retirement plans in general  http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/publications/wyskapr.html#PlanAdministrator
triffid

Shame on you!  http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20110927/NEWS01/109270318/1060/news01


Pension perks aren't unique to legislators in South Carolina. More than 4,100 legislators in 33 states are positioned to benefit from special retirement laws that they and their predecessors have enacted to boost their pensions by up to $100,000 a year, a USA TODAY investigation found. Even as legislators cut basic state services and slash benefits for police, teachers and other workers, they have preserved pension laws that grant themselves perks unavailable to voters they serve or workers they direct.

In some states, lawmakers add expenses, per diem allowances and stipends to their base salaries. That inflates the compensation that's used to calculate retirement benefits, which are typically a percentage of final pay. In other states, legislators have written a special definition of salary that applies only to their pensions. Additional tactics include:

Basing pensions on salaries legislators are not paid or were paid in non-legislative jobs.

Collecting state pensions while also collecting legislative paychecks.

If you know someone in calif who is collecting a state pension this link might help you find out how much they are getting?  http://www.transparency.ca.gov/Pensions/   triffid

Lost pensions could be found here?  http://search.pbgc.gov/mp/



tips on how to go looking for a lost pension.I have one of these myself.  http://www.pbgc.gov/Documents/Finding_A_Lost_Pension.pdf

triffid

Once, private pensions were almost entirely unregulated.
It was not at all uncommon for a worker to reach the end
of a long working life and find that his or her nest egg, in
the form of an ample pension, had completely disappeared.
In 1974 Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act (ERISA). This law, and other reforms enacted
since 1974, established broad protections for many workers.
The Department of Labor monitors pension plans to make
sure they are solvent and are being responsibly managed. The
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) also regulates pension plans,
primarily for tax purposes.
ERISA established PBGC, a federal agency that insures private
defined benefit pension plans, to make sure that workers
are not deprived of their accumulated benefits (see page 13
for more information on PBGC). However, not all pension
plans are protected by this federal law. Here are the major
exceptions to ERISA’s safeguards:
• Only private-sector workers are protected, not employees
of the federal government or state or local governments.
• The ERISA protections are not retroactive: that is, they do
not apply to workers who left their companies prior to the
effective date of ERISA. For most plans the effective date
is 1976 but for some plans, especially those established
after ERISA was passed, the effective date might be as
early as 1974. For multiemployer plans, the effective date
may be later. Nonetheless, in some cases, a person who
left a job before that time might be due a benefit, if he or
she satisfied the provisions of the plan for a benefit and
was vested in the benefit when he or she left the job.
• PBGC only insures defined benefit pension plans (see
Appendix A for definition and ERISA §4021(b) for a
listing of the types of defined benefit plans not covered
by PBGC.)