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Gov. Rauner who intentionally tried to bankrupt Illinois will have his veto overturned by bipartisan support

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2seaoat



A simple increase in the state income tax of just over 1%, cuts in government spending in the range of 5%, and both Republican and Democrat realized that crazy has no place in Government. A huge success for moderates and Republicans who want government to work......problem all but solved as the income tax increase is permanent, and brings almost 5 billion a year back into the coffers. Rauner will not get reelected as he could not run for dog catcher and get more than 25% of the vote. Common sense is coming back to politics. Good day for Illinois, and a great indicator for what might be coming in Congress.....people are tired of the chit.

IMASOCK



2seaoat wrote:A simple increase in the state income tax of just over 1%, cuts in government spending in the range of 5%, and both Republican and Democrat realized that crazy has no place in Government.   A huge success for moderates and Republicans who want government to work......problem all but solved as the income tax increase is permanent, and brings almost 5 billion a year back into the coffers.    Rauner will not get reelected as he could not run for dog catcher and get more than 25% of the vote.   Common sense is coming back to politics.   Good day for Illinois, and a great indicator for what might be coming in Congress.....people are tired of the chit.

Do you live within a budget Seaoat? That's all this man is trying to get Illinois to do... live within the budget or the revenue brought in. And you think that's a bad thing?

PkrBum

PkrBum

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/reports/203-billion-and-counting-total-debt-for-state-and-local-retirement-benefits-in-illinois/

2seaoat



That's all this man is trying to get Illinois to do... live within the budget or the revenue brought in. And you think that's a bad thing?


No that is not what Governor Rauner's mission. His mission was to bankrupt Illinois. I have worked second jobs early in my life to meet my budget. I increased my revenue. Republicans and Democrats rejected the sinister goals of Rauner. A Republican who I have had personal issues with and is very conservative stood on the senate floor and said voting to increase revenues was the only answer. It so happens that nobody is talking about across the board 10% cuts in government to go with those revenue increases. Illinois lost 3 years and almost 17 billion because of this governor, not to mention the increased costs for borrowing which were his doing.

A one percent increase of my state income tax, and a 2% increase in my income tax on our C corporation.......that is going to hurt seaoat or others in the state of Illinois to balance budgets.......insanity.....and that is exactly what 17 Republicans said when they over turned the political terrorist who tried to bankrupt Illinois. The cost of some of my supplies and services went up almost 25% from last year, and I am going to worry about a 1% personal increase in state taxes and a 2% increase on my one corporation which is not a subchapter S corp...........stupid people just have never ran a business. Now if you want me to tell you about the costs of the stupid bureaucracy and stupid regulations on my business which I am taking to a senate committee, we can talk, but increasing revenues to pay bills......sanity.

2seaoat



There is a simple solution to Illinois long term pension obligations. Under Illinois law government pensions are not taxed under state income tax law. The one thing which the corrupt Democratic machine has done is fight the income tax applying to illinois pensions. My wife gets an $85,000 teacher's pension each year. It is obscene not because of the amount, but the fact that she does not have to pay one dime of tax on that pension. Both my wife and I have on letters to the editor asked for Illinois to start collecting income tax on state pensions which would be directly applied to the pension fund.

The Illinois constitution which was rewritten in the 1970s does not allow a progressive income tax. It is an unfair flat rate tax which means a teacher who taught in a rural poor school district and only has a $35,000 state pension will have to pay the same percentage as my wife. It is wrong. The higher pensions should pay more, and the lower pensions less. The teachers unions and the government worker unions are all fighting this and the Democrats will not budge, but it is such a simple solution. Illinois is the fifth richest state in America. In eight years all budget problems could be resolved.

It took an all out war to get state workers to pay part of their retirement medical. Teachers always did, but Judges, politicians, and state workers were getting free coverage with no premium being paid by the retired person. Sorry, they fought it all the way to the supreme court, and lost. Government pensions need to be taxed in Illinois.

Floridatexan

Floridatexan

Looting the Pension Funds

All across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers

By Matt Taibbi
September 26, 2013

"In the final months of 2011, almost two years before the city of Detroit would shock America by declaring bankruptcy in the face of what it claimed were insurmountable pension costs, the state of Rhode Island took bold action to avert what it called its own looming pension crisis. Led by its newly elected treasurer, Gina Raimondo – an ostentatiously ambitious 42-year-old Rhodes scholar and former venture capitalist – the state declared war on public pensions, ramming through an ingenious new law slashing benefits of state employees with a speed and ferocity seldom before seen by any local government.

