The Civic Committee’s Ty Fahner.
The scapegoating of public employees in Illinois began when greed and corruption, particularly flagrant in the financial sector, exploded into the Great Recession. This, of course, came after eight years of inordinate military spending for two costly wars, deregulation and unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthy by the federal government. This tsunami of debt contributed to every state’s budget deficits.
A final question and answer for us to ponder: now who found it self-serving to confound the facts of the matter and shift the blame for the resultant economic debacle occurring in Illinois? The answer is those who benefit most from ignoring the injustices inherent in our state’s archaic system of income distribution, regressive tax loopholes for the wealthy and flat-rate taxation. In other words, Tyrone Fahner’s Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago; its doppelganger, Laurence Msall’s Civic Federation; and their mouthpiece, the Chicago Tribune have hoodwinked the citizenry of Illinois, made quite evident by Fahner’s million-dollar-plus Illinois Is Broke advertisements and his reinvention of a three-headed-tiered Cerberus that the Civic Committee wrote into SB 512 to guard the obscene profits that flow along the River Styx of Chicago and then a few blocks east to the doors of 21 South Clark Street.
Fred Klonsky 