Fox News Channel video: Chicago the next Detroit? Pension problems raising alarm bells. America LIVE host Jamie Colby speaks to Fox Business Channel's Stuart Varney on the similarities and differences between Detroit and Chicago. Aired August 6, 2013. http://video.foxnews.com/v/2589585215001/chicago-the-next-detroit/
A-Rod, WaPo stories are intriguing...but this is the story we'll be grappling with across the country for years... http://t.co/X7sSaK3tMJ
— Jeff Greenfield (@greenfield64) August 6, 2013
Glenn Reynolds' spot-on take on Chicago as an early battleground in the unfunded govt. pension costs vs. taxpayers fight, and the prospect of Democrat elected officials fighting Democratic-leaning govt. employee unions. Pundits everywhere are paying VERY CLOSE attention to what Rahm Emanuel & The Daley Machine will do, with William M. Daley running for governor of Illinois next yearAfter having read the original predicate article in the New York Times a few times and even sent links of it to friends around the country, I decided I wanted to also share it and the spot-on comments of University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds on this important issue and the New York Times' decision to give the issue the front page treatment on Tuesday at his terrific and much-read InstaPundit blog, which I've been reading since I was living and working in Washington, D.C. over ten years ago.
It continues to inform, educate and amuse in just the right proportions.
As we've discussed here previously, the editors at the New York Times know that their decision to give their story a push and place it on the front page suddenly gives the story "legs" in other parts of the country in ways that it simply wouldn't have if it had run on page 17A.
Nothing is on the front page of the New York Times by mistake or without the logical consequences of doing so having already been thought about and discussed.
You can't say the same with South Florida's newspapers since there often seems to be no rhyme or reason other than sheer shallowness or brazen bias or a desire to be seen as hip to certain advertisers.
New York Times
Chicago Sees Pension Crisis Drawing Near
By Monica Davey and Mary Williams Walsh
August 5, 2013
CHICAGO — Corporations are moving in, and housing prices are looking better across the region. There has been a slight uptick in population. But a crushing problem lurks beneath the signs of economic recovery in Chicago: one of the most poorly funded pension systems among the nation’s major cities. Its plight threatens to upend the finances of President Obama’s hometown, now run by his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
The pension fund for retired Chicago teachers stands at risk of collapse. The city’s four funds for other retired city workers are short by $19.5 billion. At least one of the funds is in peril of running out of money in less than a decade. And starting in 2015, the city will be required by the state to make far larger contributions to the funds, which could leave it hundreds of millions of dollars in the red — as much as it would cost to pay 4,300 police officers to patrol the streets for a year.
Read the rest of the article at
#understatement: Unions remain angry at the mayor, who was at the helm during the teachers’ strike in 2012.
CHICAGO’S PENSION CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE
August 6, 2013
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/173724/
NYT: Chicago The Next Detroit
August 6, 2013
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/08/06/chicagos-pensions-crisis-in-black-and-white/
Former L.A. mayor @RichardJRiordan calls on POTUS to propose national public employee pension reform in today's NYT: http://t.co/UtOZzNhgET
— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) August 5, 2013
New York Times
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
A Plan to Avert the Pension Crisis
By Richard J. Riordan and Tim Rutten
Published August 4, 2013
LOS ANGELES — It isn’t politically feasible for Washington to bail out Detroit, but President Obama and Congress must step in to avert the worst fiscal collapse in urban American history.
They must intervene, because symptoms of the municipal illness that made Detroit, with an estimated $18 billion in liabilities, the largest city in American history to declare bankruptcy are showing up in other cities.
Read the rest at:
