Wait Just A Darn Minute: The Return to Springfield for Pensions?

“Wait just A Darn Minute!” The return to Springfield in December for Pensions?

The other evening, Todd Mertz asked if there were any news regarding what happened during the last veto session in Springfield with Archer Daniels Midland’s latest corporate threat for tax subsidies or their leaving the offices in Decatur for a more understanding and favorable fiscal bed in another state.   It was a great question.

The answer is the same as the answer for “pension reform.”  “No,” the legislators departed Springfield quickly after adjourning the final day of the veto session, and they planned to return possibly in December to finish those tasks left undone.

Interestingly, no more dramatic pair of intertwined legislative prospects characterize so perfectly the twisted climate of corporate welfare and its power and pressures upon middle class workers.  ADM tax subsidies and possible Pension Reform.

This is the new topography of politics and corporate business on the state and federal level.  This is the “new reality” for all of us: white collar extortion in the various capitol buildings of states from here to both coasts.  It’s the great extraction in state after state.  The major corporations are demanding payments and subsidies in order to consider bringing employment to an area, district, or state.  To make these increasing and exorbitant demands, legislatures are seeking whatever funds can be scraped, borrowed, or pillaged from the middle class to keep their business relations stable.  Illinois, already maintaining a corporate-friendly flat tax rate, is a leader in this specialty.  Quinn caves to business regularly, after hand-wringing, but those running against him won't even pretend to argue.  

You’ll remember, as did Todd, that ADM spokespeople were seeking more than $20 million in tax subsidies to remain in Decatur.  Without that subsidy, they warned, they might just have to move the offices of 100 people in Decatur to another location, possibly another state.  Politicians in all states are still stuck between the needs of middle class public sector workers, especially those promised pensions and the disastrous lack of tax revenues after the Great Recession in 2008-09.  And other states, make no mistake about it, are willing to deal if your state won’t.  Someone like Rick Perry (Texas) is waiting for any opportunity to bring his state, a place where less than 25% have any medical health care, a job, any job. 

And where does the middle class stand in these “deals?” 

Senator Andy Manar

Ask Senator Andy Manar of the 48^th Illinois District.  He for one is hopeful that something can be done by December 5^th to provide those subsidies for ADM, even as the bottom may drop out for hundreds if not thousands of pensioners in his and other legislators’ districts.  His proposed legislation would grant the subsidies to ADM but extract a promise to provide more jobs at the plant in Decatur.  You’ve got to admit, that’s total trust or at least a kind of blind hope that the numbers may overpower the crippling losses in a pension bill – for the Senator’s district.  And, of course, ADM has a proven track record of crossing fingers when it comes to deals?

Nevertheless, without the funding or revenues, Senators like Andy Manar (who is on record believing that some kind of consensus legislation is necessary in order to treat public workers fairly and avoid tests of constitutionality) may return to the General Assembly facing a kind of ethical schizophrenia.  It becomes a question of damage control, doesn’t it?

Who can hurt me most?  The big player with hundreds of thousands of dollars to eliminate my political aspirations or the hundreds of thousands of little people whose single dollars and memories might also affect my future? 

And the corporations are lined up outside the divinely-inspired “pension reform” Governor’s office waiting to try their turn for breaks, tax subsidies, and increased loopholes.  It matters not that their companies are awash in money and profits.  For example, ADM earned more than $90 billion in sales just last year.  Their demand for $24 million is exactly a payment of 2 millionths of their annual earnings.  It’s the principle of the thing.  Corporations must act like corporations, and if corporations are people, my friend, they’re not the kind of person you want hanging around your family or children.  They’re shallow, easily angered, petulant, and very vindictive.  Just ask Senator Manar.

So, what’ll it be in December in the General Assembly?  Will the General Assembly supply ADM with the payment in order to play along, like they have with Caterpillar, Boeing, and so, so many others?  Or will they say no?

Or will they look at the hundreds of thousands of single dollars to be taken from those who worked under promises of pensions, planned for futures after retirements, found or find themselves in unexpected medical needs and costs, see that a starting salary today in teaching is nearly 5 and ½ where they started…and take away their futures, break their oaths to the Illinois Constitution, and hand it over to the corporates?

Now there’s a bet for you.

Call your Representative or Senator now. 

888-412- 6570

http://www.weareoneillinois.org/news/pension-emergency-days

Perfect Storm: Unwitting Meteorologists and Witless Predictions.

Perfect Storm: Unwitting Meteorologists & Witless Predictions.

Perfect Storm:  (Noun)  A critical or disastrous situation created by a concurrence of factors (www.merriam-webster.com).

