Quick Picks: Murtha's Troubles and CEO Pensions — ProPublica

Quick Picks: Murtha's Troubles and CEO Pensions

Jan. 23, 2009, 12:32 p.m. EST

Quick Picks focuses on a select few of the day's stories from "Breaking on the Web."

Prolific pork king Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania may be in hot water. As Politico details, federal agents raided offices of Kuchera Industries and Kuchera Defense Systems Thursday. During his tenure in Congress, Murtha has steered more than $100 million in contracts to the defense contractor, and received more than $65,000 in campaign contributions from the firm and its employees.
Today's Wall Journal Street reports that departing CEOs of some of the largest U.S. companies are boosting the value of their pensions by as much as 40 percent by requesting a lump-sum payment, and then calculating its value based on an obsolete federal interest-rate formula. When regular workers retire, they are more often subject to stricter rules on how a lump sum payment is calculated.

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