I know one of those teachers. He works an 80 hour work week on a 44k salary. He teaches because his mother did, and both are proud of the chance at a good future they try to give every child possible. He teaches high school physics and sacrifices more than anyone else I know. I'd like to see one of you critics attempt his job.

I know a PE teacher. He works 40 hours per week, 36 weeks per year. He makes 115K and will retire with a lifetime pension that I will have to save 1.5 million in my 401K to match. I don't begrudge him, just wish I knew what a great scam it was when I was choosing a career.

Adobe finally brings Flash to iPhone and iPad
http://www.bgr.com/2011/09/09/adobe-finally-brings-flash-to-iphone-and-ipad/

Or you could use something that actually works instead of your iCrap.

Personally I have no desire to buy an Iphone. I have an Android. Why should I buy from Apple when they ship their jobs to China instead of making it here in the USA where they would still make a large profit.

Mouse, you must be an iDiot. Once you've used an iPad for email and web surfing you will never want to use anything else.

Mouse, where do you think your Android phone is being manufactured. NEWS FLASH........ It's certainly not here in America. All of this stuff is produced overseas (i.e. China, Malaysia, etc.). You need to dig into this a little bit.

Independence666, there is a big difference between a German company hiring Germans and an American company hiring Chinese Communists. Apparently Apple's flag is not the red, white, and blue; however it appears to be green. Greed is placed before patriotism, and you want to support a company like that which turns its back on us.

According to one estimate if they moved the jobs back to the USA, they would have a 45% profit margin which almost any compant would like to make.

This is what I love about Patch: People like "Independence666" who have so little brainpower that everything they post is tainted with insults. News Flash for Independence666...I don't use a smartphone (too expensive) and an iPad is such an overpriced, under-powered toy that unless all you do is waste time online it is virtually useless. I actually had an iPad 2 for awhile but there were too many things it just could not do that I ended up going back to the notebook to complete. Sold the iPad to some iSucker.

And...while I was typing Jim R made the best argument yet not to buy anything from Apple. Staggeringly high profit margins (>45%) that would make BP blush while investing $0 of it in the USA.

Mouse, funny you should mention that since several months ago I was considering the purchase of a tablet for my wife but fortunately came across a small netbook with a 11 inch screen, 4 gb of memory, a 500 gb drive, wifi, usb port, and loaded with the full version of windows which some small units do not include. She wanted a simple tool that she could use in the kitchen for recipes aside from other work. When I showed it to her she liked it. Did not have to buy a stand or a keyboard to make a tablet convenient to use and enter information. On top of that I already had license for office for more than one laptop so I was able to load that on her laptop along with a recipe program. This is not to say the tablets or ipads are not nice, but if you want to do a lot of work I do not think the other technology is up to it. This small netbook is not much bigger than the others and is so much more powerful. My phone already has a 4,2 inch screen and there are others larger which I would be more prone to buy since they are easier to carry on a belt or in a pocket which cannot be done with tablet technology. If you have to carry something, you should consider a netbook. Bought mine at Costco for 399. You have trouble finding a tablet at that price with only 16 or 32 gb of storage versus the 500gb I got with a netbook.

Jim R, Apple is not the only American high tech electronics company who manufactures their products overseas. The fact is they all do (Motorola, IBM, HP, Cisco just to name a few). When is the last time you bought a consumer electronic product that was made in the USA?

I worked in IT for over 30 years and am very much aware of electronics and the manufacture of them. Name one other company like Apple that could make a 45% profit margin even if the jobs remained here. That is pure greed and people should be aware of the way Apple is laughing in our faces. Personnaly unlike others Jobs was not one of my favorite people, check some of his history and also look into the shenanigans with Amazon being told to raise their prices or a number of companies would not work with them.

So also I am not pleased with IBM who sold out their pc industry to China which is now made under the brand name Lenovo. I would sure like to know if there was any technology passed onto China in that deal, as it is China steals enough technology from us. A company should not sell technology to them outright. Hopefully the government, as incompetent as they are, are watching over these deals.

...and of course those advanced degrees were obtained on the taxpayers dime, too.

Tim, you are not well-informed. Most school districts pay a small percentage of advanced degrees. I just paid 18k for a Master's degree and was reimbursed $1800. 90% on me, along with a pay freeze...I'm taking it like a man and cutting my own budget, but please don't spout out facts you do not understand.

