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Message of the Day – A Tee Shirt — 5 Comments

  1. This is low I.Q. Little Joey Blowhards favorite Tee Shirt.

    He can be seen wearing it while walking around town muttering to himself

    about how he loves the fake nurse.

  2. But Joey got something nasty spilled on it in the course if a frenzied tirade about Chick-fil-A at his gay agenda meeting. And the stains wouldn’t come out. His soul has even worse stains, however, and those can come out IF he repents.

    That’s what I’m praying for.

  3. That shirt is a comedy, let’s start with the balanced budget BS:

    When Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a $40 billion spending bill into law June 5 it was supposed to usher in a new era of good government and transparency in Illinois history. “We achieved something that has eluded state government for decades, we passed a real balanced budget,” Pritzker said at a news conference. “Just a few years ago, simply passing a budget was considered nearly impossible, and for years before that, the budget included gimmicks and tricks and was balanced in name only. Those days are over.”

    In reality, taxpayers are only getting more obfuscations and dishonesty. For decades Illinois governors and legislatures have claimed balanced budgets while the state has accrued billions in bills. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, Gov. Pritzker and the current legislators are continuing the very same budget games that have gotten us into this calamity.

    The largest budget ruse involves the $134 billion in unfunded pension benefits that Illinois has promised to its public servants. Springfield lawmakers are claiming that the budget “fully” funds the pension payments. To explain how misleading this is let’s discuss this at a personal level. A couple who is in debt could decide to ignore the minimum payments that their credit card companies tell them they should pay, and foolishly set up a schedule to pay smaller amounts now and then ramp up the payments in the future. Such a plan would result in their credit card debt continuing to increase dramatically.

    In 1994, lawmakers reckoned with the state’s looming pension debt, and instead of agreeing to make the minimum payments that actuaries calculate as the annual required contribution, the legislators and Gov. Jim Edgar established the “Edgar Ramp.” Under this statutory plan the state made smaller pension payments in the beginning, but now the law requires ramped up payments, including $8.4 billion included in the current budget.

    Unfortunately, even this year’s ramped-up payment does not meet the minimum level that pension plan actuaries suggest as fiscally responsible. Therefore the current budget is at least $4.9 billion out of balance, despite speculative media reports of a $150 million surplus.

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    In 2013 the state of Illinois was charged with securities fraud, with the Securities and Exchange Commission noting that “the schedule proved insufficient to cover both the cost of benefits accrued in a current year and a payment to amortize the plans’ unfunded actuarial liability. The statutory plan structurally underfunded the state’s pension obligations and backloaded the majority of pension contributions far into the future.”

    While some lawmakers have publicly claimed that the Illinois pension plans are in fine health, the SEC requires them to use more forthright language when communicating with bondholders. (This came after the state settled charges of securities fraud in 2013.) For example, an April 2019 general obligation bond offering admits that “the funding levels for the State’s retirement systems have deteriorated dramatically and are among the lowest in the nation with respect to state pension plans. The State’s contributions to the retirement systems, while in conformity with State law, have been less than the contributions necessary to fully fund the retirement systems as calculated by the actuaries of the retirement systems.”

    While the SEC requires Illinois lawmakers to be more transparent with potential bond buyers, the commission has no legal authority to prevent elected officials from misleading their constituents. Pay no heed to Gov. Pritzker’s latest budget victory lap or the “new era of fiscal stability,” Illinois’ alarming budget gap speaks for itself.

    Sheila Weinberg is a certified public accountant and the founder and chief executive of Truth in Accounting, a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that researches government financial data.

    https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-illinois-budget-balanced-pritzker-20190612-story.html

  4. This organization wants to recruit more morons to vote for them.

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