-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
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.
Illinois State Senator Robert Martwick (D-Chicago) is pushing ahead with legislation that could increase Chicago’s police pension obligations by another $3 billion. It’s a repeat of a similar bill Martwick championed for the Chicago firefighters’ pension, which was signed into law by Gov. JB Prtizker in April.
“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.
The process for selecting projects funded through Illinois’ celebrated “Rebuild Illinois” spending plan is sad enough, but much worse when you consider how the program is being paid for: The poor and working class are hit hardest.
National single family home prices rose 18.8% year over year, which was down from 19.0% in October. The Chicago area on the other hand rose to an 11.6% annual appreciation rate, up from 11.3% in October. Those two moves were enough to catapult the Chicago area into 3rd from last price, which is a higher ranking than it’s been in for quite some time.
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.
What’s baffling is disregard by Illinois politicians for their own political interests. Few causes today have as much bipartisan public support as school choice. We would prefer that politicians act on principle. But failing that, is it too much to ask for political expedience? Please, give voters what they want.
“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.”
America should not look away from these grim realities in the heartland of our nation. Chicago has historically been the grand city of middle America, but its descent into chaos must serve as a grave warning to the rest of the country. The kinds of policies pursued by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Democratic machine reflect the radical agenda of the Biden administration for the entire country. The United States must
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.
Vacant, sometimes dilapidated properties that have been abandoned, or empty lots where the structures were cleared away have unpaid taxes attached to them, and according to Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas. It adds up to $5 billion in lost property tax revenue – more than a fifth of the current Cook County budget. “If you look at these numbers, they’re frightening.”
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.
Since immigrating to Chicago, Arellano said he worked toward his goal: to leave his children well-established, build a home in Mexico and save enough money to return to live in his native town and retire. He did it, always with his wife by his side.
Arellano also managed to buy his Chicago home, where he hopes his five children — the youngest 25 and the oldest 33 — continue to host the family gatherings, even if he is
Illinois voters aren’t often to be congratulated, but they made the right call by killing the “Fair Tax.” Had they authorized a progressive tax increase, the state would now be facing a still worsening competitive disadvantage. Phew.
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
“Reparations are a means of addressing the wealth and opportunity gaps that residents experience due to historic racism and discrimination…. I would like to see a long-term reparations plan that gives Black people the opportunity to build community and wealth in Oak Park. That might be direct grants to Black residents, low-interest business and real estate loans, tax reimbursements, child care, community spaces, and revisions to the school curriculum, among many other possibilities.”
The Chicago suburb of Skokie joins the wave of Illinois local governments borrowing to manage rising public safety pension costs with a $176 million issue that will wipe out most of its unfunded liability. The Government Finance Officers Association recommends against POBs because of the risks that investment earnings will fall short of debt service driving up overall costs.
More vile than their dishonesty is their call for censorship — “for the sake of Public Education and the future of democracy,” the letter says.
“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.
Let’s hope employers are more ethical than the American Medical Association and its president.
It’s an obvious solution that Illinois could have implemented long ago. Equally obvious is that it hasn’t happened because the Pritzker Administration, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the General Assembly simply don’t care enough about Foxx’s malfeasance.
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.
Chicago Public Schools’ $872 million of junk-rated paper met with a more fickle high-yield audience this week, underscoring the district?s vulnerability to market volatility even as it inches closer to investment grade status.
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.”
New York Mayor Eric Adams made a talking point of Chicago having to shut down its schools for four days because of a standoff with the local teachers union over COVID-19 safety concerns.
“This is not Chicago. We are working with the UFT,” he said on Friday, referring to the United Federation of Teachers union. Adams has pressed to keep New York schools open, despite the recent virus surge due to the omicron variant.
On Thursday, he tried to frame his city’s approach as being different than that of the Windy City. “This is not Chicago, this
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.
Just 9% percent of those participating in the latest round of the survey, conducted for Crain’s and The Daily Line, say the city is headed in the right direction, a drop of 12 percentage points from the third quarter. A sobering 91% say the city is on the wrong track. Sixty-one percent say their neighborhood remains a good or excellent place to live, but the citywide figure is only 40%, and just over a quarter, 28%, say Chicago is a good place to raise children. All those figures are markedly down from earlier
Duckworth and Durbin had it right originally, but principles mean nothing and hypocrisy rules. The filibuster is there to prevent exactly what the new Duckworth and Durbin want: partisan, rash changes by a radical, ephemeral majority.
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.
The only solution for a system so broken lies not with Lightfoot, Sharkey or anybody else in Chicago. It lies with their great enabler, state government, which has been relentlessly derelict in its central duty to educate our children.
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.
Comment: This is an appropriate place to remind our readers that we link to sources and opinions from all sides that we do not necessarily agree with.
Because they have close ties to the unions, Democrats are concerned that additional closures like those in Chicago could lead to a possible replay of the party’s recent loss in Virginia’s governor race. “It’s a big deal in most state polling we do,” said Brian Stryker, a partner at ALG Research whose work in Virginia indicated that school closures hurt Democrats. “Anyone who thinks this is a political problem that stops at the Chicago city line is kidding themselves,” added Mr. Stryker. “This is going to resonate all across Illinois, across the country.”
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.”
Staffing is down at police stations across the city.
Chicago’s school shutdowns will contribute to its growing child-abuse problems.The see-no-evil approach to child welfare was fatal before Covid-19; it has only become deadlier since. After almost two years, we can no longer claim ignorance.
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.
Agree to the facts as Pritzker sees them or you cannot hold office.
There’s more to the story than the press release that media focused on, as usual.
“We have no sympathy for the unvaccinated. Actually we have contempt for them and we don’t want them sitting near us coughing on our popcorn at the Lake Theatre.”
The political scandal of the year so far is unfolding in plain sight in Chicago, where the teachers union has effectively shut down the public schools.
Most owners of Chicago-area midsize businesses will pay their workers more this year, and nearly half will give employees more flexibility to work remotely as finding and retaining labor shapes as their top challenge. In the Chicago subset of a national survey, 67% already have increased wages or plan to in 2022. About 43% are offering workers more options on where they do their jobs.
Ridiculing dissenters does not work. It has backfired. But this isn’t only about effective rhetoric and persuasion. The substance of the Pritzker Administration’s COVID policy is falling apart.
“I still have a role to play. Just one. To make my life relevant somehow. The thought that I can still be of service to my students, touch their lives and make a difference in their lives.”
“Our state has made great progress with its finances, even in the face of the pandemic. We are paying our bills on time.” That’s a frequent message from both Gov. JB Pritzker and Comptroller Susana Mendoza. That claim is mighty hard to reconcile with a call for more bailout assistance from federal taxpayers, but Mendoza did both in a Friday letter printed in the Chicago Sun-Times.
This action is likely to trigger a showdown between the union and the school district, which could lock teachers out of their remote classrooms and prevent them from teaching. This would effectively shut down the school district.
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.
A little tale about how breezily Illinois state government imposes unfunded mandates on municipalities.
Full opinion is linked here.
The nation’s home prices rose 19.1% in the 12 month period while Chicago tied with Minneapolis for last place among the 20 largest metro areas with a mere 11.5% appreciation.
Despite COVID, the “Great Resignation” and inflation, economists predict growth in the year ahead. And yet Chicago’s outlook isn’t quite so rosy as the rest of the nation’s.
Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois Department of Public Health Director Ngoze Ezike held a press conference Monday. It was almost overwhelmingly devoted to vaccines and masks, to the exclusion of all else. The subject of treatments was almost entirely ignored. None of the reporters’ questions addressed treatments.
“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.”
He began drinking and, around 11:30 p.m., his gun began to fall out of his waist.
He grabbed for the weapon to keep it from falling, but it fired, striking an 11-year-old boy, prosecutors said. Then, it fired again, striking a 25-year-old man. Both are recovering.
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.”
Had I known 45 years ago that someday I’d be introducing my son to Jim Lovell, Christmas Eve that year would have been still more magical than it was.
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.
In light of the differences in expert opinion, parents should be entirely free from condescending insults and coercion if they choose not to vaccinate their children or to wait until better evidence is in. But politicians, including President Joe Biden and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, have resorted to hectoring and steamrolling parents into vaccinating their kids, pretending that the science in favor of vaccinating kids is certain.
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.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is so far ducking most questions about the future of embattled State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. And a statement, the county chief made it clear that she disagrees with Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s call yesterday to stop releasing those charged with murder, carjacking and many gun offenses.
In an interview Tuesday with “Chicago Tonight,” special prosecutor Dan Webb said Foxx’s office “cannot explain” how it came to the decision to dismiss the original disorderly conduct indictment filed against Smollett, calling that move “massive confusion and an operational failure.”
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.
A police officer is facing an internal investigation after she supported her daughter and her friends’ right to form a political club at their Chicago public high school. Ammie Kessem, a 20-year veteran police sergeant with the Chicago Police Department who serves as the Committeeman for Chicago’s 41st Ward, heard about the formation of a TPUSA chapter at Taft High School from her daughter, and posted on Facebook that she was proud of the students for thinking for themselves.
At 9:30 p.m., a 22-year-old man and a 24-year-old woman were walking out of the restaurant just a couple of blocks north of Trump Tower when someone got out of a white Audi, took out a gun, and shot them both.
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 reprint of our Wirepoints column.
“It’s well past time we started framing vaccinations not as a personal choice, but as a civic duty…. The early signals strongly suggest boosters offer better protection against omicron than the standard dosage does.”
“I Think This Situation Absolutely Requires A Really Futile And Stupid Gesture.” – Otter in Animal House
“Just maybe, voters are starting to regret the consequences of electing progressives…. Chicago and New York may offer the most interesting clues. Kim Foxx won election in 2016 as Cook County, Ill., prosecutor with 72% of the vote. The pullback on prosecution came quickly…. In the November 2020 election, Ms. Foxx’s winning margin against a competitive Republican fell to 53%. In Cook County’s suburbs, she dropped from a previous majority to 43%. There have been more than 1,000 murders in Cook County this year.
“The mayor did not settle this case for an outrageous amount of taxpayer money because the city was legally exposed to a potentially high judgment. She used taxpayer money to jump-start her reelection campaign. In other words, there was no danger that the city was going to incur a large civil judgment in this lawsuit, because the case would have probably not made it to trial. The legal theory under which it was filed was flawed.”
Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza was the lead signatory on a letter sent by officials of seven other states asking the federal government to reinstate the interest waiver. It’s effectively a request for more bailout money.
Wirepoints’ Mark Glennon was Mary Ann Ahern’s guest on NBC5 Chicago discussing the New York Times report that Gov. JB Pritzker’s name is in play as a potential presidential candidate.
Choose Chicago’s fruitless six-plus-month hunt for a new chief executive and plan to relaunch its search heading into 2022 set off alarms this month around the local hospitality sector. Business owners that have collectively been pummeled worse than any other during the public health crisis and are longing for a citywide promotional jolt are instead bracing for another season without leadership atop the city’s marketing arm.
Many of us in Illinois may be snickering, but it’s entirely sensible in Democratic circles that “talk is abundant – at least in private,” about Gov. JB Pritzker as a candidate for President of the United States in 2024. That’s what the New York Times reported on Sunday. Check off the boxes on who could win the Democratic primaries for president and you have to put Pritzker at or near the top of the list.
“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.”
The Cook County Democratic Party is now requiring candidates to sign a loyalty pledge if they want the party’s endorsement when 50 ward and 30 township committee members meet on Monday and Tuesday to decide which candidates they will back in races next year.
Now that entertainer and Obama White House star Jussie Smollett has been convicted on multiple counts of faking an anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Trump hate crime against himself, what do we hear?
We hear a predictable chorus from Woke Media World: Let it go. Forget it. Leave it alone. Yes, he’s guilty. And that’s a good thing. But let’s never speak of Jussie again. The mention of his name vexes us. Hush. Please, just let it go.
“)ne of the most notorious criminals in Illinois history”.
“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.
The full story raises serious questions of wrongdoing that may go to the heart of how Illinois government works, in both the Pritzker Administration and the General Assembly. The story is still unfolding but answers are clearly needed.
Progressive illusions about cops and crime are having bad consequences across American cities, and the people of Chicago can see them in their neighborhoods. Last week the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office recorded its 1,000th murder in 2021—and there’s still a month to go. That’s the first year it has crossed the 1,000-mark since 1994.Mayor Lightfoot has been missing in action as the death toll rises.
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.
Left-leaning states, particularly Illinois, have long been trying to strong-arm the financial sector into enforcing their social justice agenda. Now, more conservative states are responding by using the same tool. Nobody will end up winning. Blame those who started it.
A welcome trend is unfolding in higher education. Wealthy donors are using their clout to fight the cancel mobs and woke radicals now dominating most colleges and universities. The path now seems clear for organized groups of those donors to form everywhere. An umbrella organization for them has now been formed called the Alumni Free Speech Alliance.
