“Wirepoints, an Illinois-based research organization, took a look at the latest migration data released by the IRS and drew some conclusions that should leave Democrat-run states in a cold sweat, wondering how they’ll ever be able to maintain their profligacy.”

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

More checks from privacy lawsuits are likely on the horizon. Google Photos and Shutterfly incurred similar class action lawsuits in Illinois, and have entered approval stages of multimillion-dollar settlements within the past year. I

“If 50% of their annual budget has seen an increase of 20% over the past year, which is a significant increase, that is going to present serious financial strain and put hospitals in a position to make difficult decisions.”

Illinois last year had made a run at the plant, which could serve Stellantis’ Belvidere plant. Insiders say the state fell out of the race awhile ago, and the Kokomo facility will be close enough to Belvidere to serve that factory if it is converted to EV production.

For passengers arriving at the rather faded terminals at Chicago O’Hare, it may not feel like it. But as of last year they are landing at America’s most important port, measured by value of trade. For Chicago, where most flights are domestic, that was not so positive. But when people stopped flying because of the pandemic, the cargo holds of passenger planes were no longer available. Instead, more freight has been flown into specialised cargo terminals, like the one in Chicago. Since 2019 the amount moved through O’Hare has increased by 47% in value, and almost as much in volume.

If you want to know how Democrats maintain their monopoly in the Illinois capital of Springfield despite their flagrant mal-governance, look no further than their legally questionable gambit to conscript businesses into helping them get re-elected. Last week gas-station owners sued the state for violating their speech rights under the Illinois and U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit says the law requires gas retailers “to choose between making

Nearly five years after iPhone assembler Foxconn Technology Group unveiled plans for a factory that would transform this corner of southeastern Wisconsin into a high-tech manufacturing hub, only a few buildings occupy the 3,000-acre site, a huge power substation stands largely untapped and new roads are sparsely traveled.

The census snafu should have given our elected officials and the economic teams who work for them cause to take no more than a five-minute victory lap and perhaps enjoy one round of “I told you so’s.” Now that they’ve gotten that out of their system, it’s time to get back to work on fixing Illinois’ myriad problems. The best place to start is by creating policies that attract businesses, and the jobs they create, rather than repelling them. The solutions to many of this region’s most complex problems would flow from there.

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

Illinois priced $1.64 billion of general obligation debt Wednesday at spreads on par with current trading levels that have more than doubled this year due to market turmoil despite a round of upgrades.

Comment: We wrote here why Lisa Cook, currently with the Chicago Fed, has no relevant credentials and represents the worst of the cancel culture.

Sponsors of the legislation include Sen. Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Jan Schakowsky.

Illinois is moving to create an equity-based funding formula for higher education, potentially setting up a clash among the state’s 12 public universities over a limited pot of state dollars. A commission established by state legislators is exploring ways to reallocate those dollars to help Black, Latino and low-income students. But one early and central discussion point at the Commission on Equitable Public University Funding is likely to create tension: Should appropriations be tied to the demographic composition of a school’s graduates?

Charles Lipson recounts the remarkable story of the brave Illinoisan who challenged loyalty oaths and today’s Illinoisans who betray what he fought for.

Rivian is a significant employer in Normal, Illinois and recipient of state government incentives.

Losses across both stock and bond markets delivered a double blow to the funds that manage more than $4.5 trillion in retirement savings for America’s teachers, firefighters and other public workers. These retirement plans returned a median minus 4.01% in the first quarter, according to data from the Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service expected to be released Tuesday. Recent losses have further eroded their holdings.

In addition to rating governments on meaningful financial criteria, in March the biggest of the top three credit-rating firms began to apply an environmental, social and governance, or ESG, rating system.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic Party will host a high dollar fundraising reception with President Joe Biden in Chicago on Wednesday evening, with the top ticket price $365,000, the Sun-Times has learned.

“Credit to Boeing, though, for inflicting their own punishment: exile. The wicked flee when no man pursues.”

To be sure, this map will most likely help Democrats in their quest to hold onto the House. But it’s also possible that they’ve bitten off more than they can chew.

By state Rep. Andrew Chesney.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed 35 bills Friday, including measures impacting education, driving and public safety retirement.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Thursday a measure that borrows $1 billion to extend the existing pension buyout program for Illinois state employees for two more years.

Boeing Co., a leading defense contractor and one of the world’s two dominant manufacturers of airline planes, announced Thursday it is moving its global headquarters from Chicago to Virginia.

“It’s not just that they’re taking away reproductive rights,” Pritzker said. “It’s that this is a slope that they’re headed down that is going to take away all of the rights that were granted as a result of the right to privacy. It’s a constitutional right to privacy, determined by the court 50 years ago and reinforced along the way, and now they’re taking it away.”

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

Gov. JB Pritzker was joined by the Illinois Housing Development Authority and local elected officials in Chicago Friday to promote the Illinois Emergency Homeowner Assistance Fund for struggling homeowners.

Western sanctions on Russia have disrupted fertilizer shipments and increased shortages, driving input costs even higher than they were last fall. So, should Illinois wheat farmers increase the amount of wheat they plant in the fall? Green said it is too soon for him to decide.

With 19,000 workers still laid off, according to Michael Jacobson, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association, Illinois’ hotels and lodging businesses are struggling to find their feet. The industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic and government economic restrictions, but in other states like Wyoming and Montana, leisure and hospitality payrolls have recovered, Muddy River News reported.

People in Illinois whose face appeared in a photo on Google’s Photos app could be in line for as much as $400 each, under a new $100 million settlement given an early nod in Cook County court.

If House Bill 4556 is signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, pharmacists will be able to provide, for some patients, tests that determine if certain drugs have been laced with fentanyl.

“Why would anyone brag about a delay in a tax increase by implying that it is a tax cut? The answer is that politicians gladly spread misinformation to the public when they are trolling for votes. Is a 2-cent delay more important to consumers than the 10-cent increase in sales tax?”

When billions of funds are showering down from those dark, billowing federal government clouds, you can be sure some of those funds will fall on those really needing help. Sad to say, the vast majority of those funds will fall on those that are convinced they deserve, and thus, demand those federal funds.

Michael Mini, executive vice president of the Chicagoland Apartment Association: In the spirit of equity, the Chicagoland Apartment Association urges those policymakers to consider how increased valuations of apartment buildings will impact the price, quality and future supply of rental housing for more than half of Chicago’s residents. Any efforts to shift the burden from homeowners to other property types should not dismiss the fact that renters are taxpaying residents, too.

Civic Federation’s Laurence Msall: If members of the General Assembly are still serious about meaningful property tax reform and providing relief to taxpayers, they need to thoroughly examine the structural oddity that is Illinois government.

Illinois’ top education official urged schools to stop working with police to ticket students for misbehavior, hours after an investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune revealed that schools across the state were evading laws designed to prohibit the fining of students.

Chicago allocated $293 million to mitigate negative economic effects of the pandemic and $179 million in cash transfers, job training and community violence interventions. Chicago is receiving $1.9 billion in ARPA relief after tapping $1.3 billion for budget relief to make up for lost revenues. Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration is using the remaining $600 million of funds along with $660 million of new general obligation borrowing to fund more than $1.2 billion of social, climate, environmental affordable housing, violence prevention, homeless reduction, economic, health and other infrastructure investments.

