QUOTE OF THE DAY
Chicago Tribune: Jelly Belly brand leaving Chicago
Jelly Belly brand jelly beans will soon no longer be made at the North Chicago factory where they’ve been produced since 1978.
The company said Monday that 70 jobs will be eliminated as it moves production of all Jelly Belly brand candy products to its headquarters in Fairfield, Calif. The factory will now produce private label food products, which it said “have reported double digit growth in recent years.” It will also do contract manufacturing.
Jelly Belly Candy Co., formerly known in North Chicago as Goelitz Confectionary Company, got its start with candy corn and has been making candy at the Illinois plant since 1913. The company is now headquartered in California and managed by fourth, fifth and sixth generations of the Goelitz family.
Fox 2: Landscaping job gone bad cost taxpayers more than $800,000
You Paid For It gets the call to investigate a landscaping job on an interchange in Fairview Heights that cost taxpayers more than $800,000.
It’s a project gone bad at Interstate 64 and Highway 159.
What was supposed to be an interchange beautification didn’t turn out so beautiful. Many of the flowers didn’t grow and a lot of the trees died.
Wall Street Journal: Calpers Rethinks Its Risky Investments
The largest U.S. public pension plan is considering a dramatic retreat from some riskier investments, as it tries to simplify its $295 billion in holdings and better protect against losses during the next market downturn, according to people familiar with the matter.
California Public Employees’ Retirement System is weighing whether to exit or substantially reduce bets on commodities, actively managed company stocks and hedge funds, the people said.
The pension, which manages investments and benefits for 1.6 million current and retired teachers, firefighters and other public employees, is a bellwether for investment trends at other public plans. Any shift it makes will likely influence others because of its size and history as an early adopter of alternatives to stocks and bonds.
Chicago Sun Times: Springfield, here we come
The Capitol in Springfield is where elected officials allocate most of our state tax dollars, make major decisions that affect our lives, and manage a government wracked with chronic fiscal and ethical problems.
Springfield is also a small media market where, despite hard work and good intentions, there aren’t enough news resources to hold our state officials sufficiently accountable.
Is there a connection between paragraphs one and two?
Politico: Consumers’ next Obamacare challenge: Tax forms
If consumers thought logging on to HealthCare.gov was a headache, sorting through complex forms ahead of tax deadline day 2015 is their next big Obamacare challenge.
The health care law’s benefits are rolling out, but its major math problems start next year as the IRS tries to ensure that millions of Americans are correctly calculating their benefits and that those who don’t have coverage are penalized unless they qualify for an exemption.
That means much new paper-shuffling between now and April 15, which could be especially confusing for low- and middle-income Americans unaccustomed to lots of reporting to the IRS. The insurance exchanges and employers must send consumers details about their health plan and benefits or exemptions in time for them to file a tax return. If any of that information is delayed or wrong, tax refunds could be delayed.
Crain’s: Companies announce over 700 job cuts in Illinois
Nine companies, including Comcast Corp. and software firm Intuit Inc., warn of 738 Illinois job cuts in a new state report.
More than 500 of the cuts are in the Chicago area, according to the July WARN report from the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
• Philadelphia-based Comcast plans to lay off 112 workers in southwest suburban Romeoville starting Sept. 14.
• Mountain View, California-based Intuit will lay off 104 workers in Arlington Heights starting Sept. 15.
Chicago Tribune: Too much regulation spoils a good haircut
The city should impose only essential regulations to protect Chicagoans because too much regulation spoils a good haircut, and car-service competition, too.
When my hair gets a little shaggy, I walk to the corner barber, plunk down $20 plus a tip, and 20 minutes later, I’m out the door. I assume my barber has a state cosmetology license — I’ve never actually checked — since she couldn’t legally snip without it.
Consumers pay a price for licenses like hers. If I wanted a $5 haircut, I probably couldn’t get it from a licensed barber in Chicago. I’m not sure if I could get a $10 cut. The state doesn’t outlaw them, but it sets requirements so high that it’s likely no one provides them. The government limits the number of barbers by making licenses costly and time-consuming to acquire. A barber has to attend a licensed school, train for another 1,500 hours and pass the state’s cosmetology exams. These requirements block many prospective barbers and protect current ones from competition.
US News: Fixing the Garden State’s Pension Problem
Gov. Chris Christie is on tour this summer. The Republican is telling New Jersey residents, there’s “no pain, no gain” involved in fixing the state’s pension problems. And he’s announced that a special commission will be formed to study the issue.
The governor’s right. Pension costs are consuming the budget. This year’s required contribution to fund the system is $4 billion and slated to rise to $4.8 billion by 2018. According to JP Morgan, debt service and retirement costs represent more than 35 percent of the Garden State’s revenues.
But New Jersey’s pension woes aren’t news. For several years economists have warned of large liabilities facing many U.S. pension plans. The recession cast light on years of confused accounting, skipped payments and risk-taking in investment. To be sure, not every state is in the same bucket. With continued policy changes and better accounting, some states will be able to navigate out of the storm. Unfortunately, New Jersey isn’t among them.
Bloomberg: Welcome to Wal-Mart, the Doctor Will See You Now
As its retail business matures into slower growth, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wants to disrupt another mass market: health care. The company is piloting what it hopes will be a broad network of primary-care clinics. The company already has urgent-care clinics in about 100 stores, but the new facilities will provide much broader services such as chronic-disease management that are normally provided at a doctor’s office. And it is doing so at an admirably low cost: A doctor’s visit at one of its primary-care clinics costs just $40, in cash — the only insurance they take is their corporate health plan and Medicare.
This model makes a lot of sense to me. Doctor’s offices are, as the Affordable Care Act’s designers frequently stressed, remarkably inefficient compared to most of the rest of the economy. There are a lot of efficiencies that can be brought to the market by a big company employing staff physicians and centrally coordinating things such as purchasing and information technology. And what is Wal-Mart very good at? Central coordination of purchasing and IT.
The price of that is that when physicians are staffers, they will probably work hours like staffers, meaning that you may not be able to get an appointment with a particular doctor. Health-care advice usually stresses that you should find a good primary-care physician.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
