018 be the year of civil-service reform—a root-and-branch overhaul of the government itself. Call it Operation Drain the Swamp.
When Candidate Trump first referred to “the swamp,” he was talking about the bog of Beltway lobbyists and “establishment” politicians. But President Trump’s first year in office has revealed that the real swamp is the unchecked power of those who actually run Washington: the two million members of the federal bureaucracy. That civil-servant corps was turbocharged by the Obama administration’s rule-making binge, and it now has more power—and more media enablers—than ever. We live in an administrative state, run by a left-leaning, self-interested governing class that is actively hostile to any president with a deregulatory or reform agenda.
It’s Lois Lerner, the IRS official who used her powers to silence conservative nonprofits. It’s the “anonymous” officials who leak national-security secrets daily. It’s the General Services Administration officials who turned over Trump transition emails to Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the absence of a warrant. It’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Leandra English, who tried to stage an agency coup. It’s the EPA’s “Scientific Integrity Official” who has taken it upon herself to investigate whether Scott Pruitt is fit to serve in the office to which he was duly appointed. It’s the thousands of staffers across the federal government who continue to pump out reports on global warming and banking regulations that undermine administration policy.
More broadly, it is a federal workforce whose pay and benefits are completely out of whack with the private sector. A 2011 American Enterprise Institute study found federal employees receive wages 14% higher than what similar workers in the private sector earn. Factor in benefits and the compensation premium leaps to 61%. Nice, huh?
These huge payouts are the result of automatic increases, bonuses, seniority rules and gold-plated pensions that are all but extinct in the private sector. The federal workforce is also shielded by rules that make it practically impossible to fire or discipline bad employees, to relocate talent, or to reassign duties. These protections embolden bureaucrats to violate rules. Why was Ms. Lerner allowed to retire with full benefits? Because denying them would have cost far more—and required years of effort.
It’s been nearly 40 years since the last civil-service overhaul. Trump appointees are doing valiant work to shift the bureaucracy by canceling programs and using buyouts to cut staff. White House Counsel Don McGahn —a veteran at battling the federal career elite—is recruiting a generation of judicial nominees who are experts in administrative law. And Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, tapped another administrative-law genius, Neomi Rao, to head the deregulatory effort.
Even so, Trump officials spend most of their days fighting rearguard actions against their own employees when they should be implementing the president’s broad vision across the executive branch. Since congressional Republicans refuse to slash agencies, the least they can do is make oversight a priority.
Americans generally have a higher opinion of federal agencies than they do of Congress, though the Veterans Affairs and Justice departments have seen their ratings slip in recent years, as has the Environmental Protection Agency. But government overhaul is an issue that unites across parties on grounds of accountability, fairness and spending. Ask Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Civil-service reform’s bipartisan appeal means it has a shot in the Senate. The Chuck Schumers and Elizabeth Warrens will fight for their federal union buddies. But will Democrats like Jon Tester, Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly —who represent conservative or right-to-work states—go to bat for the likes of Lois Lerner? Will they defend the CFPB, the majority of whose employees take home six-figure salaries, when the median personal income in the U.S. is about $31,000?
If Democrats insist on engaging in class warfare, Republicans should take on the governing class. Washington is now home to a bureaucratic elite, fantastically paid and protected, divorced from economic reality, and self-invested in thwarting conservative policy efforts. Let’s drain the swamp, or at least make it smaller.
Write to kim@wsj.com.
Posted in Administrative State, Big Government, Corruption/Crime, Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2016, Election 2018, Environmental Protection Agency-, FBI, Government Regulation, IRS, Justice Department, Liberalism, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Pensions, Political Corruption, Politics, Progressive Movement, Radical Left, Resistance, State Department, Transparency | No Comments »
Saturday, April 9th, 2016
Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez in Washington D.C. on April 30, 2015. Photo: CQ-Roll Call,Inc.
April 7, 2016
President Obama’s regulators aren’t slowing down, alas. And on Wednesday they unveiled another part of their plan to push Americans out of private investment accounts and into government-run plans.
The Department of Labor says its so-called fiduciary rule will make financial advisers act in the best interests of clients. What Labor doesn’t say is that the rule carries such enormous potential legal liability and demands such a high standard of care that many advisers will shun non-affluent accounts. Middle-income investors may be forced to look elsewhere for financial advice even as Team Obama is enabling a raft of new government-run competitors for retirement savings. This is no coincidence.
Labor’s new rule will start biting in January as the President is leaving office. Under the rule, financial firms advising workers moving money out of company 401(k) plans into Individual Retirement Accounts will have to follow the new higher standards. But Labor has already proposed waivers from the federal Erisa law so new state-run retirement plans don’t have the same regulatory burden as private employers do.
This competitive advantage could be significant. Last month the board of California’s new “Secure Choice” retirement plan wrote to state legislators about their “exciting win” in Washington. They reported that employers enrolling workers in the new government-run plan “would have no liability or fiduciary duty for the plan.” Score! The California bureaucrats added that “we have been given the green light to auto-enroll workers into an Individual Retirement Account (IRA).”
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Posted in Banking, Big Government, Democrats, Economy, Government Regulation, Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Pensions, Progressive Movement, Wall Street | No Comments »