CHICAGO | Politics and Current Events

[SamInTheLoop]

Originally Posted by r18tdi

Christ I've hated that tacky-ass T R U M P sign since the day it went up, well before Donnie's toxic politics came into focus.
It's like someone slapping a bumper sticker on a priceless Ferrari. I will dance in the street when it comes down.

It's of course minor - little more than a footnote perhaps - in the long list of Trumpian horrors. But it is periodically worth the reminder that Trump - the man, the family, the brand - is endlessly, relentlessly, always, completely tasteless.

[SamInTheLoop]

Originally Posted by RedCorsair87

Breaking News: Emmanuel Welch is the new speaker!

https://www.chicagotribune.com/polit...2fq-story.html

It's derserving.

[sentinel]

Oh damn, excellent news!

[Tom In Chicago]

Well that was fast!

. . .

[RedCorsair87]

Truly amazing how fast out government works when it wants something. 8 MONTHS for a second round of meagre stimulus and DAYS to impeach the president and replace Madigan.

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by ardecila

That would be logistically difficult in a canyon of skyscrapers with roads, bridges, and boats underneath. The removal of that sign, like the installation, would need to be carefully planned and slowly executed. It can't be done under the cover of night. IIRC the original installation took a few weeks and went up one letter at a time.

If the city wants to take away the sign's power swiftly, it'd be a lot easier to invite that artist back with the floating pigs, and give him an arts grant to hire a parade balloon company for a "temporary arts installation".

It's not about logistics, Miegs was public property, this is a privately owned building. You can't just go chopping bits of it off without the approval of the owner.

[the urban politician]

I'm glad Madigan is out, but cautiously think it's naive to celebrate Madigan's demise as some sort of "turning over a new leaf" for Illinois.

The special interests that kept him in power simply anointed one of his closes allies to take his place. All of the power brokers behind the scenes are still in place & running things, and will keep our tax dollars flowing into the usual coffers.

A true "shaking up" doesn't happen this way.

[jpIllInoIs]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

I'm glad Madigan is out, but cautiously think it's naive to celebrate Madigan's demise as some sort of "turning over a new leaf" for Illinois.

The special interests that kept him in power simply anointed one of his closes allies to take his place. All of the power brokers behind the scenes are still in place & running things, and will keep our tax dollars flowing into the usual coffers.

A true "shaking up" doesn't happen this way.

It really is impossible to overstate the significance of the demise of Madigan. Nothing, absolutely nothing got done in this state without giving him a slice. Mostly jobs, appointments, 3rd party donations, directing projects to favored businesses. And with all of those friends in government jobs you can bet the house that he would be obstacle #1 on pension healthcare reform.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by jpIllInoIs

It really is impossible to overstate the significance of the demise of Madigan. Nothing, absolutely nothing got done in this state without giving him a slice. Mostly jobs, appointments, 3rd party donations, directing projects to favored businesses. And with all of those friends in government jobs you can bet the house that he would be obstacle #1 on pension healthcare reform.

Of course Madigan was horrible. I'm not saying that I want him back.

But it took what, a few days to replace him? What does that really say?

The very same players who kept him in power simply put in a new figurehead. The new Speaker is basically going to heed the exact same overlords, the very overlords who put Illinois in such a sorry financial state.

[OrdoSeclorum]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Of course Madigan was horrible. I'm not saying that I want him back.

But it took what, a few days to replace him? What does that really say?

The very same players who kept him in power simply put in a new figurehead. The new Speaker is basically going to heed the exact same overlords, the very overlords who put Illinois in such a sorry financial state.

That is no doubt partially true. *However* it takes a LOT of work to balance dozens or hundreds of interests over decades. No doubt the new speaker is aware of where the strings are, how to pull them and where the threats reside.

But that's true of the nephew of a dead mob-boss who's now running the family too. Sometimes the operation keeps running smoothly. Just as often fractions and divisions that didn't become major issues due to personal loyalty lead to a collapse of the enterprise.

I'd be pretty surprised if Chris Welch was as effective at doing Madigan Stuff as Madigan was. Madigan was a symphony conductor. I just don't know if there are many people who can operate the way he did.

