According to Crain's Chicago Business, the State of Illinois is heading for a de facto bankruptcy. "While Illinois doesn't have the option of shutting its doors or shedding debts in a bankruptcy reorganization, it seems powerless to avert the practical equivalent. Despite a budget shortfall estimated to be as high as $5.7 billion, state officials haven't shown the political will to either raise taxes or cut spending sufficiently to close the gap." That is, they don't want to tell the voters that as a result of their past decisions Illinois residents face a future of high taxes and degraded services, to pay for unfunded pension obligations and debts run up by past residents and older generations. Of course, the overall tax burden in Illinois is much lower than in New York.

On the private sector side, one of the dwindling number of honest men in business asserts in the Wall Street Journal that corporate executives are collectively fleecing investors and wrecking the economy and institutional investors, part of the same class of people, are thus unwilling to meet their fiduciary obligations by stopping them. "The faith of investors has been betrayed" according to John C. Bogle, founder of Vanguard.

CHARLES HURT (in, [where else?] the NEW YORK POST): Call it smear by association.

It appears to be — literally — the only hope Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has to pull off a slender victory here, in one of the most Democratic states in the country, for a seat so long owned by one of the most beloved liberal lions America has ever known.

Yet this is what it's come to: Don't vote for Scott Brown because look at all the yucky people in his party.

In a brilliant New Republic article, The Rise of Republican Nihilism, Jonathan Chair skewers the intellectual bankruptcy of the contemporary Republican Party.

Because Chait’s primary focus is domestic policy, he leaves out some of my favorite examples. For instance, late last year, the self proclaimed “Party of National Security” announced its willingness to block the Defense Spending Bill, which contained the funding for continuing the two wars that Party had dragged us into without an exit strategy (and, in the case of Iraq, without any good reason).

Brooklyn Attorney Helps Forgotten Victims of the Haitian Earthquake

By Michael Boyajian

America is not a perfect place but it is a generous country and there are many heroes here whose stories go untold.  I would like to tell you about one hero in particular, Brooklyn attorney T.K. Small.  T.K. has Muscular Dystrophy and spent a good portion of his early life in a children’s hospital in Westchester County.  The plan there was that once he turned eighteen he would be sent to an out of state nursing home where he would be warehoused for the rest of his life.

Then use John Bogle's rate of return, as shown in this Wall Street Journal article, as an assumption for the pension funds, and start paying up now rather than put it off with interest.

Of course, robbing future generations and destroying the future is exactly what those who control our institutions have been doing for nearly 30 years, and there is no evidence they want to stop. I only hope that in the end, when the consequences are inescapable, people will not be fooled by some demagouge into blaming some powerless group.

By Michael Boyajian

Marriage Equality New York is hosting a party to thank their District Coordinators for their support in lobbying state senators in their districts for the recent drive to legalize same sex marriage in New York.  I was a District Coordinator and considered a straight ally and assigned to Senator Saland.  I tried to convince him of our view point but he seemed to have objections on religious grounds.  MENY is seeking civil marriage ceremonies not religious ones by the way.

The party will be at the Central Park West apartment of Betsy Malcolm.  I am hoping Michael Sabatino and Robert Voorheis will be attending.  They are the poster boys of the same sex marriage movement.  Their story begins as choir singers along with Michael’s late mother at the local Catholic church.  One day Michael and Robert get married out of state and when they returned they are asked to leave the choir.  So to make a long story short Michael, Robert and Michael’s elderly mom, all lifelong Catholics, are now singing for the local Episcopalian choir.

At a press conference held at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall yesterday, democrat senator John Sampson -Majority Leader of the New York Senate- pledged to donate ten thousand dollars from his salary, to aid the Haitian relief effort; in the wake of last Tuesday’s devastating earthquake. The earthquake which appears to be one of the deadliest in Caribbean history has devastated millions of Haitians when it hit 7.0 on the Richter scale that day; and since then, numerous smaller after-shocks have further heightened tensions in an already frail situation. Some estimates say that as many as a quarter million people have already died because of this earthquake. 

So Governor Paterson has announced that local governments in the portion of the state outside New York City will be able to put off paying into the state pension funds the amount required to keep them solvent. They will not have to pay more 9.5% for most workers and 17.5% for police and fire workers — a small fraction of what New York City is paying right now! The money would be borrowed from the pension funds themselves. And what would happen if future residents of those localities are unwilling or unable to pay the money back, a near certainty? I suppose the state — including residents of New York City — would have to do so instead. With the state once again offering nothing to New York City.

Another generational theft by a member of Generation Greed, sure to be approved by all the other members of Generation Greed in the legislature. They just keep running up those guaranteed, “contractual” benefits for themselves, and deferring the costs, with no limit. As I said in my previous post, evolutionary change won’t do. Only bankruptcy — or a reduction in the value of past debts and pensions via massive inflation — can help this state now.

I read in the NY Observer that Governor Paterson slammed “good government” groups for being “drunk with power.” “Here are good government groups who are always talking about what government is doing, and no one knows who their donors are…It's about time they realize they have been drunk with power, just like the legislators,” he said. Well, I donate to one of them, because I see coverage of state and local government issues ebbing away in the for-profit media, and that group has a website that produces original new content on state and local government issues as well as links to that for-profit media. Even if I often disagree, it’s much better than nothing, and I’m free to comment there. So do I see the Governor’s remarks as those of a desperate man lashing out, well, blindly? Not necessarily.

By Michael Boyajian

There is a violent religious struggle now going on in the Muslim world as mainstream Islam and the West faces Islamic extremists.  The struggle is as violent as the Reformation with the Islamic battle claiming far more Muslim lives than Western ones yet threatening all with calamity.

The violence will continue until world civilization advances to a new plateau.  That advancement lies in the creation of a borderless world where power struggles including Islamic extremism are neutralized.