Households and small businesses that get their power from Commonwealth Edison will be unprotected from commodity price spikes in the high-demand summer months unless state regulators take fast action. For the first time in the 14 years since the state took over the job from utilities of negotiating with power generators, the Illinois Power Agency was unable to reach an agreement on an electricity price in northern Illinois for the entire months of July and August, as well as part of June.

In Racine County, Wisconsin, home to some 350 industrial firms, two local economic-development groups have combined efforts to roll out a promotion dubbed the Digital Manufacturing Campaign. Its aim is to draw skilled manufacturing workers from the nearby greater Chicago area. Workers in the Windy City are a tempting target because Illinois manufacturing employment, after a steep decline in 2020, remained flat last year.

The hottest job markets in America are in five different states, but they have a lot in common. They’re in midsize cities, all with a population under 2.3 million. They’re in states with fairly low income taxes, or none at all. And their climates allow for outdoor activities all year round. They are: Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Raleigh, N.C.; Salt Lake City; and Jacksonville, Fla. Larger cities remained at the bottom of the rankings this year. New York took 41st place, Chicago was 40th and Los Angeles was 26th.

Sens. Tony Muñoz of Chicago, an assistant majority leader, and Steve Landek, who doubles as mayor of Bridgeview, withdrew their names from the June 28 primary ballot, each likely clearing the way for their political allies to take over the respective seats. Neither Muñoz nor Landek has been accused of any wrongdoing.

This position will be responsible for developing college-wide programs that focus on “cultural competency, racial healing and reconciliation, counternarratives, community building, restorative justice, equity, and inclusion responsive to the ongoing needs of all constituents at NIU,” according to the description.

The pattern here is clear,” observes the Foundation for Economic Education, regarding the startling demographic shift. “Americans are fleeing highly regulated, highly taxed states. They are flocking to freer states.”

Rochelle Gutierrez, who teaches “Sociopolitical Perspectives on Mathematics and Science Education” at the University of Illinois: “YES! This attends to the Cultures/Histories dimension of RM (addressing Western/Eurocentric maths). And, we also want to attend to the Living Practice dimension (which is more about imagining a version that builds upon ancestral knowings, but does not yet exist).”

The fact that the law requires gas stations to pay for the signs or be fined and that the placards be in place when the hike would have taken effect on July 1, as the state budget year begins and just days after the June 28 primary, has emboldened critics to say the effort is little more than the latest example of old-school, gas-pump politics.

In his latest re-election ad, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker touted his election-year tax relief as lowering prices for families. He failed to mention his plan expires shortly after the election and that he imposed thousands in new taxes as his term began

The list did not fall along predictable lines. A number of GOP lawmakers who voted against recent bills sanctioning Russia were on list, while some of the leading Democrats advancing those policies were left off. Some of the most vocal Republicans supporting Ukraine were also not on the sanctions list.

Mr. Griffin and Mr. Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune and the brother of former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, have had a running feud in recent years, lately over rising violence in Chicago. “I’ve had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I’ve had a colleague stabbed on the way to work,” Mr. Griffin said of Chicago. “That’s a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city.”

“From San Francisco, where voters ousted several left-wing, union-endorsed school board members in February, to Chicago, Massachusetts, and other blue enclaves, parents are demanding reform.”

A contrarian perspective says Illinois’ new sales tax exemption for groceries isn’t actually progressive.

In a letter, the FTC allegedly said it found evidence the NFL’s Washington Commanders engaged in unlawful financial conduct. The team allegedly withheld as much as $5 million in refundable deposits from season ticket holders and also hiding money that was supposed to be shared among NFL owners. “Quite frankly, as you go through the allegations it reads like a description of some organization out of The Godfather and not an NFL football team,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said.

“In Illinois, a Chicago plaintiffs’ firm focusing on nursing home and medical malpractice litigation says it brought 78 cases in March alone. “It’s going to be a knock-down-drag-out battle,” said Steven M. Levin, the founder and senior partner of the firm. “It’s probably going to take years to get some of these cases to trial.”

Illinois holds the worst credit rating among its peers and pays the highest penalty to borrow of any state. While it’s difficult to draw a direct line from the state’s notoriety for corruption to its bottom line, investors increasingly weigh environmental, social and governance metrics when buying or shunning securities.

The U.S. attorney’s office issued a grand jury subpoena in January to the Illinois State Board of Elections seeking records on three campaign funds controlled by Jones, according to a copy of the subpoena provided to the Tribune via an open records request.

Budget bills introduced by Illinois Democrats in the waning hours of session and that were passed early Saturday will require private-sector retailers to notify consumers of temporary “tax relief” measures included in them. Critics say the requirements are an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights and forced campaign propaganda during an election year.

“Prophecy is optional folly, but predicting a convulsive crisis for the nation’s worst-governed state merely involves understanding its present parlous condition.”

From City Hall to Springfield to Capitol Hill, the candy man and candy lady are out in force.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum sued the Center for Covid Control, or CCC, and its testing partner, Doctors Clinical Laboratory, for deceptively marketing testing services and for violating Oregon’s Unlawful Trade Practices Act.

And the Democrats’ summary of the budget is linked here.

“Arguably more pertinent are more recent investments by Pritzker personally. As reported in state disclosure documents, they include a membership interest of undisclosed size in funds run by Bridgewater Associates and Two Sigma Fund. Bridgewater’s investments included money in the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund, which effectively is the investment vehicle for the Chinese government. Two Sigma, in turn, was one of the largest investors in three large Chinese firms delisted by the New York Stock Exchange as per U.S. rules for being too close

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

Illinois’ 90% funding target already violates best practices, but some have proposed going even lower. That’s a bad idea based on a myth, according to the American Academy of Actuaries.

Burberry cannot catch a break. The luxe retailer’s Magnificent Mile location has fallen victim to shoplifting mobs, late-night burglary teams, and looters. On Thursday afternoon, it got hit again.

The average price of a gallon of gas is currently $4.46 in Illinois according to AAA, and more than 50 cents of that price is from state taxes and fees. But in Missouri, where gas taxes and fees are only 17.42 cents, drivers are only paying $3.76 for a gallon of gas. That makes crossing the border an attractive option.

Illinois Democrats proposed legislation Friday they say will fight crime in the state, but it comes with a hefty price tag. It also comes during an election year and after Republicans have pounded Democrats over rising crime in the state.

“Their signals from Washington were, we don’t want any infrastructure projects so they cut pipelines, we don’t want you to lease off of federal lands so leases stopped, and they tried to put in certain methane taxes,” Watson said. “All these were signals to the industry that we better not invest.”

The statement indicated that Lincoln College had survived other difficult circumstances, including the economic crisis of 1887, a major campus fire in 1912, the Spanish flu of 1918, the Great Depression, World War II, and the global financial crisis in 2008, but the pandemic caused a combination of setbacks that ultimately were too much to overcome.

