Last night, after a series of shady, back-room (not to mention illegal on several counts) dealings, the Kentucky Legislature passed SB1. It now goes to Governor Bevins's desk, and it probably won't have to wait long for its hymen to be punctured by his pen.
You can read the whole of the pertinent section if you want to (http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/18RS/SB1.htm . . . or all 289 pages of the things @ https://legiscan.com/KY/text/SB1/2018), but the first independent clause might be all you really need to know:
"Amend KRS 6.505 to provide that the "inviolable contract" provisions shall not apply to legislative changes to Legislators' Retirement Plan (LRP) that become effective on or after July 1, 2018 . . . . "
Perhaps my vocabulary isn't what it used to be. Let me check with the Oxford Dictionary on this.
inviolable [/ɪnˈvʌɪələb(ə)l/]:
ADJECTIVE
Never to be broken, infringed, or dishonoured.
Origin
Late Middle English: from French, or from Latin inviolabilis, from in- ‘not’ + violabilis ‘able to be violated’ (from the verb violare)
Hmpf. That's pretty much the direction I was heading in.
Maybe the Kentucky Legislature had a vote before the SB1 vote in which they democratically decided that inviolable meant violable.
At any rate . . . the short of it is that the majority of the Republican State Senators and Representatives decided to fuck Kentucky teachers . . . and to fuck them retroactively. (The provisions of this bill reach back four years.)
So teachers who made the decision to retire based on the promise of the benefits they were told they would receive . . . based on the guarantee of benefits they were told they would receive . . . are now being told that the deal is going to change.
In what universe is that okay?
I don't understand the lock-step of the Republicans on this. How could these people have voted yes on a bill which is so clearly unfair . . . and which they did not even read? (Long story, but there was literally no opportunity for most of the legislators to read this bill because of the way it was pushed through. NO opportunity.) I mean, I understand ideological allegiance, but this goes way beyond that. These boys and girls did not read the bill they voted on.
What is wrong with these people? They literally just voted to break the law, and they're not even breaking a sweat. And when you pry open the story to get to the details, it gets even worse.