I don’t blame teachers who worked and were promised brnefits. I blame politicians who have overspent on this and everything else. They are like 3 year olds in a candy store with no concept of how much money they have. Or rather, we have.
Government officials gave unions whatever they wanted, it wasn’t their money after all. The whole thing should be considered illegitimate from the get-go
You are being way too kind to them.
A) They are claiming to be smart, so as to teach our kids, yet they didn't see something this obvious coming???
B) Much of the money that should have gone to fund their pensions instead went into their pockets as raises. The rest went for various pet causes and projects done at their behast as members of (along with the non-teacher public employees) the interest group that's been running Illinois for ever. They, collectively, are responsible for this and deserve every consequence resulting from it. So, as good libs, they are trying to duck all responsibility and shove the consequences onto the innocent.
As changing the Illinois constitution to allow sanity short of a federal bankruptcy court (in which maybe their state constitutional pension protections will be thrown the way of other states straight marriage clauses) remains politically impossible they have few choices. Mine would be to employ one of the key principles of liberalism: liberals think they can tax anything they want. E.g. their home state prodigy and his bud, John Roberts, on ObamaCare. So if you can't reduce the size of government pensions and benefits, give them their 'full' pensions/benefits but tax them enough to make the math work. As members of government employee unions ARE the rich for once they'd be honest in their 'tax the rich' statements.
There is some guilt on the part of the employees but I agree that they’re the least guilty. The true guilt lies with the politicians and union officials who made deals they knew were unsustainable.
There should be criminal consequences for those who make impossible deals like this.
Teachers? Sure. But how about Chicago garbage collectors ($50.00/Hour), or Street/Sanitation workers ($60-$70.00/Hour)? Some of them make a lot more than the teachers.
The teachers make up the union which along with the school boards have extorted the money from the taxpayers. So why not blame the teachers? Did these teachers believe they could just keep getting more and more from the taxpayer piñata?
The less educated teachers have my sympathy in the same way welfare dependent Social Security recipients have it. Many believe they should collect Social Security because it was promised to them by politicians. Now they have discovered politicians lie and they want taxpayers to make it good,
Blame teachers.
How do you think the Iron Triangle works?
The teachers elect the crooked pols who shovel money at the teachers.
Screw the parents. Screw the taxpayers. That’s how it works.
What about teachers who went "on strike" or threatened to strike unless they were paid copiously?
There's a resort area in Wisconsin, "Door County" (the penninsula that isolates Green Bay from Lake Michigan).
A significant portion of the property owners there are Chicago Public School teachers.