I was lucky enough to be invited to the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy for a presentation on the media this past Sunday at the Stevenson family farm in Mettawa, Illinois.  Sen. Adlai Stevenson III and his wife Nancy were the gracious hosts.  The Keynote Speaker was Torey Malatia, Chief Executive Officer and President of Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) who made an intriguing presentation titled “The Consequences of the Media Information Hydrant: A Nation of Silent Spectators”
 

Malatia’s premise was that people don’t really participate much in politics anymore, because they …

Crain’s is running one of its vapid analysis of survey results, written by Greg Hinz (one of it’s most vapid analysts), claiming that downtown Chicago is sure a great place to do business, especially tech business.
tech-sector employers say that to attract talent, they need to cluster within that two-mile radius of City Hall, too
In which proximity to “City Hall” is something of a headscratcher. Do technology people really want to be closer to James Cappleman and Karen Yarborough for some reason?

 
 
Yet, Chicago does have it’s earnest businessmen and politicians putting …

From the New York Times
When MF Global toppled a year ago, chaos engulfed a Chicago trading floor. Customers were locked out of their accounts, later discovering that about $1 billion of their money had disappeared.
Federal authorities have all but cleared MF Global’s top executives of criminal wrongdoing, people briefed on the matter say. The government has yet to usher in a wider overhaul of futures trading rules, save for certain piecemeal policy changes. And the profit-making exchanges that rely on brokerage firms for business still police the futures industry, presenting …

After 8 quarters of steady decline, Government Spending has increased in the third quarter of 2012.  Just in time for the election, the Federal Government is doing what it can to boost economic growth (of course, by borrowing money from the Chinese to pass out to political donors and potential voters)
From the St. Louis Fed

CNN has a surprisingly balanced story about the problems an Indiana based manufacturer is having with manufacturing an attic ventilation system. The solar-powered system relies on a panel which is made in China to power his device. The Obama administration, which had touted this manufacturer as a Green Energy company, now is slapping a 250% tariff/fine on his imported panels, to encourage US Made panels to be used.

 
Troubling news is that there are no available US panels, so the manufacturer is pulling his hair out on how to make a …

Per the Collegiate Times, Robert Anthony Bruno Director of the Labor Education Program in School of Labor & Empl. Relations made $120,955 in 2009, cheerfully coughed up by the taxpayers of Illinois to support his research and teaching at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

 
Professor Bruno does not approve of the Caterpillar Union agreement in Joliet
Workers who had previously agreed to a two-tier wage contract and contributed to the company’s eye-popping profitability and global market dominance in the earth-moving equipment industry got little more than the privilege to vote for their …

Here’s David Axelrod making it up as he goes along
In last 29 months, we’ve had 29 straight months of private sector job growth, 4.5 million jobs created. In this last report, 173,000 private sector jobs created.
Here’s the St. Louis Fed on the Employment Ratio, that is the total number of people employed vs. the total number of jobs.  Notice anything over the last 4 1/2 years?

 
The total number of people working vs the total number of jobs has shrunk 3% since President Obama was elected.  Axelrod fails to note the …

Rahm Emanuel, who we are assured is a sharpie, concocts this head-scratching bit of economics in today’s Sun-Times
Emanuel aides said last week that firefighters and paramedics — unlike police officers — are barred from working other jobs while on disability leave and said a similar policy for the police might help limit abuses of the system. “Among potential reforms being discussed for the Chicago Police Department’s disability program is a requirement similar to the Chicago Fire Department’s that those receiving disability benefits cannot hold a second job outside of city …

My grade-school aged daughter gets at least her fair share of school lectures concerning faddish subjects like obesity and recycling from the Federal Grant seeking portion of the education industry. Over the last few months, she picked up a new catch all term for dramatic effect: bully.

Not that their aren’t bullies; they seem like they are a constant menace throughout history, but it also seems like an absurd lecture to a small child to point out that someone threatening you or actually harming you is up to no good. No …

In case you forgot Carol Marin, is widely disregarded as a legitimate journalist.  From Tom Roeser
Carol Marin the orange haired duenna of political correctitude…who gets three salaries one from the Sun-Times for writing lefty columns, one from NBC for doing lefty “analysis”…and one, partially taxpayer-subsidized from `TTW for running panels skewed to preconceived Lefty ideas… adored the late Studs Terkel who ordered all his identical red-checked working-man’s shirts from Paul Stuart’s of Michigan avenue…the self-same Marin who prayed Cardinal Bernardin be sprung from his tomb to counsel the current Pope on …