[TheRealThing]

You should go thank him.
Hes fighting to make sure you've got a retirement check 20 years from now and no a soggy wash rag from a broke pension that cant pay out.

Ole steve done went and used all your money

^^ This can’t be said enough. I’m amazed at how mad people get when this is brought up in a conversation. Instead of putting blame where it should be, they want to kill the guy trying to help and being upfront about it. I don’t have a dog in this pension fight, but after all the bleeding hearts for just the teachers and brainwashing I’m afraid we will go right back to the dems as governor and things will be even worse. Especially if old Steve’s son gets in.

Exactly right. And the underlying rationale behind the Dem's way of looking at things is actually not very complex.

In order to understand the liberal rationale we must consider first, the time frame in which these guys grew up. After the horrors of WW2 had been washed away by the sacrifice and blood of this nation's citizenry, the US had undergone the ultimate attitude adjustment. The soldiers and sailors fortunate enough to have returned home, went from not knowing from one day to the next if they would be killed in action, to the blessings of life in a safe environment. In their minds, it was a privilege to go out and find a job, (yes even pumping gas and cleaning windshields). Men were thrilled to have families and take on the responsibilities of head of household.

But though the perspectives of these brave men and women, forged by the indescribable horrors of war, in fact shaped the society in which we all grew up, those hard lessons which gave them their perspectives have been washed away by something as innocuous as the passage of time. So to get to the point here's what I am saying... with the passage of time, so too has passed the benefit of their wisdom and leadership. Thus most people leading the charge these days are by-in-large naïve. And I'm speaking across the board here. Teachers are likely the worst offenders as they teach our youth all sorts of hogwash, and they do so devoid of any real world experience on their own part. What these people teach in their classrooms is almost completely unregulated. The quintessential example of inexperience born of the ranks of academia suddenly elevated to prominence in the real world, is that of one Barack Obama. A miserable failure as President, a man who nonetheless was so in love with the sound of his own voice that anything he said to him, became reality.

Even leaders of the US military have been affected, as though they are old enough to know better, more and more instead of the sage wisdom which governed thought in this country under the great generation, we're getting liberal drivel from the ranks of the US military. Trump hating criticisms come from the likes of high ranking officials such as Air Force General Michael Hayden, and Admiral William McRaven. Similarly afflicted but to a far greater degree are the US Congress. In fact outside the Freedom Caucus, one has to wonder if there is a single original thinker among them. And things only get worse from officials in state and city governments across the land, as tinhorn politicians emulate the ridiculousness on display in the Congress.

But I said the liberal rationales driving the actions of the left are not complex. Because since 1945 owing to the successes of WW2 and the subsequent new world order, this country has enjoyed almost continuous economic growth. Therefore most of the leaders now in power have never known any form of real hardship, much less the common man across this land. And as such a great number of folks just cannot wrap their head around the idea that for the US to continue in it's position of world prominence, fiscal responsibility is a non-negotiable. In other words, like a rocket attempting to achieve escape velocity, there is in this land, a lifelong misconception among Democrats. That being an inescapable gravity created by the idea that government can be the grantor of all one's wants in life.

Such an idea is a mania which has managed to sweep common sense from ruling the minds of men. As the American dream and the blessing afforded one in the land of equal opportunity, have been supplanted by unreasonable and simple minded expectations. Among them is the one in which a one dollar lottery ticket gives one a reasonable chance of achieving great fortune, or that Extreme Makeover will just 'give' us a fabulous house to live, or that Publisher's Clearing House will knock on our front door with the promise of 7,000 dollars a week for life. Some people just prefer to believe fortune is a stroke of luck. So they sleep till noon waiting for that knock on the door instead of laying hold of self sufficiency through gainful employment.

I don't think teachers are that goofy, and I don't think a life spent in a responsible dispatch of service to that end is in any way unworthy of the pensions promised. No, where teachers and union workers alike have made their error, is with the ones with whom they have chosen to make their bed. At some point Democrats realized they could use tax dollars to buy votes. But as with any pyramid scheme, eventually all the syphoning off of tax dollars for vote buying through give-aways (which should have been used for the legitimate governmental concerns of the common good, like say, pensions for example?), has drained government coffers dry. Thus the only option in a Dem's mind is to raise taxes. Because it is easier, instead of being accountable to the taxpayer they serve, to create for cover, the present day fictional moral high ground. A place of delusion where politicians insist that ours is to take care of the poor at any cost. In such a state of hypocrisy, Dems shift the blame for their own lazy failures to the already beleaguered and abused taxpayers, telling us we should be ashamed of ourselves for being so selfish as to not want to pay our 'fair share.' In truth, Democrats cannot deliver on their promises because they have to payoff everybody in the zoo-stew of special interest groups which comprises their base. In living for today, they (Democrats) foolishly and unashamedly burned through teacher's pension funds

Teachers would be well advised to sever their ties with Democrats whom have no compunction with filling their ears with lies and unfulfillable promises.