Ligftoot also says, “I’m going to encourage the Attorney General to look into this huge rapid escalation in gas prices,” she said. “I’m very concerned about gas gouging, and I’m not accusing anyone, but it’s worthy of the Attorney General to look at this, because the escalation is really pricing people out.”

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will soon require diversity-contribution statements from all faculty members for tenure and promotion.The policy says that the departments’ evaluations of teaching, service and research and future potential “must, where appropriate, consider the candidate’s diversity, equity, and inclusion activities and their impact.”

A little-known provision of the SAFE-T Act — the criminal justice reform law Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed last year —now requires that criminal defendants who are on home confinement while awaiting trial must be given a minimum of two days a week to move freely, without being actively monitored. Since the provision took effect Jan. 1, dozens of people on home confinement have gotten into trouble while free of supervision during those “essential movement” days when they aren’t monitored, the Chicago Sun-Times has found.

Thought you’d seen everything in Chicago when it comes to buying votes? Welcome to the great Chicago gas giveaway. Hence, Thursday’s mayoral announcement of the “Chicago Moves” initiative, which includes up to 50,000 preloaded gas cards worth $150 each, valid for a year and usable only at pumps within city limits.

“So prolific is this mostly false claim, PolitiFact developed its own PolitiFact fact sheet: The Gender Pay Gap.“

The March University of Illinois Flash Index moved ahead strongly in March, rising to 106.1 compared to 105.7 in February. “This is a post-crisis high,” said University of Illinois economist J. Fred Giertz, who compiles the monthly index for the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. “The Illinois economy gained strength as measured by state tax receipts for the month, overcoming the economic headwinds of the invasion of Ukraine and the most recent variant of the COVID-19 virus.”

“Since taking office, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been gradually and quietly transforming the Illinois Prisoner Review Board, which is responsible for deciding whether to release some of the state’s most violent criminals from prison early, to fit his “weak on crime” agenda. That is, until now. Senate Democrats who covered for him for over a year finally had enough of his dangerous gamesmanship.”

Illinois needs to gain more ground in putting its fiscal house in order as a burdensome pension tab, population losses, and economic uncertainty threaten progress that has driven a round of positive rating actions. That’s the assessment offered by the legislature?s non-partisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability in its annual three-year budget forecast.

Local governments could see an additional $500 million dollars for their share of state income taxes, something that could help fund local services and control local taxes.

The Local Government Distributive Fund, or LGDF, was instituted when the state implemented an income tax decades ago. The LGDF sends a percentage of state income taxes back to local governments as a way to keep local governments from implementing their own income taxes.

Legislation giving only vaccinated school staff the benefit of taking COVID-related sick time as administrative leave rather than sick time could soon head to the governor’s desk.

“Instead of being a man and putting his name on these false attacks, Governor Pritzker chooses to hide behind political insider groups by forcing them to meddle into the GOP primary on his behalf,” Durkin said.

House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, said Republicans have been frozen out of negotiations. He expects large amounts of spending supported by federal tax dollars that Democrats will tout as a great accomplishment. Durkin also said despite House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, saying it’s a “new day” after replacing former longtime Speaker Michael Madigan, Democrats will be taking up what Durkin called the Madigan model to budgeting.

In the Land of Lincoln, gas taxes are the second highest in the nation. Residents close to the borders are taking advantage of neighboring states’ lower rates. Currently, Illinois’ average gallon of fuel costs $4.49, according to AAA. In Wisconsin, it’s $3.95. Iowa’s average is $3.88 and Missouri is even cheaper. Most of that difference is due to taxes. On top of a state gas tax, Illinois also allows local motor fuel and sales taxes.

A number of Illinois housing provider groups are pushing for a “no” vote on legislation that would require landlords to participate in the federal Section 8 housing program by amending the state’s Homeless Prevention Act.

Graduates from Illinois colleges and universities may soon be able to access their transcripts even if they still owe money to the school they attended. The Illinois House on Tuesday gave its approval to a bill that had already cleared the Senate prohibiting higher education institutions from refusing to provide copies of student transcripts either to the current or former student or that student’s current or prospective employer.

Loitering, drinking on public property, fights, shootings — they’re all issues police would typically handle, except for one problem. Champaign police don’t have enough officers to provide extra patrols in the downtown area, where incidents such as these have been occurring. The city’s proposed solution for now: hiring private security officers to address safety and nuisance concerns on the busiest nights for downtown bars and restaurants.

The Democratic Governors Association is pouring $728,000 into a statewide advertising blitz focused on the Illinois Republican race for governor. The first ad ran early this morning. It’s a 30-second spot that targets Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin’s career as a defense attorney (after he was a prosecutor) and questions his decision to represent “violent criminals” accused of domestic abuse, child pornography and sexual assault in the past. The goal is to rev up Republicans to vote for Darren Bailey, or maybe any of the other GOP candidates, over Irvin. There’s nothing Republicans hate more than a candidate who’s not tough

A proposed state law to strengthen environmental protections for low-income communities appears to be dead for a second-straight legislative session as lawmakers fear the wrath of business groups in an election year. Environmental groups say a law is needed to slow the addition of pollution sources in communities already overwhelmed with bad air and other hazards. The businesses say the proposal adds red tape and fees that will kill jobs. The idea of an “environmental justice” law was supported by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last year but a bill was never debated in 2021. The same bill now lacks enough votes

“The pandemic led many Americans to take stock of their lives and what they really valued. Many decided that living in a place with avowed progressive values was not worth the financial and personal costs that come with it. Those choices might portend a significant shift in national politics in the years to come.”

The Illinois House has approved the Innovations for Transportation Infrastructure Act, which authorizes IDOT to use the design-build method to allow for a single entity to both design and start construction on a project. Currently, IDOT uses the design-bid-build project delivery method where the department designs a plan in-house, then reviews bids from contractors.

Illinois is still missing 77,000 jobs from its restaurants, bars, hotels and other leisure industries since COVID-19 shutdowns. That Illinois jobs sector has recovered only 72% of what it lost in the pandemic – one of the nation’s worst recoveries.

“The goal of filing this application was to create generational wealth so I can bring back opportunities to the community that I live in,” said Apriel Campbell, community organizer.

Biden said in his message to Congress that his spending plan, “details the next steps forward on our journey to execute a new economic vision, reduce costs for families, reduce the deficit, and build a better America.”

But state Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, said the governor is promoting a false narrative “Because obviously last night, Eleanor Wilson only got 15 votes,” Bryant told The Center Square. “So, 15 out of 59 when there are only 18 Republicans, give me a break.”

The Illinois General Assembly once had an unusual method of electing representatives — one that may be worth reviving. Every district sent three members to Springfield, and every voter got three votes, which could be spread among three candidates split between two or “bulleted” on one. The 177-member chamber was known as the Big House, the system that produced it as cumulative voting.

In Illinois right now, 3.6 million people receive an earned income tax credit. Senate Bill 3774 would offer that targeted tax relief to 1.2 million more people.

SAT math scores dropped nearly 15%, and reading scores dropped 9% from 2019 to 2021 among Illinois high school juniors. Low-income and minority students saw bigger losses.