Rarely is anything so popular yet so neglected by politicians as school choice for K-12 education. It should be a top issue in next year’s elections. Politicians will start listening if voters start demanding what they say they want.
There are no farms in Fulton Market, but more agriculture companies are calling the Near West Side neighborhood home. Farmers Business Network, a Silicon Valley-based, agricultural technology startup that just raised $300 million, plans to expand its Chicago office to 250 people. Farm equipment giant Deere, based in Moline, has leased space that could hold up to 200 software workers.
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.
A Chicago-area judge saved a grandfather’s life with the single question that exposes hospitals blocking doctors from using a safe, FDA-approved drug: Why?
The proposal would allow landlords to terminate a lease only if the tenant violates it, or for one of four non-tenant fault reasons: the landlord or a family member wants to occupy the unit, the unit needs substantial repairs, condominium conversion, and demolishing or removing the unit from the market. Other provisions would require landlords to provide relocation assistance when terminating a lease if the tenant is not at fault, create a rental registry and, because it was crafted around the time of the Fair Notice Ordinance, require more notice for evictions and raised rents.
Australian journalists visit Normal, Illinois to take the pulse.
“Left unmentioned as lawmakers were approving the budget, Petrella wrote, “was the creation of a state fund that gives Gov. J.B. Pritzker authority to spend billions of dollars from the federal aid without first getting approval from lawmakers.”
“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
Tax analysts on the left and right leaning analysts agree on this one. The “Build Back Better” bill now pending in Congress includes, among many abominations, a huge gift to the wealthy.
Chicago will have its eye on which among five bids offers the best odds for fiscal and economic gains as it takes the next step in picking a developer to build and operate a casino and resort complex. The city received five proposals from potential developers and operators by a late October deadline. On Friday, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s offered a deeper look at the proposals and an initial, general assessment of the fiscal prospects as its review begins.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” -Calvin Coolidge
Twitchy has a column knocking the Chicago Sun-Times about it, but at least the Sun-Times later caught on and corrected it.
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.”
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Covenant House’s annual Sleep Out Chicago event, held last week, raised nearly $500,000 for a shelter that targets homeless 18- to 24-year-olds.
“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.”
The national anti-harassment group Time’s Up announced a “major reset” Friday, claiming the women’s rights organization would be “rebuilt from the ground up” after a few of its leaders advised disgraced ex-New
“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.”
The world has turned upside down.
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.”
There’s a lesson here not only about Illinois pensions but about how easily the press will let Gov. JB Pritzker thumb his nose at crisis.
“In simple terms, Jones is an elitist, and King was not. Real change in American society seldom comes from an ivory tower. Progress is a function of mass action, something Jones is incapable of inspiring. Nikole Hannah-Jones is in no way comparable to Martin Luther King Jr. To have her headline an event in his honor is nonsensical.”
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.
The expected massive tax increases in 2022 will be fueled by the 2021 triennial reassessment in Chicago, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to link future property tax increases to the rise in inflation.
As a result of this double-tax tsunami, renters in the North Side neighborhoods of Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Old Town, River North, and Streeterville should brace themselves for hefty rent increases next year.
Orphe Divounguy: Government budget priorities matter. The city is making a choice when it fails to prioritize communities most plagued by crime. And that choice is likely driving Chicago’s crime problem to among the worst in the nation.
The number of new Cook County convicts in Illinois prisons has plummeted.
“The truth is, laws criminalizing gun possession not only devastate Black and brown communities; they also fail to achieve one of their primary objectives: reducing the supply of guns on our streets. As the Chicago Police Department seizes thousands of guns on the street, thousands more exist on the market and access to them remains far too easy.”
Chicago and other cities around the Great Lakes are envied by most of the world for their abundance of fresh water. It took some doing, therefore, for Chicago to let high water bills accumulate to the point that tens of thousands of homeowners are drowning in debt for their waters bills.
Comment: Must watch. All of it.
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.”
We’re certainly not about to tell parents whether they should vaccinate their kids against COVID. It’s for many of the same reasons that we think the State of Illinois also should not.
Activists say the needs of struggling communities in Chicago and elsewhere vastly exceed the trillions Congress has spent and the additional trillions it is now considering.
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,
Friday was the last straw.
The sting of serious competition solves most problems, and so it may be for higher education. A project I have been following for some months was publicly announced today — a new institution dedicated to the classic principles for which universities are supposed to stand. It is to be called the University of Austin, and it is historic.
Illinois and New Jersey consistently rank neck-and-neck for the highest property tax rates in the nation. When will Illinois voters send as strong a message as New Jersey voters sent?
Crime is a actually a gun problem, which is a health crisis, the root cause of which is systemic racism. It took some imagination to characterize today’s crime wave that way, so maybe it’s appropriate that Gov. JB Pritzker refers to his new initiative the “Reimagine Plan.”
A national reprint of our Wirepoints column.
Murder in Chicago is hardly breaking news. So far this year, the city has logged almost 700 victims of homicide. But this time a new element was added to the same sad story. This time, the CEO of a major American corporation weighed in. And what made his reaction to the deaths interesting is that he didn’t blame the usual suspects: systemic racism and rogue cops. Chris Kempczinski, the president and CEO of McDonald’s, sent a text message to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot that recently was made public: “With both, the parents failed those kids.
Cotton: “No provision is more pernicious than the immigration proposal pushed by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who has tried to force amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants into this bill not once, not twice, but three times…. His most recent proposal would amount to nothing less than DACA-For-All. It would grant full public benefits to millions of illegal aliens and grant five-year “amnesty passes” for illegal border crossers. These amnesty passes could be renewed in perpetuity, until Congress is forced to make this amnesty plan permanent. This proposal would cost the American people unknown
Dishonesty, despotism and undisguised ignorance were on full display in an move to assure compliance with vaccine and other COVID mandates.
Rep. Steve Stadelman (D-Loves Park): “I think there needs to be a serious, open and frank discussion on the future of local news and how its future will affect government. As people rely less on traditional news organizations, we’ve seen a rise in media outlets that push a political agenda.”
“Democrats have embraced gerrymandering, the practice of drawing district boundaries for political benefit that party leaders, including former President Barack Obama, have railed against as ‘rigging’ elections. The new map is a collection of odd shapes that critics say is also a symbol of Democrats’ hypocrisy.”
“If your job is to expect—to demand—that people follow the law, it’s generally a good idea to do so yourself. If Chicago police really want to be respected, it would help if their union acted like it.”
Join Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski and Founder Mark Glennon on the eighth episode of Wirepoints Podcast. Mark and Ted attempt to simplify and make sense of the situation involving some 650 local pensions across Illinois.
Duckworth: “I think that the past 18 months have really drove home to the American people that the AANHPI community is subject to significant discrimination, and I think there’s a lot of real ignorance in terms of the history of AANHPIs in this country.”
Comment: The blatant lies, willful ignorance and smug condescension shown by the bill’s sponsors and supporters is blood-boiling.
This past week, 91 of the state’s 181 COVID deaths were breakthroughs, meaning cases where the victim was fully vaccinated.
“So much has been said and written about Chicago’s crime problem—a situation that’s generated lurid headlines and cast a harsh spotlight on a city long known for racial strife—it’s easy to forget that there are actual solutions, proven approaches that have helped other major metros to effectively reduce violence while also bringing wrongdoers to justice. In this week’s issue, our monthly public policy series, Crain’s Forum, takes a deep look at one aspect of the problem that persists in Chicago, and which seems least likely to change: police misconduct.”
Count on property tax increases to pay for this.
Chicago homeowners are about to pony up more for property taxes.
A mixed vote by the city council approved Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s $16.7 billion budget, including a $23 million property tax hike. The automatic increase is based on the national inflation rate instead of a local one that some economists say makes more sense.
“Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has already lost his credibility on district-drawing by promising independent maps in 2018, then signing off on gerrymandered state legislative districts this year. If the Legislature approves the new Congressional map, the Democratic Governor will likely be a rubber stamp.”
Comment: This is a particularly appropriate place to remind our readers that we publish all viewpoints, including those we disagree with.
Congress sent states hundreds of billions of dollars to help them pay for pandemic-related expenses. For state officials not to use those funds to refill their UI funds, and to raise taxes instead, is a betrayal of taxpayers. As the aforementioned states are demonstrating, some states, like Texas, will take the optimal approach, while states like Illinois and New Jersey will serve as examples of what not to do, just as they do with so many other policy matters.
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
A more bizarre and destructive mismatch of economic circumstances and policy direction would be hard to imagine.
Europe has learned the folly of this quest. Surging energy prices have forced the closure of manufacturing plants, curtailed production at others and risk the exodus of other energy intensive industries from the largest economies on the continent.
“This budget will complete the squandering of $6 billion in combined federal COVID funding awarded to the city and schools that could have been the financial salvation for the city. This budget is 60% larger than the 2019 pre-COVID budget, despite local city revenues having taken a big hit.”
“I don’t envy my friends in Chicago. I knew fiscal doom would hit the city in this decade, but this was not the form I was expecting.”
Contrary to what is widely said by the media and many health authorities, the number of “breakthroughs” — COVID deaths in fully vaccinated people — is large, and that number as a percentage of total COVID deaths has been growing.
Talk about voter suppression. “Music to Pelosi’s ears,” said Politico.
Chicago is at “an inflection point,” burdened with a government that is “broken,” a mayoral administration that “lacks competencies” and an electorate that accepts too much misconduct. That’s the word from just-retired Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson in a candid, no-holds-barred interview
As North Michigan Avenue landlords face their toughest market in decades, the owner of a building leased to one of the shopping strip’s biggest and oldest tenants has decided to cash out. UBS Realty Investors has hired a broker to sell the 196,000-square foot store at 737 N. Michigan Ave., the home of Neiman Marcus since 1983.
The strongest argument for COVID vaccine mandates has been that it’s not only about protecting one’s self. By getting vaccinated, the thinking has been, we reduce the chances of spreading infection to others and contribute to the broader battle against the virus. But new evidence is strong that vaccinations do not reduce transmission by those who have been vaccinated.
Comment: We usually don’t publish national stories that don’t specifically mention Illinois, but this one clearly applies and is exceptionally good.
In museum-speak, a docent is a trained volunteer who greets visitors and guides them through the collection, filling in details of the artists’ lives, speaking to the visual elements of the work on display and adding art-history context. The Art Institute used to have more than 100 docents, 82 of them active, until Veronica Stein, an executive director of learning and engagement, sent a Sept. 3 email canning all of them. In gratitude for their long, unpaid service—averaging 15 years each—the Art Institute offered the involuntarily retired guides a two-year free pass to the museum.
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In “zombie foreclosures,” lenders begin foreclosure proceedings against homeowners but don’t follow through because they want to avoid the financial responsibility that comes with holding title to the property — costs that often exceed the value.
In Chicago, the union representing 13,000 police officers is advising members to ignore a mandate from Mayor Lori Lightfoot to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by Friday. If officers don’t get vaccinated or agree to be tested twice a week at their own expense, the city says it’ll suspend them without pay.
Chicago plans to return to the bond market in force over the next year to tap a portion of $4.66 billion of existing borrowing authority and $4.4 billion of newly requested capacity in a mix of new money and refunding deals under its general obligation, securitization, and revenue-backed credits.
The share of empty office space in the central business district at the end of the third quarter was 20%, up from 19.4% midway through the year, according to data from real estate services firm CBRE. The jump marked the fourth consecutive quarter that vacancy rose to the highest mark CBRE has tracked.
This is about something that intrinsically bothers some of us but not others – about conformity and following orders. And it’s personal.
Orphe Divounguy: Despite having a young, highly skilled population with relatively higher COVID-19 vaccination rates, Chicago ranks second to last—behind only San Francisco—among the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, in jobs recovered from pandemic losses. It couldn’t be clearer when looking at the link between the city’s lagging housing market, labor market, and how the city taxes and spends that it must change its strategy. But Chicago needs Springfield to act before pension reform can become a reality. Until state lawmakers get serious about providing relief, Lightfoot and the rest of the city’s leaders must start using their
Democrat senators and Eric Zorn get nailed by wokesters.
Our Wirepoints column republished.
At issue is legislation pushed by IOEU Local 399, a highly influential and politically active labor group. The measure would require data centers to not only use union labor in building data centers, but also effectively hire from union-approved lists in filling operational jobs, many of them highly technical.
Comment: Our own column on this episode is here.
Money is being raised in several Chicagoland school districts to join a consolidated action against Governor J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Public Health
A national republication of our column.
It’s worth going though some particular reasons why this misconduct by federal law enforcement is is so appalling, and to remind parents why they should not be deterred.
Skim down to the portion labeled “A learning experience at DePaul” for Zorn’s latest comments on the matter we wrote about here.
“It’s time to say no to the mob, no to the cancellations. And it’s time to be forthright about your true opinions. This is not a partisan issue. Anyone who is interested in the pursuit of truth and in promoting a healthy and functioning society has a stake in this debate. Speaking out now may seem risky. But the cost of remaining silent is far steeper.”
