-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
In a unique effort to release stress, Chicagoans are gathering on Sunday evenings — to scream into Lake Michigan.
Pastor Corey Brooks is preparing to walk 3,000 miles from New York to Los Angeles this September to raise awareness and funding for community development in Chicago, and for underserved youth across the country. “In Chicago, we’ve taken one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in all of America, and we’ve transformed it,” Brooks said. “We have a school to put in place. Our goal is to plant Project H.O.O.D. across the country.”
“There are so many components to reparations, and it’s not just about writing a check. There are a lot of things that can be done that won’t cost the government a dime, [such as] removing laws that racially profile [us]. [This] can really change the trajectory of lives and to lessen the wealth gap between Black and white people,” said Vetress Boyce, a West Side native and the community co-chair for the Reparations Task Force. Mayor Brandon Johnson allocated $500,000 to create the Task Force, whose first meeting this week is not open to the public
Before he was an alderman, Nick Sposato was a Chicago firefighter and says – as politically unpopular as it may be – it may be time for a tax hike to generate more city revenue. “Not pay more taxes and try and get through with what we have right now? To me I would rather pay more taxes,” he said. “But I’m an elected official and that’s the last thing the people want to hear me saying. But public safety is the upmost important to me. We got to upgrade our rigs.”
Northwestern University announced Tuesday that it will eliminate more than 400 jobs, about half of which are vacant, to help close a budget gap amid “mounting financial pressures.”
Gov. JB Pritzker said SNAP provides more than $7 billion in economic activity for Illinois every year and extra checks on eligibility Trump implemented are too burdensome. “And the more burden we put on the poorest people in our state, the harder it is for us to deliver for them because the federal government has put up these barriers,” he said.
The Chicago Teachers Union recently marked the 10th anniversary of the celebrated “hunger strike” victory that prevented the closure of the nearly empty Dyett High School. Lost on the CTU is the harsh reality that despite Dyett boasting an 87 percent graduation rate and winning a 2A state boys basketball championship, only 2 percent of its graduates are proficient in reading. None are proficient in math. An alarming 75 percent of Dyett students were chronically absent – missing more than 10 percent of the school year.
Reinstating the $4-a-month-per-employee head tax, lump-sum payments in lieu of taxes for hospitals, churches and other non-profits exempt from paying property taxes, taxing digital advertising and a corporate income tax are all “options” on the table, the mayor said Tuesday. He acknowledged that the there is “still some ambiguity” about whether or not a corporate income tax would require legislative approval.
The new Mattoon facility is expected to bring 50 new jobs.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford is pushing House Resolution 252, which seeks to create a Landlord-Tenant Task Force aimed at fostering constructing dialogue between the two sides.
The Stopping Teachers Unions from Damaging Education Needs Today Act, would hold the NEA to the same standards of neutrality, transparency and public service expected of any nationally chartered nonprofit. In 2024, the NEA spent $23 million on political campaigns and another $3 million lobbying Congress. That same year, just 9% percent of the NEA’s spending was on representing its members.
“This is an almost violently anti-American building. It’s awful in ways difficult to fully describe. But as a representation of the man and the political figure it honors, it fits. And that’s what’s worst of all.”
U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski said that three-to-five-day mail in central and southern Illinois is on time about 59 percent of the time, while it was around 93 percent seven years ago. People at the roundtable discussion talked about problems for retaining local USPS employees and a convoluted hiring process, as well as logistical challenges facing the agency, particularly in rural areas.
Willie Greenwood, 27, was initially ordered detained for robbing casino shuttle bus riders in Chinatown in March. But Judge Timothy Joyce decided to release him a month later without even requiring an ankle monitor, according to court records.
His annual pension was just over $158,000. Housing him in a minimum security prison could cost the state about $46,000 annually.
PMI’s event represents another example of taxpayer dollars going toward nonprofitsinvolved in leftist
“The city essentially has been missing in action on this issue, and (Mayor Brandon) Johnson apparently is struggling to balance his political brand as an ardent union backer with his duty to Chicago taxpayers. This is no time for such timidity.”
How did two of the billionaire heirs to the Hyatt hotel fortune turned politicians get obsessed with a technology so complex that even the tech-savviest struggle to comprehend it? A little bit of hometown pride and a lot of optimism.
“We don’t have enough power to meet the goal of a million [electric] vehicles at this point,” said John Walton, former chairman and current emeritus board member of the Illinois Alliance for Clean Transportation. There are still less than 150,000 EVs registered statewide, well below the state’s targeted goal of 1 million by 2030.
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