Wake UP Mississippi PERS

Every now and then a reader sends information to me that I find useful. I am posting to my blog an update I got today from a reader. I am leaving out the reader's name for I do not have permission but will update with name once I have it. I find the information sent to me to be too important to keep to myself. This is an issue not just for Mississippi but across the nation. Mississippi is the economic poster child for Tea Party economics. We must do something now in Mississippi and across the nation to put life back into proper perceptive for 99% of Americans. Occupy. Occupy now. Sad little buried news items sent to me by a reader: To my fellow liberal mad woman in Mississippi, I came upon your blog on your Occupy night at Smith Park and noticed your comment on PERS. Though certainly not my only reason for supporting the movement, I do consider PERS to be revelant to OWS. You list the cutting of benefits by Boss Hog Barbour and we are in total agreement on that. However, there's another PERS/OWS issue at stake and wanted to know if you were aware of it. This past June, PERS of Ms(primary plaintiff) along with four other pension funds, filed a lawsuit against Merrill Lynch (now a subsidiary of Bank of America) for allegedly selling them 16.5 billion dollars of toxic mortgage backed security(MBS) certificates. If one assumes that PERS has an 20% equal share in the lawsuit, that's 3.3 billion dollars that Merrill Lynch stole from over 244,000 Mississippians. Keep in mind that $3.3 billion is over 8% of the total assets in the PERS fund ($36 billion). It's not in the MSM much, but bank settlement talks have been going on for months with all 50 state's attorney generals (see article: The Next Big Bank Bailout http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/attorneys-general-settlement-the-next-big-bank-bailout-20111005) To condense, the AGs are contemplating ONLY fining ALL of the big banks COMBINED a fine of just 20 billion dollars. That's not much more than the PERS lawsuit alone!!! Personally speaking, if this isn't a Occupy Mississippi issue, I don't know what is! PERS members represent over 8% of the state's total population. It makes me wonder how many members are aware of this lawsuit. And how many would show up at Smith Park to protest, if only over this one issue. I wrote a long letter about this to one of the primary Occupy Ms organizers and got no response. Am I missing something here? PERS is not a union or political party, so I don't understand why this member chose to dismiss the information. Does this info outrage you as much as it does me? Let's face it. The vast majority of Mississippians are conservative (i.e. ignorant sheeple voting against their own self interests) and would never politically support the Occupy movement, even if there was a personal issue at stake. BUT, if OM could get just 0.5% interested and involved, that's over 1,200 people. Curious for your opinion, XXXXXX XXXXXXX Brandon, MS