Chicago Sun-Times

Taxpayers deserve ‘golden parachute’

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 06:36:01 -0500

‘Golden parachutes” may ensure soft, comfortable landings for high-level officials as they float down from lofty government jobs, but those excessive severance packages drop like lead balloons on the backs of taxpayers who get crushed by the cost. Big bye-bye bonuses are especially offensive when the beneficiaries already have been generously compensated and sufficiently coddled in their executive positions. The latest extravaganza, replete with a “gag order” so the participants can’t discuss it publicly, is the Metra board’s departure deal with CEO Alex Clifford, which could end up costing taxpayers and riders more than $750,000. That puts Clifford in the …

Obamacare stumbles? Give it a boost

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 18:47:11 -0500

EDITORIAL: Neither ObamaCare nor the federal government was operating properly Tuesday, for different reasons. Cutting through all the rhetoric, though, one thing is clear: The nation needs both of them to be running on all cylinders. And Congress, now gridlocked, needs to make that happen.

Poor kids face tough challenges — even walking to school

Tue, 01 Oct 2013 09:48:20 -0500

EDITORIAL: It’s not just the guns and gangs. Poor children have endless strikes against them as they set out in life. One of those strikes — one most of us probably never stop to think about — was highlighted in a Sunday Sun-Times story reporting that 48 of the 53 Safe Passage routes at schools that took in children from closed schools have registered sex offenders living along them within a city block.

No denying it: Humans cause global warming

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 10:06:02 -0500

EDITORIAL: A United Nations panel on Friday released a summary to a major new report that concludes, in the most forceful language yet, that human activity is “extremely likely” the dominant cause of global warming and that the potential dangers are great. That didn’t stop climate change deniers, of course, from immediately trying to poke holes in the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Time to move to heart of stunt: pension reform

Mon, 30 Sep 2013 10:06:02 -0500

EDITORIAL: Gov. Pat Quinn wants to milk his bid to withhold legislators’ pay for as long as humanly possible.Not surprising. It was an excellent stunt — withholding pay until timid lawmakers cut state pension costs. But on Friday Quinn lost more rounds in court, decreasing the odds that he will prevail, The circus value on this is nearly tapped out. And like Quinn himself, we’d like to turn to the long-awaited pension cost-cutting plan that is due from a special legislative committee.

End ‘stand your ground’ in Illinois

Sun, 29 Sep 2013 02:34:31 -0500

EDITORIAL: So-called “stand your ground laws” have led to unnecessary shootings around the country, and now Illinois is on the brink of having one of its own sneak onto the books through the back door. The Legislature should act to prevent that before anyone dies in one of those stupidly unnecessary confrontations.

City’s pension freight train is here

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 02:25:33 -0500

EDITORIAL: A plan for dealing with this monstrous pension crisis is needed now, today. That plan should not include — please, no — any significant delaying or deferring of those payments, an idea Mayor Rahm Emanuel pitched this week.

Quinn’s stunt still a good one

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 17:59:00 -0500

EDITORIAL: Well, heck, we said all along it was a stunt — and probably not a legal one. We just didn’t care. If Gov. Pat Quinn’s dramatic decision back in July to withhold all legislators’ salaries until they solved the state’s unfunded pension crisis put pressure on them to finally get it done, then it was a stunt worth pulling.

Obamacare off to good start, but success requires effort

Thu, 26 Sep 2013 02:19:50 -0500

EDITORIAL: Get Covered Illinois is the biggest new social service program in the state’s history, and not everything will go smoothly at first.

Beavers’ recreation was really his addiction

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 20:16:17 -0500

EDITORIAL: As hogs go, Bill Beavers makes for excellent entertainment. When he goes off to prison, we will miss him. But Beavers will be back soon enough, after serving a six-month stint, and you can bet he’ll be as old-school incorrigible and quotable as ever. It’s not as if a short stay in a federal pen is about to transform a guy like Beavers, an unrepentant tax cheat who deserves his fate.

Chicago needs more cops, not troopers

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:53:48 -0500

EDITORIAL: Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy this week summarily dismissed the idea of bringing in the Illinois State Police to help quell the violence in Chicago. As he should. At it’s best, it would be like trying to patch up a big wound with a shriveled Band-Aid. At its worst, bringing in outsiders who don’t know and aren’t trained for Chicago’s streets could inflame tensions and put State Police at unnecessary risk.

Positive words from iran welcome, but actions must follow

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:59:02 -0500

EDITORIAL: When the new president of Iran addresses the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, he is expected to make some kind of big conciliatory gesture, such as acknowledging the Holocaust. Can you imagine? He may even venture to say puppies are cute. And from such bold pronouncements, the West will surely feel confident that Iran is eager to build better relationships and end its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. We prefer a wise and more wary view.

Going long for Payton a good call

Wed, 25 Sep 2013 13:58:51 -0500

EDITORIAL: It is easy, on the face of it, to knock Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to spend $17 million on an addition to Payton College Prep, an elite selective enrollment public high school on the Near North Side. And it’s just as easy to knock Emanuel for the rest of the spending spree he announced last week — another $75 million on seven other schools, mostly to relieve overcrowding. But, sorry, we’re not jumping on that bandwagon.

Too much gun crime, but Chicago is on right course.

Sun, 22 Sep 2013 02:35:36 -0500

EDITORIAL: When 13 people, including a 3-year-old boy, are shot in a Southwest Side park, Chicago’s unwanted yet persistent reputation as America’s crime capital is bound to get worse. Chicago does have an alarming crime rate, especially compared with New York and Los Angeles. But that shouldn’t distract us from the fact that the Chicago Police have put effective anti-crime strategies in place, which will continue to bring down the crime rate over time

Editorial: No charges in Koschman case, but still plenty of stink

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 09:37:37 -0500

EDITORIAL: A shabby 2004 police investigation into the death of David Koschman outside a Division Street bar reeks with City Hall clout, but a special prosecutor concluded Thursday it is too late to bring criminal charges of a possible cover-up against any cop or county prosecutor. But let’s understand why the Chicago Police and the state’s attorney’s office should remain on the hook in the court of public opinion. The evidence revealed by the Sun-Times that cops and prosecutors dragged their heels or worse to protect the nephew of a powerful mayor named Daley remains strong.

Rapid transit buses not there yet

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:23:36 -0500

EDITORIAL: Chicago once had the world’s largest cable car system and, after that, the world’s largest street car network, but those grids were ripped out partly because — unlike the L — they interfered with cars. Now planners are taking on cars again with a proposed bus rapid transit line, and they need to get it right if it is to be the model for public transit expansion in the Chicago area.