Crime is out of control in Chicago, Griffin said, and political leaders are doing little to address it. “It is a disgrace that our governor won’t insert himself into the challenge of addressing crime in our city…He says, ‘It won’t look good for there to be men and women on Michigan Avenue with assault weapons,'” Griffin said. (Pritzker’s chief of staff, Anne Caprara, tweeted that she was on that call and the governor “never said that.”) Griffin said today: “If that saves the life of a child, I don’t care.” Pritzker’s office responded: “Ken Griffin
The problems with staying are clear. At 61,500 capacity, Soldier Field is the NFL’s oldest stadium and one of the smallest. By contrast, the 326-acre Arlington Park property, home to a racetrack that recently shut down, would give the Bears the option to join with developers to add shopping, dining, entertainment and so forth.
The data show a gap between the combined unemployment rate of the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metropolitan areas and that of the rest of the country that’s been much bigger during the pandemic than at any other time since 1990. Removing those three metro areas from the picture delivers an unemployment rate of 4.9%, less than the 5.3% national figure but not enough to dramatically revise one’s picture of the U.S. economy.
This biennial directly addresses why massive swaths of the South and West Side are so available. “Let’s be clear,” says contributor Paola Aguirre of Chicago-based Borderless Studio, “The ‘Available City’ only exists because of racism. The only reason we have all this vacant land is because resources have been continually extracted from our Black and Brown communities for decades.”
A panel ironically titled “Tough times for local journalism” became a shameful episode for Eric Zorn, DePaul University and journalism.
As Illinois’ senior U.S. senator revealed how dangerously close he came to a drive-by shooting in Chicago, former White House advisor David Axelrod urged Mayor Lori Lightfoot to declare a “public safety emergency.”
A regional manufacturing index.
Yet another falsehood from the Pritzker Administration and the media.
Absurd: Former Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn should be disinvited from an upcoming panel at DePaul University, according to two students writing in the school’s paper. In addition, according to column, the Society for Professional Journalists, which is one of the panel sponsors, “advised students to attend the in-person panel and publicly voice their concerns to Zorn himself.” I think we know what that means.
Why worry about charges of hypocrisy? What are you gonna do about it? With Pritzker having signed off on newly rigged election maps, in violation of his campaign promise, it’s not like they need to worry about getting voted out.
A reprint of our Wirepoints column.
President Biden and his allies in Congress are having a rough time winning support for a historic, gigantic, new spending plan, but they knew who to call for help. On Friday, Biden joined Gov. JB Pritzker on a Zoom call to with local reporters to make the case for the pending federal legislation.
Thank you to ZeroHedge and all the others who publish our columns.
On a White House-sponsored call with the media, Pritzker was joined by David Kamin, deputy director of the National Economic Council, and touted the early success of Biden pandemic relief proposals, among them allowing the state to make major investments in child care and early childhood education.
If you haven’t been downtown lately, here are a few pictures and the perspective of one restaurant owner. Chicago cannot survive with this few people downtown.
CEO of the Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization, iBIO, in Chicago: Allowing the government to dictate what a company may charge for a novel drug will have a chilling effect on innovation. Economic studies on the impact of government price setting, including non-partisan reports by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), have warned that “negotiations” will result in fewer new medications, essentially defunding R&D for the most challenging diseases. This could mean less money for new treatments for Alzheimer’s, cancer and rare diseases.
Lightfoot falls in line with Pritzker and other top Democrats in opposing the most important action needed to solve the pension crisis. She refuses to endorse an amendment to the Illinois Constitution that would allow state and local governments to curb rising pension obligations.
The Cook County assessor’s office released its figures for a large swath of downtown Chicago. Homeowners should be happy, but landlords? Not so much.
A reprint of our Wirepoints column.
Everything in Cook County government will be judged on “equity,” we learned in Cook County’s Racial Equity Week. Everything.
“In time, history books will be written about these Americans and the Afghans they saved. Today, the story of one of them. A 15-year-old girl in Kabul named Rahima. And a woman called Esther in East Moline, Illinois, who stepped into the vacuum left by the U.S. government.”
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
Health authorities should have been issuing this message constantly: “Immediately after being exposed or you have COVID symptoms, get tested and ask if an antibody treatment is right for you.” But they didn’t. They still aren’t. At least not in Illinois and most of the nation.
Part 1 of an extended interview.
The American Hotel & Lodging Association projects hotels in the metropolitan area will end the year with just $346 million in revenue, an 86% cut from the $2.53 billion grossed in 2019.
Increased contributions and a market surge have strengthened balance sheets, but uncertainty remains.
Citing Chicago’s expansion of O’Hare Airport: “Recent history, not to mention the pending legislation, suggest that a Biden-led spending binge will yield very little necessary infrastructure.”
It’s about mistakes and confusion piled high, complete with charges of political favoritism, built on the foundation of a licensing scheme that seems to have been defective from the start.
A suburban high school is dealing with issues that include a series of fights and bus shortages.
In 2019, the school board voted to close Rich East High School in Park Forest. Since the pandemic, this is the first time all the kids are back in the consolidated schools and parents say it is causing sheer chaos.
Former Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton’s son is leading an effort to save and repurpose his father’s childhood home. Last Sunday, one of those potential sites, Proviso East High School, dedicated its Social Justice Room to Hampton, a 1966 graduate. The dedication in the school auditorium featured impassioned speeches by Illinois senate majority leader Kimberly Lightford and house speaker Chris Welch, among many others.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot sponsored the resolution. Our own article on this is here.
Armed with a new “disparity study” mandated by a federal judge, the Chicago City Council’s Committee on Contracting Oversight and Equity agreed to extend one of the last surviving construction set-aside programs in the country but keep the set-aide percentages the same.
Through December 2027, the city will earmark 26% of all construction contracts for companies owned by minorities and 6% of those contracts for firms controlled by women.
The 10 states that have outstanding loan balances California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas—could be poised to see significant tax hikes on employers next year if they do not pay the money back before increases are triggered.
She didn’t just vote for it, she sponsored it: a resolution expressly calling for K-12 schools to teach Critical Race Theory, which the public overwhelmingly despises and which has sparked heated protests at school boards across the nation. Unlike other attempts to hide what CRT is about, Lightfoot’s resolution is shameless.
A new research report looked at pensions from both teacher and taxpayer perspectives, and they distinguished how retirement systems are expected to perform for teachers who are in them for the short, medium and long term. Illinois ranked last.
“What’s going on now, that’s not what our buses are about,” said Don Fielding, who 35 years ago founded Untouchable Tours. “ Al Capone and Bugs Moran—those men are nostalgia, they don’t scare people. What’s happening in Chicago today is so much worse. It just makes you sad.”
Results of the 2020 census show that the change in thinking arises in part from necessity. The nation’s metropolitan areas have become more diverse, forcing their representatives to speak to a more racially mixed constituency. The new data show that seven Black lawmakers now in Congress represent districts that were majority Black in 2010 but no longer are so, including several in and around New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C
The city’s tallest and most recognizable building is staring down a leasing challenge that could rival the one it struggled with for almost a decade after the terrorist attacks.
Last month, Chicago Public Schools scheduled pickup times to start approximately 15 to 30 minutes earlier than prior years due to a shortage of about 420 bus drivers.
In mid-August, the district announced that all employees would need to submit proof of full vaccination by Oct. 15. The week of Aug. 23, approximately 10% of bus drivers resigned, which bus vendors said was “likely driven by the vaccination requirements.” Approximately 70 drivers resigned on Aug. 27 alone. The shortage meant the district couldn’t provide transportation for about 2,100 students.
The state of Illinois General Assembly and Governor J.B. Pritzker have decided the best way to deal with educational funding is to establish grants based on identity politics rather than merit.
The General Assembly and the governor signed the Retention of Illinois Students and Equity (RISE) Act in 2020. The act authorizes state grants to students that had previously not qualified for federal or state funding. The three main groups the grants now cover:
1) “undocumented” students
2) students that had attempted 75 hours funded by the Monetary Award Program (MAP) grant but had not yet achieved junior status
3)
Comment: See our own story here on Illinois cities on this misguided path.
“We’re in America, G-ddamn it,” union president John Catanzara told the Sun-Times. “We don’t want to be forced to do anything. Period. This ain’t Nazi f—ing Germany, [where they say], ‘Step into the f—ing showers. The pills won’t hurt you.’ What the f–k?”
Why is everybody fed up with so much of the establishment press? It’s worse at the national level but Illinois, too, has big problems. Sit back a few minutes and consider some recent examples.
“Over the Labor Day weekend, the people of Chicago will have two things on their minds: What to grill. And how not to get killed.”
0.06% of contributions from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign employees went to Republicans in the last election cycle; 96.6% went to Democrats. Left-wing student organizations at the public university include Young Democratic Socialists, LGBT Jew, and Planned Parenthood Generation Action. It has fourteen liberal groups and four conservative groups.
“As we focus on an equitable come back for Chicago, we turn this week to Samir Mirza, co-founder and executive director of Fifth Star Funds, a venture philanthropy fund enabling the city of Chicago to be early investors—the “friends and family” capitol—of Black tech founders.”
President of Illinois Trial Lawyers Association: “It is also impossible to reconcile McConchie’s contention that Illinois is anti-business with regular stories in Crain’s touting corporate relocations to the Chicago area, in conjunction with booming residential construction downtown.”
It’s scandalous enough that the Chicago’s pension for police officers is just 22% funded, but it’s far worse if even half the claims made in a new report about the fund are true.
“The purpose of this column is to turn up the heat and keep it on President Joe Biden until the Taliban free hostage Mark Frerichs, raised in west suburban Lombard. He was never made a priority as the Trump and Biden administrations negotiated an end to our nation’s longest war.”
Early data show the effort from local tech booster P33 and World Business Chicago has reached 1.2 million, and 50 are making plans to move here.
Parents moving to seize control of school districts from the hands of bullying officials serving their overlords in Washington, D.C., Sacramento, California, Chicago, Illinois, and other liberal enclaves, are fighting not only for their children, but for America’s future.
“When I tell people about the program, they kind of look at me like I’m crazy.” Enough said.
The June Case Shiller home price indices showed an 18.6% increase in home prices for the nation over the last 12 months with the Chicago area in last place yet again.
The state and local taxes, or SALT deductions have a current cap of $10K that was put in place back in 2017 by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.
Last Friday, Gov. JB Pritzker signed SB 2531, which allows small business owners across the state the ability to avoid the federal cap by changing the way they file with the IRS. This move could potentially save the small business owners thousands of dollars each year.
“Following months of negotiations, the Senate earlier this month finally passeda long overdue, sweeping infrastructure bill to authorize more than $568 billion in new infrastructure spending, moving President Joe Biden’s plan closer to the finish line. Dubbed the “largest federal investment in public transit ever,” the bipartisan deal represents historic funding for America’s infrastructure, but one aspect of the plan has been left out of many recent headlines: It will help deliver safer wastewater infrastructure and cleaner drinking water to millions of families.”
A deal struck over the weekend would phase out natural gas-fired “peaker” plants before larger combined-cycle facilities. Will the decision further jack up electric bills to preserve union jobs?
With just a few short questions in his written concurrence with last week’s ruling, Justice Bret Kavanaugh showed why eviction bans at any level are so crassly dictatorial and irrational. It’s Governor JB Pritzker who must answer.
Because of inherent shortcomings, the government GAAP as used by New York City and Illinois to calculate their budgets has resulted in continued financial instability and shoddy budgeting practices, which are reinforced by GAAP.
On Saturday, Chicago joined several cities and towns across the country in a solidarity action opposing such legislative attempts.
“Lawmakers in at least 28 states are attempting to pass legislation that would force teachers to lie to students about the role of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and oppression throughout U.S. history. That repression has sparked a national response from educators across the nation, and on Saturday, Chicago will join cities and towns across the U.S. to stage solidarity actions opposing legislative attempts to undermine the right to teach truth to students.”
Worth, Illinois, is known as the friendly village. But many residents are complaining about a not-so-friendly jump in their property taxes. They say their bills went up — way up.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end President Joe Biden’s federal eviction moratorium won’t affect Illinois’ own ban — extended yet again on Friday — but housing advocates say they still face a “race against the clock” to make sure rental assistance gets to tenants in need before the state’s freeze is slated to end. But groups representing landlords and property owners say they’re also running out of time, and the sooner the state can get back to a “normal operating system, the less damage that will be caused.”
For now, at least, maybe the mantra for politicians and policy makers should be “Take the job. And if you can’t find a good job nearby, move.”
The State of Illinois has released its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the 2020 fiscal year that ended June 30, 2020.The state lost another $6.7 billion for the year, with its net position falling to negative $194 billion.
The simple fact is that local control is fine with Pritzker only as long as officials decide to obey him.
Located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the county lost 36.4% of its residents between 2010 and 2020, Census Bureau data released this month shows. No other county lost more than 30%.
