by John Laesch, posted on Monday, February 11th, 2013 at 8:00 am
I hope that readers take the time to attend the Aurora City Council meeting on Feb. 12th at 6:00 p.m. in the city council chambers, 2nd floor of city hall, 44 E. Downer Place, Aurora, IL. If you want to address the City Council should notify the City Clerk’s Office at (630) 256-3070
Being discussed and voted on at this meeting is the appropriations of $750,000 of taxpayer money to fund a development project in downtown Aurora.
This latest TIF deal has me asking lots of questions about our city’s TIF policy. This one certainly has “politically connected insiders” written all over it, but other developers and “businessmen” have taken the city for a ride in the past.
Illinois State Representatives Linda Chapa LaVia and Elaine Nekritz address the Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice forum, “Funding Strong Schools and Fair Pensions,” East Aurora High School, Aurora, Illinois, January 2, 2013.
Gerald Epstein (Political Economy Research Institute, and Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst): The basic policies must change or recession and high unemployment will continue
Gerald Friedman (University of Massachusetts, Amherst): A single-payer plan in Maryland would cover everyone, improve outcomes and make business more competitive
Angela Kelley and Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress’s Immigration Policy team, discuss what the Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s immigration law, S.B. 1070, means for Arizonans, other states and Latino voters.
In a major policy move, President Obama has issued an executive order that will stop the deportations of some undocumented youth. Under the administration’s plan, immigrants who meet certain requirements will not be deported if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30. We speak with one of the key lawmakers dealing with immigration reform today: Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ Immigration Task Force.
President Obama is slated to visit TPI Composites on Thursday, a wind turbine blade manufacturer in Newton, Iowa, where he will urge Congress to extend two key renewable energy tax credits — the Production Tax Credit for wind and a clean energy manufacturing credit.
Wind energy provides thousands of jobs in Iowa, like this one of a turbine maintenance worker in Franklin County. The Center for American Progress traveled to Iowa to talk to experts and officials about how uncertain federal policy is hurting the wind industry.
Public spending is under assault from the United States to Europe in the name of fighting deficits. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman argues in his new book, “End This Depression Now!”, that the hysteria over the deficit will constrain an economic recovery in a time of high unemployment and stagnating wages. “The economics is really easy,” says Krugman, “If we were to spend more money at the government level, rehire the school teachers, firefighters, police officers who have been laid off in the last several years because of cutbacks, we would be a long way back toward full employment. … Right now there’s just not enough spending. We need the government to step in and provide the demand we need … We’ve had austerity in the face of a recession in a way that we’ve never had before since the 1930s. The results are clear — it is disastrous.” Krugman writes about the economy as a columnist for the New York Times and is a Professor of Economics at Princeton University.
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