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“…[W]hat happens if Illinois is able to unlock its own
chains and shackles from decades of avoidance of payments to the pension
systems by using the legal canard of Police Powers to deny what is owed to
those who worked for the state?
“Attorney General Lisa Madigan would tell you that she (and
the state) would be able to pay for these significant human services that are
in desperate need of succor due to lack of money. Hmmmm.
“Would she or anyone like her father address the structural
fiscal deficit in the state? Or – God help us all – if she were to prevail in
the Supreme Court – would she declare the pharmacists, the health care
providers, the businesses that have done business with the state a terrible
drain on the economy in Illinois and therefore subject to the need for Police
Powers to break more contracts?
“In fact, if she were
to win her necessity argument before the Illinois Supreme Court – why pay
anything owed again? To anybody?”
What if Police Powers…?
By John Dillon
Commentary (Redux):
...There is no threat to the “public’s safety, health, and
morals as well as peace, well-being and order of the state”; nor is the State
of Illinois dealing with an economic emergency of such magnitude that the
state’s politicians are compelled to invoke such powers “to protect the state's
citizens and serve a reasonable public purpose or need.”
Politicians who are attempting to subvert the Illinois
Constitution, such as Lisa Madigan and other pension thieves, prefer to blame
investment losses as well as the precarious longevity of some public employees for the state’s financial troubles.
Had the state’s politicians not siphoned off public pension
assets (by not fully contributing to the systems for decades), the five public
pension systems would be nearly funded and would have withstood the financial
crisis of 2008-09.
Lisa Madigan and other self-interested pension thieves
insist on cutting pensions as their final solution, instead of considering more
comprehensive, legal and ethical strategies for addressing the unfunded
liabilities they had created. Shifting future costs to public employees has
been their immoral modus operandi for a very long time.
Thus, nothing has been done about the flawed “Pension Ramp”
of 1995. Nothing has been done about the antiquated, flawed tax structure;
though, ironically, the state’s politicians allowed the state's needed income
taxes to expire while perpetuating continuous theft of public employees’
constitutional rights and benefits…
Right on.
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