Chicago Sun Times: Lawsuit demands millions in refunds for speed cam tickets illegally issued on non-school days
Chicago could be forced to refund millions of dollars in speed camera fines issued to “tens, if not hundreds of thousands” of motorists on “non-school days,” under a class-action lawsuit that accuses City Hall of thumbing its nose at state law.
The previously undisclosed lawsuit, quietly filed in Circuit Court on Halloween night, accuses Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration of “blatantly and intentionally” ignoring the ground rules established by the Illinois General Assembly before speed cameras were installed around Chicago’s schools and parks.
The statute clearly states, “Violations shall be recorded, only on school days.”
Chicago Tribune: Consolidate CTA, Metra, Pace or scrap RTA, report concludes
The Regional Transportation Authority should either be strengthened into a superagency to coordinate all Chicago-area transit service or be eliminated entirely, leaving the CTA, Metra and Pace to fend for themselves, according to a new report from a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Either option, says the Eno Center for Transportation study, “would be preferable to the current situation where the RTA is just strong enough to be an obstruction, but too weak to have any real planning influence over the region.”
The Eno Center report is the latest of several critical analyses of the region’s transit governance. Unlike previous critiques, the new report was conducted by an independent transportation research organization that weighed Chicago against five other metropolitan areas, including Boston, San Francisco and New York.
AEI: Don Boudreaux’s ongoing, excellent coverage of the minimum wage issue
No one has more steadfastly, consistently and vigorously brought economy sanity, logic and reason to the issue of the minimum wage law government-mandated wage floor that guarantees reduced employment opportunities for America’s teenagers and low-skilled workers (especially minorities) than George Mason University economics professor Don Boudreaux. On his Café Hayek blog, Don has for many years regularly covered the minimum wage issue with his wisdom, wit, and keen economic thinking, and I applaud his ongoing efforts to educate his readers, students and (hopefully, some day maybe) policymakers about an important economic issue.
In several recent posts, Don has emphasized a very important, but usually overlooked or neglected reason that some empirical studies fail to find negative employment effects following increases in the minimum wage government-mandated wage floor that guarantees reduced employment opportunities for America’s teenagers and low-skilled workers (especially minorities). That reason has to do with the fact that the minimum wage has been in effect for almost 80 years since the Fair Unfair to Unskilled Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938, and it’s been increased 27 times since then. Therefore, the government’s mandated market-suppressing, artificial wage for low- and un-skilled workers has been around for such a long time, and it’s been raised so many times, that the distortionary effects of the minimum wage have long ago been “internalized” by employers who hire unskilled workers. Don explains that phenomenon in a recent blog post where he schools Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein about his “simply poor economic journalism,” and provides this additional commentary:
Chicago Tribune: Will County failed to follow through on dump site complaints
For more than a year, Chris Jenkins watched the regular dumping of refuse and rubble onto the northern banks of the DuPage River in the southwest suburbs.
From his property on the river’s south side, Jenkins said, he witnessed trucks unload plastic bags, tires, barrels, concrete debris and other garbage, some of which was dumped right into the river and floated away with the current.
“That’s when the farmer would come out,” Jenkins said of Herman J. Fritz, the owner of the land in Plainfield. “He would push soil over the concrete and garbage.”
Chicago Tribune: Rauner names Meeks as Illinois State Board of Education chairman
Republican Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner announced Saturday he has chosen Chicago religious leader and former Democratic state Sen. James Meeks to head the Illinois State Board of Education.
Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church on the Far South Side, endorsed Rauner for governor and was a member of the Republican’s transition committee. Like Rauner, Meeks backs the increased use of charter schools and vouchers as alternatives to traditional public education and has been critical of the Chicago Teachers Union.
“The good news is you are the voice of the administration and not your own voice,” said Meeks, who added that Rauner informed him of the selection on Wednesday. “It’s not up to me to advocate what my personal or religious beliefs are. I’m sympathetic to improving the quality of education in the state of Illinois.”
WBEZ: What Rauner faces as he takes the oath of the Governor’s office
Bruce Rauner gets to show Illinois what he’s got starting Monday. He’s taking the oath of office as the state’s next governor with many big challenges facing Illinois. Here are some key questions and answers about what’s been going on in Illinois politics since November’s election.
What’s Rauner been up to since he won election?
One of the best ways to see what kind of governor Rauner will be is to see who he’s hiring. For instance, Rauner is appointing Leslie Munger to be the state’s comptroller, after the death of Judy Baar Topinka. Munger is a former executive at Unilever who ran a failed campaign for state representative last year. Rauner also hired the former attorney for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, someone whom Rauner says he intends to model as Illinois governor. During the campaign, Rauner, a Republican, frequently talked about having to be the state’s best recruiter for hiring people to manage state government.
Huff Post: The Job Market Is Still Years Away From A Full Recovery
Friday’s jobs report was generally pretty good news. The jobless rate dropped to a six-year low of 5.6 percent. And the December hiring data capped off the best year for the job market in 15 years.
But unfortunately, it’s still nowhere near where it needs to be.
According to recent analysis from the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. economy is missing about 5.6 million jobs. That’s the number of additional jobs there would be if the economy regained all jobs lost in the recession and the job market kept pace with the natural increase in job seekers.