Work with a guy who's married to a teacher. They're worried as hell about her pension, and he lets his inner Obama voter slip out when he starts ranting about "Rich Bruce".

My counter as I was drinking coffee this morning - so where were the "loyal friends of labor" democrats when the bill for the pensions came due back in 1983?

1990?

Anywhere in this state's history?

The (D)imwits made great promises, but were more to blame than the (R)s for failing to make good on them when they had the chance and setting all their promises on a house of cards that they built.

What should "we", as in our elected blood suckers, have done? Simple.

1) made the payments suggested by the Illinois Department of Insurance, the agency responsible for oversight of the various local pending funds throughout the state, as they had recommended for the last 40+ years.

Instead, our elected idiots chose to:

1) rely on their belief that the stock and housing markets would never crash simultaneously.

2) use non Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to arrive at "alternate" amounts different - and much lower - than the IDOI numbers. Typical methods included, but were not limited to:

A. Calculating the member contributions based on participation by a fully staffed department, regardless of the actual number of filled (contributing) positions, which was typically less.

B. Using a Rate of Return on investments several percentage points higher than the IDOI rate to inflate future balances and lower potential shortfalls.

C. Using a fictitious standard family assuming a max of a single dependent per worker, instead of the actual number of dependents on file.

D. Shortening the post-employment life expectancy of workers by as much as 20 years.

E. Shortening the life expectancy of survivors.

F. Discounting any previous years shortages in payments, thus concealing the true depth of potential liability.

As a defense to the charge that "untrained people" were running pension funds - and as a part of a compromise measure to prevent our then-Governor (and now jail bird) from consolidating and raiding our funds for operating capital) all trustees were required to take a 32 hour college level course in investment theory and application. Resultingly, as a certified pension trustee, I can be held liable for fiduciary misconduct.  

If I was elected, OTOH, I could figuratively say "3 minus 10 equals 4. All those in favor?" and face no liability whatsoever.

IMO they should remove the immunity for elected officials and prosecute them under RICO. The lack of any real accountability allowed these officials to make decisions they had every reason to believe were insufficient, but with no consequences who cares?

Of course, that argument goes a lot higher than our state capital...