Comment: Let’s hope so. If the IEA is nervous, it has to be good.

“Pension fund officers suggest there’s a tension between fulfilling their fiduciary duty to seek top returns and meeting goals to hire women- and minority-owned firms. But others in the industry increasingly say there’s no trade-off between returns and policy.” Comment: This is not the place for affirmative action. Anybody who meets the very demanding qualifications for these positions is almost certainly already well-to-do; it’s just making the rich richer. Pensions should be managed to maximize returns.

If a budget deal isn’t reached before then, the state will lose spending authority for a variety of important services, like public colleges and universities and grants for health and social services. These are areas the state’s ongoing budget impasse has already adversely affected.

A judge in Cook County has issued a temporary restraining order halting a labor board decision that would allow the state to implement its contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The delay costs Illinois taxpayers over $1 million more each day in state-worker health coverage costs.

“We’ve said for more than a year on this page that the plan for the Democrats has always been gridlock.”  

Police officers entered the classroom of an African-American studies seminar in October to inquire about a stolen cell phone that had been tracked to the location, prompting the professor leading the course to exclaim after the fact that “lots of people on campus, lots of people of color, are scared.” The professor, Erik McDuffie, even compared the incident to the numerous shootings of African-American men across the country, stating that “the incident terrified me and it terrified my students.”