Chris Christie Caught Stealing $1 Billion From Pensions

His corruption is actually beneficial to his presidential run because the most easily corruptible ones are the ones the corporations want in power. Easier to control.

a reply to: Swills

Gotta love ATS, when someone posts something like this, and on cue, people howl for blood without even taking 30 seconds to understand the issue and its context.

Unfunded / underfunded pension liabilities are a problem everywhere.

New Jersey's unfunded pension liability is estimated at up to $90B - oooh, let's burn Christie!

But New York City's unfunded liability is $46B, and New York State's is estimated between $260B and $307B

California's? $754B

Illinois? $331B

And Social Security/Medicare unfunded liability is about $49T (yes, *trillion* dollars).

Funny. Not a peep.

Oh, and just to be fair, it's not just the public sector - for example, GM has an unfunded pension liability of $27B.

Anyone care to explain why Christie deserves to be crucified for these shortfalls, but everyone else is cool?

a reply to: squittles

If you want to start a thread on each of those states be my guest. This is about Christie because when he took office the fees increased five times costing over a billion dollars! There was no gain for the employees, in fact they got themselves a loss, no payment or partial payments.

a reply to: squittles

It seems to me from the OP video, the problem is the sharp increase in fees to the pension managers on wall st
From $140M to $600M per year under Christie.

Not the portion pensions are underfunded by the state.

originally posted by: Xeven
a reply to: Swills

It's not just Christie it is all of them. It is our system, capitalism + freedom = Elitist win. When people have so much money they can pay for the news you get to be what they want you to get to mislead you into voting for their puppets.
It will take an American "Spring" to clear the garbage and reset. Probably another 25 years before that happens though.

People cant make informed choices when all the information is a lie.

We will all be dead by then, if it takes that long, it will never happen. The New One World Order, Rothschild's and their cronies, want to do away with the middle class. It will only be Master, Slave. They want to preserve the natural resources from the eaters, consumers.

Our government has been taken over completely, the Elites have always been in control, but now it's complete control. The next thing is to disassemble the United States and the people of the United States.

The end.

Christie is only the latest,but this is the name of the game now, rip off what ever you can, screw the STUPID, Trusting, people.

www.youtube.com...

If you look back in history,it has always been this way, Grandpa, Prescott Bush, crook, treason selling steel to the Nazi's, this is how, they got rich, also in plot to kill Woodrow Wilson.

How they bent the Great Man Tesla over.

Pearl Harbor.

911

I don't blame Christie for being a crook and creep. I blame the voters who put him and his kind in office.

a reply to: MOMof3

just wondering

just whom should we vote for?? It seems to me that both frick and frack are dishonest, lying, crooks.
Maybe we should attach a lie detector to potential candidates and set them in from of the citizens to be questioned with one of the requirements for being able to run for office is that they have to pass the the test?

a reply to: dawnstar

Oh gosh, that's a scarry thought, because that will ensure that only the most cunning and rehearsed psychopaths would win.

...ahh, well they already do. Perhaps the addition of sodium pentathol would help? Lol

a reply to: dawnstarT

I would like to run for an office, local. But it costs so much money and I would have to sell my soul to the highest bidder. Like the rest of the prostitutes in DC. That is our fault. We always get distracted how they are slowly taking freedoms away with stupid ideology wars and foreign wars and fear. We can't take the money out of it under the current system, but we can demand better problem solvers. When we get into economic trouble, why is the attack and focus always on the working, the working poor, and the poor. How much more can be taken from this group? We have proven over and over that wars in the ME solves NOTHING. And yet, a recent poll shows 60% think more war, money, blood will solve this ISIS problem. Unbelievable. Because a foreign politician spoke.

a reply to: crazyewok

Umm I wouldn't be so sure of that. Chances are its rampant in both of our countries, our politicians have been playing ball so their dirty laundry hasn't been aired. They get dirt on a lot of these big names in the event they try to pull a JFK and actually do something positive, they can either be discredited or eliminated is my guess.

