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Illinois Bet the Farm and Lost—You'll Never Guess Who They Want to Pay the Tab

June 22, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Illinois is facing a fiscal crisis that would see normal businesses shutting their doors and packing up the U-Haul. But states are an entirely different matter. They're not allowed to declare bankruptcy.

Pensions, which a judge ordered must be paid by Illinois, now amount to 100 percent of the state's revenue. Moreover, those pension funds are invested in the stock market and cannot be paid without a guaranteed five to seven percent return --- which is nearly impossible. So lawmakers have come up with a new plan to solve the problem created by an overburdened, overreaching government: tax the rich.

"This is an actual proposal now. They want to tax the rich, but in particular, they are mad at the people who are making so much money on the stock market. So what they're going to do, in Illinois, they are now proposing a 'small' tax of 20 percent," Glenn explained Thursday on radio.

The other proposal on the table is to break up the state and have it absorbed by the surrounding states.

"How many people in Missouri want to now be responsible for East St. Louis?" Glenn asked.

Thanks, but no thanks, Illinois.

GLENN: Hello, America.

Back in -- when I was at Fox, I did a segment on pensions and how pensions were working for fire firefighters and police and everything else. And if you remember, it was like four or five -- when pensions first started, it was like four or five workers would support the firefighter that left. Remember?

The problem is, is that the pyramid has been turned upside down. Now, what's happening, is one person is trying to take care of three or four pensioners. And there's absolutely no way to cover it. The math doesn't work. The pyramid is upside down. And it's a pyramid scheme.

So what did they do? The -- the unions decided that they would take all of the money that was supposed to go to pensions and they would put it into the stock market. And they had to get a return of five to 7 percent a year to be able to cover -- what they said, cover all of the pensions. It still didn't work.

Stu, you're wise enough to -- on money investment. How -- how difficult is it to get a guaranteed return of five to 7 percent a year?

STU: There's actually no such thing as a guaranteed return, in this particular climate, of five to 7 percent a year.

GLENN: Right.

STU: I mean, if it's in the stock market, it's obviously never guaranteed.

GLENN: Right. And in the stock market, or any investment, say I need 7 percent or I collapse every year. Is that something you should put together?

STU: That's a horrific idea.

GLENN: Horrific idea. There's no -- there's nobody in --

PAT: You might get that some years.

GLENN: Correct.

PAT: You might even do better than that some years.

STU: Oh, yeah. And you will.

PAT: But it's almost a guarantee you won't get it every year.

GLENN: So because the pension is upside down, the pyramid pension is upside down, now you have one person paying for three people, it doesn't work. And the stock market has been up and down. You never know if you're going to get five to 7 percent. But if you put your money in, in 2008, when the stock market was, what? At about 8,000.

STU: It was in the 6800 range --

GLENN: Yeah, might have been 6800.

Okay. Today, the stock market is at 21,000.

STU: Right.

GLENN: So you got a pretty good return on your money, don't you think?

PAT: Yeah. Tripled it.

GLENN: Yeah. You put your money into the teacher's union and the teacher's union is invested in stocks, that's fantastic. You went from 6800 went to 21,000. That's probably the best run of the stock market in history.

We were at an all-time high of 21,000. Illinois now has 100 percent of every tax dollar coming in, going out to pay for the pensions. 100 percent of every tax dollar, which means nothing for schools, nothing for roads, nothing for infrastructure, nothing to pay the mayor, nothing but graft now for city council. Nothing. 100 percent.

And a judge has said, "You cannot reduce any of the pensions. They must -- the state of Illinois must pay 100 percent of those pensions," which is now taking 100 percent of every tax dollar to pay.

So now they're saying, "We're going to break Illinois up." One suggestion is we're going to break Illinois up into five separate states and give portions of the state of Illinois. So congratulations, St. Louis, you're going to get east St. Louis as well. And you just to have take care of that.

Or is it -- it's east St. Louis, isn't it? Across the border? Yeah. Congratulations. How many people in Missouri want to now be responsible for east St. Louis?

But congratulations. You might get that. And, you know, it will now be part of your state. Congratulations.

No, thank you. And you can pay for all the pensions and everything there. Well, that's not going to work. The states aren't going to do it. Because every state is in this condition.

So --

PAT: Except for Texas.

GLENN: Except for Texas. Be careful.

Now, what are they talking about -- besides -- they're not going to break the state up. So besides that, what is the state of Illinois suggesting that they do?

The state has a great idea. They say that the wealthy are getting rich off of the stock market. Now, let's remember that the pensions are all in the stock market. So it's not just the wealthy that are getting rich on the stock market. It's the people who have their money in 401(k)s, IRAs, and in pension funds. They're getting rich on the stock market. Or they're at least getting partially paid because of the stock market being run up. So what is Illinois' plan?

Oh, I'll show you next. And show you how this works out, a little like what's happening in London, when we come back.

GLENN: All right. Let me just -- let me just take you through this real quick, and then we're going to get to what lessons did the Democrats learn and where is the world headed.

