Free Republic

Despite it being the year of our Lord 2015, at least one CHIditarod participant seemed to think it was OK to wear blackface. Event organizers apparently told him to remove the makeup, but people who believe blackface to be OK do not strike me as the type willing to listen to reason. The man was part of the #TooSoon team, a group that ostensibly dressed in an intentionally offensive manner. The man in question was dressed as Bill Cosby — why limit yourself to just blackface when you can make rape jokes in the process — and was joined by...

Does Gov. Bruce Rauner's pension math add up? Is it possible to cut spending $2.2 billion immediately, save taxpayers $100 billion over 30 years, protect everyone who's already retired and amortize $111 billion in unfunded pension liability without pushing current state workers and teachers into near-poverty when they retire? I spent most of the past week trying to get an answer to that question, talking to Rauner's team, independent financial experts and key lawmakers. My tentative conclusion—I say “tentative” because deciphering actuarial tables makes nuclear physics look simple—is: probably not.

Gun ownership among Americans at a record low, survey finds By Tribune wire reports contact the reporter The number of Americans who live in a household with at least one gun is lower than it's ever been, according to a major American trend survey that finds the decline in gun ownership is paralleled by a reduction in the number of Americans who hunt. According to the latest General Social Survey, 32 percent of Americans either own a firearm themselves or live with someone who does, which ties a record low set in 2010. That's a significant decline since the late...

Mayoral candidate Jesús “Chuy” Garcia got the endorsement of the Rev. Jesse Jackson on Monday as both the challenger and Mayor Rahm Emanuel compete for the crucial African-American vote ahead of next month’s runoff election. Jackson cited Garcia’s “consistent track record of service” including his work with Harold Washington, Chicago’s first African-American mayor. Jackson also said his support of President Barack Obama, who has endorsed Emanuel, had no bearing on endorsing Garcia.“This is not about President Obama and me; it’s about Chuy and Rahm Emanuel. It’s about whether there’s a plan for reconstruction,” said Jackson, who did not directly criticize...

Rahm Emanuel’s path to re-election as Chicago’s mayor just got a little murkier. On Monday a large group of African American ministers led by Operation Push activist Jesse Jackson endorsed Rahm’s opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. Emanuel has been having a lot of trouble with three entrenched constituencies in the Windy City: The black community, the Hispanic community and the teachers union. Still, in the recent election he did better with black voters than he might have. But today, after losing Jesse Jackson and the city’s black ministers, Emanuel might have received a fatal blow to his shaky base of African...

Over three days, some of the wealthiest people in Chicago, if not the nation, dumped more than $1.3 million into the political re-election campaign of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.. Among the donors was Citadel founder and billionaire Ken Griffin, who donated $250,000 to Emanuel. The mayor is battling to keep his seat against a surging Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. Others who donated from March 3 to March 6 include: Groupon co-founder Eric Lefkofsky, $200,000; Richard Melman, $100,000; and Jay B. Pritzker and M.K. Pritzker, who tossed in $50,000 each. Garcia recently took in a a $250,000 contribution from...

A Chinese immigrant who stole trade secrets from the Chicago Merc worth an estimated $50 million was spared prison Tuesday by a federal judge who cited his otherwise “exemplary life.” Chunlai Yang, 50, of Libertyville, was instead sentenced to just four years probation for stealing software that underpinned the CME Group’s Globex trading platform. Yang, who worked as a high-ranking programmer for the Merc from 2000 until his arrest in 2011, pleaded guilty in 2012 to the theft, admitting he was trying to create a similar product in China when he illegally downloaded more than 10,000 computer source code files....

Two men were fatally shot in the Pilsen neighborhood early Saturday. Johnathan Ramirez, 18, and Santos Bueno, 22, were sitting inside a vehicle parked in the 1000 block of West 18th Street when a gunman walked up and opened fire about 1:30 a.m., authorities said.

Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois held a “Black Lives Matter” assembly last week, but banned anyone who was not African American from attending. Oak Park is just outside of Chicago. White students who tried to attend were physically barred from entering the auditorium where the meeting was taking place. Parents of these students said that their children were turned away when they tried to enter. However, Principal Nathaniel Rouse, who organized the event and is black, is not backing down from his decision to exclude other races. Not only that, but by banning “whites,”...

Moody’s Investors Service on Friday announced it had reduced its rating on Chicago Board of Education debt to one level above junk bond status. Moody’s downgraded the rating to Baa3 from Baa1 on the board’s general obligation debt. That rating applies to a total of $6.3 billion in outstanding debt held by Chicago Public Schools. That lowered rating, according to Moody’s, “reflects CPS’s continued reliance” on its reserves to cover ongoing operating expenditures, “particularly pension contributions, which will steadily increase in the coming years.” ... the lowered CPS rating also takes into account the city’s own credit rating, which also...

