Thursday, May 31, 2012

SB 1673: What Do We Do Now, Teachers?

We fight back!

We are one of the last mainstays of hope for middle-class Americans.  We are responsible, resolute and just.  We are a stronghold of amity, reason and compassion in a State driven by amoral envy, reckless insincerity and indifferent greed.  

We are appalled by hypocrisy and lies, by incompetence and irresponsibility. We are repulsed by prejudice and this coercion of choice that will be imposed upon us, a choice that is a diminishment to our earned rights and benefits. 

We are disheartened by the indifference of others, especially by the apathy of some of our colleagues in these matters.  Nevertheless, we are motivated by a community of action and by our indomitable spirit and idealism.

We must support our union leadership when the leadership makes the correct moral and legal decisions; we must also be prepared to confront the anticipated constitutional challenges we will have before us this summer and after the elections on November 6th.

We must prepare for the early June and Veto sessions because what policymakers have tried to do to us this spring will never be enough for them or for the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and Civic Federation. Therefore, we must forestall and oppose the injustice of further attacks to come.

It is up to us to defend our dignity and self-respect; it is crucial that we persist in protecting and securing our constitutional rights.  We must not give up on this issue. We must recruit every retired and active teacher; we must enlist every friend and neighbor and unify our wills to enforce the rights and benefits of all middle-class citizens, or all of us will be ill-fated.

We must rally together to un-elect policymakers who would have supported this autocratic bill. We must re-educate the misinformed public and challenge this unremitting and formidable struggle we have with powerful interests from obscenely-wealthy individuals and their procured partisan politicians who are more concerned with Bond Houses than with the needs of middle-class Americans.

Call the leadership of the Illinois Education Association (1-217-544-0706), the National Education Association (1-202-833-4000), the Illinois Federation of Teachers (1-217-544-8562), the Illinois Public Pension Fund Association (1-630-784-0406), AFSCME Council 31 (1-217-788-2800), Illinois AFL-CIO (1-217-544-4014), Associated Fire Fighters of Illinois (1-217-522-8180), Service Employees International Union (1-202-730-7173), Teamsters Local Union #700 (1-847-939-9700) and other unions of the “We Are One” Labor Coalition without delay.

Tell them you are willing to fight for your rights and benefits; tell them you support their efforts and are willing to do whatever is required to safeguard your constitutional rights and to halt impending contractual infringements.

What else should we do now? Let’s follow the example of our Chicago colleagues, but in Springfield in January. 

-Glen Brown

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

“Responsibility” according to the Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan


“There is a concept in America that we all strive to live under which is called responsibility, responsibility for our actions. And when one person can spend money and send the bill to somebody else, that’s not responsible; that’s not responsibility; that’s un-American” –M. Madigan

How should we respond to Madigan’s “concept in America that we all strive to live under...” when he wants the state’s policymakers to shift the "responsibility" of the state’s debts to public employees and other taxpayers and their school districts? Is that responsible?

Madigan’s new definition of “responsibility” is about sacrificing teachers and other public employees. It is about a disregard for active and retired teachers’ dignity, about betrayal and indifference and not honoring a legal and moral commitment and "responsibility." 

What really matters for Madigan and his cronies is the elimination of the state’s pension payments (at any cost) and not a reform of the state’s inequitable and unbalanced revenue system and pension debt problems.

Madigan’s new definition of “responsibility” is about coercing teachers and other public employees to make an unconstitutional choice or lose the modest, non-guaranteed state’s health insurance subsidy and creditable earnings in retirement.  

It entails establishing an inefficient Cash Balance Plan, a 401 (k) scheme that is profitable for pension-consulting companies and employers, contract and pension lawyers and actuaries, but is not as profitable and cost-effective as the constitutionally-guaranteed defined-benefit pension plan.

Madigan’s new definition of “responsibility” involves a deliberately vague and ambiguous legislation that would have diminished Article XIII, Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution, even though there are better legal and moral alternatives that do not violate the Pension Protection Clause, such as the ability to raise money through revenue restructuring so the State of Illinois can pay its debts responsibly.

Madigan’s new definition of “responsibility” maintains the wealthiest people among us who do not pay tax rates commensurate with their incomes, and it supports tax breaks for large corporations.

Madigan’s new definition of “responsibility” also means sustaining the unethical “winner-take-all” economy for the wealthy egomaniacs among us at the expense of everyone else; thus, it means scapegoating teachers, other public employees and retirees by legislators who align their interests with those who want laws passed that preserve their concentrated economic privilege and power.

