For 71 years the key recruitment tool of the State of Illinois to bring high-level professionals with real world experience into the State University was offered in (to me) this sentence, “We know we cannot match your salary at your current position, but, we do offer unbeatable benefits, especially our great pension program…”
For 71 years faculty faithfully contributed to their pension fund and for 71 years the State of Illinois did not. Not once, ever. Oh, now and then they would pay the interest on their debt, but never funded it, Sometimes they said they were funding but had to borrow the money, most of which the gave away to blackmailing corporations, who threatened to pull out to a state in the south or off shore and the state would cave in. It became a regular routine. Corporations were eating up our pension funds.
In his election run Mr. Quinn said he would not do harm to the committed retired educators. Billions were given away on a variety of incredibly wasteful projects. However, once elected he turned upon the very people who voted for him.
The Governor capped it with an incompetent attempt to change the state constitution, saying the voters, the people wanted it. The State University Retirement System said they lacked the votes to beat it. However, many people, myself included, wrote, called and pushed and the bill was defeated.
Now beaten the Governor tried a new assault, placing a huge target on the backs of all educators and a few of use wrote and called about it, and bellow are some of the things I wrote about. Where the union has been on this I have yet to hear. They seemed incredibly quite in the pensions effort and though I tried when I was actively teaching, they seemed uncommitted to suing or disturbing “the still waters”. Maybe now they will wake up.
Below is my open letter to the governor concerning that attack upon educators, one that places cross hairs upon large targets they placed on the backs of educators the very week shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., last Friday
Thus:
A Taking of the Low Road by Governor Quinn
For 71 years the key recruitment tool of the State of Illinois to bring high-level professionals with real world experience into the State University was offered in (to me) this sentence, “We know we cannot match your salary at your current position, but, we do offer unbeatable benefits, especially our great pension program…”
For 71 one year faculty faithfully contributed to their pension fund and for 71 years the State of Illinois did not. Not once, ever. Oh, now and then they would pay the interest on their debt, but never funded it, Sometimes they said they were funding but had to borrow the money, most of which the gave away to blackmailing corporations, who threatened to pull out to a state in the south or off shore and the state would cave in. It became a regular routine. Corporations were eating up our pension funds.
In his election run Mr. Quinn said he would not do harm to the committed retired educators. Billions were given away on a variety of incredibly wasteful projects. However, once elected he turned upon the very people who voted for him.
The Governor capped it with an incompetent attempt to change the state constitution, saying the voters, the people wanted it. The State University Retirement System said they lacked the votes to beat it. However, many people, myself included, wrote, called and pushed and the bill was defeated.
Now beaten the Governor tried a new assault, placing a huge target on the backs of all educators and a few of use wrote and called about it, and bellow are some of the things I wrote about. Where the union has been on this I have yet to hear. They seemed incredibly quite in the pensions effort and though I tried when I was actively teaching, they seemed uncommitted to suing or disturbing “the still waters”. Maybe now they will wake up.
Below is my open letter to the governor concerning that attack upon educators, one that places cross hairs upon large targets they placed on the backs of educators the very week shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., last Friday
Thus:
If I have ever seen a more despicable and dangerous piece of garbage than Governor Quinn's “Kids Don’t Have Lobbyists, Part 1” I do not recall it.
This Governor was not above corrupting little children in his disgustingly incompetent video. It is demeaning to use children in the way he did, and how far is that from Child Abuse?
His use of innocent children as “victims” of educators because the educators want the money owed them, and unknown to them, his ” firing away at the backs of retired educators, lying by saying that their pensions are taking away from children’s medical and other benefits, is well below the lowest point of unethical behavior. Are not the governor’s overpaid salary and HIS Pension eating up benefits from the kids?
The governor and his arrogant, glib, associates are knowingly placing crosshairs and TARGETS on the backs of elderly retired educators. What lies and hypocrisy he is spewing!
His vicious attacks are akin to putting a HIT on educators. Why not simply ask some of those mass murderers if you can borrow their weapons to take out the educators? Or send the mass murderers to their homes or their hospitals.
He lied about the reason for the attacks on teachers with the incompetent Constitutional amendment attempt, claiming that the voters wanted it, but as it turned out our hard work and prayers to St. Michael the Archangel, Our Patron Saint overturned that sickly plot and the voters defeated it. Now he is taking an irresponsible approach of ignoring that failure on his part and is trying to humiliate and endanger educators into what… heart attacks, strokes, or assassinations?
No teacher makes as much money as the governor, but he is neither cutting his salary nor pension, nor those of members of the legislature, all of which is much higher than ours. With his approach of trying to gut the income of those elderly retired educators, he is sliding us back into the pre-FDR era.
Some say he is acting like one of the directors of Dachau or Auschwitz-Birkenau with teachers as the victims of his Illinois death camp attitude?
The book of The War Against the Jews will soon be joined by Quinn’s War Against the Elderly Educators. Some people believe he is giving new meaning to the works of these men; the cowardly Judas, Robert Ford, John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald, especially the democrats who make up the vast majority of educators in Illinois.
