-- 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.
SIGN UP HERE FOR OUR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER
Here’s an idea for Kevin Warren. Leave the state and take the Sox with you. Two of the worst franchises in all of sports, run by idiots.
Why should taxpayers support funding for teams that you can’t follow without a (or two or three) cable subscriptions? Why should we pay without an equity share, particularly if the team sells for a bazillion dollars or has a major injection of equity investors? Can public funds be per se equity investments with dividends and ownership shares?
IL has more important things to fund than sports stadiums. The games are so expensive only the wealthy can go to see the teams.
Yep. The games are so expensive to see in person because even the lousiest players make 10 times what American workers make. Good players make over 100 times more. It took me a long time to figure out, but now that I’m old, I decided not to spend my money on an enhanced cable or streaming sports package to use large amounts of my time watching mediocre or worse sports teams. It was a bit challenging at first to break the habit, but I’m completely unhooked now. BTW, I looked it up. Trick question: how many seasons of 100 or… Read more »
Sorry, but if you’re helping generate hundreds of millions of dollars for someone, you should be paid for it. Obviously I’d rather they be good players but that’s how it goes. Of course the worse you are the less you’ll make anyways. Now, if the billionaires that own the franchises decide to make less money, make tickets cheaper, then we can talk about paying players less. But thats never going to happen, so pay the men who pay your mortgage.
What Warren is really saying is that the Bears and McCaskeys don’t have a clue as to how to get a deal done. They need to partner up with someone who is smart enough to get a deal that the Bears can tag along on. The Bears are at least 0 for 6 over the decades in stadium attempts, and Reinsdorf is 2-0. But the question is what do the Bears bring to the table? Not much really.
The White Sox are 32-110 right now, which is on track to be the worst record in the 100+ years of baseball statistics. It’s the most historically awful season in sports history, and that’s saying a lot. Nobody is going to give the owner a new stadium. He said in an interview earlier this year, “…A New Stadium Is A Must To Keep White Sox In Chicago” because after his death, and he’s 88, “.. [the] other members of the team’s ownership group would be motivated to sell it to a relocation group following his death if it remains based… Read more »
I think most Chicago-area fans agree with you: they don’t care if the Sox move out of state. Why should they? Reinsdorf doesn’t seem to care if the team he fields is playoff-worthy or embarrassingly awful. Imagine that: the third largest sports market in the country with such a rotten team. Here I thought they were pretty bad in 2022 at 81-81.