Tag Archives: Illinois

“End Of Days” Near As Illinois Set To Eliminate Cash Bail For Violent Offenders, by Tyler Durden

Posted on September 10, 2022 | Leave a comment

This will stop Illinois’s crime problem, particularly Chicago’s. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Progressive prosecutors and politicians have been enforcing radical criminal-justice policies across the country, often with little concern for real-world effects on the community. The latest is a “no cash bail” policy that will take effect in the new year for those charged with second-degree murder, aggravated battery, and arson in the State of Illinois.

The Counter Signal reported SAFE-T Act ends cash bail and includes 12 non-detainable offenses, second-degree murder, aggravated battery, and arson without bail, as well as drug-induced homicide, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, intimidation, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing and eluding, drug offenses and threatening a public official.

After Jan. 1, individuals charged with the above crimes will be free to roam the streets without bail.

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow warned the “end of days” is coming in the new year when the bill takes effect. Will County is located in the northeastern part of the state and is the second largest county in the six-country Chicago metro area.

Glasgow continued: SAFE-T Act “will destroy the city and the state of Illinois … and I don’t even understand (how) the people who support it can’t realize that.”

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More Signs That Illinois’ Green ‘Industrial Policy’ Is Failing – Wirepoints, by Mark Glennon

Posted on September 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

There are a variety of green policies, but they have one thing in common—their designers’ lack of real world understanding means they all fail. From Mark Glennon at wirepoints.org:

Whodathunkit?  Taxpayer assistance to relieve the pain of government failure.

On Wednesday, Gov. JB Pritzker proudly announced a whopping $300 million of cash assistance for Illinoisans struggling with energy bills. “Every Illinoisan deserves access to reliable energy—regardless of their economic status,” Pritzker said in his press release.

That’s just the latest result of Illinois’ foundering energy policy but, first, note that the new program is for natural gas, propane and electricity (only about 10% of which is from renewable projects). Those are the very energy sources that Illinois is in the process of deliberately trying to destroy.

Illinois plans to have 50% of its electricity production from renewable sources by 2040 and 100% from clean energy sources by 2050. That’s under CEJA (Illinois’ Climate and Equitable Jobs Act), which became law last year and was correctly called by one of its sponsors “the most aggressive, most progressive climate bill in the nation.”

It’s all part of what two leading supporters openly call an “industrial policy.” That was in a Chicago Tribune op-ed last week by Kady McFadden, a former deputy director at Sierra Club “whose work was instrumental in passing” CEJA, and Ameya Pawar, a former Chicago alderman who was also active in forming Illinois’ energy policy.

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The Illinois Political Establishment’s Shameful Response To The Departure Of Ken Griffin And Citadel – Wirepoints, by Mark Glennon

Posted on June 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

In their arrogance, Illinois leaders are disparaging a business leader who’s leaving the state and taking his business with him. From Mark Glennon at wirepoints.org:

On a wall in Ken Griffin’s office at Citadel in Chicago, I’m told by people who worked there, hangs a thank you note from a six-year old. Like many kids that age, he was enthralled by prehistoric creatures so he wrote to thank Griffin for funding Evolving Planet, a permanent wing in Chicago’s Field Museum.

The six-year old was my son, who asked if he could write it after my wife had taken him for what must have been the fifth time to the exhibit.

I was proud that he had the simple decency to feel a need to thank somebody.

I wish I could say the same about the Illinois political establishment’s send-off to Griffin and Citadel, who are leaving for Florida. There was no decency in any of it.

Griffin is among the most successful financial entrepreneurs in history and Citadel was a crown jewel in Illinois’ economy. But the decency of a proper send-off was nowhere to be found in Illinois’ leadership. There wasn’t even the standard, “we’re disappointed to see them go,” which they usually say about corporate departures. Just a kick out the door for a golden goose.

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Pritzker Goes To Bat For What The Wall Street Journal Calls ‘One Of The Greatest Fiscal Cons In History’ – Wirepoints, by Mark Glennon

Posted on September 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

Surprise, surprise! A guy who’s going to get a lot of money from a financial fraud is all for it. From Mark Glennon at wirepoints.com:

President Biden and his allies in Congress are having a rough time winning support for a new, historic, gigantic spending plan, but they knew who to call for help.

On Friday, Gov. JB Pritzker joined Biden on a Zoom call with local reporters to make the case for the pending federal legislation.

You may know the bill as the “$3.5 infrastructure bill,” which is what it has been commonly called in the media.

But that’s just a testament to media distortion. It’s not $3.5 billion and it’s not infrastructure.

