(UPDATE: 10.14.2010, Law firms based in the District of Criminals are coming out of the woodwork and reading this post. Everybody wave!!)

Fascism is alive and well in the District of Criminals.  Fascism is the only way to describe a federal government so full of themselves that they believe seizing Americans’ 401(k)s is perfectly acceptable; nevermind the immorality or un-Constitutionality of the move.  They really do believe that it is their money and they just let us use it.

I found the link to this story on Market-Ticker and one needs to give credit to a master when it is due (which is just about every day with this guy. I am so freakin’ glad Karl is on the internet!)

Karl’s quote about this story:

If there’s a pitchfork moment in this country it had better show up fairly soon, because if this report is accurate you can bet that these clowns are going to find a way to attach this in some obscure section of a 2,000+ page “must pass” bill – another one of those “you have to pass it so you can read it” deals.

I know we are all just waiting and holding our breath for 11.2.2010 in hopes that flipping this congress will actually make some sort of difference in the slow, agonizing, ‘managed decline‘ of the United States under the progressives who by all appearances are throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the economy in an effort to collapse it.  This is the part, IMO, that the GOP hasn’t gotten the memo on yet (if their pledge is anything to go by); pitchforks before or after the economy completely tanks.

Here’s the story about Congress seizing 401(k)s, Human Events, 10.8.2010:

New Lame Duck Threat to Bailout Union Pensions

Democrats in the Senate on Thursday held a recess hearing covering a taxpayer bailout of union pensions and a plan to seize private 401(k) plans to more “fairly” distribute taxpayer-funded pensions to everyone.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee heard from hand-picked witnesses advocating the infamous “Guaranteed Retirement Account” (GRA) authored by Theresa Guilarducci.

(You can find the blistering interview with Guilarducci by radio talk show host Mark Levin in 2007 at the link).

In a nutshell, under the GRA system government would seize private 401(k) accounts, setting up an additional 5% mandatory payroll tax to dole out a “fair” pension to everyone using that confiscated money coupled with the mandated contributions.  This would, of course, be a sister government ponzi scheme working in tandem with Social Security, the primary purpose being to give big government politicians additional taxpayer funds to raid to pay for their out-of-control spending.

From written hearing testimony submitted by Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Vice President Ross Eisenbrey:

“We need a comprehensive solution that addresses interrelated problems. For example, a system that places most of the burden for retirement saving on individuals will always have to wrestle with the problem of pre-retirement loans and withdrawals (simply plugging these leaks will not work, because many workers would stop contributing to the system). A system that relies on tax incentives to promote individual retirement savings will necessarily tend to favor high-income workers who can afford to save more and who benefit the most from these tax breaks. Conversely, a truly universal system would need to shield low-income workers from out-of-pocket costs or wage cuts. EPI has published and advocated what we feel would be an excellent national supplemental retirement plan, the Guaranteed Retirement Account which was authored by Prof. Teresa Ghilarducci, Director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research. “

The EPI is housed on the third floor of the building occupied by the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, a hard-core leftist group whose flavor of socialist policy has brought you the current blend of elitist socialism and crony capitalism bankrupting the American economy.  Which speaks volumes about EPI and the Democrat leadership’s choice of witness.

Brett McMahon, spokesman for the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a trade association, warns this hearing exposed part of a process that may come as early as the November lame duck push to bailout union pensions by attaching the bailout to an across-the-board extension of the current tax rates.

“I am deeply concerned that they will try to attach something like the Casey bill or the Casey bill in and of itself to tax cut extensions bill that is inevitably going to have to be dealt with at some point during the lame duck session,” McMahon told HUMAN EVENTS.

As reported in HUMAN EVENTS the Casey bill from Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) is a new entitlement program that would set up a permanent bailout of the union multi-employer pension plans that are desperately underwater through a new “fifth fund” at the government Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).  Casey’s bill would create a line item on the federal budget through the PBGC to fund these union pension bailouts annually — union pensions that are underwater as a result of mismanagement that pre-dates the 2008 financial upheaval.