"Rhode Island Pension System Collapsing." Walter Russell Mead

W.R. Mead,  Bard College, NY

      "Politicians and union leaders chose the path of systemic deceit. Taxpayers weren’t told what the bill for the system would be; public service workers weren’t told that the pension guarantees they’d been sold were worthless because taxpayers would not and could not foot the bill.

"An economic crisis is nature’s revenge on those who make and those who accept false promises; it is a holocaust of lies when the dross is burned away and only what is real and true remains. Think of cotton candy melting and charring in the flame of a blowtorch.

"Rhode Island turned its pension program into a Ponzi scheme with the same basic technique that is being used in cities and states all over the country to bamboozle workers and taxpayers alike: it projected unreasonable rates of return on the money the state set aside to pay the pensions when the bills came due.

Charles Ponzi: Patron Saint of Rhode Island?

"As far as I can tell the union leaders and politicians who concocted this disaster between them have no plans to suffer any cuts in their own pay or pension plans — and intend to go on “serving the public” without any accountability at all.