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PJStar: Abandon all hope, ye who enter Illinois
We are shocked (shocked, we tell you!) that the Illinois Supreme Court’s four-member Democratic majority would hand their benefactor Michael Madigan a victory by forbidding voters their chance to change the way political maps are drawn and thereby correct a persistent injustice.
We are shocked (shocked, we tell you!) that the justice whose campaign House Speaker and Democratic Party Chairman Madigan bankrolled to the tune of $1.4 million so he could keep his job in 2010 — Thomas Kilbride — would write the majority opinion saying no-can-do to potentially ending decades of self-serving map drawing. The latter arguably has led to some of the most fix-is-in gerrymandering in America, one of the least effective legislatures in America, one of the most egregious denials of democracy in America — more than 60 percent of legislative races in Illinois are uncontested — and perhaps the entrenching of one of the worst House speakers in America. An independent panel could not do worse.
RRStar: Democratic Supreme Court sides with Michael Madigan front group. Surprised?
If anyone doubted House Speaker Michael Madigan’s total control of the state of Illinois, Thursday’s state Supreme Court decision throwing the Independent Map amendment off the Nov. 8 ballot should erase that doubt.
In a party-line vote, the Democratic-controlled court ruled 4-3 against the amendment, which would have removed control of the legislative district mapping process from politicians and given it to an 11-member independent commission that would draw a fair map that wouldn’t favor the Republicans or the Democrats.
Financial Times: The crumbling assumptions of US public pension plans
The governor’s office for Illinois, a state with notoriously weak finances, this week issued a stark warning about what might happen if it reduced the assumed rate of return for its Teachers’ Retirement System.
“If the board were to approve a lower assumed rate of return taxpayers will be automatically and immediately on the hook for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in higher taxes or reduced services,” the state’s senior adviser for revenue and pensions wrote in a memo.
Chicago Tribune: How Illinois politicians consciously created these debt and pension crises
Some scandal sagas unfold in litanies of detail. Factual dots of who, what, when and where create a linear narrative. Other times we have to absorb decades of dereliction to understand a debacle — such as how this state’s political class devastated Illinois’ public finances. The enormous debt and pension crises now menacing taxpayers didn’t erupt spontaneously, like unexpected tornadoes roaring out of blue sky. Instead:
Illinois politicians consciously invited these crises. Examine the latest evidence of how the perps set up Illinois to fail:
August means dial-out time for vacationers and back-to-school chaos for families. But while many Illinoisans were occupied elsewhere, this August has revealed two insights that the pols — especially incumbents nervous about re-election — don’t want to see conjoined.
Sun-Times: Park district hired clout contractor CPS fired
A bus company the Chicago Public Schools fired more than two years ago, accusing it of overbilling taxpayers at least $1.5 million, has since gotten deals worth more than $500,000 from another city agency, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
The park district hired the company — which has found support from the Rev. Jesse Jackson — even after receiving letters from a school official warning about the problems CPS had with the company.
“We uncovered a great deal of illegal activity by Jewel’s Bus Co,” Paul Osland, who recently left his post as CPS’ chief facilities officer, wrote in March. “I anticipate that the issues with Jewel’s will end up in the public eye and I would hate to see [the park district] embarrassed.”
PJStar: The law said an ex-felon couldn't be a nurse. So this single mom got the law changed.
When Lisa Creason was a 19-year-old single mom, she robbed a Subway shop. Or, at least, she tried to. One evening in 1993, she walked in without a plan, without an ultimatum, and demanded money from the cash register. When she was denied, she took off.
That spontaneous decision, which she said she made out of desperation to provide for her baby girl, would cost her for the next two decades.
But it never defined her.