After shifting abruptly into reverse in 2020, the market has pushed the accelerator to the floor this year, recovering everything it lost and then some. Buildings have filled up again, and downtown rents hit all-time highs in the second quarter.
The closing on Magnificent Mile will leave another empty storefront on the storied shopping strip, which has suffered the loss of Macy’s, Gap, Express and Uniqlo this year. The street’s vacancy rate has jumped to 26 percent, up from 15 percent in 2019, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
What was really eye-catching in census numbers are gains on South Side neighborhoods along or close to the lakefront. All the way from the Loop down to Woodlawn, their population grew a lot, in some cases more than 10 percent. Who are these people? According to Chicago demographer Ed Zotti, who first tipped me several years ago that interesting things were starting to happen on the South Shore, it’s mostly affluent, middle-class Black people with college degrees, many of them working in the same kind of high-end service jobs downtown that power North Side neighborhoods.
Is it too much to ask whether measures being taken actually work? America is tired of being lied to.
The ruling from Justice Amy Coney Barrett comes as the long-awaited project in Jackson Park broke ground this week.
A national republication of our Wirepoints column.
Comment: This is what Truth-In-Accounting, Wirepoints and many others have been pounding the table about for years.
Proponents of the amendment have framed it as a right-to-work ban, but labor expert Mailee Smith, with the Illinois Policy Institute, said there is more to it. “The majority of this amendment has to do with giving unchecked control to government union leaders,” Smith said. “Only a small portion of this amendment has anything to do with the right-to-work.”
This is an especially good time to act. After years of decline, Illinois is getting a boost as the national economy improves and a friendly administration showers federal money on the state. The latest credit rating upgrade shows Illinois can do better than it has. It can do right by its retirees and taxpayers if it takes advantage of this temporary upswing to attempt some commonsense reforms and set the table for a brighter future.
The amount will go in three buckets: the $700 million cost of construction, which officially kicked off Monday and is expected to take four years; $90 million for preparing artifacts, exhibits and the center’s opening; and $40 million in the first year of operating costs, according to an annual report and tax return for 2020 released this week.
The traditional workweek that drew 600,000 employees to Chicago’s commercial office buildings Monday through Friday before the pandemic will be replaced by a “three-and-two hybrid” with two days of remote work, a top mayoral aide predicted Wednesday.
Michael Fassnacht, newly-appointed CEO of the public-private job growth agency known as World Business Chicago, said the stay-at-home shutdown that forced employees to work from home — if they could — has created an appetite for remote work that will survive COVID-19 and all its variants.
Among major cities, Tacoma, Washington imposes the highest combined state and local sales tax rate, at 10.30 percent. Five other cities—Fremont, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Seattle, Washington—are tied for the second highest rate of 10.25 percent. Birmingham, Alabama, at 10 percent, rounds out the list of major cities with a combined rate of 10 percent or higher.
Activists and local progressive officials in cities like Chicago don’t want the money used to pay down debt.
As property taxes soar, the percentage going to pensions increases even faster.
The influential Chicago lawyer’s involvement in the Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment scandal is raising thorny questions about the line between those who have access to power and those who hold power to account.
Much attention is paid, justifiably, to state lawmakers’ failure to give public employee pension plans the amount of money actuaries say is necessary to cover future obligations to retirees. The state’s latest annual pension reportblames another rise in unfunded liabilities on “actuarially insufficient employer contributions, changes in actuarial assumptions and demographics and other miscellaneous actuarial factors, along with lower-than-assumed investment returns.”
“We are beginning without a comprehensive reopening agreement. This is a real problem. So far the city has not been willing to agree to metrics, which would close schools and keep us safe if this surge continues,” CTU President Jesse Sharkey said at a morning rally outside Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen as school clerks returned to buildings citywide Wednesday.
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“They’re trying to cut social distancing in half. They’re trying to cut a number of other provisions, which we had in place last spring. And they’re not willing to make those commitments, and we’re not willing to
Construction of the Obama Center began this week in Jackson Park. At first, it was believed the presidential center would cost $700 million to build, of which $500 million was for “hard costs.”
Now, the Obama Foundation believes it will cost $830 million.
There are plenty of Black residents that still believe that they’re going to be getting direct cash payments, because that’s how the reparations program was framed when it was first introduced in 2019,” said Sebastian Nalls, a Black Evanston resident and one of the founders of Evanston Rejects Racist Reparations
Full report linked here.
When the calendar turns on a new year, the average Chicago household will have paid about $170 more for heat and cooking fuel than last year. The projected $1,350 price tag comes to over $112 a month on average, easily topping the $90-plus averages Chicagoans have been paying the past few years.
About 45.9% of those polled disapprove of the job Lightfoot is doing as mayor, 42.5% approve of her performance and another 10.8% are unsure or have no opinion. Also under water with Chicago residents, but by a much wider margin, is Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx. Just 34.7% of Chicagoans polled approve of the job the county’s top prosecutor is doing overall, 47.7% disapprove and 15.9% are unsure or have no opinion.
“Most notable among the catalogue of resentments is that the least resentful citizens of Illinois are those living in the relatively affluent Chicago suburbs.”
The local tax burden continues to shift from residential to commercial properties. Commercial landlords countywide this year collectively owe more than $7 billion, or 6.2 percent more than they were on the hook for last year, according to an analysis of 2020 tax year bills by Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas’ office. Homeowners, meanwhile, will be billed $8.9 billion, or 1.3 percent more than last year.
The foundation estimated as of June, the total costs will be $700 million, of which $500 million is slated for what the foundation calls “hard” construction costs.
From 2010 to 2020 three states, Illinois, West Virginia, and Mississippi lost more people than they gained. Illinois and West Virginia each lost a congressional seat, and Illinois lost $6 billion in 2019 due to population losses alone, an analysis of Internal Revenue Service data by the nonprofit Wirepoints website found.
A compliance audit, linked here, lists multiple failures.
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
And District 202 Superintendent Eric Witherspoon said that the concept of black lives mattering is “embedded in the mission and the goals of Evanston Township High School. We believe it, we live it, we embrace it.”
It’s long past time that the obvious questions be put to Governor JB Pritzker and other public officials who claim to be so dedicated to fighting COVID: Why aren’t you demanding that the border be enforced? Are infected immigrants being sent to Illinois? How many of Illinois’ COVID infections have been in illegal immigrants. Do you even know? Do you care?
Republicans said the money was handed out with few specifics, little public scrutiny and no real opportunity for the minority party to advocate for the needs of their constituents.
The expenditures include $250,000 for Black Lives Matter of Lake County, $500,000 for Ex-Cons for Community and Social Change, and $4 million each for three commissions representing Asian, Latino and African American families. There also are millions of dollars to supplement and expand immigration integrations services.
A deeper dive reveals labor force participation of Black non-Hispanic and Hispanic women without a college degree has fallen drastically. Unfortunately, bad policy could be exacerbating the problem. Illinois’ big priority is to spend $11.6 billion, more than 27 percent of the state’s budget, on public employee pensions. The result is heavy investment in past labor, with little available to invest in the future.
A block that had once been home to more than 100 people was down to six who lived amid the ruins of another era. There were gaping holes in roofs and crumbling foundations. Some houses were so bad that even the squatters had quit on them, and now only raccoons and rodents sought them out for shelter.
And then, for reasons that no one in Peoria could fathom, people from all over America began snapping them up. By early summer, seven houses on this block of West Lincoln Avenue had sold to buyers from Los Angeles, San Diego, Long Island,
The number of homes in the Chicago metro area grew by 3.9% between 2010 and 2020, census data made public Thursday shows. That was a slower growth rate than the nation overall, where the number of homes grew by 6.7%.
Rather than fight over political power, Stacy Davis Gates, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union said Black and Latino aldermen should create a coalition and recognize that engaging in a power struggle only serves the interests of the white majority.
“Don’t be sad for Lightfoot. She has been quite cruel, to her city, to her demoralized police force and their families, and just about everyone else who dares question her reign. But then, baseball can be cruel, too. The baseball gods are often cruel, as every fan knows.”
Pritzker: “This is yet another way Illinois is making powerful strides in transforming the culture of our schools.”
For those interested in really digging into the debate on the science of whether masks are effective, two pieces are probably the best start.
The lawsuit by the Illinois Rental Property Owners Association, or IRPOA, follows others filed by landlord groups against the federal government since Aug. 3, when the CDC said the freeze, which expired on July 31, would continue through Oct. 3.
A bill to facilitate consolidation of school administration was left to die in the Illinois House. It Why? Because teachers unions said no, that’s why.
Firms chosen to be in the pool must provide upfront and then annually update information on the number of Chicago-based employees; minority, women and disabled veteran ownership; and diversity of staff who cover the city account.
Crain’s/Harris Poll: 77 percent of execs surveyed believe that vaccination should be required for workers returning to a physical office. Just 41 percent of large companies expect to operate their offices at 50 percent of capacity within a month or are already doing so, with an additional 22 percent shooting for bringing 100 percent of workers back within three months. Still, 29 percent won’t bring their full staff back onsite for at least a year, if at all. The share of business leaders who expect to maintain their pre-pandemic workspace when COVID finally passes continues to drop, moving from 32
Rarely is there a matter on which data and expert opinion are so consistent – over time, across the world and regardless of political opinion: Two committed parents are the key to ending both intergenerational poverty and the consequences thereof, particularly crime.
“Cherry-picking statistics to minimize PR damage doesn’t help. It only creates the impression that the people at the very top of our public hierarchy don’t really understand the problem and that, ultimately, no one is capable of fixing it.”
Since 2018, the CBS 2 Investigators have chronicled Chicago’s unfair and potentially unlawful water billing practices. “Getting Hosed” started with one couple billed $58,000 for water they didn’t use. Every bill we’ve examined thereafter has been drastically inflated and the City department whose taxpayer-funded responsibility it is to provide safe, affordable drinking water has utterly failed consumers and undermined our investigative efforts at every turn.
The Final 5 Campaign is an organization dedicated to closing down the remaining five youth prisons in Illinois. One of them, the Illinois Youth Center in St. Charles, Illinois is the main priority for the organization. This particular facility is 127 years old.
If Illinois were to follow policy actions taken by other states, it would increase the number of over-the-counter medications and unlock other vital services such as testing for common infections like the flu. By updating state policies, countless lives can be saved and we can save millions on healthcare expenditure.
When Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently announced that state employees who work in congregate facilities would have to be vaccinated by October 4, the largest state employee union, AFSCME, released a statement chiding the governor. “We strongly oppose any effort to define them as part of the problem,” the powerful union claimed on behalf of those workers.
The spike in illegal border crossings from Mexico has reached truly extraordinary proportions, likely to make 2021 the worst year ever with 1.8 million illegal crossings projected at the current pace.
The chairman of the Regional Transportation Authority says suburban moderates and business leaders want him to run against Gov. J.B. Pritzker—and he hasn’t said no.
“But we have our own, milder, version of “re-education” camps that indoctrinate, all for a supposed good, evolved cause. We call our re-education camps public schools.
Here is one example, from Evanston, right outside of Chicago, of what first and second graders are now “taught” in school.”
Illinois’ flawed pension funding system weighs heavily on the ratings of some struggling local government ratings and legislative action to date has made little headway in solving the quagmire, S&P Global Ratings warns.
State legislative action consolidating suburban and downstate public safety funds and moving Chicago to an actuarial-based contribution help but they fall short of alleviating the pressures bearing down on municipalities to achieve better-funded ratios.
The Obama Center, if built, will stand as a fittingly hideous monument to the hubris of the out-of-touch, self-absorbed Obama crowd and to the misuse of government power, subsidized by Illinois and federal taxpayers, disfiguring one of the finest urban parks on the planet. Same for for his obscene party.
Pritzker could have used the independence that comes with bankrolling his own campaign to govern as a pro-business, centrist Democrat looking to spur economic growth so that his state could meet its liabilities and retain its tax base. Instead, he has continued down the path of high taxes and union control that will send even more citizens packing for other states. California and New York have more space for bad governance because they can afford to live off the capital of Silicon Valley and Wall Street; with no comparably powerful economic engine, Illinois is already in dire straits. In Pritzker,
“…another chance every day the sun comes up.”
Chicago government school teacher Ray Salazar: “So much of teenagers’ lack of success in stories about the pandemic and education that I’ve read remains grounded in whiteness..for white journalists and advocates who’ve lived life focused on the white supremacy characteristic of perfectionism, every failure means catastrophe.
Our Wirepoints article republished.
The Illinois Department of Public health took no time at all deciding last week to say it “fully aligns” with new masking guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control, including universal masking in schools, regardless of vaccination status. If you think that means the “science” behind the changes must be settled or clear, you haven’t been paying attention. Contradictions, confusion and unanswered questions from national health experts and media followed the CDC announcement, none of which is apparently of concern to IDPH.
The Syndicate was brutal, but it wasn’t random and ubiquitous like violence in the 21st century.
“As with the fraud involving fake claims, the administration of Gov. J.B. Pritzker is providing few details on the scope of the problem, as Pritzker gears up for a reelection battle with Republicans looking to question his record.”
