Morning Shorts
Friday, Jan 23, 2009 - Posted by Mike Murray
* Todd Stroger Campaign Memo: A New Generation of Leadership
* County officials defend planned hospital cuts
* Oak Forest Hospital cuts make no sense
* Kids beg for better schools
* Kids Testify to Subpar Education in Desegregation Case
* Desegregation Hearing Continues
* Chicago parents argue to keep magnet schools
* Court rejects Barrington’s bid to block CN purchase of rail line
* Court won’t stall CN merger with EJ&E
* Naperville to stay in fight over EJ&E sale
* Court Refuses to Postpone EJ&E Sale
* Peoria Journal Star lays off 11, including five from newsroom
* Pontiac school board votes to slash budget; 10 teachers could be cut
* The end of a Chicago tradition
Hot dogs. Corned beef. Tongue. Pastrami. Bologna. By the end of the month, the company that my great-grandfather Isaac Oscherwitz started in 1886 will close. Best’s Kosher Sausage Co., was family owned for more than 100 years. In 1993, Sara Lee Corp. acquired Best’s Kosher. Mike Cummins, a Sara Lee spokesperson, said of the closing: “It was not because it’s not profitable—it’s just not where it needs to be.”
* Mayor Daley Suggests Feds Lease Assets
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says the federal government should follow his lead in the leasing of public assets. Daley has raised billions of dollars by privatizing the Chicago Skyway, Midway Airport and parking garages.
Mayor Daley says it’s all about quote, “thinking outside the box.” He says President Obama’s plan to invest in public infrastructure is a great way to boost the economy. But he says finding the money to do that is difficult.
* Illegal garbage pickup?
The sanitation superintendent from Mayor Daley’s boyhood home, the 11th Ward, and several underlings are under internal investigation over allegations they made illegal city garbage pickups from a Bridgeport hot dog stand owned by a retired Chicago cop who’s a friend of the local alderman.
* Why put up with this?
When you drive the Chicago area’s busy roadways you’re not only taking your life in your hands. You’re also enduring an added distraction and putting your car at risk: You have to dodge potholes. Big, gaping, tire-gashing, hubcap-crushing potholes
* LaHood confirmed as transportation secretary
* SJ-R Opinion: LaHood’s style good fit for job
* Legislators to shoot for STAR line again
* Ill. AG says collection agency threatened debtors
Ill. Attorney General Lisa Madigan is suing a collection agency that she says used threatening and abusive language toward debtors and their families while trying to collect on payday loans made in the state.
Madigan filed suit in southeastern Illinois’ Wabash County Thursday, alleging that Jacksonville, Fla.-based United Processing, Inc. operated without a state license and used deceptive practices. She says United employees posed as attorneys and told debtors that the state would take their children away if they refused to pay.
- wordslinger - Friday, Jan 23, 09 @ 8:48 am:
I’m not a a U of C Nobel economist, but let me see if a understand Mayor Daley’s leasing plan for the federal government:
the investment bankers go bust; the feds crank up the printing press to bail them out; the investment bankers then give the money back to lease federal assets; and we use that money for infrastructure, but we pay the juice on the lease.
That certainly is thinking out of the box.
- b-dogg - Friday, Jan 23, 09 @ 9:16 am:
the privatization of public assets is “thinking outside the box”????? Please. it is a quick cash grab that will have consequences down the line. but, hey, what does he care? he will be long gone by then. this short sighted-ness and “thinking outside the box”, when he is in fact so far inside it he couldn’t find his way out of it if he tried, is a disgrace. i can’t wait for the day his reign comes to an end.
- Springfield Sceptic - Friday, Jan 23, 09 @ 10:38 am:
Speaking of tradition, check out the letter to the editor by Mike Cramer in this week’s Illinois Times. Rich, your fans are legion. Keep on doin what you’re doin. I don’t know where else I could get a better political fix.
- Chicago Cynic - Friday, Jan 23, 09 @ 10:39 am:
No more Best’s Kosher Hot Dogs???????? I’m devastated! What will my son grow up with?
- jerry 101 - Friday, Jan 23, 09 @ 11:20 am:
yeah, don’t the feds realize that selling public assets is like a license to print money?!
It won’t ever cause any problems.
The government always gets a great deal!
Lost future revenues? What lost future revenues? We just got a billion dollar bonanza!
So what if the taxpayers were socked with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds being issued to upgrade the asset right before it’s sold!
It’s not real money! And hey, you don’t even have to raise taxes!
Yeah, so what if its actually an extraordinarily bad deal, and the government could have made all sorts of money if it just did what the private company is going to do (charge market rates for use of the asset), allowing the asset to bolster revenues and avoid some tax increases down the line.
It’s not like any of the politicians currently in office will be around in 20 years when we have a huge fiscal crisis and the government can’t depend on any revenues flowing from it’s assets.
Daley. Worst big city mayor in America. Anyone who listens to him should have their head examined.
- jerry 101 - Friday, Jan 23, 09 @ 11:23 am:
actually, Daley and Blagojevich are a lot a like, minus the crazy. Both believe that you can expand government without raising taxes.
Daley sells off assets that belong to the taxpayers for pennies on the dollar, while raising goofy little fees and taxes; while Blago robs peter to pay paul while jacking up goofy little fees and taxes.
In both cases, we taxpayers are seriously screwed down the line.