The Day after Vito’s Tavern, Father's Day 1957

(For my sister “Pidge”)

He was a left-handed Tarzan
swinging from Andante’s grocery store awning.
His right hand waved a .22 caliber pistol,
and shots rang out on Elizabeth and Race Street.

The Everly Brothers were singing

Bye, Bye Love on the Philco;

Rocky Marciano abandoned his title

the year before,
and this was just another Sunday brawl
between mom and dad.

The day after Vito’s Tavern brought no surprises

for my sister and me, but this time
mom broke my plastic guitar over his head,

heavy with 80-proof,
and we had to duck through alleys

and down gangways
to avoid his Ford Fairlane’s squealing tires.

Why was he chasing us?

How was I to know about the effects

of Early Times Kentucky whiskey
and Blatz beer at six-years-old?

He tried to leave mom before,

and he made my sister lug suitcases

down the stairs while I listened to cursing

and the neighbors’ murmurings,

their doors slightly ajar.

We cried because of his almost leave-taking,
but he passed out just in time
and my sister dragged his suitcases

up the stairs until next time.

Mom didn’t speak to him for four days,
and he made me his mediator
with a mission to obtain her mercy.
By Saturday, the two of them were going to Vito’s,
and I’m All Shook Up was playing
on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

“The Next Day after Vito’s Tavern…” was originally published by Lake Shore Publishing, 1995.

For my book of poems: https://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2023/02/hum-if-you-cant-sing-book-of-poems-by.html

Phasing out state's income tax hike would be a disaster by Ralph Martire

Nobody likes taxes. But everybody should be thankful Illinois increased its income taxes in 2011.

Here's why. Illinois lawmakers just enacted a General Fund budget for fiscal 2014 that starts July 1. Even a cursory review of that budget makes three things abundantly clear. First, a structural imbalance between revenue growth on one hand and service-cost growth on the other continue to plague state government.

Overall, the fiscal 2014 budget calls for $9 out of $10 dedicated to education, health care, social services and public safety — a total of $24.5 billion in spending on services. Of that amount, however, anywhere from $8.35 billion to $8.9 billion, or 34 to 36 percent, will be deficit spending. Which is nothing new. According to the state comptroller's office, this will be the 22nd consecutive year in which Illinois has run a General Fund deficit.

Second, spending on services doesn't drive these ongoing fiscal problems, but flawed tax policy does. Indeed, overall service spending is scheduled to be $214 million less in fiscal 2014 than the previous year, the fourth consecutive year spending on services will be reduced in nominal dollars. In fact, after adjusting for inflation, service spending will be 28 percent less in real terms in fiscal 2014 than in fiscal 2000. Again, this is nothing new.

Illinois historically has been a low-spending state, ranking 32nd in General Fund spending as a percentage of GDP, despite having the fifth-largest population and economy of any state and the 17th-greatest GDP per capita. Yet state tax policy is so flawed that even when spending is flat or reduced in real terms over time, deficits nonetheless materialize because of insufficient revenue growth.

IGNORANCE IS COSTLY

Third, the 2011 temporary tax increases are all that stand between Illinois and insolvency. As things are, the accumulated deficit for fiscal 2014 will range from $8.35 billion to $8.9 billion out of a total service budget of $24.5 billion, which is pretty bad. But consider this: Assuming spending on services remains as scheduled for fiscal 2014 and all the spending cuts from the prior four years are left intact, the state's accumulated deficit would be a whopping $34 billion in fiscal 2014. That's almost $10 billion more than the entire budget for services.

Despite all the charged rhetoric to the contrary from anti-tax scolds, the revenue from the temporary tax increases has almost stabilized the state's fiscal condition, albeit with an accumulated deficit ranging from $8.3 billion to $9.1 billion annually. But that's a far cry better than the $11.5 billion to $34 billion deficit Illinois would've had over the same sequence without the tax increases.

