-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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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Downtown and the near north side isn’t too far away from an urban poor and cyberpunk dystopian sin city, something straight of a movie, with nightclubs, prostitution, vice, drugs and cannabis, bars and restaurants and gambling all in one walkable location, with bright flashing lights, and the other smells and sounds of a gritty, dystopian urban environment. That’s where it’s heading, a sort of Chicago’s version of 1970’s Time Sq. with peep shows and all the rest.
A bit like Weimar – era Berlin, in that Chicago is a decaying and decadent place, dancing on the edge of a precipice. But unlike 1920’s Berlin, Chicago lacks the cultural creativity and technical innovation that Berlin gave us, and that still resonates all over the world a century later. Berlin had Einstein, Brecht, the Bauhaus, and Marlene Dietrich – while we have the mental dregs of a Preckwinkle, a Mayor Johnson, and the CTU…
The Chicago pols have already started implementing their reimagining of downtown Chicago. As most rational people can see, the result isn’t good.