If you want to start a small business in Illinois, there are different forms your new business can take. For example, you can have a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a corporation or a limited liability company, or LLC. The LLC is a relatively recent innovation that has advantages over the corporate form, and it can...

The Illinois Department of Employment Security, or IDES, announced today that the Illinois unemployment rate increased to 9.2 percent in July from June’s revised rate of 9.1 percent. Illinois’ unemployment rate is still 1.8 percentage points above the national average, which fell to 7.4 percent in July. The number of unemployed Illinoisans now stands at 604,700, up...

More than 2 million Illinoisans – 16 percent of the state’s population – are on food stamps according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, enrollment numbers continue to rise in Illinois, and have been continuing to increase across the nation. Illinois added nearly 20,000 people to food stamp rolls...

I grew up in Detroit, and as far back as I can remember my hometown was in trouble. But if there was a time when people just gave up on the place, it was probably October 30, 1984 — just a couple weeks after the Tigers won the World Series — when fires on “Devil’s...