I am going to make this quick…
Over the past year, Matt Taibbi, who was with the Rolling Stone, and David Siorta wrote two devastating articles about the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which is a philanthropic group that was caught donating money to pension reform initiatives and donating money to NPR to broadcast a series about those looming pension crises around the country. John Arnold’s background as a billionaire banker started when he was with Enron and after the demise of the organization, he rose through the ranks of investment banking.
Following the Pennsylvania budget and the fact that Governor Corbett is holding the Philadelphia School District hostage over pension reform, there is a Laura and John Arnold Foundation pension advocacy group that has received between $100,000 and $500,000 from the two. The advocacy group is known as the Citizens to Protect PA Jobs. This is something that I stumbled upon on my way out to work, but I am sure there is some more digging to be had. Here is sampling of what they have been posting when following the “pension crisis.”
The term “reform” typically means to privatize/corporatize, as in turning the item to be “reformed” over to a profit-seeking, middleman corporation. To understand the meaning of “reform” we need to be aware of who uses the word, of who the “reformers” represent. Many believe we need to switch from Obamacare, a privatized approach, to a single payer/Medicare 4 All system, but that should NOT be framed as insurance “reform”, because such a switch would actually de-privatize the current private insurance function of collecting money and paying claims (in a far more efficient way by eliminating the 15-30% take the pig-in-the-middle insurance companies grab, replacing them with a single, non-profit-seeking public insurer) while preserving the private “delivery” part of health care–the doctors, hospitals, etc. who’d remain private enterprises. Maybe the word reform is fairly interchangeable and can describe two opposite philosophies, but it has always bothered me and even I find myself using it.
RLS:
So true. 95% of the time reform is used these days it is by these very groups. Rich people looking to rip off the rest of us taxpayers.
Have you seen their FB page:
https://www.facebook.com/protectpajobs
Hardly anyone “likes” their posts. And the only comments they seem to draw, lately, are ones you’d think they’d scrub/delete. Haha!