The Impending Public Pension Disaster

I believe in doing that which is right and lawful. Even though I will never receive a public pension, I believe that we should (or should have) done all that we could to ensure that public pensioners receive all that they are entitled.

I am passionate that people receive that for which they contracted. I do not believe in changing the terms later for the sake of expediency or worse, for "fairness." On political issues, I am most passionate about fiscal matters. Profligacy can destroy a civilization faster than an army of foreign invaders. Chicken Little is right about some things and this is one of them.

During the Obama years I found it interesting but frustrating that every public pensioner I knew, supported Barack Obama. I tried to make the point that reckless spending threatened their financial foundation. In retrospect, I feel a bit stupid for futilely protecting the interests of those who voted against their own self-interest. They will reap what they sow but they will be too damn stupid to make the connection.

For rest of our lives, we will suffer the abuses of the Obama Administration. Not just the doubling of the national debt (with NOTHING to show for it) but the inflation of student loan debt (now exceeding $1 trillion) and perhaps most significantly, the impracticality of federal bailouts when each taxpayer already owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to Uncle Sam.

The next big bailout effort will be state and local pensions. Even if there is an appetite for someone in rural America to fund the retirement of a Chicago school administrator, the preexisting condition that is our national debt might make everything moot. This is not entirely a red state vs. blue state phenomenon. Newly red Kentucky has a massive pension problem.

Blue cities in red states, like Houston for instance, complicate the melee. Do you think that all those suburbanites whose families abandoned the dysfunctional city long ago will want to pick up the tab for someone back in the hinterland? I doubt it very much.

With the cacophony of bogus news, the "pension tsunami" has gotten little exposure. It might be too soon for the MSM, too close to Obama's occupancy. In good time this can be pinned on Donald Trump or The Freedom Caucus.

A few muted voices are whispering about the oncoming disaster. The appropriately named Pension Tsunami covers this subject in chilling detail. The ever-alert and always worthy, Zero Hedge, has contributed an eyebrow-raising article. These are both good jumping-off points.

This will get ugly. While we might snicker at the idiot who built a mansion in a flood basin (and who now demands a new mansion) there will also be countless victims who are more innocent. It would be good and noble and just to help those who will not receive that for which they worked hard and devoted their lives. Unfortunately, Pelosi, Reid, Boehner, McConnell and yes, Barack Hussein Obama, might have already burnt that candle at its other end.

We reap what we sow, even if we are too stupid to realize it.