Ripped from Space

From May 19, 1991 to March 25, 1992, Sergei Krikalev, a cosmonaut, remained in space
because there was not enough money to bring him back to earth. During that time, the Soviet Union collapsed, and a new Russia was born. For this, Krikalev is sometimes called “The Last Soviet Citizen.”…After a 10-month marathon… the fellow who couldn’t even score some honey was finally home.   —from a news story

When Sergei Krikalev returned 
to the barren steppes of Kazakhstan, 
reeking of horseradish and lemons, 
he knew he had traveled the length 
of more than one revolution,
that he had come back a galactic victim  
of economic relativity to a world  
now bewitched by a game of Wolfenstein  
instead of a game of ninepin, 
while he had orbited 200 miles above the earth.

When he heard the yoke of communism had broken,  
that his space station nearly sold  
to the highest bidder,  
his knees locked together; his eyes rolled back. 

So they set him down in a wooden chair 
to take his pulse and wipe his brow.
And after they weatherproofed him  
with fur to riffle back the wind  
that gray day in spring,  
he rubbed his eyes like Rip Van Winkle,  
not knowing another revolution had taken place 
where he now found himself whilst the lone loyal subject  
lost in liberty, moonstruck with the thought  
that he could finally score 
honey in some place unlike heaven.


“Ripped from Space” was originally published in Elf, 1993.
  

Ripped из космоса

С 19 мая 1991 по 25 марта 1992 года,
Сергей Крикалев, космонавт, остается в пространстве
потому что не было достаточно денег, чтобы привести его
обратно на Землю. За это время Советский Союз
рухнула, и новая Россия родилась. Для этого,
Крикалев иногда называют «последним советским гражданином."

... После 10-месячный марафон ...

человек, который не мог даже забить
меда, наконец, домой
-из новость

Когда Сергей Крикалев вернулся
в бесплодной степи Казахстан,
пропахшей хрена и лимона,
Он знал, что он путешествовал по длине
более чем на один оборот,

что он вернулся галактические жертвы

экономической теории относительности к миру
Теперь околдован игры Wolfenstein
вместо игры Ninepin,
в то время как он облетел 200 миль над Землей.
Когда он услышал ярма коммунизма сломали,

что его космическая станция почти распроданы
по высокой цене,
колени заблокированы вместе, его глаза закатились.
И поставили его вниз на деревянном стуле
принять его пульс и вытер лоб.

И после того, как его weatherproofed

с мехом на спине винтовка ветра
что серый весенний день,
Он потер глаза, как Рип Ван Винкль,
Не зная еще одна революция имела место
где он сейчас оказался в то время как одинокие верноподданного
потеряли в свободе, помешанный с мыслью,
что он может, наконец, забить
Мед в некоторых местах в отличие от неба.

Our Constitutional Rights (My Last Discussion with Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune)

Though it is printed here, I chose not to respond to Eric Zorn’s final discussion on his Tribune blog. I told him that beginning with his second post, he began to use tabloid thinking, causal oversimplification, faulty analogy, straw man, and non sequitur… that if the Chicago Tribune reneged on his current contract, he would understand a different point of view…


To Glen:

Discussing future pension obligations with you is like discussing proposed restrictions on gun rights with an NRA member: Every answer invokes the constitution – the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in their case, the pension clause in the Illinois Constitution in yours – and avoids the request for a common-sense analysis of compromise reforms.

I asked what’s objectionable, morally or ethically, about the idea of honoring all pension obligations for past service, but renegotiating the future pension benefits that will be based on future service, much as salary and other terms of employment are renegotiated.  Your answer: The state constitution forbids it.

I asked whether these pension deals were ever good deals for taxpayers – transparent, market based and actuarially responsible -- and if they remain good deals for taxpayers today. Your answer: Doesn’t matter. The state constitution renders such speculation moot.  [I never said this].

We agree that irresponsible legislators turned a potential problem into a looming crisis by skipping pension payments to in effect pay their bills with money from the future. And that now the future is here, so we’re going to have to raise taxes to make good on our obligations.

But at the suggestion of a compromise re-definition of those obligations going forward, in order to minimize the potentially metastatic impact of significant tax increases on citizens and businesses, your answer remains the same. And your allies on the comment threads rage that any other answer amounts to teacher bashing, union bashing and a Wisconsin-esque attempt to divide working people.

If these truly are the battle lines, I’m afraid this policy fight’s going to get ugly.

