DI LEO: ILLINOIS AND THE GREAT PATH DOWNWARD
By John F. Di Leo
First, the state of Illinois’ new governor signed a record number of tax and regulatory increase bills in Springfield, and then Chicago’s new mayor delivered a State of the City address announcing her plans to do the same to Chicago.
It’s been a good week for the tax collector, the political hack and the bureaucrat; it’s been a bad week for everyone else.
As statewide progressive income taxes - and many other forms of property grabs - loom large on the horizon, the message is clear to any Illinoisan with a house, a job, a business, a bank account, or in fact anything of value at all:
Get Out.
Get out now.
Get out while you still can.
Every household in Illinois has a six-figure debt from pensions alone, and there’s only one
way the establishment is interested in addressing it:
way the establishment is interested in addressing it:
J.B. Pritzker and Lori Lightfoot have it in for you, and they both have at least four full years in which they intend to treat your possessions as their own personal source of kindling.
There are real solutions to Illinois’ problems, of course. Immediately correcting the pay scales and contracts of public employees to address the pension crisis… immediately reducing the size of government… immediately ceasing our sanctuary status and ejecting our million illegal aliens… immediately returning to a true criminal justice system in which our state’s criminals are actually imprisoned, instead of being released in a revolving door.
But all proper solutions are off the table, in a state long ruled by a single party that exists only to expand the welfare state, and to reward the ward heeler and the city sealer.
So it’s tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, on an ever greater scale, as far as the eye can see.
Laboratories of Democracy
Illinois’ effective bankruptcy bears an important lesson to those who have believed in the old “laboratories of democracy” theory, long promulgated by leftists and other fools.
There have always been people – usually teachers – who claim that our nation was meant to be a collection of “laboratories”… fifty different states, each of them able to do whatever they wanted… Big government or small government, socialized programs or private sector solutions… And these advocates never recognized it as an inherent conflict with the policies of our Founding Fathers philosophy.
They were wrong, in so many ways.
America was always meant to be a nation of small government. Government was to be limited at every level - not just federal, but state, county, township, and city as well.
Yes, each state was to have the choice of whether to get there with a unicameral legislature or a bicameral one, or with a stronger governor or a stronger speaker of the house, or with home rule in every city or a wilder collection of unincorporated communities.
But our Founders never intended for some of our states to be essentially unAmerican; our Founders never dreamed that some states would choose massive, costly, overbearing and intrusive government, sure to result in bankruptcies that would infect their innocent neighbors. That was never to be one of their options; in fact, our Founders wrote state constitutions designed to keep it from ever happening.
But it has happened… not just in Illinois, but in many more states as well. And what we have today, by allowing Democrat-run states like Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and California to spend themselves into bankruptcy, has unavoidably become a national crisis, not small localized crises.
These bankrupt states are a drag on the entire nation. Whether they are ultimately successful in convincing Washington, DC to rob the rest of their countrymen to pay off their unsustainable debts or not, these “laboratories of economically destructive policies” have hurt us all.
There is only one way for a nation to prosper, and that is if the entire nation is bound to the same philosophy - the same commitment to small government, low taxes, low spending, and the rule of law.
We simply cannot survive as long as those with suicidal impulses are allowed to pull down their neighbors with them.
Now, on to another subject…. Umm… Know anybody who wants to buy a nice house in Illinois?
Copyright 2019 John F Di Leo
Many of these government pensions are ill-gotten. Meaning they are somehow improper. Almost every dec member of the general assembly is now or will soon be eligible for a 2d or 3d government pension.
ReplyDeleteThis has to be addressed.
https://agency.governmentjobs.com/illinoistollway/default.cfm?action=viewJob&jobID=2554995
Delete$20,000 for a tollway job!
FLEE ILLINOIS!!
ReplyDeleteOk, this has probably been said hundreds of times, but sometimes it bears repeating. City employees pay up to 9.5% of their salaries into a pension. Social Security is not with held and unless employees have satisfied a number of quarters worked, they're ineligible for social security benefits and if they do qualify, they are reduced because of their government pensions. In Richard M's time as Mayor, he received plaudits for reducing the number of city employees by hiring freezes and buyouts. This did 2 things. It reduced the number of people contributing to the pension fund and increased the number of persons drawing from it. With the buyouts, it allowed early retirements to pay a chunk of money to purchase years of service thereby increasing the amount of their month pension benefits. In addition, the City took a pension holiday, not making their contribution to the fund for over 20 years. But you don't read that story, instead we're fed a slant about "greedy" city employees and through the rough cost of living increases. Which is total bullshit. Only the few and connected can finagle opportunities to work for a day to qualify for benefits they had no part in contributing to like the state official who worked 1 day as a substitute teacher and then qualified for a teachers pension to leverage against his lower priced pension. Most work their 25-35 years, contributing 24 times a year for financial benefits when they no longer work. Most don't collect 2 or more pensions. So pension crisis in Chicago and Illinois is not the doing of the contributing employees, its from those who didn't honor the contract, the statute that called for contributions that weren't made. Its like the city was banking on actuarial studies that figured most of us would be dead by now.
