More dancing around pension facts from Frankfort

A day after Speaker Jody Richards told us full funding of our public employee benefits is just around the corner in 2025, we get more spin about how the problem might have something to do with poor investment returns. The truth is we are headed for the mother-of-all cash flow problems and will never have enough money to invest our way out of this hole even if we did have average investment talent on board.

The best way to get decent returns would be to fire all the fast-talking Wall Street types and put all our money in index mutual funds. Not only would that virtually guarantee higher returns, it would allow us to liquidate funds -- as we will have to do very soon -- without having to absorb losses due to untimely selling of assets.

All of this is just wasted effort, though, if we can't muster the political will to swiftly curtail our gold-plated public employee fringe benefits.