* I dunno about you, but, to me, this looks pretty darned close to an act of war…
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday in an attempt to stop it from destroying a southeast Missouri levee protecting valuable farmland from the rising Mississippi River.
Koster said the corps is preparing to intentionally breach the levee at Birds Point in Mississippi County in order to relieve upstream pressure on a different levee protecting the Illinois town of Cairo. A decision on whether to detonate the levee is expected Tuesday afternoon.
So, Missouri fields are more important than an Illinois town, eh? Great. I think we need to dust off our quite detailed invasion plans designed to capture territory from St. Louis to University City. The Cardinals kinda suck this year, but they could be ours within days. Maybe the preznit can divert some of those drones he’s sending to Libya to assist our endeavors. Their first mission would be to blow up that levee.
All we need is a catchy name for the invasion, like the Pentagon always has. Any ideas?
The mayor of the southern Illinois city of Cairo says he’s asking its 2,800 residents to leave voluntarily to protect themselves from the rising Ohio and Mississippi rivers.
Mayor Judson Childs says he made the request after meeting with police, the Army Corps of Engineers and emergency-management agencies.
*** UPDATE *** Perhaps a clever ruse to disguise a massing of troops? From a press release…
Governor Quinn Activates Illinois National Guard Troops for Flood Assistance
Visits State Emergency Operations Center
SPRINGFIELD – April 26, 2011. Governor Pat Quinn today activated the Illinois National Guard to support flood-fighting and life safety missions in southern Illinois. The initial activation includes up to 125 Guardsmen who are deploying to Marion to assist the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) with emergency response planning. Additional troops may be activated if needed.
“The Illinois National Guard is a valuable asset to the state during disasters,” said Governor Quinn. “During the February snow storm, the men and women of the Guard helped save many lives and I am very grateful for their assistance during the flooding.”
“The Illinois National Guard fully supports Governor Quinn’s activation of our Guardsmen for flood relief,” said Maj. Gen. William Enyart, Illinois National Guard Adjutant General. “These Guardsmen are fully trained and motivated to assist in this mission to ensure Illinois citizens are safe from harm’s way. As always, we stand ready to answer the call for additional support if needed.”
Tuesday, Apr 26, 2011 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
Grid Modernization will give customers new tools and options that can make a real difference in their monthly energy bills.
This is not guesswork or hyperbole. ComEd has been running field tests on customer benefits where real-time pricing and smart meters are available. Here’s what we found:
• Customers who participated in ComEd’s real-time pricing pilot program saved 10% in 2010 and 15% in 2009. Since the program began, 90% of customers have saved money.
• The savings extend across all demographic groups. Nine in 10 program participants aged 65 and over saved an average of nine percent off their electric bill.
• 70 percent of the 6,000 customers enrolled in dynamic pricing as part of the smart meter pilot have saved money.
• The lowest income group has the highest percentage of customers saving money. In the group earning less than $20,000, 78% of customers saved money under the pilot program, compared to 69% of customers in the highest income group.
It’s just another reason why grid modernization is an important part of Illinois’ future.
Tuesday, Apr 26, 2011 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
ComEd President and COO, Anne Pramaggiore:
“While there is great promise here, we’re reluctant to quantify them at this point because they (smart grids) rely on changes in customer behavior and this is a new arena in the electric business. We simply don’t know enough to count on them.”
“Smart grid we are reluctant to embrace because it costs too much and we’re not sure what good it will do… The real issue is are we doing the customers more good by putting money into more advanced electronics or would we do them more good by putting the same money into replacing more old cable? To me that’s an unknown answer. If I had to choose, I’d bet on the cable.”
House Bill 14 is the wrong bill at the worst time. The bill completely ignores ComEd’s current Smart Meter pilot, which was funded by a surcharge on customer’s bills. What would motivate ComEd to rush for full Smart Meter deployment before pilot results are known and analyzed? The answer: profit margins.