Concerned, what pay track did that move you over and up into? How many years will it take to make that back? Does that pay raise also mean a bigger pension?

Personally I paid for may own education except for scholarships where I also taught in college which paid for the scholarship. Have a BA and MA, and all but a dissertation toward a Ph. D. since I found myself over qualified in many areas other than in teaching.

...and why are the state union employees the protected class? Because they can always be counted on to vote "D" like lemmings and keep the favors coming from their crooked cronies

Thank you Carol! The average person does not seem to understand that "pension" is a real misnomer -- The Teachers' Retirement System, State University Retirement System, etc. are INSTEAD of Social Security, not in addition to it. If we were talking about reforming the "pension system" of Social Security, you bet this would be a very different discussion!

Show me any social security payment that even comes close to these pension payments. Arguments have been made that they are underpaid and hence receive large pensions. Seems their salaries are competitive. You can see some of the salaries at the site below.
http://www.familytaxpayers.org/salary.php

Some of the political pensions are shown below in the link, but keep in mind other pensioners are in non elected positions such as public school teachers and various local officials in various public jobs. The State Congress should be taken to task on these matters. It is not that pensions are not earned, but the amount of many is absurd and unfair to the rest of us. Our state is bankrupt and these pensions are a major reason. You can see some of the top pensioners below.
http://media.apps.chicagotribune.com/pensions/index.html

You will see in the link below that many pensions are not covered by what has been put into the system.
http://media.apps.chicagotribune.com/pensions/gars_members.html

It is not that some have not earned a pension, it is just that they should be more in line with what others receive. When we have a raised income tax and many are not able to retire at the normal age of 66, but public employees can retire in their 50's and receive pension that could be as much as 85% of their salary and have medical coverage, a change is in order.

@Carol B Davis: Thank you for this voice of reason.

Interesting point. Social Security has the largest percent of the national debt. Many people think it is China, but China is far behind what the government owes Social Security.

Jim, "Social Security has the largest percent of the national debt" because your boys borrowed all the money paid in, replacing it with chits. If it had been left alone and not raided for pointless wars and absurd tax breaks, there would be no Social Security debt. Get your facts straight.

Sorry Mouse, but apparently you do not understand the current debt problem at all and you definitely do not know the status of social security. There is actually a surplus of money in social security which allowed the government to use it as a resource of the huge debt of the United States. Social Security owns around $2.4 trillion of the national debt. So currently Social security has no debt but the US government does.

Jim, I understand it perfectly. The Social Security trust fund has been raided by several administrations (most notably Reagan's) and left with notes payable instead of cash. That shell game continues to this day in all sorts of backhanded accounting for public pensions as well as Social Security, which would be fully funded had Congress and the Executive Branch not thought of it as their personal ATM.

Mouse here is a breakdown of our debt.
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/who-owns-america-hint-its-not-china/

If you check a link given earlier you will see pensions are not covered by the employee or the state. However politicians exacerbated the situation.. Unions kept on asking for more and now the rest of us in the state are expected to cover it.

Jim R you are correct in an actuarial perspective. However, the State is breaking its employment contract with its long term employees, who honored their employment contract. It is unethical, and will also cost taxpayers even more when found unconstitutional.

It begs the question why something like pensions or anything similar would be in the constitution. If you are talking about ethics that first point should be considered and if voters wake up it should be removed or anything similar from the constitution.

Talking about ethics, the voters have been mislead in the salaries and benefits of teachers and others on the public payroll. Wisconsin should wake people up since we need the same thing here.

IL Constitution only says that earned benefits can not be diminished. Not that a pension is guaranteed or mandatory. Teachers are not in Social Security. If you moved teachers into 401's with SSA, the State could never afford to start picking up the employee cost currently around 6.2%. Agree that those end of career kickers is abuse, but that fault lies within the local school boards. And we do agree on Wisconsin.

Just checking...you think that the contracts negotiated by locally elected school boards with the teachers are somehow bad while at the same time you feel that a central state government edict to nullify said contracts is somehow good, a la Wisconsin. Right? Care to explain how that jives with the conservative cornerstone of decentralized and less invasive state and Federal government?

