StrangeSox

1:30 House session delayed because some idiot threw some sort of substance on Gov. Rauner's office door at the Capitol. Mrs. Rauner's group has been running pro-veto-override ads.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jul 6, 2017 -> 09:35 AM) Of all the examples of the wealthy elite raising the ladders behind them so nobody else can join, preventing punishment of any bad behavior and consistently rewarding failure among the ranks, Mark Penn still being around has to be up there. His firm got the Obama library. He still has work somehow after the Scroogled campaign for Microsoft. He's failed everywhere he's been, has been hilariously wrong on any historical event he had the opportunity to write down his idiocy on, and yet, he shows up at the cocktail parties and is a good guy, so could you just give him another chance? I was going to ask "who on earth puts stock in what Mark Penn thinks?" but yeah, this. This is as clear a sign as any that there are still a lot of Bad Dems at the top who aren't learning the right lessons (or any lessons at all) in the wake of 2016.

NK has somewhat unreliable liquid fueled icbm technology. They're still missing stable nuclear warhead, guidance, warhead reentry, and warhead detonation technology. Even the US expects a decent dud/failure rate with nuclear weapons which is why we'd launch so many at once in an attack. Attacking NK means a lot of dead Koreans on both sides of the border, another massive refugee crisis and another long, drawn out occupation.

No quorum yet in the House, vote will be tomorrow per Madigan.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 5, 2017 -> 09:52 AM) The state has a ton of systemic problems that the Illinois Dems don't want to acknowledge. They would rather keep spending taxpayer money versus fixing them. There's been plenty of can-kicking by both sides on these structural issues and pensions in particular.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jul 5, 2017 -> 08:12 AM) So, Rauner vetoed the budget bill, and senate overrides his veto which means now it goes to the House for A vote. How many more power checks can occur before this bill is actually put into motion? If House approves the bill, can Rauner do anything else? What a mess House will be picking it up as early as today. If the veto override passes the House, then it's done. I don't know if there are specific implementation dates within the bill for when tax increases go into effect etc., but it'll be the law and we won't be running on court-ordered spending anymore. It seems like in order to really fix Illinois' structural problems, a constitutional convention needs to be called so that the state's constitution can be rewritten. It's not really possible to fix the broken funding/taxation system or really address the existing pension issues without one. eta: this guy seems like a pretty good source of what's happening in the capitol https://capitolfax.com/

Tax and spending/budget bills passed the house and Senate, but rauner vetoed. Senate will likely override veto later today and House will do so tomorrow. We might actually get a budget for the first time in three years! e: Senate overrode the veto, House doesn't have a quorum today and will take up the measure later in the week.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 05:14 PM) We are shut down...just means a floating holiday is used (vs. it really being an extra day off). We get 10 holidays and a couple move depending on when the holidays actually fall. My wife and most everyone I know don't get it off though. Same for us. Got a bonus half day Friday because everyone just decided not to come back from lunch, which was nice.

I travel a lot for work, and I've always thought how "quaint" these cities of say 1m or so are compared to Chicago and it's skyline. Then I flew to NYC.

Denver is great and I wish we had moved back in 2012 when we briefly considered it.

If our economic system is such that it isn't economically possible for everyone working a full time job to earn a living wage, then something is fundamentally broken.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 02:52 PM) Why not Colorado and Washington? Too expensive still? Utah, the religious element turns off quite a few....although it's a beautiful state in terms of nature. Denver and anywhere near Puget sound are getting really expensive. Lots of Cali tech money looking at these places as cheap compared to the Bay area is driving up costs.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 01:31 PM) Whew. Kobach, the pro-voter-suppression Kansas AG who's running this commission to end the very real problem of millions of illegal votes, just announced that Kansas will not be handing over the requested data.

gotta say I'm glad Illinois is at least a little bit slower on the mission of funneling public tax dollars to private schools than Indiana is