Called the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011, her plan would later be hailed as the most comprehensive pension reform ever implemented. The rap was so convincing at first that the overwhelmed local burghers of her little petri-dish state didn't even know how to react. "She's Yale, Harvard, Oxford – she worked on Wall Street," says Paul Doughty, the current president of the Providence firefighters union. "Nobody wanted to be the first to raise his hand and admit he didn't know what the fuck she was talking about."

Soon she was being talked about as a probable candidate for Rhode Island's 2014 gubernatorial race. By 2013, Raimondo had raised more than $2 million, a staggering sum for a still-undeclared candidate in a thimble-size state. Donors from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase showered her with money, with more than $247,000 coming from New York contributors alone. A shadowy organization called EngageRI, a public-advocacy group of the 501(c)4 type whose donors were shielded from public scrutiny by the infamous Citizens United decision, spent $740,000 promoting Raimondo's ideas. Within Rhode Island, there began to be whispers that Raimondo had her sights on the presidency. Even former Obama right hand and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed to Rhode Island as an example to be followed in curing pension woes.

What few people knew at the time was that Raimondo's "tool kit" wasn't just meant for local consumption. The dynamic young Rhodes scholar was allowing her state to be used as a test case for the rest of the country, at the behest of powerful out-of-state financiers with dreams of pushing pension reform down the throats of taxpayers and public workers from coast to coast. One of her key supporters was billionaire former Enron executive John Arnold – a dickishly ubiquitous young right-wing kingmaker with clear designs on becoming the next generation's Koch brothers, and who for years had been funding a nationwide campaign to slash benefits for public workers.

Nor did anyone know that part of Raimondo's strategy for saving money involved handing more than $1 billion – 14 percent of the state fund – to hedge funds, including a trio of well-known New York-based funds: Dan Loeb's Third Point Capital was given $66 million, Ken Garschina's Mason Capital got $64 million and $70 million went to Paul Singer's Elliott Management. The funds now stood collectively to be paid tens of millions in fees every single year by the already overburdened taxpayers of her ostensibly flat-broke state. Felicitously, Loeb, Garschina and Singer serve on the board of the Manhattan Institute, a prominent conservative think tank with a history of supporting benefit-slashing reforms. The institute named Raimondo its 2011 "Urban Innovator" of the year.

The state's workers, in other words, were being forced to subsidize their own political disenfranchisement, coughing up at least $200 million to members of a group that had supported anti-labor laws. Later, when Edward Siedle, a former SEC lawyer, asked Raimondo in a column for Forbes.com how much the state was paying in fees to these hedge funds, she first claimed she didn't know. Raimondo later told the Providence Journal she was contractually obliged to defer to hedge funds on the release of "proprietary" information, which immediately prompted a letter in protest from a series of freaked-out interest groups. Under pressure, the state later released some fee information, but the information was originally kept hidden, even from the workers themselves. "When I asked, I was basically hammered," says Marcia Reback, a former sixth-grade schoolteacher and retired Providence Teachers Union president who serves as the lone union rep on Rhode Island's nine-member State Investment Commission. "I couldn't get any information about the actual costs."

This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era. Five years ago this fall, an epidemic of fraud and thievery in the financial-services industry triggered the collapse of our economy. The resultant loss of tax revenue plunged states everywhere into spiraling fiscal crises, and local governments suffered huge losses in their retirement portfolios – remember, these public pension funds were some of the most frequently targeted suckers upon whom Wall Street dumped its fraud-riddled mortgage-backed securities in the pre-crash years.

Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions. This war isn't just about money. Crucially, in ways invisible to most Americans, it's also about blame. In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America's states and cities..."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/looting-the-pension-funds-20130926

2seaoat



The teachers in Illinois made actual cash contributions to the state retirement fund, and the local school district matched those funds. The teachers and local districts 100% funded the pension. The state workers, judges, police, fire, legislators, and other state workers needed for their pensions to have the state contribute their share. They did not make contributions, and they borrowed against the teachers retirement fund. There is no big business raid of the Illinois pension funds, it is bipartisan kicking the can down the road instead of raising the state income tax to pay bills. I blame mostly the Chicago democrats who allowed a judge to work four years and get a 100,000 pension, and patronage was appointing judges for four years. They finally shut down these abuses, but after 20 years of corruption there are hundreds of millions of wrongful pension payments being made.

del.capslock

del.capslock

Floridatexan wrote:Looting the Pension Funds

All across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers

By Matt Taibbi
September 26, 2013

"In the final months of 2011, almost two years before the city of Detroit would shock America by declaring bankruptcy in the face of what it claimed were insurmountable pension costs, the state of Rhode Island took bold action to avert what it called its own looming pension crisis. Led by its newly elected treasurer, Gina Raimondo – an ostentatiously ambitious 42-year-old Rhodes scholar and former venture capitalist – the state declared war on public pensions, ramming through an ingenious new law slashing benefits of state employees with a speed and ferocity seldom before seen by any local government.

