(Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

All right, so I've been the skunk at the garden party long enough today. If you want to find a clear -- if largely unacknowledged -- winner in last night's electoral shindig, take a look at organized labor. In Boston, where John Connolly attached himself to the Rhee-ite school "reform" movement and criticized Martin Walsh for being a tool of big labor -- In other words, this was a race between Democrats in which union support was an actually an issue. Never thought I'd live to see that in Boston. -- Walsh beat Connolly fairly handily. And in Cincinnati, a bastion of hard-bar Republicanism in Ohio, areally remarkable thing happened.

Cincinnati voters overwhelmingly rejected Issue 4, a major overhaul of the city's troubled pension system, in Tuesday's election. The vote was 78 percent against and 22 percent for. Peter McLinden, Cincinnati-area Regional Director at AFSCME Ohio Council 8, released this statement: "Today's vote will be heard beyond Cincinnati and sends a message for those on the ideological extremes who think it is ok to impose their agenda on an entire city. Had this passed, outside money and political extremists would have cost Cincinnati taxpayers more money, with less services. ... That said we all are dedicated to working together moving forward to fix the pension system in a way that is in the best interest of Cincinnati public employees and taxpayers."

This was a raid, plain and simple. These pensions are not retirement plans. They are deferred compensation. They are money that workers are owed because they and their unions were willing to compromise on salaries in exchange for moe money after the workers retired. This is the kind of thing that has been going on all over the country for quite some time under the guise of "unfunded liabilities," which, in most cases, are "unfunded" because the people who were supposed to fund these plans reneged over decades to do so. (It is also a scam beloved of new brotastic centrist Governor Chris Christie, among others.) It is generally sold by the grifters promoting it as a rank appeal to worker jealousy. (That garbageman has a pension and you don't? No fair! And everybody forgets to ask why private-sector workers don't have pensions any more.) As such, it has worked extremely well. It certainly should have sold itself in Cincinnati. Instead, mirabile dictu, the voters saw through the charade and shredded it at the polls.

A private group known as the Cincinnati for Pension Reform Committee gathered enough signatures last summer to place a charter amendment on the ballot. The amendment would have required the city to pay off its $872 million unfunded liability in the current pension system within 10 years. If the payoff couldn't be achieved under existing budget conditions, the amendment would have required Cincinnati officials to create new revenue or find cost savings so the goal could be met.

About that "private group"...

Cincinnati's pension plan has a large unfunded liability, due mostly to the economic crash of 2008 that affected the system's investments, along with rising healthcare costs. An unfunded liability occurs when pension obligations to retirees must be paid out of current income rather than from a separate fund that has been contributed to over time. The group pushing the charter amendment had three members - Dan Lillback, Bill Moore and Burr Robinson - and ties to the tea party movement. It was similar to pension reform efforts that have been tried by the tea party in other states.

This was an assault on money owed to city workers, money that got itself squandered by, among other people, the vulpine bastards on Wall Street. The vote in Cincinnati was a carefully selected test case for ripping off workers for the benefit of large financial services institutions. THat it failed was one reason to cheer last night. The next time someone tells you the Tea Party is a vehicle of protest for ordinary Joes and Janes, feel free to laugh in that person's face.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io