Time To Close The Cardinal Center

Well I just researched the numbers and it looks like the CC will have to close up due to the turnout at the Classic. The last cap event was down 49 entries compared to last year.

I added up all the negative days and the entries were down 374 for the six days

WHATS THAT?

Add up the plus days too? How in the hell did that happen? How are there any plus days?

OH, Ok now I see them. That can't be right can it? It looks like there are 954 MORE entries this year over last.

SO I guess I should subtract the minus days from the plus?

954
-374
580 More entries this year? Son of a Gun

How about that WAVE

 

Forecast for Saturday was rain and a heat wave on Sunday. Could have been bigger. I heard Gipson was lurking about in the local hood.

 

Why, was there a building for sale?

 

Dang Jim, if you don't have pictures, for Pete's sake, don't start rumors. Merlo'll be pissed.

 

I have a SUSPICION that the ATA's EC, Gipson, and other VIPs within the organization are just getting prepared for what MAY come down the road with the Sparta Complex in the near future.

Somehow I am guessing that THEY know something the general membership, OR even Delegates don't know, and members can't be prepared before it's actually happened.

 

I think that it would be awesome if they had a few shoots a year like Jaquas used to have. Run 4 or 5 banks. Just saying

 

Man, I miss Jaquas.

 

The attendance numbers for the 2019 Cardinal Classic were certainly better than 2018’s. The 2018 shoot did suffer with some crappy weather but it was nice to see this year’s numbers rebound to where they were in 2017. The management team has struggled with target setting to best accommodate the shot curtain. I remain hopeful that they will see what works and more importantly what doesn’t work and make the right choices going forward. For me the Cardinal Center is a very enjoyable place to camp, shoot and shop shooting related vendors.

 

I Hear They May Be Putting Trap Fields In At There New Location At Some Point.

 

Targets were low and slow Sunday, especially doubles. Not my favorite.

 

Chicago homeowners are suffocating under pensions and property tax hikes
byOrphe Divounguy
| August 23, 2019 07:48 AM
forecastedto continue in the third quarter of this year. While the Midwest and the nation as a whole saw a very minor dip in home sales and surging Midwest home prices, Chicago missed the wave. Home sales in the Windy City experienced a 13.3% plunge, and the typical home sale price is barely climbing at all.



00:2000:51


Senior Columnist Fred Barnes on the expanded Washington Examiner magazine

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Chicago homeowners nervously sit on properties that are still worth 30% less, adjusted for inflation, than when the economy collapsed in December 2007. Adding insult to injury, property taxes on those devalued properties are up 20%. And there are fewer potential buyers, with the city and state losing population in each of the past four and five years, respectively.

During the past 20 years, the typical homeowner in Chicago’s Cook County saw his property tax bills grow faster than he can afford — at least five times faster than his income. Many Chicagoans can rattle off the annual shocks at opening property taxes bills thousands of dollars higher than a few years before.

Depressed housing prices should at least mean that property taxes go down, too. But that would be in the regular world and not in the rare atmosphere that Illinois has created for itself by sacrificing public services, the state’s economic stability, and residents’ personal finances, all in the service of a public pension monster that cannot be sated.

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Less than half of every new Illinois property tax dollar in the past 20 years has gone towards core services to improve communities. In Cook County, where Chicago is located, 77 cents of every new dollar for police and fire has gone to pensions instead of protective services. Pensions remain in crisis despite those rising property taxes and a slew of other new taxes at both the state and city levels.

If things seem bad now, just imagine what will happen when the next recession hits. All signs point in the wrong direction. Chicago is the bellwether for aloomingnational crisis, as its real estate is suffering worst out of the nation’s 10 largest cities relative to before the Great Recession.

Illinois’ statewide public pensions are short anywhere from $134 billion to $250 billion, depending on whose projection you trust. Chicago’s city pensions are $29 billion in the hole.

Add in falling interest rates and the resultant extra risk-taking in pensions’ investment portfolios, and you can see how an economic downturn could swiftly turn the funds insolvent. Retirees could see their benefits slashed, ashappened in Rhode Islanddespite taxpayers having to shoulder larger and larger tax increases.

That’s why Illinois needs real, substantive, and innovative reforms through a constitutional amendment.

By allowing for changes in future unearned benefits, the state could preserve existing retirement benefits and avoid devastating tax hikes and bankruptcy. It would specifically address the current 3% retiree raises and replace it with a true cost-of-living adjustment that is actually tied to inflation. In addition, the amendment would allow for changes such as increasing the minimum retirement ages and capping pensionable salaries to limit six-figure pension payments that accrue to millions over time.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has shown she’s reform-minded, but so far, she is looking for ways to tax the city out of its pension problems. The reforms that Illinois and Chicago need are not in their ability to tax, but in their ability to control pension costs.

As long as government continues to rely on unfairly raising taxes that hurt many Illinoisans and only benefit a few, retirees and homeowners will be punished for choosing Illinois. And increasingly, they just won't.

Orphe Divounguy is the chief economist for the Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization based in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois.


P.S. For those who are not aware Chicago is in the State of Illinois, the one with all of the debt piling up and getting to the point where it will not be able to recover from this debt ... This will sooner or later effect the entire state and all of the States holdings ... The State Parks get Federal grants to off set some of the cost but not entirely, so sooner or later the State will have to be responsible for the State Parks or shutter which ever ones they cannot afford for what ever reason ... The new Governor (Pritzger ) is not a gun friendly governor which creates a lot of possibilities, some good, some not so good ...




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