Posted on 07/05/2010 8:47:46 AM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
Illinois is broke. So broke it can't pay its bills. Yet on it goes stiffing its creditors and it's making me wonder why I bother to pay my bills at all. If the state can get away with thumbing its nose at its bill collectors, why can't I? Oh, yeah. I'm not a Democrat. Unlike them, I'm expected to pay my bills. I forgot for a moment there. Oh, and I'm not a union member, either.
According to the Times story Illinois owes its schools, rehab centers, and childcare obligations $5.01 billion. And there's no payment in sight.
Then there is the state employees pension plan that is underfunded by 50 percent.
Also, as the state legislature left the Capitol last month for its summer break there was no budget settled upon.
Marginal state employees and contractors are being let go right and left… as far as I am concerned they should never have been hired in the first place, of course. Most of these positions are unnecessary welfare workers paid out of the now non-existent largess of the state treasury. Still, whether they were legitimate employees or not -- and admittedly some are -- there's no money for them and they've been let go...
Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...
I often wonder just why I pay taxes.
Interesting times are coming.
Prepare.
It’s certainly appropriate that the Chicago gang of Baraq, Axlegrease, and Rhambo are affiliated with this Illinois train wreck.
>> it’s making me wonder why I bother to pay my bills
It’s making ME wonder why vendors are still delivering ANYTHING to the state of Illinois.
Putting credit risks on COD has been a sound business practice since business was invented.
Cut the sorry deadbeats off!
Yeah, considering I have yet to receive my Illinois state refund...
Why should I file with this state in the future, until they pay me what they owe me? Just a rhetorical question...
Bookmark
Let me guess....Shortshanks is still getting HIS paychecks, right??!!!
Broke Obama.
Rush predicted this a while back. The stimulus money was used to prop up states and cities. That money is running out. So there’s fixing to be a lot of layoffs of state and city employees.
Thousands of school boards and local government boards hire and pay government employees with hefty pensions and medical benefits. But when it comes time to pay these, the state gets the bill.
This article seems to think that raising taxes is a the solution. And it may help for a while. But the problem is the same as New Jersey's. The local boards create the pension obligation and the state has to pay out.
The article makes the wrong assumption that Illinois residents are too cheap to pay for teachers and cops. But the reality is that they pay for 3 cops and 3 teachers for every one that shows up for work. The other ones are collecting pensions at 50 or 55. Many are onto second jobs in other states to rack up another pension.
To solve the problem Illinois needs to send the pension obligation back to the local boards. Where possible, local boards should stop giving pensions. Most of these people get 401ks or 403bs anyway. And they should increase the date at which people can collect pensions to 65. We make fun of Greece for letting people retire at 55, but there are thousands of state and local governments who do the same thing right here in the US. In fact if you look at all our government dept, you can blame almost all of it on pensions and retirement medical plans. Take those two out of the equation and we could be cutting taxes. Remember raising or lowering taxes is not the issue. Its over spending. And more specifically its over spending on pensions.
The Canuck used over $1 billion of stimulus money to shore up the budget last year. Now everyone is “surprised” there’s a budget shortfall again in Michigan this year.
Would someone please take our governor off our hands?
I was not even properly blown away.
I recommend skipping the blog post: just read the NYT article (helpfully linked in the article).
OK, whatever.
Using actuarial calculations from the Teachers' Retirement System (TRS), Champion News reports that the total estimated pension liability for the top 100 retirees will equal...
$887,925,790.00
You read it right. The top 100 retirees, by themselves, will cost Illinois taxpayers nearly one billion dollars.
Government employees are gang raping the tax payers.
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