San Diego City Employees pension fund ailing

Read what I said again johnny. I didn't say 40 % of the F1000 have frozen or closed plans. What I said was according to this report since 2005, 40% of the F 1000 plan sponsors have at least one plan that is either frozen. That means 40% of those companies having DB plans not 40% of the entire F1000. So if 40% of the companies HAVING DB PLANS are frozen/closed then the other 60% are not. As I read it, there are only those 2 optionsfrozen/closed or open. And these are specifically DEFINED BENIFIT plans and not DEFINED CONTRIBUTION plans. I don't believe I have refered to any DC statistics in any of my posts. Let me make that a little clearer for you. From the WWW report referenced in a previous post : FORTUNE 1000 list year-2008 Number of DB sponsors-624 New DB sponsors with one or more frozen plans -31 DB sponsors with active plans-455 Cumulative number of sponsors offrozen plans-169 If you would be so kind as to point out where DC plans are referenced. I have no idea what kind of plans, if any, the other 376 F1000 companies not addressed sponsor. I was addressing your specific comment on DB plans when you said: ""Corporate America" does not have the DB pension plan anymore, and the FEW that did stopped them years, even decades ago." I don't see "private sector companies" or DC plans in there anyplace,. Do you??? And obviously they weren't stopped "years, even decades ago."
— March 31, 2009 7:24 p.m.

San Diego City Employees pension fund ailing

Response to #1219 Don Why is it that when someone presents information that differs from your opinion, that you find it hard to believe?? Did you even bother to look at any of the information before you made your crass remark? If you care to follow the last link provided in post 1217 you would find chart #6 brakes down the F 1000 companies by industry. You would see at the bottom line that 624 Fortune 1000 firms maintain DB plans, that 455 of the firms have left their plans open to new hires and that 169 firms have frozen their plans. According to this report since 2005, 40% of the F 1000 plan sponsors have at least one plan that is either frozen or closed to new hires, or put another way, 60% have plans that are OPEN to new hires. I personally don't care as I am fortunate enough not to have to rely on any kind of corporate pension plan. But if you disagree, if you think these reports are wrong, if you think I'm just making stuff up then I challange you to show me the contradicting evidence and it's supporting links.
— March 31, 2009 12:52 p.m.

San Diego City Employees pension fund ailing

No problem, johnny. As for IBM and HP I know about them because because my girlfriend's father Robert was an HP Field service Tech who retired in 2007 and my parents owned IBM stock. I sold most of it when my mother passed away in 2002 but I still get all of the IBM mailings and news letters and such. The other info came from a few different articles in Business finance which compliled it's info from IRS reports, Dept. of Labor report's and some Wtson Wyatt reports. I'm familiar with Wastson Wyatt because one of my oldest friends works for Booz Allan Hamilton, in DC and his wife works for Watson Wyatt in DC. Military strategy and financial management, what a combination huh. The 2008 info on Fortune 1000 Db plans came striaght from a chart in a WW release, the last link I provede in 217. For the 2003 info, to which you said "And saying 630 of the Fortune 1000 do offer DB's is one of the biggest whoppers I have heard in years", that info came straight from another BF article. "HP is not the only company that is freezing or terminating its defined-benefit pension plan. According to an analysis conducted by Watson Wyatt, the rate at which Fortune 1000 companies froze or terminated these plans increased significantly last year even as the average funding level for plans grew. The analysis found that although nearly 63 percent of these companies sponsored a defined-benefit pension plan in 2004, 71 of those businesses, or 11 percent, had a frozen or terminated plan, and another 25 companies (4 percent) had pension plans that were closed to new hires. In 2003, 45 companies (7 percent) of Fortune 1000 plan sponsors had a frozen or terminated plan. (See The Big Freeze, below.) I couldn't find the link yesterday, but here it is. http://businessfinancemag.com/article/uncertain-f…. I really don't care whether you believe me or not. I'm not just pulling numbers out of thin air. If I read a WW study that says 455 Fortune 1000 companies sponsores active DB plans in 2008 and you say something else, who do you think I'm going to listen to.
— March 31, 2009 12:30 p.m.

