Category: Politics
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Speed Cameras Save Children
Quinn pulls out an old line: Gov. Pat Quinn gave Mayor Rahm Emanuel something he wanted Monday: the power to use cameras across nearly half of Chicago to nab speeding drivers and fine them as much as $100. Questions linger about the effectiveness and scope of the speed camera plan, but the governor sought to…
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FOID Card Requests Sink Police
Illinois has so many requests for Firearm Owner’s Identification cards that state police can’t process them in a timely manner. In addition, people calling the state police to ask why they haven’t received their FOID cards are put on hold for as long as 35 minutes, if they’re lucky enough to get through to an…
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Your Water Bill Doubles For What?
God bless Ben Joravsky. All summer long, in press conferences and at public hearings, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget refrain remained the same: no more accounting gimmicks and no new taxes. “We have been doing smoke and mirrors on the budget and avoided taking control of our own future as a city,” he said at a…
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Taxpayers Pay for Political Payback
Kudos to Crains on this unbelievable story: Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan cost taxpayers nearly half-a-billion dollars by blocking repeated efforts to restructure McCormick Place bonds and finance a much-needed second hotel at the convention center, a Crain’s investigation finds. Between 2005 and 2010, Mr. Madigan stopped five refinancing bills, ignoring declining interest rates that…
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Ward Map Gerrymandered
Really? We didn’t know. Residents in this area had hoped Chicago’s new ward map would put homogeneous communities in the same ward. Those hopes were dashed on Jan. 19 when the Chicago City Council passed one of the most gerrymandered maps in its history. Second Ward resident Barbara Burchjolla summed up local frustration when she…
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Illinois, the Greece of America
It all started with this story: Even though the legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn last year imposed a temporary 67 percent state income tax increase, Quinn’s office expects to have a $500 million budget deficit this year. Quinn is calling for a 9 percent cut in most areas of state government, except education and health care. But…
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Occupy Chicago Gets a Home
Occupy Chicago has secured a new home base to coordinate its winter activities. The group is leasing two units on the fifth and seventh floors of Riverfront Work Lofts at 500 W. Cermak Road. … The fifth-floor unit is nearly 3,400 square feet, while the seventh-floor unit is about 2,500 square feet. Kaunert said protesters…
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Ward Remap: Round Two
Alderman Bob Fioretti 2nd Ward, one of eight alderman to vote no on the map, stated in his email newsletter on Thursday that he has no intentions of dropping the issue. “I believe that new map breaks up communities of interest and includes deviations in population from ward to ward, which may subject it to…
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Church Groups Getting Public Money
Here’s something: Faith-based groups that have become the face of community support for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s controversial plans to lengthen the school day and close failing schools also receive millions of dollars in grants from his administration. … One of the key players touting grass-roots support for Emanuel’s agenda is the Rev. Roosevelt Watkins, a…
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#OCCUPYCHICAGO
I found a post on Second City Cop about the madness coming this spring. SCC was concerned that the kids were going to “live without dead time for a month in May and see what happens.” Hardly a threat. What I found interesting was their claim that: On May 1, 50,000 people from all over…