That still leaves something in the constitution that should not be there. I feel many people were mislead about teachers being underpaid. Maybe they were at one time but they are not currently. So it is possible to take something out of the constitution that should never have been there. We are at a point that something has to give and you cannot keep on raising taxes like our governor to cover it. Without decrieasing benefits salaries could be frozen and no further increase in medical insurance coverage which will force people in the future to buy their own insurance since the frozen state's share will become a smaller and smaller part of insurance coverage. So those with bloated pensions and medical coverage will be at fault what is done to the rest, but even here the amount the state pays for medical insurance could also be frozen for current retirees. Seems a compromise is in order to straighten out the past.

Mouse, it is a matter of reducing the tax burden of the people in Illionois. A neighbor of mine moved because of the cost of living there. Where do you think much of the real estate taxes go. The discount which seniors get is rediculous. So the emphasis here is reducing the burden of taxation because these clowns in Illinois did not control budgets and many kept on asking for more even when other people were losing their jobs. If teachers strike now, I say let them go and look to hire someone else for a lower salary.

What we need is a tax revolt. You go first.

Some may be greedy, some may be bullies, some may be dishonest and some may even be crooks. Others may be hard working true public servants. Every one of them was put there by the voters of Illinois. If they are guilty of anything, it is that they have tried to please everyone, whether the motive was good or bad, even though they couldn't pay for it. After 20 years of really bad math, really bad decisions, trying to make it all happen...Illinois is going bankrupt. They KNOW what the solution is and what they have to do. My guess is that they are paralyzed by fear of another Madison Wisconsin, of losing the next election or even a recall. After all, they are "Pleasers" and the solution won't be pleasant. The tension between the elected and the electorate and all the factors in between is high....surpassed only by our state and national debts. Somethings gotta give...and soon...this madness is bringing us all down...the good, the bad, and the indifferent! The operative words in all of this message is...THEY KNOW WHAT TO DO...hold them to it.

They are politicians and even if they know exactly what to do, which I doubt, they will not take any action until the crisis hits and they have no choice. We are watching it play out right now in Europe. Keep an eye on what is happening over there. It's a preview of what will happen here very shortly. Their experiment with Socialism failed, and so will ours.

Nice work Charley! You chose the perfect subject. Thanks.

Waiting for your next cartoon since you started a hornets nest here.

An unflattering cartoon of Madigan and Quinn would probably get us going.

If you want to see some fireworks Charley, do a cartoon on Obama.

Colin, you poor, sweet naive child. Illlinois Dems and Unions are inseparable. The unions negotiate for taxpayer money, the crooked pols hand it over and the unions vote like lemmings to keep their benefactors in office.

Well said David. This is exactly what goes on in Illinois politics.

I agree with you Colin, until enough voters become aware of the fact that the Unions and Dems are enriching each other and robbing us (the non-union taxpaters) blind, and we start turning out to vote in sufficient numbers, we get what we deserve in this sorry state.

Would be nice if we could trade our lousy governor for the one from Wisconsin.

Colin, the amount is 7 times that of Barrett, and 75% of it was from out of state.

Nobody seems to want to talk about what they bought with that money.

Once again, the pop-political yammering (and parroting whatever Fox and Friends put out this morning) has successfully drowned out the few who are asking the right questions and trying to follow the money. In Wisconsin the teacher's union had already agreed to benefit and pension cuts the state had asked for, and then Walker still cut them off at the knees. This is not the way to run a state, no matter how bad you think Illinois is.

Colin you raise some good points about the unions of the past. I agree that unions provided an organization to help workers of the past in not only pay but the way they were treated. The problem is that they have gone much further than supporting what is fair, but push for more and more with a threat of a strike and claims of sympathy of their members. There is a lack of fiscal responsibility in their demands but they began abusing there power. Though members may benefit the tax payers suffer in what they are asked to support. I am not attempting to deny the pathetic actions of the politicians who I do not respect in this matter, but to claim the unions are not responsible for helping to bring this situation about is absurd. Unions may still play an important role in protecting their members but they must be cognizant of the situation they are making. If the funds were not handled properly why were the unions not involved in that process instead of just asking for more. Maybe they do not show the same greed as the sports unions whose salaries are an insult to their fans, but in the case of sports I have the option of not attending or even following the sport (saying this as a former Cub fan - yes baseball is America's past time) which I have opted to do for the Cubs a bunch of greedy people. However the state unions and state officials are asklng me to pay for something I cannot afford.