And when Madigan says, “When one person can spend money and send the bill to somebody else, that’s not responsible; that’s not responsibility; that’s un-American,” that is precisely what Madigan and all the General Assemblies he has controlled have done throughout the past decades. 

How incongruous is this declaration by a politician who callously exploits his power, resources and sycophantic loyalists? How ironical is his so-called "reform" bill that will force the state's public employees and other middle-class taxpayers to pay for debts that were the result of political and ethical corruption during his protracted tenure as Speaker of the House? 

-Glen Brown

Read also Like So-Called "Pension Reform": It's Quite Simple 


Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Illinois Pension Reform Is Without Legal and Moral Justification by Glen Brown








By legal definition, a contract is “an agreement creating obligations enforceable by law… The law provides remedies if a promise is breached or recognizes the performance of a promise as a duty. Contracts arise when a duty does or may come into existence because of a promise made by one of the parties. To be legally binding as a contract, a promise must be exchanged for adequate consideration. Adequate consideration is a benefit or detriment that a party receives which reasonably and fairly induces them to make the promise/contract” (Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School). 
Accordingly, the State of Illinois has a long list of antedated court rulings upholding the rights and benefits (contracts) of its public employees.

To possess a right to a promised deferred compensation, such as a pension, is to assert a legitimate claim with all Illinois legislators to protect that right. There are no rights without obligations. They are mutually dependent. Fulfilling a contract is a legal and moral obligation justified by trust among elected officials and their constituents.

According to philosopher David Hume, the idea of keeping a promise depends upon creating rules of justice; that rules of contracts, for instance, have to be considered morally desirable as well. In other words, a "contract" or promise between the State of Illinois and its public employees must be viewed as a moral commitment and requirement of justice. Justice demands we keep our "covenants" with one another. In regard to public pensions, keeping an agreement means a concern to promote the well-being of public employees and the need to secure their rights. 

All citizens have rights that must be protected. When legislators swear an oath to uphold the state and federal constitutions (Article XIII, Section 3 of the Constitution of the State of Illinois), then citizens of Illinois and the United States have also acquired the right to expect that they will uphold that pledge. This is also a matter of important moral concern for all citizens of a state, for all legal claims will be validated by a moral framework since the concept of justice is grounded in ethics. If citizens’ legal rights are abused, then their dignity and humanity will also be violated. As stated by Alicia H. Munnell, Director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, Illinois is one of seven states where accruals are protected, and the legal basis for protection of public pension rights is under state law (State and Local Pensions).

Like all other citizens, public employees’ legal rights are derived from past political constitutions, legislative enactments, and case law. All citizens of Illinois have a fundamental right to oppose a General Assembly that imposes a violation of their constitutional rights and earned benefits… According to Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, “Any statute which [is] imposed upon [public employees]… in order to redistribute resources and thus benefit some persons at the expense of others [extends] beyond the implicit boundaries of legislative authority. Such laws…violate natural rights of property and contract, rights lying at the very core of the private domain” (American Constitutional Law). Current pension reform is without legal and moral justification; furthermore, to call it "pension reform" when it is "breaking a contract" is a fabrication.

“Wherever there is a right, the case is one of justice and not of the virtue of beneficence… When we call anything a person’s right, we mean that he [or she] has a valid claim on society to protect him [or her] in the possession of it, either by the force of law or by that of education and opinion” (Mill, Utilitarianism).

The significant issue of pension reform is its attack on public employees’ rights to constitutionally-guaranteed, earned compensation and the legislators’ obligation to safeguard those promises. An unconscionable constitutional challenge of those rights and earned benefits generates a serious threat to their secure sense of worth as citizens and creates the unfair possibility for an economic disadvantage for a particular group of people and their families. This can never be legally or morally justified.

Public employees are promised certain retirement compensation. It is earned; it is not a gratuity. They expect and plan their lives based upon these promises. “The very idea that [the state can] hold [public employees’ lives], or the means of [their] living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another ‘has been thought’ intolerable in any country where freedom prevails” (Locke, Two Treatises of Government).

State “governments must respect ‘vested rights’ in property and contract…” (Tribe). We should be able to assume most legislators in Illinois understand this concept of justice and that lawfulness demands that people keep their "covenants" with one another. Regarding current pension reform, no justice is accomplished when subordinating or diminishing public employees’ rights and earned benefits because of past legislators’ negligence, irresponsibility, and corruption.

