billionaire bucks it appears the pension parole was anything but joining me now for more on that is david serota a staff writer with daily nationally syndicated columnist author of the most recently his is third book back to our future david welcome back thanks tom thanks for having me great to see who's secretly funny pension peril what is pension peril . john arnold a former enron trader turned billionaire who has been waging a legislative battle to cut the retirement benefits of police officers firefighters teachers and other municipal workers. basically because that's a kind of right wing doctrine it also to do that protects billionaires for instance from having to pay higher taxes to focus the state legislative and budgetary debate on the idea that pensions are bankrupting states means that billionaires like john arnold don't have to pay a little bit more in taxes to make sure we meet those pension promises to those workers that's who john arnold is but we didn't know until last week is that john. in arnold amongst other political activities in state legislatures john arnold through his fou