Chicago Weekly Crime Tracker – Wirepoints
May 14, 2024
95 Comments
Weekly crime statistics from the Chicago Police Department: Report through 5/12/2024.
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Comment: Wirepoints readers will have fun counting the errors, lies and distortions in this.
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May 10, 2024
31 Comments
Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently promised electric car maker Rivian $827 million in taxpayer subsidies when he shouldn’t have given the company a penny. The question is, was it negligence or something more?
This article has big enough holes to drive a JB through. They truly lost me when they quoted Klonsky. Any retired teacher applying a couple years worth of unused sick days to his service years credit and participating in pension spiking should not be commenting on pension ethics. Then they mention AFT’s Weingarten, who’s own teacher union ironically shows $34M in Accrued Post Retirement Benefits on their financial statements. I wonder if union members ever talk about the union employees’ unfunded pensions?
“… the pension crisis myth” Wow.
Also, “in 2014 … the average pensioner … received $32,000 per year.” Pull up a Chicago suburban school district list of teacher salaries. The retiring teachers’ pensions are much higher than $32K. Then, multiply the much higher pension by around 2.5 to determine their pensions if they live to be in their 80s. Yep, there’s no pension crisis.
We’ve written often about those “averages” that include folks who only worked part of their careers in that pension system, or part time. It’s so misleading it can only be called a lie.
Yes, but here’s another aspect of that topic that I’ve never seen you address as far as I can recall. Any public employee retiree in IL who also had employment elsewhere under Social Security receives only a fraction of what’s otherwise due for all those SS contributions from his/her wages. The argument you bring up periodically is that those who worked under Social Security also draw retirement income from that source. Well, yes, but it may be something like only roughly half of what it would otherwise be without also having that IL public employee retirement income. So, that person… Read more »
You are right that we haven’t written about that particular issue. I’d like to know more about it and see it quantified. But we have written very often that there are haves and have-nots in this system, and that its rigged in favor of senior, full carreer, tier one workers, to the detriment of those who change jobs. In particular, we have emphasized the unfairness of vesting rules, and the research done on that by Teacherpensions.org. Those penalized by what you say, if it’s material, may indeed be among the have-nots. We’ve also written that when the haircuts come, which… Read more »
This depends on what percentage of lifetime earnings was subject to social security and what wasn’t (aka substantial earnings). If you paid Social Security tax on 30 years of substantial earnings, you are not affected by WEP. I do agree there are probably some middle-ground folks that probably take a somewhat bigger hit than others. But I’m not going to feel sympathy for some teacher who tutors a bit on the side or a policeman with his hot dog cart outside the stadium or someone who spent 8 years at a middling office job before moving the the public sector.… Read more »