By Steve Rhodes
Like or Nope? Plus: Covering Chicago Violence In The Worst Possible Way; Really Reassessing Obama’s Legacy; and Beachwood Funnies.
Posted on July 11, 2015
The Beachwood Radio Hour #61A: Grateful Dead Edition
By Steve Rhodes
Let there be ungentrified songs to fill the air: What the media and David Axelrod get wrong.
Posted on July 11, 2015
Beware Wall Street’s Magic Pension Beans
By Cezary Podkul/Pro Publica and Allan Sloan/Washington Post
If there were ever a time not to bet the moon on the stock and bond markets, it’s now, with U.S. stocks at near-record highs and interest rates on quality bonds at near-record lows. But Wall Street is urging state and local governments to do just that – and they’re listening.
Despite the risks, governments are lining up to issue billions of dollars in new debt to replenish their depleted pension funds and, as a bonus, take some pressure off strapped budgets. In some cases, the borrowing makes their balance sheets look vastly better.
Bankers, who make fat fees for raising the money, are encouraging this borrow-and-bet trend. Their sales pitch is that borrowing at today’s low interest rates all but guarantees a profit for the governments because they can invest the proceeds in their pension funds and for decades earn returns higher than the 5 percent or so in interest that they will pay on the bonds.
But there’s a catch: If the timing is wrong, these so-called pension obligation bonds could clobber the finances of the government issuers. Pension funds and beneficiaries will be better off because pensions will be more soundly financed. But taxpayers – present and future – might be considerably worse off. They will be running huge risks and could get stuck with a massive tab.
“It’s sold as a magic bean,” said Todd Ely, a professor at the University of Colorado at Denver who has studied pension bonds. “But when it goes bad it’s not free. Then it isn’t really magic. If it could be counted on to work as often as it’s supposed to, then everyone would be doing it.”
Posted on July 10, 2015
The Beachwood Radio Hour #60: Don’t Blame Garry McCarthy For Rahm Emanuel’s Crime-Causing Policies
By Steve Rhodes
The real case against the Chicago police chief. Plus: Bracing For Holiday Weekend Reporting; Here We Go Again With The National Guard; Boykin’s Bullshit; and The FBI-CNN Joint Task Force For Fear-Mongering.
Posted on July 2, 2015
Rahm’s Plan C
Another Beachwood Special Report
Emanuel offering 2 options. Plan A: create one fund for all IL teachers incl Chicago. Plan B: IL picks up normal costs of pension.
— WBEZeducation (@WBEZeducation) July 1, 2015
The Beachwood has learned, however, that Rahm is also working on Plans C through Z. To wit:
* Hold the school board hostage for $1 million $6 billion.
* Sell naming rights to all CPS kids.
* Welcome to the world’s first all-online school district!
* CPS kids work off pension debt as Aramark janitors.
* Make Winnetka a Sister City and ask to borrow some money to go to the mall.
Posted on July 2, 2015
CPS Covers Madonna
Including These Favorites
* Pension Holiday
* Junk Bond Borderline
* Lucky PARCC
* Like A Virgin Borrower
* The School Year Will Start Like A Prayer
* I’m Crazy For CTU
Posted on July 2, 2015
American Torture Story – Chicago Chapter
By CAN TV
“America has a torture story, ladies and gentlemen.”
Organized by Amnesty International, human rights activists gathered on Friday to commemorate the International Day of Support of Torture Survivors.
Posted on June 30, 2015
Kathy, Linda & Ron: A Love Story
By MediaBurn
“Studs Terkel recounts the story of two lesbian mothers, Kathy Fagin and Linda Gagnon, and the gay doctor Ron Sable who helped they have a family.”
Posted on June 29, 2015
Living Apart: How The Government Betrayed A Landmark Civil Rights Law
By Nikole Hannah-Jones/ProPublica
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the landmark federal Fair Housing Act protects Americans from discrimination in where they choose to live, even when the discrimination is unintentional. In its 5-4 ruling, the Court held that governments or lending institutions can be sued based in part on statistical evidence that certain categories of residents had suffered what is known as “disparate impact,” as a consequence of housing or lending policies.
ProPublica in 2012 detailed how the U.S. government rarely enforced the many provisions of the Fair Housing Act. And earlier this year, we looked at the issues at stake in the “disparate impact” case decided Thursday.
Original story, published Oct. 29, 2012:
A few months after Congress passed a landmark law directing the federal government to dismantle segregation in the nation’s housing, President Nixon’s housing chief began plotting a stealth campaign.
The plan, George Romney wrote in a confidential memo to aides, was to use his power as secretary of Housing and Urban Development to remake America’s housing patterns, which he described as a “high-income white noose” around the black inner city.
Posted on June 26, 2015
5 Tips For Donating After Disasters
By ProPublica
Earlier this month we published an investigation with NPR into the American Red Cross’ failures in Haiti. We’ve gotten a lot of questions from readers (including on Reddit) wondering what to do next time a big disaster hits.
What should you do if you want to help? To whom should you send money?
Posted on June 23, 2015