Called the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011, her plan would later be hailed as the most comprehensive pension reform ever implemented. The rap was so convincing at first that the overwhelmed local burghers of her little petri-dish state didn't even know how to react. "She's Yale, Harvard, Oxford – she worked on Wall Street," says Paul Doughty, the current president of the Providence firefighters union. "Nobody wanted to be the first to raise his hand and admit he didn't know what the fuck she was talking about."

Soon she was being talked about as a probable candidate for Rhode Island's 2014 gubernatorial race. By 2013, Raimondo had raised more than $2 million, a staggering sum for a still-undeclared candidate in a thimble-size state. Donors from Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase showered her with money, with more than $247,000 coming from New York contributors alone. A shadowy organization called EngageRI, a public-advocacy group of the 501(c)4 type whose donors were shielded from public scrutiny by the infamous Citizens United decision, spent $740,000 promoting Raimondo's ideas. Within Rhode Island, there began to be whispers that Raimondo had her sights on the presidency. Even former Obama right hand and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel pointed to Rhode Island as an example to be followed in curing pension woes.

What few people knew at the time was that Raimondo's "tool kit" wasn't just meant for local consumption. The dynamic young Rhodes scholar was allowing her state to be used as a test case for the rest of the country, at the behest of powerful out-of-state financiers with dreams of pushing pension reform down the throats of taxpayers and public workers from coast to coast. One of her key supporters was billionaire former Enron executive John Arnold – a dickishly ubiquitous young right-wing kingmaker with clear designs on becoming the next generation's Koch brothers, and who for years had been funding a nationwide campaign to slash benefits for public workers.

Nor did anyone know that part of Raimondo's strategy for saving money involved handing more than $1 billion – 14 percent of the state fund – to hedge funds, including a trio of well-known New York-based funds: Dan Loeb's Third Point Capital was given $66 million, Ken Garschina's Mason Capital got $64 million and $70 million went to Paul Singer's Elliott Management. The funds now stood collectively to be paid tens of millions in fees every single year by the already overburdened taxpayers of her ostensibly flat-broke state. Felicitously, Loeb, Garschina and Singer serve on the board of the Manhattan Institute, a prominent conservative think tank with a history of supporting benefit-slashing reforms. The institute named Raimondo its 2011 "Urban Innovator" of the year.

The state's workers, in other words, were being forced to subsidize their own political disenfranchisement, coughing up at least $200 million to members of a group that had supported anti-labor laws. Later, when Edward Siedle, a former SEC lawyer, asked Raimondo in a column for Forbes.com how much the state was paying in fees to these hedge funds, she first claimed she didn't know. Raimondo later told the Providence Journal she was contractually obliged to defer to hedge funds on the release of "proprietary" information, which immediately prompted a letter in protest from a series of freaked-out interest groups. Under pressure, the state later released some fee information, but the information was originally kept hidden, even from the workers themselves. "When I asked, I was basically hammered," says Marcia Reback, a former sixth-grade schoolteacher and retired Providence Teachers Union president who serves as the lone union rep on Rhode Island's nine-member State Investment Commission. "I couldn't get any information about the actual costs."

This is the third act in an improbable triple-fucking of ordinary people that Wall Street is seeking to pull off as a shocker epilogue to the crisis era. Five years ago this fall, an epidemic of fraud and thievery in the financial-services industry triggered the collapse of our economy. The resultant loss of tax revenue plunged states everywhere into spiraling fiscal crises, and local governments suffered huge losses in their retirement portfolios – remember, these public pension funds were some of the most frequently targeted suckers upon whom Wall Street dumped its fraud-riddled mortgage-backed securities in the pre-crash years.

Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions. This war isn't just about money. Crucially, in ways invisible to most Americans, it's also about blame. In state after state, politicians are following the Rhode Island playbook, using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America's states and cities..."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/looting-the-pension-funds-20130926

That ain't the half of it, it's going on all over the country--Republican bankers and Wall Streeters trying to grab public pension funds:

The corporate media outlets are ever so fearful that the raw emotions unleashed by the fate of young black men at the hands of the police will lead to vandalism and looting… they are not so attentive to the wholesale looting conservatives have in mind for America’s pension funds. The retirement savings of millions of Americans — The money scraped together from modest earnings over a life time — The funds intended to keep elderly Americans out of poverty.

