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.
Gerrymandering doesn’t just give Democrats a majority, it gives them a supermajority. That’s why they have zero interest in reforming the system.
When local progressive groups complain about gerrymandering and claim to support fair maps, they will admit that it’s not about Illinois – it’s about reforming other states. Illinois is their progressive utopia – why would they want to do anything to change it?