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.
I always laugh whenever one of the aldermen or mayor get on the boob tube and proclaim that they are going to “help” businesses. Especially the favored “small businesses.” They really don’t care, but they know that you like to hear these words, because they know YOU like your neighborhood businesses. In truth, they send out inspectors and harass businesses constantly, but especially when the businesses are down. Aldermen use it as a chance to try to put under a business whose owner they don’t like, and the mayor is afraid of any blowback from noncompliance. Aldermen make… Read more »