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Comment: We generally stick to stories that pertain to Illinois in particular, but some matters cannot be ignored and must not be accepted.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Pat Buchanan called it!!
“Banish” says it all, it’s supposed to be punishment to those that value the founders of our great nation. Morality evolves and we symbolize important figures in our history for the good values we choose to honor. The people who remove statues know nothing of history and act their performative virtue as our moral betters while un-ironically erecting George Floyd statues.
They do this to disassociate you from your own history, your past and your own land. They know they have democratic elected power of you, but they want more. They want cultural, economic, social and educational power over you too. When they take away your past, they can educate you with a clean slate of their own ideaology. This has been the case with virtually every revolution in history, where the new guys erase all the past and try to start anew, often with much resistance from the peasant class that doesn’t welcome the change. That’s when the bloodshed really… Read more »
Just as concerning is that a city employee attempted to block press access to its removal. If removing the state was the right thing to do, why attempt to conceal it?
He wrote the Declaration of Independence his legacy must be erased.
And he insisted on inclusion of the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights as a condition to adopting the Constitution. We would not be here without that.
Yes, but thankfully these both occurred BEFORE he founded the Democrat party. He founded the party as an alternative to the Federalist party whose ideals are still with us today in the Republican party. As great as Jefferson was, I cannot overlook the harm the man caused by founding the Democrat party. There’s just no way to overcome this flaw.
Pffft, You cannot overlook? LOL however, you can overlook the statue of George Floyed in Union Square.
Tear down that statue too.
No founder of any party can be held responsible for what the party becomes 200 years later. That’s entirely unforeseeable.
Why not? We hold Lenin responsible for nearly a century of communism around the world just as we today hold Mao responsible for the evils of the CCP in China today. Jefferson had some great ideas as a young man but then squandered it all. Today’s disaster that is the democrat party was entirely foreseeable. Jefferson was a flip flopper in office, he had the dirtiest campaign for American office up to that point. The founding of the party was the antithesis to all that was good in Washington, Madison, and the majority of the founding fathers. And now, as… Read more »
Somewhere the progressives are planning the ultimate bonfire – burning every copy of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution on the National Mall in DC. Probably will throw in the Magna Carta for good measure.
And we the people have no means to stop the madness.
They don’t consider anything! They’re too busy killing each other to be bothered by thought.
Hmmmm….Don’t see any BIPOC represented in the removal. Lol, look but don’t touch! This will provide good JuJu through the holidays.
“but some matters of cannot be ignored and must not be accepted.” Jefferson was a Democrat. The statue should remain there only to remind Democrats of their awful beginnings. Jefferson did two good things in his life – the Declaration of Ind. and the Louisiana Purchase. Don’t get me wrong, this is very impressive, but given the times he lived in, even a broken clock can be correct twice in a day. But he was still a Democrat. Now, the beginnings of our party – Abraham Lincoln. Now there’s a hero. Best president ever. Freed the slaves. Fought the Democrats.… Read more »
They’ll be taking down Lincoln statues next.
Republicans won’t let them. That’s a hill worth dying on. That man gave his life to free the slaves and was assassinated by a…wait for it….DEMOCRAT.
Each was a hero and a villain in his own time. I would also list the Jefferson-Adams correspondence as an attempt at redemption for #3. As to #16, I recently read: As Abraham Lincoln prepared for his first inaugural address, he originally intended to end his speech in a bellicose manner, threatening war. Lincoln showed the draft to William Seward [who] counseled that Lincoln instead end in a conciliatory manner, and wrote his own draft, for Lincoln’s use, of the inaugural’s ending. … [Lincoln] edited Seward’s words, showing his own genius for the English language as well as his great… Read more »
Say what you want but an anecdote about Lincoln’s speech in draft form is trivial and insignificant compared to the horrible history of the Democrat party. Our Republican leaders have been terrible, and corrupt, for sure. But the social and cultural legacy of the Democrat party is indefensible which is why they want to remove the statues of their former leaders. Republicans don’t have any toxic Robert E Lees, or Huey Longs, or Robert Byrds. They’re all Democrats. Every single one of them.
Current Dem’s also seem to be intent on de-platforming Jackson & Calhoun & Wilson based on their expressed views which were widely shared at the time. I’d nominate Joe McCarthy as a toxic Republican. One might try to rehab McCarthy based on then-prevailing views about communism. But some form of anti-communism continued through Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon. The folks you name were Southern Democrats but LBJ undid most of what they supported. I guess I have trouble taking historical figures out of context and trying to trace forward on the basis of linking “founders” to those who… Read more »
“And lots of people who go by the name Democrat are as anxious to dismiss that duo as they are to disavow Robert Byrd.” But they cannot. Because they are all Democrats. And that’s the point – no matter how much they try to disavow their sordid past, that past is still present today in their racist, irrational politics, but today it’s just called CRT, or climate policy, or post-modernism. It’s the same kind of people with the same mindset applying the same relative morality in their own times. Nothing has changed with the Democrat party for 200 years. Yes,… Read more »
If you are right about the “mindset” even as it has evolved, do you suppose that the philosophical continuity extends to all who vote for Democrats? We’ve had some periods when conservatives controlled the levers of government — the 20’s, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan. You may think they were RINOs but they did capture enough votes to win national office and congressional majorities. And in many states Republicans are in control. And people are migrating to Texas. I don’t credit average voters with having well developed philosophical views. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. So, leadership of the left and right… Read more »
Many of them are true believers. Its just that they see themselves as exempt from the rules they create for you. It’s been like this since the first barbarian warlord ruled over a tribe and built a complex for himself while the rest of his tribe lived in a hut.
So feudal lords and British monarchs were the antecedents of Jefferson? Plausible, I suppose, but ironic.
No, two different thoughts going on. Thought 1 is that the institution of the Democrat party has produced for 200 years nothing but racists, conspiracy theorists and violence. Thought 2 is that leaders are true believers but always exempt themselves from their own rules.
John Kerry, Gore truly believe in climate change. They really do, it’s like a religion. But like John Kerry said last year, its too much to expect him to fly commercial because his climate change work is just too important for him not to fly private. He really said this.
A good definition of hypocrisy. Also, cognitive dissonance. “At the root of hypocrisy is fear and low self-esteem. We use hypocrisy to avoid looking at our shortcomings and figure out our part in it. It typically stems from a sincere belief that we should not be held to the same standards as others because we have better intentions. Our belief is juster, nobler, and sincerer.” The Psychology of Hypocrisy – Why We Do it & How to Stop (straighttalkcounseling.org) I don’t know much about psychology or psychiatry but a couple hundred years of saying one thing and doing another cannot… Read more »
Ooh,JimBob, that’s good. I am adding it to my list of potential reasons why today’s left is so psychologically impaired, which I may convert to a column.
And McCarthy was right – communists were everywhere in the government. The ‘have you no decency’ quip worked well on television, but there were communists and their sympathizers everywhere, as we have come to learn, and now, their acolytes are in charge of every major institution as they spread equity and destruction everywhere they go…
Almost everything in life is defined by personal perspective. Truth generally is more uncertain.