QUOTE OF THE DAY
NY Post: How ObamaCare will kill job-based plans
Americans aren’t all that optimistic about ObamaCare, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll: Fifty-seven percent say the law isn’t working as planned.
That number will shoot even higher if employer health insurance vanishes, as an S&P Capital IQ report predicts. The financial-research firm forecasts that 90 percent of Americans who now have employer-sponsored coverage will lose it by 2020 — and have to turn to government exchanges for policies.
The Obama administration has long denied that its health-reform law would cause companies to stop providing insurance. But thanks to an ObamaCare-fueled increase in health costs, employer-sponsored coverage may soon become a thing of the past.
Chicago Sun Times: No way to paper over court clerk’s record-keeping: critics
Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown has mocked the technology that was used to manage Cook County court records when she was first elected in 2000.
“The systems were very outdated,” Brown was quoted as saying in a 2005 trade publication. “We were operating with 1980s software and antiquated hardware.”
But 14 years after she first campaigned to modernize the operation, Brown’s office still manages court files with 1980s computer technology; bail amounts are still scribbled on carbon paper.
Chicago Sun Times: Exclusive details: Bid for Obama Library on Lake Michigan shore
Among the rival locations in Chicago for the Obama library and museum, the most majestic one hugs the Lake Michigan shore on the Southeast Side with a stunning view of the Chicago skyline.
More than pretty, the Chicago Lakeside site has vast potential to trigger massive related economic growth and create jobs in an often ignored part of the city. With a presidential library and museum as an anchor, large-scale private investment that otherwise might take a generation to occur could happen in a decade.
“It is the most incredibly beautiful site in the city of Chicago,” developer Dan McCaffery is telling me as we discuss the bid for the library and museum he submitted to the Barack Obama Foundation last month. We’re talking in the suburban Washington office of his Chicago-based firm, where I had an exclusive look at the bid.
Daily Herald: Unions gain in government sector
Unions representing government workers are expanding while organized labor has been shedding private sector members over the past half-century.
A majority of union members today now have ties to a government entity, at the federal, state or local levels.
Roughly 1-in-3 public sector workers is a union member, compared with about 1-in-15 for the private sector workforce last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, 11.3 percent of wage and salary workers in the United States are unionized, down from a peak of 35 percent during the mid-1950s in the strong post-World War II recovery.
Chicago Sun Times: Illinois Supreme Court throws wet rag on pension reform plan
That pre-holiday firecracker lobbed under the Statehouse dome by the Illinois Supreme Court has the potential to reverberate through the state for years to come.
By ruling that the subsidized health care benefits of retired state employees are protected by the Illinois Constitution, the court raised the unpleasant specter that there may be only one way out of the pension mess facing the state as well as local governments.
That is: come up with the money, no matter how painful.
Chicago Tribune: Feds subpoena emails in Quinn anti-violence fund inquiry
A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena for emails of key players in Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn’s troubled $54.5 million anti-violence program, including the former head of the program and two former ranking members of Quinn’s administration.
The subpoena, provided by the Quinn administration in response to a Tribune records request, is the latest public sign of federal prosecutors’ interest in a program also under scrutiny by Cook County authorities and a state legislative panel.
The May 13 grand jury document sought emails dated back to the beginning of 2010, the year Quinn ran for his first full term as governor and launched the Chicago-area program in the closing weeks of his campaign. Quinn spokesman Grant Klinzman said the administration has “zero tolerance for mismanagement, fraud or abuse” and that the governor has directed agencies to fully cooperate with authorities.
CARTOON OF THE DAY