Here’s a shocker. Rahm Emanuel may not be re-elected as mayor of Chicago. The reason? Emanuel has been siding with poor, minority children who want a better chance in life against Chicago teachers unions who view the public schools as a jobs program rather than a place to educate children. Guess which of these two groups is not allowed to vote?When he was running for office, John Edwards reflected the way that many Democrats would probably like to think of themselves. Edwards talked about two Americas – which he characterized as the haves and the have nots. He promised to...

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan made a fiery speech Sunday in which he warned whites that a “day of judgment” is coming to avenge their “evil” and that African Americans serving in the armed forces should immediately withdraw and fight for their communities instead. In an address given at the Nation of Islam’s headquarters in Chicago, Farrakhan claimed whites have oppressed blacks for hundreds of years and a reckoning is due for the “iniquities of their fathers,” the NOI publication Final Call reports. “When a man has done that kind of evil, they are long gone and dead, but...

After years of being treated as if the Wisdom of the Ages were as relevant as Confucius in a fortune cookie now that we have Chicago on the Potomac the wisdom gained in the City that Works is suddenly spot-on. Back in the Dream Time, elders were honored because of their accumulated knowledge, if Pops knew a better way to saddle horses that knowledge helped Junior since he saddled horses. Today if Pops knows how to tune-up cars what good is that when cars don’t need to be tuned-up anymore? Now the old are relegated to extolling their own relevance...

It’s a day every student at Englewood’s Urban Prep Charter Academy eagerly anticipates, including 17-year-old Deonte Hoard. On Friday all seniors admitted to college are honored during the school’s august “On to the Next One Ceremony.” It’s a beautiful, moving event. Hoard won’t be there. Instead of reveling in his success — Deonte earned multiple college admissions letters — his family is mourning. Deonte is Chicago’s latest agonizing and senseless shooting victim. He was killed Monday on his block in the South Deering neighborhood, shot after someone in a black SUV opened fire around 7 p.m.

Is the Chicago pension system so messed up and union work rules so entrenched the only way to change either of them is bankruptcy? I think so. So does Dennis Byrne who wrote on his blog today Chicago's Only Salvation: A Detroit-Like Bankruptcy. This is a guest post from Byrne. Chicago's Only Salvation: A Detroit-Like Bankruptcy Wait, I thought only the Republican Party was being torn asunder by a rift between the establishment middle and the fringe. That impression was nailed down, again, last week by the embarrassing fracture among House Republicans over funding for the Department of Homeland Security....

Last week, the mayoral election in Chicago produced a shocking result when incumbent Rahm Emanuel—Barack Obama’s former chief of staff—failed to get the 51% of the vote needed to avoid a run-off. Emanuel should be worried, but you know who should really be terrified? Hillary Clinton and her acolytes. This election result is a warning that not everyone is ready for Hillary. First, some context. In Chicago, Da Mare does not go to a runoff. Ever. If you’re in charge of the machine, it does your bidding and its gets you re-elected, period. That’s how Richard M. Daley ended up...

Sen. Kirk: Chicago Could End Up Like Detroit If Mayor Emanuel Not Re-Elected March 2, 2015 Craig Dellimore (CBS) — Republican U.S. Senator Mark Kirk has given his tacit endorsement of Mayor Rahm Emanuel for re-election, reports WBBM Political Editor Craig Dellimore. He refused to call it an endorsement, but Senator Mark Kirk made clear he feels Chicago would risk dire financial straits like Detroit has seen if Mayor Emanuel is not re-elected.

The baseball world lost another legend on Sunday with the death of former Chicago White Sox outfielder Minnie Minoso. Minoso was a seven-time All-Star while playing with the White Sox in the 1950s and 1960s, but much more than that he was a pioneer. When he was traded by the Cleveland Indians to the White Sox in 1951, he became the city of Chicago’s first black player. There is some dispute over when Minoso was born, but the team website said he was 92. The Chicago Tribune reported that Minoso was found dead in his car at a Chicago gas...

ities: The problem with socialism, Margaret Thatcher once noted, is you eventually run out of other people's money. In progressive Chicago, that's hit home as Moody's has cut its credit rating to two grades above "junk." Chicago's finances are staggering under the weight of an unfunded pension liability that Moody's Investors Service has estimated at $32 billion, eight times the city's operating revenue. Chicago has a $300 million structural deficit. And Illinois law requires the city to up its 2016 contributions to its police and fire pension funds by $550 million. "This is an unfortunate wake-up call for anyone still...

Minnie Minoso, the hugely popular All-Star outfielder from Cuba who became the major league’s first black player out of Latin America and a treasured figure in the history of the Chicago White Sox, died on Sunday in Chicago. His true age was never entirely clear, but by an account in his autobiography, he would have been 89 when he died.