Like many other legislators’ latest email correspondences, Senator Jason Barickman’s November 15^th announcement of an upcoming return to Springfield for “pension reform” sounds like a desperate call to heroism for the historically uninformed. 

The Senator from Streator, like many of his Springfield colleagues, eagerly anticipates something very different happening in the December call-up to action by Speaker Madigan and Senate Leader Cullerton.  In the kind of clipped and terse language usually found in orders to report to the front, Senator Barickman’s review of recent battle and his anticipation of upcoming action sounds almost exciting.

“Illinois’ four legislative leaders may be drawing closer on an agreement that could address Illinois’ massive public pension debt.  The House Speaker, Senate President and the Republican Leaders in each chamber have told us to be prepared to return to Springfield the first week of December for a possible vote.

“In June, pension reform negotiations were handed over to a bipartisan Conference Committee, which worked for months exploring details and seeking common ground. Now, those discussions have been handed back to the state’s four legislative leaders.

I’ll do my best to keep you up on the latest…”

Meanwhile, as Senator Barickman and his Capitol crewmates feverishly prepare, a confluence of dangerous fronts appear ready to bear down upon the public sector workers in Illinois, and help Barickman and others move into deep, unconstitutional waters without reservations. 

Storms to the East: Bond and credit ratings agencies are warning that further down grades can be expected if there is nothing done about the debt issues in Illinois.  By the way, as Ralph Martire of the CTBA would point out, the rating companies do NOT call for the raiding or impairment of pensioners promised and earned benefits to improve credit ratings in Illinois.  They are describing a lack of revenue to fix a serious debt problem that has become systemic.  Fix the revenue stream, not by stealing money from someone else. 

Strong winds to the South: The erroneous concept (as per Barickman)

 “Illinois holds the record for the worst-funded public pension system in the nation. A system that is about $100 billion in debt and only has assets to cover less than 40% of the debt the state owes. The state’s poor pension funding has been a major contributor to Illinois having the worst credit rating in the nation.” 

In fact, the reasons for this are many, but none are more significant than the theft or nearly $32 billion over decades from the pension funds by the General Assembly.  And let’s not forget that Senator Barickman’s (and many others’) insistence to hold to the feckless RAMP pay-back scheme of 1995 has made it impossible if not improbably that they can escape the debt they’ve built themselves into through theft of public worker funds.  Fix the debt problem by amortizing the debt, and pay back the fully due amount, not the lesser interest.  The end result in two years will be no different than if Illinois stayed on the “ramp,” and it will diminish from there.

High seas to the North:  The cold, clinical argument that there is strength in numbers. Senator Barickman proceeds; “Although there appears to be progress toward a proposal that all four legislative leaders can urge their members to support, no final decision can be made until the ideas under discussion are “scored” by financial experts. That’s a painstaking process that relies on complex financial projections as to what the impact of each individual component may be on the retirement systems over the coming decades. Those calculations are then used to arrive at an estimated overall savings. Senator Barickman makes it all sound like a clean surgical strike, not a decimation of families or futures or their dreams.  Remember that whatever their take from the public workers’ promised futures (from which they’ve already stolen), the amount will never be enough to prevent their return for more, according to Ralph Martire and earlier actuaries who have determined that even the most draconian of cuts will fall short of Illinois’ structural revenue deficit…and they still have not dealt with the unfunded liability of nearly $100 billion. Fix the revenue stream and work slowly back to fiscal health.

Crazed Captain on Deck:  Stumping about on deck like an Ahab on a mission from a deranged God, Governor Quinn has taken on Paul Vallas for his First Mate, which leaves little hope for anyone expecting a life raft later.  Vallas is an expert on Disaster Capitalism, a man who literally rode the waves into New Orleans to create one of the greatest Charter School exploitations of an impoverished and decimated land area in our country.  Even today, his New York successor is dealing with the struggling public school systems and miserable scores after the business model’s culling of the cream into specialty schools for the Recovery School District.  Quinn has ostracized the very people who put him into office, Vallas vilifies the very people who put Quinn into office, and Rauner/Brady/Dillard (sorry, mixing metaphors here) are the Tinker, Evers, & Chance of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.  And don't forget, the Governor's eventual need to come clean on a permanent 2% tax increase, and his fears of an Illinois Is Broke mutiny. Fix it by running an independent against the paid for or disguised politicians in Illinois.  Fix it by moving to a progressive income tax.  Fix it by never pretending that we don’t know what is really going on here: the scapegoating of public employees for the burglary of their hard earned earnings by politicians.

Call your Representative and Senator.  Tell them to fix it the right way, the moral way, the constitutional way.  1-888-412-6570.

