-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
“The issue is real now. Why do we want to send another 100,000 people out of our state,” State Sen. Jil Tracy asked.
“The children are not going to have the education they deserve,” Acero parent Lucy Salgado said.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is led by U.S. Rep. James Comer, released a new video Wednesday setting up what’s likely to be a divisive hearing. “State and local governments that refuse to comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts should not receive a penny of federal funding,” Comer said. “On March 5, the House Oversight Committee will hold sanctuary mayors publicly accountable for refusing to abide by the law and placing Americans’ lives at risk.”
According to the Illinois Craft Distillers Association, while 47 states allow for the direct shipment of wine directly from winemakers to consumers, only 11 states currently allow distillers to ship their products directly to consumers and Illinois is not one of them.
Republicans offered a package of proposals to do things like end taxes on tips, or to waive first-year business license fees. Other GOP proposals include tax credits for donating to scholarship programs and increasing education expense tax credits to $1,500, among other ideas.
Senate Bill 148 would enable Illinois residents to open a special kind of savings account that could only be used to pay eligible costs for the purchase of a single-family residence. Deposits into those accounts would be deductible from state income taxes with some limitations.
Illinois received $127.8 billion of imports from China, Canada and Mexico in 2023, according to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Illinois is highly dependent on oil and gas from Canada, meaning consumers could be in line for higher energy and gas prices due to Trump’s tariffs. About 72 percent of Illinois’ imports, or $47.4 billion, from Canada in 2023 was oil and gas, according to DCEO.
Chicago’s City Council on Wednesday approved the issuance of $830 million of general obligation bonds that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration says will fund infrastructure projects in the capital improvement program.
“Hiring full-time mental health professionals to physically respond to a crisis 24/7 sounds ideal in theory, but in practice, has proven fiscally impossible at any reasonable scale. By using telehealth technologies, we aren’t just saving taxpayer dollars — we are saving lives.”
Johnson’s team first floated the new cameras as a means to raise $11 million to pay for Police Department positions related to the federal consent decree in his 2025 budget.
“In a time of intense polarization, voters in municipal elections that were held Tuesday around the Chicago area showed encouraging signs of exhaustion with politicians’ drama. On both the left and the right.”
Antonio Reyes, 21, was charged Tuesday with five counts of first-degree murder and four counts of first-degree attempted murder, said Police Supt. Larry Snelling. Reyes was already in custody at Cook County Jail since his December 2020 arrest in the murder of a 26-year-old man in Gage Park in June 2020, Snelling said.
At a recent Board of Trustees meeting, several faculty members aired frustrations over the quality of family leave conditions and accused the university of inadequate pay. The 650 tenure and tenure-track faculty represented by UFISU now threaten to walk out if they don’t reach mediation.
“We’re the only state that puts this burden on their own state taxpayers, and to not run it properly and to have these large cost overruns, that’s how you end up with a budget deficit,” Senate Minority Leader John Curran said. “That’s what’s crowding out spending on education. That’s what’s crowding out spending on other components of the state budget. That’s why we need an audit.”
Of the 23 states that are losing residents to domestic outmigration, 16 of them, or 70 percent, have progressive income taxes. Only 11, or 41 percent, of the 27 states that gained residents from other states last year have progressive income taxes.
Pastor Corey Brooks: “I started my journey of building my new part of America when I first moved to the South Side of Chicago in the early 2000s. Now, I am more than halfway through building a 90,000 square foot Economic and Leadership community center. … The government taught us dependency, systemic racism, and victimhood. Here, in this new building, when it is built, we will practice the values of responsibility, accountability, building good character and the resilience to not only dream big but to pursue it until it’s accomplished.”
Illinois politicians are once again touting a “balanced” budget. One problem. Calling the budget “balanced” completely ignores the fact that Illinois is underpaying its pension funds by the billions – same as it has every year for a long time.
What induced Pritzker’s rant? The Cleveland Clinic provides a clue: “For people with histrionic personality disorder, their self-esteem depends on the approval of others and doesn’t come from a true feeling of self-worth. They have an overwhelming desire to be noticed and often behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention. For those of us in Illinois, this comes close to describing our governor’s interesting psyche: He’s the needy billionaire.
Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration vastly underestimated the cost and popularity of a pair of health insurance programs for immigrants who are not citizens that has ended up
Johnson says a “significant” portion of the funds would go to projects like bridge repairs and replacements, street resurfacing, sidewalk maintenance and more.
“Illinois offers arguably the worst illustration in the nation of this anti-democratic procedure. Over the past four gubernatorial elections in our state, 46 percent of Illinois voters cast Republican ballots on average for governor. Yet only three out of our 17 congressional districts elected Republicans in the past two, post-redistricting election cycles.”
“State Sen. Willie Preston of Chicago is right: ‘This is not a time for celebration.’ He went on to say, ‘Budgets reveal the morals and the values of our state. In Illinois, Black communities contribute significantly to the economy, yet when the budget is finalized, those contributions are not flowing back into our community.'”
“All of Chicago will eventually have water meters, so we better figure this problem out and help people adjust once the meters come in,” Ald. Ray Lopez said. “We can’t (be) sending people into water stricken panics, every time we engage a new water meter in the city of Chicago.”
“The cases of Madigan and Burke and the others you mention are very different from mine,” the former governor said. “And I can’t judge the specifics … I can only tell you about my case … and I know what they did to me, and I do know they did the same thing to Trump.”
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER