Are Residents and Taxpayers of Illinois Really this Dumb (Stupid)?

From the Market-Ticker blog this morning comes the following post:

"Wondering what your taxes pay for?  If you live in Illinois, you might want to look at this, or thinking about moving there.  I'm sure you'll find that the $250k+ wages are reasonable for public school teachers, right?  Or the half-million+ wages are reasonable for university employees?  Ever wonder why college tuition is so high?  Half-million dollar+ salaries might have something to do with that, eh?  Pigs at the trough folks, and you're being extorted to pay for it.  Property taxes, income taxes, taxes taxes and more taxes.  All "for the childern", you see, even though teaching and administering a school should be a middle-class job (which means it pays a middle-class wage, and that, incidentally, is $50,000/year.)

Oh, it doesn't stop with "middle class" teachers either.  No no, we also have "middle class" cops and firefighters, who make well over $150,000 too.  Naw, there's nothing wrong with that.

When you're done throwing up at the active duty salaries, you might look at "retired".  There you will find people making more than $30,000 a month in retirement pension "benefits" -- promises your wonderful state and local governments made and now are fulfilling -- and guess who's getting the bill?  You are.

Then there are the State Worker's Compensation Claims.  Some are probably legitimate.  But I gotta admit, getting $300,000 worth of taxpayer funds due to "overexertion by lifting objects" sounds pretty good to me.  Where do I sign up to soak the taxpayer with this one?

If we, the people, ever want to do something about the cost of government, we had better start right here, especially when it comes to these salaries and retirement "benefits."  I don't care what people were promised -- it was and is being extorted from the people at gunpoint, and nobody has the right to do that.

These pensions need to be clawed back and stopped on a forward basis, and those working in "public service" need their salaries capped at no more than 125% of the median family income immediately and forevermore into the future.

You go into public service because you want to service the public, not to get rich.  To those who claim that we need "the best and brightest" in such jobs, I counter with the fact that volunteer fire departments worked just fine forever until unions forced them to be replaced by public tit-suckers, and that being a cop was historically always a middle-class job -- until we militarized the police forces.

This platinum-plated crap cannot continue, must not continue, and it is time for the people to rise and demand that it stop right here and now."

As I have stated on this blog previously, if you are dump enough to live in Illinois or put up with its crap, you deserve everything that is going to come to you.