Adapting DNA from corporate parent Fiat and sibling Alfa Romeo, the all-new 2013 Dodge Dart goes on sale this summer with a choice of three engines, three transmissions and a host of cool features.
Built in Illinois, the front-wheel-drive Dart is based on a lengthened and widened version of the platform that underpins the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, which corporate parent Fiat now refers to as its CUSW (for Compact U.S. Wide) architecture.
Four-cylinder engine choices include a 160-horsepower Tigershark 2.0-liter, a 160-hp turbocharged 1.4-liter Multiair and a 184-hp Tigershark 2.4-liter. Six-speed manual, six-speed automatic and six-speed dual dry-clutch (DDCT) transmissions are available. […]
Chrysler also has focused considerable attention on the Dart’s interior, which is said to have the roominess of a midsize sedan and comes with 10 standard airbags, dual-zone climate control and keyless push-button start.
Some versions of the Dart will get 40 miles per gallon on the highway. Its starting price is $15,995, at least $500 below its closest competitors, the Ford Focus and Chevrolet Cruze. The Focus starts at $16,500, while the Cruze base price is $16,720. The Toyota Corolla, the sales leader in compacts, starts at $15,900. […]
The company knew it had to overcome an image of chintzy, hard plastic interiors from its leaner years. As a result, it paid close attention to the inside, says Bigland. Chrysler gave the Dart a soft-looking dashboard and doors, and developed switches that open and close vents like in a luxury car.
Dart buyers also can get touch-screen controls and can pick their own interior accent colors. There’s a choice of three engines, including a Fiat-designed 1.4-liter turbo reserved for the muscle car edition.
Also setting the car apart is the tail lights. The Dart borrowed the trademark horizontal LED lighting from the tough-looking Dodge Charger.
Starting Sunday it’s going to be tougher to buy a can of Drano than a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Sunday is when the state’s Caustic/Corrosive Substance Act goes into effect imposing new purchase hurdles for many products including drain and sewer line cleaners.
The legislation is a response to two acid attacks in Chicago where the victims were severely disfigured. It was the final piece of legislation for State Rep. Susan Mendoza, D-Chicago, who now is the Chicago city clerk.
Buying a bottle of Drano will never be the same in Illinois again.
A new state law went into effect today that requires customers purchasing products containing sodium hydroxide, or lye, and other corrosive chemicals to show a legitimate photo ID and to provide their name, address and date of birth. And the store clerk will log the time and date of purchase.
While some consider the regulations intrusive, Illinois lawmakers behind the new law said regulating drain cleaners and other products is needed to protect the public from those who may use them to harm.
“The fact of the matter is there are evil people in the world who will abuse the most normal, everyday household products for sinister aims,” state Rep. Rich Morthland, R-Cordova, said.
However, those same House members seem troubled about requiring citizens to show that same “valid driver’s license or other government-issued identification showing the person’s name, date of birth, and photograph” in order to vote.
In fact, Rep. Randy Ramey’s bill (HB 3458) designed to reduce voter fraud by requiring valid identification sits dormant in House Rules.
* But is this actually the case? Will you have to register with the state if you buy a bottle of Drano at the local supermarket? Absolutely not, says one of the bill’s Republican supporters…
No, said state Rep. Chapin Rose, you shouldn’t need to show your driver’s license or sign a form to buy Drano or most other bathroom cleaning products.
There’s been some confusion about what is covered by a state law that went into effect Jan. 1, the Mahomet Republican said.
“The way this has been reported is about 90 percent not accurate,” said Rose, whose office has received a few calls about the bill (HB 2193) approved last spring. “There are going to be some high-grade, industrial-grade products available at Menards, for example, that are covered, but they’re industrial grade. Virtually anything on the Walmart shelf is not going to be covered by this.” […]
HB 2193, which passed both houses of the Legislature unanimously, limits who can possess certain caustic or corrosive acids that are regulated by the Federal Caustic Poison Act. Persons who sell or use the substances for commercial purposes are exempt from the restriction on possession. […]
But the law doesn’t apply to most everyday consumer products, said [Tanya Triche, senior counsel with the Illinois Retail Merchants Association], only those that contain the words “causes severe burns” on the label.
