Three Card Monte, Nekritz style. « Fred Klonsky

Three Card Monte, Nekritz style. « Fred Klonsky:

Three Card Monte, Nekritz style.

by Fred Klonsky

Three-card Monte, also known as the Three-card marney, Three-card trick, Three-Way, Three-card shuffle, Menage-a-card, Triplets, Follow the lady, Les Trois Perdants (French for Three Losers), le Bonneteau, Find the lady, Bola bola or Follow the Bee is a confidence game in which the victim, or mark, is tricked into betting a sum of money, on the assumption that they can find the money card among three face-down playing cards. It is the same as the shell game except that cards are used instead of “shells”.

Pension bomber, Representative Elaine Nekritz, has responded to Ralph Martire’s numbers in the debate about state revenues. Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability has argued that what Illinois faces is a revenue problem, not a pension problem.
Nektritz responds:

Thanks so much for your response.  I am familiar with Mr. Martire’s proposal.

 The reality is his proposal would require a payment of almost $9 billion into the pension systems next year. The current year payment is “only” $5.7 billion. We could decimate General State Aid for schools by about 75% in order to pay for it, or raise the income tax another 1%. I don’t believe either of those are good for Illinois.

Mr. Martire omits some very important points in his article. The first is that his payment amount