The Orland Park Village Board is handing out million-dollar pensions to public-sector employees, particularly Mayor Dan McLaughlin. I used to live in Orland Park. I still have relatives there. If you’re hoping for property taxes to go down, forget it. They need the money to pay these six-figure pensions to firemen, police and fire chiefs, the mayor and teachers. This will give incentive to other mayors who, along with their trustee buddies, will say, “Orland Park’s getting million-dollar pensions. Why shouldn’t we?” Look for that to happen in New Lenox, the Palos area and Tinley Park.
The National Museum of African American History & Culture recently opened in Washington, D.C., and the article written in the newspaper showed a picture of first lady Michelle Obama with her arms around former President George W. Bush. What a delight it was to see such an inspiring picture of our former president and current first lady. This is the way it should be, regardless of political party difference. Where is it written that we should just flat-out hate each other? Nevertheless, when several Republicans saw this photo of Bush and Obama locked in a hug, he was called a traitor.
BJ, Hazel Crest
I saw a great bumper sticker recently. It said, “If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, spoons make people fat and cars drive drunk.” It all makes sense; doesn’t it?
Tom, Burbank
More about Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin tripling his salary to $150,000 a year: The entire system needs to be totally overhauled. That’s one reason we have the highest property taxes in Illinois and people want to move out of here. It’s ridiculous. The Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund is bought and paid for by public-sector employees, plain and simple. It’s corrupt. They need to adopt the same rules followed by the private sector like unions for carpenters, teamsters and electricians. Also, when you retire you can’t get another job and double-dip, which is another thing they do. It’s ridiculous. It needs to be overhauled completely. Illinois is in dire financial straits and they want to give million-dollar pensions to mayors.
Medicare is going up 3.9 percent in 2017. Social Security will be raised only 0.3 percent in 2017. Instead of spending the taxpayers’ money on countries that don’t even like us, why not spend the hard-earned taxpayers’ money on the taxpayer? Help Main Street and the poor people in this country.
Read about Boeing Corporation’s announced impending job cuts for the coming year. Well, I wish for once those doing the announcing, and those making the decisions, would feel the angst, and in some cases the terror of losing ones source of family financial support. Unfortunately, they will continue to collect their salaries, pay their health care premiums, fund their 401(k)’s, and put food on the table. They will move on, and in their wake they will leave many with shattered lives, because you know what, they won’t just fire employees, they will fire entire families.
Evergreen Park
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