In 2020, Gov. JB Pritzker’s trust bought stock in the health insurance company Centene Corp. That same year, Illinois gave $2.6 billion worth of Medicaid contracts to Centene Corp.

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police is out with a report detailing how much state funding they need to do their jobs and implement mandated reforms – $759 million.

Illinois used federal pandemic money to hire community health workers who connect people with food banks and rental assistance programs, just like public health officials have long hoped to do. What will happen to the community trust that has been built up when the federal money runs out and the workers disappear?

I’ll just repeat one line from a newspaper report from which I quoted this morning.

The Financial Times:

Volodymyr Zelensky has called on energy producing countries to step up their output in order to prevent Russia from using its oil and gas to “blackmail” European nations.

Chicago is a “sister city” of Kyiv, I see.

Monday’s developments represented the latest shakeup on the governor-appointed board that has seen heavy Republican scrutiny in the past year as the Senate repeatedly delayed hearing several of Pritzker’s appointees to the board that determines whether offenders should be released from Illinois Department of Corrections custody and what the terms of their release should be. The board also makes recommendations on clemency, arbitrates the calculation of good time credit, and reviews cases of those who violate the terms of their parole to decide whether they should be returned to prison.

Governor JB Pritzker Friday established the Illinois Cyber Security Commission. The goal is to support a coordination effort across all levels of government to build and enhance cyber security.

The three largest numeric losers were L.A. County … New York County (Manhattan) … and Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago.

The $2.7 billion — a full third of the $8.1 billion in Illinois’ ARPA funds — is more than had been previously floated either publicly or in months of private negotiations on how to handle the state’s unemployment debt. But even with that surprise boost, the state will still have to find another source to fully pay off the $4.5 billion it owes the U.S. Treasury. The most likely funding scenario is a case of deja vu: Just like after the economic downturns of 2001 and 2008, Illinois could go to the bond market to raise a yet-to-be-agreed-to sum. And

Illinoisans are paying a premium at the pump and many blame the conflict in Ukraine, but experts say it has been a long time coming. The price per gallon in the Land of Lincoln has been steadily climbing, with AAA reporting the average price per gallon at roughly $4.54. In some counties, Illinoisans are paying as much as $4.72 for a gallon of gas.

A youth liberty organization, with a chapter in Illinois, is celebrating the end of what they call “COVID-19 tyranny” on campus. Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) fought pandemic mandates on dozens of college campuses around the country, including at the University of Illinois and other state schools, stressing they were not anti-vaccine, but rather anti-vaccine mandate at taxpayer-funded academic institutions.

U.S. Rep. Marie Newman has signed on to legislation that would ban the increasingly controversial practice of members of Congress trading stock in individual companies. But Newman’s conversion to that issue is recent—very recent. Only in the last month have Newman and her husband voluntarily ceased the practice themselves, this after trading stock worth $5.8 million in 2021. That was enough to rank her ninth among the 535 members of the House and Senate, right behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is eighth.

In an effort to attract more electric vehicle-related companies to Illinois, a state agency is recommending making changes to the Reimagining Electric Vehicles Act, or REV Act. Changes would incentivize other types of manufacturing of EV vehicles, such as agricultural EV vehicles and other EVs that don’t operate on public roadway.

Civic Federation President Laurence Msall said it’s good news that tax revenues that bounced back much more quickly from the pandemic than expected are going into overdue bills — and an unprecedented $900 million installment in a rainy day fund.

Business and labor negotiators are staring down the barrel of possible tax increases on job creators and benefit reductions for the unemployed after Illinois Democrats approved

Legislation is advancing in Springfield that would increase payments to eligible residents participating in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, welfare program. The Illinois House passed House Bill 4423, brought by state Rep. Marcus Evans, D-Chicago. The measure would increase benefits from 30% of the federal poverty guidelines for each family size to 50%.

Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Everyone in state capitols is talking about tax cuts these days, as elected officials facing voters this fall try to curry favor with a restless electorate.

Treatment service providers who work with those with gambling disorders say they have seen a spike in people seeking help with gambling addiction.

A poll was floated showing Gov. JB Pritzker facing suburban headwinds — even trailing Republican governor candidates Richard Irvin and Darren Bailey. Problem is there was no explanation about which suburb was polled.

In Chicago, drivers pay nine different taxes on gas. In addition, Illinois consistently ranks toward the bottom for its high cost of doing business. Illinois’ public policy decisions result in relatively higher prices for consumers and higher input costs for businesses, worsening the squeeze on Illinois families and businesses. Most important, during times of economic uncertainty, state and local policy should be able to respond quickly to changing economic conditions. In Illinois, this is nearly impossible, but the astronomical increase in pension costs that constrains state and local budgets.

As the new ideology has been institutionalized, the costs of disobeying it have grown steeper, both for faculty and for students. ​​At the University of Illinois Chicago, for example, a law professor’s classes were cancelled and his career threatened for including a bleeped out “‘n____’” on an exam in a hypothetical scenario about employ

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a Democrat who met with the state’s congressional delegation in Washington this week, told Route Fifty on Thursday that despite having a $1.7 billion surplus, the state could use the money on other things besides paying tens of millions in interest.

School districts across the state continue to divert money from classrooms to boost the pensions of retiring educators despite multiple attempts to curb the practice.

After three confirmation fights in which Democrats vigorously opposed former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is working to convince Republicans to not return the favor.

Elected village presidents of Hanover Park and Hoffman Estates op-ed on restoring the Local Government Distributive Fund (LGDF) to its intended rate of 10%.

Ashley Gott vs. Ashley Gott.

HB 4410, which passed the Illinois House on March 4 and will now go before the Senate, would create a “real estate evaluation task force” that should investigate whether there is a pattern of racial bias in appraisals and recommend ways to correct it. It would also try to determine whether there are barriers to entry for people of color in the appraisal industry, which would be helping to perpetuate unconscious bias among appraisers.

Under the longstanding definition of money laundering and current federal law that categorizes cannabis as an illegal substance, there is virtually no reason that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker—as well as his fellow governors across the country—should not be arrested on federal charges. That has to change.

So far, the sportsbooks have come out on top with almost $651 million in revenue, generating $98 million in state tax revenue plus another $7.3 million for Cook County. The state’s $8.9 billion all-time handle would shake out to about $903 wagered for every adult resident — nearly $13.5 million bet every day, or $9,341 every minute.

After raising his right hand and swearing to tell the truth, Madigan, is by turns serious, funny, calm and stoic as he fends off accusations in a federal voting rights case charging he loaded up a 2016 primary ballot with sham candidates to ensure his own victory.

In an election year, Springfield could have dedicated one-time federal COVID relief funds to politically popular projects. Instead, the governor’s proposed budget invests in long-term fiscal stability and economic growth. Let’s hope the Legislature takes his lead and uses this opportunity to put Illinois on a better and stronger path.

“Democrats dethroned Mr. Madigan as Speaker last January after leaks about the sprawling public corruption investigation helped cost them their progressive tax referendum in November 2020. Mob bosses are only useful until they’re not.”

