From MSNBC:
A retired Chicago labor leader secured a $158,000 public pension — roughly five times greater than what a typical retired public-service worker in the Windy City receives — after being rehired for just one day of active duty on the city payroll, local news reports said…
…Gannon, former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, was able to take a long leave from a city job to work for a union and then receive a city pension based on a high union salary. That arrangement is allowed under a state law signed by Gov. Jim Thompson on his last day in office in 1991, according to an investigation by the Tribune and WGN-TV.
The change has enabled a couple dozen labor leaders to become potential millionaires.
What is different in Gannon’s case is that he became eligible for the especially lucrative pension deal only because the city rehired the former Streets and Sanitation Department worker for one day in 1994, before granting him an indefinite leave of absence, according to the investigation. He retired from the city job in 2004 at age 50…
Now, don’t anyone out there think that any Joe Shmoe can get a job, work a day, go on indefinite leave and then collect millions in pension benefits. This is something entirely reserved only for those the government wants to pay off for one reason or another. I don’t know what services Gannon rendered in order to secure such a massive amount of money for no work, but it was probably pretty stupendous…and probably something the politicians of Chicago and Illinois would prefer we never find out about. And this is just a tip of the iceberg in the total playbook of how to bribe of payoff in politics.
One other way which Matt and I discovered in writing Caucus of Corruption is to donate to powerful politicians who either run un-opposed or against token opposition. You’ll be surprised how many such there are in politics…and even more surprised in how much money they raise for their re-election campaigns. You become un-surprised about it when you find out that their campaign staffers, at very high salaries, are spouses, children, family members and long-time cronies. In other words, you don’t directly bribe Congressman X, you donate to his campaign and he pays his wife $100,000.00 a year to be a campaign “consultant” against a non-existent or quixotic opponent. All perfectly legal, just as Gannon’s pension, but always it is a bribe…it is a means of giving in return for getting without the public finding out just what sort of nauseating filth is going on.
And it is on and on like that all through politics. To be sure, plenty of Republicans engage in it…but it is endemic in the Democrat party. If you found me a Democrat who had never engaged in any sort of shady practice, I’d be surprised…pleased, but surprised. It is endemic over there for two reasons – for generations Democrats were in power and never really had anyone call them to account; secondly, Democrat electorates have proven almost impervious to corruption…no matter how corrupt a Democrat is, he can usually win re-election if he’s in a strongly Democrat district (for instance, Barney Frank had a live-in whore working out of Frank’s DC townhouse; Frank fixed 33 of the whore’s parking tickets and wrote a letter on his behalf to the parole board…a GOPer who had that would be forced to resign in days; Frank has been re-elected 11 times since that scandal). Year by year it has built up – first go ahead and do it; secondly, you never (or, at least, rarely) get punished for it.
The thing to remember is that if the MSM actually did its job and relentlessly investigated the corruption in government, it would be front page headlines every day that some senior politician is on the take…even if the take is “legal” in the sense that corrupt politicians have set up the laws and regulations to make it so, but still crooked as all get out. Nine out of ten of the crooks would be Democrat, of course…and that is why the MSM doesn’t do its job. It doesn’t want to implode the Democrat party in a sea of corruption stories. And, so, it just continues…but, perhaps not for long.
The real fear in the Ruling Class is that someone will get elected next year who doesn’t care about the Ruling Class and is willing to unleash law enforcement on those who have broken the law, as well as ruthlessly exposing those who keep within the law, but are clearly taking/giving bribes and payoffs. The Ruling Class is afraid that their time at the hog trough might be through…that is the real genesis of the Wisconsin protests and recall elections. The Ruling Class was frightened that the corrupt deals, bribes and payoffs might come to a screeching halt…as, indeed, they will now that Wisconsin government doesn’t have to roll over to corrupt public sector unions. If you think Wisconsin was bizarre, just wait until a TEA Party-backed candidate comes to the White House…these people will go ballistic.
But ballistic only because they are afraid they won’t get free money and an easy time in life. That is what must be remembered. They’ll talk like they are fighting for the little guy but all they are really fighting for is their bribes, kickbacks and payoffs…they will be upset that maybe they won’t ever get a chance at millions of dollars in taxpayer money for working a day. There are probably 30 to 50 million people like that in the United States…who are either already living off the taxpayer or dream of doing so…on a larger or smaller scale, but still the goal is to get money they didn’t earn. This is the core constituency of the left…and they are worried sick they might be kicked off the taxpayer’s teat.
And, glad to say, it looks like that is what will happen…a revolution is brewing in this nation. Those who have been paying the freight for a corrupt, lying, morally degenerating Ruling Class have had enough…we’re taking it all back next year, and we’ll fix this nation and restore our greatness. This will result in a lot of leeches having to get real jobs, but that is all to the good…it’ll teach them to be better Americans.
HAT TIP: Mish’s
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