The Wall Street Journal

Mayor Emanuel’s minimum wage executive order doesn’t apply to political pals

By Brian Costin
10/11/2014
With great fanfare, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced an executive order requiring city contractors and concessionaires to pay their employees no less than $13 per hour. The move was highly touted in both the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune, as well as a number of other publications and television news broadcasts. None of these...

TAGS: Rahm Emanuel, transparency, unions

Taxpayers on the hook for risky investments in state pension systems

08/15/2014
Politicians have made a mess of Illinois’ finances, in large part through their mismanagement of state and local pension systems. With most of the state’s pension funds heading toward insolvency, it’s no surprise that politicians’ actions – from using government-worker retirements as slush funds, to trading retirement benefits in exchange for union support, to taking...

ACA driving part-time nation

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
07/15/2014
Evidence that the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, is harming the nation’s labor market continues to mount. U.S. News & World Report Chairman and Editor Mortimer Zuckerman explained in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that less than one-half of working-age adults are working full time. Zuckerman lays blame to slow-growth and the...

TAGS: ACA: Affordable Care Act, health care

Chart of the week: Waning entrepreneurial spirit in Illinois

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
06/27/2014
According to a recent Gallup survey, only 60 percent of Illinoisans believe that this is a good state to start a business. Not only do we have one of the most negative views in the nation, but it stands in stark contrast to booming states such as North Dakota and Texas, where more than 80...

Chicago’s pension red alert

03/10/2014
The Wall Street Journal’s article “Public Pension Red Alert” foreshadows more municipal bankruptcies countrywide as pension costs continue to spiral out of control. One of the cities facing the most stress nationally is Chicago. The city’s pension payments are set to jump to more than $1 billion as laws that allowed the city to skimp on pension payments...

TAGS: Chicago, municipal pensions

ObamaCare: Time for heads to roll?

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
10/09/2013
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is in damage control mode in the wake of the glitches and failures of ObamaCare’s grand unveiling. Her op-ed in USA Today calls the government’s ObamaCare website “simple, user-friendly.” She also appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. But her next appearance might be in...

TAGS: Health and Human Services, HHS: Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius

ObamaCare: The great Medicaid expansion

By Naomi Lopez Bauman
10/05/2013
Federal officials are trumpeting the high “demand” that ObamaCare’s health insurance exchanges are experiencing, but their celebration is misguided. What’s the point of the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges if the end result is to dump the majority of Americans covered under ObamaCare into Medicaid? The truth is that more than three-quarters of the newly insured next year...

Want to criticize your government? Better get permission first.

09/10/2013
If you want to criticize a politician, should you have to check with your lawyer first or get the government’s permission? You wouldn’t think so – at least not in America, where we have a First Amendment that’s supposed to protect our right to free speech. Unfortunately, laws enacted under the guise of “campaign finance...

Justice Department sues to block Louisiana’s voucher program

08/29/2013
On the same day he gave a speech celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s life on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder instructed the Justice Department to file a motion to prevent 34 predominantly black school districts in Louisiana from allowing families to utilize the state’s voucher program. And the Justice Department’s reasoning...
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Chicago Forward 2026: A pro-growth plan to end city budget deficits

Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.

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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