* And if you check the Midwest Hardware Association’s website, you’ll see a list of products that would require the registration. The list includes commercial products, like “Rooto Professional Drain Opener.” This stuff has high concentrations of sulfuric acid and other compounds that are far more harmful than household products.
“(Friday’s) action by Moodys is a direct result of Mike Madigan’s failure to pass legislation reforming the public pension system which is bankrupting the state,” said Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady.
“Madigan passed massive tax increases in 36 hours last year, but won’t touch the pension issue because it might jeopardize the millions in campaign donations he receives from organized labor.”
Brady continued, “In Madigan’s world, sound public policy long ago took a back seat to accumulating power and self-enrichment. Illinois deserves better.”
* The Question: Do you think “sound public policy long ago took a back seat to accumulating power and self-enrichment” in Speaker Madigan’s world? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please. Thanks.
* A Chicago News Cooperative story goes beyond the fact that Sen. Mike Jacobs sponsored the so-called “smart grid bill” despite the fact that Jacobs’ father Denny lobbies for ComEd…
In 2007, Denny Jacobs received $9,000 from the Illinois Recovery Association, which represents auto-repossession businesses, to lobby for a bill that would regulate the industry more tightly, according to Rick Constantine, who led the association’s lobbying effort at the time. Senator Jacobs introduced the bill, which died in committee.
Denny Jacobs registered last year as a lobbyist for the Rock Island Boatworks, which owns the casino in that city. Senator Jacobs had sponsored a bill narrowly tailored to give the casino a tax break.
At the time Denny Jacobs was lobbying for the smart-grid bill last year, Senator Jacobs took to the floor of the Senate and invited colleagues to a reception of “appetizers” and “liquid libations” hosted by ComEd. State records show that the company spent $3,818 on the reception and an additional $5,690 taking lawmakers to dinner that night.
During hearings before the Senate Energy Committee he oversees, Senator Jacobs allowed less than 15 minutes of testimony before adjourning, sending the measure to the Senate floor.
The move denied Scott Musser, the associate state director of the AARP, the opportunity to express his opposition. “It was very suspect, especially on such a huge and controversial issue,” Musser said.
That smart grid bill sponsorship clearly crossed a line. I won’t say it was illegal, but Senate leadership never should’ve allowed it to happen. There’s just no defending it.
Both lobbyists and their clients are required to disclose their lobbyist-client relationships. In 242 instances, records show, lobbyists reported working for a client but there was no corresponding registration by the client.
Lobbyists also do not have to detail all of the money they spend lobbying public officials. Most lunches or other entertainment are reported, but other outlays are not required to be disclosed. The nonpartisan watchdog group Common Cause Illinois compared Illinois’ filings to those in Pennsylvania and found that Pennsylvania lobbyists reported $470 million in expenditures in 2009, compared to only $1.3 million reported by Illinois lobbyists that year.
When lobbyists work as subcontractors to other lobbyists, as often happens, they are not required to identify the ultimate beneficiary of their efforts. They are required to report only the name of the lobbyist who hired them.
Lobbyists have long pushed back against disclosing what their paid and how they spend their money beyond food and entertainment. But federal lobbyists have to report those things and the time may be near for Illinois as well.
It would cost $3.7 billion over four years to merge all of Illinois’ high school-only and elementary-only school districts, according to an Illinois State Board of Education analysis.
The whopping cost to a state government already plagued by financial problems means forced consolidation is unlikely, said Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, who heads the Classrooms First Commission, which is studying the issue.
* But this is where the cost estimate is coming from…
The multibillion-dollar cost stems mainly from two factors. Merged school districts often have different pay scales, and when they merge, the state pays to make sure all teachers in the combined district are compensated based on the higher salary scale.
There are 100 high school-only districts in Illinois and 377 elementary-only districts. Combining them into 101 unit districts would affect nearly one out of every three children in the state. Funding the salary incentive alone over the required four-year period would cost $3.1 billion, according to the ISBE.
The state typically also pays districts $4,000 per certified staff member for up to three years. That would cost $611 million.
* “I don’t agree with that,” said Gov. Pat Quinn on Friday. Quinn proposed mass school consolidations in his budget address last year.
The governor reasons that the state doesn’t have to continue using the current law to force consolidations. Quinn said the new law could require some adjustments. “I don’t think the current law would envision the kind of fundamental restructuring that we hope to get,” he said.
