By Steve Rhodes
1. No More Elephants In Chicago Zoos.
2. “America’s traditional 180-day school year is more myth than reality in Illinois, as a jumble of state laws, rules and waivers allow districts to chip away instruction time, shorten school hours and cut the number of days students come to school,” the Tribune reports.
“While Illinois requires 176 days of ‘actual pupil attendance’ already fewer than most states the vast majority of public school districts dip below that by one or two days and sometimes more, a Tribune analysis has found.”
3. The Week in WTF featuring the amnesia and bad ideas of Jesse Jackson Jr., Carol Moseley-Braun, the GOP and the Wrigleyville bomber.
4. Seized Pot Now Valued At $10 Million.
5. “The Green Party candidate for governor says Illinois should legalize and tax marijuana, but his opponents disagree,” AP reports. (h/t: Rich Miller)
“Green candidate Rich Whitney says Illinois could bring in about $300 million a year by taxing marijuana.
“That’s one of the ideas he discussed in a closed-door forum with the other candidates.”
6. “General Motors Co. has begun to once again contribute to political campaigns, lifting a self-imposed ban on political spending put in place during the auto maker’s U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring last year,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
This year’s model, same as last year’s model.
7. “Todd Henderson feels like he’s barely making ends meet,” the Tribune reports. “He’s a law professor at the University of Chicago. His wife’s a doctor at the school’s hospital. Their combined income exceeds $250,000. They have a nice house, a nanny, kids in private school, a retirement account and a lawn guy.
“Wait. What’s he talking about? A lot of people would consider him rich.
“People have had some other choice words for the outspoken professor, who has been on the receiving end of a jolt of criticism in response to a blog posting last week in which he described his lifestyle in detail and then complained about President Barack Obama’s plan to raise taxes on high-income families.”
8. If the U.S. Attorney’s Office really did leak damaging information about Jesse Jackson Jr. after Junior challenged them to “bring it on,” then that’s a story, isn’t it? “Feds Retaliate With Leak.” And you know who would know if that’s what happened? Reporters. (Call me naive, but I remain skeptical. But it would be interesting to ask Patrick Fitzgerald if he intended to locate the leak and discipline any of his prosecutors.)
9. “It was May of 2009,” the Parking Ticket Geek of The Expired Meter reports.
“That’s when Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan opened a consumer fraud investigation into the Chicago parking meter lease deal.
“At the time, the AG seemed curious to see if consumers had been defrauded, and if the ‘transaction and implementation’ of the new meter system was on the up and up. So Madigan’s office issued subpoenas to the three main players – Chicago Parking Meters, LLC (the company that got the lease), CPM’s majority stake holder, Morgan Stanley, and LAZ Parking, the operational partner for the meter system.
“But it’s been 16 months since those subpoenas were issued and so far, not another peep on the subject from Madigan’s office.”
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Disclaimer: I’m working on some T-shirts with the Parking Ticket Geek so I have a commercial relationship with him.
10. State Street’s Future: 1973-Style.
11. Who’s Buried In John Logan’s Monument?
12. Re-Imagining Marina City.
13. “Illinois, facing the worst financial crisis in its history, received a negative outlook on $25 billion of general obligation bonds from Moody’s Investors Service after failing to address a deficit that almost tripled in one year,” Bloomberg reports.
14. Paper Report Cards A Thing Of The Past In SD 228.
15. A song with unexplainable universal and timeless appeal.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Glory be.
Posted on September 24, 2010