Illinois’ Debt is Far Worse than expected…..$54,000,000,000 short in pension funding!

April 8, 2012

Surprise! You owe another $54 billion

A new report forces the question:

How could Illinois pols do this to taxpayers?

 Chicago Tribune:

 

“Previous legislators and previous governors even awarded taxpayer funded health insurance benefits to themselves and 82,000 retirees, where 90 percent of them pay nothing on their insurance premiums. This lack of fiscal accountability has cost us dearly today.”

—Gov. Pat Quinn, Feb. 22, 2012

“All told, state government is on pace to spend nearly $1 billion on retiree health care benefits in fiscal year 2013, more than double what it spent in 2003. Worse yet, these liabilities are growing more than twice as fast as tax revenues.”

—Illinois Policy Institute, April 9, 2012

The state of Illinois admits to $83 billion in pension underfunding, a staggering weight on today’s and tomorrow’s taxpayers. Add to that the as yet uncalculated billions in unfunded pension obligations for city, county and other local governments. During a Tribune forum Wednesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel explained how that overhang — some estimates run far higher — deters businesses from locating in Chicago: Companies don’t want to buy shares in a phenomenal tax burden that will unfold over decades.

One nice thing about pension obligations: When you know the number of employees and their ages, the actuarial estimates start falling into place. The mystery is the investment return a pension fund will earn over time.

A second, often overlooked time bomb merrily ticking for governments nationwide is the cost of health insurance for all those retirees. That number, too, is hard to gauge, because health care costs — like future investment returns — are unknowable. Yet governments typically don’t put aside money for future health care, as they do for future pensions. The culture is to pay-as-you-go.

In Illinois, that means pay-as-you-go-even-more-broke. The Illinois Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank, now is releasing 133 pages of frightening data — we obtained a copy Thursday — that project yet another devastating hit to taxpayers: Beyond that $83 billion in unfunded pensions, state government alone faces an unfunded liability of more than $54 billion in retiree health liabilities over the next 30 years.

Illinois lawmakers haven’t yet seen that startling number, but they do know they have to confront a retiree health debacle. Last year Illinois Senate legislation to begin addressing that debacle didn’t make it to a floor vote. Gov. Pat Quinn’s pointed words on the subject in his February budget address both encourage us and make us hope he sticks to his word that something has to happen.

Opinions differ on whether lawmakers can reduce current employees’ pension benefits going forward. (Our view is that lawmakers definitely can do that, and we hope Illinois courts agree if and when legislators pass pension reforms.) But there’s no dispute on this: While pensions have some state constitutional protection, retiree health benefits do not.

The IPI says that only 8 percent of private-sector retirees are offered health insurance benefits, and those retirees pay an average of 54 percent of the cost. Similarly requiring Illinois retirees to pay an average of 54 percent of insurance costs would save Illinois $500 million a year. Over the next 30 years, that change by itself would shrink the anticipated $54 billion shortfall by $21 billion. IPI suggests leaving benefits essentially intact for retired state and university employees with household incomes below $70,000 a year. Those with incomes between $70,000 and $200,000 a year would receive monthly subsidies of $302 and pay $369 themselves. And “retired union heads or university executives collecting pensions nearing $200,000 would be required to cover their own health insurance costs.”

That’s one option; lawmakers surely can consider others. But think of this issue as the Legislature’s test case for meaningful pension reform: If Springfield won’t ask six-figure pension beneficiaries to pick up a portion of their health premiums, what are the odds that legislators will confront their pension monster?

During the 2011 deliberations, two groups helped block retiree health reform: lawmakers of both parties who have state institutions (and thus state retirees) in their districts, and well-paid lobbyists whose prior careers in government entitle them to, yes, fat public pensions. If that happens this year, we want to read names.

We’ve noted before that many states similarly fund unaffordably generous retiree health benefits on a pay-as-you-go basis. But those states don’t rank worst in the nation in their preparedness to meet pension obligations. Nor do most of those states expect to finish this fiscal year with a budget deficit and a malingering $9 billion in unpaid bills. As a result, then, most states are better prepared to meet these retiree health costs than is the insolvent state of Illinois.

By the last of the IPI’s 133 pages, we conjured one question, then a follow-up:

How could Illinois pols do this to taxpayers?

And come November, will voters finally exact some consequences?

Allen West for Veep? He says Yes…..if the fit is right!