Comptroller Susan Mendoza just threw her support behind a bill that would slash the 12% annual interest rate that state agencies must pay suppliers for bills that aren’t paid on time. Mendoza and Pritzker like to tout their progress in improving Illinois’ finances. But they have a long way to go—as the state’s massive pension funding shortfall shows. Bringing lasting stability to Illinois finances requires a long-term commitment to sound practices, including timely bill payment. The push to cut the interest rate on late bill payments casts doubt on that commitment.

Starting this year, Illinois will receive nearly $18 billion in federal infrastructure funds, on top of the $45 billion the state already committed to repair roads, bridges, rails and more—a collective windfall for infrastructure that this area has not witnessed at any other point in its history.

Now that Covid is endemic, why don’t legislatures permanently repeal or relax laws that restrict their citizens’ access to medical care? Mostly because powerful interest groups, including lobbies representing in-state healthcare professionals, oppose doing so. Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker has renewed his Covid-19 “disaster” proclamation every 30 dayssince the pandemic began, most recently on Feb. 4. Governors have another incentive to extend states of emergency: The Family First Coronavirus Act, enacted in March 2020, increased food-stamp benefits subject to states of emergency at the state and federal levels. This is one reason average food benefits nationwide

Comment: This probably makes it official as some people see the world. It’s OK to say what Wirepoints has been saying.

Chicagoan Ken Griffin: “In 1948 American supplies broke the Russian stranglehold on Berlin. Today American energy can end Berlin’s dependence on Russia. If planeloads of food can get the better of Stalin, boatloads of gas can get the better of Mr. Putin.”

A Chicago state lawmaker is urging the health care profession to confront racial bias that may aggravate medical issues in the African-American community.“There must be some Critical Race Theory training, even in the medial profession,” state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, said.

The statewide school mask mandate will end on Monday.

“For too long, our roads, bridges, transit and water systems have been neglected, contributing to accidents and lost time and productivity for millions of Americans. Now, the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act has set us on a path to progress and innovation. Combined with the America Competes Act we recently passed in the House, and many other policies of the Biden administration, we are spurring innovation, creating jobs, fighting inflation and bringing our infrastructure into a new era.”

“Given the nature of the year and the resources that are massed against him and some of the scars of having to lead a state through the pandemic, he has to be seriously focused. …This is not gonna be a walk in the park for him,” Axelrod said of Pritzker. Polls done for other politicians have recently shown Lightfoot’s approval rate in the 30% range, roughly 10 percentage points lower than Rahm Emanuel’s ratings were when he abandoned plans to seek a third term. “It’s an uphill battle for her. All polling reflects that. She’s a very pugnacious person. She’s

So here ends the take of the approval of the Tier 2 pension system, with no actuarial review, no opportunity for anyone but the backroom negotiators to assess the changes before the vote was taken, and the need to take on faith the claim of $100 billion in savings. Is there anything in here that is a surprise? No. Is this sort of legislating unique to Illinois? Also no. But I think there’s still some value in observing our legislators in action.

“Much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control. Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots. And wastewater surveillance across the nation would spot outbreaks and emerging variants early. Without the booster data for 18- to 49-year-olds, the outside experts whom federal health agencies look to for advice had to rely on numbers

Comment: This is an appropriate place to add our occasional reminder that we link to stories from all sources and articles we don’t agree with. Regular Wirepoints readers will already know why the supposed evidence cited by BGA herein is junk.

“It’s economic illiteracy to believe inflation is not running hot and has been for a long time. Every person on the Fed is guilty of not understanding what inflation is. They are also all guilty of ignoring Fed-sponsored clear asset bubbles.”

During his budget address Feb. 2, Pritzker said that those without the state’s best interests in mind will not be at the “grown-up table” regarding negotiations. State Rep. Tom Demmer, R-Dixon, said the lawmakers and the governor should be working together on what’s best for the people.

“[I]t seems clear that anyone who takes it for granted that mask mandates have played a crucial role in controlling the spread of COVID-19 is making a series of assumptions that are not justified by the evidence.”

“There will soon be no statewide mask mandates on the mainland United States, if all goes according to plan. California and New York have yet to announce an end to their school requirements. And school mask mandates in Illinois and Maryland are being contested in court.”

“Just as elites led us into this mess, the way out is unlikely to come from “experts” or the elite institutions that have fostered a climate of close-minded authoritarian disregard for the nuances of scientific work and openly show their contempt for people who hold opposing points of view. Instead, we see hope in the voices of dissent.”

Comment: $3.4 billion seems newsworthy.

Chicago Democrats made sure that, whatever the Democratic performance turns out to be in 2022, minority turnout will drive Democratic performance in the new 13th District. However, establishment Democrats’ radical gerrymandering coupled with their preferred congressional candidate selection created a mystery.

Our own column on this new decision is here.

“The executive order requiring masks is still in place,” Pritzker insisted at a Wednesday morning press conference. “School districts that aren’t part of the lawsuit should follow the executive order.”

Senator Dick Durbin, Democratic whip and one of the loudest proponents of his party’s Build Back Better Act—which offers work permits and de facto legal status to 6.5 million illegal immigrants and would be the largest amnesty in U.S. history—gleefully noted that the bill would put downward pressure on incomes. “If there are more workers filling those jobs, it’s deflationary.” In other words, Democrats’ talking points in favor of the bill are actually some of the strongest arguments against it.

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

States with mask mandates haven’t fared significantly better than the 35 states that didn’t impose them during the omicron wave. There’s little evidence that mask mandates are the primary reason the pandemic waves eventually fall — though much of the outrage over lifting mandates is based on that assumption. Many experts acknowledge that the rise and fall of waves is a bit of a mystery.

The CDC’s handling of this study has implications that extend beyond the empirical question of how well masks work. In this case and others, the agency has proven that it cannot be trusted to act as an honest broker of scientific information. The result is that Americans are increasingly skeptical of anything the CDC says, even when it is sensible and well-grounded. While the CDC’s desperate attempts to back up conclusions it has already reached may be aimed at protecting its reputation and credibility, they have the opposite effect.

Illinois’ mask mandate to be lifted Feb. 28 with exceptions for schools, hospitals and nursing homes.

According to sources with knowledge of the announcement, the governor will announced a phased-plan to drop the indoor mask mandate in most settings, but that plan will not include a repeal of the mask mandate in public schools. See our own column on this linked here.

“COGFA has estimated that a sales tax on services would generate between $1 billion and $3 billion in additional revenue for Illinois, depending on the number of services taxed. More importantly, revenues from a sales tax on services would likely grow over time, as it tracks the direction of the economy. Taxing more services would give Illinois something that Pritzker’s budget lacks: a sustainable new revenue source that would help put the state on a path to fiscal stability.”

America’s blue states are increasingly chasing normalcy, especially when it comes to face mask rules meant to slow the spread of COVID-19 [but not Illinois].

The CDC spread what amounts to misinformation in its promotion of cloth masks, which countless medical experts have said are useless against Omicron, the dominant COVID-19 variant in the United States.

The scientific and medical establishment’s uncritical support of masks and other dubious policies is just the latest manifestation of its lack of independence from political imperatives. After several years of finding themselves at the receiving end of rhetorical assaults from rising Right-wing populists, the experts seized on the pandemic as an opportunity to reassert their own status and authority — and that of the liberal-technocratic politicians with whom they are largely aligned.

