'Insane' even by Illinois standards? Union official to get $500,000 in pensions

Forget about those greedy corporate executives...

Outside the targets of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests, the real con men are the public sector millionaires holding a gun to your head to fund their lottery-style pensions.

From lifeguards who can retire at age 50 and receive $108,000 for the rest of their lives to double-dipping police officers, these public sector fat cats have turned the idea of civil service on its head.

One of these scoundrels is Liberato "Al" Naimoli.

According to the Chicago Tribune, ol' Al will receive a whopping $9 million in pension benefits from the taxpayers if he makes it to the end of his expected lifespan.

Naimoli is what's known in the pension world as a “triple-dipper.” The President of Cement Workers Local 76, Naimoli is already receiving $160,000 a year from his Chicago pension and is now eligible for $60,000 a year from the Laborers’ Pension Fund — and another $220,000 a year from a national union fund.

That's a pretty nice haul for a guy who retired more than 25 years ago from a $15,000-a-year job with the city of Chicago...

What's more, according the Tribune, thanks to an obscure change to Illinois state law 20 years ago, Naimoli is just one of 23 retired Chicago union officials that stand to walk off with a total of $56 million in city pensions.

Zombie Municipal Governments

Naimoli and his pals are one of the reasons the state of Illinois is broke and teetering on the edge of a financial abyss.

Overwhelmed by figures that will never add up, zombie state governments like Illinois are the next fiscal wave about to wash over the markets.

And while this may be news to most Americans, the brewing municipal pension crisis is about to take another bite out of their pitifully equipped wallets...

Things have gotten so bad that, according to a study by Joshua D. Rauh, associate professor of finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management,taxpayers are now on the hook for $1 trillion — even if states uniformly eliminate generous early retirement deals and raised the retirement age to 74.

Rauh's study of 116 U.S. retirement plans for teachers and government workers showed that as of June 30, 2009, they had just $1.89 trillion in assets to cover $3.15 trillion in liabilities.

That's a gap of $1.26 trillion — more than double the shortfall of a year earlier,according to a study by the Pew Center on the States.

Two years later, that figure has only grown. According to Rauh: “Assuming states don’t start defaulting on their bonds and other debts, it seems that taxpayers will be footing most of the multi-trillion dollar bill for the pension promises that states have already made to workers.”