Upon Further Review

The ongoing saga of the demise of Wentzville-based US Fidelis, once the nation’s No. 1 seller of extended auto-service contracts, gets more intriguing by the day. Now Missouri’s attorney general is accusing the two brothers who operated the business and paid themselves millions to finance a lavish lifestyle with plundering it. And accountants are telling similar tales.

Liberal columnist Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in an open letter to President Obama before a visit to St. Louis last week, suggests the only way for meaningful health reform to be enacted is for the current 2,000-page proposal to fail.

Writes McClellan:

A commission is our best chance, Mr. President. Load it up with doctors and nurses and business people. They can study what other countries have done and figure out what would work here. It wouldn’t take long. A commission could do its work in six months.

After the commission makes a recommendation, it could go to Congress for a vote up or down. No amendments.

Many see Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed income tax hike as a cynical ploy to hold teachers and schoolchildren hostage while playing on the sympathy of voters. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggests the state quit playing games with its future and come up with real solutions to its problems, which the newspaper admits will be very tough medicine.

As the series that began today in The Herald-Whig will show, the state’s inability to pay its bills, along with some educational requirements and unfunded mandates, are the primary culprits in an economic crisis that is threatening the viability of school districts statewide.

The one good result of Missouri’s ignominious flameout against last-place Nebraska in the first round Wednesday is that I won’t have to waste any time this weekend following the Big 12 postseason tournament. Another consolation: Maybe the Tigers will fall to a 10 or 11 seed in the NCAA tournament, which would mean they would avoid the top seed in the second round — should they get that far.

(Mizzou’s last two losses also mean I need to avoid Dr. Jim Nuessen for a while. The football victory over Kansas is a distant memory.)

Oh, well. Baseball’s opening day is around the corner and the Masters tees off in four weeks.

David Nicklaus of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggests the U.S. Postal Service as we know it is quickly becoming obsolete — and costly to taxpayers — in the Internet age. His cure: Privatize mail service, rather than raise rates and cut services.

Far better would be to admit that first-class mail is no longer the essential service it was a generation ago. We no longer need a government monopoly. We should privatize the Postal Service, as Germany and the Netherlands have done, or subject it to private competition, as has happened in Britain, Finland and New Zealand.

Either way, we’d be introducing market forces. Would that mean fewer stand-alone post offices? Would it mean less frequent delivery for some of us? Would lucrative business-to-business mail perhaps get cheaper, while people on rural routes pay more?

Yes, yes and yes. But those are the consequences of living in the Internet age, and the longer we ignore them, the bigger the ultimate bill for taxpayers is going to be.

Quincy isn’t the only school district in Illinois facing massive financial problems because the state can’t pay its bills. The Daily Herald in Arlington Heights provides more examples:

• Elgin Area School District U-46 is facing a $50 million deficit. District officials are talking about class-size increases, firing hundreds of teachers, cutting employee pay and increasing employees’ benefit contributions.

• The Maine Township High School District 207 school board last month approved cutting 75 largely nontenured, certified teachers by school year end to save $5 million.

• Gurnee’s Woodland Elementary District 50 cut 16 teachers as it struggles with a local deficit for next year projected at about $3.5 million.

• Indian Prairie School District 204, which serves Naperville, Aurora, Bolingbrook and Plainfield, will wait to renew the employment contracts of almost 700 nontenured teachers and administrators, who will be in limbo about whether they’ll resume their jobs next fall.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports the pension fund for 365,000 Illinois teachers returned 15 percent in 2009 after losses the two previous years.

The investment gain lifted the value of the Teachers’ Retirement System, the 15th largest U.S. public retirement account, to $32.1 billion as of Dec. 31, trustees said in a news release. The Standard & Poore’s 500 Index rose 23 percent in the same period.

Illinois, the second-lowest rated U.S. state behind California, borrowed $3.4 billion in January to cover payments into its retirement systems for teachers and government workers. Gov. Pat Quinn, who is to present his budget for the coming fiscal year March 10, has suggested he may borrow again to meet pension payments.

