-- 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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Has anybody thought to ask the Asian community their thoughts on this new merit based system.
Let those Democrats bellyache until they are shrill. My brother was working at Bell Labs Naperville in the late 70’s urged me to apply for a technical staff position. I never got a callback from his supervisor because I was disqualified neither being Latino nor black by the new rules according to him. What ever happed to merit? I happen to be the son of a WW2 non-black minority American who grew up in poor, violent South Shore-Woodlawn, saw National Guard and US Airborne tanks rolling on my street and happened to lose my dad at 14yr. My family did… Read more »
I am hoping there will be class-action lawsuits against large company’s that effectively instituted racial discrimination for diversity quotas over the last 20 years. Lot of people damaged. So much discrimination for hiring and promotion preferences in the American workplace it seems. All very much illegal.
The CTU and Teachers Unions nationally are the most exposed with this ruling. The massive failures of Teachers Unions and especially CTU – where only 1 in 6 kids overall function at grade level – are finally the focus. The complete and total malfeasance of CTU’s highest paid teachers in the nation to educate black kids is one of the most abysmal failures in history. School choice is the obvious and necessary solution. The end of CTU’s monopoly of education funding is nigh.
Lt. Governor Stratton statement“We cannot go back in the journey for justice and opportunity for all…”. Who is all? It certainly isn’t the Asian kid that scores higher than all the other applicants but not high enough to overcome the hurdle put in place by this policy.
so hilarious to see the Left get upset beause they can’t discriminate anymore….treating people fairly, equally, under the Law is in the US constitution….Diversity, Equity and Inclusion…Diversity does not include asians and whites….Equity is giving things away based on skin color (racial communism), and Inclusion does not include whites or asians….who would have thought it ?
It’s not about treating people fairly, it’s about power. They use affirmative action to give away plum positions of power and seats at prestigious universities to other leftists who in the future will support their values. Every position that goes to an affirmative action appointment is one less place for a potential conservative. They know it is not fair, everyone knows it is not ‘fair’ but it was never about fairness, it’s about power.
Look at the two affirmative action appointees on the supreme court, Jackson and Sotomayer. They don’t belong there. They don’t. There are plenty of other smarter people, of all races, who are intelligent enough to be there. But they are wildcards. The left wants progressive consistency. Sotomayer, Jackson are consistently progressive even when their arguments make no sense, and have no historical precedent. Kagan will occasionally side with the R’s on the bench, and that’s a huge NO NO. Every decision by a leftist appointee must ALWAYS tow the party line. There is no independence. That’s why they put the… Read more »
I haven’t yet heard to many utterances from Jackson, but the Latina Sotomayer is a blithering idiot based on her rants-w/o a doubt the least qualified.
Jackson wrote the dissent.
Jackson spoke more words in her first 8 arguments than any other judge. She has quite a bit to say, and it mostly veers towards the same progressive nonsensical worldview where everything is white supremacy and bake the cake, bigot, type argumentation.
I sadly read KBJ’s dissent – it gave me a bad headache and I know killed a bunch of my brain cells. KBJ’s dissent was so bad, that Thomas tried to school her. The Latin woman Sotomayer and Black woman KBJackson it seems are both blithering ‘woke’ idiots.
Sotamayor affirmed the opinion (the opinion that she’s the dumbest person ever to sit on the Supreme Court).
Sotamayor is really dumb. She admitted her law school entrance exam score was low compared to her classmates. She blamed cultural biases built into the tests. Uh, Ok.
Division, entitlement and intimidation- that’s the REAL D.E.I. agenda.
Which Jackson is Skye Alex Jackson daughter of??….she look’s like she’s hurt-en, in an Ive-league college and already set up with her own equity hustle racket
The majority of IL and America support the ideals of MLK, and the law of the Constitution. So sad but predictable that Pritzker and the Democrats despise both.
Well how about this. The poorly educated black Chicago public school students can no longer be guaranteed a college spot because of affirmative action. What a surprise and to be sure howls of racism will be heard because qualifications based upon merit are racist and have nothing to do with the school system that taught them or on the efforts of the students themselves. I can hear it all now.
Don’t worry I’m sure the grifter colleges will figure out a way to push the affirmative action agenda by a different path. Remember that the least qualified is always better than the most qualified or so we are told.
I believe the result will be the opposite, and will be a further assault on merit. Colleges will just officially downplay objective criterial like grades and test scores, focusing instead on essay questions that will be a proxy for affirmative action. California is the proof. Affirmative action is constitutionally banned there but easily circumvented.
But the assault on merit will come at the expense of their academic reputation. They can’t have it both ways. Unless of course, merit everywhere is systematically destroyed, and we become little more than a Soviet state, where connections and ancestry, not merit or skill, determines advancement in both public and private life.
You have a point and I am sure will happen. However I do not think it will be as inclusive as before and not all schools will follow that path. I have a son who has a doctorate in a medical field. To be accepted it wars based upon grades and an entrance exam with no essay. This ruling will let that program continue on as it is.
I saw this on another post. “Would you let an affirmative action educated doctor operate on you?”