* Most of the statements from Gov. Pat Quinn’s office Friday afternoon regarding the Moody’s downgrade were carefully constructed. This one was not…
A spokeswoman for Gov. Quinn called the Moody’s downgrade of Illinois an “outlier decision.” She said two other Wall Street rating agencies affirmed the state’s previous credit rating.
He didn’t come out and say it, but Gov. Pat Quinn has apparently abandoned his promise to allow the “temporary” personal and corporate income tax hikes to expire three years from now.
The governor submitted a three-year revenue and spending projection last week as he’s required to do by a new Illinois law. Its bottom line is that revenue is simply not high enough to match what Quinn wants to spend. According to his projections, the state will finish this fiscal year with a $507 million deficit, despite the recent tax increases.
Overall, Quinn wants to reduce the state’s operating budget by 7 percent next fiscal year, but much of that “cut” actually is a $400 million decrease in the availability of what is known as “salvage” money, or unspent appropriations. Quinn then projects no more cuts or increases through 2015.
The governor also believes he can keep health care spending flat for the next three years. The Senate Republicans say those projections are way off the mark. Health care inflation is rampant. The Republicans say Medicaid spending alone will have to rise by $2 billion to 3 billion over the next few years to keep pace with current laws.
Quinn wants to change some of those laws, but that would mean reducing payouts to providers (doctors and hospitals have powerful lobbyists) and kicking people off coverage and making them pay more during widespread economic hardship. Not easy, to say the least.
Quinn’s proposed cuts are outmatched by pension spending, which will continue to increase by leaps and bounds. Years of underfunding the systems and a 1990s-era law that delayed dealing with the problem have combined to squeeze the budget hard.
And then we arrive at fiscal 2015, when the governor projects a budget deficit of $818 million. As the Senate Republicans point out with their health care spending projections, that figure could be way low.
It wasn’t in his report, but Quinn’s projected deficit will double the very next year because most of the income tax increase is set to expire in January 2015, exactly halfway through the 2015 fiscal year.
The governor has promised to allow the tax increase to expire on schedule, most prominently during an appearance in Peoria with Caterpillar’s chief executive Doug Oberhelman, who has repeatedly complained about Illinois’ poor business climate.
Yet there’s no way to get rid of all that income tax increase with the governor’s three-year road map. He simply hasn’t made the cuts or produced the necessary revenue to keep the books in balance.
By Quinn’s own reckoning, all or at least some of that tax increase will have to remain. And if the Senate Republicans are right about health care spending projections, that 2016 deficit will be close to $5 billion, which is pretty much right back where we started.
I talked the other day to a Democratic political operative who said he was trying to figure out a way to explain to voters the need for the higher income tax and why the state still has to cut programs and can’t pay its bills. He said he had put a lot of thought into this problem but was having no luck and asked if I had any ideas.
My advice was simple politics — change the subject and attack the other side for something else.
There’s just no way on God’s green Earth you can win that argument, I said. You believe the tax hikes were necessary but saying that mass misery would’ve resulted had they not passed isn’t easy to do when most people firmly believe that simply cutting “waste and inefficiency” will solve all our problems.
Illinoisans have been so inundated with media hype about businesses threatening to leave and state vendors suffering from late payments that no amount of political spin can alter that negative perception.
And Quinn’s spending and revenue projections show we’re heading back to the edge of the abyss in three years — either politically via what will surely be a hugely unpopular permanent tax increase or governmentally if the tax hike expires and the state plunges back into the red. Either way, it won’t be pretty.
“Illinoisans are packing up and bidding adieu to our high taxes and crushing labor laws. They’re heading for states with lower tax burdens and more economic freedom. Places like Alabama and Mississippi may have not traditionally been known as beacons of prosperity, but they’re winning the race for families and businesses. Freer markets improve everyday life significantly, and people respond to opportunities for growth.”
Who knew that Alabama and Mississippi were “beacons of prosperity”? It’s true that Alabama has a lower unemployment rate than Illinois. Even so, you still gotta live in Alabama.
Obviously, Illinois can and should learn lessons from surrounding states. We’re not the best in anything, and the worst in too many categories. But if we want to engage in a rapid race to the bottom and lower our median income by $17K to match Mississippi’s, we’ll lose even if we “win.”