First thing the Fascists’ did when they moved upon Poland was murder the intellectuals; the professors and scientists and now under cover of his office he is trying to destroy their lives.
Congratulations Mr. Governor on this most malevolent comment, “Whether the campaign's characters generate ridicule or praise does not concern the governor's office. Its goal is to get people talking about pension reform by whatever means possible, makes you sound like Adolph Hitler, “Any means possible
Need I say more? The above speaks for itself with no further comment from me, but it speaks volumes about the character of the man.
By attacking the most vulnerable group: elderly people who when younger, studied hard and educated themselves, many of them were veterans in WW II, Korea and Viet Nam and other wars, who have now come home to face diabolical behavior aimed at their backs in their home State? No wonder so many are leaving Illinois. And here the Governor sits, beating up on defenseless seniors at the request of Tea Party Republican avarice generators.
Why not just open concentration camps in which to commit educators? Might as well, because they will not be able to afford their homes if you take away their income. Then the teachers can face a death camp ending of their careers, is that your goal? They who contributed their own money, their hearts, their souls, their ethical view of life, now simply want to live out those lives in peace, but you and your avarice saturated string pullers won’t let them. The trend in Red States is to demean and attack teachers, the mayor of Chicago attempted to demonize, even criminalize teachers. A week ago a teacher gave her life shielding her students. I wonder if those who demonized teachers would have done as much. I doubt, it greed, cowardice, and vicious behavior overcome all attempts at decency.
For decades the politicians ill-placed the money that was supposed to match educator’s contributions to the pension fund, by “borrowing” against it, or never honoring or contributing the state’s share of a contract, a solemn promise. Illinois is are nothing more than “Dead Beat NON-Dad” attacking in flagitious exceptions, all educators, by refusing to pay those retirees which are now elderly and most in need of peace and rest which they earned with their hard work and contributions. The state has put people in jail for less and a democratic governor is acting more like a Tea Party/fascist than a remnant of the New Deal. Such a man making those of an honorable profession the victims, targets-TARGETS for Crazies, is certainly a most dishonorable thin, is it not?
Recently a retired teacher who is 79 years was quoted as saying that she was shouted at by a young neighbor who threatened her saying that, retired Professors are stealing from the children and do not deserve to live. Nice going Mr. Quinn.
Crazies with access to weapons will see The Governors Mephistophelean cartoon, idiotic-advertising slander of educators, as just another tie with the philosophies of 1920’s – 1940’s in Germany, ganged up as an okay way to do away with elderly retirees.
The governor apparently thinks nothing of demeaning, threatening, and ridiculing veterans and others who invested small fortunes educating themselves, who then served as educators for decades. Some had successful careers and were recruited by the state of Illinois with this promising beginning, “We want the best and the brightest. Well educated people with professional career experience to teach in our college and while we cannot offer you what you are now making we can offer you a wonderful pension plan.” Fraud and lies.
Perhaps an attorney can make a case against the state for Embezzlement of Funds from an annuity to pay-off corporations?
And this most unconscionable comment: “Whether the campaign's characters generate ridicule or praise does not concern the governor's office. Its goal is to get people talking about pension reform by whatever means possible."
The governor was falsely thrilled because “5,000” people visited his vicious creation. 5,000 may have seen his website, but the vast majority was roundly rejecting as a derogatory and foolish piece of trash.
He and his predecessors threw away our money on corporate projects and it is rumored that more money will be stolen to aid a poor billionaire in repairing Wrigley Field. But that, the governor and the mayor of Chicago think does not take money away from children. Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, at it lowest point.
By giving Sears and other corporations billions of dollars allowing them to blackmail the state and city, was cash wasted and apparently more important than teachers.
Throwing $550 millions into one lottery, now that is real commonsense, isn’t it? I believe that studies show that when lotteries payoffs are smaller but more often offered more people buy into them because they see the odds as lowered.
Isn’t that money taking medical care away from children and pensions as well? If you had saved that money by making reasonable lotteries and stopped giving it away and had contributed the pensions would be funded and nor a worry. This effort by the state of Illinois lately called the most corrupt state in America, is far worse than simply a sinful thing, it is akin to forcing retired people into a form of political genocide, by slowly driving teachers bankrupt. It is nothing less than Financial Terrorism. Where are the indictments against that sort of terrorism?
I wonder if this is that what Governor Quinn is willing to do to his own children? Or just the now grown children of others? He knows far less about students than do professional educators. Our children are the beneficiaries of the educator’s knowledge. He is opening up a bag of rattlesnakes that will haunt his conscience, if he has one, forever. I hope his position is worth the price of his soul.
If any educator is attacked physically as result of these slanders this governor has fired at their backs, I will be the first to contribute heavily for his/her lawsuit against him and his staff and the addle-brained persons who wrote his sick uninspired and misguided slop, and the ignoble use of children in a disgusting conspiracy attempting to intentionally agitating people to violence, shouting "FIRE" in a crowded theatre by targeting intellectuals for target practice for crazies, just as they did in Germany in the 1920’s through 1940’s.