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Newly-released polling indicates that while police reform efforts have widespread support, most urban residents dismiss sweeping calls to defund the police as an inadequate solution.
The Illinois Department of Public Health largely relies on local health departments to do tracing, then report back. Dr. Rachel Rubin, who runs the Cook County Department of Public Health with another physician, didn’t have specific numbers, but she said the county has traced a “fraction” of the just over 75,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the region. Instead, the county focuses on specific areas, like schools and people in their 20s, where cases are rising quickly.
“First, the good news…. That’s a whopping 16% drop over three years. Now the bad news—at least for blue-state taxpayers…. Five states last year still boasted long-term liability burdens above 20% of personal income, a level that Fitch gently calls “elevated”: Illinois (27%), Connecticut (25.9%), New Jersey (21.4%), Hawaii (20.7%) and Alaska (20.3%)….
The pandemic will put more of a squeeze on state worker pensions by reducing the tax base to pay for them and perhaps also lowering fund investment returns. But faster economic growth makes pension obligations more manageable, and worker pensions will be stronger in states that reopened
BLM is a poor label for the movement, which should distance itself from BLM the organization because the organization does not represent the views of any race.
“The attitude of the politicians eager to collect more billions boils down to this: Give us your money but don’t make us change anything. As is, Illinois works just fine for us.“
By Arthur Laffer, Ph.D., Stephen Moore, and Erwin Antoni, Ph.D.
While many restaurants followed Pritzker’s orders in the spring, closing down and awaiting the state’s permission to reopen with heavy regulation, hundreds are now announcing they’ll defy the latest bans on indoor dining and capacity limits.
The state tried to force places of worship to stop in-person services in the spring because the crowding and other activities that happen at them — like singing — create a higher risk for COVID-19 to spread. Pritzker eventually backed down.
Pritzker said, “I want every kid to be able to go to school in person, every day. And so we have got to bring down these numbers so that we can restore the businesses, restore education. We can get there.”
“Everyone is running on fumes,” said Greg Mohr, who co-owns the Fifty/50 restaurant group. “… We understand having a breaking point of having to shut down restaurants. That doesn’t mean we’re any more prepared financially to take that on. … It’s gonna be an absolutely terrible, terrible winter.”
Known as “menu money” for the list of permanent improvement projects that aldermen get to choose from, the project allows aldermen a pot of money to spend as they see fit — and curry favor with voters.
There were calls to shift cops from downtown back to other neighborhoods, questions about how many murders go unsolved and requests to reallocate money away from policing and toward mental health and affordable housing. And aldermen also raised concerns about retirements, overtime spending and progress on a court-ordered police reform plan.
The differing opinions on police are evident in Ald. Jeanette Taylor’s 20th Ward. “I have a ward that’s split, half of my ward hates you, and the other part loves you, so I’m somewhere in the middle,” she told Supt. David Brown. “It seems like every major city around the country is doing something different than just investing in police, and we’re not.”
Mark Konkol: “While Pritzker issues pandemic executive orders leaning on ‘unreliable’ metrics without much input from any elected officials — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot included — other leaders, as Dr. Landon suggested, have found another way to do it. A better way, at least, compared to coronavirus statistics in our state.”
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