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“I’d like to think my husband and I have become partners in knowing everybody counts, especially fighting for the voiceless and the powerless,” says the first lady, who chuckles about “their vastly different backgrounds growing up." She has spent the past four years curating a collection of Illinois art and historic furniture for the newly rebuilt governor’s mansion, reviving the state’s poet laureate and arts program and, without fanfare, visiting prisons to interview incarcerated women throughout Illinois.
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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Do not go on a cruise ship and let both of them stand on the same side of the vessel
You know who does not count in IL? Suburban non-public union taxpayers who have for decades experienced injustice and broken promises from IL politicians, who put themselves and public unions ahead of the vast majority of IL taxpayers.
IL-#1-2 in overall tax burden; #1-2 in public corruption; and #51, despite all its assets, in fiscal condition (behind Puerto Rico). Plus kids can’t perform at grade level and rampant crime. Why?
MK and JB look like siblings.