The Chicago Tribune has issued its endorsements for State Representative.
Here’s what was said about Steve Reick’s district (or should I say Jack Frank’s district, as it has been for the last eighteen years):
Steve Reick
63rd District: The Republican who emerges from this primary race will face Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, in November. This one is an easy call. Steven Reick of Harvard is a tax attorney who ran against Franks two years ago.
Anyone have a photo?
This time, Reick has a GOP primary challenge — sort of.
Jeffery Lichte of McHenry is on the ballot, but he isn’t campaigning, and he is a known supporter of Franks.
Is he a ghost candidate put up by the Democrats to protect Franks from a real opponent?
Probably.
Don’t waste your vote on him.
Reick would bring common sense to Springfield and advocate for a separate revenue stream to pay down pension debt. Without a dedicated stream, taxpayer money will continue to get misspent, he says.
Reick also is a champion of school choice and allowing tax money to follow each child so that families can choose where they want to send their children. Reick is endorsed.
Jack Franks is looking very bad on this one.
Obviously Mr. Reich is a better Republican candidate than a Democrat masquerading as a Republican.
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The pension problem cannot be solved equitably to taxpayers by simply having a revenue stream dedicated to pensions.
Certainly that is one reason we got into this mess, but only one reason, and simply fixing it won’t solve the problem.
That’s because of the hundreds of legislative pension benefit hikes that occurred while pensions were already underfunded.
Legislative pension benefit hikes to underfunded pensions escalated after the pension sentence was added to the state constitution on December 15, 1970.
That’s the legislative pension scam that occurred, along with legislators and Governors playing games with the annual contributions to the pension fund.
The unions went along with the legislators on the game, supporting the very same legislators whom were hiking benefits to underfunded pensions and shorting annual pension contributions.
So instead of protecting pensions the unions participated in the scam, supporting legislative pension benefit hikes to underfunded pensions, rather than exposing the practice.
So a mixture of outcomes can be expected:
– Less money from state to local governments.
– Hiked and new taxes and fees and other revenue streams from state and local governments.
– Reduced Services at state and local governments.
– Bankruptcies (state law would have to be changed to allow bankruptcy)
– Pensioners favored over bondholders during bankruptcies.
– Hiked bond interest costs for those governments that have weak finances, which in turn results in hiked taxes or reduced services.
This pension mess effects every government in Illinois that depends on state revenue.
Want to take away Speaker Madigan’s veto proof super majority?
Volunteer, donate money, and help Steve win!
The whole state of IL is at stake.
The next time you hear “a pension is a promise” ask the person to list all the legislative pension benefit hikes to underfunded pensions that occurred to that pension fund, since the inception of that pension fund.
They will not be able to give you an answer because they don’t know the answer.
The unions don’t tell the rank and file that story.
Neither COGFA nor the Civic Federation nor anyone else tells public that story, as their analysis typically go back only 10 or 20 years or so, and the pension funds began and the practice began decades prior to that.
So government employees, retirees, and their supporters are manipulating the public, intentionally or not, based on not telling the whole story.
There are twenty pension systems in Illinois and hundreds of legislative benefit hikes to underfunded pensions that occurred over 5 + decades.
It’s a massive, long running, scam.
What!
Lichte is a “ghost candidate”?
That can’t be right or I would have read about it sooner in the Northwest Herald.
@Mark: There’s a piece missing in the endorsement.
I want to carve off the underfunding amount from the budget and create a separate line item with its own funding source to pay it off.
That way the budget reflects only current accruals, and is not burdened by past underfundings.
There’s no getting around the fact that the underfunding is going to have to be paid, unless you change the Constitution to retroactively reduce benefits, which isn’t going to happen.
I just don’t want the budget to be held hostage by a pension payment that takes up over 24% of general revenue and is only going to go up before it comes down.
The kneejerk reaction to my call for a separate revenue stream is that I’m advocating a tax increase.
That is not true.
Illinois has become like the dog that’s beaten every time it moves, sooner or later it starts to think that’s the normal state of affairs.
This state has been down so long we’ve started to think that stagnation is the normal state of affairs.
If we started showing the world that we’re cleaning up our own mess, businesses would recognize the natural advantages we have in this state, which are many, and would begin to move here.
Economic growth is a term we don’t use much in this state, but economic growth coupled with spending restraint will give us a fighting chance to get off our backs.
But first we must straighten out the mess in Springfield, and that isn’t going to happen under the Madigan/Franks super-majority.
Madigan’s interested more in politics and power than policy, and Franks is playing out the string.
You’re absolutely right to say that this problem has been around for decades, but that’s no reason not to try to fix it now.
https://illinoyances.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/the-albatross-around-illinois-neck/
You don’t seem to understand that Speaker Madigan’s power comes from the fact he is the head of the Democratic Party of Illinois and therefore controls staffing and money- if you think removing him as Speaker is going to change his influence you are nuts.
And the NW Herald said Lichte’s candidacy was “legitimate”.
What do you think is a better description of Lichte’s campaign?
“Legitimate” or “Ghost Candidate Put Up by Democrats to Protect Franks from a Real Opponent”?
I’m gonna go with the Tribune’s take.
Again we see Jack willing to mess more locally than the JOB he was hired to do.
Two things you must do Steve is directly address the state’s Constitution on balancing the budget, just a few words would do it, and directly changing the pension fund wording so we can resolve that mess.
I believe you have read my rant on both.
Voters need to control tax rates, both state wide and locally by voting regularly on them with a 2/3 majority for
any changes.
Time to take that power away from the elected.
Cary Dist 26 had a referendum when they were in financially bad shape.
I was against the raise in taxes, but 2/3 said they approved, I’ll live with that verses some politician telling me what to pay with no real voice from us.
The under funding can’t be paid whether it is in the budget or not and the pensions are a legal fraud.
The legislators and Governors did not create a sustainable pension system.
Just because they made new laws didn’t mean the new laws were sustainable.
It’s a legally fraudulent system.
If they passed a law giving government retirees a brand new car people would take notice, but these legislative pension and retiree healthcare benefit hikes, and salary hikes (which hikes the pension) are not as visible as a new car.
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There is now more money being piled into Republican PACs to fight the Democrat PACs.
The unions have spent a lot of money defending their unsustainable pensions and retiree healthcare, diminishing the amount they have for other political purposes.
Some people have woken up to the fact that hey, my kids could be getting a better education and the Democrat union and government jobs do me no good because they don’t hire me decade after decade, and my 401k & Social Security doesn’t come close to their pension.
Their Democrat Kingdom in Illinois is strong but not impenetrable.