Eric Zorn

To Eric:

What we call rights of individuals is bound up with the theory and precepts of social and political justice we adopt (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty).  When legislators swear an oath to uphold the state and federal constitutions, then citizens of Illinois and the United States have also acquired the right to expect that they will uphold that pledge. This is also a matter of important moral concern for all citizens of Illinois, for all legal claims will be validated by a moral framework since the concept of justice is grounded in ethics. If citizens’ legal rights are abused, then their dignity and humanity will also be violated.

Rights and obligations are logically correlative. In other words, a citizen’s rights imply or complement the legislators’ obligation to guarantee them. The keeping of promises is the General Assembly’s legal duty. It is something the U.S. Constitution requires them to do whether they want to or not. Unfortunately, many legislators will act without moral principles, even though “claims of rights [are] prima facie or presumptively valid-standing claims” (Tom Beauchamp, Philosophical Ethics).

If policymakers do not take individual rights seriously but prefer to challenge them in a court of law, then we can assume they will not take any of their other laws seriously either. All citizens of the State of Illinois have legal justification for their rights and benefits. The foundation of their rights and benefits is the state and U.S. constitutions that directly support any claims against them.

“Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override… It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by the many. Therefore, in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests” (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice).  

To possess a right to a promised benefit, such as a pension, is to assert a legitimate claim on all Illinois legislators to protect that right. There are no rights without obligations. They are mutually dependent. We both know state contracts are also protected by the federal government as well (Article 1, Section 10 of the United States Constitution).

The significant issue of today and tomorrow is the relationship between a teacher’s right to an earned, constitutionally-guaranteed defined-benefit pension and the legislators’ obligation to safeguard that promise. An unconscionable constitutional challenge of teachers’ rights and benefits will generate a serious threat to their secure sense of worth as citizens and create the unfair possibility for an economic disadvantage for one particular group of people and their families. This cannot be morally or legally justified.

glen brown

For an in-depth discussion about constitutionality, please read "Illinois Pension Reform... Is Without Legal and Moral Justification"

Illinois Pension Reform

The confrontation between rights and power has a long history.  John Stuart Mill, in his famous essay On Liberty, examined the “struggle between Liberty and Authority… between subjects… and the Government.” A question he might have asked today if he were alive is what should be the limits of power that legislators have over their constituents when some of their decisions border on political despotism?  

No doubt, public employees and retirees have been blamed for the mismanagement of the states’ budgets all across the country.  It is easy to construct victims with a dubious call for “Shared Sacrifice.” Of course, by “Shared Sacrifice,” legislators and executives of corporations mean only middle-class Americans, and especially public employees and retirees.  Rose Ann DeMoro, the leader of National Nurses United, says the wealthy have “created an economy on to themselves without people.” 

To blame public employees for the state’s budget deficits is reprehensible. To change public employees’ and retirees' constitutionally-guaranteed pensions with the passage of any law that mitigates benefits (that were earned) and deprives basic rights is an encroachment of the public employees' right to human dignity and justice.  It is a calculated infringement of those essential principles, made evident by the lack of reciprocity and obligation of legislators and their lawyers and businesspersons who will not be made to sacrifice anything.

With the enactment of a pension reform bill, legitimate rights and moral concerns are in jeopardy not only for public employees and retirees, but for every citizen in the State of Illinois. Defrauding a person out of his or her constitutionally-guaranteed rights and benefits violates a most significant interest in morality and ethics and in basic legal principles of both the State and U.S. Constitutions that protect every citizen. Attempting to find ways to break those promises by the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago’s Sidley Austin LLP is a costly, dangerous effrontery and precedent to set in motion.

In a proposed world of freedom, justice, and peace, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948. Article 23 of the document states that “Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable [compensation] ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity…”

What public employees and retirees must do now is defend their rights and ensure the aforementioned proclamation. We can never become complacent in our belief that justice exists because policymakers can be trusted to make ethical and legal decisions for the rest of us; moreover, we can never become indifferent to political power and what exorbitant wealth can buy.  As Bill Moyers said, a “democracy is on the auction block, [when it is] subject to the highest bidder.” Citizens United and “We Mean Business” epitomize what money can buy, and what it can destroy.

Although we can infer that policymakers will often pass laws for their own advantage, most of us still adhere to the belief that the legislators’ duty to act justly stems from their duty to keep promises. (We should recall that despite their pledges, the legislators’ criteria for justice are their consideration for what is most expedient for them—their re-election, which is often concealed by a hypocritical concern for the general welfare of the state’s financial condition). 

