See our full story on what else is really going on, linked here.

What is Illinois’ plan to get this state on stable financial footing? If Amazon was watching the General Assembly Wednesday, they didn’t get an answer.

“School mathematics curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean Theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans,” she says, according to Campus Reform.

“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as white,” she writes.

“Why don’t we just go full out socialism in the state of Illinois,” Rep. Jeanne Ives, R-Wheaton, said. “So we could have a work comp agency run by the state, a health insurance agency run by the state, homeowners insurance run by the state, business liability run by the state. Maybe we put State Farm Insurance out of business. Let’s just have the state insert itself in all other insurance.”

The powerful Service Employees International Union is cleaning house amid an ongoing investigation into allegations of misconduct and abusive behavior among leaders of the campaign to increase the minimum wage.

The union fired the top leader of its Fight for 15 campaign in Chicago, Caleb Jennings, as a result of the ongoing investigation, BuzzFeed News has learned, and placed the head of the campaign’s Detroit outpost, Mark Raleigh, on administrative leave.

It’s not news that unions have long controlled the Illinois legislature, but the heavy-handedness in Springfield increasingly makes the Land of Lincoln look more like a thugocracy. Behold how Democrats are seeking to criminalize political opponents who support giving workers a choice not to join a union.

-By Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon

Comment: More retirees than active participants, no help from a booming stock market because the pensions are so underfunded and just not enough money to ever make it up. Those circumstances are being repeated in many towns and cities across Illinois.