By Benjamin VanMetre
05/05/2014
In 2011, the Illinois General Assembly passed a record income tax hike. The higher rates are legally required to partially sunset in 2015. That means all Illinois taxpayers are less than one year away from tax relief. But Quinn is back for more. He wants to increase taxes again on Illinois’ middle-class residents instead of...
By Michael Lucci
04/30/2014
Gallup released a stunning poll that shows 50 percent of Illinoisans want to leave the state, the highest percentage of any state nationally. This comes a week after Illinois’ worst-in-the nation performance in a Gallup poll that showed one in four Illinoisans consider Illinois to be the worst possible place to live. If Illinois government...
By Brian Costin
04/30/2014
A ballot measure that would limit state legislators to eight years in office cleared a major hurdle today. In a press conference, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner announced that the group, The Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits, is submitting more than 590,000 petition signatures in support of a term limits constitutional initiative. The...
For months Gov. Pat Quinn has campaigned on the need to make permanent the temporary tax hike the Illinois General Assembly passed in 2011. Under state law, the majority of the 2011 tax increase will sunset in January 2015. Quinn wants to reverse that. He claims the state is out of money and there is...
By Donovan Griffith
04/25/2014
1. A supermajority means the rules do not apply When it comes to running a state, there is a long list of rules and parliamentary procedures the government must abide by during its everyday operations. These rules govern everything from how votes are taken to how bills are read and are in place to protect...
By Naomi Lopez Bauman
04/22/2014
Some bad ideas just won’t stay dead. Despite reasonable opposition from both sides of the aisle in Springfield, some political activists are continuing to push the idea of a state-based health insurance exchange. Illinois has a state-federal partnership exchange currently. At a time when the state’s health-care bureaucracy was caught paying Medicaid benefits on behalf of dead...
By Naomi Lopez Bauman
04/21/2014
Illinoisans are all-too familiar with jokes about cemeteries full of voters. But, according to a recent audit, the dead are also receiving Medicaid benefits. National news outlets reported recently that the state made Medicaid payments to health-care providers on behalf of nearly 3,000 deceased Illinoisans under the Medicaid program. The federal-state program, which is supposed...
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has backed off a proposal that would have hobbled or destroyed ridesharing services such as uberX and Lyft in Chicago – for now, at least. And when the taxi lobby turned to the Illinois General Assembly for help, they proposed a ridesharing bill full of provisions that would harm consumers and...
By Benjamin VanMetre
04/15/2014
The 2015 fiscal year marks a long-awaited milestone for Illinoisans: taxpayers are less than one year away from tax relief. The record 2011 income tax increase is slated to partially sunset during the 2015 fiscal year. But politicians are already crying poor as Illinois approaches the tax-hike sunset. The solutions they’ve offered up involve making...
By Matt Paprocki
04/11/2014
This session, a bill was introduced to the Illinois General Assembly that would impose draconian regulations on Uber and Lyft’s ridesharing programs. This legislation was crafted by the cab unions with the intention of drastically increasing regulation so as to maintain monopoly control over the urban transportation market. In addition to stifling the free market,...
TAGS: Lyft, Uber
