A 401K Under Every Teacher's Tree

One of the few advantages of the noblest, yet most disrespected and under-funded, profession in America is the public pension benefits that have assured a modicum of security for retired teachers over the years. Now the America' Choice privatizers that make up The Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce have joined the larger privazation effort to try scare up support nationwide for ending defined benefit pension plans by states. There is this today at Huffington Post by Gerald McEntee. A clip:

Despite this year's victories at the ballot box and against Social Security privatization, a recent article in The New York Times made clear that right wing attacks on Americans' retirement security continues.

The story itself was overly alarmist. It omitted key facts about a San Diego public pension case and failed to mention that, by and large, public pensions are well funded and backed by law.

The truth is, public employee pensions overall are fiscally sound and subject to strict oversight.

But these inconvenient facts mean nothing to right wing ideologues who want to gut Americans' retirement security. And they think the public will go along if they gin up a false crisis about the state of public pensions today.

Sound familiar? It should. That's exactly the strategy that Social Security privateers pursued last year. They failed miserably. But now they're back with a new plan to gut retirement security: pick off public employee pensions, then raid pensions in the private sector.

Their ultimate goal, of course, is to make pensions altogether a thing of the past; to promote a society in which the wealthiest continue to horde huge resources while the American Dream is dismantled for everyone else. To real people, that means risking financial turmoil just by getting sick or growing old. . .

Then there is this news today from Morgan Stanley on an all-time, anywhere, record-setting $40,000,000 holiday bonus for CEO, John Mack. How long do you think Americans will put up with this madness? What will be the tipping point to send an enraged public into the streets?