Monday, February 2, 2015

What if Police Powers…? By John Dillon




“…[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…




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