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A 2018 J.B. Pritzker campaign volunteer who was indicted last year for allegedly ripping off the Illinois State Police Merit Board is now at the center of a campaign tussle over whether she should face additional charges — a question that has roiled the Nov. 8 race for attorney general.
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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It’s the work.of.his.life. KR is a joke. Just another rent-seeker looking to live off of his role in Illinois government.
Justice is truly blind in Illinois. Just read up on Jussey, Eddie or Kenneth Johnson’s punishment for their crimes and ask yourself if the typical Wirepoints reader would be treated differently?
It’s just so sad that when we wake up on Wednesday morning in Illinois, we’re going to find that we’re in for four more years of this sort of thing. Fraudulent, which is to say criminal, acts committed by state employees, Medicaid & SNAP beneficiaries and people stealing Unemployment benefits, that disappear into a murky swamp of Illinois courts and administrative law hearings, where no one is actually held accountable. Except, of course, the taxpayers who pay for it all. But, then, since most of them keep bending over in the voting booth and pulling the, “Thank you sir, may… Read more »
The article got its knickers in a twist portraying AG as prudently avoiding conflicts by staying out of it…no mention of AG personal intervention to get qui tam lawsuit tossed by friendly judge.
True. You have to read the article very carefully to come to it’s true conclusion, which is that Raoul has stonewalled any investigation of the workers’ comp claim. A fair article would have been clear about that and, as you said, would have emphasized his direct opposition to the whistleblower claim.
Is this a case that could make it to Supreme Court? (After the Illinois State Supreme Court grants its rubberstamp denial of appeals, of course). The question is: taxpayers have zero recourse for torts by corrupt government officials, when corrupt government officials are granted power to refuse to act, then squelch civil suits at personal whim. The very nature of qui tam is that the government itself declined to act to recover funds stolen from citizens, and citizens must do so on their own behalf. If the government encourages corruption within its ranks, and can forbid judicial review, citizens truly… Read more »
I’m starting think that IL may be in play for the (R)’s…
Normally the (D)’s just ignore these types of allegations, with the help of the MSM of course…
But the IL (D)’s appear to be very nervous about Tuesday…
There’s no publicly released polls for Casten, Underwood or Foster, districts they all won basically by D+8 to D+14 in 2020. But the districts throughout the state have been redrawn as a gerrymander to squeeze even more Democrat seats out of a declining population. Rumor is that the map drawers, in total secrecy, used Trump era voting patterns as the basis for the maps. Big, big mistake for them. The big swing independents away from D’s and towards R’s, 2-1 in some areas/polls, really throws a huge monkey wrench in these maps. D+8 districts become R+1 or R+2 with the… Read more »
I agree that gerrymandering is the problem, but in different words. The state is a tough state to gerrymander, so further updates promise to get diminishing returns for the democrats. They will have close races or be forced to cheat some other way in order to get more democrats elected.
Cheating is a real concern. They keep repeating that voting is safe and secure, yet, there’s never been an external audit of any contested Illinois race. It’s almost as if the dirty little secret is that voter fraud in IL is the perfect crime for which you’ll never be caught. It doesn’t explain the Rauner win, of course, which shouldn’t have happened. But the current talking point is that ‘democracy is on the ballot’ and if you elect Republicans then Democracy is over. And if you were a Democrat clerk, in a really blue county, and you truly believed Democracy… Read more »
I sure would like to see it. The extreme progressiveness needs to be reigned in. If the Republicans do indeed win they can’t view it as a mandate. That’s the Dem playbook. Republicans can save this country by governing for the masses, not the extreme.
Spot on. My mind is already spinning with the warnings that should go to the GOP if they win big.
We’ll see if the red wave spills over into Chicagoland…It seems like it might…I’m cautiously optimistic…
Yep, exactly correct. We need to present ourselves as the party of the adults in the room, not just the shrill group of kids from the other side of the Balkanized playground that our political environment has turned into.