"NEVER LET A SERIOUS CRISIS GO TO WASTE"

Those words were spoken by Rahm Emanuel in November 2008 and used by Glenda Beck and others to stoke fear in the rubes.   Over the last two weeks or so, we've heard the gasbags rave about how public sector pensions are killing the states and on the face of it, these raves seem to have some validity. Only on the face, as Kevin Drum informs us, because what's really killing the states in the Great Recession:

The recession blew a huge hole in the already shaky finances of state governments, causing them to lose nearly one-third of their revenue in 2009, according to a Census Bureau report released Wednesday....Overall, total state government revenue dropped 30.8 percent, to $1.1 trillion, between fiscal 2008 and 2009, according to the report.