Ponzi City Government: Chicago

Ok Daley, nice bleat:

Mayor Daley warned today that the day of reckoning has arrived for a financial crisis that’s choking local taxpayers: underfunded city pensions.

Daley said the 32-member pension commission he created more than two years ago will soon recommend solutions to the crisis that won’t be pretty or politically popular.

What's the primary problem?  Try right here:

He cracked the door open to raising the retirement age from the current minimum of 50. He said he would consider raising employee contributions and implementing a two-tiered pension system that shifts newly-hired employees to the 401k plans favored by private industry.

Can I have my Social Security - full benefits - along with Medicare at 50?  That's only three years form now.  Sounds pretty good.

Why not?

Because the Federal Government would go broke in about a year if we tried this nationally.

So who thought it was a good idea to do this with City (and State) employees? 

Where the hell were you, Mr. Daley, back in the 1990s when I ran a business in your putrid, corruption-infested town?

I'll tell you where he was: he had the public sector unions under his desk taking turns giving him fellatio in return for endorsements and votes, that's where.

Now, having basically bankrupted the City, he, like a number of other mayors and governors is bleating about how horrible the situation is - a situation he was responsible for creating!

Oh, and instead of facing this years ago his "response" to the early warnings was to sell off the parking meter revenues via a "forward" (in effect) and then blow the money, thereby destroying that which was in fact a decent city asset.

This sort of stupidity is nothing new and now there's no ability to avoid a truly nasty set of consequences.

Of course deposing the Daley monarchy is a bit of a problem when you have a plurality of people who suckle on the teat. 

When the teat runs out of milk Daley might want to consider how the fine citizens that would otherwise guarantee his re-election might choose to refill the udder they're used to being able to suckle from.