b: I wonder why the pensions, like the unions before them, are in the crosshairs of the financial elite. Then I remember, most of the power structure are Karma Cultists (aka “The Just-World Fallacy). To a Karma Cultist, a union or pension are devices that undermine the rules of Karma by insulating people from the consequences of their actions. So of course, they must be dismantled. A karma cultist is used to being a determiner of Good/Bad, and any institution that seems to upset that power will be destroyed.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/07/the-just-world-fallacy/

Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 21 2011 15:49 utc | 3

great catch b , this was completely off my radar.

Posted by: annie | Jan 21 2011 17:04 utc | 5

The aim is to destroy the Unions.
Maybe in some or many? cases, Unions and the pensions they have garnered for some of their ppl are hopelessly extravagant or even illegitimate – douple-dipping, fraud, nominations to non-work posts, cronyism, back-door deals for votes, extravagant stipends, per diems, and so on.
Some (?) of the Unions played the competitive game – not against the main adversary, but played it in the corporate fashion, the top dogs gaining many privileges, while ignoring all those below. When individual competition is a holy standard and riches afford happiness and success, a hierarchical structure is enforced by all means, even criminal ones, and the upper strata are compelled thru greed and hubris to wield whatever slim wedge of power they hold – that’s what you get.
Yet, Unions are crippled players in this end-game. Practically, disposable thrash – minor players easily eliminated by outsourcing, globalization, political pressure on key figures for that half million, etc.
The attack against them and Gov. employees in general is set to escalate. Hate against them is easily whipped up, in a race of spiteful blame and sinking to the bottom – the mirage of ‘lower taxes’, ‘less Gvmt. interference’, etc.
The generous pensions will be toast. Except for key Gvmt. employees….
Welcome to Iraq! Or rather, the new Iraq…
One concrete ex. Oba since before election, aimed to break teacher’s Unions.
He has kick-started what Bush did not think of, approve of, or dare.
Bush’s ed. program, No child Left behind was traditional, dumb, pedestrian, stupid and obnoxious, according to many specialists. Others welcomed it as sensible, traditional (again), at heart, a proper path, sincere and egalitarian. Bush-type programs (surely Laura influenced) have been implemented since education began. Even in Sumer, the earliest traces about ed systems in writing, parents complained about skill and drill, teacher power, lack of creativity, rigid standards, etc.
O’s is called Race to the Top and will enforce merit pay for teachers, computer tracking of all students, competition between schools, and more. If Obama is elected for a second term public education in the US will be an empty simulacrum, game officially over.
Looked for just one link (there are thousands) and perhaps this one raises some of the key points: quote:
A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy—where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision—investing in education yields great bang for the buck.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