* Illinois’ collection of 91 specialty license plates is dwarfed by Maryland’s 700, but more could be on the way…
So far this session, the state Senate has approved the creation of eight new specialty license plates and the House has approved two.
These proposals would still have to be endorsed by the other chamber and signed by the governor, before, say equestrians, could display their love of horses on their cars.
In order for a specialty license plate to be produced, it has to be approved by law and at least 1,500 people have to order one for it to be “worth the state’s time,” said Dave Druker, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office.
The most popular plate is the environmental one, which raises money for Illinois parks, with 43,517 on the road. This is followed by the firefighters’ memorial plate with 33,110.
Because of added fees to purchase them, the plates pay for themselves, Druker said.
* Today, Secretary of State Jesse White unveiled the latest plate, featuring the Chicago Bulls’ logo…
For each plate sold, Twenty-five dollars ($25) will be donated to state public education resources.
[Treasurer Dan Rutherford’s] idea of a universal charity plate with stickers for particular groups never caught on despite its passage in the mid-1990s.
Police have learned to live with the variety of designs and to be careful when entering numbers.
And apparently they have learned to live with lawmakers who argue against having one plate on vehicles because it makes police work tougher while the same lawmakers make police work tougher with more plate designs.
* The Question: Should Illinois create more specialty charity plates, eliminate them altogether, reduce them or hold the current numbers steady? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* A lot of folks just don’t want to hear it, but House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie made some good points on this video about why legislative district maps aren’t perfectly rectangular in Illinois. Have a look…
* The federal and state Voting Rights Acts, geographical and political boundaries, etc. all make it difficult to draw square maps. For example, take a look at the Mexican-American Legal and Defense Fund’s proposed House district maps for the South Side which I told subscribers about in much detail this morning…
As subscribers know, there was some heavy-duty personalized/politicized gerrymandering involved in at least one of those above districts. The Illinois Supreme Court has allowed maps drawn with incumbent homes in mind, however. And various federal and state laws/rulings require squiggly lines to achieve racial/ethnic representation. Congressman Gutierrez’s 20-year-old map has never been struck down, for instance, despite running all over the place…
* Some folks don’t like this, particularly white people who say we shouldn’t have maps based on race. The problem with that is, the people in power tend to be white, and they tend to draw maps which favor their own tribes. It’s no accident that the 1981 legislative map had to be partially redrawn via court order because white Democrats refused to draw districts to help elect Latinos beyond one “safe” machine candidate (Joe Berrios).
So, that’s the way it is, your reading of the Constitution’s “compact and contiguous” language notwithstanding. Courts interpret the Constitution, and they’ve done so in a way that allows these things. Even the crazy, purely political map drawn for Lane Evans has held up for ten years…
The Republicans, by the way, drew Gutierrez’s map and a lot more Latino legislative districts in concert with MALDEF. Why? Because they didn’t want to risk their map being tossed out by a court. It’s the way it goes.
* There are those who say we should have districts which look like Iowa’s, nicely squared boundaries. But racial requirements and our own state’s rather odd shape and population patters both work against that. That’s not to say that mapmakers shouldn’t try to make legislative districts a bit less bizarre, but they’ll usually do whatever they believe they can get away with.
* Remap roundup…
* Greg Hinz: Latinos ask for more — lots more — in state remap
“The present valuation indicates that state contributions are far from adequate to meet the current requirements of the system… On the basis of the present rate of state contributions, the retirement system is actuarially unsound,” Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois (TRS) Actuary Arthur Stedry Hansen, Fiscal Year 1950 Valuation Report. TRS had a funded ratio of 23 percent in FY 1950.
It was 77 percent unfunded? And the world didn’t end?