Of course, being temporary, the 2011 tax increase will begin phasing out over the next two years, causing $5 billion in lost revenue annually. If this happens, Illinois will have to impose crippling cuts to education, health care, human services and public safety. Which, given Illinois' status as a low-spending state, is hard to justify. The facts are clear — ignoring its flawed tax policy is more ignorance than Illinois can afford.
 
from Phasing out state's income tax hike would be a disaster by Ralph Martire

Also review Understanding Illinois' Budget Deficit and Solutions

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Of all the epiphanic books I read at Notre Dame High School, it was in Patrick Flynn’s literature class during junior year when a particular passage sweetly shook me to the core. It was also the same year I decided to become a teacher. In later years, teaching A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to advanced placement seniors remains one of my fondest memories at Lyons Township High School.

“Where was his boyhood now?  Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? Or where was he?

            “He was alone.  He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life.  He was alone and young and willful and wild hearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gay-clad light-clad figures, of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air.

“A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea.  She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird.  Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane’s and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh.  Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips where the white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird’s soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some dark plumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.

“She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot… The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; …and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.

“Heavenly God!’ cried Stephen’s soul, in an outburst of profane joy. 

“He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the strand.  His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs were trembling…

“Her image had passed into his soul forever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy.  Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call.  To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!  A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory…

“He turned landward and ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach, reckless of the sharp shingle, found a shady nook amid a ring of tufted sand knolls and lay down there that the peace and silence of the evening might still the riot of his blood.

“He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him, the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast…

“He climbed to the crest of the sand hill and gazed about him.  Evening had fallen.  A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky like the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand; and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools...”

(1916)

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Viking Press, 1964.

Madigan guts Cullerton’s pension bill (from Capitol Fax)

House Speaker Michael Madigan gutted Senate President John Cullerton’s pension reform bill today and replaced the language with an amendment which appears to contain Madigan’s own original bill. That bill, of course, died in the Senate last month.

From Rep. Elaine Nekritz’s spokesperson: A House Personnel and Pensions Committee hearing has been scheduled for next Tuesday, June 18, at 4:30 pm in Room 114 of the Capitol. On the agenda is House Amendment 1 to SB 2404, sponsored by Speaker Madigan… [possunt quia posse videntur:
they can because they seem to be able to].


from Capitol Fax

To reiterate: What is at stake right now is not a potential adjudication of conflicting claims that public employees will have against policymakers who want changes to retirees’ and public employees’ earned compensation and rights, but to respect the retirees’ and 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 acts of cheating a person’s guaranteed rights and earned 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 (link: Illinois Pension Reform Is Without Legal and Moral Justification).

We might become "We Are One" after all.

Fact check: Chicago school closings

Chicago school closings by Becky Vevea and Linda Lutton

• Chicago is closing 61 buildings.
• 30,000 children are affected by school closings.
• Schools are under-enrolled because the City of Chicago lost 145,000 children in past the decade.
• Children will be going to better performing schools.
• CPS needs to close schools to address its $1 billion deficit.
• CPS will save $560 million in capital expenses over the next 10 years.
• Chicago Public Schools will save $43 million annually on operating expenses by closing schools. 
• Students will have busing if their new school is more than 0.8 miles away from their old school.
• Schools slated to close are half-empty.

Fact check: Chicago school closings

Will Illinois political opportunists attempt another theft?

 

 

 

 

Go ahead and victimize the public employees through legislative incompetence, irresponsibility and misappropriation, Mr. Madigan and Mr. Cullerton. Strong-arm members of the House and Senate for additional votes. Ignore your oath of office yet again and challenge the State and U.S. Constitutions; transfer the constricting pension debts that both of you are responsible for, via your previous legislative duplicities. Continue your uncontested corrupt tradition of Illinois politics. Taken together, your reigns of influence since 1971 and 1979 (respectively) are perhaps unrivalled in this country.

“The Governor and I are now going to try to pass the original Senate Bill1. We`re hoping the Republicans will now support it. That would be a big help in passing the bill,’ Cullerton said. The two earlier competing versions of the bill would be combined into one new bill.

“We would have a bill similar to the one the speaker has passed in the House and that would be a version of the bill that we pass out of the Senate and try to put that in the same bill,’ Cullerton explained.  ‘We will see if we can pass that out of the Senate and probably delay the effective [date] that would require 30-votes.  We will make that attempt.’

“Both bills should be passed,’ Speaker Madigan said…”  (Quinn, lawmakers make small steps toward pension reform).

