Comments on: Defined-benefit pension must go

By: Not Cox

Not Cox — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:01:17 +0000

You idiots at Cox/AJC have no feel for Atlanta. You have blown out so many good reporters your paper mirrors nothing of life here present or past. Jim Axel dies 30 hours ago and not a mention from you blowhards. 34 years on Atlanta television covering our lives for decades and you clowns are too busy with Souper Jenny recipes or a rapper getting tossed out of a posh hotel. This is a cool city with almost 5 million people. Your paper deserves it’s fate. I laugh when I walk past your machines charging a dollar. Congrats clown team.

By: mike

mike — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:35:21 +0000

I’ll suscribe to defined contribution the day the brokers on Wall Street are honest.

It’ll never happen.

Bush tried to turn Social Security into just such a plan (defined contribution) and it would have broken almost every senior citizen in this nation.

What do you have against, senior citizens, Wooten? Leave their fixed incomes alone.

By: Dusty

Dusty — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:34:15 +0000

Rone, honey, whatcha doing up at 4:25 in the morning? The DTs keep you awake?

Now be a good lil’ lib and get some rest and rehab. Best wishes.

Here’s a huggy bear just for you. Enjoy….

By: Rone

Rone — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:35:40 +0000

I gotta say this one last thing…

I’ve been reading your blog on and off for about 5 years, and I have never read anything that even comes close to the devils words himself, (or herself) than that of Dusty. She makes everyone else on this blog look like a genius.

She needs to step back, and ease off on the Manechevits. She makes all of your contributors look like Nobel Prize winners. Which, by the way, is a good thing in this world.

Take it sleazy, wingnuts.

By: Rone

Rone — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:26:25 +0000

Hey Woots,

Have Perdue hold another prayer meeting on Gov’t property. I need this rain to stop.

Will the big G answer my prayers?

Forever yours, big woots!

Keep on prayin’!!!

By: John

John — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:55:03 +0000

Defined benefits NEED TO GO!!! it is going to kill our economy over time…Unions are a joke they remind me of ACRON, our companies do not put kids to work! this is not the 1920’s. We are in a global economy these days, we need to be competitive otherwise the jobs will go overseas and at some point the unions will have to go after white collar workers to join their rolls since they have ran off all the manufacturing jobs in the USA. As for gov’t workers no offense, but has anyone ever had to goto downtown ATL for anything that deals with Gov’t??? i do not need to explain, one word LAZY, lets stop giving or gov’t employees lifetime jobs and full pensions and hire people who will work hard and give a crap.

By: A World (Atlanta) Without (Lisa) Border

A World (Atlanta) Without (Lisa) Border — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:27:23 +0000

Wow. First Obama gets a Nobel Prize and then the Navy names a ship after Medgar Evers.

Two african-american community organizers honored in the same week?

No wonder the GOP is so angry. I think they have the ‘vapors’…what ever happened to our southern traditions.

By: JohnD

JohnD — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:17:13 +0000

Jim — your bias is showing. You don’t seem to mind that metro Atlanta pays more in taxes than it gets back. Why whine about gridlock in Atlanta when GDOT and the State GOP purposely siphons off tax dollars from where the people are (metro Atlanta) and spend it where the politicians live (South Georgia)?

Oh — I also bet that Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize AND the Navy naming a ship after Medgar Evers is really giving you heartburn.

And Medgar Evers was honored by a white southern male (a democrat, of course) but it still must stick in your craw. I mean after all Medgar was just another community organizer trying to overturn the traditional southern society.

Almost makes you want to retire? Hint. Hint.

By: joeblow

joeblow — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:59:11 +0000

It is either thru benign neglect, willful intent or simple ignorance (all of which are inexcusable for members of an editorial board of a major newspaper) that Mr. Wooten’s long term misrepresentation of ‘defined benefit’ pension programs continues, and is allowed to continue.
Item- Many, if not most, city, county and state employees do not pay into social security. Outside of any voluntary savings, investment or IRA involvement, the defined retirement benefit is the only source of retirement income for tens of thousands of Georgia’s public servants. In his statements re: the City of Atlanta, I challenge you to find the instance where Mr. Wooten has made this simple fact a part of his continuing misinformation campaign. This would be less of concern if not for the fact that members of the Atlanta City Council and state legislature have occasionally quoted Mr. Wooten verbatim, albeit rarely with attribution.
Item- Virtually all defined benefit plans rely on the revenue generated by the investment of the funds contributed by employees and their employer in long term investments in equities, bonds and other ’safe’ revenue generating entities or enterprises. Mr. Wooten seems to be unaware, or unwilling to recognize, that it was the economic policies of those ‘right thinking’ conservative federal policy makers and business leaders, along with lax oversight by conservative state leaders, that precipitated the problematic world wide investment scenarios which, in turn, created revenue issues for, not just public employee pension funds, but for corporate pension funds (both defined benefit and defined contribution), small business retirement funds, hundreds of financial management firms and thousands, if not millions, of individual financial professionals. Most government and corporate defined benefit pension plans, just like all the rest, would be doing just fine otherwise. Mr. Wooten needs to admit to himself, if not to anybody else, that this single fact is the major reason why Democrats deservedly occupy the White House and control Congress.
Item- It isn’t just the long term financial security of those enrolled in defined contribution plans that is at stake. America’s large public employee defined benefit plans are some of the most influential and (necessarily) financially conservative investor groups in the world. In fact, most defined benefit plans have internal financial and investment criteria aimed at managing risk that specifically prohibit involvement in entire arenas of otherwise broadly exercised investment activity. Advocating for the dissolution of these types of entities in favor of pension plans oriented towards shorter time horizons, shorter term gain and hands-on, day to day ‘management’ by huge numbers of largely unschooled, unaware and financially inexperienced individuals (you and me) only promises more large scale financial, social and economic volatility and an ever increasing lack of ’security’, in all of its forms, for us all.
Item- Unlike those enrolled in defined contribution plans, who are generally allowed to walk away with all contributions free of any internally imposed penalty, and who escape IRS penalties if the proceeds are appropriately managed, most defined contribution plans impose substantial financial penalties on those who elect to collect monthly benefits or ‘cash out’ of the plan before a certain age (usually 62 or 65). This is in addition to any IRS penalties for early withdrawal.
Item- Mr. Wooten also doesn’t mention that not long ago, that participants in the City’s defined benefit plan weren’t vested in the plan until their 16th year of service. In other words, one had to work for the City for 15 years and one day to collect any of their employer’s contribution, which otherwise remained in the fund. This was changed during the revamping of the plan in 2005/2006.
Item- In Mr. Wooten’s latest, ‘Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all’, he writes, ‘Pick a topic:’. I assumed he was aiming that at the general reader, not the headline writer, who had their choice of nine different topics, but decided to go with ‘Defined pension must go’. One can only think that this was actually aimed at the remaining members of an internal AJC audience struggling to deal with the impact of much larger economic issues on their personal financial futures in historically trying financial times.
Speaking of which, I’d be more than happy to share my FT subscription with those members of the editorial board (and the intern working as headline writer) if they’d like to bone up on some economic basics.

By: Hillbilly Deluxe

Hillbilly Deluxe — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:09:22 +0000

“Politics” is an inherently corrupt field

Or as we say up here in the hills, “if they ain’t a crook when they go in, they will be time they come out”.

Ensign, Rangel, and probably a few dozen more we don’t know about, need to go.