Same as it's always been, to give those of us who have little individual power the collective strength stand up against being manipulated and used by the few who have incredible power because they can buy influence.

Nothing is new about this. Will Rogers said that "we have the best government that money can buy".

Read the series on Illinois government that has run in the Trib. over the last few days. Just who really controls government in Illinois? Yes, the public employee unions do contribute a lot to this mess but so do the corporations. And just why do you think that the unions are getting all the blame and the private, big money people are slipping under the radar?

Just who actually does control the message that gets out to us, the public, and how do they try to manipulate us?

I get a lot of political stuff emailed to me from people that I know. I check it ALL on SNOPES, FactCheck, and similar sources.

I find an alarming percentage of it to be false, yet those who send it take it at face value. Point: be very careful whom you believe, or maybe better yet, don't believe anything you are told relating to politics until you check it against a reliable source.

TDS, I think that you hit the nail on the head. Why are we demonizing the public employee unions for causing our state's financial problems? Because we have been told to by---guess who---our legislators!!!

The unions have been doing what unions are supposed to do, getting the very best deal that they can for their dues paying members. So they lobby, negotiate, contribute, and do whatever the system requires in order to achieve their obvious and legitimate goal.

The unions did not create the system! You know who created it, profits, from it, and lives by it. The "Chicago Way"? "Pay to Play"? If that's how things get done in Illinois just who is responsible for that? Could it possibly be the very legislators that WE elected to office?

NAH! It's obviously all the fault of those greedy unions.

At least that seems to be what our dear. respected. and esteemed legislators tell us and who could possibly believe for an instant that they might try to shift the blame for their own mismanagement?

If you believe everything that you hear from Springfield please call me. I just happen to have a very nice bridge for sale. Really!

They also receive a combination of Social Security benefits along with IRMF benefits. They are not receiving the same financial benefits as those from the state.
"Today, IMRF has more than 176,000 active members working for nearly 3,000 different units of government, including school districts, counties, cities and villages, parks and libraries. It has more than 97,000 retirees.

Members who retired in 2010 retired with approximately 22 years of service and received an average annual benefit of approximately $17,000."
http://rockrivertimes.com/2012/03/15/illinois-municipal-retirement-fund-reports-flat-investment-returns-for-2011/

And Madigan and Quinn want to shift the state burden to the local areas. First the twirps raise our income taxes now they are setting the stage for our property taxes to be increased. Seems we have a choice of leaving the state and leave the bills to others who cannot afford them either, or to get the likes of Quinn and Madigan to leave their offices which we should try to do as soon as possible. Can we recall officials in Illinois. In the meantime the unions better learn to compromise regarding the public good or face the prospects of receiving nothing from a state they along with politicians are bankrupting.

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I like the idea of shifting the pension burden (and all local government/school costs) to the local areas. Too many people think the state has an endless supply of money, and are willing to defer the costs to future generations. Take the local school board approving teacher contracts as an example. The local community should feel the bite of every provision in that contract. If teachers get a 4% raise (or 30% raise like Chicago teachers are asking for), local taxes should increase to cover it. If the contract specifies retiring teachers get automatic 6% raises, that should come from the local community, not just now, but for the next 30 years that it compounds paying pensions.

One of the major factors why public pensions are out of control is the people negotiating outlandish benefits with the unions aren't responsible for funding those benefits. The school board members and elected polticians that negotiated many of todays union benefits are now retired themselves, and the current batch of politicians are negotiating for benefits that won't have to be paid for another 20 years.

There is no free lunch. Every penny in benefit paid to a public workers costs the taxpayers, and those pennies add up.

You are spot on David. Transfering the burden of these crazy pensions and raises to the local areas will force local school boards to deal with reality. This has gotten out of control because local board members have been allowed to spend other people's money.

Jim, you are absolutely correct. Illinois voters are just plain stupid. Our state continues to elect fools and criminals and then we all wonder why things keep getting worse. As the economy continues to improve elsewhere (i.e. Indiana, Wisconsin), more and more companies and workers will be moving out of here. I'm Illinois born and raised, and all of this makes me very sad indeed.

I have quite a few friends and family who live outside of Illinois, and a number of them have begged me not send any more of our politicians to Washington. Obama is just one more embarrassment for the folks from Illinois to bare. We don't have very much to be proud of here.