You've read the reports, you see the weekly updates and you understand the issue: State pension systems across the U.S. are in serious trouble, so much so that California has adopted cost containment measures and Illinois – if leaders can ever agree to meet to discuss the issue – suffers from teacher and worker pension issues so broad that the state's credit rating has dropped as a result.

Now, even worse news, in a piece featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal this weekend: Even with austerity measures from coast to coast, state pension systems still face nearly a trillion dollars' worth of funding shortfalls.

As the piece explains, despite number-crunching, benefits cuts and rollbacks for public employees in 45 states, there's been very little progress in helping to address the nearly $900 billion in pension deficits.