Chicago

All the latest moves coming from Jeff Sessions would seem to imply that the beleaguered Attorney General has every intent of aggressively pushing forward with Trump's agenda in order to mend broken fences with the White House and try to keep his job.  The latest such move comes in the form of the following rather direct official statement from Sessions in response to Chicago's lawsuit filed earlier this morning regarding federal funding, or lack thereof rather, for sanctuary cities.

One month ago, President Trump vowed to "send in the Feds" after Chicago's murder rate continued to track roughly in-line with 2016, the most violent year for the city in nearly two decades.

Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help. 1714 shootings in Chicago this year!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 30, 2017

Authored by Mark Glennon via WirePoints.com,

“Net position” is the government accounting term used for a balance sheet snapshot.

The chart shows net positions, in billions, for each of the last ten year ends, taken from the most recent CAFR, the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, for Illinois, the City of Chicago (which are plotted on the right axis) and for Chicago’s two largest overlapping units of government, Cook County and the Chicago Public School District (which are plotted on the left).

Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via Forbes.com,

The 'Big Dogs' of local government in Illinois.

Illinois is broke and continues to flirt with junk bond status. But the state’s financial woes aren’t stopping 63,000 government employees from bringing home six-figure salaries and higher.

College graduates and other young Americans are increasingly clustering in urban centers like New York City, Chicago and Boston. And now, American companies are starting to follow them. Companies looking to appeal to, and be near, young professionals versed in the world of e-commerce, software analytics, digital engineering, marketing and finance are flocking to cities. But in many cases, they’re leaving their former suburban homes to face significant financial difficulties, according to the Washington Post.