Illinois is Broke is an organization fully funded by the the pals and members of the Civic Committee and their millionaire lawyer, Ty Fahner.
As part of their efforts to destroy the Teacher Retirement System and turn our retirement into a risky ponzi scheme created by Wall Street hedge fund managers, they have put this out:
DuPage County teacher, Michael Cousineau says of this video:
This isn’t low. It’s desperate. This is the equivalent of a SNL skit. She forgot to mention that when teachers retire they will have to sell their kidneys just to pay for the van they’ll live in down by the river… This belongs in William Shatner theater. “It. Just. Doesn’t. Add up!”
She’s right. The numbers don’t add up. Probably because she’s got them wrong. TRS currently has $37 billion in assets (not $31 billion), current retiree benefits paid last year were $4 billion (not $49 billion) and active teachers like me cost zero dollars (not $27 billion) because we can’t collect benefits for 10, 20 or 30 years – which is why TRS collected $6.9 billion in revenues last year while paying out only $4 billion.
Fred Klonsky 
You have to love the background fixtures in this revealing look at how Fahner and his associates imagine the perfect classroom to be.
There’s the shiny apple, the only real pice of color in the scene. The ancient oak desk is a nice if not foreboding box behind the cadaverous face of the “school marm” who warns us all with smiles (and misinformation). Not a hint of an electronic learning device anywhere – probably cutting expenses. Nice little rows of color-coded texts in a dilapidated book case, representing the “bluebirds,” “redbirds,” and “slowbirds” in her imaginary reading program – if there is one. Perhaps they represent instead the collection of various grades into one classroom, another way to face those billions in payments.
Let’s hope that 19th Amendment gets ratified. LOL
Joke
This lady must be an actress and it looks like she is reading from a teleprompter.
I did note how absolutely no blame for this contrived mess was mentioned. But
One thing is for sure this crap is circulating ,the entry to a full court press for the veto
Session ?
I cannot watch this, having seen enough/heard enough about all of this to make me sick enough to cap out my health insurance. (For which–thank-you-very-much– I am paying 1/3/month out of my pension–NO, TEACHERS DO NOT RETIRE W/A FULL HEALTH/ BENEFITS PACKAGE, contrary to what the C.C.o.C./Ty Fahner would have people believe.)
I wonder, though, just how much this commercial cost?!
Wow! Where are my hip boots when I need them! I believe I heard a presentation that pointed out that TRS was 40% funded in 1970 and we’re still 40% funded. In those 40+ years not a single payment was missed to retired teachers. The fuzzy math presented here is an embarassing. This is the ultimate irony that the Civic Committee is trying to get teachers to lobby against their best interests. I served on the Pension Modernization Task Force. When the data showed that the cost of teachers retirement benefits was lower than the private sector, I asked Eden Martin why they weren’t concerned about the cost. His response was “Your benefits are too rich!” That’s a different story than it costs too much. I’ll switch my pension with yours any time Eden!