All citizens of the State of Illinois have legal justification for their rights. As stated, the foundation of their rights is the State and U.S. Constitutions that directly support any claims against them. State contracts are protected by the federal government. Understandably, the 5th and 14th amendments of the United States Constitution protect due process of law. The legal basis for protection of past-and-future public pension rights are established in both constitutions. 

John Stevens, legal consultant for the Illinois We Are One Labor Coalition, stated most recently that “to take away the Cost-of-Living Adjustment for retirees is not a free and fair choice. It is a coercive choice under duress.” In other words, duress (or coercion) is a vitiating factor. Legislators of the State of Illinois are breaching a contract by forcing public employees to make a choice to diminish their originally-vested guarantee. They are breaking an enforceable promise, one that is bilateral and emphasizes an agreement between the State of Illinois and its public employees as to their future rights and earned compensation. To impair the obligation of a contract is to lessen its value. "Any law which changes the intention and legal effect of the original parties, giving to one a greater and to the other a less interest or benefit in the contract, impairs its obligation" (115 A. 484, 486). State statutes which do so are prohibited by Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution.

Any pension reform with a coercive choice offers public employees no ethical and lawful alternatives except to consent to the General Assembly's demands by choosing between two illicit choices. It is unlawful because of the illegitimacy of the General Assembly's advantageous attempt to renegotiate a constitutionally-guaranteed contract; it is unlawful to induce undue pressure upon public employees to make an unfair choice; it is an unjust financial enhancement for the General Assembly because it is a breach of contract for public employees to receive less than what the original vested right and earned compensation guaranteed, and it is a blatant exploitation of influence to obtain an unwarranted advantage.

American moral and political philosopher, John Rawls, once stated: “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override… It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by the many. Therefore, in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests” (A Theory of Justice).

"The notion that, whenever a privilege or benefit might be withheld altogether, it may be withheld on whatever conditions government chooses to impose, has been repeatedly repudiated since the mid-20th century... Unconstitutional conditions – those that make enjoyment of a benefit contingent on sacrifice of an independent constitutional right – are invalid..." (Tribe). 

Breaking a contract threatens the integrity of all laws that govern and protect the citizenry, for the values of the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 10) and the Illinois State Constitution (Article I, Section 16 and Article XIII, Section 5) are dependent upon the understanding and integration of all of the articles and amendments in totality. Moreover, American philosopher, Tom Beauchamp, states: “the strength of the constitution[s] would not be proven by considering each article or amendment in isolation from the others” (Philosophical Ethics
).
As citizens, we are advocates of a unification of the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution, which protects all of us from any violations of human rights and contracts, as much as we would wish others to be motivated by a way of life that is also governed by a complete moral system of thinking. There are no good reasons for legislators’ attack on public employees’ rights and benefits and their attempt to equate public employees' lives to an exchange rate in dollar amounts. The General Assembly cannot justify pension reform in accordance with fundamental, constitutional principles of reason and morality. 

What we call rights of individuals is bound up with the theory and precepts of social and political justice we adopt (Mill, On Liberty). All citizens of the State of Illinois have legal justification for their rights and for compensation they have earned, for rights and obligations are logically correlative, and a citizen’s rights imply or complement the legislators’ obligation to guarantee them.

The keeping of promises is the General Assembly’s legal duty. It is something the United States Constitution requires them to do whether they want to or not. Unfortunately, many legislators are willing to act without moral or ethical principles, even though “claims of rights [are] prima facie or presumptively valid-standing claims” (Beauchamp). 

What is at stake right now is not a potential adjudication of claims that public employees will have against policymakers who want changes to public employees’ benefits and rights, but to respect the public employees’ contractual and constitutional promises because they are legitimate rights and moral concerns not only for public employees, but for every citizen in Illinois: for any unwarranted act of stealing a person’s guaranteed rights and compensation will violate interests in morality and ethics and the basic principles of both the State and United States Constitutions that protect every one of us.

For that reason, it is imperative that policymakers and stakeholders examine their own ethical and moral principles and their conduct in view of the fact that they will have to justify their decisions to the citizens of Illinois. Certainly, moral responsibility and legal obligation to fund the public pension systems should not be ignored.

