Dear Fred, you know I have said this many times:
What is at stake right now is an adjudication of claims that public employees have against policymakers who have coerced changes to public employees’ benefits and rights and who are breaking public employees’ contractual and constitutional promises. These are legitimate rights and moral concerns not only for public employees, but for every citizen in Illinois: for any unwarranted acts of stealing a person’s guaranteed rights and compensation will violate interests in morality and ethics and the basic principles of both the State and United States Constitutions that protect every one of us.
It is a moral concern and legal duty to reform the state’s sources of revenue and to address the incurred pension debt through restructuring so the state can provide services for its citizens and fund the public pension systems instead of incriminating public employees, and thereby forcing them to defend the State and United States Constitutions.
There is no justice in granting financial benefits for the wealthy among us and attempting to place the burden of financing public pensions upon schools and taxpayers by Illinois policymakers; there is no justice in granting tax breaks for wealthy corporations and, at the same time, legislating cuts to public employees’ constitutionally-promised compensation. It is ethically wrong to perpetuate unfair distributions of debts in Illinois, especially when Illinois legislators give “undeserved weight to highly-organized wealthy interest groups, [those groups] tending to ‘drain politics of its moral and intellectual content’” (Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law).
http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2013/12/illinois-pension-reform-is-without_1.html
Fred Klonsky 