This State is Your State

"This is yet another classic saga of how Illinois power brokers take from the many to line the pockets of a chosen few. Legislators awarding free tuition at state universities to the children of their contributors, school boards inflating superintendents' late-career salaries to raise their pension calculations, politicians awarding one another pensions for part-time jobs — like those three traditional scams, this pension-rigging for union officials fits the definition of "corrupt": contaminated, morally unsound, debased, venal."


The Chicago Tribune has an editorial today about the revelations this week that Chicago union leaders got huge public pension deals, even though they had long since left their public jobs. The editorial names the names of those involved and provides a missing piece of the puzzle. Will it surprise you to learn the John Daley, the mayor's brother, was one of those involved? And that two days after the crooked pension giveaway was done under the table, all of the major unions endorsed Richard Daley for mayor?

The men who were supposed to be taking care of the public purse instead emptied it to get the acquiescence of troublesome labor.

And the men who were supposed to be looking out for the interests of the rank and file instead took care of themselves, enriching themselves by submitting to power. 


Shameful. This is Illinois.


Read more:      Yes, This is Corrupt       Chicago Tribune Editorial