A Response to the Chicago Tribune and the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago... Civic Committee and Tribune continue propaganda attack on teacher pensions in Illinois
Are the articles in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune (October 23, 2011) regarding Steven Preckwinkle, David Piccioli and Reg Weaver just another blatant, diversionary attempt to shift blame for the financial woes of this state on the Teachers Retirement System and the other public pensions? What is the purpose for publishing such stories when, in fact, the average TRS recipient receives a pension of $46,452 a year and does not receive Social Security? And, for Chicago teachers, the average pension is slightly less than $43,000 per year (they are part of a different fund, the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund, and don't receive Social Security either).
R. Eden Martin (above right) has been one of those leading the attack on unions and on defined benefit pension plans in Illinois from his position at the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. Martin, a partner in the law firm of Sidley and Austin, is regularly featured as an op ed expert on "pension reform" in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. He is also an expert on "school reform," as he was on December 17, 2010 (above) testifying on behalf of what became SB7 at the hearings before the Illinois House "Special Committee on School Reform" in Aurora. With Martin (above left) is Robin Steans of the group called "Advance Illinois," which is completely bankrolled by the members of the Civic Committee (the CEOs of the largest corporations in Chicago). Steans is regularly featured by Chicago's ruling class as an expert on schools and school reform. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Perhaps the Chicago Tribune should publish what the typical pension amount is for a Civic Committee retiree and how it “feeds into the cynicism about all the deals, that [it is] an insider’s game and that the system is rigged” and completely “manipulated for personal gain?”
Are the articles an attempt to prove a faulty cause-and-effect understanding of the State’s budget deficit? Does it seem fair and reasonable to stoke the blind and misinformed anger of the people of Illinois by publishing purposely- incendiary pieces about three individuals? Does the Chicago Tribune believe that its readers are that stupid to believe that three people drawing an exorbitant pension are representative of the whole of which they constitute? Is it rational to believe that the state’s public pension systems are yet the cause for the state’s chronic budget deficit and that these three men are relevant to it?
Is the real issue that specific types of people do not want teachers and other public employees to have a pension, and many financial advisors would love to get their greedy hands on that money?
It is the way of thieves “to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers… from speculators [and corporate CEOs and bankers] on Wall Street who looted the U.S. Treasury…, [who] stymied any kind of regulation… and [who] avoided criminal charges” (Chris Hedges, from “The Promotion of Liberty”).
Teachers and other public employees are victims once again of the fallacy of selected instances, illicit division, and diversion perpetrated by Sam Zell’s Chicago Tribune and Tyrone Fahner and his Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and their obverse group, Illinois Is Broke: they simply “imply that all public-sector retirees who receive large pension payouts are representative of all public-sector pensioners, and that is the cause of [the State’s financial mess]” (Government Finance Review).
Dea Meyer of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago has been keeping a watchful eye on the secret "working group" meetings with legislators on the question of "pension reform." The meetings, held in the conference room of House Speaker Michael Madigan in the Bilandic State of Illinois Office Building in Chicago, were not reported to the public under the Open Meetings Act. Above, Meyer at the October 12 meeting, which was chaired by state reps Senger and Biss. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Of course, influential, wealthy businessmen such as Fahner and other members of the Civic Committee, billionaire Zell, (and some of his sycophants such as R. Bruce Dold, editorial page editor; Troy Hunter, chief executive officer of the Chicago Tribune and a member of the Civic Committee; Ray Long, reporter, et al.) and the Tribune’s WGN and its news reporter, Mark Suppelsa, are promoting the imbalanced messages of the Tribune and Illinois Is Broke.
We can assume that these subordinates’ intentional, eager and biased reporting are meant to perpetuate the ignorance or indifference of the public and to manipulate legislators, via Fahner’s, Madigan’s and Cross’s pending legislation (SB 512) that will redistribute exorbitant amounts of money to the financial sector (of which 40 percent of the Civic Committee membership are affiliated); even though such legislation will cost the Illinois taxpayers an additional $34 billion according to Buck Consultants, “one of the world’s leading actuarial firms,” as well as increase the pension benefits for some of the public employees who remain in the defined-benefit plan despite the proposed, continual increases in their contributions.
Is it possible to measure just how much money some corporations are currently pocketing from the majority of Illinois citizens or to calculate how much of their profits are the result of “subsidy economics” or “corporate welfare?” Could it be more than the Civic Committee’s fabricated, absurd, and unproven claims that Illinois is “$140 billion short” and that the pension systems will cost “$30,000 per household?”
“All [the state] needs to do to correct this problem is require sound financing of [the pension plans]. That means setting aside enough money each year for the benefit that each worker has earned and then investing that money... The problem for [some] representatives and senators is that the simplicity of sound financing would mean a loss of fees for investment advisors and others who get rich off the current system. In turn, that would mean a reduction in the flow of campaign contributions…
“To business owners and executives, the cost of campaign contributions is chump change to the benefits of shortchanging pension plans. Government rules permit and encourage a vicious cycle. To the extent that pensions are not fully funded, that their true costs are not paid each year, it means that corporate profits are inflated. Inflated profits mean that share prices for company stock are inflated because they should represent the profitability of companies. And inflated stock prices mean, in turn, that executives cash in their options for more than they should get.
