From a friend: Here’s the Chicago Tribune’s take on the state of IL this morning, following a ruling on Friday that the new governor and the old legislators can’t simply stiff the state’s employees for the pension benefits that they were promised. They anticipate “toxic tension” – I think that’s an understatement for what we’ll endure. I also don’t think the voters will allow the cuts necessary to avert the tax hikes that will “make this a ghost state.” Soon enough, we’ll be seeing the same sorts of editorials – at least in journals still having a scintilla of responsibility – about the United States.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE
by Editorial Board
May 8, 2015

With their public finances ravaged, their taxpayer debts enormous and any prospects for cost control bleak, Illinois voters declared on Nov. 4 that they’d had enough. They fired the incumbent governor and instead hired an insurgent who said state and local governments could not continue to tax and spend as ruinously as they had. He zeroed in on pension costs that now devour one-fourth of Illinois’ operating revenues. On Friday the Illinois Supreme Court tacitly agreed that the massive industry of government in this state has lost control of itself. The justices reaffirmed a principle they articulated in a similar case last July: Lawmakers who tried to regain some control of future state spending by trimming retirement benefits violated the Illinois Constitution. If anyone doubted the truth of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s insistence that Illinois must radically restructure the costs and scope of government, Friday’s ruling settles that. READ MORE