Fahner: Civic Committee helped jaw down state’s bond rating (by Rich Miller from Capitol Fax)

"A commenter mentioned something the other day which caught my eye. The commenter claimed that the Civic Committee’s Ty Fahner admitted in a March speech to the Union League Club that he had actively helped talked down the state’s bond rating in order to put more pressure on the General Assembly to pass pension reform.

"So, I looked up the video and watched it this morning…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ7ejQoBoJc

"The commenter wasn’t quite right, but he was close.

"If you go to about the 47-minute mark, you’ll hear an unidentified questioner say this to Fahner: ‘Maybe sometimes you gotta be irresponsible to be responsible. If a political solution really doesn’t produce a favorable outcome, maybe you really need a market solution. And a market solution, I don’t mean bankruptcy, I mean actually talking down the state rating even further so the state’s bonds essentially become below investment grade. And it drives up the borrowing cost to the state and all of us to a significant level enough that you really feel the public pressure…’

"Fahner’s response: 'The Civic Committee, not me, but some of the people that make up the Civic Committee… did meet with and call - in one case in person - and a couple of calls to Moody’s and Fitch and Standard & Poors, and say ‘How in the hell can you guys do this? You are an enabler to let the state continue. You keep threatening more and more and more.’

"And I think now we’ve backed off. We don’t want to be the straw that broke the camel’s back… It hasn’t been irresponsible, but we have told them that we thought they were being irresponsible. But we stopped that a couple of months ago.'"

- Posted by Rich Miller at Capitol Fax


Commentaries:

Corporatists are alive and well in Illinois. The history of our State has been one of excessive greed and shameless hypocrisy, of corruption and oppression, of extortion and domination, of exploitation and deception, of selfishness and subjugation, of poverty and unemployment and inequitable taxation, of protection for the wealthy and their powerful interests, of exorbitant wealth for the few and scarcity of wealth for the many: government of the Committee, by the Committee, and for the Committee…

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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...

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