March 1, 2014

QUOTE OF THE DAY

156050_10151368210703667_1791100133_n

Chicago Tribune: GrubHub files for up to $100 million IPO

GrubHub said Friday it has officially filed for an initial public offering of up to $100 million and that co-founder Mike Evans plans to leave the company by the end of June.

The online food ordering company, which merged with rival Seamless in August and changed its name to GrubHub Seamless Inc., will now be known as just GrubHub Inc.

Evans, 36, currently serves as GrubHub’s chief operating officer and plans to leave by June 30 to pursue other opportunities.

Read more…


Daily Herald: Illinois lawmaker wants to expand speed camera use

A southwestern Illinois lawmaker wants communities around the state to be able install speed cameras, which are only allowed in Chicago.

The Belleville News-Democrat reports Rep. Jay Hoffman has introduced legislation that’d allow communities of all sizes to install the devices.

Legislation signed by the governor in 2012 limited speed cameras to cities with at least 1 million residents, making the statute apply solely to Chicago.

Read more…


Chicago Sun-Times: CPS threatens to discipline teachers who won’t give students ISAT

Chicago Public Schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett has threatened to discipline any teacher who refuses to administer an annual state achievement It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward “mobility,” defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen.

That distinction is seldom even mentioned in most of the studies. It is as if everybody is chomping at the bit to get ahead, and the ones that don’t rise have been stopped by “barriers” created by “society.”

When statistics show that sons of high-school dropouts don’t become doctors or scientists nearly as often as the sons of PhDs, that is taken as a sign that American society is not “fair.”

The letter, sent out Thursday to principals, claims teachers could face the harshest repercussion from boycotting the test — losing their state education certification.

On test day, teachers will be ordered to leave the school building if they refuse to administer the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, according to the letter.

Read more…


New York Post: Inequality and the ‘fairness’ fraud

It seems as if, everywhere you turn these days, there are studies claiming to show that America has lost its upward mobility for people born in the lower socioeconomic levels. But there is a sharp difference between upward “mobility,” defined as an opportunity to rise, and mobility defined as actually having risen.

That distinction is seldom even mentioned in most of the studies. It is as if everybody is chomping at the bit to get ahead, and the ones that don’t rise have been stopped by “barriers” created by “society.”

When statistics show that sons of high-school dropouts don’t become doctors or scientists nearly as often as the sons of PhDs, that is taken as a sign that American society is not “fair.”

Read more…


WSJ: All the President’s IRS Agents

Few presidents understand the power of speech better than Barack Obama, and even fewer the power of denying it to others. That’s the context for understanding the White House’s unprecedented co-option of the Internal Revenue Service to implement a political campaign to shut up its critics and its opponents.

Perhaps the biggest fiction of this past year was that the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups has been confronted, addressed and fixed. The opposite is true. The White House has used the scandal as an excuse to expand and formalize the abuse.

About a month after the IRS inspector general released his bombshell report about IRS targeting of conservative groups last May, Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel unveiled a “plan of action” for correcting the mess. One highlight was that targeted groups would be offered a new optional “expedited” process for getting 501(c)(4) status.

Read more…


Real Time Economics: GDP Growth Slowdown Is Just More of the Same

The U.S. economy didn’t grow as robustly as the Commerce Department first thought. But this recovery’s history shows the downshift should not be a surprise.

Real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.4% last quarter, down from the 3.2% pace Commerce reported a month ago. New data show consumer spending, exports and government purchases were weaker than first estimated, while housing and business investment did better than originally thought.

The weaker gain follows a strong 4.1% jump in the third quarter and highlights the zig-zag pattern of growth so far in this recovery. One reason is the volatile swings in inventory accumulation. The sector added only 0.14 percentage points to growth last quarter but its impact has ranged from adding nearly 3 percentage points to subtracting as much as 2 points in certain quarters of this upturn.

Read more…


Carpe Diem: Minneapolis and Seattle restrict ride-sharing services Lyft and Uber 

1. In Minneapolis, the city is trying to ban both Lyft and UberX from operating in the city, even though both ride-sharing services are already operating in neighboring Saint Paul (and people would often be traveling from city to city):

The taxi-like car-sharing service Lyft and the city of Minneapolis are on a collision course. San Francisco-based Lyft, whose driver-owned cars are festooned with magenta mustaches, said Tuesday that it will begin operations in Minneapolis this week — defying a city prohibition on the unlicensed service.

Minneapolis insists that Lyft and similar services with driver-owned vehicles be licensed as taxi companies. This requires a city license for the driver, another for the vehicle with inspections and commercial insurance.

If Lyft launches in defiance of its rules, the city said drivers will be ticketed and their vehicles impounded. The city already has done this with UberX, a service similar to Lyft that has been operating for about a month in Minneapolis.

2. Meanwhile, Seattle is allowing Uber and Lyft to operate, but will now restrict both ride-sharing services to a maximum of 150 drivers at any given time:

The city council transportation committee decided Thursday to limit rideshare car services like Uber and Lyft in the city. It’s a controversial decision designed to create fairness with the taxi cab drivers. The council members voted 5-4 to limit what they call “transportation networking companies” to 150 drivers per company on the road at any given time.

Read more…

CARTOON OF THE DAY

obamacare