Two Sobering Graphs About the Illinois Pension Crisis
One reason for increasing pensions? Decreasing government. The 2002 Early Retirement Initiative got a lot of people off the government payroll… and onto the pension rolls.
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Illinois Pension Reform: You Were Expecting Consensus?
Unloved and unwanted pension-reform negotiations slip between the deadline. It was probably inevitable, given the general assembly’s problems keeping its own pension fund in order—the worst in the state. On the other hand, it’s probably for the best to keep the bill in the air for awhile.
The Politics of Mike Bost's Pension Rant: Upstate, Downstate
A downstate representative from Murphysboro gets mad, and his rant on teacher-pension funding goes viral, thanks to some paper-throwing and barnyard epithets. What’s bothering him: Michael Madigan, or something more?
The NATO Summit: Was It Worth It?
NATO wanted to have the summit here for geopolitical messaging. The city wanted it as an “open for business” sign to the international community. Does that make up for the as-yet-unknown tab?
Leelanau Peninsula
Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula—a relatively narrow outcropping just north of Traverse City, with its collection of lakeside towns, farms, beaches, and rolling hills—was a fairly well-kept secret until
a few years ago. That’s when Mario Batali, the New York-based celebrity chef who has a summer home in Northport, started promoting the farm-to-table restaurants, cafés, shops, and farmers’ markets like only a TV personality can. The buzz is deserved and the peninsula’s towns are thriving on the attention. Connecting them all is M-22, a gorgeous stretch of road that follows Lake Michigan.
The Death and Life of American City-Planning Journalism
The American Planning Association put its journalism awards on hiatus because not enough people cared. Has urban-planning journalism disappeared, or just migrated online?
Rahm Emanuel Goes After Public Safety Spending, Because That's Where the Money Is
As the city looks to reduce its budget and its pension obligations, it’s inevitable that public-safety employees would come under the green eyeshades. For all the fuss about clouted folks taking big pensions, the real problem is much more powerful: math.
Chicago Crime: Shootings Slightly Up, Murders Way Up. What Gives?
In the first few months of the year, homicides are up by half over last year, though shootings are up only 14 percent. It sounds odd, but it happens. Beneath the basic crime data there’s a lot of underlying complexity, but it’s not well-researched or understood.
Finding the Perfect Bike in Chicago
CRUISE CONTROL: Jeff Ruby tries everything from a hybrid to a recumbent and finds himself in an existential crisis
Obama's Former Doc on the President, Health Care, and Ed Klein's New Book
Barack Obama’s physician of 22 years, who in the new anti-Obama book, The Amateur, described his former patient as “distant” and “lacking passion and feeling,” is sorry he agreed to talk to the author, Ed Klein.
In an interview Thursday at his Hyde Park office, 73-year-old Chicago physician David Scheiner told me that he feels “betrayed” by Klein, who uses the doc as…