* Percent of benefit payout was the method used to calculate state contributions to the Illinois pension systems for many years. From FY73 through FY81, state contributions to the five state retirement systems were based on 100 percent of each system’s expected benefit payout. However, funding based on percent of benefit payout bears no relation to the cost of benefits being earned, and this has added to the unfunded liability of the system. In FY82 through FY88, state contributions dropped to an average of 60 percent of benefit pay outs. Eventually, payout was no longer used as the basis of appropriations and the prior year’s funding level (level funding) became the standard of determining state contributions.
* Public Act 86-0273 was enacted in 1989 and called for all state pension systems to be fully funded over 40 years, following a seven-year phase-in period. However, there was no continuing appropriation in the law and the state never complied with the funding requirements. […]
* Public Act 94-0004 became law June 1, 2005. The act specified fixed amounts to be paid by the state in FY06 and FY07, which represented a $2.3 billion cut over two years to the five pension systems.
* Meanwhile, the Peoria newspaper editorialized on behalf of the General Assembly using itself as a test case for cutting pension benefits to current state employees…
Lawmakers also pay into a pension plan, administered by the General Assembly Retirement System; reduce legislator pensions first and make that your test case in the courts. It’s a narrow sample group, so the cost to catch up is smaller if it’s ruled unconstitutional. Beyond that, what better way to show leadership in a budget crisis than to prove you get it by sharing in the pain personally? Just imagine the vote-getting potential for the politician able to brag that he voted to cut his own pension first.
* You may have heard by now that Attorney General Lisa Madigan sent a letter to Apple and Google about their location data collection practices…
llinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is asking Apple and Google to explain why their mobile devices — Google’s Android smartphones and Apple’s iPad and iPhones — collect and store detailed data about their users’ locations in ways that can be mapped, easily accessed and kept for long periods.
“It’s important that these companies ensure that their users’ private information is protected,” Madigan said in a letter asking to meet with Apple and Google executives.
Apple has remained silent, while Google said users get pop-up notices that allow them to turn off location-information sharing.
“All location sharing on Android is opt-in by the user,” according to the Google statement. “We provide users with notice and control over the collection, sharing and use of location in order to provide a better mobile experience on Android devices.”
Google acknowledged today that it collects location information from Android devices, but downplayed concerns about privacy by saying the information is not “traceable to a specific user.”
That claim, it turns out, depends on the definition of “traceable.”
According to detailed records provided to CNET by a security researcher, Android phones regularly connect to Google.com and disgorge a miniature data dump that includes time down to the millisecond, current and recent GPS coordinates, nearby Wi-Fi network addresses, and two 16-letter strings representing a device ID that’s unique to each phone.
“It’s not tied to a user,” says Samy Kamkar, who provided the Android connection logs to CNET. “But it is a unique identifier to that phone that never changes unless you do a factory reset.”
Last week’s discovery that Apple’s iPhone and Google phones track their users’ locations sparked outrage and led to questions about what the data is being used for. Now, the New York Times is reporting that the location data collection is being used not only to improve the accuracy of maps and navigation services, but also for advertising purposes.
Location data is highly sought after for use by advertisers who want to target customers in a particular place, since location-based ads are much more lucrative than other ads. “Google envisions a world where even a small business can promote products to consumers nearby on a mobile device,” said Alistair Goodman, CEO of location-based advertising company Placecast. “That is a massive market.” And according to the Times, the market is so massive that Google and Apple have both been willing to push the envelope on privacy to collect user information.
In the suit, the pair, who seek punitive damages and injunctive relief, cite research from Alasdair Allen and Pete Warden about the tracking files found within iOS as the source for Apple’s collection techniques.
“Users of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, including Plaintiffs, were unaware of Apple’s tracking their locations and did not consent to such tracking,” the suit claims. “Apple collects the location information covertly, surreptitiously and in violations of law.”
The suit faults Apple specifically for not disclosing that the iOS software records “comprehensive” location data in its iTunes Terms of Service, nor offering end users informed consent of the practice.
“If Apple wanted to track the whereabouts of each of its products’ users, it should have obtained specific, particularized informed consent such that Apple consumers across America would not have been shocked and alarmed to learn of Apple’s practices in recent days,” the suit says.