And a Monmouth University poll this week found that a large majority of Americans, 70 percent, agreed that “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.”

“We need to take into account the lack of evidence for mask efficacy and re-evaluate our policies and procedures. We know much more now than two years ago. The virus is likely shifting from a pandemic to endemic, and we need to shift with it. Parents should be able to follow the science, properly evaluate risk, and have the choice to unmask their children.”

Following mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates in schools being deemed null and void by a circuit court judge, Gov. J.B. Pritzker plans to continue battling parents and staff in court.

Covid is mercifully sparing kids, yet adults are seemingly, inexplicably, targeting them, making them suffer needlessly and in defiance of the data—that is, in defiance of the science.

Not surprisingly, there’s a partisan difference on that question. So I ran it by two independent fiscal watchdogs, Civic Federation President Laurence Msall, and Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois President Carol Portman. Their verdict: though challenges remain and a few asterisks need to be explained, the budget is pretty darn good, certainly a lot better than taxpayers might have expected a year ago.

Illinois would pump up now near-empty rainy day fund, pay more of its bills down, bolster scheduled pension contributions, and provide one-time tax relief under budget plans Gov. J.B. Pritzker laid out Wednesday.

Full text of Gov. JB Pritzker’s combined State of State and Budget Address February 2, 2022 Leaders, Members, Lt. Governor, First Lady… Joining us today are a special group of distinguished guests… teachers, doctors, nurses and first responders. I want to sincerely thank ALL of you for joining me under the dome of the old Illinois State Capitol building. So many of you have showed up to work in person during the worst health crisis our state has ever seen. I figured the least I could do as your Governor was brave a snow storm to deliver the State of

“…this grand plan either amounts to a budgetary shell game or it seriously threatens local spending.”

The former head of the office that oversees hiring, firing and discipline within the Illinois State Police will need to wait a while to press his claims that a politically connected former employee, who now faces criminal charges, falsely accused him of sexual assault and then used her political ties to Gov. JB Pritzker to get him removed, because he allegedly caught her falsifying payroll records to rake in overtime pay.

Matteson offered generous property tax incentives to land a marijuana facility with 300 jobs, just as the state’s fledgling cannabis industry is preparing for an explosion of new companies entering the market.

“Governors Andrew Cuomo (NY), Phil Murphy (NJ), Gavin Newsom (CA), Gretchen Whitmer (MI), J.B. Pritzker (IL), and Tom Wolf (PA). There’s a special place for governors that locked kids out of classrooms for a year and a half, ordered sick COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes, did not practice their own orders, shut down tens of thousands of businesses and still couldn’t beat the U.S average in COVID-19 deaths or excess all-cause deaths.

Politics happened. The correlation with election maps is unmistakable.

Comment: The General Assembly crammed through, with no hearings and no transparency, a rigged map that is now subject to a temporary restraining order. This video explains the controversy.

The student government at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions be barred from campus. Sessions is schedule to speak on February 1, 2022. The “Safe Campus” resolution passed 21-5-1 and declared that the visit is “inappropriate and insensitive” and a “‘slap in the face’ to the university’s commitment to DEI.

Professor Jason Kilborn was put on indefinite administrative leave after using a censured version of the n-word in an exam question at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is now suing the school over his treatment, including the required participation in sensitivity training and denial of a standard pay increase for faculty.

The more we learn about the Jenny Thornley affair, the more it appears that senior members of the Pritzker administration, including potentially the governor and his wife, may have facilitated a fraud on the state by a now-indicted former campaign aide to enrich her and then obstructed efforts to bring her to justice.

State Rep. Mark Batnick: Democrats claim to care about voting rights. In Illinois, it’s a ruse to manipulate the electorate in their favor.

Comment: This is a particularly informative, up-to-date column on the availability of antibody treatments and other COVID therapeutics.

Comment: Our own column on this and on a pending, similar enhancement for Chicago’s police pension is linked here.

Pending in the House—and on a “short debate” fast track to passage—is a measure sponsored by Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Highwood, that would renew a pilot program in which retirees covered by Illinois’ four big retirement funds can cash out early, taking a lump sum up front in lieu of either their entire pension or, more typically, annual guaranteed 3% compounded cost of living increases.

“Wholesale power prices started rising sharply in the second half of 2021, following a surge in the cost of natural gas, the fuel for many power plants. Long-term efforts to curb global warming are likely to push electricity costs even higher…. States where electricity costs less will have an edge over those where watts are pricier…. As Illinois drifts toward the latter category, there’s one more reason to ask the question so many in our state ponder during these frigid winter days: Why are we here?”

A national republication of our Wirepoints column.

A spokeswoman for the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago — the health system that the federal database showed had the second highest number of unvaccinated personnel — also said the numbers in the database are incorrect.

The Illinois congressional delegation is thus far standing firm in its bid to repeal the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions—albeit strictly along party lines But repealing the cap has threatened to open a divide between Democratic progressives and traditional liberals. For progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont it’s also a fairness issue, in that if he insists that the richest Americans pay more in taxes, that also goes for Democrats in that group. Republicans, meanwhile, have made hay out of charging that Democrats are out to benefit their own millionaires with the efforts at repeal.

llinois would extend two pension buyout programs by two years funded by $1 billion in additional borrowing authority under legislation being advanced during the current session.

The existing buyout programs began in 2018 under the administration of former Gov. Bruce Rauner. Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the legislature in 2019 extended it to June 30, 2024. The buyouts are funded by $1 billion in general obligation borrowing capacity, $175 million of which was tapped in the state?s last bond sale last December. Only $115 million in authority remains.

“Whether they accept it or not, teachers—and the unions that represent them—are part of that society. They’re part of the collective. They need to start acting like it.”

Only six states—Alaska, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—levy top marginal corporate income tax rates of 9 percent or higher.

Irvin might not be enough of a Republican for the purists. And Democrats might want to weaken Irvin in the Republican primary for governor by pointing to some of the nice things he’s said about Democrats (including the governor) over the years. But Richard Irvin is still a Republican.

See the list of demands from the Black Students Association.

To bring working people back into the job market, State Senator Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) is leading an initiative to offer businesses a tax credit to hire employees who lost their job due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An investigation into Illinois’ largest-ever capital projects bill found nearly $4 billion in discretionary funds set aside for politicians’ pork projects, including $2 billion for Gov. J.B. Pritzker to spend as he saw fit – including on needs he saw driving around during his campaign.

There was also $144 million for constituents with close ties to former House Speaker Michael Madigan, according to the Better Government Association analysis.

Nusrat Jahan Choudhury “would be the first Bangladeshi-American, the first Muslim-American woman, and only the second Muslim-American person to serve as a federal judge.”

While riding my bike through the Northwestern campus on what must have been the first day of class, Fall 2021, I passed a long line of students wearing masks, outdoors, waiting to enter some building, or a residence hall. It wasn’t clear, but it was striking.

