The New York Times today has a huge piece on the conditions of the pension plans for city employees that lays out just what a fraud the entire New York City accounting system really is.

Keep in mind that the politicians who helped create this pack of lies are the same politicians who went on and on about a “corporate crime wave” when Enron went down and some companies had to restate their numbers. Out of this, we got large numbers of corporate executives going to prison, but even that was not enough for the editors of the Times and their politician friends. Still I am glad to see the newspaper give us a more accurate picture of the real state of city pensions, even if it is too little, too late. (Don’t expect the editors of the Times to demand that their favorite politicians go to prison for fraud, however.)

I remember 30 years ago when New York City’s finances were collapsing, and the editors of the Times and their politician acolytes were demanding a federal bailout. It seems that the city was issuing bonds for capital improvements, and then using that income to pay off previous bonds, a true municipal ponzi scheme. Interestingly, no one at the New York Times was interested in any politician going to prison for what was one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. History.

No, the people there save their anger only for business executives. Welcome to Amerika, where being an employee of the state gives one a free pass to lie, commit fraud, kill, cheat, and put on a pose of moral righteousness.