The true cost is likely to be $5 to $5.5 trillion over ten years according to the bipartisan Committee For A Responsible Budget. A primary gimmick being used, it said, is pretending that programs intended to be permanent expire, which they say obscures “the true cost of the legislation and put program beneficiaries at risk.” A Wall Street Journal editorial detailed various “time shift gimmicks” and also explained how some states will be stood up for paying, on their own, part of the cost of new, universal pre-K entitlement and free community college. Hence, their preface: “Behold one of the greatest fiscal cons in history.”

“The press has reported almost none of this,” said the Journal about the phony cost estimates.

The Biden’s Administration’s answer to the cost issue is astonishing, even by its standards. The cost is actually “zero,” they say. Biden himself said the cost is “nothing.” On what basis? They claim they will raise taxes enough to cover the cost.

How’s that for chutzpah? As long as you are billing taxpayers, you can say it costs nothing.

And infrastructure is only a small part of what it’s about, even by CNN’s charitable description: “The sweeping 10-year spending plan marks the biggest step in Democrats’ drive to expand education, health care and childcare support, tackle the climate crisis and make further investments in infrastructure.”

The bill in fact includes a massive expansion of multiple government dependency programs, which CNN tried to list, based on “what we know so far,” as they candidly put it last week. Does anybody really know besides a few insiders?

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Federal Cash For Illinois Is Vastly More Than Commonly Reported: $138 Billion And Counting, by Mark Glennon

Posted on July 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Illinois lawmakers say they are now on a sound fiscal path, but that only comes after the state received huge grants from Uncle Sugar. From Mark Glennon at wirepoints.org:

We finally have a more comprehensive tally of the grotesquely oversized federal assistance dispensed under the guise of pandemic relief. It’s from CRFB, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and it’s broken down by states. It obliterates claims made by Illinois lawmakers that they’ve put this state on a sound fiscal path. Illinois, instead, was temporarily bailed out.

The total amount committed or disbursed to public and private sector recipients in Illinois is $138 billion and growing, the CRFB shows. Another $24 billion is allowed for Illinois under federal legislation already passed.

The current total of $138 billion may even shock many who have been following the federal bailout. That’s because most reporting to date has focused only on the direct aid to the state under the recent American Rescue Plan Act, which was only $8.1 billion. CRFB’s $138 billion total state aid includes distributed aid to both the public and private sector across Illinois:

    • Loan and Grant Programs: $63.5 billion
    • State & Local Funding: $16.2 billion
    • Income Support: $24.3 billion
    • Direct Payments: $10.0 billion
    • Health Spending: $7.86 billion
    • Other Spending: $4.01 billion
    • Administrative: $5.95 billion
    • Lending Facilities: $4.04 billion
    • Other Loan Purchase Programs: $1.59 billion

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Illinoisans Overwhelmingly Oppose Racial Indoctrination Rampant In Schools, Yet They Cower In Silence, by Mark Glennon

Posted on April 26, 2021 | 3 comments

It’s not easy to take on the mob. From Mark Glennon at wirepoints.com:

Illinois’ political establishment is far out of touch with the general public on the racial dogma now forced on students from kindergarten through college. Yet a stunning two-thirds of Illinoisans say they don’t speak up, thereby ceding control to an intolerant, extremist minority.

The proof is in a poll released last month that was mostly buried and ignored by the press. It primarily addressed what schools now teach as unquestionable truth: critical race theory, also called anti-racism or wokism.

Illinoisans don’t like it. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which commissioned the poll, summarized their findings this way:

A majority  of respondents  favor equipping teachers to develop core skills and competencies over the encouragement of  progressive  political activism.  Illinoisans  also  favor  a curriculum that  focuses  on “American founding principles and . . . documents” over  one that  incorporates  key  tenets of the  New York Times’ 1619  Project.  At  the post secondary level,  strong  majorities  oppose reducing police presence on campus;  support viewpoint diversity; favor a merit-based application process;  and  prioritize  reducing the cost of tuition over expanding  diversity  and equity  programs.     

That’s completely at odds with mandates from the state’s politicians and education officials. The Illinois State Board of Education recently approved woke teaching standards with its “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning Standards” for K-12 education, and the state earlier made “implicit bias” training required by law for Illinois teachers.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Education, Government, Politics, Propaganda

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This Is How A State Goes Bankrupt, Illinois Edition, by John Rubino

Posted on October 25, 2020 | Leave a comment

Politicians have been buying votes with pension promises to government employees for decades. Now, in Illinois and other states, the bill is coming due. From John Rubino at dollarcollapse.com:

Somewhere back in the depths of the 20th century, a bunch of governors, mayors, and public sector union leaders got together and cooked up one of history’s greatest financial scams. They would offer teachers, cops, and firefighters extremely generous pensions but would avoid raising taxes to fund the resulting future obligations. Grateful workers would vote to re-elect their benefactors, while taxpayers would appreciate the combination of excellent public services and low taxes.

