[PEN-L:33323] letters to the editor [pension reform]

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-gunall22.1dec22,0,7400
024.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dletters
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Corporate America Wants Your Pension

December 22 2002

I just read John Balzar's Dec. 18 commentary, "Pension Fund Is About to
Go the Way of Your 401(k)," regarding President Bush's helping corporate
America reduce everyone's pension fund by saying they are only trying to
help the younger workers out. Has everyone in Washington gone crazy?
First we get raped by Wall Street and I lose almost all value in my
401(k); then Enron and the rest of the energy companies try to "game"
the California energy system. A major health industry provider is
accused of defrauding the U.S. government.

The government is pouring trillions of dollars into a program to shoot
missiles out of the sky that anyone with a scientific background (and
backbone) has called bad science. The phone companies are all but
bankrupt, along with the airlines. Forget about Iraq....

I end up getting laid off by a large soft-drink corporation after
working 14 long, hard years (losing my ability to accrue any more
pension benefits) because another company said it could do the work for
less expense. This second company then hires me and tries to get me to
falsify my paperwork, forcing me to quit. Now my elected officials want
to allow these corporations to drive the nail in deeper?

I must ask (after reading the Dec. 17 article in Business about Bush's
presence at a 1997 Enron party where there were jokes told about
accounting practices), has everyone in this country decided to loot
what's left? And people wonder why so many have given up voting.

Dave Gunall

Ventura

After reading Balzar's commentary on company pension funds, the
corporate connection (Enron, etc.) to the Bush administration and the
corporate greed that continues unabated, I have to wonder when and by
whom the preamble to the Constitution was changed from "We the people
... " to "We the corporations.... "

What voice do common citizens have in all of this?

Mitch Holder