I thought "no way" Chuy is gonna win this run off. Now I think he's got a puncher's chance. It's gonna be close to 50-50 either way, don't you think?

Sorry for the past 4 years of presenting balanced budgets and getting pension deals approved with dozens of unions, which help alleviate the future and ongoing financial pressures....

10 days ago Chuy's response to the financial issue was 'I have to do my homework on that one"

Hey, buts its your vote.....CHUY CHUY CHUY.....it's gonna be great!

The victims are the American People and the Republic itself.

Rahm's PLAN has led to the city's bond rating being downgraded 5 times in the last 3.5 years.

When you have a minute, explain to the class how much money that costs the taxpayers.

Over the last decade each of the ten Chicago-area public employee pension funds reported sharp funding declines, the report said. The average actuarial funded levels, which smooth market results over a period of years, have fallen to 45.5% in 2012 from 74.5% in fiscal 2003. All ten funds are now below 60%, ranging from the Chicago firefighters fund's 24.4% to a high of 59.4% for the CTA fund.

Still, one would have expected pension plans to be in bad shape in 2008-2009 at the market bottom, but to be in improved financial health by 2012 after the market bounced back.

If public pension plans are losing ground on their funding status in years when the market is delivering above normal returns, is there any hope for their survival?

The answer is probably not, but if there is a way to save public pension funds, it will require a new political calculus by the two parties most responsible for the current sorry state of affairs: state politicians and government employee unions.

In the current state of political compromise between (mostly Democrat) politicians and unions, politicians vote in favor of generous pension benefits for public employee union members and then union representatives accept under-funding of those pensions. This makes the generous pension benefits seem affordable by hiding the full cost of those giveaways.

Politicians win because they avoid the spending cuts to popular programs or the tax increases necessary to actually pay for the benefits they voted for; union leaders win because they can tell their members about the new pension benefits they secured. Unfortunately, since nothing in life is free, a cost most be paid for these decisions. That cost is the higher probability the public pension fund will collapse under the weight of this under-funding and those public sector union members will lose their pensions.

The deals hinge on a key assumption in the calculation of the cost of any deferred benefit: the expected future return on the invested funds between now and when the benefits are collected. This future expected return on the pension fund investments controls how much money the politicians need to pay into the workers’ pension funds now. A higher assumed rate of return means less money is needed now thanks to all the money the investments are assumed to make in the future.

Right now politicians and union leaders are taking a huge gamble by using expected future rates of return that are much more optimistic than reasonable. The hope is that either investment returns will save the politicians from their irresponsibility and the workers from poverty or that the courts will force states to pay up enough later to keep their promises. Union leaders are accepting such a risk because they see the only alternative to be accepting smaller pensions.

Yes it is.

When this is all over, which is not going to be for a while, Trump will be re-elected President.