Chicago Daily Observer

Troubled Hyde Park Co-op to vote on closing out a million in debt, closing its doors.

The end may be near for the Hyde Park Co-op, a linchpin of the South Side neighborhood and a link to an era of utopian dreams—including a conviction that a better society lay in a grocery whose owners would be customers.

The Co-op’s Depression-era founders wanted a business in which decisions were made not by distant executives, but by a show of hands.

Sometimes the difference between a good think tank and a successful think tank comes down to taking action. Over the past month, the Illinois Policy Institute has been heavily engaged in fighting a Chicago Transit Authority bailout that included a sales tax increase in six Chicago suburban communities.

As a non-profit think tank, our job is to educate activists, policymakers, the press and the general public. Over the course of this tax fight, we did just that:

• The Institute targeted state representatives who were being pressured to vote for the tax increase and called more than 30,000 voters in their districts to urge them to contact their legislators.
  * We spread the word to leaders of Americans for Tax Reform, who contacted key members of the Transportation Committee to oppose the tax hike.
  * We also notified our friends at the National Taxpayers Union, who subsequently ... Read More...

American business leaders, especially insurance executives, public policymakers and consumers should sit bolt upright when they read about two new studies published in October – one concerning the breast cancer epidemic and the other on the rising costs of premature births.

The November issue of The Actuary, a magazine for insurance
professionals in the UK discussed what it called the “breast cancer epidemic” in England and Wales. American business leaders should take it seriously because it has serious implications for the U.S. health care and insurance industries.

In the article, Patrick Carroll of the Pension and Population Research Institute in London, predicts that by 2029 breast cancer rates will have increased by 50.9% in England and Wales. Carroll, a statistician and actuary, advised British insurance actuaries to adjust their insurance premiums and reserves accordingly, urging health care providers to “plan treatment facilities so that women diagnosed can be treated ... Read More...

Multi-kazillionaire Warren Buffett this week renewed his annual plea for government to soak the middle class. He didn’t put it in quite those words. What he said was that he wanted Congress to raise income taxes on multi-kazillionaires like himself because he isn’t paying his fair share – and he is willing. The left loves to trot out such noble and self-sacrificial-sounding sentiments from the super-rich. But it is not a formula for soaking the rich: it is a formula for soaking the working man – and Warren Buffett knows it. Let me tell you why.
For the truly rich their income is merely their surplus, the fat on the meat of their holdings. Their substance is in their personal property and investment instruments. For the working man his income IS his substance, the only meat he has on his bones. So the proper translation of a plea like ... Read More...