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  • Unions Investment in Chicago (Elections)

    Four years ago, SEIU spent almost $2.5 million in Council races, spearheading a union effort that helped depose Daley allies like Madeline Haithcock, Shirley Coleman and Dorothy Tillman. Asked about the budget for this election, Balanoff said SEIU expects to be involved “at the same level as last time.” Total expenditures by SEIU and other labor groups, including the CFL, could top $4 million, union sources told the CNC.

    (Full story here.)

    Just ask yourself, why would unions spend $4 million of their members money on municipal elections?  Because it’s worth it.  They get an excellent return on their investment.

    The union makes millions in political donations and they get multiple millions in return.

    So who’s looking-out for the taxpayer?

  • Big Tax Hikes Result in Less Revenue

    Last year, voters in Oregon voted to raise taxes on the highest income earners in the state, giving Oregon the highest tax rates of any state in the nation. It hasn’t worked out too well for Oregonians, according to the Wall Street Journal:

    In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000.  …

    Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. …

    One reason revenues are so low is that about one-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing. The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax, but only 28,000 did.

    (Full story here.)  Hat tip to SCC for the story.

    As Homer Simpson says, Doh!

    Again, I’ve written about this here and here.  People simply leave.  Those who do not understand the Laffer Curve will perish from it.

    And note, this does not happen with a bang.  This happens slowly, quietly, over time.  One middle class family moves to Evanston, then one to Riverside, and another to Elmhurst.  Pretty soon10% of the people paying the bills have left.  Those first on the bus get to pick the best seats.  The rest have a real problem.

    But we can stop this.  We just need to say “Enough!”

  • Wisconsin ‘Open for Business’

    Wisconsin is open for business. In these challenging economic times while Illinois is raising taxes, we are lowering them. On my first day in office I called a special session of the legislature, not in order to raise taxes, but to open Wisconsin for business. Already the legislature is taking up bills to provide tax relief to small businesses, to create a job-friendly legal environment, to lessen the regulations that stifle growth and to expand tax credits for companies that relocate here and grow here. Years ago Wisconsin had a tourism advertising campaign targeted to Illinois with the motto, ‘Escape to Wisconsin.’ Today we renew that call to Illinois businesses, ‘Escape to Wisconsin.’ You are welcome here. Our talented workforce stands ready to help you grow and prosper.

    —  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

    (Full story here.)

    Wow!  Thanks to the trifecta of stupidity known as Quinn, Madigan, and Cullerton we can begin to shed even more jobs from Illinois.

    Of course, we can’t really blame Quinn, he ran on the platform of raising taxes.  So it says more about us (and by us I mean the people, not including myself, who voted for him) than it does about him.

    Despite the fact that the state voted these people into office, we really, honestly, deserve better than this.

  • How to Really Save Education

    The cool indy magazine Fast Company has a huge spread on education called, plainly enough, How to Spend $100 Million to Really Save Education.

    Naturally not all of the ideas are fully baked.  It is Fast Company after all; it’s meant to be an article on the fringe, and on the fringe it is.  But at least it’s raising the ideas so we can talk about them.

    Let’s bring all these ideas forward and start talking about them.  Testing some over here and others over there.  What we know is that the current situation is not working.  So there is little to lose.

    We must being the fundamental reform of education.

  • Robbery using Pepper Spray (instead of handgun)

    Three men attempting to rob a Loop Old Navy store Tuesday by deploying pepper spray fled without stealing anything.

    Three men entered a retail store at 35 N. State St. about 7 p.m. and one of them deployed pepper spray or a similar chemical agent on three patrons in an attempted robbery, police News Affairs Officer Veejay Zala said.

    (Full story here.)

    I wouldn’t normally post this (it’s really just another crime in the city) but it goes with the story below, about guns not being the problem.

    Bad people will do what bad people do.  Should we read this story and demand a nation-wide ban on pepper spray?  Of course not, that’s not the answer.

    The answer is to demand a nationwide ban on criminals.  We need to enforce the laws we have on the books already regarding not just weapons but robbery, auto theft, assault, etc.  The Cook County Courts system must stop being a revolving door where criminals go in and out month after month.

    Until we get serious about crime, banning handguns, high-capacity magazines, pepper spray, knives, 2×4’s, is making it more difficult for law abiding people to protect themselves in a city that is short 2,500 police officers.

  • Daley: Giffords Tragedy Show Need for More Gun Laws

    Mayor Richard Daley expressed sadness and outrage in the wake of the Arizona shooting rampage, and said the incident is yet more evidence that stronger gun control is needed.  …

    “But unfortunately, events like this happen far too often in America. We have to come back with some common sense gun laws. I mean no one should have that type of weapon, that kind of magazine on the streets of America.”  …
    “It isn’t what your beliefs are, it’s basically access to guns . . . we have a killing machine going on because of guns,” he said.

    (Full story here.)

    I was waiting for the right time to respond to the Giffords tragedy and I guess this is it.

    First: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords did not deserve to be shot.  Let’s get that clear.  The situation is a national tragedy.  My heart goes out to not only the injured and their families, but everyone who was at the scene and has to live forever with that memory.  It must be brutal.

    Second: despite calls for civility for over 200 years, mudslinging is part of politics.  Free speech is the law of the land (thankfully) and the Supreme Court has ruled — many times ruled — that the solution to bad speech is more speech, not less.  You got a problem with someone you talk it out.  You do not shoot them.