Halfway through the fiscal year that ends in June, the fund’s return was 15.3 percent, compared with a loss of 23 percent for the year ended June 30, 2009, the most recent actuarial report shows. The value of the fund rose from $28.5 billion during that time, according to state records.

The pension was underfunded by $35 billion through June 2009, and the value of assets against liabilities was 52 percent, according to the reports.

Gov. Pat Quinn is right in saying an income tax increase that would generate between $3 billion and $5 billion is needed to help correct an Illinois budget that is spiraling toward the abyss. The state cannot continue to nibble around the edges and rely on revenue gimmicks while staring at a projected $11.5 billion deficit a year from now.

Yet, it’s unlikely the income tax hike will happen. For starters, too many elected officials have been shortsighted in recent years in taking a blanket no-tax pledge, a move designed chiefly to play well with voters and ignore reality as the deficit grew. Even though the Senate approved one last year, House Speaker Michael Madigan never called a vote, and he doesn’t sound like he plans to do so this year, either, not with legislators facing voters in November.

The other reason is that the state has not shown it can handle money. State officials at all levels can blame the economy for a large part of this, but Illinois was a financial mess before the markets tanked. Schools, service agencies and providers were being starved. Pension obligations were not being met. Necessary projects that could have produced jobs were put on hold.

Taxpayers have the right to be skeptical. They might take a leap of faith and support higher income taxes if they thought the state would spend the money wisely, fix the problems through cuts and reform measures, and restore financial sanity. But this is Illinois, the land of political hiring, exorbitant pensions and shady deals. One former governor is in prison and another could be headed there.

So the budget debate will be like watching auto racing: We may just tune in to see the crashes.

Jim Gallagher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch uses the sad story of Patty and Greg Robinson of Hannibal, Mo., to issue this warning about the individual health insurance market: Watch what you’re buying. There are lots of lousy health policies out there.

Of course, it’s probably too much to ask for the 535 members of Congress to actually collaborate  — you know, legislate, problem solve, work for the people — to come up with a way to make sure things like this don’t happen. Not in an election year when the wrong party (either one) might get credit. Not when nifty sound bites trump substance.

Question of the day: Will the quo warranto lawsuit filed against Quincy School Board President Melvin “Bud” Niekamp be decided before his term expires in 2013?

There was yet another delay in the case this week, meaning the evidentiary hearings that had been scheduled in late November for next Monday and Tuesday will not be held until May 4. Seems all parties were so booked up they couldn’t squeeze it in until then. The attorneys did concede they could argue their points in one day instead of two the week after the Dogwood Festival, an apparent salute to expediency.

This case has had more stops and starts than a 16-year-old driving a clutch for the first time. For those keeping score at home, if the May hearing is actually held, it will have taken 284 days since the suit was filed to get to the point to maybe determine if it should be heard.

No rush to judgment here. Sometimes the wheels of justice move slowly; sometimes they just spin.

How big is the Tiger Woods press conference today? ESPN is going to be all Tiger, all day, on all platforms. You can follow the press conference live below.

Meanwhile, Mike Bianchi, a sports columnist with the Orlando Sentinel, says he doesn’t want to hear an apology from Woods today. All he wants to hear is when Tiger will be playing again.

I want to hear Tiger Woods talking about his birdies and bogeys; not about his babes and bimbos. If you want to see him fall on a bloody sword, fine. I’d rather see him lift up a Claret Jug. … the public apology given by Tiger’s speechwriter today is completely and utterly meaningless. America is not going to fall for any more white lies or red herrings. But a green jacket? Now that’s a discourse of a different color.

Columnist Jason Whitlock, on the other hand, in an open letter, urges Woods to retire. Whitlock says having a life is more important than dealing with today’s media frenzy and breaking Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major titles.

That’s not advice. I’m not even sure it’s what I would do if I was in your position. It’s simply what I feel 24 hours before your news conference announcement. Take your golf clubs, go home and raise your kids. Don’t let for-profit “journalists” turn you into Michael Jackson. Walk away.