* Another day, another ill-informed, adolescent temper tantrum over pension reform from the Chicago Tribune editorial board…

There’s a conference committee of House and Senate members working on a solution. If all the legislators on that committee were serious — we know some of them are — they would have crafted a bill by now to present to the public and the governor.

But they haven’t done so. Some members of the committee appear to be in no hurry, especially now that Quinn has taken away their paychecks. They’ll show him! They’ll … just … keep … stalling.

Most exasperating is the slow-walk on pension reform by the conference committee’s chairman, Sen. Kwame Raoul. Not that Raoul hasn’t been busy … sizing up a run for governor. Gov. Raoul — excuse us, Sen. Raoul — your handling of this conference committee isn’t building confidence in your case for a political promotion.

The state’s pension liability grows by $5 million every day. Debt is piling up, up, up.

The committee has to produce a substantial bill, one that comes close to the $187 billion in savings promised by the pension reform bill that passed the Illinois House but was crushed in the Senate.

What’s it going to take? We’ve even come to miss Squeezy the Pension Python, the cartoon character that Quinn created to try to prod the legislators to own up to the disaster they’ve created. Where’s Squeezy, trapped in a smoke-filled room in the Capitol? Lured to the beach for bikini gazing and Mai Tais? Maybe he joined the conference committee — a guarantee that he would never be seen again.

Only the We Are One negotiated pension plan could receive three-fifths votes in both chambers to give any pension reform bill an immediate effective date. Otherwise, we’re looking at July 1, 2014 for an effective date on a simple majority roll call But to hear the Tribune tell it, we’ll drown if something isn’t done right this very second!!!

These people write like they’re tweenie girls whose parents won’t buy them One Direction concert tickets.

Take. A. Breath.

* Also, if they’d bothered to actually check, they’d know that the conference committee is actually making lots of progress. What’s the holdup? Well, every tweak they make has to be sent off for actuarial analysis, and that takes time.

Again.

Take. A. Breath.

* And I seriously doubt that Sen. Raoul cares whether the Tribune thinks he’s gubernatorial material. Threatening the guy ain’t gonna work.

* Also, too, the Tribune has proved over and over again that it has zero concerns for the state Constitution. Perhaps their editorial board members have moved to another state. I dunno. But pension reform is made extremely difficult because of our Constitution. And the obvious separation of powers questions raised by the governor’s veto seem not to bother the Trib, either.

They just want those concert tickets, man, and they don’t care how it’s done. Missing Squeezy? C’mon. Grow up, already.

[And for my more partisan commenters, please note that the word “republicans” in the headline is not capitalized.]