The lowered objective standards for med schools are among the most striking. I do not have them handy but thy are out there. Bravo to your son (and his parents).
This is the graph that has been floating around.
Jackson made the libelous allegation in her opinion that black babies die more under the care of white doctors than black doctors, that’s why we need diversity doctors.
Which of course is just plain racist to suggest this. One pundit even suggested this is a misunderstanding of the situation – the diversity hire doctors likely get the easiest cases, leading to lower mortality, it has nothing to do with white doctors negligently or intentionally killing black babies.
I heard on a podcast (even though I have not independently confirmed this stat, the source podcaster is pretty trustworthy), that in recent years, 75% of applicants to California state medical school programs had their research dossiers outright rejected because their DEI statements were inadequate. *heavy sigh*
The DEI statements are so easy to fake, the Berkeley Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) rubric is posted online, it tells you exactly the lies you need to say to pass their student test. The fact that so few students did that shows how deeply unpopular DEIB is even among students themselves.
https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversity/rubric-assessing-candidate-contributions-diversity-equity
I should also be clear that the decision is likely to be far more effective on matters other than school admission. Chicago’s contract set-asides, for example, are toast. Many corporate DEI programs are now suspect.
I hope you’re right but I have serious doubts. Corporate America is addicted to this stuff.
It won’t be long before the lawsuits start coming and the large jury awards, especially in red states. For the same reasons we don’t have lawn darts, the DIE departments in corporations will be destroyed. And secretly, many of them inside corporate America DIE as much as we do, and they’ll be quite happy to shed that dead weight as they try to survive Biden’s looming recession.
A lawyers dream..and I’m sure for Chicagoan & Illinoisans it will be taxpayers on the hook to pay for all the legal fights to come to defend all the dem contract set-asides, etc
Article coming tomorrow on that.
BJ is just another community organizer. Need a tissue?
The real outrages is that inner city schools and CPS produce horribly unqualified students who can’t get into college without systemic racial discrimination in their favor. They’ve failed generations of their students and now the day of reckoning has come.
Yet they do get in and displace otherwise hard working qualified students. They, the qualified, are the ones discriminated against.
BJ and JB may want to save some outrage for tomorrow when the student loan decision is released. I’m expecting full on head explosions tomorrow along with all the fake outrage. I’m sure the fundraising emails have already been written and are just waiting on the decision to send them out.
In the meantime, all those Asian students that would have been discriminated against by top universities may finally get what they rightfully earned.
My thoughts exactly.
Been a lot to read about this decision, ranging from the thoughtful and considered to quite a lot of vaporous hyperventilating nonsense.
The short story of this kerfuffle seems to be a culture of perceived victimization and reparation vs a culture of achievement and opportunity.
We’ve done a not very good job of figuring this out.
With all this talk about student loan forgiveness did the students and parents read the contract. You know a lot about contracts and what’s in them when you sign the dotted line. Everything these borrowers need to know is in the contract. Length of loan-interest rate/interest accrued-total payment and if it is interest only for a while and when interest is accruing. So why does Biden want so much to forgive student loans? Why not forgive property taxes/auto loans/personal loans/etc. All of these had contracts with ALL the details.
The larger problem is that it shouldn’t cost $40,474 per year to attend U of I, which has increased faster than the cost of inflation. It’s a major problem to put teenagers in this kind of debt, so that leftist professors can earn $175,000 a year to teach your kid that America is bad, communism is good. I used to care about this issue a lot, but since most of these borrowers are leftist communists themselves, I don’t care one bit…In fact, I want to see these leftist students feel financial pain, as much as possible, make them pay it… Read more »
Everything these borrowers need to know is in the contract. Length of loan-interest rate/interest accrued-total payment and if it is interest only for a while and when interest is accruing. Agreed. Borrowers knew all those details. They are required to taking a quick online course explaining all the details so they can’t plead ignorance. SCOTUS made another great decision. Congress is certainly welcome to try and provide relief with the presidents signature but Biden doesn’t have that authority on his own. Just like Illinois pension debt, there is no magic wand to make it disappear. It’s about time students and… Read more »
Contracts are made to be broken, including pension contracts. Then let the lawyers and courts figure it out.
The ILSC has already figured it out. Pensions must be paid. In addition, because the state’s self-interest is at stake whenever it seeks to modify its own financial obligations, the United States Supreme Court has made clear that it is not appropriate to give the state’s legislature the same deference it would otherwise be afforded with regard to whether the impairment is reasonable and necessary to serve an important public purpose. “A governmental entity can always find a use for extra money,” the Court observed, “especially when taxes do not have to be raised. If a State could reduce its financial obligations whenever it… Read more »
Here is an interesting article on pensions and contracts.
https://reason.org/commentary/the-legalities-of-pension-reform-how-do-you-get-there-from-here/
Everyone with a pension gets paid so there is no problem but as you asked earlier. Pay more now or pay even more later. I opt for much much later. Hopefully after I’m dead or moved out of state. Paying the debt later will most like be with inflated dollars and who knows if hyperinflation will take place. The U.S. is not immune but most likely it won’t happen but inflation will.
https://www.fleur-de-coin.com/articles/worthless-money