The Financialists’ attack on American pension funds encompasses both the public and private sector, and it is nothing less than A Great Pension Robbery.

Those, like the Arnold Foundation, who would like nothing more than to get their financialist mitts on public pension funds must first convince people that it would be “better” for the private sector to handle public employee pension funds, and to do so requires a concerted campaign of mis-information and dis-information about pension funds for public employees which are not associated with Social Security. This scam incorporates a multi-layered attack.

http://crooksandliars.com/2014/12/america-s-most-accomplished-looters-great

http://www.flickr.com/photos/btraven/

PkrBum

PkrBum

I'm not sure that I can get upset by people raiding pension funds that were little more than ponzi schemes to begin with. There's a common sense reason that even fdr opposed public unions. No one guards the henhouse.

del.capslock

del.capslock

PkrBum wrote:I'm not sure that I can get upset by people raiding pension funds that were little more than ponzi schemes to begin with. There's a common sense reason that even fdr opposed public unions. No one guards the henhouse.

Post evidence of that.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/btraven/

PkrBum

PkrBum

del.capslock wrote:
PkrBum wrote:I'm not sure that I can get upset by people raiding pension funds that were little more than ponzi schemes to begin with. There's a common sense reason that even fdr opposed public unions. No one guards the henhouse.

Post evidence of that.

He wrote an eloquent position... which you can look up yourself if you're interested in history as you say.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/aug/13/scott-walker/Did-FDR-oppose-collective-bargaining-for-governmen/

I decided to post it for you because I read that politifact crap and there was some spin.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15445

My dear Mr. Steward:
As I am unable to accept your kind invitation to be present on the occasion of the Twentieth Jubilee Convention of the National Federation of Federal Employees, I am taking this method of sending greetings and a message.

Reading your letter of July 14, 1937, I was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades "has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships." Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.

The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

I congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful.

del.capslock

del.capslock

So what, he was wrong. Big deal, compare his right/wrong record with any President of the last century.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/btraven/

PkrBum

PkrBum

Lol... you're a fucking trip. Ignore the inconvenient... classic.

2seaoat



Lol... you're a fucking trip. Ignore the inconvenient... classic.


You do not even understand the problem. It is the failure to be able to implement a progressive tax structure as the flat tax failure has been evident. I do agree that the public unions have too much power, but in this case it is far more complex. The fifth wealthiest state has some of the richest people in the world living within their borders and they pay the same amount of tax as the guy sweeping the floor at the gas station.

2seaoat



Steve Anderson was floor leader of the Republicans in the State of Illinois. He has a 88% rating by conservatives. He is an attorney who was elected from a town called Geneva, Il. He and 10 other Republicans crossed over to pass the budget. The Chicago Tribune ran a half page photo of Steve shaking hands with house majority leader Madigan who is probably now head of the Chicago democratic machine. I played poker yesterday and one of the players told me that Steve got a death threat from a fellow Republican from Southern Illinois. The Illinois State Police were dispatched and met with this Republican from downstate who had threatened Steve's life. It is my understanding that this was a respected Republican who apologized profusely as the rhetoric and hate toward any responsible governance had this man cross the line. Steve could have had him arrested. He did not. He resigned as the senate floor leader and simply said that his duty is to the best interests of Illinois and his constituents in his district. I told this person I was playing poker with that I was proud of an Abe Lincoln Republican taking back our party and that I would be sending campaign contributions and speaking with others in Geneva to support him. The idea that Republicans want to blow up Government and threaten to kill somebody who wants the State of Illinois to pay its bills is insanity to me. I am not going to register as an independent. I am going to continue to work in the Republican Party to support fiscal conservatives who want good government. I personally have never gotten along with Steve, and I would say it is fair to say we have had some actual conflict, but the courage he has shown has my utmost respect, and we need more profiles in courage for America to reach its potential.

2seaoat



Steve will face knuckle dragging primary opponents and this photo will be on TV and the papers next November. He got death threats because of his vote and this handshake. His political career is probably over if the bad guys win next November, but his courage in showing fiscal responsibility despite the personal consequences which included a threat on his life require that good people put him back in office.

Gov. Rauner who intentionally tried to bankrupt Illinois will have his veto overturned by bipartisan support 595fa210

2seaoat



I love it. With historic low gas prices, Illinois slipped in a nickle a gallon tax increase and my wife just purchased gas at a local wal Mart for under $2. I wish they made it a quarter and did not let this temporary glut with oil under 50 bucks a barrel. http://abc7chicago.com/politics/gas-tax-hike-hidden-in-illinois-budget-/2210298/

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