Today, Gov. Pat Quinn signed two pieces of legislation that result in greater budget transparency. The bills – House Bill 2947 and House Bill 2955 – which have both passed out of the Illinois General Assembly, mandate that the governor’s office posts the Illinois state budget online, and specifically identifies if there a budget surplus or a deficit within...
Recently, unions have been encouraging fast food workers to hold out for a $15 an hour wage in Chicago and other cities. Proponents have argued that fast food employees deserve more than they have been getting, and that the pay boost will improve the economy. But if they succeed, a different effect could take place: the...
The New York Times recently revealed yet another ObamaCare implementation delay. “In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care. “The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was...
The Illinois Department of Employment Security, or IDES, announced today that the Illinois unemployment rate increased to 9.2 percent in July from June’s revised rate of 9.1 percent. Illinois’ unemployment rate is still 1.8 percentage points above the national average, which fell to 7.4 percent in July. The number of unemployed Illinoisans now stands at 604,700, up...
In January, the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, or HFS, began a new project verifying eligibility for Illinois’ 2.7 million Medicaid enrollees. For years, state workers had failed to take adequate steps to ensure the people receiving Medicaid benefits were actually eligible for the program. As an Auditor General report noted, state workers...
Former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. was sentenced to 2½ years in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to stealing more than $750,000 from his campaign fund and illegally using the money for personal purchases. “I was wrong and I don’t fault anyone,” he said. His wife received a term of one year and will have...
In a weekend appearance on Las Vegas PBS’s “Vegas Week in Review,” Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, not only admitted that ObamaCare is designed to fail; but he also admitted that the law is one step toward a single-payer health care system. This admission should be added to the growing pile of ObamaCare’s broken promises. Just as many of the law’s...
Studies have shown that paying teachers for earning a masters’ degree is one of the worst ways to spend money in education. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said as much in a 2010 speech: “Doing more with less will likely require reshaping teacher compensation to do more to develop, support and reward excellence and effectiveness,...
In the wake of the Detroit bankruptcy, the media have paid a lot of attention to the effects of Detroit’s massive population loss – increased corruption, ineffective public safety and an unsustainable pension system, to name a few. But among the hundreds of articles written about the city after it declared bankruptcy, no one has...
More than 2 million Illinoisans – 16 percent of the state’s population – are on food stamps according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, enrollment numbers continue to rise in Illinois, and have been continuing to increase across the nation. Illinois added nearly 20,000 people to food stamp rolls...
We write a lot about the ridiculous things government officials in Illinois do, but make no mistake: officials in other states do plenty of outrageous stuff, too. In Tennessee, for example, there’s Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew. When two unmarried parents had a dispute over whose last name their child should take, Judge Ballew decided to...
Last week, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) was kind enough to send us the following letter (see below). Below that letter is our response. Finally, I gave a speech at ALEC last week on the very subject of the campaign to crush dissent to the progressive world view. Here is a brief excerpt that is...
I grew up in Detroit, and as far back as I can remember my hometown was in trouble. But if there was a time when people just gave up on the place, it was probably October 30, 1984 — just a couple weeks after the Tigers won the World Series — when fires on “Devil’s...
As the Detroit bankruptcy unfolds, the attention has started to shift to other big cities such as Chicago. Detroit and Chicago differ in countless ways, but regardless of the disparities, one unfortunate characteristic is shared by both: they’ve been successful in scaring away entrepreneurs. Between 2010 and 2012, Detroit was tied with Philadelphia for dead...