This could have been written about CT as well.
obamaland another legacy of the failure of this nimrod and the rats who control the cities
nothing changes till the money runs out...................
Big government does have its downsides.
It’s not coming everywhere. Many States and cities have changed their pension plans and are not on the hook. The Federal Govt did this back in the 80s. I don’t know the exact numbers of States that have done this.
When Democrats negotiate public employee pension plans, the taxpayers are going to get a raw deal, just like John Kerry negotiating with Iran or negotiating the Paris climate accords.
Escape from Chicago, Snake Pliskin I thought you were dead.
Massholechusetts was just downgraded by S&P this week. The legislators just voted themselves a nice salary increase and are whining about a “fiscal crisis” while setting the groundwork for a progressive income tax.
That song “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place” by the Animals is on the playlist of every taxpayer here.
“Go ahead folks, keep pretending.”
For many, many years I’ve said America has not failed yet due to two things:
1. We hold so much WEALTH (yes, and debt - but we have more wealth) that the Socialists haven’t, ‘run out of other people’s money’ yet and...
2. Too many of us are WILLING to take I.O.U.s from Mother Government in one form or another.
It may not happen in my lifetime, but it IS going to happen. I’m terrible at math, but THIS, ‘math’ I understand.
Haircuts all around but no money from Uncle Sam.
How long have the Left been in charge?
O’ Everett McKinley Dirksen tried for years to keep the lid on IL, but now 48 years after his passing, the truth is out! Compromise does not pay dividends for the long haul.
How about 10-year term limits for public employees with NO employer-funded retirement benefits (except military and certain positions where 10+ years experience serves some compelling public interest).
No one should make more than the average private sector worker by either picking up garbage or even teaching children for that matter. These should be jobs for people just out of high school or college who have not yet settled on some career choice in the private sector - so fine, then let the work for a few years on the public dole, then get out and make room for someone else.
There’s this mysterious correlation between spending and collapse; we haven’t been able to figure it out....
Is the act of making an impossible contract and then ‘selling’ it to the beneficiaries fraud?
I blame Madigan, who has been in charge of the train wreck longer than half the people in the state have been alive.
We need a state bankruptcy law...
If states go bankrupt, they revert to territorial status.
- all bonds, contracts, pensions void
- no reps, no senators
- areas within may petition for separate statehood, once
solvency is proven
Chicago has overpaid teachers who can’t teach...in many cases because the students aren’t ready or willing to learn.
The cops are overpaid crime historians that avoid the worst neighborhoods in the daytime and most neighborhoods during the night.
The politicians are so corrupt that they don’t even worry about being caught chasing a bribe... because everybody does it.
I left 16 years ago... and never looked back.
There is NOTHING so disgusting as to watch the HARD-WORKING downstate Freeper Illini SUFFER so miserably because of the boil on the forehead of Illinois known as CHIRAQ.
I wouldn’t put anyone still alive today anywhere near the top of the blame heap.
We knew decades ago that it would eventually be impossible to balance the math on pensions. And (at least where I lived) there was article after article detailing what eventually would happen. Like Whitewater, understanding the articles meant applying mathematics. Most people chose to believe whatever they wanted.
Today, most of the politicians who peddled these schemes around the country are gone. Old age and death shielded them from the blame.
You could try to blame the boomers for continuing the insanity but most of them were too young to vote as this all began.
Illinois has been de facto bankrupt for 50 years, paying for year n expenses from year n+2 tax revenues. Unless the year n expenses are goodies to the unions that run the state, or the welfare mob that elects it. All the while keeping just the one promise the ruling party values, to keep growing those goodies and so maintain their power.
Illinois needs to recoup as much as is possible, under something like RICO with treble damages for what is provable, what the crooked politicos, unions and welfare pimps have fraudulently taken. They need to write off the rest of their debt against the same. Then ban government unions, fire about 2/3 of their state workforce, rip out the welfare hammocks, zero their voting roles then restart them with strict voter id. But then I'm dreaming. What will happen is that more and more businesses and productive citizens will refuse to accept their late payments and big tax bills and flee the state. Until the parasites in Champaign and Chicago are left, alone with my dream as a nightmare.