The Better Government Association supports the appeal by the non partisan Independent Maps coalition of this Cook County District Court ruling to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Except you don’t make judicial rulings based on partisanship ideology.

You base your decision on LAW.

So if you believe the judge ruled because of his/her politics then you have the duty to file a complaint with the ARDC.

Do you have the evidence to do that or are you just pissing in your wheaties?

The press release does not claim the judge ruled based on partisanship ideology or his/her politics.

The Illinois General Assembly has the ability to pass a measure to place the Independent Maps redistricting reform measure on an election ballot but won’t do so.

Simply put, Michael Madigan is against this effort desired by the people, as reflected in any poll taken about the subject.

**Simply put, Michael Madigan is against this effort desired by the people, as reflected in any poll taken about the subject.**

What is your point?

Do you think everything should be up to the voters?

Do you also support a millionaire’s tax to fund education?

Because “the people” overwhelmingly support that too.

The point is exactly what it says, Michael Madigan is against this effort desired by the people, as reflected in any poll taken about the subject.

If the Democrats wanted to pass a millionaire’s tax to fund education they could do so because they have a Supermajority in the Illinois House and Senate which means they could override the Governors veto if they agree to do so.

So Democrats are against a millionaire’s tax to fund education.

So the Democrats are against the people.

‘shake’ is correct.

Tax the millionaires in Illinois – expedite their departure.

Analyze the voter lists in the state and you will quickly discover the majority of voters departing the state are Republicans – the people who can afford to leave.

Wake up call for the ‘shake’:

Teachers in this state are already overpaid!

The problem with public education in the state is not money – it is the lack of quality.

We keep paying more and more and more but the quality of the product continues to deteriorate.

Remember when the average life span of a car was 5 years (1969)?

Unions and weak spined automotive company owners kept increasing the costs but quality did not improve.

Other countries started to manufacture a longer lived product at lower cost.

Those countries opened car plants in the U.S. without unions.

Now the average life span of a car is approaching 12 years.

Competition drives down cost and generally results in a better quality product.

Republicans want to add a modicum of competition to our public education system.

This will improve the product – more money will not!!

Vote straight Republican – federal, state AND especially local!!

It is well documented that overall compensation for many teachers and administrators, in the property tax rich suburbs especially which is not always the wealthy residential suburbs, is far higher than surrounding states.

Overall compensation being:

Current Pay

Current benefits

Pensions

Retiree healthcare.

There are several reasons for this.

1. Collective bargaining is completely disassociated with pensions and retiree healthcare and thus overall compensation is not considered when hiking pay (which hikes pensions).

2. Collective bargaining pay and benefit hikes are opaque to the public.

– Voters are not allowed to review and voice opinion on the collective bargaining agreements or in most cases administrator contract before they are approved.

– Collective bargaining agreements are often not finalized and released to taxpayers until months after the tentative agreement is approved by the board and rank and file union members.

– The rank and file union members get to vote on the tentative agreement, but taxpayers do not get to vote on the tentative agreement.

– Neither a tentative nor a final change document is released to the taxpayers. The change document would clearly show all the changes form the existing agreement to the proposed / final agreement, for instance, underline text for additions, strikethrough text for deletions; note underline / strikethough to indicate changes is currently used in the Illinois General Assembly for proposed house bills, senate bills, and public acts.

3. Pensions and retiree healthcare benefit hikes were not transparent to the public. The hikes were never clearly disclosed to taxpayers. The hikes were a complete failure:

– The TRS teacher and administrator pension and TRIP / THIS retiree healthcare fund has always been underfunded.

– Yet the Illinois General Assembly and Governors hiked the pension and retiree healthcare benefits.

– Many of those hikes themselves were underfunded (as the systems were already underfunded).

Those are 3 reasons.

4. During collective bargaining, pay is only compared to Illinois teachers, not Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana, even if the district is near a state boarder. That is unheard of in private industry and makes no taxpayer sense.

5. School boards are dominated by union endorsed candidates with taxpayers not realizing the teacher endorsed candidate is the union endorsed candidate with the intention of hiking pay and benefits to the maximum extent possible.

6. During state budgeting, at times pension funding was diverted to General State Aid which is distributed to school districts and allowed school districts to further hike pay than would have been possible if the funds went to the pension fund. Hiking pay hikes the pension.

7. Collective bargaining pay hikes were off the charts in some districts in some years for no reason other than the above.

It is a dysfunctional system that needs to be overhauled.

The pensions and retiree healthcare in particular are not sustainable at current taxes and we can thank legislators such as Jack Franks for underfunded pension benefit hikes to pension systems that were already underfunded which makes him a tax hiker (even though he says he is not a tax hiker, that is Jack Franks math).

There are all sorts of nuances.

Teachers beginning their career on or after January 2, 2011 are in the Tier II pension system which as less lucrative benefits.

Teachers in central and southern Illinois are often not paid as well (lower property tax base).

For those full career teachers and administrators retiring now, the pay and benefit levels have been hiked dramatically since they began their career.

We need sustainable pay, benefits, and taxes.

What is in place is not sustainable and never was designed to be sustainable, it was done to achieve political power.

Just like the Term Limit wanting to be put on the ballot, if we do not get these bad people out we will never change this government ….