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Mayor Lori Lightfoot took time out last weekend for the perfect place to cool off from the city heat: officiating at the wedding of Chris Kennedy, grandson of the late, great Robert F. Kennedy, and his bride, Erin Daigle, at the legendary Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Comment: Ricky Hendon does music, too. Check this out.
Some are reverting to safety measures of recent months, including returns to mask mandates and social distancing. Others are temporarily closing due to positive cases on staff or moving to allow in only vaccinated customers.
Andrea Zopp: “As deputy mayor under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, I saw firsthand the positive impact on neighborhoods of significant economic investments.”
An annual report from the state’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.
As if on cue, many COVID vaccine proponents from President Biden on down to Illinois columnists have resorted over the past week to insults to encourage vaccination. That won’t work. They would do their side and everybody else a favor if they focused, instead, on a bedrock principle of medical ethics and law in America and most of the world — one that’s been largely ignored: informed consent.
The mayor’s numbers have tumbled lately, and potential legal questions loom. Her team says it doesn’t matter. But with re-election time nearing, it may.
The Chicago Board of Education approved a federal aid-infused budget amid warnings of a financial cliff that could knock it off the track needed to win back investment-grade ratings.
Galesburg, IL School District 205 Superintendent John Asplund emailed staff members announcing a new ID badge policy. School staff now have the option to change from the customary white ID badge to a yellow ID badge to indicate that they have received the covid vaccine.
The budget is balanced, but the reason largely is $1.06 billion from Washington in COVID relief money, the federation said. And while more money is coming, that pot is scheduled to run dry in 2024.
That’s problematic because CPS is sharply increasing spending as a result of COVID and the new contract, with the Chicago Teachers Union today holding a press conference to demand a voice on how Mayor Lori Lightfoot spends $4 billion in federal aid that the CTU says CPS is “is sitting on.”
In a last-minute bid to derail a project that finally appears to have a lot of momentum, opponents of the proposed Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park have released some flashy schematics of how a reimagined center might instead be built elsewhere on the South Side.
Harvey, Illinois, hired Loop Capital Markets LLC as it pursues a debt restructuring that’s the cornerstone of a consent agreement with a group of its 2007 bondholders who had sued to intercept city revenue in order to resolve defaults.
The nation’s single family home prices rose 16.6% over the previous 12 month period. That’s an all time record for the country. The Case Shiller Chicago area index rose by 11.1%, which is the 103rd consecutive month of gains and slightly more than a 7 year record but, nevertheless, we still remain in last place.
Driven up by the loss of nearly half a million square feet of tenants, the office vacancy rate in the Chicago suburbs rose to 26.1 percent as of the end of June, according to data from real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle. That’s the highest mark JLL has tracked in its two decades of data and up from 25.5 percent at the end of the first quarter, which itself marked a record high.
For an employer to inflict CRT training on employees against their will can be legally problematic. And even in the public schools, promoting CRT while discriminating against expression of other viewpoints may violate the First Amendment.
Most of the membership on the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board has turned over recently, but they are sticking with the previous board on the imperative of amending Illinois’ constitutional pension protection clause. Bravo.
After two students were killed in off-campus shootings this year, the Hyde Park university faces a twin test that few of its rivals at the uppermost end of the higher education market must overcome.
Not even a global health crisis has slowed down Joe Monsueto’s recent streak of high-profile investments. Since buying the Chicago Fire FC—the city’s Major League Soccer franchise—in 2019, Mansueto has purchased the Waldorf Astoria Chicago hotel, bankrolled a $50 million office redevelopment in Humboldt Park and recently unveiled a plan to build a roughly $90 million training complex and headquarters for the soccer club on 32 acres in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood. His latest pursuit, though further from home, is just as attention-grabbing: He’s kicking tires on buying another soccer club overseas that could serve as an affiliate for the
Chicago leaders are searching for a company to build the city’s first casino, but big gambling operators are concerned that the government’s plans will be too costly to make the project feasible.
The city is calling for a megaresort with hotel rooms, meeting space and a surrounding entertainment district, according to a request for proposals issued in April. Chicago is hoping a casino will aid its
CPS planned as of Friday to ask the Board of Education as soon as next week to authorize rehiring the janitorial behemoth to clean all its school buildings, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
“To reach herd immunity against COVID-19 and rescue the economy from another downturn, employers must mandate vaccines…. The virus now is almost exclusively killing people who haven’t been vaccinated….Here in Chicago, only 51.7 percent of residents are fully vaccinated; statewide, that number rests at 50.3 percent. That’s a better level than many areas of the country, but still far short of the 70 percent threshold that’s widely considered to be the goal of public health officials seeking herd immunity.”
“It’s obvious: we cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” Lightfoot said during the press availability.
“Fundamentally, if you look at the West Side and you look at the problems, the opioid addiction that is really harming so many individuals, families and communities, the investments we have to make in human capital and the investments we have to make in infrastructure, those are why I spend so much time on the West Side,” the mayor added.
“States with the highest unemployment are all run by Democrats: Connecticut (7.9%), New Mexico (7.9%), Nevada (7.8%), California (7.7%), Hawaii (7.7%), New York (7.7%), New Jersey (7.3%) and Illinois (7.2%). Mere coincidence?” Shrinking populations, regulations and taxes and continuing the Democratic Congress’s $300 unemployment benefit bonus through Labor Day.
Deli Star was headquartered 35 miles southeast of St. Louis in Fayetteville, Illinois, for 34 years.
How many fibs can Gov. JB Pritzker pack in a ten-minute interview? Count ’em.
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
The matter is playing out in a broad debate about antitrust policy and what to do about tech companies, which may significantly change what America’s economy looks like. If not resolved in Washington, the issues may be thrust on states.
A Michigan company run by a former Chicago entrepreneur wants a federal judge to stop the lotteries that will determine who can sell recreational marijuana.
The most recent claim of the Julianna Zobrist could seal her reputation as the most ridiculed figure in Chicago since Steve Bartman.
The wholesale price of natural gas—in the Chicago area the key commodity that sets the price of power in addition to keeping homes and businesses warm in the winter—is double what it was a year ago. Futures contracts for delivery of the fuel months in advance show prices well above last winter’s persisting through the coming cold-weather months.
Essentially, the cost of all overassessed property values, each year, will now be passed onto all property taxpayers the next year.
Illinois does have one thing going for it: cheap and reliable electricity.
The state would lose that too under an 800-page climate bill Democrats in Springfield are contriving to jam through the statehouse. “The proposed energy legislation being circulated will be the largest rate hike on consumers and businesses in history,” a coalition of business groups wrote to Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker last month.
Independently drawn maps that enhance electoral competition would have gone a long way toward encouraging more candidates to run for Statehouse races and ultimately more voter engagement. But despite repeated promises not to, Pritzker signed into law another decade’s worth of gerrymandered maps earlier last month.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Keith Cooper, 73, died Wednesday at around 12:30 p.m. in the Hyde Park area after two people demanded he give them his car while he ran errands. They then repeatedly punched him in the head, police said, as witnesses stepped in to try to stop the attack.
The new General Assembly learned quickly. Why bother even with excuses when voters don’t care?
United could use the aircraft to connect hubs like Chicago O’Hare International Airport to smaller routes. Some of these routes have been cut by legacy carriers because they are too expensive.
Chicago Public Schools laid out a proposed $9.3 billion fiscal 2022 budget that directs $707 million towards capital and spends down about $1 billion of the district?s $2.6 billion of federal relief to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Should this column be serious or facetious? I honestly can’t decide, for reasons to be made clear.
Up from No. 30 in 2019.
Despite reportedly spending less and receiving support from the CARES Act and other grants, Chicago’s overall financial position worsened during the pandemic. Based upon the city’s fiscal year 2020 audited financial report, Chicago had a Taxpayer BurdenTM of $43,700, earning it an “F” grade from Truth in Accounting.
While Illinois’ political establishment is boasting about what it did with the federal cash gush, other states are cutting taxes or improving services.
Take Casten up on his claim that he believes content of character, not race, should be the test. What’s the content of his character?
The man arrested has 26 felony arrests and 7 convictions.
“The status quo cannot continue—and, considering the downward path we are on, it’s not even clear that the status quo is the worst possible scenario we face. We’re a nation that over time has been politically atomized, one faction set against the other, so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that our elected leaders are not much better than we are at figuring out what’s wrong and working together to fix it. But this is the job the mayor asked for and ran hard to win, and the credentials she brought to that campaign included her track record on the Police
A suburban Northbrook family says they’re devastated after their 18-year-old son, a standout football player who was awarded a full-ride college scholarship, was fatally shot while visiting relatives in Chicago.
Casten’s full video is linked here.
According to official records of the mayor’s schedule obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, Chicago’s mayor in just over two years in office has given exclusive, one-on-one interviews to the national MSNBC network an eye-popping 40 times. That’s once every 2½ weeks—and nearly twice the 22 sit-down interviews the mayor has granted in the same period combined to Chicago’s two major daily newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times.
At first glance, the results look quite good for a year made so challenging by the pandemic. But look further.
“You’re not just dealing with high water, you’re dealing with low water.” The New York Times has a new, similar column here.
Reaction has spanned the spectrum with market participants mostly saying it was deserved given the state?s fiscal progress and its COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Some said the upgrade was expected, a reason for the state’s narrowing spreads over the past few months. But they are quick to underline that’s the near-term view and chronic pension strains, past decisions that favored one-shots, an ongoing structural imbalance and out-migration weigh heavily on the state’s fiscal foundation.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
With more than a million passengers over July 4th, the airport could return to pre-COVID traffic next year, the city’s aviation chief says. And it’s on the cusp of a world-first, thanks to a huge runway redo.
“We recognize that people of color often feel unwelcome in gardens, forest preserves, and parks, a direct result of historical oppression and violence in outdoor spaces.”
“In Illinois, as in most states, jobs and services for adults with disabilities are woefully inadequate. We struggled to find programs and opportunities for the relationships that Lauren craved…. But 19 years ago, that all changed. Lauren moved to Misericordia, a remarkable community for people with intellectual disabilities near us on Chicago’s North Side.”
The people who teach our kids apparently expect you to forget that equations have two halves.
Angela Miller-May, chief investment officer, Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund: “Those visits to Africa were an experience…. We have the opportunity to boost investment and job creation in Africa while earning the returns that we need. Together, we control trillions of dollars. We can use that capital not only to benefit our stakeholders, but also to spur social and economic impact in emerging markets. We can do both. We can make money and do great things. We can do well, and we can do good.”
Dr. Allison Arwady is the Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. She called Friday with some comments on my June 28 column that was republished in the Chicago Tribune about continuing spending on contract tracing.
The CDC looked at which students had full-time in-person learning, hybrid learning or fully remote learning between September and April. Since January, the study found that in-person learning increased nationally among all groups of students, although white students continued to see the greatest gains in access.
Comment: A must-watch.
Experts say that gives organized groups like the Chicago Teachers Union, which calls mayoral control an “unmitigated disaster,” an edge.
“The latest complaint comes from Stacy Deemar, a white teacher in a K-8 school district in Evanston and Skokie, IIl., just north of Chicago. She alleges that teachers and students are required to participate in racially segregated antiracist exercises and that teachers are required to teach material depicting white people as inherently racist oppressors.”
Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) and her chief of staff were indicted Thursday on charges of conspiring to take bribes from construction contractors seeking city assistance for development project. Austin is the third active alderman facing federal criminal charges. Alds. Patrick Daley Thompson and Ed Burke face charges in separate scandals
A federal grand jury has indicted 34th Ward Ald. Carrie Austin, 72, and her chief of staff, Chester Wilson, on bribery charges. The U.S. attorney’s office says Austin conspired “to receive home improvements from construction contractors seeking city assistance” for a development project in her ward on the city’s far South Side. Austin faces four total counts, including lying to the FBI. Wilson faces similar bribery charges and one count of theft of government funds.
A new study gives Aurora homeowners and Chicago commercial landlords an extra reason to gripe about property taxes. Homes in Aurora are taxed at the highest effective rate among 53 U.S. cities included in the “50-State Property Tax Comparison Study,” an annual report published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence. Commercial properties in Chicago, meanwhile, are taxed at the second-highest rate after Detroit.
Comment: But here in Illinois, a gas tax hike goes into effect today and the new budget includes $650 million of new taxes styled as “loophole closings.”
Presented without comment.
The agency’s campus that houses McCormick Place Convention Center, a 2.6-million-square-foot facility that is the largest convention center in North America, and the Wintrust Arena has been shuttered since March 2020. One of two hotels on the campus just south of downtown Chicago remained open and the second recently reopened.
