THE ILLINOIZE: Monday Free for All
November 29, 2021
Good morning and welcome back to reality after the Thanksgiving break.
You might be wondering who the heck this guy is with the cumbersome Polish name. I’m a former political reporter and a lifelong political nerd. I covered politics in Ohio for many years but was born and raised in Illinois. I moved back the weekend Illinois went into its first COVID-19 lockdown. Great timing, huh?
Patrick is taking a much-deserved break after welcoming his first child to the world so you’ll be hearing from me a few times over the next few weeks. There will be two newsletters each week for the next month instead of three. Every Tuesday and Thursday you’ll hear from guest writers, starting with former Democratic Congressman Bill Enyart tomorrow and former Republican Congressman John Shimkus on Thursday.
If you want to help Patrick pay for all of the diapers he’s about to be changing, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It’s just $7.99 per month and $75 per year. Just click below to subscribe!
YOUR MONDAY FREE FOR ALL
(note: we’re not responsible for paywalls and restrictions from other news outlets)
Illinois economists argue: price carbon now (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Climate change is considered to be the greatest challenge of our generation, and for good reason. As global average temperatures have increased 1°C (1.8° F) over the last 100 years, storms have become stronger and more damaging, flooding and drought are both more common and intense, and loss from wildfires has grown dramatically. The cost of destructive weather is rising as well: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, climate and weather-related disasters now regularly cost the United States over $100 billion a year, a more than fivefold increase from just the 1980s on an inflation-adjusted basis.
Illinois is not immune from a changing climate. The Environmental Protection Agency’s assessment for Illinois predicts that climate change will lead to more intense precipitation and flooding events in the spring and more intense heat and drought in the summer. These changes will lead to a higher incidence of flooded farmland: Our area experienced 500-year floods in 2011, 2017 and 2019. We will also face challenges to management of water resources, increased heat-related deaths and ecosystem stresses in Lake Michigan.
If current global climate policies to reduce emissions are not strengthened, this 1°C (1.8° F) temperature increase will at least triple by the end of this century and corresponding damages will increase even more. As the IMF recently stated, “Without further action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is on course to reach temperatures not seen in millions of years, with potentially catastrophic implications.”
This cannot be our future or the future we leave to our children.
But a simple, effective solution, one that is broadly favored by economists, can stabilize climate risk, increase job opportunities, improve public health and provide a financial benefit to the most vulnerable in our society. The solution is explained in the “largest public statement of economists in history,” signed by all living chairs of the Federal Reserve, 28 Nobel laureates and over 3,500 other economists. It is to simply put a fee on carbon pollution and then return all funds raised directly to households in the form of “carbon dividends.”
What can be done to stop Chicago’s Black exodus? (Chicago Sun-Times)
In the past 10 years, the exodus of Black families has continued in Chicago, which was once a prime destination for Black Americans fleeing the violence and racism of the Jim Crow South. West Englewood and Austin have lost the most Black residents in the past 10 years, according to the 2020 census.
The Chicago Sun-Times shared the stories of Black Chicagoans who had left the city and how their lives improved — but is there a way to stop this 30-year decline in population?
Community leaders say in order to bring Black residents back, the city must devote more resources to closing gaps in homeownership, wages and life expectancy between Black and white Chicagoans, though admittedly it will be no easy feat.
Democrats name successor to D’Amico in Illinois House - a firefighter who the ex-lawmaker has known ‘most of our lives’ (Chicago Sun-Times)
A group of Democratic Party officials representing the Northwest Side and neighboring suburbs decided Tuesday to fill the vacant seat of a former state representative and member of a Chicago political dynasty with a firefighter who has served as a foot soldier to that family.
Choosing from a crowded field of candidates, seven Democratic committeepersons — and one who voted by proxy — backed Chicago firefighter Michael Kelly to serve the remainder of former state Rep. John D’Amico’s term in the Illinois House, a position the Democratic lawmaker has held since 2004.
…The firefighter said he voted in the GOP primary in 2010 because his union was backing Judy Baar Topinka for state comptroller and in the 2012 GOP primary as a favor to a friend of a friend, though he couldn’t recall that candidate’s name.
Despite those two instances, Kelly pledged that his voting history was 100% Democratic.
Op-ed: An open letter to Congress from here in the Heartland (Chicago Tribune)
Admit it: You think we are all fools. We watch you year after year, election cycle after election cycle, and what do we see? Crabs in a bucket that climb and clamor to see who can get the most lucrative book deal, the longest on-screen time on the Sunday talk shows and the fattest checks from the slickest lobbyists. You don’t even try to hide your shenanigans anymore.
When did public service become the golden ticket to generational wealth? And why do we now have to be millionaires and billionaires to run for office?
…You threaten other members of your own tribe with dangerous memes on Twitter. Too many of you deny the results of the 2020 presidential election. I would not be surprised if this same bunch denies that the Earth is round.
Then, when you realize that you will lose badly in the upcoming elections, you cut and run, pension and health insurance intact for the rest of your life. In your post-government life, you set up consulting firms in which you instruct your former lobbyist pals how they, too, can game the system. So, in a sense, you are “spending more time with family.”
The phrase “conflict of interest” apparently does not apply. Time and time again, we read of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who mysteriously trade stocks based on information they might have received in private briefings. Your lack of accountability is chilling. I realize the toothless Hatch Act hardly scares anybody, but have you no decency?
No holiday lights for the Capitol Dome. Again. (Associated Press)
The Capitol dome in Springfield will be without holiday lights for the third straight year.
The same structural issue that kept workers from hanging some 1,300 lights from the state Capitol dome in 2019 and again last year has not been resolved, Secretary of State spokesman told The Springfield State-Journal Register.
According to spokesman Henry Haupt, an engineering firm conducted an inspection of the dome in 2019 recommended that an observation deck above the dome be fortified before the lights are put up.
JOIN US