Jonathon Chait on Why "Congress Should Impeach William Barr"

From NEWYORK Magazine

“Congress Should Impeach William Barr”

By Jonathan Chait

“House Democrats are going to face a difficult decision about launching an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Balanced against the president’s impressive array of misconduct is the fact that several more criminal investigations that may add to the indictment are already underway, and that impeaching the president might jeopardize the reelection of red-state Democratic members. But in the meantime, Attorney General William Barr presents them with a much easier decision. Barr has so thoroughly betrayed the values of his office that voting to impeach and remove him is almost obvious.

“…And while many members of the old Republican political Establishment had recoiled against Trump’s contempt for the rule of law, Barr has shown no signs of having joined them. He met with Trump to discuss serving as his defense lawyer, publicly attacked the Mueller investigation (which risked ‘taking on the look of an entirely political operation to overthrow the president’), called for more investigations of Hillary Clinton, and circulated a lengthy memo strongly defending Trump against obstruction charges.

The events since Barr’s letter have incinerated whatever remains of his credibility. The famously tight-lipped Mueller team told several news outlets the letter had minimized Trump’s culpability; Barr gave congressional testimony hyping up Trump’s charges of ‘spying,’ even prejudging the outcome of an investigation (‘I think there was a failure among a group of leaders [at the FBI] at the upper echelon’); evaded questions as to whether he had shared the Mueller report with the White House; and, it turns out, he’s ‘had numerous conversations with White House lawyers which aided the president’s legal team,’ the New York Times reports. Then he broke precedent by scheduling a press conference to spin the report in advance of its redacted publication.

“…Barr’s letter had made it sound as though Trump’s campaign spurned Russia’s offers of help: ‘The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign,’ he wrote. In fact, Mueller’s report concluded, ‘In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer,’ but that the cooperation fell short of criminal conduct.

Where Mueller intended to leave the job of judging Trump’s obstructive conduct to Congress, Barr interposed his own judgment. Barr offered this incredible statement for why Trump’s behavior was excusable: ‘[T]here is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,’ Barr said. ‘Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation,’ and credited him further with taking ‘no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.’”

“…There is no other department in government in which mere norms, not laws, are all that stand between democracy as we know it and a banana republic. Barr has revealed his complete unfitness for this awesome task. Nearly two more years of this Trumpian henchman wielding power over federal law enforcement is more weight than the rickety Constitution can bear.”

The entire article is available here.  I urge you to read it.  

Why the Tribune Is Pushing a Constitutional Amendment Change

Tribune Calls on Pritzker to Propose a People’s Vote on an Amendment to the Pension Protection Clause in the Illinois Constitution 

An up-to-date reader of the Chicago Tribune would have to scratch his/her head at the newspaper’s strained reasoning to force a voter’s amendment to the state Constitution remove or “fix” the Pension Protection Clause in Article XIII, Section 5.  

Why?   Major changes made to the benefit structures of current and future hires in Illinois’ public workers’ sectors will make drastic reductions in eventual pension earnings in the approaching future.

There’s no need to make any alterations in a promise to pay the contractual benefits.  Not when the contractual benefits are being diminished by the General Assembly every year or so.  

The Pension Protection Clause protects what you were promised once you started, but if you are getting less and less when you start, the “protection” isn’t worrisome when it promises less or little.  

Tier One teachers who have the benefits afforded to current retirees were those who began working and contributing to their pensions before January 1, 2011.  The General Assembly changed that for all those hires who began working and contributing on or after January 1, 2011, by creating a new benefit structure called Tier Two.

Tier Two public sector workers are required to work an additional 12 years (age 67) before retiring or face penalties of 6% of the annuity for each year before age 67.  A wall will stop the determination of a final average pension payout as the Consumer Price Index (currently approximately $110,000).  Any Cost of Living adjustments will no longer be 3% compounded; instead, the COLA will be 3% simple or ½ the Consumer Price Index, whichever is less.  

This is getting thorny, so take my word that Tier Two workers are getting taken to the retirement cleaners.  In fact, the benefit structure is so bad, there may be later consequences for the state of Illinois in not meeting the “safe harbor” requirements for retirement thresholds determined in Social Security returns.  (See Glen Brown for more information there)

But wait.  There’s more.

The General Assembly has also created a new benefit structure for those entering public sector work called Tier Three.  Tier Three has so many moving parts that the exact benefit structure is still being hammered out.  The thorns are thick in this structure too, but suffice it to say that an individual choosing to remain within this yet-to-be-introduced benefit structure would need to work 60 years to attain the level of pension benefit afforded to a Tier One retiree.  

60 years.  Start working at age 21 and – for the full pension – work until 81.  

I say, defibrillators in every room, kids. 

Within the Tier Three plan, whenever it should appear, are other reductions in benefits which give ample reason for anyone still in the public sector to jump at the chance to move (one time only) to Tier Two.

In short, very short – There’s not really any need whatsoever to force a 3/5ths vote by the senate and the house on a proposed change to Article XIII, Section 5, in the Illinois Constitution which promises a protection of the benefit structure of a pension when continual removals of benefits are forced into the structure before hiring.  

So, I’m back to why? The Chicago Tribune knows full well about these Tier I, II, III changes. The Tribune knows that changes in the benefit structures of public workers will leave them severely short on retirement funds.  The Chicago Tribune knows full well that the $130 Billion debt from money diverted from funding pensions over seven decades will still remain as an ironclad and legal IOU to the pension funds as determined unanimously by the Illinois Supreme Court. 

Because, I believe, the Chicago Tribune – like the Illinois Policy Institute and the Better Government Association in Illinois – want to blame, scapegoat, and eliminate collective bargaining, unions, and pensions altogether.  

It doesn’t take a lot of perusing the editorial pages of the Tribune to see that they invite I.P.I. perspectives and anti-union slant to form their editorial positions.  In June of 2018, it was once again editorial board member Kristen McQueary who found the opportunity to present the Tribune’s singular trope: unions are bad, the pension debt is all the unions’ fault,  the tax increase (using some kind of convoluted mathematics) was the fault of the unions, politicians are corrupted by unions, the unions have too much influence, and (God forbid) the unions have an affinity for the democratic party rather than the Republicans (like the Tribune). 

“And taxpayers are on the hook. The union advocates for tax hikes and government growth — last year’s 32 percent income tax hike and now a proposed graduated income tax — to shore up its strength to the detriment of Illinoisans en masse. All those years of unbalanced state budgets and shortchanged pension funds? AFSCME, an ally of the Democratic majority, was an enabler.

“On the political side, the union is an operative in political campaigns. Its leaders interview and endorse candidates up and down the ballot. They provide staff for petition-gathering and campaign strategy. They dump cash into dozens of races. They coordinate with other unions and political party officials to elect and defeat candidates.

“From 2013 to 2017, 74 percent of the union’s political contributions went to Democratic committees or organizations, according to the Illinois Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Six percent went toward Republican committees or organizations.”

Janus decision aside, the Tribune wants to eliminate the Pension Protection Clause altogether as just one step in an ongoing right-leaning process of falsely blaming unions for the unfunded liability, and eradicating collective bargaining until we too descend into a right-to-work state like Wisconsin and Michigan and Indiana.