Must Reads for Feb. 17:
Chicago Tribune: All these Quinnidences

Yet another of the governor's tax hike enablers lands, yes, a taxpayer-funded job.

Documents obtained by the Tribune show that in the face of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's expansion of the school day, the union has led with an offer seeking a 24 percent raise in the 2012-13 school year and a 5 percent increase the following year, the net effect being 30 percent.

Current public pension accounting rules cause the plans to promise too much, contribute too little, and take too much investment risk. To understand the real cost of state and local pensions, we must turn to market valuation.

University of Illinois economist Fred Giertz said the layoffs were an embarrassment for the governor, though he said the company’s recent woes made them necessary.

Northwest Herald: Burden shift idea no good

School districts could face a big boost in their share of payments into the teacher pension system – a system that already is unaffordable because of the overly generous benefits it pays out. The state of Illinois helped create this mess. Merely shifting the burden to local districts isn’t a solution at all.

So charter schools get targeted with nonsensical claims like this, that Noble Network is "dehumanizing" students. If these schools are dehumanizing students, why are students lining up to go to them?

This page is not saying that Illinois should try to mirror North Carolina. But if North Carolina is what the competition looks like, it is not out of reach.

Of the utmost importance is preventing the state and local pension crisis from becoming a further drag on the federal government. Mr. Obama's budget shows that Uncle Sam is in no position to fund states' liabilities.

Must Reads for Feb. 15:
Northwest Herald: Anti-transparency bills wrapped in fear and feigned concern for easier swallowing

If you're a politician wanting to help local governments keep public records private, you wrap your attack in common-sense exemptions that no logical person would oppose. And through subtlety, you make people afraid of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act and you wrap it in that fear as well.

University of Illinois at Chicago professor Dick Simpson, who served as alderman of the 44th Ward in Lakeview from 1971 to 1979, estimates the cost of corruption at $500 million.

The graduation rate for D.C. public schools was 56%, and it was 70% for students who entered the lottery for a voucher but didn't win. Because the president's teachers union allies are opposed to school choice for poor people, Mr. Obama ignores or downplays these findings.

The new corporate tax rate increases the total percentage Illinois corporations pay on income, including a separate personal property replacement tax, to 9.5%, one of the highest in the nation. That makes the corporate income-tax rate in Illinois the third-highest in the country when combined with an assumed 35% federal corporate income tax, following only Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

The president's "savings" do not amount to cuts in overall spending, which would continue to rise every year under his proposal. Although Obama calls his plan "balanced," following it would mean the budget never is.

Wall Street Journal: The Amazing Obama Budget

The political reality of budgeting is that voters should only believe what they can see, which is what politicians are proposing now. Promises of future spending cuts are a mirage. Mr. Obama needs to point to the mirage because his fiscal record is the worst in modern American history.

Illinois dropped 12 places, to 28th place, in the Index rankings, more than any other state. Robyn said Illinois’ 5 percent flat personal income tax is still good compared to many other states, and its sales tax rate is in the middle. These kept the state from falling farther in the rankings, but Robyn warned Illinois’ unemployment insurance, corporate, and local property taxes could drag it down in future.

The Chicago Teachers Union and some local school council members have joined in a lawsuit to try to block Chicago Public Schools from closing and overhauling 17 of the city's worst-performing schools.

Regular citizens have a far greater sense of urgency about this state's problems than their politicians do. We've been trying on this page to raise the urgency in Springfield. A state that hikes taxes and chases away job-creators and still can't balance its books is hurtling to disaster.

Must Reads for Feb. 13:
Chicago Tribune: Why job creators skip Illinois

Business leaders are making decisions today on where to invest in the future. Illinois must act now, with a bipartisan sense of urgency, to position itself for future job creation that is being discussed in board rooms all across this country.

When President Obama entered office in January, 2009, the recession was already in its 13th month.  His responsibility was to manage a timely, robust recovery to get America back on track again.  What he gave us instead, with his outdated, throwback, Keynesian economics, is the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.

“One taxpayer moved out of Illinois every 10 minutes between 1995 and 2009,” according to the Illinois Policy Institute, and it appears taxes and tax policies are to blame for many of the losses.