Illinois Comptroller Pension Debate – at a Table

The three candidates for the Office of Illinois Comptroller this November (incumbent Democrat Susana Mendoza, Republican Darlene Senger and Libertarian Claire Ball) had a lower profile debate which included a mention of whether cutting benefits to deal with the state’s pension debt should be on the table:
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The Consideration Model for public pension negotiations was explained by geo8rge in a comment on the last blog:

Illinois Pension Debate – Not Even a Table

The question came in the middle of the Illinois gubernatorial debate tonight between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, Democratic challenger J.B. Pritzker, Libertarian candidate Kash Jackson and Conservative candidate Sam McCann. What will you do on the $129 billion hole in the retirement system for public employees?

First the would-be spoilers:
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And from the major party candidates:
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Summarizing the answers:

Christie In Fear

The first five chapters of Bob Woodward’s Fear take us from Trump’s presidential aspirations to his election with Steve Bannon seemingly dictating most of the journey. This is the only section of the book where Chris Christie is mentioned, usually in conjunction with an expletive. Excerpts follow:

Four Issues of Free Speech

I had blogs set to go on some news of the day – two of which are getting massive media coverage while the other two barely return a blip on bing searches – but decided to conflate the four since they are somewhat related on one issue and I have only brief comments on each.

Everything Trump Touches Dies & A Bronx Tale Message

Offering scores of variations on the ‘Trump Is An Idiot” theme Rick Wilson in his book (from which I excerpted the Governor Shinebox bit) tries to be an amalgam of humorist, provocateur, and sage. Sometimes he hits*.

NJ Pension – National Enquirer – Trump – and Christie Too.

It was recently announced that the New Jersey Retirement System is divesting from a private prison contractor that runs family detention centers and a gun company that makes semi-automatic rifles. Today’s target is Chatham Asset Management which owns the company that owns the National Enquirer which apparently has some information on hush money payments to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump. But what the nj.com story did not go into was the Christie connection so we will do it here.

Faux Populist Christie

With practically every new political book out there being on Trump  our Governor Shinebox, as one of the books I am reading dubbed him, keeps getting more minutes on the public stage, with another book even mentioning pensions.