Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Morning Shorts

Posted in:

Illinois

* Illinois’ unemployment rates dips to 10.9 percent

* Hang up on contractor who’s ‘phoning it in’

In a special Sun-Times/NBC5 News report in Thursday’s Sun-Times, Carol Marin and Don Moseley wrote that a consulting company run by the stepson of former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. has not filed a single one of the weekly reports it is required to produce under its contract, which has run for 21 months.

* Judge says street gangs more dangerous than Gitmo detainees

* Illinois tollway headaches finally coming to an end

After two years and countless headaches for drivers, work on the Tri-State Tollway is finally expected to be finished before this weekend, tollway officials said today.

* Illinois tollway extends contract of troubled customer-service firm

* Chicago magnet school plan trimmed back

Faced with screaming parents and enraged aldermen, Chicago school officials trimmed back their admission plans for the most coveted schools in the system Wednesday — and said they might tweak them again once they see the results.

* Daley Criticizes Federal Lawmakers on Legislative Stalemates

* Alderman Takes Aim at Power-Plant Emissions

* CPS unveils new rules for school closings, ‘Student Bill of Rights’

* CTA budget with cuts approved

* Alderman re-introduces elephant cruelty ordinance

* Chicago. Wal-Mart. It’s time

* Wal-Mart: We’ll pay city-mandated wage, if it applies to everyone

* Alderman propose new reporting by police on missing children

* Chicago city workers keep quiet about misconduct, survey finds

* City employees report misconduct only half the time: survey

* Race Gap Widens In Chicagoans’ Health

* Health gap kills 3,200 black Chicagoans every year

Already lagging far behind whites on most key measures of health, blacks in Chicago have fallen even further behind in 11 of 15 areas reviewed by Chicago’s Sinai Urban Health Institute between 1990 and 2005 — including infant mortality, heart-disease deaths and diabetes.

* Racial gap in health widens in Chicago

* Sad news: Illinois ranks 45th

Unhappy?

You’re not alone. A new happiness survey ranks all 50 states and the District of Columbia — and Illinois comes in at a miserable 45th.

* Campton Hills rejects video gambling

* NAACP vows to fight cutting of city position

* YMCA names former Tribune exec as new CEO

* First Community Bank of Joliet parent accepts $22M in TARP aid

* Red-light cameras: First 14 installed in suburbs show mixed results

* Sheriff predicts layoffs for deputies

* Opinion: City should implement hiring freeze

* Evanston taxpayers urged to appeal

* Schaumburg residents voice opinions on possibility of village’s first property tax

* Charter school only real option in SD 227

* Belvidere City Council to vote on bar permit Jan. 4

posted by Mike Murray
Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 9:00 am

Comments

any chance that we can send gang convicts to gitmo???

Comment by bored now Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 9:10 am
In addition to a politicized state civil service paying above-market salaries and demanding little accountability from its underworked employees, Illinois also suffers from poor contracting practices. The contract with Emil Jones’ stepson, described above, is likely only one of thousands which should be thoroughly scrubbed, especially after the Blagojevich years.

Alas, our Pat is running for election and he probably doesn’t want to know. Jones probably
still has a lot of power in the Dems and we know
our Pat doesn’t want to unsettle any powerful Dems who might causes others not to vote for him.

Carol and Don probably don’t have time to make
the scrubbing of 50,000 plus state contract a priority. So, I guess we’ll never know how bad things are.

But when our Pat comes looking for that middle class tax increase in the spring, we should at least ask.

Comment by cassandra Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 9:15 am
the judge is right…why aren’t people up in arms about this instead of a couple hundred terrorists in a MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON…?

Cassandra: what does Carol Marin have to do with this contract? Your grasp of her responsibilty in this matter is totally off…go have another cup of coffee or something…

Comment by Loop Lady Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 9:26 am
This Sterling guy is a trip. His company could have taken a half hour every week to make up the reports and there would be no problem — who’s going to follow up to verify?

I like a little effort and imagination in my public contract scams. It’s the least he could do for the money.

