Totaling the unsustainable tax increases and windfall revenue during Pritzker Administration – Wirepoints
May 26, 2026
23 Comments
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
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A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Funny how Northwestern touts its $800 million stadium as accomplishment “without taxpayer funds”, while ignoring fact that it refuses to pay PILT (“payment in lieu of real estate taxes”) payments to Evanston and Chicago for its enormous portfolio of tax-exempt real estate properties. Northwestern doesn’t deserve its “non-profit” categorization. It fails to accomplish an appreciable charitable mission, pays its administrators huge salary packages, and charges its students huge attendance charges. Northwestern Hospital is notorious for its extremely low percentage of “charitable medical treatment” patient. Hospital is also hostile presence within Streeterville neighborhood, cause of significant traffic and noise problems, harbors… Read more »
Northwestern has a 14 billion dollar endowment. $14,000,000,000. If Northwestern’s endowment were a hedge fund, it would be about the 60th largest in the US. It had a 37% investment return in 2021. Along these same lines, Northwestern in 2021 had revenue of $2.56 billion dollars a year with $2.47 in expenses, leaving a tiny surplus. A realistic look at these figures shows that Northwestern is really just a private equity fund with a non-profit university attached to it. There’s really no other way to explain the universities finances.
Not to mention NMH has turned into a high priced, patient gauging medical factory. We switched from them because every routine check up became a sale pitch for all kinds of services, not to mention they are huge supporters of medical tyranny via illegal covid lockdowns and fake vaccine mandates and the ongoing coup in DC.
I think that’s the point. The high priced patient gauging medical factory is designed to keep out the illegal medicaid crowd, so you don’t have to share the waiting room with them. I recently visited Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, and it is so modern, the inside looks like a space ship out of a science fiction movie. There wasn’t an obvious medicaid patient in the entire building, and the crowded parking lot was full of newer $50,000+ cars. The receptionist asked us to prepaid the co-pay up front before they would even treat us (we declined, said we always… Read more »
Debtsor, paying first then receiving care is coming to a medical facility all over this formerly great land.
I’ve got a friend from China and he says that’s SOP over there. Pay first, then get in the surgical queue.
We already have that to a degree here, called concierge medicine. Pay up front, get better service. I imagine this is probably popular in urban areas near hospitals with large numbers of medicaid patients. The trick, as I’ve said before, is to move to a geographic area with few medicaid patients, or an area wealthy enough to support clinics without without relying on medicaid. As soon as the medicaid patients show up in droves (40% of all births are covered by medicaid) the providers start to want payment up front.
https://www.forbes.com/health/healthy-aging/concierge-medicine/
When Old Joe went to MSU in the 70s Northwestern was known for strong academic programs and a lousy football team.
Now they’ve come full circle with lousy academics too.
Oops, I forgot they still have expensive tuition.
It just went up:
https://evanstonnow.com/nu-hikes-tuition-4/
NU hikes tuition 4%
May 26, 2023
The total cost for undergraduates living on campus will be $86,330. Undergraduate tuition will be $64,887; standard room and board will be $20,333; and fees will be $1,110.
Nothing to worry about GM. Bidet will forgive student loans again late in his 2nd term.
NU Students, no need to work your way thru college like me. Spend more time chasing skirts and drink premium beer.
Lol… the “thing” up here in The People’s Republik of Evanston is that the “skirts” are now mostly worn by “guys”, and Evanston is one college town that is totally lacking a “bar scene”…