Fix The Debt Scam

The IPS did a study last year on the "Fix the Debt" crowd, CEOs of huge corporations who think Social Security and Medicare need to be cut to "save" the country, but not mentioning their own multi-millions in personal pensions and the underfunded employee pensions their companies maintain.  Here are the findings.

Key findings:

• The 71 Fix the Debt CEOs who lead publicly held companies have amassed an average of $9 million in their company retirement funds. A dozen have more than $20 million in their accounts. If each of them converted their assets to an annuity when they turned 65, they would receive a monthly check for at least $110,000 for life.
• The Fix the Debt CEO with the largest pension fund is Honeywell’s David Cote, a long-time advocate of Social Security cuts. His $78 million nest egg is enough to provide a $428,000 check every month after he turns 65.
• Forty-one of the 71 companies offer employee pension funds. Of these, only two have sufficient assets in their funds to meet expected obligations. The rest have combined deficits of $103 billion, or about $2.5 billion on average. General Electric has the largest deficit in its worker pension fund, with $22 billion.

Those wise guys feel they're entitled to offer lumps of coal to the 99% while increasing their own wealth, often at taxpayer expense - look for many of those pensions to be "bailed out" by the government down the road, while the CEOs don't sacrifice a dime.  Looks like a scam to me.

Picking our Pockets

Move over too big to fail banks, there's another monopoly in town that has jacked up the cost of living to new heights, I'm talking internet monopoly here.  The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has published an article on its blog that points out that the companies dominating the internet broadband market (AT&T, Concast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, et al) are selling internet internet access for about $500 / Year while it costs them less than $100 / subscriber, making a tidy 80% gross margin on that service.

How do they manage to keep this racket going?  Why the American way, they hire hundreds of lobbyists and partner with ALEC to buy protection against competition.  They do this with the Municipal Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguards Act the model legislation that outlaws communities efforts to build their own broadband networks, because that would be infringing on "Free Enterprise".  Such measures have now passed in 19 states, including our neighbors in Washington State. This is the worst of crony capitalism at work.
 

Fix the Debt Scammers

Our corporate friends at the well funded "Fix the Debt" campaign are still hoping to get "their" tax-cut too.  The Institute for Policy Studies tells how.  Fix the Debt leaders lamented that “Washington missed this magic moment to do something big to reduce the deficit, reform our tax code, and fix our entitlement programs.” in their Press Release.  What they aren't saying is that they're hoping for HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS in "tax reform" measures that they're pushing.  These are the richest of the rich, with companies that pay their CEO's more than they pay in US taxes! 

IPS comments  "The hypocrisy was stunning. We documented, for example, how many of the campaign’s leaders had contributed massively to the national debt through tax-dodging tricks. Twenty-four of them had even paid their CEOs more in 2011 than their firms paid in corporate income taxes. We also calculated that the average Fix the Debt CEO calling for cuts to Social Security themselves had pension assets of $12 million, enough to garner a $65,000 monthly retirement check starting at age 65. "