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.
One of the problems with many of the past and present Chicago and IL politicians is that they had or have minimal knowledge of finance and economics. So, it becomes very detrimental to the taxpayer when those politicians made or make financial decisions for Chicago or IL.
Dardick’s a big martire fan, and believer that pob’s are a viable solution (seems even progressive left has given up on pob’s), also no mention of rahms tax securitization fire sale. But This is the craziest statement, what the crazy are they talking about??: “Eventually, however, there’s expected to be enough money going into the pension funds to start shrinking the debt. The city will be kicking in significantly more. And as city employee wages grow with inflation, so too will their pension contributions. Workers pay between 8.5% and 11.5% percent of their salaries toward pension costs.”
Now the Tribune does an analysis on this? Wirepoints has been documenting all this in detail for years, laying out the data sources for all to see. Instead, the Tribune news pages have mostly just regurgitated what the politicians and Ralph Martire say.
Keep the lie simple…
So let’s raise taxes some more. It will work this time. We promise!
Taxes go up, yet the deficit increases. Why would anyone rationale vie the pols any more money? And why would anyone sensible trust them?
We (the taxpayers) are all pigeons …
My pulse will be quickenin’
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon
It just takes a smidgin
To poison a pigeon in the park
Slow-witted folks ingesting slow-acting seeds sown by short-sighted politicians that poison our economy and political system in exchange for the conditional approval of heedless Ponzi artists masquerading as public servants. Who will rid us of these pipers and vipers?