ReplyDeleteWhere were the Union leaders when city kept taking pension holidays?
Delete"Pay up to 9.5 %" sadly a lot pay a lot less, Chicago school teachers pay only 2% of their salary, in every case the taxpayer makes up the difference, all while trying to fund their own future retirement.
DeleteSo yes most government employees are over compensated both working and in retirement.
So when the Sun-Times broke the story about the real estate investments that went bust with money Vanecko "borrowed" from the pension funds, Rich Daley tells the reporter, "this is the first I'm hearing of this". How could that possibly be? Each of the city's 4 pension funds have 2 members of the Mayor's cabinet sitting on their boards. What are the possibilities than not one of these pension board/mayor's cabinet members wouldn't mention to the Mayor, "by the way, your nephew stopped by and borrowed $64 million dollars.
DeleteTake it a step further: who would have given the mayor's nephew the idea or the names of pension board members to contact to initiate this loan/"investment opportunity". And even one step further, who would have authorized these board members to vote in favor of making this loan/"investment"?
Is the phrasing of "investment opportunity" the escape hatch they had for not making ANY attempt to reimburse the funds? Vanecko and his partner had no quibble about paying themselves $9 million dollars as a management fee for their incompetence. And yet a decade later, here comes Vanecko, with a $25,000 donation to the mayoral campaign of William "NO EXCUSES" Daley, who no sooner lost the election, and proceeded to make excuses; not for his idea to re-write the state constitution to change pension laws, no for his brilliant pandering suggestion to rename the Dan Ryan Expressway, not for his futurist vision of putting video cameras on every block in the city, but rather point a finger at another mayoral candidate who was in the race before him, has more ties to community and the city than Bill Daley.
Anyone remember his response when Bill Daley was asked why he wanted to be mayor? His response, "it'd be cool".
But getting back to the pensions, the reckless use of TIF funds for pet projects, "wrought iron, anyone" and the reckless disregard for financial responsibility such as pension contributions are what ballooned the debt into what it is today. The city employees did their end, they paid their taxes, they contributed to their pensions and every other fricking add on the mayor came up with. But now when they can no longer work, the mayor and the governor and all the other panderers point their fingers at them and pronounce them greedy. These retirees have more skin in the game through their many years of service than any of those making the pronouncements of what to do with their money before its paid back to them. You lost their money. Time to pay up.
You sum it up perfectly. Thank you.
DeleteAnd where is Bill Daley now? New York. Little crybaby.
And lets not forget Billy, who called for numerous televised debates, skipped out on the first one when he thought he might be asked about who changed the answers on the state insurance broker's license exam. NO excuses my ass.
DeleteYes and don't forget to mention the actuaries complicity in all of this. Some of these projections are utter nonsense. Examine the reserving practices of these pension fund and you will ask yourself how did this get by the trustees. I would recommend that you if you work for Cook County government that you especially check the numbers. Oh, and by the way don't even think about running for a trustee position. Check out my lawsuit if you have any doubts-- 14-cv-10456. You can also contact me through LinkedIn. The truth must come out be informed. Paul E. Cox
ReplyDeleteLook who he pardons!
ReplyDeletehttps://apnews.com/ef02a7de1d154d389baafc6d70c23d90
Perez in 2008 was accused of giving a laptop case of cocaine to an undercover police officer. He pleaded guilty to a drug crime and spent seven years in prison. He was deported last year after failing to persuade a federal appeals court to block his removal.
Open the pension funds to everyone in Illinois everyone contributes 20% most people are not disciplined enough to save for their own retirements there are going to be a lot of seniors living in poverty soon in little one bedroom apartments or with their kids. People laugh when I tell them I still live with my parents never moved out what they don't understand is I'm the breadwinner now how can they live on 2000 month social security with the all taxes and fees it so disgusting how am supposed to have a family now.
ReplyDeleteTax the pensions and cap them at $100,000! Look at all those top pensions that is what is killing these funds you were supposed to retire with dignity not live like a king.
ReplyDeleteIs John DiLeo related to James DeLeo?
ReplyDelete