It was at a Wood Dale, IL, town hall meeting 7/23/13, when he typically framed the problem purely as one of meeting retirees’ payment schedule. Never as fiscal issue threatening everyone in the state.

Asked why there had been no urgency in solving the pension problem, he denied the need for urgency. The state was in crisis “according to a tough standard . . . assuming pensioners live to 90.” And even by that standard, the state had 32 years before the money would run out.

He harked back again to Democrats’ 2010 pension solution — a staple of his crisis-talk rebuttal — that raised retirement age and reduced benefits for new hires. However, a 1995 Republican solution, re-amortizing the debt, he called inadequate.

They both were inadequate, said the fiscally cautious Illinois Policy Institute. There had been “perhaps no bigger fake reform” than the Republicans’ of 1995, which had done nothing but allow Governor Jim Edgar and others “to stand tall” for having “solved” the problem.

But “even more” fake reforms were to come, perpetrated by Democratic governors Blagojevich and Quinn, “with their large Democrat majorities,” including “issuance of pension obligation bonds and Tier 2 reforms that fix nothing,” the institute said. The band-aids had an inglorious history.

Being bi-partisan Illinois style.

From Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters— available in paperback, epub and Amazon Kindle formats.

Advice to Dem staffers.

Probably good advice if you want their votes, assuming they vote. At least you want them to stay away from your microphones at rallies.

Not surprising either, in view of news reports in general of shootings in black ‘hoods, not murders. Never say murder, even though you are talking about citizens who shoot and kill other people.

Point is, don’t demonize black murderers, or any other kind, unless they are cops. Cops kill, no problem with saying that. They are even murderers, and sometimes are charged.

This though there are murder sprees in Chicago, where already this year the toll is at record annual level with four months to go. Never say murder. Say gun violence, as if violence were a disease, you catch it, you’re dead or at least sick.

Say shooting deaths, as if they just happen. Do not say black (alleged, if you must) gangster shot (murdered) black person. It will cost you the black-lives-matter vote and maybe lose you a microphone at a rally.

Got it? Get it. Good. Go forth.

Said well by an objector:

“I was in the Navy and I saw men and women bleed and die for this flag,” Uzcategui said. “If he wants to do something, go to some outreach program where he can do some good. And I get it, his First Amendment right. But you don’t sit during the presenting of the colors, and you don’t sit during the national anthem. That is not the way to do it.”

Unless you are not only soft-hearted but also soft-headed (a devastating combination) and maybe have a youthful-enthusiastic yen for limelight (a common-enough yen, for all that).

via Associated Press