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Around 175 million tons of freight travels on the Mississippi River each year, and from the river’s headwaters to southern Illinois, a series of locks and dams guide barges through the journey. A 2019 Agribusiness Consulting report found that in 2017, more than half of boats and barges on the river were delayed at locks and dams, up from about one in five in 2000. Delay time increased from 90 minutes to about 122 minutes, some of the longest delays in the country.
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Here is a novel idea. make the river a toll way meaning those who use the river can pay their fair share for using the infrastructure needed for them to use it. Get that? Their “fair share” taht is a slogan I hear so often these days/
Pay their fair share and lets move on keeping the governments hands out of it
That was considered when the origins of the lock and dam configuration was proposed. However giving the Army Corp of Engineers exclusive power over the system provided the government the means to torment anyone with a boat. It was just too tempting.