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Illinois’s Job Creators and Workers: “Complainers”?

10/10/2011
by Emily Dietrich After a weeklong excursion to Asia, Gov. Quinn made a splash last Wednesday with his first public statement in 20 days. Quinn said that those expressing concern over Illinois’s economy are “complainers” and “naysayers.” As evidence of a positive jobs market, Quinn pointed to the job growth the state experienced last year. True, the...

Baby Come Back: Illinois’s Private Sector Job Loss 3rd Worst in Nation

06/07/2011
Over the past decade, only Michigan and Ohio had worse private sector job growth than Illinois. The Prairie State’s private sector job growth was down 7 percent. That means 363,100 jobs disappeared between April 2001 and April 2011 — that’s equivalent to disappearance of Delaware’s entire private work force.

High Speed Rail Dead in its Tracks?

By Chris Andriesen
04/29/2011
by Brian Costin In the above video from 2009 the Cato Institute’s Senior Fellow, Randal O’Toole, talks about the impact of high speed rail in Illinois. Fast forward to April 2011, and it appears as if the national high-speed rail plan touted by President Obama is losing significant steam. This blog post from O’Toole explains. “President Obama’s dream...

Because You’re Not Paying Enough In Taxes Already

04/27/2011
by Kristina Rasmussen As Illinois’s service sector grows (accounting for 32 percent of Illinois’s economy in 1977 and 48 percent in 2009), so has the desire to tax it. In 2009, the Illinois Senate tried to expand the state sales tax to a number of services (chimney sweeps, animal shelters, interior design services, and so on),...

Another State Rejects High-Speed Spending

By Chris Andriesen
04/14/2011
by Mark Cavers Bloomberg Business Week reports that legislators in Missouri are moving to reject some federal money to fund work that would speed up rail travel between St. Louis and Kansas City. The mounting concerns over future costs to Missourians echo similar concerns in a host of other states that have rejected federal money. Over...

The Public vs. Private Pay Disparity

02/28/2011
Last night the Institute's John O'Hara was on Beyond the Beltway where he discussed the disparity between pay for public and private workers.

Money in Politics and the New Class Warfare

02/28/2011
While most other states in the union are tackling public employee pensions, cutting taxes and razing roadblocks to prosperity, Illinois remains the last bastion of fiscal foolishness.
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4 ways to break out of Illinois’ pension trap

Causes, costs, how to set the state free

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Diana Graham

Process for unionizing non-state workers raises red flags

By Paul Kersey
06/19/2014

CBS Chicago: Illinois’ highest-paid superintendent receives $400K per year to oversee 1,200 students

By Ted Dabrowski
05/02/2016