From Illinois Statehouse NewsGov. Pat Quinn’s budget speech on Wednesday offered an austerity of details unmatched by even the spartan spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year. Quinn spent more than a third of his 27-minute speech to the House and Senate recounting past state efforts to revitalize the Illinois economy. He briefly mentioned his proposal to reduce by $552 million Medicaid reimbursements to nursing homes and hospitals for the care of the poor and disabled. He called for the elimination...

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Despite the massive tax hikes in Illinois, Pat Quinn and his auxiliary PR Men Eric Zorn and Rich Miller are ho-humming the ability of Illinois based corporations to locate out of State. Says Quinn (via the Zorn/Miller pitch) The only way for the company to avoid paying Illinois corporate tax is for the company to cease selling their product to Illinoisans; relocating out of Illinois will have no effect on the amount of money paid by a company to the State of Illinois. · A company that has $1 million...

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Tucked away at the end of Gov. Pat Quinn’s budget address was what sounded like a plan to do away with the state’s flat-rate income tax.“Now, for too long, Illinois has had a tax code that is not fair. It is regressive. It is not based on an ability to pay. We can do better and for that reason, I will appoint an Illinois Revenue Reform Commission and charge the members with recommending a plan to write a 21st Century plan for Illinois that focuses on fairness and promotes economic growth,”...

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From Senator Dick Durbin We write to ask that Major League Baseball (MLB) prohibit the use of tobacco products on the field, the dugout, and the lockers rooms at all venues.It has been 28 years since the MLB ended tobacco use in its minor leagues, and it is time to extend that policy throughout MLB’s venues and events. We now know conclusively that smokeless tobacco endangers the health of baseball players who use it, but it also affects millions of young people who watch baseball. The use of...

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Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that the social conservatives’ hub-bub over C-PAC’s invitation of GOProud to participate in its big parley is foolish. Why? Because, he asked do the Democrats try to exclude liberals who aren’t in line 100% with ideology?No, he thundered. But of course the answer is yes. They don’t demand line-by-line comformity but down-the-line comformity on ideology. You can support modest changes in Obama spending but by no means can you support pro-life or anti-gay...

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The city of Chicago lost 200,000 people during the past decade, as an influx of whites and Asians was more than offset by a historic drop in the African-American population. The Hispanic population of the city proper stayed about even.Among other conclusions of the population count, which details major shifts in the size and makeup of metropolitan Chicago’s population: * The metropolitan area as a whole gained about 210,000 people between 2000 and 2010, with Cook County’s population...

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