It is expected that that political opportunists who have no legal or moral concerns (besides their own) will break contracts.

“One of the key unions in the We Are One Illinois bloc, AFSCME Council 31, said it would not favor the idea of pairing the two plans together so that if Madigan’s approach failed a court challenge, the Senate, union-negotiated plan would be the backup.

“There is a plan that has been developed with our union and others, and it has passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support. That’s [Senate Bill] 2404. It’s not easy for us to agree to the compromise embodied in that bill,’ AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall told the Chicago Sun-Times.

“Any changes to it will not be in keeping with that compromise. That bill should be considered and passed by the House with no changes,’ Lindall said…”  (State Dems agree to work on pension reform, but ready to point fingers if it fails). What can one expect when dealing with liars and thieves? Click here.

The legality of a two-part bill:  Click here.

“[Any] attempt to denigrate the validity of decades of judicial precedents about the binding nature of legislation establishing pension commitments to government employees and to motivate state courts to overturn long-settled premises about these commitments would impose its own, unjustifiable costs. The states and their instrumentalities have promised pension benefits to their employees; those employees have relied on those long-standing promises; and as a result the citizens of the states have benefited from the services provided by those employees.

“There is no sound public policy reason to conclude that promises – based on the reasonable expectations of the contracting parties – should not be fully protected by the laws prohibiting or limiting the impairment of contracts”  (Greenfield, Douglas L., Lahne, Susan G. (2012). How Much Can States Change Existing Retirement Policy? In Defense of State Judicial Decisions Protecting Public Employees’ Pensions. National Council of State Legislatures Legislative Summit) ("The Illinois Constitution [should] impede pension reform").
 

If you haven’t read why any pension reform is illegal and morally wrong, Click here.
 

Illinois Pension Reform Conspiracy (or why a 401(k) is a foolish option, especially when it's your only retirement plan as in HB 3303)

Don’t be fooled by organizations like John Tillman's Illinois Policy Institute and some Illinois politicians’ saccharine prevarications about stabilizing the public employees’ defined-benefit pension plans. What some of them really want to do is reduce and weaken them so they are inevitably eliminated. Defined-benefit plans are lucrative opportunities for corporate predators when they turn them into defined-contribution savings plans.

Watch the 13-minute 60 Minutes: 401k Recession segment, especially an interview of a lobbyist for the 401(k) industry named David Wray (who is also president of the profit-sharing 401(k) Council of America); then read about the differences between a Defined-Contribution Savings Plan and a Defined-Benefit Pension Plan and Cash-Balance Plans.

“What kind of retirement plan allows millions of people to lose 30 to 50% of their life earnings?” Click here for video.


What is the difference between a Defined-Contribution Savings Plan and a Defined-Benefit Pension Plan?

A Defined-Contribution Savings Plan (Tom Morrison & Jeanne Ives HB 3303):

1) A defined-contribution savings plan (401(k), 403(b), 457) was not initially created as a retirement vehicle but rather as a supplementary savings account;
2) A defined-contribution savings plan shifts all the responsibilities and all of the risk from the employer to you; thus, your benefit is not guaranteed for life;
3)  Your benefit ceases when your account is exhausted;
4) There are no survivor or disability benefits and guarantees;
5)  Your benefit is based upon individual investment earnings;
6)  You assume all funding, investment fees, and inflationary and longevity risks;
7)  A defined-contribution savings plan does not have the pooled investments, professional asset managers, and shared administrative costs that a defined-benefit pension plan provides;
8) Though you bear no portability risks, accounts are not always rolled over when you change jobs;
9) Changeover costs to this plan could be significant;
10) Your employer (state) will have to bear the administrative costs of both defined-benefit pension and defined-contribution savings plans when you switch over;
11) “Payments to amortize unfunded liabilities for the defined-benefit pension plan may be accelerated” (National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS);
12) The Governmental Accounting Standards Board “requires [an] acceleration of unfunded liability payments when the defined-benefit pension plan is closed to be recognized on financial statements” (NIRS);
13) “No unfunded obligations [liabilities] for existing members are reduced when new members go into a defined-contribution savings plan” (NIRS);
14) “The loss of new members makes it difficult to finance the unfunded obligations of the defined-benefit pension plan” (NIRS);
15) The State of Illinois will not save money. Most of the State’s obligation to TRS is for contributions not paid during the past several decades; therefore, the deferred cost of underfunding cannot be eliminated by switching to a defined-contribution savings plan;
16) Shifting to a defined-contribution savings plan can raise annual costs by making it more difficult for Illinois to pay down existing liabilities. The plan will include fewer employees and fewer contributions going forward;
17) Even with a defined-contribution savings plan option, states and localities are still left to deal with past underfunding;
18) There is a several trillion dollar deficit between what 401(k) account holders should have and what they actually have.