It is a moral concern and legal duty to reform the state's sources of revenue and to address the incurred pension debt through restructuring so the state can provide services for its citizens and fund the public pension systems instead of incriminating public employees, and thereby forcing them to defend the State and United States Constitutions. It is the State of Illinois that has the "primary responsibility for financing the system of public education" (Article X, Section 1 of the Illinois Constitution), and the public employees’ pensions are an integral part of “the system of public education” in Illinois.

There is no justice in granting financial benefits for the wealthy among us and attempting to place the burden of financing public pensions upon schools and taxpayers by Illinois policymakers; there is no justice in granting tax breaks for wealthy corporations and, at the same time, legislating cuts to public employees’ and retirees' constitutionally-promised compensation. It is ethically wrong to perpetuate unfair distributions of debts in Illinois, especially when Illinois legislators give “undeserved weight to highly-organized wealthy interest groups, [those groups] tending to ‘drain politics of its moral and intellectual content’” (Tribe). 

“The Pension Clause [Article XIII, Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution] not only makes a public employee’s participation in a pension system an enforceable contractual relationship, but also constitutionally protects the pension benefit rights contained in the Illinois Pension Code when an employee joins a pension system, including employee contribution rates. The Clause also safeguards pension benefit enhancements that are later added during employment. Further, the Clause ensures that pensions will be paid even if a pension system defaults or is on the verge of default. Finally, while the Clause bars the General Assembly from adversely changing the benefit rights of current employees via unilateral action, these rights are 'contractual' in nature and may be modified through contractual principles. In sum, while welching on public pension promises is not an option for Illinois as some legal and civic commentators have suggested, legitimate contract principles provide a solution to mitigate this crisis” (Madiar, Chief Legal Counsel to Illinois Senate President John J. Cullerton and Parliamentarian of the Illinois Senate, Abstract for Is Welching on Public Pension Promises an Option for Illinois? An Analysis of Article XIII, Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution).

If policymakers do not take individual rights and contracts seriously, but prefer to challenge them in a court of law, then we can assume legislators of the Illinois General Assembly will not take any of their other laws seriously either. To “let the courts decide” (Michael Madigan) is a travesty of justice, a costly effrontery and negligence of a legislator’s oath of office.  

-Glen Brown


Works Cited:

Beauchamp, Tom L. Philosophical EthicsAn Introduction to Moral Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982.

“Constitution of the State of Illinois, Constitution of the United States.” 2011-2012 Illinois Handbook of Government, May 2011.

Cornell University Law School, Legal Information Institute. 2 May 2012 https://www.law.cornell.edu/ 

“Hume’s Moral Philosophy,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online. 2004, 2010. 

Law Dictionary, 6th edition. Ed. Steven H. Gifis. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc. 2010.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Madiar, Eric M. “Is Welching on Public Pension Promises an Option for Illinois? An Analysis of Article XIII, Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution”

Mill, John Stuart. Selected Writings of John Stuart Mill. Ed. Maurice Cowling. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Munnell, Alicia H. State and Local PensionsWhat Now? Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2012.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 28 April 2012 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/ 

Tribe, Laurence H. American Constitutional Law. New York: The Foundation Press, Inc., 1988. 


Added on May 8, 2015: For Illinois Supreme Court ruling on May 8, 2015, Click Here.


Sunday, May 27, 2012

Can the State of Illinois Nullify Its Contractual Obligations Protected by the U.S. Constitution?


Are not legal rights derived from past political constitutions, legislative enactments, and case law? “Any statute which [is] imposed upon [teachers]… in order to redistribute resources and thus benefit some persons at the expense of others [extends] beyond the implicit boundaries of legislative authority. Such laws…violate natural rights of property and contract, rights lying at the very core of the private domain” (Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law).

Are teachers’ rights to a promised pension and their benefits like property with which they hold? The state “government must respect ‘vested rights’ in property and contract – that certain settled expectations of a focused and crystallized sort should be secure against governmental disruption… [There is an] “undisputed condemnation of any law attempting to ‘take property’ [from anyone]… General principles of law, enforceable in a proper forum, had settled that no form of legislative authority could be employed to serve private ends…” (Tribe). The fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution bans uncompensated takings of property.

