1. “The Irishman” is a magnificent, blood-spattered 3.5-hour cautionary tale about what happens when pension trustees fail to honor their fiduciary duty. (I can’t understand why this wasn’t mentioned in the reviews.) In the sequel, the feds take the Teamsters into ...
2. ... receivership and manage its Central States Pension Fund even worse than the Mob did when the cash was used to underwrite various colorful but not necessarily profit-maximizing ventures (blowing up people in their cars, etc.). Meanwhile Teamsters members lose their ...
3. ... livelihood to well-intentioned deregulation of their industry favored by conservatives, sure, but also by liberals like Ralph Nader and Teddy Kennedy. Trucking companies go out of business, beggaring Central States. The Teamsters elect Jimmy’s son, James Hoffa, to be ...
... their president. He has a tough re-election fight and withdraws the Teamsters’ sotto voce support for legislation to shore up Central States and other multiemployer plans b/c inevitably that entails some benefit cuts. The Obama Treasury Department ...
5. ... nervous about angering unions in an election year (2016) decides not to force the issue and so the insolvency problem gets handed off to the Trump administration. Trump appoints to run the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation ...
6. ... Mitch McConnell’s brother in law, who has never worked in government and hasn’t held any kind of job in many years. Which is an approach not all that different from that of the Teamsters in the golden age depicted in “The Irishman.” Congress appoints a joint ...
7. bipartisan “select”committee to figure out how to fix Central States and a few other multiemployer pensions that are on target to go bust (Central States in 2025) and take the PBGC down with them. Nobody covers the committee except my Politico team because pensions are ...
8. ... boring unless accompanied by guys getting garrotted, etc. The bipartisan committee therefore does zippo and nobody much cares. The End.