[the urban politician]

January 15, 2021 02:41 PM
Putting out a pension fire with gasoline
The passage of a sweetened pension deal for Chicago firefighters is a set piece that rather neatly captures our current predicament.
CRAIN'S EDITORIAL BOARD

No one reading this needs us to fully recap the many ways Illinois found itself saddled with the most underfunded public employee pensions in the nation. We all know the fundamentals: We promised more than we were willing to pay for, we let our elected officials make a habit of borrowing against these long-term funds in order to enjoy short-term goodies, etc., etc. It's a depressing tale of serial mismanagement by pols of both parties, a slow-moving train wreck that first started going off the rails as far back as the Thompson administration.

What's been true all along, though it never seems to get the attention it should, is the thing that's been slowly inflating our overall pension costs like an overstretched balloon. It's the built-in annual elevator in most of these contracts—a guarantee that the pensioner's payout will rise by a fixed percentage each year. People commonly refer to these elevators as COLAs—cost-of-living adjustments—but in a world where inflation has consistently been running in the 1 percent range for years, a 3 percent guaranteed annual bump-up in pay can't rightly be called a COLA.

Nevertheless, COLAs have caused our pension costs at the city and state level to spiral out of control. The state of Illinois' unfunded pension liability, by the way, now stands at more than $141 billion and counting. For the city of Chicago's pension funds, that unfunded liability is north of $30 billion. And thanks to a bill headed for Gov. J.B. Pritzker's desk, the situation is about to get that much worse for Chicagoans.

Over the strenuous objections of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the Illinois Senate voted Jan. 11 to raise retirement perks for 2,200 Chicago firefighters by ratcheting up their COLAs—a move that is expected to burden city taxpayers with an additional $850 million in costs by 2055. The bill lifts a restriction that prohibits firefighters born after Jan. 1, 1966, from collecting a 3 percent annual COLA in retirement. Currently, firefighters born after that date get 1.5 percent.

The mayor—who, it should be noted, was unable to persuade a single Chicago legislator to vote against the measure—calculates that the COLA change will cost her constituents $18 million to $30 million per year.

Given his tendency to behave as public employee unions expect him to, it's more than likely Pritzker will sign this bill into law. Never mind that the city, financially strained even before the COVID calamity, is now reeling as the pandemic slows the inflow of tax revenue. Chicago will pick up the tab, whether it can afford it or not.

And there you have it—a set piece that summarizes rather neatly our current predicament: A Chicago mayor whose clout in the Statehouse is next to zero, union chiefs who want what they want and have enough legislators in their sway to get it, and a governor who will do their bidding no matter the cost. We may have a new speaker presiding over our House of Representatives, but in all the ways that really matter, nothing much has changed in Springfield.

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opin...-fire-gasoline

[SIGSEGV]

It's quite amazing that inflation has been so low when people keep saying they're worried about it?

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

It's quite amazing that inflation has been so low when people keep saying they're worried about it?

In the short term, inflation has been low because demand is low. There is so much new money entering the supply, but nowhere to spend it. I worry that is why the stock market has remained fairly constant over the past 6 months or so. Once the world opens back up, and people go back to their old spending habits, i think we will see people pull money out of the S&P and back into retail, which will drive up inflation.
Bear Market for stocks + inflation is why i'm doubling down on Bitcoin and other Crypto

[SamInTheLoop]

^^ ^

The bigger picture though is that inflation has been low for an exceptionally long time. It's actually a significant macroeconomic problem - inflation has consistently undershot the Fed's target for the "stable prices" part of its mandate for many years. Periodically it has only briefly flirted with a healthier level (2-3%), but it has always receded time and again just when it looked to be able to sustain. I certainly am in the camp that the Fed should raise its target, and much has been written about that. This problem is also very much related to why interest rates have been so low for so long. The last time I think it's realistic to say you could feel comfortable about where core inflation was is probably all the way back in 2005-2007 - and even then during that span it was basically only 2-2.5% in terms of core PCE (referencing that of the many alternate measures as it's the FED's preferred measure).

