A Chicago Blog

Don’t forget, if you want to buy anything, leave Cook County and avoid being raped at the register. Lucky for Todd, the price of gas has gone up. It’s no longer worth driving to the suburbs for a carton of cigarettes and groceries. You can only really break even if your buying a car or [...]

Another notch in Blagojevich’s belt.

It’s always fascinating to watch momentum shift in public policy. A year ago, it looked like the eco-fundamentalists would continue to amass supporters and inevitably storm the gates of power and “revolutionize” American energy policy.
But it i amazing what $4 per gallon does to American politics. Remember the carbon tax? A popular “solution” to global [...]

Chairman Durbin’s plot to take over the nation’s economy picked up steam yesterday, as the windfall profits tax was debated on the floor of the Senate. Durbin seized yet another opportunity to threaten the petroleum industry: “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in [...]

Looking for Chicago City Employee Salaries? The Better Government Association has them. I sure wish they’d let me download the whole database in CSV. These user-friendly online databases are hard to deal with.
[Hat tip: CapitolFax]

Seriously. This is only partly invective. Today the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is busing 30,000 kids to Soldier Field to rally for more school funding. But Chicago already spends more than $11,000 per student on average. The real problem is that Chicago school budgeting ensures that most of the resources are sucked up by schools [...]

Dear members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRC),
You are failing miserably. I rely on you to ensure that government doesn’t take away my property, my money, my guns, my speech and my freedom. And I must say, I’m beginning to get a little worried. Not only did you nominate John McCain, whose track record on [...]

Illinois Reason is up in arms over a robocall into Melissa Bean’s district coming from area code 217, which is Springfield and central Illinois. While there could be something nefarious at work here, it’s more likely just the marketplace. Campaigns are a businesses just like any other. No one in their right mind would turn [...]

And endorses the Metro Planning Council’s suggesting that we rank spending priorities:
With a little more than a week until the General Assembly’s scheduled adjournment, the prospects for a capital bill this spring aren’t good, especially since the current proposal relies heavily on money from two iffy sources: a partial lease of the state lottery [...]

As most of you know, I have been filing FOIAs on a regular basis, not because I necessarily think Chicago City Government is corrupt (!ahem!) but because I think there is certain information taxpayers should be provided whether they ask for it or not.
Credit Card statements are a big one. All my credit card bills [...]