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November 2012

	12/03/12 The Slow Grind of Cook County Justice Cook County's court system has long lagged behind the city in its use of data, frustrating journalists and open-data advocates. It's finally adopting an electronic case-management system, which may help with the court's problem with timely dispositions. Posted at 2:17 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/30/12 Where Our Money Came From, 1950-2005 A look at how Illinois has tried to pay for itself over the years—mostly income and sales taxes, though riverboats have kicked in. The real revenue expansion was from 1960 to 1970, when the state got an income tax and a corporate income tax to pay for the wave of baby boomers and new social programs. Posted at 6:57 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/30/12 This Week in Chicago Maps: Segregation and Hyperspectrum A look at segregation patterns in Chicago in recent years actually suggests some good news, as cultural and legal barriers to desegregation have fallen. Plus: Cook County wetlands in hyperspectral glory. Posted at 2:44 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/30/12 Educational Chronicles of a Death Foretold: Are People Less Likely to Go to College When They Know They're Going to Die Early? A study by a U. of C. economist looks at how victims of Huntington's disease respond to their diagnosis in terms of education and job training—and suggests that more people are going to college in the U.S. because we're living longer. Posted at 10:37 AM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/28/12 Is Brandon Marshall Right About Viagra Helping Football Players? He's probably right that players have tried using Viagra as a performance enhancing drug, but until the NFL puts a team in Beijing or La Paz, it's not likely to do anything for anyone that it doesn't already promise on the TV. Posted at 6:26 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/28/12 The Geography of Chicago City Employees, and City Layoffs Chicago, like the national government and governments throughout the country, has been cutting back on headcount throughout the Great Recession. Which neighborhoods is that hitting the hardest? Posted at 4:02 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/28/12 Casinos: A Tax on the Reasonably Well Off? It's pretty well established that lotteries are a regressive tax, though if Powerball gets big enough (it's not even close), it might eventually cross over into being progressive. Casinos, meanwhile, reach a different demographic. Posted at 2:34 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/28/12 Illinois's Pension Problem: Internet Famous The Khan Academy, the Web's general store for teaching people about things, tackles the state's most critical fiscal issue—up until it comes to solutions, and then it vanishes like Squeezy. Posted at 1:11 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/28/12 Dick Durbin and the Fiscal Cliff: Two Ways of Looking at the Same Speech What did Illinois's senator and the Senate Majority Whip say about Social Security, Medicare, and entitlement cuts with regards to a grand bargain? It depends on who you ask. Posted at 10:48 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/27/12 Chicago Crime Trends: Murder Victims Increasingly Likely to Be Found Outside Finding trends in Chicago crime is always tricky, but one thing seems clear over the past couple decades: murder victims are much more likely to be found outdoors instead of indoors, and in the public way instead of in a residence. Posted at 4:36 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/27/12 Marijuana Legalization: Moving Towards a Tipping Point State representative Lou Lang thinks his years-long battle to legalize medical marijuana in Illinois is finally within reach in the House. Meanwhile, a similar bill is likely to be proposed in the Indiana legislature, with the support of the head of that state's police force. Posted at 2:38 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/27/12 The Math Behind the CTA Fare Increase Besides Rahm Emanuel's comments about how people can just drive instead of buying more expensive CTA passes, the Chicago Transit Authority really is in a bit of a fix, thanks to increased costs, declining federal subsidies, the disappearance of the stimulus, reduced state subsidies, and perhaps the fiscal cliff. Posted at 12:34 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/26/12 Where Chicagoans Live, By Their Jobs A look at where Chicagoans live, based on the industries they work in, reveals some patterns: managers cluster from the Loop up through Lincoln Park; public administrators group in Mt. Greenwood and Ashburn; and construction and manufacturing workers can be found on the northwest and southwest sides. Posted at 6:39 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/26/12 The Geography of Chicago Jobs, 2002-2010 An animated map shows where jobs are distributed in Chicago—and how that distribution changed from the run-up to the economic collapse to its aftermath. The difference between 2008 and 2009 is stark. Posted at 5:14 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/26/12 How Did Jesse Jackson Jr. Keep Getting Elected? His incumbency was a huge advantage (and as with many incumbents, may have played a role in his ethical lapses), and his focus on building a Chicago machine while bringing federal aid was a cornerstone. But Jackson was also one of the most reliably progressive votes in the House—to an extent that cost him on the national level. Posted at 2:15 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/25/12 Harold Washington in His Own Words The late mayor on "a crisis of leadership in Chicago"; reflecting on the first half of his first term; and discussing the legacy of Richard J. Daley, whose long reign overshadowed Washington's brief but critical tenure. Posted at 4:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/25/12 "What's Love Got to Do With Politics?": The Funeral of Harold Washington "The media estimated that somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 mourners passed by Washington’s open casket in the days leading up to Washington’s funeral. Only 25,000 amassed in Memphis to view Elvis Presley’s. It may be crass to compare two famous men by counting heads at their funerals, but how better to make the point that the reaction to Washington’s death resembled the death