NYT columnist Bret Stephen: “Thoughtful liberals who think this is much ado about nothing should spend some time pondering how perfectly people like Ms. Lightfoot are now playing into right-wing stereotypes. They should also spend time wondering whether the ideal for which they have long fought — a society that, if not colorblind, can at least see past color — is being jeopardized by progressives who apparently can see only color. Whichever way, it shouldn’t be hard to see that trying to solve the old racism with the new racism will produce only more racism. Justice is never achieved by
S&P Dow Jones released the April CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price indices this morning showing that Chicago area single family home prices continue to soar. The 9.9% gain from last year is the highest appreciation in exactly 7 years and the 102nd consecutive month of annual gains.
Nationally, home prices increased at the fastest rate in the indexes record. The Chicago area is still in last place among the 20 metro areas tracked – the only metro stuck in the single digits.
We finally have a more comprehensive tally of the grotesquely oversized federal assistance dispensed under the guise of pandemic relief. The insanity of American fiscal and monetary policy is matched only by the gall of Illinois politicians who are using it to claim they’ve put Illinois on the right track.
“Cherry-picking statistics to minimize PR damage doesn’t help. It only creates the impression that the people at the very top of our public hierarchy don’t really understand the problem and that, ultimately, no one is capable of fixing it.”
“Morgan Stanley recaps over the weekend, “some states chose to end these benefits early – in about 10 states in the US, these benefits expired on June 19.” So what did the bank find? That not only were Republican states right all along to end benefits early, but that the primary – and biggest – reason for the unprecedented shortage in workers has been Joe BIden’s catastrophic socialist policy of having the government match or even surpass what the private sector is paying….”
Remember in May 2020 when Gov. JB Pritzker announced funding for an “army” of contact tracers to combat COVID-19? Well, armies of government workers aren’t easily disbanded, and we better hope our real army functions better than our contact tracers.
“The more we examine the bipartisan Senate infrastructure deal, the worse its details look. Consider its plan to pay for new spending in part with unemployment-benefit savings from GOP states that are recovering faster economically and ending the $300 federal bonus… Meanwhile, California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York mopped up 40% of benefit payments during the first quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The budget savings would be much greater if Democratic states ended their bonus, but they want to keep taking federal cash, even though it pays millions of Americans more not to work than to
See our own column on this linked here.
“A 1994 Gallup survey found that a larger percentage of African Americans — 58% — supported the [1994 Crime Bill] bill than whites at 49%. The only black senator, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois, supported it while only 12 of the 40 members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against it.”
Just 29% of people surveyed in the U.S. said they trust the news, compared to 45% in Canada and 54% in Brazil.
The COVID-19 pandemic notwithstanding, Cook County is running a budget surplus so far this year and will enter fiscal 2022 having to fill only a relatively modest $121 million gap.
In the first five months of 2021, home sales grew by more in the city than in the larger metropolitan area, according to Crain’s analysis of data released this morning by Illinois Realtors, a statewide business group. Another sign of the Chicago market’s strength is in data released today by the National Association of Realtors. Nationwide, home sales were down 0.9 percent in May from April, the fourth consecutive month of declines in nationwide sales. By contrast, Chicago metro-area sales were up 3.7 percent in May from April. In the city, sales were
Arizona, Michigan and Texas are showing how to create resilient systems for government retirees.
The latest on the expanding school of thought in journalism that openly says facts and objectivity don’t matter.
“The state affiliates that I support would be appalled at the stance that NEA Management is taking.”
Are they? What say you, Illinois Education Association?
Like small businesses across the country, most of the shops on Roscoe Street, a neighborhood shopping district on Chicago’s North Side, are eager to get back to normal after a year in which coronavirus restrictions held back foot traffic and limited in-person dining, shopping and services like haircuts. While business is coming back, small shops are now facing unexpected challenges, like shortages of workers, materials and capital that are preventing them from fully taking advantage of the state’s reopening earlier this month.
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
Gone is any excuse for silence. CRT is in our schools due only to a loud and aggressive minority concentrated in today’s political, educational and media establishments. It will be driven into the obscurity it deserves if the majority continues to speak up.
With a public price tag already exceeding $300 million, the 23-year-long effort to rejuvenate the area around the former public housing project is set to take at least 12 more years and could approach a total of nearly $1 billion.
Home price appreciation in Northwest Indiana exceeded that in the broader Chicago metro of which the Region is a part. The Chicago-Evanston-Naperville metro placed 90th nationwide with 9.6% growth in home prices last year.
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker (D.) signed a bill this week to change the titles for elected officials in the state from “alderman” and “congressman” to “alderperson” and “congressperson” to be more gender-inclusive.
“We see a lot of ‘hes’ and ‘hims’” in state statute, said the bill’s co-sponsor, State Representative Maurice West (D).
“The recent wrangling over the governor’s massive energy agenda in Springfield is a case in point, but it’s only the latest example of decision-making at the highest levels that includes everyone but those who will have to pick up the tab. No one on Team Pritzker, it seems, consistently stands up for the business community.”
“Part of me still believes in the healing power of spirited dialogue; still has faith in the capacity of the frank exchange of views to promote understanding, respect and possibly even lasting compromise.”
“Here’s something you can bet on: If politicians reach a deal, your electric bill will rise. Any legislation that passes almost certainly will include costly new subsidies for nuclear reactors and additional surcharges for renewable power development. Those proposals and others on the table would cost Illinois residents and businesses nearly $3 billion in the next five years alone.”
The town of Evanston, Illinois, is holding Pride and Juneteenth parades during the month of June, but canceling July 4 fireworks and Independence Day festivities.
Robin Rue Simmons, a former Evanston alderman, is perhaps at the vanguard of one fight for racial justice. Rue Simmons, whose term ended in May, led Evanston’s effort to implement reparations.She spoke with WBEZ’s Odette Yousef about how, on this Juneteenth holiday, she is thinking about the groundbreaking work she has embarked on.
Residents in one Chicago ward are “giving up” on calling the police as the city fails to protect them from violent crime, according to one city council member.
“Generational gang life isn’t just something that’s encouraged. It’s almost revered in some neighborhoods,” Lopez, whose constituents are about 67% Latino and 22% black, told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “If you really want to get to what is at the heart of a lot of this, it is gangs, and it is the borderline collapse of the family unit in
“It makes no sense, allowing adults, at higher risk of getting sick from the virus, to congregate unmasked as much as they want and not allowing the kids to take off their masks. … It’s upside down,” said Ted Dabrowski.
On May 16, she embarked on a hunger strike on behalf of one of the most ambitious and elusive goals of the U.S. racial justice movement: reparations — or making amends through payments or policy — to Black people for slavery. Bright-eyed and energetic during a recent interview, Rachelle Zola has made it to
As part of that strategy, CDPH said the department will allocate $9.6 million in COVID-19 relief funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish what officials call Healthy Chicago Equity Zones.
The fate of a $1.3 billion natural gas plant under construction in Grundy County is mainly what kept the Senate from acting yesterday on the most ambitious state energy bill in 25 years.
Will the exodus from big cities that occurred during the pandemic persist or reverse? The final verdict isn’t in, but here are some new insights.
DePaul University’s Jason Hill interviews Gad Saad on his book, The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas are Killing Common Sense.
The project is also putting significant dollars into the pockets of some Obama campaign and administration alumni and others who have landed jobs with the foundation. A tax document filed last year shows 16 people, including some former staff members, making six-figure salaries, ranging from
The sprawling energy bill lawmakers are set to vote on this week is being marketed in part as recompense for Commonwealth Edison’s admitted bribery scheme aimed at winning Springfield favors over nearly a decade. But the cornerstone of that effort—ending the annual formula-rate mechanism that’s allowed ComEd to dramatically increase its delivery charges over the years—opens the door to a new rate-setting process that easily could be more lucrative for ComEd than the current one.
Pritzker and the Illinois Attorney General have some explaining to do.
Give them credit at least for being open about what they intend: No diversity of opinion about race. Wokeness shall be mandatory under pending directives for University of Illinois faculty.
Included in the tax changes, the new budget decouples Illinois from the federal 100 percent bonus depreciation deduction. By raising the cost of doing business in Illinois, the changes will lower personal income and could reduce opportunity for the state’s idled workers.
“For faculty who are currently heavily engaged in DEI efforts,” continues the statement, “this is an opportunity for them to share what they have been doing. Their DEI efforts will be considered as a strength in the evaluation process.”
Pritzker isn’t yet ready to lift the original disaster declaration he made on March 9 of last year as Illinois reported 11 known cases of COVID, as many emergency orders like the state’s eviction moratorium are attached to it.
“Whether or not the GOP plan would have held up in court, it’s clear Republican lawmakers made at least some effort to create a redistricting commission not controlled by the legislature. We rate Pritzker’s claim Mostly False.”
“New IRS data compiled by research outfit Wirepoints illustrate the flight from high- to low-tax states.”
We’ve gotten the prologue to the high-fives and backslapping we’ll be hearing from Illinois lawmakers and much of the media over the new state budget.
Illinoisans should feel insulted that their elected officials figure the public is too stupid to see through this.
Recently, the Illinois legislature passed a bill to amend the Illinois Freedom to Work Act to expand the ban on noncompetes to a larger population of workers and provide certain rights to employees who are asked to sign noncompete and nonsolicitation agreements as a condition of employment. Pritzker is expected to sign that bill.
“No one in the mainstream media will acknowledge the possibility, but there are signs everywhere that the militant progressives currently running Chicago are willing to sacrifice even the safety and rights of women and children in their quest to destroy the criminal justice system… Is Chicago’s past the nation’s prologue?”
New Illinois homebuyers, particularly at the low-cost end, may end up realizing that they bought into a surge created artificially and temporarily by the Fed. When the Fed’s largess ends, Illinois’ traditional problems and their impact on home prices may return with a vengeance.
Residential developers grumbled when the City Council approved a tougher affordable housing ordinance in April. They’re happier with the Illinois General Assembly, which has just given them something they like: tax breaks. State lawmakers passed a sweeping housing bill with property tax incentives for developers that set aside some units in their projects for low- to moderate-income residents.
After dropping as low as 86.5 percent at the end of 2020, the downtown occupancy rate rebounded to 91.1 percent in the first quarter, according to Integra. That’s still a few percentage points below 2019 levels, but you won’t hear many landlords complaining.
Even in Illinois politics, Gov. JB Pritzker’s betrayal and dishonesty on fair maps is as shameless and destructive as anything before.
“Obama Foundation President Valerie Jarrett put a new price tag on the presidential complex — ‘less than” $700 million,’ up from a $500 million estimate.”
Beginning in about a year, under a surprise bill jammed through Illinois’ state legislature in the wee hours of the morning, just before the end of the recently closed legislative session, Lake County’s circuit court system will be redivided, with the addition of at least four new “subcircuits” and an unknown number of new judges to preside in them.
A conservative political organization has won a chance to proceed with part of its federal lawsuit accusing the Illinois State Board of Elections of violating federal law by limiting access to the state’s voter registration database, and restricting the group’s ability to audit the data for irregularities.
As a candidate for governor in 2018, Pritzker voiced support for an independent commission to draw maps and removing political considerations in placing the lines. He vowed to veto any map authored by politicians, such as these.
“When I wax nostalgic about moving back, I see the terrible condition of the city and the future expectations as it relates to the fiscal situation, and I am glad I left.”
“The progressive case also increasingly suffers from its own manifest failures in urban bastions like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago, which have been losing residents and attracting far fewer immigrants while suffering among the poorest job recoveries since the onset of the pandemic.”
The Illinois General Assembly approved the MPEA’s expansion debt service appropriation for fiscal year 2022, the agency said.
In addition, the General Assembly has passed a $30 million appropriation for the authority’s corporate purposes for FY22.” the MPEA said. “Of this amount, $15 million can be used for the Authority’s incentive grant program for FY22, and the remaining $15 million can be used for the Authority’s general corporate purposes.”
The bottom line is that most Illinois lawmakers pretended the hole in the unemployment fund doesn’t exist. It was left to be addressed by future measures unknown, but they almost certainly will include higher payroll taxes on employers.
What happened in Tulsa 100 years ago matters far less than what’s happening in Chicago today…. The left’s focus on the past behavior of whites, while ignoring the present behavior of blacks, might offer some people catharsis, and it might help groups like the NAACP or Black Lives Matter stay relevant. But where is the evidence that such an approach facilitates black upward mobility?”
San Francisco Bay area, Boston and Chicago all saw significant outflows, the data show. There’s no telling whether many of those moves will prove permanent, especially as the pandemic wanes in the U.S. and many companies eye a return to the office.
Pritzker gets a $650 million corporate tax loophole closed, the data center industry delays a bill it fought and the governor’s $42 billion budget is teed up for final passage, as lawmakers sprint to the end of the spring session.
They died to protect a democratic republic, essential elements of which are likewise simple – democratic rule bounded by certain unalienable rights.
Yet both of those elements are being unwound today. Should that continue, Americans will gradually come to see that the foundations of government legitimacy are gone. That looming threat should be our primary concern today, for if Americans conclude that their government no longer derives its powers justly – in the manner articulated by the Founders — then division, strife and violence far worse than we have seen in
Comment: Page is wrong to say this was a “tempest in a teapot.” We have heard from multiple, livid Loyola parents and alums to the contrary.
