panic??

[advantage playe]

china , we owe it to ya , hows that sound ??

[tech58]

china, we USED to owe it to ya , sounds better.

[FAA]

Not blame, just an observation. Glad that so many of the mustered resources went unused by the battered states. We were perhaps a couple weeks late in shutting down, but certainly not the six weeks number by MSM. I would have taken that mask off your hands. Maybe he just had law enforcement temperament of paying his own way at all times. Nice offer.

[FAA]

BTW, great news thus far on Remdesivir from University of Chicago and Penn Medicine. It's not the HCQ that the President touted, but no reason they both can't be effective. City of broad shoulders working it.

[notes1]

anybody else pay $12 for a pint of ice cream? that's the amount for the brand PELOSI has in her muti- thousand double freezer, in her multi million dollar home.

[FAA]

I missed that, so I looked it up. 1.2M Google results in five days. Some put it at $13 IC, $24,000 two fridge cost. Mortified. I thought celebrities overshared. Why is she throwing open her doors like this? Dumb move. Anything for attention in video age. She basically blocked $250B PPP replenishment! Biden chimed in: You have great taste, @speakerpelosi! The jokes write themselves, Nance. You just wrote an RNC campaign ad, in record time. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. (Let them eat cake.)

[notes1]

examples of dem power grab, using virus as excuse. state of WASH, mandates all private construction cease. but, they allowed ALL government construction projects to continue.

WHY, what is the difference? how can MICH close stores that sell paint, seeds, etc, BUT allow stores to remain open that sell weed, booze and abortions to continue?

kansas governor allows grocery stores to remain open, but no church can have more than 10 folks in it.

[Tedlark]

Is there any correlation to the defiance of social distancing orders happening in Colorado, Washington, Michigan and these same states having legalized(?) recreational marijuana use?

[Tedlark]

As reported by the Chicago Tribune 3 hours ago:

It is not surprising an Illinois politician finally put in writing what economists and financial watchdogs have been warning for years: That elected officials who failed to take seriously decades of fiscal warning bells in this state eventually would seek a bailout from the federal government.

What is beyond galling is using the coronavirus as an excuse. But that’s what Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, did last week in a letter circulated among Illinois’ congressional delegation and obtained by The New York Times. Harmon requested more than $41.6 billion in bailout aid as part of the next coronavirus relief package, including $10 billion for Illinois pensions, due to economic collapse from the virus.

Even by this state’s low standards, asking federal taxpayers from California to North Carolina, from North Dakota to Texas — farmers, small business owners, teachers, nurses, bus drivers, bartenders — to help dig Illinois out of its pre-coronavirus, self-inflicted, financial hellhole is astonishingly brazen. Every member of Congress should carefully scrutinize pleas from states whose unbalanced budgets, embarrassing credit ratings and vastly underfunded pension systems predated virus outbreak.

“I realize I’ve asked for a lot, but this is an unprecedented situation, and we face the reality that there likely will be additional, unanticipated costs that could result in future requests for assistance,” Harmon, who has been in office since 2003, wrote in the letter.

It’s absolutely true states and cities are suffering from dramatic revenue losses due to mandatory shutdowns in the retail sector, investment losses in pension funds and high demand for unemployment resources. But to suggest Illinois is worthy of such a generous bailout given its history is preposterous. Just look at the history.

Illinois’ pension system faced roughly $20 billion in unfunded liabilities in the mid-1990s. Today, those unfunded liabilities — retirement promises to state workers and other government employees — have risen to more than $137 billion, the worst in the country.

Since 2003, Democrats have controlled the state legislature and failed to stabilize those liabilities. That year under then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Illinois borrowed $10 billion and still shorted the pension funds. Lawmakers skipped full payments to the pension funds in 2006 and 2007, then borrowed again to make partial pension payments in subsequent budget years. Even after raising income taxes 67% for four years in 2011, lawmakers stood by as unfunded liabilities rose and rose and rose.

By then, when the legislature finally enacted a two-tiered pension system that reduced benefits for new hires, Illinois was years behind other big states such as New York, which had recognized the obvious drain on resources. New York’s employee pension system has six tiers. That’s just one example of a state that started addressing the strain of defined benefit plans decades before Illinois.

At the same time Illinois lawmakers were ignoring the growing crisis, they were adding benefits and beneficiaries, including union officials and teacher union lobbyists who substitute-taught for one day in order to “qualify” for the Teachers Retirement System. Those abuses, shockingly, were ruled constitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court. That’s how un-seriously this state’s leaders have dealt with state resources.

By 2013, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had charged the state of Illinois with fraud for “misleading municipal bond investors” about the state’s chronic underfunding of its pension obligations. Was anyone held directly accountable? No. Did lawmakers change their ways in subsequent budget years? No.

Even as the state made pension payments during the budget impasse under former Gov. Bruce Rauner, the liabilities of the pension funds have continued to climb. So no, taxpayers around the country should not be responsible for rescuing Illinois, which is $8.4 billion behind in past-due bills — in spite of the recent economic boom.

Ever heard the one about the man who kills his parents and then begs for mercy because he’s an orphan? That’s Springfield, destroying the state’s finances and then seeking a bailout.

Now give a minute’s thought to former Illinoisans, those thousands who joined the exodus of residents to other states because they anticipated the reckoning to come. They thought they had cleared out in time. But look out. If Harmon and the others in Springfield succeed in obtaining a federal bailout of more than $40 billion, no one will be protected from an Illinois bailout. Not residents of Indiana, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida or anywhere.

You’ve got income, expatriates. Springfield craves a share. It’s the Illinois Way.

Editorials reflect the opinion of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board, as determined by the members of the board, the editorial page editor and the publisher.

[tech58]

"Joe Biden,friend of China" RNC add first saw it today. About time!!
How much did Hunter make off this insider scam?
Stay tuned. Sleepy Joe could not eat his lunch in the nursing home.