Young, healthy, presumably vaccinated, masked bodies standing in single file down a sad stretch of sidewalk at the end and the beginning of another sad year. It occurred to me as I passed them, and continued to pass them, loaded up with books, loaded up with bags, full of eager energy, that I was

“It’s more of a talking filibuster. … This is being discussed. It’s going to be solidified this evening,” Durbin told reporters.

Durbin confirmed that moving to a talking filibuster would get rid of the 60-vote hurdle currently needed to advance legislation through the Senate, adding that “you have to do that, or you don’t accomplish your goal.”

To date, here are 6 of Landon’s most outrageously unethical and anti-science policy proposals and beliefs. Landon has served as an advisor to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzer and as a “primary architect” of Illinois’ COVID policies.

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

A “risk scoring calculator” used by a health network with hospitals in Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Oklahoma “provides a 7-point bonus to all patients who are ‘non-white or Hispanic,'” according to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.

In Illinois, the University of Illinois at Chicago is holding remote classes Jan. 10 through Jan. 23. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, however, is spending only one week online and will resume in-person classes after Jan. 23.

Orphe Divounguy, of Illinois Policy Institute: “J.B. Pritzker was elected governor, he made it clear his main objective was to reverse the state’s population decline by supporting businesses, maintaining a 21st-century workforce, and by bringing jobs and investments to underserved communities. Instead, Illinois has lost 137,155 residents during Pritzker’s tenure…The share of Illinois’ budget spent on underserved communities is falling, income inequality is worse than ever before, and Illinois lags behind other states on almost every measure of economic performance.”

Pritzker contributed $90 million to his campaign fund, according to a Illinois State Board of Election Friday night report of the donation. Pritzker campaign spokesman Natalie Edelstein said some of that money will support Democratic candidates and causes. Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, that city’s first Black mayor, is expected to jump into the Republican primary contest on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, various sources said.

It’s the ideal hipster home – black on black over black. The octagonal house, asking $250,000 in Lincoln, Illinois, is trending on social media because of its striking coal black exterior, and a black interior to match, according to ChicagoAgent Magazine.

The campaign by our government to prevent every possible infection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus regardless of the cost has unleashed a hollowing of once trusted institutions and ideas. Worse, parents (including my wife and me) who advocated to get their kids’ schools open were subject to abuse and harassment on social media, where we were called “teacher killers” and racists. This abuse was tacitly encouraged by teachers’ unions, which adopted similar rhetoric (“The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny” announced the official Twitter account of the Chicago Teachers’ Union in December 2020) as well as

Ilana Redstone, University of Illinois and faculty fellow at Heterodox Academy: “Universities are training students not to see validity in alternative worldviews…. While my experience in the classroom is primarily with students at the University of Illinois, there’s no reason to believe that Illinois undergraduates are somehow unique in this respect.”

The decision on the OSHA mandate by the Supreme Court will further undermine efforts to curb this grave public health crisis, the president of the AMA argues in an exclusive Crain’s op-ed.

Many parents in states like California or Illinois with mask mandates would likely be shocked how normal school protocols are in Texas, Florida, Utah, Iowa and other states.
Kids should be in school with normal protocols. They should be in class without masks, without plexiglass dividers, socializing while they eat lunch and participating in sports without face masks. Logic clearly tells us this, and this data overwhelmingly proves there is no health benefit to requiring kids to wear face masks in school.

Illinois is one of 13 states that still require masks on school children. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has had the mandate in place since August.

Under S.B. 2531 signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) on August 27, 2021, Illinois will allow partnerships and S corporations to elect to be taxed as an entity. The election may be made for tax years starting on or after January 1, 2022 and before January 1, 2026. Illinois, in addition to its statutory income tax rate of 4.95 percent, also has a 1.5 percent “personal property replacement tax,” an additional income tax that is imposed on pass-through businesses, originally to offset revenue from the repeal of tangible property taxes. This additional tax remains in place.

More than a dozen top U.S. colleges including Yale, Columbia and MIT were sued for allegedly conspiring to manipulate the admissions system to hold down financial aid for students and benefit wealthy applicants.

The proposed antitrust class action lawsuit, filed Sunday in federal court in Chicago, accuses the university “cartel” of a long-running scheme to collectively adopt “a common formula for determining an applicant’s ability to pay” tuition, rather than competing freely over financial aid by trying to attract students through more generous aid offers.

Actuary Mary Pat Campbell: Some teachers unions, such as in Chicago, are pushing for remote schooling as omicron cases of Covid spread. There is a longer-term danger to teachers’ pensions, as many of these are underfunded and depend on growing tax bases. We’ve seen many of these places lose population due to people simply moving (not just dying). Teachers and their union representatives need to think longer-term — they may minorly reduce a short-term risk of a disease most of them (vaccinated) can deal with, while greatly increase the risk of undermining the future of their pension funds.

Republicans are working to tie Democrats to teachers unions ahead of the midterms as frustrations over the unions’ opposition to in-person learning amid the omicron surge grow.The effort comes as Chicago schools find themselves in the national spotlight after the Chicago Teachers Union voted late Tuesday night to temporarily move to remote learning and the city’s public school system canceled classes beginning Wednesday.

In four years between leaving the Clinton White House and winning election to Congress in 2002, Emanuel earned $16 million as an investment banker.

Since Emanuel’s term as mayor ended in 2019, he’s been raking it in even faster, according to disclosures for his Senate confirmation: $12 million for his work as a senior adviser to Centerview Partners, $700,000 consulting for Wicklow Capital and $310,472 as an ABC News talking head.

As an example, “it wouldn’t surprise me if in five years Chicago’s pension went bankrupt.”

In a stunning move, a Cook County Juvenile Court judge issued two contempt of court orders against Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) Director Marc Smith for violating the rights of two children left languishing in facilities for months. DCFS could soon be fined as much as $2,000 a day until those children are properly placed.

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

“Active teachers and judges are being shifted under the bankruptcy plan into defined-contribution retirement products akin to 401(k)s, ending the defined-benefit formulas in place when many of their careers began. Retirement ages would be increased, delaying when pensions can be tapped….Some states such as Illinois and New Jersey are also heavily burdened by pension and bond debt, but federal law doesn’t give states a bankruptcy option. The most deeply indebted major U.S. city, Chicago, which lacks state authority to declare bankruptcy, has $11 billion in bond debt and net pension liabilities of $53 billion, according

Wednesday night, Rittmanic and her partner were responding to a call at a motel off Interstate 57 when someone in a room opened fire, killing her and critically wounding her partner, according to police.

Full opinion is linked here.

“UIC has imposed a reeducation and supervision program to publicly humiliate and demean a professor that would make the Maoist Red Guards blush. It is psychologically torturing a professor just because it thinks it can.”

A republication of our Wirepoints column.

“And so as a result been a lot of parents and a lot of families that have moved here. And what I see is New York, California, and Illinois, most commonly, Chicago area is where people are bailing on Illinois, and I asked ’em why they came here, and they all say, to a person, man and woman, they moved because they were finally fed up with the politics and COVID was the tipping point.”

Reverend Jesse Jackson officially launched Operation PUSH on Christmas Day in 1971. It later became the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. PUSH is an acronym for People United to Serve Humanity.