Undoubtedly, state employees’ pensions are not generally viewed as in the best interest of the well-being of a legislator’s constituency.  Many people believe that public pensions serve no purpose, except solely for public employees' and retirees' enviable, financial promises.  So how should we argue then for the expediency of such a right?  Mortimer Adler once stated: “Is being unjust to a minority of citizens beneficial as a means for the majority’s attainment of happiness?”  Moreover, Thomas Jefferson asked a long time ago: “Should not the minorities [of individuals] possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect?” 

Though all of us claim certain beliefs as truths, we must remember that we cannot abdicate our right to representation in a decision-making process that attacks only us. It is up to us to secure our future by opposing the unfairness of any pension reform. It is our challenge to defend our dignity with stubborn resolve.  It is our primary task to enlist every citizen in a unification of will to protect our rights, as they are benefits earned for our life-long labor.  This undertaking forestalls our pro-active and continual engagement with the Illinois General Assembly and our re-education of the misinformed public. 

Indeed, fortitude and knowledge are our power, and this resilience and “knowledge must [become our] action” (Sophocles).  Our collective financial fate must not be determined by prejudicial legislation.  Both public employees and retirees are intrinsically bound to one another in this regard.  As Martin Luther King eloquently stated, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”    

Let us follow King’s message of “direct action” and unify our efforts to confront the struggle we have with the powerful interests of the privileged elite in Illinois; let us “arouse the conscience of not only our colleagues but of our communities” and expose the unfairness and hypocrisy of pension reform that will rob us of our constitutional rights and benefits.

Let us make our goal the preservation of justice and self-worth for all workers. “We Are [truly] One” when we unite and fight against unfairness and inequality in the State of Illinois, when we rally together to un-elect policymakers who support unconstitutional pension reform, and when we reach out to those in our communities who are overwhelmed and offer them hope for a better future.  To do these things is to act upon principles that we believe are so valuable that to do nothing would be a greater injustice.     

-Glen Brown

With the Enactment of Any Pension Reform Bill...

Dear Illinois Representative and Senator:

With the enactment of any pension reform bill, legitimate rights and moral concerns are in jeopardy not only for public employees but for every citizen in the State of Illinois. Defrauding a person out of his or her originally-guaranteed rights and benefits violates a most important interest in morality and basic legal principles of both the state and U.S. constitutions that protect every citizen. Attempting to find ways to break those constitutional guarantees, perhaps through the likes of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago’s Sidley Austin LLP, will be a costly and dangerous effrontery and precedent to set in motion, even if done pro bono.

Pension reform is the wrong solution for the state's financial predicament. It is the wrong solution because the State of Illinois has a revenue and pension debt problem caused by past policymakers; it is also transparent and unfair that the wealthy among us are not part of the solution for the state's budget deficits. The vast accumulation and hoarding of wealth by the few among us while most people live modestly or impecuniously is abjectly wrong.

Where is your humanity? Where is your empathy and integrity? Why would you pass pension reform that places an unreasonable discrimination upon teachers for the sake of insignificant benefits for the wealthy and for bond ratings?  Is it because of your lack of resolve to do what is equitably and morally responsible? Is it because it is easier to lie to Illinois citizenry and to blame and shift the financial debt to public employees?

Have you forgotten your avowed oath of office? Voting for pension reform reveals to your constituency that you are avoiding your "honorable duty" and obligation to uphold the state and federal constitutions to fund the debts owed to the public pension systems. It is on behalf of your legal and ethical concerns to increase the state’s revenue and to fairly tax the state's corporations and the wealthy among us equitably so the public pension systems of Illinois can be properly funded without ill-advised prejudice.

Sincerely,

Glen Brown


Read: What would Happen If Pension Reform Is Passed

A Revenue/Pension Discussion with Eric Zorn, Pt. 3

To Glen,

As you know, there is substantial and vigorous disagreement among very learned lawyers about the meaning of the pension clause in the Illinois Constitution. Does it mean only that benefits already earned shall not be diminished? Or that benefits earned in the future must be calculated based on the most advantageous past pension formula?

My view, which is based neither on case law nor an educated analysis of Constitutional intent, is that future pension benefits based on future service ought to be as re-negotiable as is future salary based on future service.