Why can't Illinois legislators understand the concept of justice and that lawfulness demands that people keep their covenants with one another? There is no justice in subordinating teachers’ and retirees' rights and benefits when it was legislators’ negligence, irresponsibility, and corruption that created decades of unfunded pensions. The fifth and fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution protect due process of law. Article 1, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution protects a teacher’s contract from “improvident majoritarian impairment” (Tribe). Can members of the Illinois General Assembly justify any pension reform, or diminishment of constitutionally-guaranteed benefits, in accordance with fundamental, constitutional principles of reason and morality? They can’t. 


-Glen Brown


Saturday, May 26, 2012

A Report from Bob Lyons, TRS Trustee


"Putting Aside the Constitution" was how one of the Democrat leaders was able to justify what legislators plan to do next. She may have forgotten that to “uphold and protect” that very same document was in her oath of office.
Andrew Bodewes, TRS legislative liaison, who serves the same role for the Illinois Teachers Retired Association (IRTA), reported to the TRS Board on the content of the so-far unnumbered bill that will reduce the costs of the existing pension systems of the State of Illinois. As some of us may know, Bodewes is considered an expert on pension law and once served in that role for the House Democratic staff. What he described to us was the bill, as it was written, [also affected retirees].

Between January 1 of 2013 and June 30, current retired teachers would be required to make an irrevocable choice between keeping their existing benefit of an automatic compounded three-percent increase [Cost-of-Living-Adjustment] in return for giving up their access to state provided health care vs. keeping the access to TRIP, or whatever will replace it going forward, but losing the existing COLA and having it replaced by the current Tier II COLA of three percent or half the rate of the CPI, whichever is less and, thus, compounding being replace by simple interest.

Simple interest means the number the percentage is taken from is always the cost of the pension for the year the new program starts, or the first year for new retirees. [According to] Speaker Madigan’s interview that has been circulated online, [Madigan believes] that a required choice is acceptable under contract law. Madigan, Cullerton, and Quinn are lawyers and constitutional leaders of the state and that would lead one to assume they understand the Illinois Constitution specifically governs our pension benefits – apparently not!

Bodewes expected that while the draft could certainly change in the next few days that some final version of it would be introduced on Monday, May 28. He also said legislators understood that having retirees in the bill made it less likely to pass and more likely to be found unconstitutional.

The Democratic leadership was also being told that Republicans would vote against the bill if current retirees were in the bill. The latter point may have more to do with the fact that the bill is written only by Democrats. The bill does have that portion of the current state contributions that cover the “normal cost” of the pensions of current employees being gradually shifted to the local school districts, which has also been opposed by Republicans.
While a self-imposed guarantee for state payments was not in the bill, the draft does call for the pensions to be at full funding in thirty years. Active teachers would have to make the choice between keeping the existing COLA which would be based on their salary for next year and losing state health care vs. Tier II COLA based on their ultimate final salary and continued access to state health care.

This proposed bill certainly could and should be defeated. If all retired and active teachers call their representative and senator in Springfield, it can be stopped. Legislators are scheduled to be in session over the weekend in Springfield, including Memorial Day. If the bill is passed, we can expect the unions and the IRTA to be part of a suit, [and there will also be a request for] an immediate injunction to delay the implementation of the bill until the lawsuits are settled. While the majority of us are covered by Medicare and giving up access to TRIP, especially when we don’t have any idea what it will be, would be the easy choice, there are certainly others that [would find] either choice a great hardship.

It's also possible that by Monday May 25, it could be different.
--Bob Lyons

Friday, May 25, 2012

Before Amber Alerts



















Their pictures were on milk cartons
and taped to toll-way booths.
They appeared briefly in advertising fliers

for carpet and upholstery cleaning:
these mug shots of missing children,
small line-ups stalled in their short,

photographic histories.
Maybe we have seen this child before
on his way to nowhere or in a grocery store

clutched by the wrong hand,
locked in a large grip,
or crying on some park bench

with not-so-childlike bruises 
far from home.
And what should we make of their absences,

like God's heart,
of those parents held in an escrow of death
while the earth hides them beneath its skin? 



Wednesday, May 23, 2012

“We Mean Business” = No Representative Democracy

Most people believe the citizens of Illinois are victims of a partisan polarization and well-financed organizational interest group politics and policies, of compromised corporate-owned media that has been bought by the wealthy minority to shape what and how they think about fiscal issues, that the Illinois state government is held hostage by affluent and influential “special interests” (to protect the riches of the wealthy); where both the republican and democratic parties are one and the same “Money Party,” corrupted by briberies (campaign funding) made legal (Citizens United); and by those who can manipulate the state’s politicians without consequences, set the legislative agenda, and hoodwink and oppress an oblivious populace.

