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.
Someone’s holding a sing that states “Illinois immigrants pay $8 billion per year in state and local taxes.” Where does that number come from? Does that include legal immigrants? And how much does the state and local govts pay to support these immigrants? Because if they pay $8 billion but consume $18 billion, we need to talk.
Of course they consume more than they pay out. Large corporations want cheaper labor and the pubic to subsidize their profits. Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Amazon, Dollar General, Home Depot, Uber and others are the biggest beneficiaries. They’re also the ones funding the astro-turf groups I linked to below.
This is just the federal stuff:
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-45.pdf
Does anyone else remember the McDonalds budget from 2013?
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/mcdonalds-cant-figure-out-how-its-workers-survive-on-minimum-wage/277845/
The sign in the background says it all “Parking from $15”
I recently paid $55 for about four hours to park at a garage near City Hall.
Yep, and used to think downtown Detroit was bad.
Heard a funny joke today: A Venezuelan, just crossed over the border illegally, shows up in Chicago, walks down Michigan Avenue, and approaches the first person he sees. He says, “Thank you America for allowing me to come here and resettle, thank you for giving me free health care, a free place to stay and plenty of free food to eat.” The person responds, “Don’t thank me, I’m not an American, I’m Mexican.” So the Venezuelan, walks a little further down Michigan Ave., approaches the next person he sees and again says, “Thank you America for allowing me to come… Read more »
I think the illegals that have traditionally come here worked their butts off. That’s why they came, and to send part of their earnings home. That’s no doubt changing now that all the free stuff is offered.
Lets get a bunch of politicians and their families and send then to Mexico or Central America and picket about getting free health care. Would love to see what happens.
Do people still fall for stunts like this? We’re in the digital age now. I can open up another browser window and pull up different photos of the same event to gain perspective. I have yet to locate a photo with more than 30 people, and I’m guessing most of their paychecks are interdependent on the success of their activist work. A bunch of folks with the same professional protest signs and t-shirt logos always reeks of astro-turfing. Googling Healthy Illinois Campaign pulls up a huge list of backers! This is not grassroots stuff people!!! From the first link, I… Read more »
Yeah, we all know this. Democrats have the dark money networks that Republicans would dream to have. People do fall for this crap, especially the low-info voter with a slightly below average IQ. That’s why they do it.
Opposition has plenty of resources, too! I don’t know why everyone just assumes that we’re disadvantaged and incapable of putting an end to this.
Many today look at the headlines and make knee jerk decisions based upon what is presented to them. The media quite often seems to actually spoon feed this to many out there. While I will agree with you that it is easy to explore the overall validity of the reporting of the events many are either too lazy or simply don’t care to make the evaluations as you suggested. I have met a lot of people who only read the headlines devoting their time instead to assorted sports news and/or social media gossip. We disagree on this but to me,… Read more »
You assume that more involvement in IL politics would result in more anti-progressive outrage. I don’t know if I necessarily believe this assumption. What if, in IL, the citizenry paid more attention to politics, and it had the OPPOSITE effect, and it turned the low-information voter even more progressive. IL isn’t the Land of Lincoln any more. It’s the land of the hard core liberal and foreign born forever loyal to the Democrat Party. While hispanics nationwide seem to be going to the Republicans, our hispanic voters and politicians seem to be going full blown communist, there are, what, a… Read more »
Yes I do assume that. As an example in my area a lady running for State Representative made a remark to the effect of hoping the voters would forgive her for voting for the school funding bill that gave Chicago considerable funding while our district received a token drop in the bucket. Every parent I come across in my area can be quite elaborative on how the schools need more money but when asked about the Representative’s vote most don’t even know who she is. I think on the election in question we had an approximant 17% voter turnout leading… Read more »
Riverbender, I think they do recognize the problem, but they’re always going to look for Democrat or progressive answers to fix it. I don’t live in Arl. Hts. but I was shocked when it went for Biden +25, with fairly high turnout in 2020. These voters, if they showed up to vote in the off-years, would vote exactly the same in the local election as they did in the presidential election. Those progressive candidates pushing pr0n in schools don’t need very many Democrat votes, but conservatives need every single vote. And maybe they’d win one election cycle before the big… Read more »
“Many today look at the headlines and make knee jerk decisions based upon what is presented to them.” I strongly disagree. CNN is in the dumpster for betting on this demographic dominating the political landscape. Fox news is getting decimated for deception and dishonesty. Public opinion has been studied thoroughly since at least the French Revolution and experts now are well aware of how to predict and modify behavior. You’re mixing up cause and effect relationships, not taking into account those that take action vs. the ones that are indifferent, social prestige and resources of readers, etc. There are lots… Read more »
Dave, you could not be more wrong. How could all this supposed research you have done have missed the overwhelming evidence the news readers do, indeed, mostly just skim headlines and read the first few lines? Pew, among others, has done great research on that. It’s easy to measure on the internet now. Readers in large numbers not only read little of any stories but share it on social media without reading. Wirepoints readers are an exception, as I have written recently, averaging well over three minutes, often five or six minutes, on our stories. That’s multiples of industry averages.
We’re really getting into the weeds here. Pew? LOL I just visited their website, and they’re about as partisan and biased as possible. Yes, lots of people do skim the headlines. Do they trust the source or read in contempt? Are they processing information? There are too many variables you aren’t recognizing. You’ve provided one metric: dwell time. The human mind is a really elaborate creation. How much information is stored, how much can a reader recall, and what actions will they take after reading are far more important metrics. I can present some really elaborate cognitive models that will… Read more »
And CNN has less than a million viewers each night, fewer than Full House reruns.
Mr Hardy. I take exception regarding your feeling that my post was “deceptive” and therefore have no more to respond.
My best wishes…
Funny in way. The cost over runs would be a blemish on Pritzkers record as he hopes to run for President.
These criminal illegal immigrant advocates are free to spend their own money on criminal illegal immigrant health care. Don’t spend my money on these criminals.
Tell me, when you say undocumented, do you really mean illegal?
The fake news fraud left wing propagandists at the Associated Press banned the use of the phrase “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” — in order to preserve their BIG LIE — that border crossers are somehow legitimate asylum seekers.
https://flaglerlive.com/illegal-immigrants-abolished-rr/
The fact is that the whole situation is mass “asylum fraud” — asylum claims have risen 1,700 percent in recent years — and the only plausible explanation is fraud.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/jun/21/donald-trump/1700-percent-increase-asylum-claims/
Yep and with a public charge to boot!