of a celebrity more than that of a local politician?" An excerpt from the new edition of Gary Rivlin's classic Fire on the Prairie. Posted at 2:53 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/24/12 Leftovers: Food and Thanks How Morton, Illinois, the world canned pumpkin capital, subsidizes a tiny town in Mexico; the rich life and quick death of mince pie as America's pie; why Black Friday doesn't tell us anything about the Christmas economy; and more Posted at 12:21 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/23/12 The First Death of the American Christmas Shopping Season? At an Omaha five-and-dime two days before Christmas, J.G. McCrorey & Co. floorwalker David Stettsy "was killed in the presence of a throng of Christmas shoppers during the rush this evening." Black Friday actually came about as an idea to prevent last-moment Christmas-shopping chaos. Posted at 1:12 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/23/12 A Short History of Black Friday, Long Before It was Black Friday In 1906, the Chicago Tribune encouraged Christmas shoppers to begin the shopping season early, so that "the condition of the tired and overworked shopgirl should be taken into account." Over the next 50 years, "early shopping" became "Black Friday," years before that phrase came into use. Posted at 12:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/22/12 Chicago On Tap for Second Warmest Thanksgiving on Record If the temperature hits 64 degrees today it will pass 1915, tie 1914, and come with in a few degrees of 1966's all-time warm Chicago Thanksgiving. After you give thanks for that, though, things will go back to normal. Posted at 10:42 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/21/12 A Video Tour of Chicago, Circa 1936 A young Australian's film tour of mid-1930s Chicago, from the observation platform of the Wrigley Building to the Steel Mills on the Calumet River and back. Posted at 1:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/20/12 With a New Hike Due in 2013, a Look at 65 Years of CTA Fares CTA fares are going up again, at least for monthly passes—from $86, the price they've been since 2009, to $100. It's a steep increase, but it actually brings the current fee to about what riders have paid over the past 44 years. Single-ride fares will stay where they are, which is also about average for the past 65 years. Posted at 3:56 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/20/12 Two Ways to Make Squeezy the Pension Python's Website Less Embarrassing The governor's hokey pension snake drew more attention to pension reform than it's gotten in months, but Squeezy's site is kind of a dud. There's nothing wrong with a little juvenilia, but the adults need something to play with as well. Posted at 12:16 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/19/12 Illinoisans Are Getting Divorced Less, Getting Married a Lot Less 50-plus years of data on marriage, divorce, and annulment in Illinois shows that people are getting married way less frequently than they used to... but they're also getting divorced less often, perhaps because they're getting married later, and older. Posted at 6:52 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/19/12 Illinois: One of the Most Unequal States in the Country By almost every measure, the nation's growing income-inequality gap has hit Illinois harder than almost every state. It's hit the poorest 20 percent of residents the hardest, whose incomes didn't grow at all from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s. Posted at 2:08 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/19/12 I Have Come to Praise Squeezy the Pension Python, Not to Bury Him Pat Quinn's adorable serpentine representation of the state's most critical fiscal issue has been lamented as half-assed and juvenile... but Squeezy's a lot catchier than actuarial analysis, and more relevant to the problem than the recent constitutional amendment. Posted at 12:39 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/16/12 How Hostess's Project to Twinkieize Bread Crippled the Company Just before it went bankrupt the first time, Hostess embarked on a depressing attempt to extend the shelf life of Wonder Bread to a week. It failed, just as the whole-grain trend was passing the company by. Posted at 11:42 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/15/12 The Geography of School Poverty in Chicago Across the city, most public school children are eligible for free or reduced lunches—an 85 percent average across the city, showing distinct geographical patterns, and 30 percent higher than the state average. The highest eligibility? It can't get any higher than in East Saint Louis. Posted at 2:34 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (14)
	11/15/12 College Enrollment Spikes During the Great Recession, As It Has During Less Great Recessions One semi-silver lining for the Great Recession, as it's been for most American recessions in recent years, is that people obtain more education (at, on average, a modest increase in lifetime earnings). But the benefit to the economy doesn't compare to what was lost. Posted at 12:55 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/14/12 Want to Legalize Marijuana? Get Wall Street Behind It At the end of Prohibition, popular support for repeal was high, bringing out tens, even hundreds of thousands of people for "We Want Beer" parades. But Wall Street bankers also gave the effort a critical boost, envisioning lower taxes and closed budget deficits. Posted at 4:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/14/12 The Geography of Lottery Spending in Chicago In 2011, Chicagoans spent $600 million playing the state lottery, out of $2.3 billion statewide. Here's a map that shows which areas of the city are the biggest spenders. Posted at 3:46 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/14/12 Rita Crundwell Pleads Guilty in Dixon Embezzlement Case The ex-comptroller of Dixon pleaded guilty to fraud Wednesday morning in federal court in Rockford. Posted at 10:42 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/13/12 Truancy in the Chicago Public Schools: How Bad Are We? Even in the era of No Child Left Behind, it's surprisingly hard to get good data on school truancy across the country. To the extent that it exists, other urban districts seem to share our problems. Posted at 4:37 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/13/12 Mitt Romney's Big Data Fail and