The beauty of the scheme flowed from its demographics: Most of the original public sector workers were young and therefore decades away from retirement, so the crime wouldn’t be discovered until long after the architects retired rich and revered.

Now, however, those baby boomer workers are retiring and the scam is revealed for all to see. Even in the absence of a pandemic lockdown, mass defaults on state and city obligations would be inevitable in the coming decade. But with the lockdown, they’re coming next year.

So what do the worst offenders do? What they’ve always done, of course, which is to look for ways to paper over the mess for one more election cycle. Illinois is the poster child for state financial mismanagement, with unfunded liabilities that have grown from virtually nothing to $137 billion in just the past two decades.

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Posted in Business, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Government, Pensions, Politics, Taxes

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COVID-19: Seven facts that tell us Illinoisans can and must get back to work, by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

Posted on May 2, 2020 | 2 comments

Illinoisans (and everybody else) should never have been involuntarily idled. From Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner at wirepoints.org:

On March 20, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed an executive order requiring residents to stay at home in response to COVID-19. With sparse and inconsistent data to go on, the state acted in an abundance of caution. And facing fear and uncertainty, the general public accepted shutdown orders that have resulted in an economic collapse.

But today, the situation is far different. We now have far more data about the crisis and yet the state’s overall shutdown strategy hasn’t materially changed.

For one, the data tells us who’s most at risk from COVID-19, and it’s not the general public. It’s overwhelmingly those with preexisting conditions, especially the elderly. They’re the ones that need to be far better protected, and if necessary, quarantined.

We’ve also learned that Illinois had more than enough health care resources to meet our peak needs. Overall beds, ICU beds and ventilators are all in excess capacity.

And that means the general public should phase back into work immediately, while there’s still work to be had. The economic data shows how quickly the current lockdown is killing jobs and livelihoods. Economic recession and depressions cause deaths of their own.

Gov. Pritzker has seemingly ignored all the above. In fact, he recently extended Illinois’ shutdown by another month – through May 30.

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Secession fever spikes in five states as conservatives seek to escape blue rule, by Valerie Richardson

Posted on February 21, 2020 | 1 comment

Bring it on! From Valerie Richardson at washingtontimes.com:

"They'd like to have a little more autonomy and a little more control and a little more freedom, and I fully understand that," Idaho Gov. Brad Little told "Fox & Friends." (Associated Press)
“They’d like to have a little more autonomy and a little more control and a little more freedom, and I fully understand that,” Idaho Gov. Brad Little told “Fox & Friends.” (Associated Press)

You’ve got Oregonians seeking to cascade into Idaho, Virginians who identify as West Virginians, Illinoians fighting to escape Chicago, Californians dreaming of starting a 51st state, and New Yorkers who think three states are better than one.

Separation fever is sweeping the nation as quixotic but tenacious bands of frustrated rural dwellers, suburbanites and conservatives seek to break free from states with legislatures increasingly controlled by liberal big cities and metropolitan strongholds.

“Oregon is controlled by the northwest portion of the state, Portland to Eugene. That’s urban land, and their decisions are not really representing rural Oregon,” said Mike McCarter, president of Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho. “They have their agenda and they’re moving forward with it, and they’re not listening to us.”

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Illinoisans overwhelmed by a ‘shadow mortgage’ of pension debts, by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

Posted on February 19, 2020 | Leave a comment

Taxes cannot be raised high enough to pay the total state and local government debt and promised pension and medical benefits in Illinois—the tax donkeys will flee. From Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner at wirepoints.org:

Illinois’ combined state and local pensioner debts have reached absurd levels. When divvied up between Illinois’ households, the “shadow mortgage” each one is on the hook for now totals hundreds of thousands of dollars per household, if not more, depending on who politicians target to repay those debts.

As Gov. J.B. Pritzker and other lawmakers try to extract that kind of money from Illinoisans, they’ll fail, for the simple reason that the amounts have become overwhelming. Too many households don’t have the means, while others won’t stick around to pay for it. They’ll just leave.

And as Illinoisans leave, the shadow mortgage on those who remain will jump. The crisis will only deepen.

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