-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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God bless and keep the officers who continue to serve and perform a dangerous and thankless job.
Perhaps decisions to provide sanctuary for the undocumented together with defunding the police, eliminating bail bonds, releasing felons and ignoring crime have been just what was needed to awaken the voters. Our officials had to destroy the city in order to save it.
Incompetence takes months to show itself and years to fix. Is this the year?
Watch some movies from the urban 1970’s. Dirty Harry, French Connection, Serpico, etc. The cities are gritty, blighted, boarded up, full of crimes, derelicts and drug addicts. The voters didn’t turn into Democrats. They left the cities.
Chicago isn’t suddenly going to turn Republican. Rather, Chicago is staring down a generation of blight. River North cannot be saved but it will be transformed, and not in a good way, likely into some sort of vice paradise with a casino, likely drug dispensaries everywhere, lots of sex trafficking, guns, some futuristic dystopian future.
Almogordo, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Pig farms. Dust bowls. Lots of reasons to increase one’s distance from a nuisance or nasty neighbors. Once in a while you score a condemnation award, but most of the time you just suck it up and go … if you have the means. Sometimes the government pays you — usually because you stayed too long and got blown over. Often, we just expect too much … like teachers relying on pensions that may not be paid. Or water that our wells can’t reach. The government can’t or won’t fix the stuff that can’t… Read more »
When into his nineties George Burns would say “I don’t invest in green bananas.” Long-term goals at some point starts to mean thinking about next week.