Scum bags.

I received some interesting reactions to my post on pension abuse.

This week the Illinois legislature, facing billions of dollars in unpaid pension obligations, took a bold stand and made it illegal in the future for someone to collect from the Teacher Retirement System based on earnings they would have received if they left the clasroom to work for a teachers union.

That was how they responded to their failure to meet their obligations.

GOP Illinois House leader Tom Cross, author of the pension killing Senate Bill 512, also wrote this bill. A bigger diversion you will be hard pressed to find.

I got sucked in to this diversion, I suppose. And I’m not sorry. Some people called these guys “scum bags.” I think it is misplaced and wasted anger.

The Chicago Baboon started this faux controversy with a lame expose of two teacher union employees who qualified for TRS benefits because they substitute taught for one day and then went on the union payroll.

This was all quite legal, of course.

And the TRS contribution is entirely theirs while on the union payroll. The state and the taxpayers were obligated to pay nothing.

And more than that, from the viewpoint of a union guy (me) quite appropriate. We have lots of teachers who taught in classrooms for many years and then became full-time union staffers. That’s good. I want teachers doing paid union work. That means real teacher experience is represented in the work they do. To qualify for TRS, you have to draw the line somewhere. One day or fifty? What’s the principal involved?

This whole issue isn’t a scam on the part of the unions. It’s a diversion on the part of the union haters like the Chicago Baboon, Ty Fahner of the Civic Committee and House Leader Tom Cross.

Pay us what you owe us and stop looking for alleged corruption in low places.