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.
Blago is scum but 14 years was excessive. He would have gotten out in 12, and he did 8. I’m all for punishing criminals with swift and harsh justice, and Blago is corrupt. But 8 years for what he did, or more like, tried to do and was unsuccessful, is plenty. Hopefully he just goes away soon enough but that’s not likely; he’ll probably be on the news channel circuit telling stories.