You missed a great meeting. Glen and I have been wrong all this time. We make too much money, not too little, or even enough or what we deserve. Before the meeting we may have believed in the legalities of the Illinois Constitution and the concept of a vested protection with Article XIII, Section 5; we might have thought that a 401k was not an acceptable form of retirement savings and would never pass federal scrutiny; we erroneously held on to the silly conviction that as taxpayers we too were taken advantage of when the state legislature took holidays - not to mention being burglarized by the theft of our pension earnings; we held a blind faith in our unions who are still complicit in dealing a bad hand to all of us who worked so hard as public employees; we might have obtusely considered the state's problems a revenue issue; we might have wrongly figured the debt issue is separate from the normal costs; we might have been allowing the past history of investments in 401k's color our better judgment that ownership of our own financial futures is better than the leveraging power and investing wisdom of TRS; we might even have vainly hoped that TRS and pensions might be around even at lesser funding than 90%.
But we were wrong, Fred.
Now we know HB3303 is the legal rapture that will set us (and you) free, Fred. Free to invest our money on our own, without the state's dirty fingers on it. We can be adults like the rest of the taxpayers in the state. And as taxpayers, Fred, we will no longer have to make up the shortfalls of an economy sent to ruin by Wall Street; instead, we can navigate our own future fiscal health with, well, with financial advisors from… Never mind that, Fred. Besides, Fred, the guy next to us reminded Glen and me that the markets have made that money back. We're so, so short-sighted, Fred.
C'mon, Fred. Join us. You can leave your clothes behind, Fred. We'll need nothing more than ourselves when HB3303 passes.
O joyous day, Fred!
--John Dillon
If you haven’t read about Ives and Tom Morrison’s HB 3303, click here.
“I see the LIGHT!
ReplyDeleteI SEE the light!
I SEE THE LIGHT!
Saint Ives has set me FREE!
Free from the the need for money which is the root of all evil. Free from constitutions. Free from facts. Free from anything except what Jeanne Ives repeats as her Civic Committee mantra.
I am now a sacred and naked scapegoat awaiting my just punishment.”
- Manny Lou Screws
If Jeanne Ives believes my fellow active and retired teachers are going to meekly and silently become willing victims to her bilious propaganda blather, she is as delusional as Manny Lou Screws.
Even Google is in on it. When you Google "IL HB 3303," the first choice is from ilga.gov and takes you to the General Assembly website to see the bill. The second choice is "open states.org" for the text of the bill in a different format title "Pension Service Credit Freeze" run by the Sunlight Foundation. Jeannie Ives is the mouthpiece for the third choice which is the Illinois Policy Institute. Illinoispolicy.org. And the 4th choice is the Illinois Policy Institute propaganda on the bill sponsored by State Representatives Morrison (R) and Ives (R) and amended by State Senator Jim Oberweis who amended SB 2026 to make it identical to HB 3303 according to the IPI but if you go to the text, it removes the judges from pension systems saying theirs is a trust for the purpose of securing benefits and annuities. I wonder if that language would overturn the protections of the Constitution for the judges.
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