While access to education has made America a first world country, liberals and Union thugs have used public education as their own private piggy bank.
How would you like this gig? Work one day as a substitute teacher and earn a pension of over $100,000 a year! Sounds unbelievable?
Two lobbyists with no prior teaching experience were allowed to count their years as union employees toward a state teacher pension once they served a single day of subbing in 2007, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found.
Steven Preckwinkle, the political director for the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and fellow union lobbyist David Piccioli were the only people who took advantage of a small window opened by lawmakers a few months earlier.
The legislation enabled union officials to get into the state teachers pension fund and count their previous years as union employees after quickly obtaining teaching certificates and working in a classroom. They just had to do it before the bill was signed into law.
Preckwinkle's one day of subbing qualified him to become a participant in the state teachers pension fund, allowing him to pick up 16 years of previous union work and nearly five more years since he joined. He's 59, and at age 60 he'll be eligible for a state pension based on the four-highest consecutive years of his last 10 years of work.
His paycheck fluctuates as a union lobbyist, but pension records show hisearnings in the last school year were at least $245,000. Based on his salary history so far, he could earn a pension of about $108,000 a year, more than double what the average teacher receives.
His pay for one day as a substitute was $93, according to records of the Illinois Teachers Retirement System.
Over the course of their lifetimes, both men stand to receive more than a million dollars each from a state pension fund that has less than half of theassets it needs to cover promises made to tens of thousands of public school teachers. With billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System, which serves public school teachers outside of Chicago, is one of several pension plans that are in debt as state government reels in a fiscal crisis.
A spokesman for the Illinois Federation of Teachers emphasized that the lobbyists' actions were legal and that they made "individual decisions."
Even so, union President Dan Montgomery said the deal Preckwinkle and Piccioli landed "should never be allowed again." But the union, which provides its employees with a private 401(k)-type plan, is standing by the lobbyists' right to have access to the public pension.
"They entered TRS under the law and are participating members of TRS. As a TRS employer, the IFT is required to make the payments to TRS," the union said in a statement.
This is Chicago at work. This is Democrat politics at its finest. These two gamed the system and will most likely collect millions from the taxpayers over the remainder of their lives. Those millions could have gone to hire more teachers and educate students.
Of course, the unions do not care about that. All they want is for the gravy train to keep rolling.
This is just another reason why public employee unions should be sent to the ash heap of history and why public employees should never be allowed to unionize.
Are we witnessing the birth of another new political party in the United States? The election of Barack Obama was the spark which fueled the rise of the Tea Party back in 2009, and since that time the Tea Party has become a major league force inside the Republican Party. Now the Occupy Wall Street movement is rapidly becoming more organized and many believe that "The People's Party" is going to be to the Democrats what the Tea Party is to the Republicans. Others believe that "The People's Party" could accomplish what a lot of organizations in the past have tried and failed to do - launch a third political party which could successfully break the stranglehold that the "two party system" has on American politics. It would certainly not be an easy thing to do, but there can be no doubt that Occupy Wall Street is now a major political force in America. The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to 100 cities inside the United States and to nearly 1000 cities around the world. Certainly as the weather gets colder the protests will die down, but there are an increasing number of signs that Occupy Wall Street is becoming very organized and that it plans to be a major political force for years to come.(Read More.....)
