By the Numbers WITH
KELLYANNE CONWAY
14.2% The unemployment rate for construction-sector workers (who are not doing fine).
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
90 The number of women serving in Congress. Also, some 1,800 women serve in state-level elected of ice. Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics
2 The percentage points by which Mitt Romney is outpolling Barack Obama among women voters: 46 percent to 44 percent.
CBS News/New York Times Poll
$105.5 BILLION The average monthly increase in the federal budget deficit for each of the first eight months of the fiscal year — a whopping total of $844 billion, with a third of the year yet to go.
Fox News
DEAD EVEN The deadlock among women, when asked if they favored the contraception mandate — including the morning-after pill — in Obamacare: 43 percent for, 43 percent against. But support dropped to 38 percent when women were asked if religious organizations’ insurance companies should be required to provide it. Wall Street Journal/NBC News
8 FOR 8 The streak women are on in outnumbering men in turnout for presidential elections dating back to 1980.
20% The drop in the number of U.S. homes for sale, compared to one year ago.
Realtor.com
Pollster Kellyanne Conway is a television commentator and president and CEO of the polling company inc. /WomanTrend, headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Mayors Crack Down on Bloated Pensions
City leaders — including Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel — are taking action against spiraling union pensions.
BY JANE BLAKEMORE M
ayors nationwide are rein- ing in public-union pensions
that, according to published reports, are threatening to drown cities in nearly $4 trillion of red ink. The big surprise: Many of the may-
ors rolling up their shirt sleeves to take on the unions are Democrats — including former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago,
says Chicago city employees who retired in 1995 making $60,000 a year now earn over $100,000 annually. That handsome sum
stems from the automatic 3 percent annual cost-of- living increases built in to the city’s public-employee pensions. “Maybe in a diff er-
ent era that’s sustain- able,” said Emanuel in an appearance on Fareed Zakaria GPS. “It’s not sus- tainable now.” So far, Emanuel’s plan
Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics
San Jose is leading the way so “other cities can move forward to deal with this terrible crisis that is plaguing cit- ies across the state and the country.” One of those cities is San Diego,
where voters approved shifting all new city employees into a 401(k)-style plan. It would strictly limit the city’s unfunded liabilities. So just how big is the U.S. public-
pension crisis? Cities and states, which notorious-
ly underestimate such obligations in order to sell their bonds, claim their liabilities are less than $1 trillion. The Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute think tank, however, has reported that cities and states face a funding gap of $3 trillion. But even worse num-
to cut pension benefi ts has provoked deafening protests from the unions. But while Emanuel tries to reason with the unions, other U.S. mayors are moving ahead with reforms. In San Jose, Calif., a measure sharp-
ly increasing employee pension con- tributions for police and fi refi ghters passed by a whopping 70 percent to 30 percent. The city’s Democratic mayor, Chuck Reed, told Fox & Friends that
DESPERATE TIMES Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says past pension increases are “not sustainable now.”
bers emerged in June, when Charlie Gasparino of the Fox Business Net- work revealed a confi - dential JPMorgan study showing the actual liabili- ty at closer to $3.9 trillion. To put that stagger-
ing sum in perspective, it means the unfunded pension liabilities of state and local governments are 25 percent of the entire U.S. national debt — which stands at about $15.8 trillion. All of this red ink endangers fund-
ing for other social services, which may explain why Democrats as well as Republicans are now climbing aboard the pension-reform bandwagon.
AUGUST 2012 | NEWSMAX 17
ICONS/ISTOCKPHOTO / EMANUEL/AP IMAGES
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92