The problem in Illinois is going to hit every -- is going to hit every state. And it's going to hit every state differently. The pensions -- and we're talked about the fire, the police, all -- all state workers -- the pensions are out of control and have been for a long time. And back in 2008 or 2009, as I outlined, if we don't take care of these problems now, we are going to be facing massive issues in the future and there will be no good outcome. The outcome will be, dump it into the lap of the federal government. That's what I said at the time, 2008, 2009, if you remember that episode.

Well, we're here now. And Illinois, which is the state that I used as the example, is the first one to start to collapse. They have -- the money that they owe people in pensions is going to take 100 percent of the budget, and the state has said that they have to have -- they have to pay these pensions. So that's 100 percent of the budget.

The pensions are invested in the stock market. And for them to pay the pensions -- this is what they claimed -- they needed a five to 7 percent guaranteed return on their money. Well, that's impossible. I mean, that's -- you know, I know the Bernie Madoff. But it's on the road to Bernie Madoff. Nobody can promise you five to seven. But you had to have five to 7 percent in pensions because they wouldn't reduce the pensions they promised everybody. And we all accepted it. And the politicians were too greedy to say these unions are lying to you. You're never going to be able to retire because this is -- this is nothing but a Ponzi scheme.

All right. They're not getting enough of the return. They're not able to be able to make the money when the stock market is at 21,000. The highest ever. And they still can't make these pensions work.

It's not like, we had a crash, and it was unexpected. No, no, no. Highest stock market ever. And it's still not enough.

What happens if we have a correction and it falls to 15,000? What happens if -- let's be crazy and say another, you know, 2008 happens and it falls down to 16800. Or another Great Depression happens.

Well, what happens to then the Illinois pension fund, which is now taking 100 percent of the budget? Is it 200 percent of the budget?

So Illinois has bankruptcy. No, that's not going to work. Because a state can't declare bankruptcy. They can break the state apart. That's not going to happen.

So they're left with taxes. Let's take more from the poor, right? Isn't it the poor?

No. No. Sorry. They want to tax the rich.

Now, who are they taxing? Who are they going to tax? This is an actual proposal now. They want to tax the rich, but in particular, they are mad at the people who are making so much money on the stock market.

So what they're going to do, in Illinois, they are now proposing a small tax of 20 percent.

PAT: Oh, my gosh. On --

GLENN: On transactions in the stock market. Okay.

PAT: Good golly.

STU: What?

GLENN: 20 percent tax over a certain amount for the uber rich.

Well, Stu, you're investing money in the stock market, and Illinois sets a trap up to take 20 percent of your money. What do you do?

STU: Putting my money somewhere else, because even if I'm successful, I lose under this proposal.

GLENN: Correct. If I get a 7 percent return on my money and I want to move my money, I lose an additional 13 percent. I lose the 13 percent -- I'm sorry. No, no, no, wait. I lose -- yeah, 13 percent. Because I've made seven, but they're taking 20. So I've lost 13 percent of my money, even though I gained.

STU: So then, of course, these wealthy individuals do not invest in the stock market. And what happens to the stock market when they don't invest in it?

GLENN: What? What are you talking about?

STU: Yeah, it doesn't stay up. If you start taking millionaires or billionaires out of the stock market, that doesn't help.

GLENN: Yeah. Or because you are taxing the people of Illinois, something else happens too.

STU: People move the hell out of the state.

GLENN: Yes. There we go. They move. They take their crap and they leave Illinois.

STU: Now, that helps the pension funding, right?

GLENN: No.

STU: Because not having those people there -- they're so bad for the economy, those rich people.

GLENN: No. No. No.

So now they're gone.

PAT: Jeez.

JEFFY: Well, we've got to do something about that. We've got to make it so that they can't move.

GLENN: Right. Right. So now there's two problems: That's not going to work. It will only make things worse. And then the state will say, we've got to make it so people can't move.

This is going to be -- there's another problem that is going on. So the state will have to move it up to the federal government because the federal government will be the only one that could be the backstop. Because Illinois is too big to fail. There's another problem.

If I have my pension in the firefighters union or the police union and I'm already seeing in places like Dallas that there's no way I'm going to get my pension, it's starting to collapse in a healthy city, like Dallas. I'm going to do, what? I'm going to ask for my cash payout. I'll take less to get my money now.

So once they start to see what's really happening in Illinois and they realize, this whole thing is going to collapse, all of the people who have pensions are now going to say, "I'm getting my money out now." And that's -- what happens -- what do we call that when it happens to banks?

PAT: Run on the bank.

GLENN: Run on the bank. So what do they do? They usually close the bank so you can't do a run on the bank. And then they tell you, you can only take out a certain amount. So now you don't have a choice anymore.

The federal government will tell you, you can't take the pension money. You can't take a lump sum anymore because it will cause a run on the pensions. So when this happens and you have the stock market -- let's say the stock market crashes and the extra taxes on the rich don't work and then people start to lose their job and lose their money in their 401(k) and you don't have a pension, the federal government is going to bail you out. By putting that much money -- by printing that much money, what happens then again to our money? Because now we're printing millions and billions of dollars, that is going to have velocity.

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.