Posted by: Noirette | Jan 21 2011 17:24 utc | 7

Sad to see that even here, the thieves are more than halfway to success. People falling for the old divide and rule trick who have divided their community into baby-boomers and non-baby-boomers, or unionists and non-unionists, are making the job of the rich so much easier.
Identity politics is a two edged blade that must be used carefully. Certainly there have been times when certain sections of society have been marginalised because of undue concentration on society at large, so it was sensible to direct targeted programs towards those policies.
In this case it makes no sense, everyone gets old and as much as the thieves would like to have the community divided on this issue, there is absolutely no sound basis for doing so.
I used to watch this process in microcosm when I was a unionist. Back then we had some good benefits that we had earned through protracted industrial action over the decades. When I first began work many of these benefits were across the board for everyone but trade unions had become flabby, full of university graduates eager to embark on a political career who had been assisted into their positions by ‘pragmatic’ politicians of pseudo-leftist political parties who wanted to chase the real left outta the political party that the real left had established.
So they would wage war on the union activists who had been properly trained at endless communist party or Trotskyist seminars & training courses. (I watched it happen with bemusement, not being either CP trained or having a senior pol as a ‘sugar daddy’ I seemed to get left alone) There were all sorts of set ups & accusations and the sort of infighting that drives members out the door. Just what the ‘pragmatists’ wanted.
Anyway the flabby ‘pragmatic’ unions allowed many conditions to be peeled back and obliterated in the industries where organisation was not strong. Pretty soon the only workers who had retained conditions were those in ‘staunch’ unions that understood the basis of all bargaining with the rich & powerful must be solidarity.
The situation remained in stasis for a while but the media began its cranking up of the public about those workers who had continued to fight for their rights, so whenever we went into a pay round the employers would always throw these benefits on the table, demanding we trade off holidays or allowances for a pay rise that wasn’t even gonna cover the inflationary devaluation of workers’ pay packets.
We told them to stick it of course and took action against the employers. But then the bosses came up with a trick that too many fell for. They said “OK I know your members fought for these benefits and have worked hard over the years & deserve them. But what about the kids who come along today, they haven’t fought for shit & get the benefits of all the safety we have worked together to implement”
(yeah right the bosses had fought tooth & nail to prevent much of it they didn’t care how many got killed or injured on the job cause of the universal accident compensation we had also fought for t& which they had initially resisted).
The bosses tried a kicker “You know that most of these kids we are fighting over aren’t even members of your union, why do you care about them?” That is just too ironic, we had tried for years to get pay rises that only applied to members but the government had passed a law outlawing that at the behest of these blokes sitting on the other side of the table.
We gave it the big knock back because we knew that allowing any conditions to be reduced for some was the thin end of the wedge. So then the employers went around the union straight to workers with their ‘new improved internal communications systems”. We had kept everyone in the loop about negotiations but that didn’t stop beat ups about the union knocking back a pay rise promised to everyone because we were too busy fighting for non-members blah blah blah.
Many of the workers got it. That as soon as we agreed to a condition only applying to existing employees that it would spread to everyone eventually, and they stayed staunch. Then the same peeps that hadn’t paid dues for all the benefits they had but hadn’t fought for began joining up to force a fight. In many cases the employers were offering a couple of grand in the hand, plus a pay rise just to agree no new employees would get say; an accommodation allowance when they were transferred to an area where the cost of housing was much higher than the area they had been working in.
Despite what the media may say most unions are very democratic and very transparent. They only function effectively when that is the way things are done.
So in the end many allowances were traded off for a few pieces of silver. Then five years later when there were nearly as many workers who weren’t entitled to the allowance as were, the whole stinking process would begin again, except this time it was those who didn’t have an entitlement to the allowance who were being told that they were missing out on a pay rise because of the ‘feather-bedders’ who still had their accommodation allowance etc.
After a couple of years no-one had an accommodation allowance. Wait that’s not quite right, some people did, the first division employees who were the permanent section heads and above kept always their allowances & got extra ‘performance bonuses’ whenever they screwed the rest of the employees. That included all the bosses who we had been fighting with over the years.
The room for division by the powerful is so much bigger now. Within the EC they can set the Irish against the Portuguese, the Germans against the Spanish. In amerika it is the whitefellas against the African americans and the African americans against the ‘illegal migrants’ etc.
In the case of pensions though that isn’t quite as effective as creating across the board inter-generational warfare between amerikans or Europeans, while still keeping the pressure up on the racial ethnic and ‘legal’ divisions. For at least the last decade there has been a continuous assault on a group of humans originally defined by Madison Ave paid liars, the baby-boomers’.
Too bad that the group they refer to are incredibly diverse and would have been split into at least three seperate marketing groupings had more recent marketing methods been utilised back then. Now no one uses them that is serious about accurately considering a society. These artificial delineations are false and have been demonstrated to be false, why else does google et al look for what they believe to be far more accurate deliniations than these creaking generational groupings, whenever they have advertisers who really want results?
There is only one division that matters, it is the same division that has always existed; that is the division between the rich pricks and the rest of us. The haves and have-nots, the property owners and the indebted. Whatever you want to call it. There is a helluva a lot more of us than them and we always win if we stick together. That is exactly why the rich are forever trying to divide us and is the reason why no one in their right mind should be bringing these divisions into any serious discussion amongst people about the way forward.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 21 2011 22:55 utc | 9

Frankly, DiD, the money men only care about making money, not about whether the poor are killed in the course of making it.

Posted by: alexno | Jan 21 2011 23:36 utc | 11

alexno at 8, I agree with your interpretation. The overarching world view, and aim, and modus operandi, that you describe (the different elements of the system are blended together and not very distinct), affords more concrete, lower-level bullet-point type goals. One can imagine them on a mentally hovering power-presentation, e.g. the uselessness of the working class (produce things? why? – anyway there are too many surplus workers in the world), or see them clearly stated in libertarian circles – Unions who skew the free market, prevent salaries from finding their proper level, etc. As you say yourself, “secondarily.”
What ppl see on the ground though, and what they will *end up* by reacting to, are those bullet point aims, the effect on them and their families. That is addressed to Debs, as well. It has nothing to do with identity politics, except insofar as scapegoating and demonizing is used by the other side. (Fat cat Union employees, scammers, etc.)
I was a Union Boss for 2 years in a very strange situation. Most of the employees considered me a good, nice person (etc.) but they were not very interested in my going to bat on their behalf, as they considered themselves (and were) very privileged ppl, somewhat above ‘all that’. They were manipulated by the bosses in ways you would not believe. (EU country.) So my personal experience colors the supposed bullet points.
The pillagers or extractors will end up being pillaged…(as in the Roman Empire…)

Posted by: Noirette | Jan 23 2011 16:44 utc | 13