 I can see why you don’t like my view --- it suggests pension plans shouldn’t be the secure super-contracts teachers have long assumed they are – but I don’t see why you find it morally and ethically objectionable. Most of us face less than certain futures and must deal with changing circumstances – suddenly higher taxes, for example, foisted on us by politicians whose lives have become a Hitchcockian nightmare of chickens coming home to roost.

 In theory, public pension systems are a fine idea. In practice, they’ve inspired politicians to saddle their successors and taxpayers of the future with additional burdens and investment risk, paying for today’s goodies with tomorrow’s money (or, in the case of suburban school districts and municipalities, other people’s money). Teachers unions have showered these same profligate pols with millions in contributions.

Meanwhile, the Tribune editorial board, which teachers seem to believe is a co-conspirator in all this, has been sounding the alarm: The state “skips a pension fund payment to help meet one year's operating expenses, never bothering to wonder how it will meet those same expenses next year - let alone get the cash to replace the money it borrowed,” said a March, 1991, editorial. “Maybe if legislative leaders are forced to deal with today's honest numbers, rather than buying with the promise of money to come tomorrow, they can make a frank assessment of the state's revenue situation.”

My ideas for boosting revenue to pay our bills and meet future needs include graduating the income tax, expanding the goods and services subjected to the sales tax and taxing retirement income.

It also includes pension reform that outlaws payment skipping, makes the contracting entity responsible for setting benefit levels and making payments and adjusts terms and benefits going forward to keep the systems solvent and prevent the sudden, whopping tax increases that will be needed to continue sustaining the unsustainable.

Eric Zorn

Dear Eric,

We agree that a graduated income tax is needed “for boosting revenue” and for addressing the state’s structural flaws in its tax system.  Because the State of Illinois diverted revenue that should have funded the pension systems and cannot evade the unfunded liability, a practical response by policymakers should be the creation of a graduated tax rate used by 43 other states in this country. This is even more crucial since General Fund spending has been capped.

What’s more, if policymakers shift the normal costs to the pension system to local school districts and universities, it “would only mean that an even higher proportion of school district’s revenue would come from property taxes” (The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, CTBA).  Representative Darlene Senger told me she thinks this is a “bad idea.”

It appears we also agree policymakers need to design a broad-base tax base. “A majority of states apply their sales tax to less than one-third of 168 potentially-taxable services. Five of the 45 states with sales taxes impose them on fewer than 20 services… Research suggests that purchases of some services do not fall as precipitously as durable goods purchases do when the economy slows nor rise as rapidly when the economy is booming.” States that do not tax services, such as Illinois, “probably could increase [its] sales tax revenue by more than one-third if [it] taxed services purchased by households comprehensively” (The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

Consider the fact that a broader-based taxation system would provide a decrease in taxes for low-income and many middle-income families. Taxing services alone “would generate enough revenue to stabilize the General Revenue Fund and prevent structural deficits that lead to cuts in basic needs and social service programs” (CTBA).

To achieve fairness or a “shared sacrifice,” policymakers also need to consider putting an end to “corporate welfare,” in particular, extortive tax breaks and loopholes. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy maintains that the top five percent of income earners in Illinois pay the least amount of sales, excise, property, and income taxes because of federal deduction offsets or substantial tax savings (regressive tax loopholes) from itemized deductions, such as capital gains tax breaks and deductions for federal income taxes paid that are coupled with a flat-rate structure.

We both agree there needs to be a required annual payment from the state to the pension systems; the debt needs to be amortized for a longer frame of time just like a home loan that is amortized (CTBA). The ill-conceived ramp-up design (Public Act 88-0593, FY 1996) to pay down the state’s debt demonstrates the dangers of acting without careful or more systemic planning.

Lastly, Eric, the Chicago Tribune of 1991 is certainly not the Chicago Tribune of today; for everything else that you mentioned, my view is the courts will rule to uphold a state and federal constitutional ban on diminishing or impairing contracts, just like they have in Arizona, New Hampshire (February 15, 2012) and  Florida (March 6, 2012). In regard to your comment that “teachers’ unions have showered… millions in contributions,” perhaps corporate lobbyists and Citizens United, et al. should be our next discussion.

glen

A final response regarding constitutionality (May 16, 2012)

A Pension Discussion with Eric Zorn, Pt. 2

To Glen:

The law protects all employees against the sort of discrimination you describe, but very few employees have what you describe as a “sensible expectation of continued employment,” much as they too would like to have it. Many reports – including one published in our pages last year – indicate that it’s so difficult, time consuming and expensive for administrators to fire tenured teachers for incompetence that they seldom attempt it.

