Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul published an op-ed last week in Crain’s ridiculing the view that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on racial preferences has implications for the private sector. His message to the private sector was essentially to keep doing what it has been doing on diversity, equity and inclusion, and to disregard the Court’s decision.
The latest labor report for June shows Illinois still has the nation’s 5th-worst unemployment rate in the country. A 4.0 percent jobless rate means 258,000 Illinoisans were still unemployed as of June.
We wrote recently about Illinois’ poor economic growth and how Illinoisans are taking a hit under the state’s failed policies. Since Gov J.B. Pritzker took office in 2019, Illinois has had the 10th-worst GDP growth rate in the country, the number of people employed has dropped, and Illinois has consistently had one of the worst unemployment rates in the country (currently 5th-worst).
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered three historic decisions Friday. The response by leading Illinois progressives insulted not just the Court but most Americans — who side with the Court. The progressive’s comments were intended to inflame division and undermine the Court’s legitimacy. They were brazenly hypocritical, and many comments included flat-out lies.
Friday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court has consequences far beyond college admissions. While the ruling arose out of affirmative action admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the strict, new limitations laid down by the Court put countless racial preferences at risk in both the public and private sectors. In fact, the new limitations may be harder to circumvent in areas other than college admissions.
Top executives in the financial world and research reports by financial advisers are saying it’s clearly plausible that Pres. Joe Biden could drop out of the race and be replaced, perhaps, by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker or California Gov. Gavin Newsom, two possibilities mentioned by name.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker continuously denies Illinois is losing population, but sources from U-Haul to the IRS to the US Census Bureau all keep pointing in the same direction – people are leaving Illinois for other states in record numbers. More than 146,000 net Illinoisans left for other states in 2021, according to state-to-state migration data released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. And now, thanks to that data, we now know where they moved to.
Illinois lawmakers are responsible for policies that consistently leave Illinois at the bottom of the barrel nationally – from debts to taxes to credit ratings to out-migration.
Have mercy if this list is woefully incomplete. The recently concluded session of the Illinois General Assembly sent a blizzard of some 560 bills to Gov. JB Pritzker for signature, so we certainly don’t know what all is in them (and most lawmakers don’t, either.)
An awful, unconstitutional piece of legislation that should have been opposed by Democrats and Republicans alike passed unanimously in the Illinois House and Senate. It now goes to Gov. JB Pritzker for signature. The only significant opposition came from the ACLU of Illinois. They are right to oppose it.
Educational freedom. That’s what the Iowa legislature is set to give families in the Hawkeye State later this year with the passage of the Students First Act signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds in January.
How can it happen that an annual program would cost 94 times times what Illinoisans were told it would cost just three years ago — $188 million in its first year? With subsequent extensions it now costs nearly $1 billion per year and growing, money the state doesn’t have.
Illinois is home to 13 of the nation’s 50 housing markets that are most at-risk of a downturn. That’s according to a recent report by ATTOM Data Solutions, a company that provides comprehensive data on property values and taxes across the nation.
By overwhelming margins, Americans don’t want biological men competing in women’s sports. Surveys consistently show at least 60% opposed and just 30% in support at best, even surveys by left-leaning sources like NPR and The Washington Post.
On the long list of things wrong with Illinois’ pension system, there’s one problem that can’t be ignored: Tier 2 pension benefits are increasingly likely to fall short of minimums under federal rules. If that happens, the sponsoring unit of government would face huge, new liabilities. Those facts have long been widely agreed.
The buck stops with state government when one of its instrumentalities is failing. Chicago, like any Illinois town or city, is an instrumentality of the state and most everything can be changed by state legislation.
The covid pandemic began with health officials urging lockdowns for “15 days to slow the spread.” Gov. Pritzker issued his first disaster proclamation on March 12, 2020.
While the bill likely will go nowhere, it’s unfathomable that it could even be proposed: In the relevant part, a bill now pending in the Illinois legislature would criminalize, as “parental bullying,” any parent who knowingly, with intent to discipline or alter the behavior of a child, says or messages anything that would coerce the child.