There is an ugly liaison between dishonest politics and corrupt partnerships.  A substantial amount of campaign money affects the ability and the will of our state legislators to make legal and moral decisions; it is money that motivates legislators to believe that radical “pension reform,” for instance, is the option for reducing the state’s budget deficits and not revenue restructuring.

The polarization between the rich and the rest of us protracts a policy-making for “special-interests” patrons, where donations create obligations, allegiances and reciprocities. Lobbyists are no longer subtle about their tactics today, about the contaminating financial dependency that they instigate with legislators, and about their continuing influences upon policy and bills that are passed in the State of Illinois. 

If we asked our legislators whether their decisions were independent of their highly-addictive campaign funding, what would they say to us?  That their financial support does not affect the issues and the issues’ outcomes that they consider for the rest of us? That it does not affect their votes on policy and bills or the tax benefits that they will grant to the state’s wealthiest corporations?  That exorbitant campaign funding does not distract them from their elected purpose and their oath of office to represent their electorate?  That injustices perpetrated by the influential self-interests of biased brokers with their moneyed-access of power that is granted to them do not exist? “Special interests” of Political Action Committees also mean “bankrolling candidates who are willing to cross labor unions and vote to reduce pension benefits and/or require workers to pay more for them” (Illinois Review, 26 January 2012).

A “rigged system” exempts the wealthy from their proposed “reforms.” It means the rising inequalities that continue to exist in Illinois are funded by powerful and wealthy interests’ groups, like “We Mean Business” of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.  Ty Fahner of the Civic Committee says that he wants “to build a $1 million pot” by November to elect lawmakers who back pension reform.  Representatives Tim Schmitz, Elaine Nekritz, and Darlene Senger are among many who have already received donations from the Civic Committee’s “We Mean Business” coffers.  Legislators proffer unequal opportunities for the citizenry and quantifiable payoffs for the state’s largest corporate executives to ensure patronage for their re-election campaigns.  A “rigged system” also means unions must have their own lobbyists compete on this filthy, political roller coaster because the ride is “rigged” by the highest bidder. The citizens of Illinois must put an end to this sleazy carnival of thieves.  

-Glen Brown

See also http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120312/BLOGS02/120309755/biz-group-plans-to-spend-1-million-on-lawmakers-who-back-pension-reform

Also http://www.ilreference.com/donors

Also http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2012/01/we-mean-business-may-really-mean-business-on-pension-reform.html

Monday, May 21, 2012

A Contract Is a Contract…

We are aware of past cost-benefit analyses used by Ty Fahner’s Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and Laurence Msall’s Civic Federation. They are prejudicial. "Participants in the debate over pension accounting have a variety of agendas. If the purpose is to make the situation of these pension funds appear as dire as possible, [for instance], then using a risk-free rate of return to assess their liabilities can be useful..." (The Center for Economic and Policy Research, January 2012).

We are also aware of the Civic Committee’s obverse group, Illinois Is Broke, and its discriminatory pressures to persistently misinform the majority of Illinois citizenry. Moreover, we are aware of the self-absorbed interests of those legislators who will attempt to garner the support of the majority of voters for their re-election by breaking promises and violating the rights of teachers in their districts, even though it will be legally and morally wrong to ignore the welfare of a minority of their citizenry, its teachers, and the constitutional commitments made to them.

A contract is “a promise or set of promises, for breach of which the law gives a remedy, or the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty” (1 Williston, Contracts 1, 4th ed. 2009).  “[It is] a transaction involving two or more individuals whereby each becomes obligated to the other, with reciprocal rights to demand performance of what is promised by each respectively” (282 P. 2d 1084, 1088).

Just as Fahner stated on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight in late April that “This [financial mess] was not created by the people entitled to the benefits… If this happened in the private sector… If someone didn’t pay in the money…There would be prosecutions going.” We also agree that to uphold a contract is of vital social, political, economic, legal and moral significance not only for the prosperous few, but for the rest of us. Breaking a contract threatens the integrity of all laws that govern and protect the citizenry.

…Constitutional Challenges and the Ethical Path to Take (November 18, 2011): http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2011/11/pension-hybrid-plans-constitutional.html


…Should We Separate Our Moral Responsibility from Our Legal Obligation (May 3, 2012): http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/05/funding-illinois-teachers-retirement.html