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Comment: See our own article on this linked here. The state’s defense includes the “police power” argument, which Pritzker ridicules when it comes to pension reform.
While providing some direct aid to states, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief & Economic Security Act is going to cause state income tax revenue to decline even further. Illinois is unwittingly about to allow as much as $1 billion to flow from state coffers to high-income taxpayers.
“That was after she rammed her cart into his.”
“The idea here is simple,” Supt. Brown said. “When an area looks good, the residents feel good about the community they live in, and that makes things safer.”
See our own article on the eviction moratorium linked here.
Eric Zorn: “The concern here is not for veteran journalists who may have to dip into savings to pay their cable bills, but for those who have been living paycheck to paycheck and find themselves having to navigate a confusing, unfriendly website — if they even have access to a computer — that has a tendency to dump them into telephone hell. It’s a concern for the businesses who rely on their customers getting money to tide them over.”
Local news outlets are a major source of COVID-19 news for 46% of the public, according to a Pew Research study published in April. That boosted audiences, but with many retail businesses shut down, advertising revenue did not follow.
Nearly 30% of those who tested positive in the last month are between 18 and 29 years old. Those cases are concentrated in the Lincoln Park and New City areas. Arwady suggests restlessness and a perception among youth that they won’t fall severely ill or die from the disease like older Chicagoans has contributed to the rise.
“I don’t pay interest on interest. That’s going to go to the back of the line,” she said. “I need to make sure that I’m either paying front-line providers or I’m paying down bills that are accruing late payment penalties at 12 percent. That’s the best use of taxpayer money.”
Trump said the Chicago police are “terrific” but as in New York, he asserted, they are “just not being allowed to do their job.”
Mark Konkol: “The reimagining of a citywide violence reduction squad with a gentle touch would give police brass a much-needed unit of highly trained officers to more effectively respond when shootings spike. Better than, say flooding the streets with 1,200 extra cops, which didn’t work July 4th holiday weekend when 100 people got shot, 15 fatally.”
Chicago Teachers Union leaders said this week that more than two-thirds of their members are unwilling to return to the classroom without guarantees that schools will have adequate protective gear for teachers as well as detailed cleaning and safety protocols to prevent the spread of the disease.
The city is also “very, very far below any concerning point” in terms of hospital capacity, Arwady said. COVID-19-related hospitalizations are at their lowest level since March and are declining still, she said.
LeadingAge Illinois President Karen Messer said that for older Americans, the coronavirus threat is not over. “The good news is that we know what to do. It’s time to begin.”
“The rates, however, are not carved in stone but subject to the dictates of the governor and legislature. They can be raised or lowered anytime the legislature chooses. So what is promised on Jan. 1, 2021, could be dramatically revised by Jan. 1, 2022.”
The plan includes measures like mandatory face masks for students over the age of 2, student “cohorts,” temperature checks and the option to continue online learning.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has set new limits on bars and restaurants to help stop the spread of COVID-19.
Seven local counties are among the nation’s 50 most at risk of having large numbers of households struggle to hang on to the homes they own, according to the study, released yesterday by Attom Data Solutions. The counties are Cook, DuPage, Lake, McHenry, Will, Kendall and DeKalb.
“All dressed up as historic figures.I just covered myself in Stars&Stripes. Next year I’m going as Mt.Rushmore!” That was Illinois’ Tammy Duckworth when she ran
“Even less clear than Northerly Island’s reopening date is whether Chicagoans miss it at all, especially with summer concerts canceled at the Huntington Bank Pavilion…From Meigs Field to the ill-fated Hamilton exhibition, the city has treated Northerly Island as a money-making property. These days, the island’s center is a hodgepodge of chain link fences, event venues, and parking lots.”
The state was ranked 35th for its tax climate and 48th for economic debt and personal income.
Evidence shows the mental and emotional harm done to children by not being in school is outweighing the potential harm of the coronavirus. The good news is the risk of a full-time, in-class reopening is far lower than originally feared. But don’t expect the teachers unions to make reopening easy.
Best of all, the city was able to cobble together a diverse coalition of private sector donors and philanthropists to pay for at least the first two years of the program.
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