Allen West:

I’d be the vice presidential nominee

if it was the “right fit”

 by Tina Korbe   at Hot Air:

Florida Republican Rep. Allen West, who’s been cited by both Sarah Palin and Nikki Haley as a potentially “good” vice presidential nominee, told CNN’s Kyra Phillips he’d strongly consider the VP nod if he were offered it. The future is hard to predict, he noted, but he said he’d find it humbling to be considered qualified for such a high office and he prides himself on serving his country in whatever capacity he can (h/t Erika Johnsen):

 

The money line came when Kyra asked him if he likes Mitt Romney. “I’ve never been on a dinner date with him … so I don’t know if I would like him,” West says candidly. 

As much as I like the Florida congressman whose outspoken opinions are almost always refreshingly right on, I can’t help but agree with him when he says he’s highly doubtful that Mitt Romney will ask him to be the vice presidential nominee.

Right now, the veepstakes suspense doesn’t center around whether West is really a contender: It centers around whether Mitt Romney can afford to not ask Marco Rubio, whether Romney would actually make the election about the Paul Ryan budget and whether Rob Portman’s as sure a thing as GOP strategists suggest.

 

Click below for the video:

 

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/07/allen-west-id-be-the-vice-presidential-nominee-if-it-was-the-right-fit/

 

 

 

 

 

Comment:   I have followed the Allen West developments since he began his run for the U.S. House of Representatives.  I love the guy….at least from this distance of knowing his background in the military and the reason for his dismissal.   Isn’t it about time  someone in Washington can call a spade a spade?   What a refreshing young political figure…..and  totally American.   

 

 

America’s Universal University Disease: Marxism from Leftwing Autocracy

Law school refuses to hire professor

who embraces politics the rest of the faculty

“despises”

 by Tina Korbe    at   HotAir:

Bet you can guess whether she was liberal or conservative. At the same time that schools pursue diversity for diversity’s sake without ever clearly explaining why diversity is important, they often fail to consider a different kind of diversity: What about diversity of thought? (And, yes, I was trying to see how many times I could use the word “diversity” in a sentence!) Sometimes, the details of a discrimination case are murky, but, in this case, they’re pretty clear:

[Teresa] Wagner, who graduated with honors from the law school [the University of Iowa College of Law] in 1993, has taught at the George Mason University School of Law. She has also worked for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion, and the conservative Family Research Council.

In 2006, Wagner applied for a full-time instructor position with the law school and was denied. She was also rejected for an adjunct or full-time position in four subsequent attempts, according to her attorney, Stephen T. Fieweger.

Fieweger said Wagner’s candidacy was dismissed because of her conservative views, and he cited a 2007 email from Associate Dean Jonathan C. Carlson to Jones in which Carlson wrote: “Frankly, one thing that worries me is that some people may be opposed to Teresa serving in any role, in part at least because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it).”

Fieweger said the law school and academic institutions in general have been so “entrenched” in discriminating against conservative-minded faculty over the years that “they don’t recognize they’re doing it.”

Ms. Wagner isn’t taking it lying down, though: She sued the school. A lower court initially dismissed the suit, arguing the dean could hire whomever he wished — but the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reinstated it. A trial is set for Oct. 15.

While I sympathize with Wagner’s plight and respect her decision to sue the school (especially because the school purports to be committed to fair hiring practices), I’m more generally against the forced imposition of diversity than I am in favor of her lawsuit. Freedom of association, anyone?

At the same time, I’m mindful of the way we hole up in our echo chambers. Our unwillingness to experience the friction that occurs when our ideas directly clash with another person’s is counterproductive. I’m talking about real friction and a real clash — the kind that occurs when you look another person in the eye, with no mediating computer screen or TV camera or other medium, and flat-out disagree. It’s uncomfortable — and it’s almost always cause for introspection. That introspection is often fruitful, as it forces us to either reaffirm our views for ourselves or to tweak them as the new information provided by “the other” requires.

A new study shows that Democrats and Republicans are actually unable to feel each other’s pain. As in, if you know someone is thirsting and you also know they have different political views than you do, you’ll feel their thirst less. To me, that’s shabby. We do have humanity in common, at least, and it’s worth it to pause and remember a few common truths and to try to build on those truths in our daily lives: In the grand scheme of things, we’re all small but none of us is unimportant, we all long to love and be loved, we all crave truth but are also often afraid of its implications …

Somewhere along the line, we’ve confused a commitment to “tolerance and diversity” with relativism. But we can simultaneously consciously seek to challenge our own views and, in the end, hold fast to our principles. It is possible. Not all opinions are equally true and two mutually exclusive propositions can never both be true. If we’re really seeking the truth, what does it hurt to give court to others’ perspectives? Maybe we’ll find we’re wrong … but maybe we’ll find we’re right.

