FAMOUS LAST WORDS? Newmark's Door has a thesis nailed to it.

Guess the state, and guess which political party is currently running it.

Hint. Emil Jones, Mike Madigan, Rod Blagojevich :: Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama.

State legislatures have treated the required contributions to state pension funds as emergency money to be deferred to later.

Dating to the 1970s, state lawmakers pushed off the yearly payments they were supposed to make to cover the “normal costs” of pensions, or how much employees earned that year in benefits. These so-called holidays added up, and the debt multiplies over time.

The generalization to the Social "Security" Trust Fund is left to the reader as an exercise.

Headquarters has circulated a memorandum from the State University Retirement System.

Members of the Illinois state retirement systems can rest assured that their retirement benefits remain secure despite the current volatility in the global financial markets. The benefits delivered by the state pension systems are constitutionally protected and cannot be reduced due to investment losses or for any reason. Those protections also exist under the contracts clause of the U.S. Constitution.

What the letter does not tell readers is of the referendum, on the general election ballot, to call a constitutional convention for Illinois.

Developing.