NYTimes Pushes The Big Lie On Pensions

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:




NYTimes Pushes The Big Lie On Pensions

by Jonathan Tasini
Friday 10 of June, 2011




.....(snip).....

Today, we get another view of the one-sided nature of the debate, this time courtesy of The New York Times editorial board, which publishes an editorial that is shameful, full of errors and is simply another example of the crisis we all face.

Let's lay down the first marker here: it's not a new point to say that the editorial board of The New York Times is out of touch with the lives of regular workers. I have never quite understood why a lot of non-conservative people, who spend an inordinate amount of energy obsessing about FOX News, refer to the Times as "liberal"...whatever that means. Not a single one of those editorial members has ever held a job, outside of maybe a summer job slicing pizza (riding to work in daddy's Saab or Benz), that required that they actually punch in at 9 a.m., or work in any place but a very comfortable office. They are entirely clueless when it comes to the rigors of...well, work.

It's a paper whose editorial page actually has been rigorously aligned against workers and for the so-called "free market". Oh, sure, it frets when the "free market" gets a bit out of control. But, it has been a loud champion of the very "free market" philosophies that have hurt workers, notably it's loud cheerleading for every one of the so-called "free trade" deals that have been rammed down the throats of workers, and regularly spouts the foolish nonsense about the phony debt and deficit "crisis".

So, it is not surprising that the cloistered, comfortable denizens of the newspaper observe:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo campaigned for office vowing to reduce the ruinous growth in New York State’s public pensions, and on Wednesday he offered a strong set of proposals that would also rein in New York City’s skyrocketing costs. Although unions howled, such sacrifice is essential to preserve the state’s and the city’s most essential services. It is also fair that New York’s public workers — long cosseted by Albany — share more of the burden.

Over the last decade, the state’s pension costs have risen tenfold, and the city’s have risen nearly eightfold, largely because lawmakers were eager to curry favor with public employee unions, which are among their most generous campaign contributors.

While schoolchildren crammed into crowded classrooms and poor families lost medical coverage, public employees preserved better benefits than those in many other states and did far better than private-sector workers. (emphasis added)

And:

Employees would have to work 12 years instead of 10 to qualify for a pension. The proposal would end the widespread practice of padding pensions with overtime earned in the last year of a career. Many of these limits would also apply to newly hired teachers, New York City workers and, significantly, police and fire employees, who have long enjoyed extraordinarily generous pension benefits.

...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=15203