There are those of course that always worry about inflation - a lot of this to be perfectly frank is fairly standard rentier class bellyaching - the boogeyman is always lurking, and has been for the past 20-25 years, and always fails to show. Eventually of course they'll be right. I have no idea when, and I wouldn't bet on it for a while (speaking of inflation that is legitimately problematic on the high side), maybe a couple more cycles? In the meantime, in a macroeconomic sense, and for a strong majority of the public at large, we should root for a sustained period of moderately higher inflation, as it would be beneficial - 3% for a few years would be a dream and I'm not certain a realistic one in the near-term. But....with unified federal gov't control, a push for much needed greater deficit spending (yes - really - and thankfully there's an increasing consensus around the actual policy need for it, which also increasingly aligns with the politics), perhaps finally a significant infrastructure bill, higher minimum wage, and more......who knows....one can dream that we can get some lift.

[the urban politician]

As an economy becomes more advanced and heavily regulated, wouldn't that cause inflation to stay at perpetual low gear?

I'm not an economist, but just wondering.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

In the short term, inflation has been low because demand is low. There is so much new money entering the supply, but nowhere to spend it. I worry that is why the stock market has remained fairly constant over the past 6 months or so. Once the world opens back up, and people go back to their old spending habits, i think we will see people pull money out of the S&P and back into retail, which will drive up inflation.
Bear Market for stocks + inflation is why i'm doubling down on Bitcoin and other Crypto

I hope so. We definitely need this to happen by later this year if we are going to see any of the new projects that have been proposed over the past year & gone through entitlements come to fruition.

Most of the construction that we are seeing now is momentum from the pre-Covid era, thus a lot of urban-loving observers probably just aren't viscerally aware of the multifamily/office/retail slowdown because we still see all of these cranes in the sky.

But our politicians/business leaders eventually must get behind a concerted push to get COVID behind us, and bring confidence back to the consumer and office worker, or else those cranes are going to disappear and everybody is going to look at eachother like, "Uh oh...... what just happened?"

Which, this being the Politics thread, gets me back to Lightfoot and Pritzker. As long as I can remember (COVID feels like forever for me), they've been talking about Covid--understandably. But at some point, they will have an important task of bringing confidence back to the local economies. Making it feel SAFE, and even desirable, for people and businesses to invest. They have their work cut out for them because the last year has been ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL for a lot of people. If I were a person mulling opening up a new restaurant, I would be very wary even in the post-COVID era, knowing that at any moment I can get shut down immediately. This was unthinkable just 1 year go.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

^^ ^

The bigger picture though is that inflation has been low for an exceptionally long time. It's actually a significant macroeconomic problem - inflation has consistently undershot the Fed's target for the "stable prices" part of its mandate for many years. Periodically it has only briefly flirted with a healthier level (2-3%), but it has always receded time and again just when it looked to be able to sustain.

Doesn't that suggest the pension COLAs should be tied to CPI then, rather than some arbitrary percentage?

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Doesn't that suggest the pension COLAs should be tied to CPI then, rather than some arbitrary percentage?

absolutely. the fixed-percentage COLA increases were very short-sighted since people in the 90's apparently didn't have the imagination that inflation can be significantly less than 3%...

[the urban politician]

....so, I just did a physical on a Chicago school teacher, and during the visit he was in a zoom meeting on his phone with the CTU, who were debating whether to authorize a strike!

In the midst of the visit, I told him that I felt the best thing for the CTU to do was to negotiate that all of the teachers should immediately be given priority to get their COVID vaccine. With 2 shots, if they start immediately, they can have schools reopened in 4-6 weeks. He agreed with me and said that they were discussing that.

We shall see..

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

....so, I just did a physical on a Chicago school teacher, and during the visit he was in a zoom meeting on his phone with the CTU, who were debating whether to authorize a strike!

In the midst of the visit, I told him that I felt the best thing for the CTU to do was to negotiate that all of the teachers should immediately be given priority to get their COVID vaccine. With 2 shots, if they start immediately, they can have schools reopened in 4-6 weeks. He agreed with me and said that they were discussing that.

We shall see..

Certainly kids back in school indirectly helps a lot of other people get back to work (or become more productive at home).