Its Ideological Roots The GOP's skepticism of and opposition to science and data in all its forms isn't just killing them through outliers like Todd Akin—it's also a critical issue in current and future GOTV efforts. Posted at 12:33 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/12/12 The Informational Stress of Being Poor Having scarce resources means that even the smallest decisions have major ramifications. How does that effect decision-making? Let's play the Feud (or Angry Birds) to find out. Posted at 3:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/09/12 The Republicans' City Problem The GOP is having trouble breaking 30 percent of the vote in the nation's major cities (over 500,000), costing it millions of votes in an increasingly urban nation. It hasn't always been this way. Posted at 3:26 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/09/12 Why Politicians Like Privatization (In Graphs!), and Putting a Number on Ethics How much should current generations value future generations? There's math for that, and depending on how you calculate it, it can mean differences in billions of dollars in privatization deals. Posted at 12:36 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/08/12 Illinois Democrats: Good at Redistricting, Better than Other Democrats County by county in Illinois, Barack Obama picked up fewer votes in 2012 than in 2008, including in Cook and all the collar counties. But on a Congressional and state level, Illinois Democrats thrived, thanks in part to redistricting. Concerned? There's an idea, and an app, for that. Posted at 4:43 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/08/12 SuperPACs' Nouveau Riche Problem Karl Rove's much-feared American Crossroads juggernaut was soundly whipped by the SEIU in the 2012 elections, by a score of 70-6. It's one of many big-money SuperPACs that got thrashed this season. The Citizens United decision poured tons of money into a billion-dollar cycle, but that wasn't a guarantee anyone would know what to do with it. Posted at 12:17 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/07/12 Election Night 2012: A Photographer's Timeline Event photography is neither for the short nor the weak at heart. Nor is it for rapidly-aging 30-somethings who mostly edit for a living. Posted at 6:23 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/07/12 Mitt Romney Did a Good Job of Being a Bad Candidate The T-1000 poly-Mitt alloy who lost to Barack Obama last night is wide open to criticism for his Teflon, managerial ideology. But it raises the question if anyone could have done better, including consistently ideological Mitt Romneys from alternate universes. Posted at 5:44 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/07/12 Election Night 2012: Scenes from Obama's Victory Party This year's victory rally was by invitation only, open mostly to campaign staffers and volunteers. Here's your behind-the-scenes look, including Rahm, Will.i.am, the First Family, and more. Posted at 3:28 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/07/12 Why Barack Obama Is a Two-Term President, in Two Statistics Latino support for the GOP presidential nominee is cratering—dropping ten percent per election since 2004. But it's nothing compared to the party's problem with Muslims, who used to be a small but growing pillar of the party with a natural affinity for its cultural and economic ideologies. Posted at 2:57 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/07/12 Journalism in the Age of Nate Silver and Big Data Journalism made immense strides during the 2012 campaign in data gathering, analysis, and visualization, greatly expanding journalists' toolkit even as some were loathe to use these new tools. But it still pales in contrast to the knowledge and abilities of then campaigns these new tools are meant to pick apart. Posted at 1:06 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/07/12 Dancing! Sweat! Babies! Our Election Night Rally Recap Inside McCormick Place last night, features editor David Bernstein and editor-in-chief Elizabeth Fenner mixed with the crowd to watch the election results come in. Here are some highlights. Posted at 1:01 PM in The 312 News & Politics | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/06/12 Election Night 2012: Soundcheck at McCormick A few hours before rally participants are allowed into the convention hall, the sound team does a mic check to Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham. Take a peek behind the scenes... Posted at 5:59 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (1)
	11/06/12 Adlai Stevenson, Early Victim of Terrible Political Advertising The brainiac Illinois voter faced down Ike and his Madison Avenue minions, relying on Americans' interest in 30-minute Stevenson infomercials to carry the day. Obviously, he lost coming and going, but not before leaving a trail of failed pandering. Posted at 2:48 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/06/12 Our Divided Divided Political Parties Research by a University of Chicago prof shows that our political parties aren't just divided red-blue down the aisle—each party has a centrist wing and a more ideologically pure wing, with a noticeable valley between the two. Posted at 1:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/06/12 Political Ads: More Popular than Geico's Irritating Spokesreptile As you might guess, TV viewers often give Apple's visually engaging ads a pass from the DVR. How about political ads? Even though everyone claims to not like politicians, they're apparently more welcome on the TV than that omnipresent, insufferable little gecko. Posted at 12:31 PM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/06/12 Election Day Indicators to Watch Out For: Northern Virginia All eyes are on Ohio—but I'm interested in my home state, which has been polling in favor of Obama, who's got an 80 percent chance of winning. He looks like the favorite, but to win he'll have to maintain 2008's unlikely voting patterns. Posted at 9:50 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (0)
	11/01/12 'Rolling Stone' on the Rise and Fall of Chicago Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond The most riveting story in the latest issue is a profile of the Glenbard East grad and "enemy of the state" who appeared in our magazine more than five years ago Posted at 11:23 AM in The 312 | Permalink | Comments (2)

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