But let’s not get sidetracked on these broader issues. I’m sure we agree, along with most of the public, that good teachers and other union employees should be protected from arbitrary and unfair treatment, and that bad teachers should be subject to the same consequences for incompetence as most workers everywhere.

I’m sure we also agree that a deal should be a deal, whether hindsight suggests it was a good deal or a bad deal. We can go round and round debating whether the teachers’ promised return on their retirement investment has been excessively generous – by which I mean greater than the return would have been if the money had been privately invested and guaranteed in a way that private investment is not -- but the fact is that this return was promised to teachers in binding contracts and that the state remains on the hook for that debt even though it failed to set aside money to pay it.

Where we may disagree is whether the state should continue, going forward, offering teachers and other public employees the same pension deals – the same level of return on investment. Particularly if doing so would require significant tax increases or program and service cuts.

I realize the state constitution may prevent even a prospective change in the pension deal, even as I’m sure you realize the state constitution prevents the implementation of a graduated income tax, which I’m inferring is what you’re alluding to when you mention our “inequitable revenue system.”

Is it really unfair – an unconscionable example of teacher bashing – to say “OK, we’ll make good on what we owe you as of today, but starting tomorrow (or as of the next contract) there’ll be a new understanding”? If so, do you have a better idea than just raising taxes to get us all out of this mess?

Eric Zorn

Dear Eric,

We both know how emotionally-charged words can incite: describing the pension promise of teachers as a “good or bad deal” or as “excessively generous” arouses negative feelings unnecessarily. The fact is these earned benefits are protected by a “legally binding contract,” as you say, and to “make good on what [the state] owes as of today” necessitates upholding Article XIII, Section 5 of the Illinois Constitution: “Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State… shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”

Teachers acquire a “vested” right when they enter the pension system. In other words, pension benefits commence at the time a teacher’s contributions begin. The General Assembly cannot modify benefits except through an agreed-upon and fair “modification through contract principles” (Eric Madiar, Is Welching on Public Pension Promises an Option for Illinois?).  Furthermore, to respect contractual and constitutional promises as legitimate rights and moral concerns is at stake for EVERY citizen in Illinois. Why? Cheating ANY citizen’s guaranteed rights and benefits violates moral, ethical and legal principles implicit in the state and the U.S. Constitutions.

Illinois has a revenue problem and not a pension problem. Among the many proposals to “get us out of this mess”: eliminate the tax loophole for “Tax Increment Financing Districts”; eliminate “Edge Tax Credits” for large corporations; eliminate “Accelerated Depreciation” or “write offs” of all assets; eliminate “Single Sales Factor” that “allows large corporations to cut their taxes 80-90 percent, and  eliminate “Vendor Discounts” that allow companies “to keep an uncapped part of their state taxes as a ‘processing’ fee” (Illinois Tax Loopholes Cost Illinois Billions). There are many other suggestions, but these five recommendations would save approximately $2 billon, none of which raise taxes or require a constitutional amendment.

On the other hand, there is strong case to be made for a graduated income tax through a constitutional alternation. “Given an appropriately designed graduated-rate structure, Illinois could cut the overall state income tax burden for 94 percent of all taxpayers—on average providing a tax cut to every taxpayer with less than $150,000 in base income annually, raise at least $2.4 billion more in revenue, and keep the effective individual income tax rate for millionaires well below five percent…  Illinois taxpayers with the bottom 94 percent of base income collectively would receive an annual tax cut of $1.06 billion… [T]he combined effect of this policy… would create at least 36,000 private sector jobs in communities across Illinois… If Illinois were to adopt the same graduated income tax rate structure as Iowa, Illinois would raise $6.3 billion more in revenue than it does from its current five-percent flat rate, while over 54 percent… of all taxpayers would pay less in state income taxes” (The Case for a Graduated Income Tax in Illinois, The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, February 2012). 

Though there was a pending bill (HJRCA0012, February 2011) to amend the state constitution to include a graduated income tax, the Illinois General Assembly chose to enact legislation giving tax cuts to profitable corporations instead.  Eric, what are your legal and ethical ideas for solving the state’s structural budget deficit?

glen

Revenue and pension discussion with Eric Zorn, Part 3 (May 11, 2012)