    Now then, with that out of the way…

    Daley’s reaction, and the media’s reporting of the story as a whole, is itself abysmal and tragic.  Is this news?  Of course.  But this story is blown way out of proportion.

    First: Daley’s quote,  “It isn’t what your beliefs are, it’s basically access to guns . . . we have a killing machine going on because of guns,” shows just how dumb this guy really is.   This event occurred because of guns about as much as DUI’s occur because of cars.  If this lunatic drove a van full of explosives into the crowd and went boom would the mayor want to ban vans?  Of course not.  This event happened because of one thing, an evil man.

    Second:  Six people dead and 14 injured.  That happens nearly every week during the summer in Chicago.  Every week in June, July, August.  Over and over and over again.  Year in and year out.  And where is the national story, the outrage, the discussion by the talking heads?  Where’s the policy wonks talking about why and how to solve?  Why isn’t Dianne Sawyer on location in Lawndale interviewing survivors?

    A one time spree killing by a madman is going to happen from time to time.  Such events simply cannot be prevented.

    Another national tragedy is that we’re allowing hundreds of our youth, mostly African-American males, to be gunned down in the street and it receives little to no attention.  Either the media doesn’t care, or the society doesn’t care.  Either way it bodes badly for our city and for America.

  • Fermilab’s Tevatron Shutting Down

    The Tevatron at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will be shut down later this year after the Batavia-based lab failed to win additional funding from the Obama administration.

    Once the world’s largest atom smasher — technically, a proton-antiproton collider — the Tevatron was scheduled to cease operations this year with the recent startup of a much more powerful accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider, which straddles the border of France and Switzerland.

    But with Tevatron running glitch-free and still producing useful research on the elementary building blocks of matter, Fermilab sought an additional $35 million a year to keep it going another three years, a proposal endorsed last year by a U.S. Department of Energy advisory panel on high-energy physics research.

    However, the Energy Department last week notified the University of Chicago, which runs the lab for DOE, that the additional funding would not be included in the soon-to-be-released White House budget request for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

    (Full story here.)

    This is very sad.   A long (LONG) time ago I took a series of Saturday classes out at Fermilab and learned about high energy physics and the Standard Model.  It was fascinating.

    This is a huge loss for the area, including Chicago.  Fermilab employs some of the smartest people on the planet.  People who were good to have in the neighborhood to work on things like solar power, new batteries for cars, LED lighting, improved windmill design, and the like.  Many of these people will now leave the area.  Dreadfully, many will head to Silicon Valley or Texas.

    It’s sad Obama, our home town hero, couldn’t find a mere $35 million in the entire federal budget to keep this place running for another three years.

    I say we fire half the aldermen thus saving more than enough to keep the Tevatron going.

  • $5/gal gas? Yes Says Former Shell Exec

    NOTE:  This story is a few weeks old.  12/28/2010

    Gasoline rationing and $5 pump prices are predicted by 2012 for consumers if U.S. politicians don’t get their act together, a former Shell executive said.  …

    John Hofmeister, a former president at Shell Oil, told the Platts news service that energy shortages and record-high gasoline prices were on the horizon because of high demand and ineffective governing.

    “The politically driven choices that are being made, which are non-choices, essentially frittering at the edges of renewable energy, stifling production in hydrocarbon energy — that’s a sure path for not enough energy for American consumers,” Hofmeister told the news service.

    He said 2012 might create “panic time” for U.S. lawmakers who are “suddenly” going to be pressed to rethink U.S. energy strategies.

    “When American consumers are short or prices are so high — $5 a gallon for gasoline, for example, by 2012 — that’s going to set a new tone,” he added.

    (Full story here.)

    I read this story back in December, thought about posting it, then it passed.  With the news yesterday that Chicago has the highest gas prices in the country, my memory clicked and I went and found this gem.

    Talk about killing the economy.  Since the 1980’s we’ve all been on the cheap energy economy.  Looks like that’s about to change.

    Poor leadership across the board: federal, state, local governments have done nothing to assist the citizens at making sure that the we continued to get a good deal at the pump.

    If $5/gal gas come to pass, you can bet the bank on a double dip of the great recession that will last another 10 years.

  • O’Hare Bonds Downgraded

    The cost of debt is going up because of years of bad management.

    A major credit rating firm delivered a stern warning Monday regarding the mounting risks that Chicago is taking by going deeper into debt in an attempt to build more runways at O’Hare International Airport without securing financial support from the airlines.

    Moody’s Investors Service downgraded to a “negative” outlook from “stable” some of the revenue bonds that the Chicago Department of Aviation has issued to help pay for the $15 billion O’Hare Modernization Program and related projects.

    (Full story here.)

    The city needs to borrow another $1 billion in order to keep expansion alive.  Because of the downgrade, the interest rate is going up.  Interest on a billion adds up fast.

    Less money for necessary services; more money to debt service.

  • Convicted But Still on the Payroll

    Chicago, the city that works, is also the city that keeps on paying city employees long after they’re convicted of corruption.Nine former city employees were paid a total of $383,205 after they pleaded guilty or were found guilty in corruption cases, records show.

    (Full story here.)

    Simply unbelievable.

    Another clear example of how one no is looking out the taxpayer.  When people have had enough they will toss all the bums out of the city counsel and demand more from their elected representatives.