Windows Phone 7, supported by manufacturers including Dell, HTC, LG, Nokia, and Samsung, transmits to Microsoft a miniature data dump including a unique device ID, details about nearby Wi-Fi networks, and the phone’s GPS-derived exact latitude and longitude.
A Microsoft representative was not immediately able to answer questions that CNET posed this afternoon, including how long the location histories are stored and how frequently the phone’s coordinates are transmitted over the Internet. Windows Phone currently claims about a 6 percent market share but, according to IDC, will capture about 21 percent by 2015 thanks to Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia.
Microsoft does say, however, that location histories are not saved directly on the device. That’s different from Apple’s practice of recording the locations of visible cell towers on iPhone and iPad devices, which can result in more than a year’s worth of data being quietly logged. Google’s approach, by contrast, records only the last few dozen locations on Android phones.
Law enforcement agencies have known since at least last year that an iPhone or iPad surreptitiously records its owner’s approximate location, and have used that geolocation data to aid criminal investigations. […]
One concern is the circumstances under which law enforcement can gain access to location histories. Courts have been split on whether warrants are required to peruse files on gadgets after an arrest, with police typically arguing that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unusual searches doesn’t apply. (The Justice Department under the Obama administration, in a series of prosecutions including one in Nebraska involving a crack cocaine dealer, has taken the same position.)
In addition, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has publicly asserted the right to copy all data from anyone’s electronic devices at the border–even if there’s no suspicion of or evidence for illegal activity. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has blessed the practice.
All of this has led to a spike in law enforcement interest in the topic
For the second year in a row, Illinois ranks dead last when it comes to saving money to pay promised worker pensions — and the hole is getting worse.
According to a new report being issued this morning by the Pew Center on the States, Illinois through fiscal 2009 had set aside just 51% of the $126 billion it will need to pay retired workers their pensions.
That ranks the Land of Lincoln last of the 50th states, with only West Virginia at 56% and Oklahoma at 57% within six points of Illinois. Financial experts say a prudent state ought to have 90% of the money on hand for pensions that it will need.
The shortfall actually is probably greater than the $62-billlion figure Pew is reporting because the ‘09 numbers are a blended average of returns over prior years, before the stock market crashed in 2009.
Fiscal Year 2009 ended on June 30th of that year. The Dow dipped to 7062, the lowest it had been since 1997, at the end of February, 2009…
FY 2009 was also Rod Blagojevich’s last budget. He wasn’t exactly responsible.
* But the Pew report is actually way off. According to the Commission on Governmental Forecasting and Accountability, total unfunded liability was $78 billion in FY 2009 (way above Pew’s $62 billion), and almost $86 billion by FY 2010.
Here’s a depressing COGFA chart of the state’s historical unfunded liability…
And check out the percentages for FY 10…
The Pew study estimated the shortfall at 51 percent for FY 09. COGFA has FY 10’s number at almost 62 percent.
When the pension shortfall is combined with the cost of retiree health care, states face a gap of $1.26 trillion between money on hand and what they’ll eventually owe. That’s about $9,500 for every household in the United States. The study did not include many local government pension plans, which face similar problems.
In response to questions from Schoenberg, DHFS said that as of January, nearly 82,000 retirees and survivors get coverage under the state health insurance program. Most of them are covered by Medicare, with state insurance serving as a Medicare supplement policy. But DHFS said more than 27,500 retirees and survivors are not covered by Medicare.
Whether a retiree pays premiums for that health care depends on when the person retired and how long they worked for the state. People who retired before Jan. 1, 1998, do not have to pay premiums. Those who retired after that date have to pay premiums, but the amount is reduced by 5 percent for each year of service. Someone who retires with 20 or more years with the state does not have to pay a premium for coverage. However, they are required to pay for dependents on their coverage and make co-payments and related service charges required by their health plan of choice.
