The city’s overnight homeless services get axed, as Division of Family and Support Services faces layoffs. But don’t entirely blame the city—the fraying of the social safety net starts at the top.
Two studies, one by the CDC and another by a Loyola prof, find that suicide rates correlate with U.S. unemployment rates and mass layoffs, respectively. A third has similar findings for Europe, but also suggests traffic fatalities decrease during times of economic hardship, which may explain local trends.
While Rep. Randy Hultgren thinks Speaker John Boehner and his lieutenants did a masterful job in this messy debt-ceiling debate, in the end, the freshman Republican congressman didn’t vote Boehner’s way—he was one of five members of the Illinois delegation who voted “no” on the legislation…
1-800-CLUTTER-BUST: Attention hoarders, pack rats, nostalgists: Help is here, and she’s coming to live with you.
The ranks of the city’s TMA take about a fifty-percent cut. It’s a dangerous job and a scorned position, but is it worth the money? No one seems to think so, but no one seems to know, either.
Poverty tourism, opium-smoking, prison museums, panoramas of suffering, and other sordid entertainments for Chicago tourists at the end of a century.
Listen; prepare, but have a conversation instead of conducting an interview. Plus: Terkel with Nelson Algren, and talking about Richard J. Daley.
The Emanuel administration presents a bleak picture of the city budget, as sacrifice and competition for city services appear to be in our future. But one of the biggest factors in the city’s expenses, employee health care, is the victim of greater national trends… and as a result, a tremendously difficult problem.
With one Illinois governor in prison and another waiting to go, the current gov, Pat Quinn, seems remarkably tone deaf to charges that he is rewarding his political benefactors with cushy board jobs. His appointment on Wednesday of 41-year-old attorney Jennifer Burke—daughter of Alderman Ed Burke, next to Rahm the biggest foot in city politics—to the Illinois Pollution Control Board seems utterly over the top, even reckless…
A must-read Sun-Times report finds the upset 2010 winner has been sued for $100,000 in child support payments, just as the suburban rep has established himself as a voice of his caucus on television and in the House on the debt-ceiling debate. Which isn’t going any better.