Under Illinois emergency orders, which Illinois courts allow to persist with no time limit, the list of trampled rights is almost as long as the Bill of Rights itself, including freedoms of association, travel, assembly, religion, property, equal protection and due process. Two ruling by Illinois courts this past week continued the trend.
Suppose you wanted to draft the most comprehensive K-12 school policy you could for mandatory thought, speech and conduct that complies with Critical Race Theory or wokism, as it’s more often called. You probably couldn’t top the Chicago Public School district’s pending Culturally Responsive Education and Diversity Policy.
CPS is going for broke and exposing, once again, the huge lies by the Illinois State Board of Education when it claimed that its new statewide teaching standards aren’t about political indoctrination, classroom curriculum or teacher evaluation. It’s expressly about all of that and much more,
A famous Supreme Court quip is that the U.S. Constitution isn’t a suicide pact, but what about the Illinois constitution? After years of fiscal recklessness, the state’s credit ratings are a notch above junk. Yet the politicians in Springfield now want to add collective bargaining to the Illinois bill of rights, putting union power on the same footing as due process and religious freedom.
A republication of our Wirepoints column. Having now passed in both the Illinois House and Senate, the amendment will now go to referendum on the November 2022 ballot.
“Let’s say you’ve been planning on leaving the Chicago area for another city. Well, yesterday’s release of the March CoreLogic Case Shiller home price indices by S&P Dow Jones says you’re basically screwed.”
Parents of students at a private Catholic school in Chicago are raising concerns that “woke” ideology that has infiltrated secular schools has also extended into Catholic schools.
“The three areas in which Lightfoot has failed most significantly are on budgetary matters, education, and crime”
Drafters of the proposal have made it deliberately and deceptively ambiguous and misleading, but also radically broad and open-ended. By creating a new constitutional right for themselves and their agenda they would be throwing a cluster bomb toward everything in their way. The amendment’s full impact may not be entirely certain but it would, for sure, clear a path to new, unimagined public union power.
A republication of our Wirepoints column.
“…think of Wirepoints as an archetype for a community that cares and drives social engagement.”
To see the latest deliberate extension of racial strife, check out the Chicago Sun-Times story on Stanley Moore of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.
Here are the key facts drawn from the article:
All Illinois high schools will be required to provide instruction in media literacy under House Bill 234. It passed the House and is poised for passage in the Senate.
The concept and most of the bill, which is reproduced below, seem harmless enough. But does anybody seriously expect the subject to be taught objectively?
Sen. Karina Villa (D-West Chicago) is the chief Senate sponsor. Young people are “vulnerable to persecution and misinformation,” she said, as reported by Capitol News Illinois. Sen. Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro), in a Senate hearing, questioned how objective schools could be in
“The University of Illinois board of trustees last week entered a no-confidence vote against America’s greatest Supreme Court Chief Justice. Starting in July, the John Marshall Law School in Chicago will be known simply as the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law…. Some progressives want to throw that out the window, and instead intimidate the Court into their desired policy outcomes. Maybe that’s the real reason they want us to forget Chief Justice John Marshall.”
Automatic ticket regimes have turbocharged many politicians’ lifestyles. Bribery scandals have enveloped automated ticketing regimes in Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Illinois, and elsewhere. The former top salesman for Redflex, one of the largest providers of red light cameras, testified that his company had “sent gifts and bribes to officials in at least 14 states.” (Redflex denied the allegation.) Last year, Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza condemned red light ticket regimes as “a program that’s broken and morally corrupt” and recommended ending them across the state.
“Beliefs aren’t facts.” That would be an unremarkable title for what is an unremarkable column except for who wrote it. In a new column in Persuasion, Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro took on the illiberal tyranny that permeates most of higher education.
Lightfoot, who hit the headlines earlier this week for refusing to do one-on-one interviews with white journalists, said: ‘Getting a vote of no confidence from that guy is a badge of honor, and I accept it.”
The task force report noted, “that despite Chief Justice Marshall’s legacy as one of the nation’s most significant U.S. Supreme Court justices, the newly discovered research regarding his role as a slave trader, slave owner of hundreds of slaves, pro-slavery jurisprudence, and racist views render him a highly inappropriate namesake for the Law School.”
Comment: This amendment would go much further than banning right-to-work. See our Quickpoint on that here.
After sitting empty for 18 years, a huge former Motorola factory in Harvard could become something that doesn’t exist in Illinois today: a big digital hub and warehouse fueled by the sun. A Canadian venture has agreed to buy the 325-acre campus in the McHenry County town, with plans to convert it into a solar-powered data center.
“Why does the mayor of Chicago think that it’s all right for her to announce that she won’t talk with journalists who are the wrong skin color? Well, I’m afraid that one of the many bad results of the Supreme Court’s penchant in the past for carving out exceptions to the laws against racial discrimination has been that — no matter how much the Court thinks it has qualified and limited those exceptions — it is assumed by most people that they are much broader than they are.”
Former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard accused Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday of harboring anti-White racism and called for her to step down over her remarks this week about the city’s media landscape.
In a classic off-hours news dump, Illinois legislative Democrats late Friday released their proposal as to how to reapportion state Senate and House districts for the first time in a decade.
Though Republicans instantly howled, the Democrats gave every indication of enacting the map as soon as next week, scheduling a series of formal hearings next Tuesday and Wednesday, May 25 and 26.
I truly don’t get this, as a matter of politics and policy.
As reported by Center Square, both the Illinois Senate and House are advancing resolutions that would put a constitutional amendment in front of voters to lock in union power. The amendment, if passed by three-fifths votes in each chamber and approved by voters, would prohibit municipalities and the state from ever taking any measure that would impair the ability of workers to collectively bargain over wages, hours, terms and conditions.
In other words, it would constitutionally ban any attempt to reform collective bargaining rules for
Remember when Gov. JB Pritzker warned of drastic tax increases or spending cuts if his proposed “fair tax” increase were to be defeated last November? And Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton said that all residents of the state could see an income tax hike of at least 20% if the fair tax went down?
Well, the tax went down in flames. And yet none of what they warned about happened.
Now lawmakers are at it again. Illinois House Majority Leader Greg Harris (D-Chicago) said Thursday, “If we do have to cut $1.3 billion. I
Instead of calling out the racism, some in Chicago media used it to fake deep conversations on race—the kinds they learned about in White Fragility. In other words, they were too terrified to
The Tax Foundation this month published what it calls a “landmark comparison” of corporate tax costs in all 50 states. It’s certainly the most comprehensive study of its kind and was done in collaboration with KPMG, the accounting, tax and advisory firm. The full study is here and includes lots of interactive tools and comparisons.
The study calculates and analyzes the tax burdens of eight model firms: a corporate headquarters, a research and development facility, a technology center, a data center, a shared services center, a distribution center, a capital-intensive manufacturer, and a labor-intensive manufacturer. Each firm
The former UK Independence Party leader and architect of the country’s “Brexit” from the European Union has been touring the U.S. and recently visited Chicago. ” In Chicago,” he said, “I saw a city that was a complete and utter ghost town. The political differences
State Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford accepted campaign contributions from a Loretto Hospital contractor and Caribbean travel as part of her board duties.
Important, reasonable questions are left unanswered, so the state will probably go on borrowing with no concern about them.
“We must once again transform this challenging land into traversable terrain. And we can do it by not only building new transportation networks, but by building new bridges to equality and prosperity.”
“This is about economic inclusion of African American-owned businesses in the U.S. economy,” said Allen, Founder/Chairman/CEO of Allen Media Group. “McDonald’s takes billions from African American consumers and gives almost nothing back. The biggest trade deficit in America is the trade deficit between White corporate America and Black America, and McDonald’s is guilty of perpetuating this disparity. The economic exclusion must stop immediately.”
Our own story on this decision is here.
“The limp progressive response to rising crime and disorder has benefited Texas and Florida.”
And as convenient as it may be for Randi and her locals, including the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), to forget their role in this response, it’s worth revisiting here. When school districts tried to reopen last fall, the unions met them with a display that could have been mistaken for farce. In Washington DC, the union filled body bags and dumped them in front of district headquarters. In Chicago, the CTU threatened to strike, made their members sit outside during winter in Chicago to continue remote learning instead of walking into half-empty buildings, made an interpretive dance video, and suggested
As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times Monday, Gov. JB Pritzker intends to keep expanded unemployment benefits, unlike 18 states that have curtailed them to get people back to work.
Pritzker made only two points, according the the article.
First, “There are people who are afraid to go back to work … and those are legitimate reasons people might want to remain on unemployment,” Pritzker said. “I don’t want to pull the rug out from under people who have certainly legitimate reasons for needing unemployment.”
Does he think the vaccine is effective and safe or not? He claims
“In his recent column, Joe Cahill asserts that the Consumer & Climate First Act that has been introduced in Springfield is not good for consumers because it doesn’t require ComEd to compensate them as a result of its past conduct. What that bill and others do is require an audit of ComEd’s past work on the power grid, the idea being that we should first evaluate the work before we claim it was bad.”
This headline and link are from a national source 12 months ago:
This one is from last week:
What changed? A torrent cash from the federal government and the Federal Reserve Bank, which are now joined at the hip. We wrote about it here as have many others. Staggering, indeed. Staggering madness. You will pay for it either through taxes or inflation.
-Mark Glennon
Let me get this straight. You want me to invest in a business that thumbs its nose at half its addressable market, do I have that right?
Illinois’ borrowing through the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility provided a lifeline for critical services during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the state should be allowed to use its incoming federal coronavirus relief money to pay it off, Comptroller Susana Mendoza tells the federal government.
Three men, including a well-known rapper, were shot Saturday morning at a River North parking garage, according to Chicago police and multiple sources. The incident involved a group of men who were “all shooting at each other,” according to a police spokesperson who cited preliminary information.
Some 1,600 jobs are being cut at a Jeep Cherokee factory in northern Illinois as automakers continue being plagued by the global shortage of semiconductors.
The state and federal governments have granted $67 million for a project at City Water, Light and Power aimed at capturing carbon dioxide from coal before emissions reach the air.
Rep. Chuy Garcia, now in his second term in Congress, will introduce legislation today to create job opportunities for young people from historically disadvantaged communities like the ones he represents in Chicago.
All year long, public school officials in Chicago and across the country have worried about high school students who have been chronically absent and are getting Fs during pandemic remote learning.
Last Wednesday alone, House committees approved 107 Senate bills for floor action and passed 227 during the full week. Senate committees approved 100 House bills last week. The biggest problem with this haphazard flood of bills is that many require mandates for additional state spending.
With vaccines now available to everybody in America age 17 and over, two numbers may be of most interest: How many vaccinated people have died from the virus and how many of those under age 17 have died.
You probably will be surprised at how extraordinarily low both numbers are:
-Of the 115 million Americans fully vaccinated, 223 have subsequently died.
-Of the 73 million Americans under age 17, 287 deaths have been COVID-related.
Think about that in terms of probability:
-The chances of dying even if you were vaccinated to date have been .0002%. That’s two ten-thousandths of one
Illinois Treasurer Susana Mendoza recently wrote to the credit rating agencies asking for an upgrade, as reported this week. Primarily, she cited progress in reducing the state’s bill backlog, which is now down to about $4 billion, a number that probably can be considered pretty close to normal.
It doesn’t hurt to ask. Maybe the credit raters will agree; they have their own standards and I can’t speculate on their response.
But for ordinary Illinoisans, here’s the real question: Has the state really done anything to fix its structural deficit problems?
Well, the state
McDonald’s is using its packaging to promote COVID-19 vaccination. Gov. JB Pritzker tweeted this yesterday:
Obesity is a huge and under-reported part of the COVID story. Seventy-eight percent of patients hospitalized for COVID have been overweight or obese. In countries where less than half of the adult population is classified as overweight, the risk for death from COVID-19 was about a 10th of the levels in countries with higher shares of overweight adults.
Interestingly, obesity may even increase the risk of getting infected in
The Illinois Senate passed a widely reported bill to ban hair discrimination in Illinois schools after spending plenty of time on it – two hearings in its Education Committee on different versions.
But on Wednesday, when the measure arrived in the House, it was quickly assigned to the Rules Committee, which usually means a bill is dead for the time being.
Maybe somebody in the House had the sense to see Illinoisans would prefer that their lawmakers spend their time on other problems. The bill had started to catch national attention. An article on it in People
Chicago and Illinois will make their case with the Treasury Department to alter American Rescue Plan guidance that in its current form would scuttle plans to repay COVID-19 related borrowing with the aid.
The Treasury’s eagerly awaited guidance lays out in 151 pages how local and state and tribal governments can use their share of the $350 billion of ARP funds.