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 02:25 PM) Speaking of domestic voter suppression, here's what Trump's "voter integrity" committee is actually up to: https://twitter.com/vanitaguptaCR/status/880479649817649152 Requesting full voter rolls including name, last four of the social and party affiliation for every state for every voter going back to 2006. Laying the ground work for massive disenfranchisement. With control of most states and their stolen SCOTUS seat, they can put an awful lot of awful things in place to ensure they aren't held accountable by citizens at all. All of this to solve the non-existent problem of voter fraud (will solve the real problem of people voting D though). Good news on this is that a lot of states are coming out and saying they aren't going to comply with this request, even deep red states like Oklahoma. Trump's "voter integrity" committee is stocked with voter restriction advocates, so everything that slows them down is good.

haha we're all old now

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 11:16 AM) That's true. I love the west, would love to experience living there. Perhaps I could find ways to have month or 2 month stays. But I don't feel regret about staying. I live blocks from family, and raising a family in that situation is too good to be true. My parents family was all east when we grew up. Among other things, every vacation is just visiting family. At the very least we get to visit the world on our vacation time. Part of what convinced us to stick around and move to a place ~10 minutes from both of our parents' homes was 1) having a baby and 2) our friends who moved out of state for a few years for work. All of their vacation time was eaten up by traveling home to see family and friends, and whenever they were back in town, it was a whirlwind trying to figure out how to see everyone in 5-7 days. So instead of moving out west, we've just flown out there 2-3 times a year for the last 5 years and collectively in that time I've probably spent 9-10 months all over California for work. QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 11:18 AM) Notice I said west and not west coast There are still a ton of places to go, despite the coastline being so expensive. Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico....sooo many gorgeous places to live. I really think Reno is a solid option as well. I know you had mentioned you weren't impressed, but it's got a lot of momentum right now. Just have to wait for the real estate market to come back to reality a bit. Lots of places in Idaho are extremely sketchy, and the good places in Montana like Missoula are more expensive than Chicago. We loved Oregon, but again, way more expensive than Chicago.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 11:13 AM) It's not that scary...the advent of gps/smartphones has made this sort of thing so much easier. I love the Chicago area and I always feel a tinge of regret when I come back to visit, but there is just so much this country has to offer to spend your entire life living in just one place. The west in particular has so many great opportunities. that cost of living tho Chicago's not cheap but prices anywhere on the west coast are just insane

There's also some public policy issues to consider for at least some people. If you're LGBT, you probably wouldn't want to move to Mike Pence's Indiana over Illinois, for example.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 10:59 AM) We have no idea what large scale firms like walmart etc would do with restrictions taken off. Again, it's damn near full employment. That could smooth the issues for 2-3 years. Possibly, but I remember my dad's plan at a major multinational corp during the tech boom of the late 90's still having lifetime caps. Don't know why that one aspect of some insurance document laying on the counter sticks in my mind from when I was 14 or whatever, but it does. And as you said, employers are always looking to cut costs so we get increasing contributions from employees for their insurance or, if the ACA protections were removed, offering worse plans could be an option. Full employment does create some pressure there, but it's not total and we still had those sorts of plans in previous full employment scenarios. Let's just hope that this total trainwreck of an idea never comes to fruition.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 10:56 AM) http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...530-column.html Issue 1 is pensions. Issue 2 is the low income tax created a hide the ball series of taxes that imo have been incredibly regressive. Property taxes as a result, are exhorbant. And as tribune has shown, regressive. Sales tax - > regressive. Soda tax -> regressive. Red lights? Regressive. Cigarette tax -> regressive. You couldn't pick a stupider tax model. Yet, and the worry is legitimate, if the income tax was revised upward, there is legitimate concern the others would not go away. I'm sympathetic to that. So Illinois as crazy stupid spending state, true with pensions, not so true with everything. Illinois as idiotic revenue model state? 100%. Good info, thanks. I know that, in general, taxes at the state level are regressive across the country. Is Illinois pension model really that much more generous than other deep blue states like Cali or Mass?

QUOTE (Leonard Zelig @ Jun 30, 2017 -> 10:27 AM)

Illinois tax system/rates baffles me because we seem to have the highest taxes on just about everything but not noticeably better public services. I don't get how other states that aren't bare-bones services wise get their funding and why that doesn't seem to be able to work here.

Republican Bill Brady the new Illinois Senate GOP leader