 

Obama: Total Failure as President, Champion of Disorder and Deceit

THE PRESIDENT’S ABYSMAL RECORD

by John Steele Gordon     at   Commentary:

“Is this the week the Obama administration’s remarkable incompetence begins to be the narrative? If so, he’s toast.

The president’s astonishing, not to mention indefensible, lecture to the Supreme Court this week, in which he turned 200 years of American constitutional history on its head, has been the talk of the blogosphere. But it’s not just the fact that he pretends to have not heard of Marbury v. Madison, it’s the anger behind his remarks that he is having trouble concealing. Even his old professor at Harvard felt he had to weigh in.

It is not hard to see why he might be angry. His single major domestic accomplishment, Obamacare, is in mortal peril in the Supreme Court. InTrade has the chances of its being overturned at 63.8 percent this morning. And it remains deeply unpopular with the public at large. His other domestic efforts have been largely a bust. The stimulus did not produce the promised economic boost and recovery from the recession remains stubbornly slow and unemployment stubbornly high. Green energy is failing and failing and failing. The price of gas has nearly doubled since he became president, despite the recession, while domestic production of oil and natural gas has been rising despite his policies, not because of them.

And, of course, the country continues hell-bent towards the fiscal cliff at the rate of $1 trillion plus per year. Obama, and the Senate Democrats, have not even tried to do anything about something the people in poll after poll have called their number one concern.

As for his foreign policy successes, I’d list them except there haven’t been any. His failures are numerous. Our antagonists, such as Iran, Korea, Russia, and China have little or no respect for him, and thus no inclination to play ball. He has managed to alienate such important allies as Britain and Israel. Indeed, his very first foreign policy act was to insult Britain by summarily returning a bust of its great national hero, Winston Churchill–the man who saved the world in 1940–to the British Embassy. It’s only gotten worse. Last week, his open-mic gaffe with the Russian president was greatly embarrassing. This week’s summit with Mexico and Canada revealed deep problems within the North American alliance, problems that were hardly noted in the American mainstream press–a wholly owned subsidiary of the Obama re-election campaign–but were widely on view in the Mexican and Canadian media.

In sum, it’s a remarkable record, especially for a man who thinks of himself as a transformational figure in American history. The president looks in the mirror and sees FDR. Increasingly, the rest of the country look at him and see Jimmy Carter, perhaps even James Buchanan. They were both one-term presidents.”

Obamanerve knows no Bounds: Determining the Nation’s Budget as Example

It Takes A Lot of Nerve…

by John Hinderaker    at   PowerLine:

…to criticize Mitt Romney’s support for the House Republicans’ budget when Senate Democrats won’t even write one, in violation of the law, and President Obama’s budgets can’t garner a single vote. But that is nevertheless what Obama did:

When President Barack Obama criticized Mitt Romney by name this week for embracing a controversial Republican budget proposal, he worded his attack carefully and with bite.

“(Romney) said that he’s ‘very supportive’ of this new budget, and he even called it ‘marvelous’ — which is a word you don’t often hear when it comes to describing a budget,” Obama said during a speech on Tuesday, before adding: “It’s a word you don’t often hear generally.”

You certainly don’t hear it said about Obama’s budget. His FY 2012 budget was voted down 97-0 in the Senate, and his FY 2013 budget was voted down 414-0 in the House. The Senate’s Democratic leadership is trying to prevent it from coming up for a vote in that body, lest it be skunked again. But Obama has no intention of offering a serious budget proposal; he is 100% politics, 0% policy.

The desired effect was clear: tie Romney directly to mostly unpopular plans for budget cuts and emphasize that the former executive is out of touch by lampooning his use of a seemingly out of date adjective.

Good grief. Do we now need to add childishness to the catalog of Obama’s faults? Apparently so. But, speaking of being out of touch, how out of touch do you have to be to come up with budgets that get voted down by a cumulative 511-0? And how out of touch does the White House press corps have to be to listen to Obama drone on about budgets, without ever asking him why he thinks his budgets can’t get support from a single Democrat in the House or the Senate?