San Diego City Employees pension fund ailing

Response to 1188/1190 you did not say "private sector companies" you said corporate America. I don't believe the phrase connotes either private sector companies or publicly traded companies specifically. However I specifically refered fortune 1000 companies in my post. I believe in order to make the Fortune 1000 list, a company has to be based in the United States, and be publicly traded. My humblest apologies if that was unclear. As far as IBM/HP DB plans you said "The few that do have them have them for employees who were grandfathered in, not any employee that has been hired within the last 15 years. I was simply pointed out that IBM didn't stop it's plan until 2006: "Armonk, NY - 05 Jan 2006: IBM today announced that it has changed its U.S. defined benefit pension plans and that it plans to redesign its 401(k) savings plan, effective in January 2008. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/19… and HP also stopped there plan in 2006: In January 2006, HP closed its pension plan to new and younger employees and offered those individuals a beefed-up 401(k) plan in which the company matches 100% of employees' 401(k) salary deferrals, up to 6% of pay." http://hpwfr.blogspot.com/2007/02/hewlett-packard… As for the Fortune 1000 numbers, which I specified were from 2004 number, not 2008/9 numbers there are hundreds of articles, so try reading them. You can start with: "In a separate study of the 627 Fortune 1,000 companies sponsoring DB plans in 2006, Wyatt found that 113 had frozen or terminated their plans, or announced that they were, as of April 2006, compared with 71 in all of 2004. An additional 49 sponsors closed their plans to new hires by that time in 2006, up from 25 in 2004." http://benefitslink.com/articles/guests/2009-03-1… and this : http://www.watsonwyatt.be/us/pubs/insider/pdfs/20… BTW, as of 2008, 624 Fortune 1000 companies sponsored DB plans and 169 (27%) had frozen them.
— March 30, 2009 8:17 p.m.

Meter Eater

You've seen Cool Hand Luke one too many times johnny. The beheadings and vandalism happened and Berkley spent like a million dollars to buy a couple of thousand new meters as replacements. But there was no increase in rates back then. Two years ago the rates went from .75 to 1.00 which was the first change since the early 90's. When we were up there in Jan, the we talking about going to 1.25 or 1.50 an hour and putting in about 1000 more meters. Don't know what happend. BTW, Berkley's meter accuiracy is certified by the county weghts and measures people. Does anyone know who certifies San Diego's or if they are even certified at all???
— March 30, 2009 4:29 p.m.

Escorts & Engagements

Same to you furry. A toast to the ladies!!!
— March 27, 2009 9:39 p.m.

Escorts & Engagements

You mean standing on some kind of pedestal, legs together, back arched and face up against the wall??? Yeah really natural and really comfortable looking. Mine would shoot me if I asked her to pose like that for anything other than a picture. Which by being posed, makes it not natural. BTW: 5'7" dirty blonde B/C (depending) smooth no tan lines 5 tats 4 piercings not counting ears Cali girl with lots of "personality" and a healthy dose of sassiness. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Im lucky to be with her.
— March 27, 2009 9:19 p.m.

Escorts & Engagements

#188 I'm talking about the pose, dummy. When was the last time you walked into the room and your girlfriend, if you hsva one, was in that position???
— March 27, 2009 8:48 p.m.

Escorts & Engagements

I read someplace that Sebastian used a pseudonym because of legal issues with his own record company over using his own name. Later on he admitted it was actually embarrasment over Morrison's " incident " in Miami and he didn't want to be associated with the Doors at that time. Did you ever hear anything like that???
— March 25, 2009 12:15 p.m.

Escorts & Engagements

I agree with you on the Blind Faith cover. In that tone, I think the Roxy Music or even Electric Ladyland are better. One of the reasons I like that cover is the photo. I like simple and plain, as in the link above, but also the literal graininess, or roughness as I have refered to it. Just seems to fit the band. And of course the story also. Never got any autographs on my copy, but I did meet Robby Kreiger and John Densmore once. For my company, I was up in Northridge a couple of days after the quake. The closet place I coould find a hotel room was Old Towne Pasadena. My girlfriend was with me and after dinner one night we wandered into little place for a drink, not even seeing the poster by the door. The first person we noticed was the bartender. It was the Irish guy from the real world when it was up in Venice for season 2. During our conversation I mentioned my great great grandfather was born in Ireland and instantly we were buddies. We were just talking and he asked us if we were staying for the show because he would grab us a couple of free tickets . We didn't even know there was a show and when he told us who it was were were definatley staying. He introduced us to them as friends of his and we got to talk for a few. It was pretty cool
— March 25, 2009 12:06 p.m.