Amendment 1’s codification into the constitution was a mistake. We’ve repeatedly written about the troubles it’s about to cause: higher property taxes, complicated labor disputes, a tied-up court system, fewer parents rights, and a host of legal challenges in the private sector. See our Amendment 1 page for full details.
Politico says the Chicago mayor’s race highlights the importance of the “progressive” agenda for Chicago and the focus will be on crime. There are grumbles that incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot isn’t “progressive” enough. But the urban progressive agenda under her – with its emphasis on “social justice,” managed outcomes, and performative politics – has hardened the city’s horrible results for blacks around crime and K-12 public education.
This has been a tough year for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing. Aside from increasingly harsh criticism like that above, ESG funds have suffered unprecedented withdrawals, their performance for investors has lagged the broader market and most elected officials who support it fared poorly in the recent election.
It’s been so long now that most of the media and many Illinoisans no longer care that Gov. J.B. Pritzker continues to maintain a Covid disaster declaration for all of Illinois’ 102 counties. And with the elections out of the way, many may care even less.
Illinois state lawmakers have an opportunity to correct the gravest missteps baked into the SAFE-T Act. The best way to do that would be rescind the entire Act and start over. But Illinois Dems won't. Why should they dismantle SAFE-T, they'll ask, given the elections they swept last week?
City data shows total violent crime on Chicago’s transit system is on track to hit a five-year high by year’s end, even with full-year 2022 CTA ridership headed for just half of what it was in 2019.
When it comes, it will indeed be a “revelatory storm” – a grand epiphany that will cause future generations to ask how ours could have been so thoroughly duped.
Elections are time to zoom out and step back -– to reflect on where the sum of the details says we have gone, where we are headed and what we want from the election. So, forget for a moment our usual links to supporting information or to any of our 2,068 original columns presenting that information.
What will Illinois look like when the state’s controversial criminal justice reform bill called the SAFE-T Act is fully implemented January 1? Look to Cook County, which has already crippled its criminal justice system with changes similar to those in the SAFE-T Act.
Militant radicals are chomping at the bit for the constitutional right Amendment 1 will give them: the right to include their vision of a national, Marxist workers' revolution in their contract demands.
The ruling is only "a taste of what's to come," Mark Glennon, of Wirepoints, writes. "Courts will have to give meaning to countless items in the 700-page SAFE-T Act and we can expect it to be ... in favor of defendants."
It’s remarkable that as Illinois state lawmakers make police misconduct data more transparent under their 764-page SAFE-T Act, they’ve totally ignored needed reforms to bring similar transparency to felony criminal case sentencing. In places like Cook County, where horrific crimes by repeat offenders are daily news, residents should know who’s responsible.
Supporters of Illinois’ SAFE-T Act often ridicule the act’s critics who claim the law is retroactive and will result, on January 1 in release from jail of many detainees arrested prior to that date.
Truth is easy to hide in politics today. The number of crises and governmental failures in America and Illinois are simply overwhelming — far beyond what most voters can be expected to see. In Illinois, that blindness is worsened by a shrinking media unwilling to question.
MADISON-ST. CLAIR – Most students in public schools of Madison and St. Clair counties failed to meet basic standards as of 2019, according to a survey of all Illinois school districts released by Wirepoints research group in Chicago.
Proponents of Illinois’ SAFE-T Act claim that the law’s provisions to end the cash bail will make Illinoisans more safe once the provisions are implemented on January 1, 2023. They claim the new law will give judges more discretion to detain dangerous criminal suspects. They also claim that the law poses no problem for the state’s many jurisdictions concerned they’ll have to release what could total thousands of potentially dangerous defendants on January 1 as a result of the elimination of bail.
