QUOTE OF THE DAY
Chicago Sun Times: At trial, tapes keep rolling of Rep. Smith allegedly taking bribe
The pile of 70 crisp $100 bills had been neatly stacked into bundles.
“One, two, three, four, five — damn, stuck together, six, seven,” the federal mole counted out loud, as he handed over an alleged $7,000 bribe to state Rep. Derrick Smith, D-Chicago.
“You don’t want me to give you yours now?” Smith replied as they sat together in his parked car on a West Side street.
Chicago Sun Times: Rahm Emanuel strikes another deal with Jimmy Fallon on ‘Tonight’
Looks like Jimmy Fallon might be headed back to Chicago, if not the chilly waters of Lake Michigan.
On “The Tonight Show” Tuesday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel got Fallon to agree to broadcast the NBC late-night chatfest from Chicago if city kids read at least 2.4 million books this summer.
“You could bring the show anytime back to Chicago — it hasn’t been there since 1998,” Emanuel said as if he were cutting a deal at City Hall.
MuniLand: Kentucky’s big pension mess
The Kentucky Employees Retirement System (KERS-Non-Hazardous), the nation’s most poorly-funded state pension with 23 percent of the assets needed to cover liabilities, suffered a legal blow last week. As of last June, KERS had only $3.1 billion of assets to cover the $11.3 billion in retirement commitments that it had made and $8.26 billion of unfunded liabilities.
Should the 41,000 active employees, 40,000 inactive employees and 37,000 retirees in Kentucky be worried about the security of their pensions? Given recent events, they probably should.
In a pivotal court case last Friday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Joan A. Lloyd ruled that an insolvent non-profit agency, Seven Counties Services, is not part of the Kentucky government and may leave KERS. This could clear the way for other financially strapped non-profit agencies across the state to flee soaring pension costs and leave KERS with more stranded liabilities. (Judge Lloyd’s opinion here). The Kentucky Courier Journal wrote:
Four of the last eight Illinois governors have gone to prison. 35 Chicago aldermen have gone to jail in the last 30 years. What’s wrong with Illinois?
The problem involves the way the system grew up in Chicago. These were political machines that basically served the incoming immigrant population. With the best of intentions, waves of immigrants came into big cities. And they needed jobs, clothing, and schools for their kids. So the political organizations and governmental entities were a great source of those things for the immigrants. What did they want in return? They wanted soldiers — people to work the political campaigns. And from the contractors they wanted campaign cash. So what developed was a barter system that had nothing to do with meeting public need. It had nothing to do with public services.
In such a system, there’s enormous opportunity for corruption, theft, fraud, and bad behavior. This happened in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. And as a result, terrible habits were formed, many of them hard to break.
Politico: 2 million Obamacare enrollees asked for more info
About 2 million people enrolled in Obamacare exchanges submitted information that doesn’t match up with federal records, potentially jeopardizing the coverage and federal subsidies for some of them, the Obama administration said Wednesday afternoon.
The news, first reported by The New Republic and The Associated Press citing federal documents, was confirmed by officials with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees Obamacare programs.
The officials emphasized that discrepancies in people’s application data are unlikely to affect their coverage or the level of subsidies they received. Rather, they’ll have to submit additional documentation to ensure that they’re getting the correct level of tax credits.
On a recent evening, more than 300 homeowners who are worried about their rising property tax bills filled First Unitarian Universalist Church in North Austin for a town hall meeting. If something doesn’t change, many said, they will soon be priced out of their homes.
Two nights later, a similar discussion played out in South Austin, where homeowners gathered at Grace United Methodist Church in Travis Heights to talk about what can be done to slow escalating residential tax values.
“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.
“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”
Cafe Hayek: Household Inequality Is Not Individual Inequality
Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:
Kelly Breazeale argues that income inequality is at worrying levels because the Gini ratio – a popular measure of income inequality – is today higher than it has ever been for American households since the Census bureau began calculating it in 1967 (Letters, June 4). True, but misleading.
Although the Gini ratio for households is indeed today at an all-time high, the Gini ratio for individuals has remained flat since 1960. This reality means that, because income inequality among persons hasn’t risen in more than a half-century, the rise in inequality among households over that time is caused by changes in the composition of households.
Specifically what’s happened is that, starting around 1970, the percentage of single-person households (especially those of women over the age of 65) has increased. Because single-person households (especially those of women over retirement age) generally earn less income than do multiple-person households, household inequality has risen even though the inequality that surely matters most (if inequality matters at all) – inequality among flesh-and-blood individuals – has remained unchanged.*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
CARTOON OF THE DAY
