My Blog

Month: October 2012

  • Feds Investigate Jesse Jackson Jr.

    We all knew this was coming: Federal prosecutors and FBI agents in Washington have launched a new criminal investigation of Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. involving financial improprieties, including possible misuse of funds monitored by Congress, law enforcement sources tell NBC News.The probe prompted lawyers for Jackson to meet with federal prosecutors this week in…

  • Businesses Expanding but Not Hiring

    A majority of owners of midsized businesses in the Chicago area plan to expand in the next three months, but only a third say they will hire more workers in that time, according to a new survey.  … The most recent poll … found that nearly 60 percent of surveyed businesses planned to expand in…

  • $2M in Unemployment to Inmates

    More than 1,100 people have collected nearly $2 million in unemployment benefits while they were in county jails or state prisons, including $43,000 that went to a person in the Cook County Jail, a state agency said Tuesday. Now they may face state or federal criminal fraud charges as well as having to repay what…

  • SUV as Deadly Weapon

    Two people were struck by a hit-and-run driver after a fight outside a River North neighborhood bar early Sunday morning, police said. via Chicago Tribune. Although it’s not reported here, the news from police on the scene is that this was a street fight where the fight’s loser went to his car and then used…

  • No Internet Access

    Dear Friends, Please hang in there with me. I’m without Internet access until Wednesday. Thanks.

  • Ald. Burke, Wrigley & Your Tax Dollars

    Ten years ago, Chicago’s most powerful alderman, Edward M. Burke, and the rest of the City Council signed off on a deal that promised $16 million in taxpayer subsidies to the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. to help it build a new corporate campus on Goose Island rather than move to the suburbs. Three years later,…

  • Illinois Need to Cut COLAs

    The head of Illinois’ largest pension plan strongly suggested that cuts in cost-of-living benefits are inevitable for more than 360,000 teachers and retirees outside of Chicago. In an interview with Crain’s editors and reporters, Richard Ingram, executive director of the underfunded Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, said state politicians will have few other options if they…

  • Illinois – Worst Financial Shape Ever

    Bloomberg L.P., the big New York financial data firm, is holding its fall municipal-financing conference on Wednesday, and guess what the title is for the special panel on the Land of Lincoln?  Try Land of Entropy.  Yes, sports fans, the panel titled “Illinois Treading Water” is set for 1:45 p.m. and, according to a synopsis,…

  • Fast and Furious Killed 14 Teenagers

    “Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more…