WTF is it with New Jersey? Torracelli is dirty won't resign and then when its clear he won't win re election they have the NJ Supreme Court break the law so that old fossil Frank Lautenberg can come back from retirement. Then the MacGreavey scandal. Then Corzine who should have went to prison but he was a banker and a buddy of Obama's masters. Then Christie the pretend republican sells out and gets in bed with Obama( Lord, I hope not literally)and gets miraculously re elected. The bridge scandal and now this. I'm glad Christie's White House run is over. I still say he would have run against Hillary and then took a dive had he been the GOP nominee. Now Hillary's apparently finished and so is he and so is Jeb Bush for that matter. With Jeb and Hillary out of it, Christe out of it, we have a shot at putting a non cretin back in the White House. Its been decades.

N.J. pension system most underfunded of all 50 states

TRENTON — New Jersey's record of funding its pension system is the worst in the country, according to a new study by the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. That chronic underfunding has led to a deepening pension crisis and individual pension funds that could run out of money by 2027, officials say. In a comparison of state's contributions as a percentage of the annual required contribution, from fiscal year 2001 to 2013, New Jersey came dead last at 38 percent. Some states such as Connecticut, Montana, Maine and West Virginia exceeded required contributions.

I think I have this right.
My intrerpretation of the NJ Supreme Court's decision basically allows all three branches of the Federal or State government immunity from forcing any of the other branches the legal justification to backstop any elected official from doing what they were elected to do. What happened to "The Buck Stops Here!"?

This is like juggling several games off three card monte, while trying to thwart a 3D game of Monkey-n-The Middle concerning WE (the people['s]) civil rights enumerated in THE U.S. CONSTITUTION.

If we can't get "honest/trustworthy" canidates on the tickets due to the narrow options of a fixed game Two party system, or effectively pressure those currently in office (without the use of gun) to IMMEDIATELY affect a equitable resolution, the Courts convieniently abstain from duty (and thus quilt), and the President/Governor gets to be an "active" referee. How does the MADNESS stop!?!

I guess ANYONE who is counting on ANY type of pension had better just come to the conclusion that 20 cents on the U.S. Dollar is better than nothing at all.

thinkprogress.org...

The court handed a victory to the likely presidential contender just weeks before he is expected to officially launch his campaign. In a 5-2 ruling, the court found that there wasn’t an enforceable contract to require Christie and the legislature to come up with the full payment for the current fiscal year.

“This is not an occasion for us to act on the other branches’ behalf,” the court said, adding that it is the people’s responsibility to hold the elective branches of government responsible for their exercise of powers.

Tuesday’s order lets Christie’s administration off the hook from coming up with the additional payments, but the pension gap will continue to plague the state and restrain spending. New Jersey’s pension system is currently $80 billion in the red. Even after a state judge found in February that Christie is obligated to fulfill his payments promise, heproposed further cuts to the pension system. A state bond sale disclosure last year reported that the state’s unfunded liability had increased by almost $30 billion since 2011 and projected that six of New Jersey’s seven pension funds will go broke by 2027. The state’s fiscal situation has led to eight credit downgrades during Christie’s tenure.



touch.latimes.com.../-1/article/p2p-82261198/

The retirees whose pensions are at stake are mostly blue-collar workers, including mechanics, truckers and construction workers, who participate in what are known as multi-employer pension plans.

The plans were designed to allow workers flexibility to switch companies with ease, guaranteeing them a stable retirement in fields where they were likely to move frequently between employers.

Retirees in all 50 states are affected, although the biggest of the pension plans in danger of collapse is the Teamsters-affiliated Central States Pension Fund, which has some 410,000 participants in the Midwest and South. The average pension for Central States members is $15,000 per year.

www.businessinsurance.com...

The deficit in the PBGC's insurance program for single-employer plans fell to $19.3 billion, down from $27.4 billion in fiscal 2013. But that decline was more than offset by a huge rise in the deficit in the agency's insurance program covering multiemployer plans, which jumped to $42.4 billion, up from $8.3 billion in fiscal 2013.

“The program's increased deficit is largely due to the fact that several additional large multiemployer plans are expected to become insolvent within the next decade,” the PBGC said in statement.

The PBGC did not identify the names of the multiemployer plans that it expects to fail in the coming years. But in congressional testimony last year, the executive director of one huge plan — the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund in Chicago, which in 2013 had $17 billion in unfunded benefits — said the plan was headed toward insolvency.



en.m.wikipedia.org...

en.m.wikipedia.org... reply to: squittles