Illinois State Rep Darlene Senger (above left) was unwilling to be interviewed by Substance about how her proposed legislation to make Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel dictator over Chicago's public worker pension funds would constitute "pension reform" for Illinois. Above, Senger is speaking on October 12 at one of the "working group" meetings at the Bilandic building in Chicago. Senger co-sponsored HB 3827 with Republican Rep. Tom Cross, legislation that would reduce the size of the trustees for police, firefighter, municipal worker, and teacher pension funds in Chicago to seven — with four of the trustees appointed by Chicago's mayor. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.“Many hundreds of billions of tax dollars [across the country] have been diverted to the rich, leaving our schools, parks, and local government services starved for funds. Jobs and assets are going offshore, sometimes to the detriment of not just the economy but to national security…
“It is the rich who are gorging themselves on the government with giveaways, favors, contracts, rules that rig the economy, tax breaks, and secret deals [and not the majority of citizens in Illinois, many of whom are public employees with hard-earned pension plans]” (David Cay Johnston: Free Lunch, How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You with the Bill).
At the Chicago Tribune’s suggestion, here is some fertile “dirt” dug up without the “tools [of the] Tribune reporters’ previous [biased and bungling] investigations”:
What should be published in the jaundiced Chicago Tribune? How about a full, investigative story regarding the state’s public retirement systems and why they are not responsible for the state’s budget deficit or for the underfunding of public sector funds? Here’s a lead for the story: state employees have contributed responsibly and consistently to their pension funds. Most of them will not receive Social Security when they retire, and they will have worked for lower wages and without “corporate bonuses” throughout their career for the promise of a guaranteed pension.
What should be published is that teachers, policemen, firemen, and other state employees are not to blame for the wasteful spending, unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcy, poverty, and other financial disasters that have occurred, but Wall Street “robber barons” are the culprits.
What should be published and further investigated in the Chicago Tribune is that last year, “state and local governments gave nearly $70 billion to corporations. [These are] massive subsidies and welfare for these large corporations… even though corporate profits have increased 60 percent, and corporations have almost $2 trillion in cash… [Corporations] are not investing this money. They are not creating jobs. They are hoarding this money that they have pulled out of the economy” (David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist).
What should be published and investigated is that billionaire real-estate investor and Chicago Tribune’s Chief Executive, Sam Zell, is well known for his “vulture investing” and is “the storied ‘grave dancer’ who scooped up hundreds of discounted assets during the real-estate collapse of the early 1990s” (The Wall Street Journal, June 2011).
What should be published and investigated is that the government of the State of Illinois has a plausible complicit partnership with the Civic Committee and that there is a consolidation of powerful oligarchic relationships among the Civic Committee’s CEOs and some of the state’s legislators; what should be published is whether the Illinois state government should continue to allow “certain businesses” to become ridiculously rich—despite the whining of “45 chief executives of top Illinois-based public companies” that the Chicago Tribune editorial board had surveyed and then published in its Sunday’s editorial page—while the rest of us become poorer and are forced to go without needed services?
What should be published is that the state’s underfunding of the pensions for 59 years, interest payments for debts incurred and its resultant tax breaks for the wealthy and the decrease in tax revenues, corporate fraud and greed and resulting stock-market crash have largely contributed to the budget problems in Illinois.
What should be published is the injustice of some legislators and the lawyers of Sidley Austin LLP who are also Civic Committee members that want to change existing state and the United States’ contractual laws (Article XIII, Section 5 of the Constitution of the State of Illinois and Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution of the United States of America), laws that would compel others to accept but are not made compulsory upon themselves, laws that would not only destroy the future of hundreds of thousands of people but subsequently increase taxes for everyone else in Illinois.
What should be published is that past legislators of Illinois had diverted its “constitutional and obligatory” contributions to other “operating expenses” and “special” interests for several decades; what should be published is that the public pension systems of Illinois have depended mostly upon income from its own responsible investments and its contributions from its membership throughout these years; what should be published is that it is an injustice to break the trust among individuals and the pension systems into which they have elected to participate (read Article XIII, Section 5 of The Constitution of the State of Illinois; Article I, Section 10 of The Constitution of the United States of America; and Articles 22 and 23 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights).
What should be published and investigated are the avarice, arrogance, irresponsibility, recklessness, corruption, and cronyism of the corporate and financial sector’s chief executives and that they should have been prosecuted in a court of law. What should also be published and investigated is that these same billionaire and millionaire bankers and CEOs, these "vulture" opportunists, have paid themselves million-dollar bonuses with the taxpayers’ bailout money and should be held accountable for their larceny.
By: Bob Busch
Stormy Weather
The Eve of Destruction
This could be the last day of serenity for all of us with any interest in the
Chicago Teachers Pension Fund. By this time tomorrow we could be far up
the creek without a paddle. The state legislature could destroy the fund by allowing
the Mayor to get control of over ten billion dollars is assets and every penny
of members contribution in the future.
Current teachers could get reformed out of future retirement, while those
Already retired await their fate next year. It will be a couple of tense weeks.