Pony Up: An IRTA Member's Contribution and Letter

Pony Up: A Contribution & Letter by Joni Lindgren to Gary Elmen & IRTA

Pony Up:  (Verb)  The pony in question, a slang term for a twenty-five pound note in Britain, is certainly an idiom describing the making of a monetary payment.  Other origins include allusions to English Quarter Day, which was March 25^th and the day all debts were to be settled and paid. While the English still used the term to “stump up,” the expression “pony up” has taken firm hold in American slang as a cash payment or down payment(www.phrasefinder.org/uk).

Joni Lindgren has certainly led the way in ponying up.  And with good reasons.

"Dear Gary….

Enclosed you will find a check for $200. for the “legal defense fund”.

Enclosed is also a summary of all the recent hand-outs that our legislators have generously given to corporations, gambling casinos and pet projects with our tax dollars. The last I knew, as a retired Illinois teacher, I was still paying the same taxes as all other Illinois citizens. The reason I’m sending this summary to you is for you to pass onto the lawyers because I think part of their defense should include…

1)    why our politicians need to rob teachers and public workers?…they need to free up their debt obligations to give to the greedy corporations….so that the corporations can continue to blackmail legislators into giving them what they want so they don’t move out of this state! The legislators also need to continue to protect (because the legislators are being paid off) the wealthy and corporations in Illinois.

2)    Not related to the summary, but also a big part of the defense should be the facts that our legislators haven’t done one damn thing to raise revenue when they’ve known for years that they needed lots of money to feed to the corporations. They should have changed the tax codes so the rich would pay more, and/or passed a bill for a graduated income tax (which would have taxed the wealthy at a higher rate), and they could have easily (without a constitutional amendment) have passed a Robin Hood tax on every trade on the CBOT or CME. That alone would have brought in millions a year! These are just 3 things they could have done to raise revenue, but NO, God forbid that they take something from the wealthy and corporations!

3)    One last point…. Win or lose….we need a full-page story in every newspaper about how the legislators were the puppets of the corporations and wealthy and why the public workers were made the victims of their schemes… to privatize and to hand over mega money to the corporations!!

If this last point isn’t written for everyone to read, the public will continue to think it will always be someone’s fault (teachers…public workers) that states have “so-called” economic woes! The public needs to wake up to the fact that the corporations have done this to us AND to everyone else and will continue to do this if voters don’t wake up and not let them get away with taking from the middle/lower classes.

“Of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations are cannibalizing our economy, laws, Constitution…and defining our futures and that of our children and grandchildren”!

Please pass this along to the lawyers."

Joni Lindgren

We need a few thousand more Joni Lindgren’s. 

Last Minute Reminders for 2013

REMINDER LIST for 2013: 

Things to do before the end of the year.

Snow is falling outside the window; most of the leaves have fallen or been blown into the neighbor’s yard.  They rake mine, and I rake the family’s on the other side of my home. 

Traditions.

Thanksgiving comes late this year, and Christmas will follow quickly after.  Legislators in Springfield are spreading speculations of a pension session in early December.  Members of the committee have been describing continued progress, and pundits describe Madigan/Cullerton as poised to coerce a vote. 

More traditions.

Reminder #1:  Vote for Fred Klonsky for IEA Retired Delegate

Except for Klonsky’s perseverance in the convoluted CMS roll out, I’d be off the trail and in the ditch for sure.  Now I might even be able to figure out what I’m doing once the enrollment forms arrive tomorrow, or next week, or…

Besides there’s that promise he made:

To fight for our pensions without apology.

To oppose any and all corporate school reform.

To stand with us. 

Reminder #2:  Send a year’s-end donation to IRTA, and annotate the check “For the Defense Fund.”

“We will fight for our pensions even if we have to sell our shoes!”  Now that’s someone willing to fight without apology.  Thanks, Gary Elmen. 

In the last year, initial legal opinions about the constitutionality of proposed bills which include the current pension committee’s suggestions cost the IRTA $20,000 or more already. 

Time for me to pony up some more.  How about you?

Reminder #3:  Call my legislators.  Email my legislators.  Write a letter to my legislators.  Ask my family members to do the same. 

My own one-time favorite Representative Monique Davis (who stood alone against SB7) folded when Madigan pushed SB1 last time around.  Even her staff were stunned.  Make sure you keep the pressure on, especially as we approach this next December’s call for “pension reform” likely on the backs of public workers, the victims of the state’s earlier theft. 

Got to remember, call Monique and others: 1-888-412-6570.

Make it easy and use the IEA website to email or call your Representative or Senator.  http://www.ieanea.org/resources/pensions/

Reminder #4:  Remember to vote in primaries this next year.

Reminder #5: Take out the garbage.