A Defined-Benefit Pension Plan:

1)  You cannot outlive your benefit;
2) Your defined-benefit pension plan is more cost efficient than the defined-contribution savings plan;
3)  Your defined-benefit pension plan offers predictable, guaranteed monthly benefits for life;
4)  Funds are invested by professional asset managers in a diversified portfolio that follows long-term investment strategies;
5)  The large-pooled assets reduce asset management and miscellaneous fees;
6)  Your defined-benefit pension plan provides spousal (survivor) financial benefits;
7)  Your defined-benefit pension plan provides disability benefits;
8)  The state is responsible for funding, investment, inflationary and longevity risks;
9)  Because you are not affected by Market volatility, your defined-benefit pension plan is a more effective protection than the defined-contribution savings plan;
10) Because teachers understand the value of such a plan, they are willing to give up higher wages;
11) A defined-benefit plan encourages a long-term career and stable workforce;
12) Your defined-benefit pension plan provides you with self-sufficiency in retirement; it is associated with far fewer households that experience food privation, shelter adversity and health-care hardship;
13) Your defined-benefit pension plan is less expensive for taxpayers than Social Security – a reason why legislators, et al. had negotiated for Illinois teachers to not pay into Social Security;
14) The Teachers Retirement System of Illinois is the 39th largest in the U.S. with 366,000 members (2012) (TRS);
15) The average investment returns for TRS: 9.6% (1982-2012) (TRS);
16) Your defined-benefit pension plan has an economic impact of over $4 billion on Illinois; the effect on Gross Domestic Product is $2.38 billion; jobs that are created: 30,448 (Teachers Retirement System of Illinois, TRS);
17) Defined-benefit pension plans contribute over $100 billion to annual local, state, and federal revenue in the U.S. and provide capital to financial markets (NIRS).


Sources: the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS), Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Teachers Retirement System of Illinois (TRS)

-Glen Brown

Cash-Balanced Plans (Dan Biss & Bill Cunningham SB 35):

“The cash-balanced plan [that Cigna] implemented [in 1997] was initially developed by Kwasha Lipton, a boutique benefits-consulting firm in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as a way to cut pensions without making it obvious to employees… [Though] pension raiding became more difficult as Congress began implementing excise taxes on the surplus assets taken from plans [or in the case of Illinois, “diverted”], Kwasha devised the cash-balance plan as a new way for employers to capture the surplus” (Helen Schultz, Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers, 2011).  

“When companies convert their traditional pensions to cash-balance plans, they essentially freeze the old pension, ending its growth… [At Cigna,] 'Employees didn’t realize that there was no actual ‘account’ receiving actual employer ‘contributions’ or ‘interests’ – just a frozen pension, with no leverage… From the beginning, the cash-balance plan’s ability to disguise the pension cuts was one of its selling points with employers… [In essence, it’s] a pension plan ‘masquerading as a defined contribution’ savings plan, like a 401(k)… [And it’s a way to disguise the cutbacks in benefits… Corporate America uses cash-balance plans to mask significant reductions… Short of outright theft of pension assets, employers have been fairly free to make a lot of self-interested decisions when it comes to managing pensions” (Schultz). (Read John Dillon’s article: Cash-Balance Plans).

“The alternative of trying to cut public employees’ retirement plans down to the private sector level… just ensures that most Americans [public employees] face a bleak old age” (Alicia H. Munnell, State and Local Pensions: What Now? 2012). 

For additional information, please read Cash-Balance Plans: Just Another Form of Pension Cutting  

“To [Cash Balance] or Not to [Cash Balance]” (from the United States Department of Labor)