The unfunded liabilities of Illinois? suburban and downstate public safety pensions rose to $13 billion in the last year of compiled results reported to the state, continuing a 29-year climb that underscores the deep strains on local government budgets.

The unfunded tab for the 295 firefighter funds and 352 police funds outside of Chicago grew to $13 billion in fiscal 2019 from $12.3 billion in 2018 and $11.5 billion in 2017. Police accounted for $7.5 billion of the total and firefighters for $5.5 billion, according to a new report from the state legislature?s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

The endorsement comes after a report published by the federal agency found the program allowed close contacts to remain in the classroom as an alternative to home quarantine. The study looked at how the program worked this fall at Lake County schools.

In Illinois, the share of workers represented by unions increased from 14.7% in 2019 to 15.2% in 2020. That’s the highest one-year jump in the state since 2013. In addition, surveys also show that support for labor unions has increased among nonunion workers and the public, at large.

The second incident cited in PDE’s claim was Downers Grove South High School’s “Students of Color Field Trip Opportunity” in Illinois. Qualified students would travel to Jefferson Middle School to learn about the education career path from a person of color’s experience, according to a screenshot of the flyer obtained by PDE.

“A study last month by the research outfit Wirepoints estimated that each Illinois household on average is on the hook for $110,000 in government-worker retirement debt, up from $90,000 in 2019. The burden of the state’s pension debt alone is $64,200 per household—four times more than the national average and the second highest after Connecticut ($65,400), which has a wealthier population…State and local government in Illinois is run by public-worker unions, and people are fleeing the economic and fiscal consequences.”

“It befuddles me to see how someone who’s living in Appalachia in a trailer park, who has no access to water, healthcare, is a walking practitioner of racism.”

According to the counterclaim, Thornley took that accusation up the ranks within state government, using her ties to Pritzker and top officials within his administration, as well as Pritzker’s wife, M.K.

According to the counterclaim, Thornley’s alleged gambit bore fruit, when Garcia was removed, and the investigation into Thornley’s alleged misconduct halted, moments before Garcia was to meet with police in Springfield.

First-term Rep. Mary Miller says she’s running for reelection, even though Democrats in the state legislature gutted her district and forced her to consider challenging two of her GOP colleagues.

If you’re still wondering why raising the cap on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction was important enough to Democrats to sacrifice their stated principles and resort to brazen gimmicks in order to fit it into the reconciliation bill, look no further than the latest release of the IRS’s tax migration data, covering tax years 2018-2019.

Comment: Falsehoods and name-calling from Manar. We will print our response shortly.

By Mike Lucci, senior policy adviser with the State Policy Network. He previously served as the deputy chief for policy to Illinois governor Bruce Rauner and vice president of State Projects for the Tax Foundation.

Australian journalists visit Normal, Illinois to take the pulse.

“I told him to deploy the National Guard [in August 2020] and he goes, ‘It won’t look good for there to be men and women on Michigan Avenue with assault weapons,’ ” Mr. Griffin said. After Mr. Griffin’s comments, Mr. Pritzker’s office used the word liar to describe Mr. Griffin, who stood by his remarks. Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokeswoman for Mr. Pritzker, said the National Guard wasn’t deployed in August 2020 following Mr. Griffin’s suggestion. “The governor does not send soldiers into a city without the request of the mayor

Comment: We generally stick to stories that pertain to Illinois in particular, but some matters cannot be ignored and must not be accepted.

“No wonder the Oct. 7, 2021, Gallup organization’s “Americans’ Trust in Media” poll recorded the second lowest point on record (36%) since it began doing media-specific tracking in 1997. But in the end, Kass laughs last. While the inmates were giddy with their taking the asylum, he formed www.johnkass news.com.”

An Illinois Democrat has been blasted for describing the deadly Christmas parade rampage in Wisconsin as “Karma” for the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse. Mary Lemanski, who is listed as the social media director for the Democratic Party in DuPage County, began her heartless online tirade by snarkily dismissing the tragedy as “just self-defense.”

“The governor, and his Democrat allies, are blowing federal dollars, creating new programs that are not sustainable, and neglecting to address the core problems that are crushing our state’s economy and Illinois taxpayers.”

A national reprint of our Wirepoints report.

“Sorry, Illinois, but you’re the least tax-friendly state in the country for middle-class families. For all three taxes we’re tracking – income, sales, and property taxes – you tax middle-income residents at an above average rate (at least). And for one of those taxes, the rates are extremely high. That’s enough to put the Land of Lincoln in the most undesirable spot on our list.”

“What happened to Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t decent. There is no decency in power politics and he was the target. There is no conscience in power politics. And no restraint. And that’s what all this was all about. Power politics.”

What’s going on right now is toxic to America and American life. Gerrymandering allows extreme candidates from both parties to rise to the top. New York, Illinois, California and all the Democratic-run states are gerrymandering their districts to ensure local, state, and national control goes to their party. Hence, any Republican-run state that doesn’t gerrymander the heck out of the Democrats is doing a disservice to Americans. Why? Because a national force needs an opposing national force. They not only need to be gerrymandered at the national level, but right down to local levels.

Chicago is in crisis as violence escalates and poverty spreads. By many measures Chicago is a city in decline. And the most critical factor is the chronically underperforming and rapidly shrinking Chicago Public School system. Long dominated by the Chicago Teachers Union, it is the city’s socio-economic “Achilles’ Heel.”

he wave of local Illinois governments turning to pension obligation bonds shows no signs of abating and could accelerate amid concern that the window is closing on record low interest rates.

Wheaton sold $46 million last month. Berwyn is eyeing an issue and Moline plans to follow its neighbor East Moline into the market.

“The consulting firm was co-founded a decade ago by Robert Creamer, husband of Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and a felon who pleaded guilty

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the top U.S. destinations for foreign students, enrolled 7,674 international students in fall 2020, a 28% drop from the year before, driven down by losses from China and India. This fall, though, it has just shy of 10,000 international students enrolled, plus nearly 3,000 in the U.S. for postgraduate training programs, landing back where it was two years ago. “We knew we would rebound, but we didn’t know how significantly,” said Martin McFarlane, UIUC’s director of international student and scholar services.

Bill Bergman, of Truth in Accounting: “But ‘get-out-the-vote’ campaigns in some states, such as Illinois and others facing financial stress, might have actually led to a form of overcount, not undercounts. After the census results became available in April 2021, it became clear that states with significantly higher 2020 decennial census results than those expected from the ACS estimates from 2010 to 2019 (before the pandemic hit) tend to be financially-challenged, and Democratic, states.”

“He called me a liar,” Griffin said at Wednesday’s event. “It’s all about politics for him. It’s not about people…. I’m going to make sure that if he runs again, that I am all in to support the candidate who will beat him,” Griffin continued. “He doesn’t deserve to be the governor of our state.”

Our own column about this new school, The University of Austin, is here.Three University of Chicago academics, including longtime president and current chancellor Robert Zimmer, are helping launch it, per this Crain’s column. In addition to the U of C academics, Deirdre McCloskey, an economist and professor emerita in multiple departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago, also serves on the board of advisers,