June 24, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Quote_Coolidge

Ars Technica: Illinois buys cell-tracking gear complete with NDAs, no-bid process

Newly published documents show that in July 2008, the Illinois State Police purchased over $250,000 worth of “covert cellular tracking equipment” from the Harris Corporation. The federally funded gear likely includes a Stingray and related devices that track a phone’s location and can also be used to intercept calls and text messages.

The 110-page set of documents represents yet another puzzle piece in the slowly emerging national picture of how such devices are acquired and used.

The document set also indicates that the Illinois governor’s office signed off on the equipment purchase and authorized an exemption from the “competitive bid process.” It includes a rarely seen Harris contract that uses language meant to keep the stingray purchase quiet. The documents, which cover a period between 2008 and 2012, were obtained through a public records request and were first published earlier this week by Scott Ainsile, a freelance “data pilgrim” based in the United Kingdom, with help from Heather Akers-Healy.

Read more…


CBS Chicago: Chicago’s Average Gas Price The Highest In The Nation

With higher summer demand and instability in the Middle East, consumers have been paying more at the pump, especially here in Chicago.

WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports the insurgent violence in Iraq and threats to oil facilities there have pushed the price of crude oil to more than $107 per barrel.

That has translated to higher gasoline prices, nowhere higher than Chicago.

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Chicago Tribune: Chicago home sales not keeping pace, but prices up

Sales of existing homes in the Chicago area failed to beat their year-ago comparisons for the fifth consecutive month in May, but prices rose more than 13 percent from a year ago, the Illinois Association of Realtors reported Monday.

In the nine-county Chicago area, 9,806 homes were sold last month, a 12.2 percent decline from May 2013. However, prices rose 13.1 percent to $207,000.

The pattern was the same in the city of Chicago, where sales dropped 15.7 percent from a year ago, to 2,390 homes sold in May. At $270,000, the median price of a home sold in the city was up 14.9 percent from a year ago.

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Chicago Tribune: CPS watchdog leaving his post

The top watchdog at Chicago Public Schools, who was responsible for uncovering misdeeds by two school board presidents and dozens of school officials, will leave his post at the end of the month.

Jim Sullivan, who has been the district’s inspector general for 12 years, will join Sikich LLP, a professional services firm for which he will be working on fraud investigations.

“With my oldest starting college in August and two more soon to follow, I wanted to work in the private sector,” he said today.

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Daily Mail: Will the SEC find your state is playing numbers games?

Should your state worry?  The SEC is investigating governments playing “numbers games” to hide retirement liabilities from potential bond investors.  All 50 states have hidden retirement debt from public view, with California and Illinois in the lead.

SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher recently used strong words to criticize this practice:

“This lack of transparency can amount to a fraud on municipal bond investors, and it does a disservice to state and local government workers and retirees by saving elected officials from making the hard choices either to fully fund the pension promises that were made to public employees, or not to make the promises in the first place.”

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Wall Street Journal: Walmart and Welfare

David Tovar, Walmart’s vice president for corporate communications, certainly earned his paycheck last week by preparing a devastating Harpers magazine-style annotation of a column by the New York Times’s Timothy Egan. Egan denounced Walmart for poor corporate citizenship, a metaphor that he seems to take literally: “As long as the Supreme Court says that corporations are citizens, they may as well act like them.”

(As an aside, that’s an embarrassing error Tovar doesn’t correct. The court has never said corporations are citizens. Presumably Egan has in mind the court’s findings that the government may not infringe on free speech merely because it comes from an incorporated organization. But the right to free speech–unlike, say, the right to vote or run for office–belongs not only to citizens.)

Here’s the central part of Egan’s brief against Walmart:

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Chicago Tribune: Panel votes to subpoena ex-director of Quinn anti-violence program

A panel of lawmakers looking into reports of financial irregularities in Gov. Pat Quinn’s $55-million anti-violence grant program voted today to subpoena the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative’s former director to testify.

Barbara Shaw already had turned down an invitation to testify before the Legislative Audit Commission. The bipartisan group of lawmakers is digging into the stinging audit done by Auditor General William Holland that uncovered widespread abuse of funds in a program he maintained was hastily rolled out without adequate oversight.

The Legislative Audit Commission subcommittee voted 4-0 in favor of issuing a subpoena to Shaw, 66, of Chicago. Lawmakers also voted 4-0 to issue six more subpoenas to former Quinn aides including ex-chief of staff Jack Lavin.

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CARTOON OF THE DAY

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