-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
“As Ted Dabrowski pointed out in a recent Wirepoints piece, one should hardly expect the unions to roll over and play dead. If nothing else, the SCOTUS decision may serve as a rallying cry for Illinois’ public employees and their Democratic Party allies and, perhaps, solidify their support for J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic candidate for Governor.”
It showed that just 31 percent said they would vote to re-elect Emanuel. When respondents were asked to choose between Emanuel and someone new — without mentioning a specific alternative — 62 percent of those surveyed said they wanted to try someone else.
When Emanuel was pitted against “a number of announced and likely candidates in the race,” his numbers went up only to 34 percent — statistically insignificant, given the poll’s margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.
Chicago’s habit of floating bonds to pay for the annual cost of police-related payouts was spotlighted in a report issued last month with the provocative title, “Police Brutality Bonds,” by Action Center on Race & the Economy.
The group, which focused on the practices of several cities but spotlighted Chicago, estimates Chicago will spend more than $1 billion to service the debt on about $700 million in cop-related settlements and judgments incurred since 2010.
Comment: This is silly. The investment was made during the Obama Administration and Rauner wasn’t even at GTCR, the firm that made the investment, at the time it was made. Nor do we know whether the money involved is material. According to the article, we only know it’s more than $5,000.
In a scathing letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration, the non-profit Jackson Park Watch has detailed the many ways that the proposed Obama Center violates portions of America’s most important environmental protection law.
The Civic Federation believes that significant changes to pension benefits should not be enacted without detailed actuarial impact studies that are made available to the public.
Emanuel’s self-described main goal: Saving a $1.3 billion deal between the CTA and a Chinese firm to assemble new el cars on the Southeast Side, a deal that’s threatened as the U.S. and China engage in a growing round of tariffs and counter-tariffs.
For more than 100 years, Granite City has defined itself as a hardworking mill town, a place where young people eager to cement a solid financial future without a college degree have to look no further than the dirt and iron and fire of the local steel plant, which stretches over 2 square miles. The opportunity afforded by the plant came to a halt at the end of 2015, when the plant idled production, laying off 2,000 people. But the first blast furnace now has been restarted and U.S. Steel is filling 800 jobs at the mill.
One graphic perfectly captures the absurdity of Illinois pensions over the past three decades. It’s what Justice Samuel Alito described as Illinois’ “generous public-employee retirement packages” when writing for the majority in the Janus v. AFSCME decision.
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