Comment by wordslinger Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 9:26 am
Personally I’m all for cruelty to elephants…

Comment by Small Town Liberal Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 9:37 am
DA’Mare has a point about those silly legislators up in D.C. Don’t they know how important it is to fall in to lock-step with the executive in charge? If they were only as obedient as the members of the city council, we could repeat the fias.., er, stroke of genious that is the parking meter lease, on a national scale. Sounds like someone is afraid that the current occupant of the Oval Office needs some reminders on how to run things “the Chicago way.”

Comment by GoldCoastConservative Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 9:46 am
Loop Lady

Maybe I wasn’t clear. I’ll try again. If we have to rely on the press to scrub our many, many state and county contracts (our elected leaders don’t seem interested in scrubbing them) we’ll be waiting a long time to uncover a lot of waste and corruption. Contracting is a great way to reward political supporters. That’s probably why our Pat hasn’t actually done much (he talks all the time about transparency of cours) about contract transparency and accountability. And neither has
Todd Stroger, of course.

Comment by cassandra Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 10:11 am
“The gangs are more murderous, I think, than some of these people at Guantanamo,” Lamberth said.

What kind of statement is that? Since when isn’t a gang of thugs less dangerous than some of the detainees? What this judge said is obviously true, but doesn’t seem to be making a statement that could actually enlighten us by the comparison.

Now if he tried to make a fair comparison here, say, if he selected each gang member and compared him to each detainee - then his statement would be wrong. The Gitmo detainees are more dangerous. A gang member has a different set of priorities than a Gitmo detainee. It is those priorities that make the Gitmo detainee more dangerous over a gang member.

If this is an example of how this judge think - he might as well save his breath because he isn’t making a good comparison in cultures, values, groups v. single, or priorities.

Making an obvious statement like his, doesn’t mean the conclusion he reaches is correct.

Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 10:12 am
consulting company run by the stepson of former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr…..

This guy has gotten a bunch of these no performance contracts from various agencies. None have produced any product of any value.

Comment by Anon Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 10:19 am
From reading this or any other news/politics blog in Illinois one would assume we’d be at rock bottom on the “happy/unhappy” list

What makes for an “unhappy” state? Climate/weather is certainly part of it, but not entirely; some pretty far north states like Maine and Montana are high on the list, and even warm states get their share of bad stuff like hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, brush fires, etc.

Taxes? Depends on the overall tax structure and what people think they are getting for the taxes they pay. Some of these states (Florida, Tennessee) have no income tax but they have very high sales taxes. Others have income taxes even higher than Illinois, because EVERY state that has an income tax, has rates higher than ours. (Note that our business friendly, efficient, and politically clean neighboring state of Indiana is even unhappier than we are)

Corruption? Yes, the states at the bottom of the list are well known for that, but so is the happiest state of all (at least pre-Katrina), Louisiana.

Economy/jobs? That’s a big part of it, but still it’s surprising to see a traditionally “poor” state like Mississippi (which also suffered a lot of damage and casualties from Katrina) in the top ten. Also, I don’t think Louisiana was ever known for being a particularly rich or prosperous state.

I guess it’s ultimately a cultural thing. Cajuns expect to be happy, New Yorkers expect to be unhappy. And it just wouldn’t be Illinois if we couldn’t complain about the politicians, the weather, or the sports teams .

Comment by Secret Square Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 10:32 am
VM - would that constitute a judice non sequitor?

Comment by dupage dan Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 10:36 am
Yes. In my opinion, it would.

The judge meant to make a statement for a political view he held, not for any truth within it.

Comment by VanillaMan Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 12:31 pm
VM and DD — isn’t the correct term for what the judge said an “obiter dictum”?

Comment by Bookworm Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 1:29 pm
The judge wasn’t in court, just expressing an opinion as a citizen.

Judge Posner, the most prolific writer since Stephen King, does it all the time. You guys can put your tortured Latin away.

By the way, it’s true, isn’t it?

Comment by wordslinger Friday, Dec 18, 09 @ 3:25 pm