“Is this really where we’re going to land in dealing with the situation? A problem was created when the federal government rushed to give away a bunch of “free money” without putting any caps on the benefit to prevent it from exceeding what workers were making before Uncle Sam shut down their employers’ businesses. So now we’re going to address the problem by… giving away more free money? You’re telling me we’ve reached the point where we will literally have to bribe people to go back to work.”
Going easy on bad behavior makes life difficult for those students who are in school to get an education.
Schools were pressured to discipline students, or not, based on race rather than behavior, and many administrators and teachers obliged.
In New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—the nation’s three largest school systems—reductions in suspensions and expulsions were followed by an uptick in bullying and other disruptive behavior. Students and teachers alike have reported feeling less safe. Fighting, gang activity and drug use have increased.
Nearly a year after Northwestern Pritzker School of Law lost its dean to a role within the broader university, it has found a successor: Hari Osofsky, an energy transition and climate change scholar who is currently dean of Penn State Law.
Both Chicago and the State of Illinois had earlier indicated use of some of the money to reduce debt.
“Illinois’ state-level pension crisis gets all the attention, but there’s another crisis brewing right in people’s backyards,” said Ted Dabrowski, president of Wirepoints, a fiscal policy group based in Chicago.
The group is independent, but has advocated for changes to Illinois’ pension system — pushing for a move for new employees to a 401(k)-style system that would suspend cost-of-living increases until pensions are fully funded. It
“Some of the smartest people I ever saw were in trading pits. They might have had a college education, and they might not have. There weren’t a lot of Ivy-educated or elite school-educated people on the floor. Not too many MBA’s either…. Most of us didn’t respect people from that part of the world, and they didn’t respect us either.”
Gov. JB Pritzker has proposed cutting the current 75% tax credit to 40% for the Invest in Kids Scholarship Tax Credit Program. It’s for low-income families who send their kids to private K-12 schools.
It’s the only thing close to school choice that Illinois has, which is why teachers’ unions despise it. There seems to be no opposition to the program from anybody except teachers’ unions and officeholders who answer to them.
Illinois schools are already getting a $5 billion grant this year from the federal government under the new American Rescue Plan, and Pritzker <a href="https://chicago.chalkbeat.org/2021/5/6/22423715/gov-pritzker-reverses-course-on-flat-illinois-school-budget-with-pledge-for-350m"
Illinois is currently in Phase 4 of its reopening plan. It is preparing to enter the “Bridge Phase” this week, which are in the right column on the state’s chart below.
What sense does this make when the vaccine is now readily available to everyone over the age of 16 and those who impose this rule say the vaccine is safe and effective? That leaves only those under 16, but as of May 5, just 282 deaths involving COVID have been recorded in the U.S. since the pandemic began for those age 0 to
In a near-unanimous action, the House voted 114-0 to approve a bill sponsored by Rep. Mark Batinick that would impose a 12-month ban on any board member of a public pension system going to work for that system or any of its vendors. Four representatives did not vote.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Demand is so intense that Illinois, the only state to tap the Federal Reserve’s pandemic emergency-lending facility, recently sold three-year bonds at yields near 1%.
According to a Friday article in Instapundit, Northwestern University is trying to impose a “critical-studies woke dean” on the law school, and the faculty is fighting back.
The nominee for dean is Hari M. Osofsky, apparently submitted by the university’s provost. A hastily scheduled meeting and vote by the law school faculty is set for Monday, the Instapundit article indicates. The abbreviated process seems to be as much of an issue as Osofsky, about whom I
“Donald Trump should be banned from any form of social media other than scrawling on bathroom walls. And even then he should be made to wash it off when he gets caught,” said the Chicago Sun-Times in an editorial last week.
They apparently think a permanent ban should be a sure thing. “As long as the former president lies about everything, Facebook may continue to ban him,” they wrote. “And he will always lie about everything.” The Sun-Times is not alone. CNN, for example, published at least two opinion pieces calling for a permanent social media
“While some have become centers for concentrated affluence in the modern city, others have become centers for economic and social ills. Chicago is a case study in these patterns. Last year it led the nation in homicides. It recorded another 195 this year through May 2, up 35 from the same period in 2020.”
How about we expand preferences in hiring and promotion to base them on any characteristic whatsoever that might disadvantage somebody, regardless of whether the characteristic is inherited or self-inflicted? That’s in a bill moving full steam ahead in Springfield and it’s a doozy. It’s House Bill 3914, the Positive Action Act. It already passed the Illinois House and is moving in the Senate.
While Illinois teachers unions fought to keep many public schools closed, notably in Chicago, many private schools reopened for in-person learning, often adopting a hybrid model. Now, the teachers unions want to give the state authority to mandate one set of health standards that all schools, public and private, must follow.
“If Bill HB 2789 becomes law, it empowers the state to impose new health mandates on in-person learning in ALL schools, including nonpublic.”
We’ve written for years about why government budgets and claims of “balanced budgets” are fraudulent. The problem is that budgets count borrowed money and asset sales as if they are income, and ignore growing debts like pension liabilities.
Testimony has been taken recently on this issue by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, which is finally focused on it. Lots of Illinoisans and big names testified to the same criticisms we have.
Video is linked here. You can view the individual testimony at the time links here– 0:00 Sheila Weinberg, 34:45 Bill
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Two bits of good news, for a change.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot told the city’s bond investors today that she wants to “force a solution” to Chicago’s pension crisis, which she said is the city’s biggest problem and is “unsustainable.” “Springfield can’t keep doing things to us….[This is] a classic unfunded mandate, she said.” Details are in stories by the Sun-Times and Crain’s.
Yes! Forcing a solution is long overdue, and the buck stops in Springfield. Let’s hope she is serious and that the can-kicking ends. If she really wants change, she should be leading
In a speech to potential investors, the mayor combines optimism about the city’s future with a dire warning.
Assume, for purposes here, that the prevailing orthodoxy is right – that COVID vaccines are highly effective and safe. Who, then, is being protected by masking and other remaining restrictions? Adults who choose not to be vaccinated.
The vaccine is now readily available to everyone over the age of 16. That leaves only those under 16, but you may be shocked by how low the risk of COVID is to them. As of May 5, just 282 deaths involving COVID have been recorded in the U.S. since the pandemic began for those age 0 to 17. With
It took decades for a consensus to form about the folly of federal policy at the outset of the Great Depression. This time, the reverse blunder and its consequences won’t take long to figure out. They are in plain view already.
Chief executive officers from across the country have once again ranked Illinois as one of the worst states to do business. For the eleventh year in a row, Illinois placed 48th in the 17th annual Best and Worst States for Business survey from the Chief Executive Group. The Connecticut-based business media company surveyed 383 CEOS from companies with annual revenues between $50 million and over $1 billion.
The exchange operator CME Group Inc. said it would permanently close most of its open-outcry trading pits in Chicago, ending one of the world’s last vestiges of old-fashioned floor trading.
No state has seen more gun sales this year than Illinois. Federal authorities there have completed nearly 4.3 million gun background checks since January, including more than 955,000 submitted last month. That’s more background checks than the next five states combined.
As a federal moratorium gets set to expire, experts fear many homeowners could lose their residences.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has lost key players in the police reform arena as she grapples with fallout from multiple CPD controversies, blown consent decree deadlines and simmering debate in the City Council over civilian oversight of the police.
Senate President Harmon says his intention is to enact an all-elected plan this spring, perhaps after a transition period—the mayor’s objections notwithstanding.
This has nothing to do with health and safety. It is yet another power grab by teachers unions intent on destroying private competition in any way they can.
“Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker campaigned in 2018 against partisan gerrymandering, saying he would ‘pledge to veto’ any 2022 map drawn by the state Legislature…. Gov. Pritzker now says he’ll be satisfied with a map drawn by his legislative allies. In a recent press conference he walked back his veto pledge and scored Republicans for
The Chicago Teachers Union went so far as to tell their members not to reveal if they’ve received the vaccine to thwart school reopening plans.
Comment: This project has taken longer than it took to build the Hoover Dam or win WWII.
America’s youngest students are being bombarded with classroom activism and indoctrination that is inappropriate not only developmentally but for public school systems in general.
Obstructing reporters who cover the government is just about the last thing we need is, so it’s no surprise that the Illinois General Assembly does just that.
The CEO Magazine article is linked here.
“I mean, really, I’m living the life over here.”
Comment: This is a good place for our occasional reminders that our links to third party sources includes those we do not agree with, as here. This is precisely the time that we most need standardized tests — to measure how much damage was done to students over the past year.
“People like [Adam] Kinzinger delivering their message do not seem like radicals or extremists. They seem reasonable. Kinzinger has learned this tactic and executed this persona with perfection, yet his allegiances are anything but reasonable.”
Statistics included in a news release from the Chicago Police Department reveal that a troubling rise in gun violence this year shows little sign of slowing down. The city had five fewer homicides this April than last April, but the number of shooting victims increased to 299 from 225.
Some of the post office’s staffing problems — mainly when it comes to clerks — existed before COVID, which only worsened those shortages.
Gary Rabine is a candidate for governor.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is facing a political buzzsaw on the subject of political mapmaking, that once-every-decade, winner-takes-all process where the party in charge of the legislature gets to draw new political boundaries.
By Stephanie Farmer, associate professor of sociology at Roosevelt University.
Cops say masked teens with a thirst for violence and joyrides are terrorizing the city. An examination of arrests reveals a narrative built on shoddy data and anecdotal evidence.
“The governor’s highly anticipated bill to scrub the carbon from Illinois’ power sector is expansive to say the least. And it also appears expensive…. Money for all these major initiatives would come from the same source: business and residential ratepayers across the state.”
Why are there any remaining restrictions on vaccinated people?
A 2019 complaint filed by an Illinois public school teacher led to a finding that as part of a year-long course on equity and diversity, seventh- and eighth-graders participated in a white privilege awareness exercise that required them to remain “in silence” and with “eyes lowered” as they responded to a facilitator’s prompts. About a dozen lawsuits and administrative complaints have been filed since 2018, with another wave planned this summer by conservative public interest law firms and private attorneys. The common thread of these legal challenges is the inescapable logic that making accommodations for critical race theory will erode
The nation’s single family home prices rose 12.0% over the previous year.
Alas, the Chicago area once again trailed the other 19 major metro areas tracked by Case Shiller with a mere 8.6% annual appreciation rate for single family homes.
A reprint of our Wirepoints article.
Basecamp, a Chicago-based company that’s developed a reputation for its tech counter-culture ways, instituted new policies this week that ask employees to refrain from engaging in conversations about political and societal issues while at work.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker today gave his strongest signal yet that, regardless of what he said in the past, he’s now prepared to sign new legislative and congressional district maps drawn without significant Republican input.
Trustee UMB NA, which represents holders of the $170 million of debt issued for the Better Housing Foundation projects, reported that it is working to connect bondholders with a securities litigation firm this spring. Whether that leads to a lawsuit is yet to be decided.
“I’m moving back because after a nightmare of a year, Chicago is poised for a breakout decade. And I want in.”
It’s all there. All of what idealogues are confident they have now achieved in converting education into political dogma, complete with laughter about how they have captured the education establishment.
A republication of our Wirepoints article.
Illinois’ political establishment is far out of touch with the general public on the racial dogma now forced on students from kindergarten through college. Yet a stunning two-thirds of Illinoisans say they don’t speak up, thereby ceding control to an intolerant, extremist minority.
They got $1.5 billion in fees for handling the federal PPP loans. BMO Harris topped the list — at least $232 million in fees — helping it have ‘a good quarter’ in early 2021.
The top executives at Blue Cross of Illinois’ parent company got big raises last year, as health insurance corporations emerged largely unscathed from the economic fallout of the pandemic. Adding insult to injury, insurers are overpricing premiums in the individual market, so much so that they had to return money—$2.1 billion—under the rules of the Affordable Care Act.
Paul Schimpf, former Illinois state senator and Republican candidate for Illinois governor: “In addition to a fundamental misunderstanding of the science, Pritzker’s desire to ignore other elected officials and go it alone on the pandemic will go down as one of his greatest leadership failures.”
“I believe the officer who shot the 13-year-old should not be charged with a crime nor treated like a criminal nor be disciplined, though it’s clear he made a grievous and fatal error.”
“It’s time to once again expose why we believe many parts of the numerous Executive Orders the Governor has issued are outside his authority.”
One historical work that students are upset about is the Bible.
Former IL state rep Jeanne Ives: “Legislative leaders and Gov. J.B. Pritzker know that if this program had been debated separately, outside the capital bill, it would have failed. Illinoisans should tell their legislators to end this program immediately.”
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![a man wearing a mask: Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot arrives at Wrigley Field on April 16, 2020 in Chicago Illinois. Wrigley Field has been converted to a temporary satellite food packing and distribution center in cooperation with the Lakeville Food Pantry to support ongoing relief efforts underway in the city as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"80","h":"58","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1ecOWT.img?h=575&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size3column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"45","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1ecOWT.img?h=450&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"},"size2column":{"load":"default","w":"62","h":"45","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1ecOWT.img?h=450&w=624&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"}})
