Raising a family on three minimum wage jobs

Five days a week, Dejun Jackson wakes at 4:30 to get to the Chicago Chick-fil-A in time to start his shift at 5:45. He works behind the counter until 1 pm, when he walks to his second job as a cashier at Walgreens. He starts there at 1:10 or 1:15, and is on his feet until his shift ends at 9 or 9:30. He heads home, crashes, and wakes up to do it all again.

Jackson, who is 23, has a five year-old son and four-year-old daughter. The kids are asleep when he leaves in the morning and have already gone to bed by the time he gets home. The only real time he gets to spend with them is on weekends.

"Their mom is doing it all," he said. "I work to put food on the table. My money is needed, but so is my time, and all I want to be able to do is give them more time."

Between the two jobs, Jackson is working about 70 hours a week. He makes $8.75 an hour at Chick-fil-A and $10.22 at Walgreens, where he's been working for three years. He's also studying to get his bachelor's degree in criminal justice and psychology so that one day he only has to work one job, one shift.

His children's mom works at Walgreens, too, making $10 an hour. The kids are in daycare all day, which costs them $150 each month, until she gets off work at 6:30. Read more >>

City of Chicago’s cash plummets, debt triples, arrests drop

Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand — down from $167 million the year before — while adding to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers, year-end audits show.

Last week, Moody’s Investors ordered an unprecedented triple-drop in the city’s bond rating, citing Chicago’s “very large and growing” pension liabilities, “significant” debt service payments, “unrelenting public safety demands” and historic reluctance to raise local taxes that has continued under Emanuel.

The 2012 city audits explain why. They show that an unallocated balance that was $167 million a year ago because of Emanuel’s aggressive cost-cutting efforts has dropped to $33.4 million.

Budget Director Alex Holt blamed the $133.6 million drop on “honest” budgeting and ending the long-standing practice of carrying “ghost” vacancies. Read more >>

Army Conducts Nighttime Exercises in Downtown Chicago

Following up on recent and unannounced training exercises in Florida and Washington state, the U.S. military is conducting a drill in Chicago. The Windy City’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) told the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday it is providing support for “routine military training exercises,” including flying helicopters in the downtown area of the city at night.

“The training sites have been carefully selected to minimize the impact on the daily routine of residents,” the OEMC said in a statement released to the public. According to a 2013 U.S. Census Bureau report, 2,695,598 people live in Chicago. Population density is 11,841.8 residents per square mile, making it one of the most populated urban areas in the United States.

The “realistic urban training” conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Command, based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, includes the participation of soldiers from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment headquartered in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. According to the Tribune, the training is designed to prepare military personnel for overseas deployments. Read more >>

CHICAGO Mag Mile Become “Muggers’ Mile”: Guardian Angels

Michigan Avenue Chicago (Photo credit: Robert R Gigliotti, RRGPhotography.com)

A volunteer group of citizen crime fighters is calling the Magnificent Mile – a popular tourist destination in Chicago – the “Muggers’ Mile,” to spotlight robberies along Michigan Avenue.

CBS 2’s Susanna Song reports the Guardian Angels routinely patrol the Magnificent Mile, and the CTA Red Line subway that runs nearby.

They said criminals have been turning the popular stretch of Michigan Avenue into their own ATM, and attacks there have grown more violent. However, police said robberies in the area are down compared to last year.

Members of the Guardian Angels were at the corner of Michigan and Chicago avenues Tuesday morning, handing out flyers with safety tips to shoppers and tourists, while making their normal patrols.

The men in red berets said they came up with the Muggers’ Mile nickname, because they want to avoid the moniker from becoming reality. Read more >>

State Rep Requests National Guard Help to Stop Chicago Violence

Gun violence in Chicago is so severe that a state lawmaker wants state police and the National Guard to assist the local cops. State Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) is making the request.

“I am requesting with this press conference that Gov. Patrick Quinn order the Illinois National Guard (and) the Illinois State Police (to) come to Chicago and work with our mayor Ron (sic) Emanuel to provide safety for the children, especially,” she said at a news conference in Springfield.

Other state lawmakers accompanied Davis to recognize the severity of the problem, and the extent to which it carries beyond Chicago’s troubled neighborhoods to the entire city and other parts of the state, but not necessarily to concur with her solution.

Over the holiday weekend, 74 people were shot and 12 killed in Chicago, and Davis says the police don’t have the manpower to make arrests. Read more >>

Washington launches four different investigations into IRS scandal

Capitol Hill aides spent their Memorial Day weekend scanning hundreds of pages of documents related to the IRS scandal in order to prepare their bosses for what will inevitably be a frantic month of June involving multiple simultaneous investigations into government wrongdoing. By the time lawmakers return to session next week, at least four different investigations will be underway.

As The Daily Caller has reported, at least five different IRS offices including Cincinnati, Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland; Chicago, Illinois and El Monte and Laguna Niguel, California improperly targeted conservative nonprofit groups for extra scrutiny between 2010 and 2012.

The IRS’ shenanigans, chronicled in a damning report by Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George, started when a “team of [IRS] specialists” came together in April 2010 to process the tax-exempt nonprofit status of conservative groups that might be “potential political operations” (page 13 of the IG report). The IRS added “additional specialists” to this effort in December 2011. Read more >>

Chicago street gang forms ‘Hit Squad’ to kill cops

Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy says his department is taking seriously a purported directive from a Chicago street gang to kill members of law enforcement. The gang reportedly has even created a so-called “hit squad” to carry out the mission, CBS 2′S Mai Martinez reports.

Being a police officer just got more dangerous in Chicago. According to information gathered by the Cook County Sheriff’s office, a street gang wants to ambush and kill police officers near 19th and Oakley west of the Loop.

“This is in regards to one particular officer who’s done an incredible job who we’re paying special attention to make sure that he’s covered,” McCarthy told reporters Monday. They’re also alerting all officers. CBS 2 obtained a copy of an Officer Safety Alert issued last week that says, “The purpose of this squad will be to kill law enforcement officers.”

According to some of the information gathered, gang members intend to coax police officers into chasing them into alleys or gangways. Once inside, other gang members would shoot the officers. Read more >>

Bedbugs invade hospitals

As if adapting to health-care reform and curbing the “nightmare bacteria” weren’t challenge enough, hospitals are increasingly plagued by another problem: bedbugs.

More than a third of pest-management companies treated bedbug infestations in hospitals in 2012, 6% more than the year before and more than twice as many as in 2010, according to a survey released today by the National Pest Management Association. The percentage of exterminators dealing with bedbugs in nursing homes has also almost doubled since 2010, to 46%. Bedbug experts also report seeing them in ambulances.

Hospitals are already cracking down on anything that could increase the risk of patient infections, which not only can be deadly but may also lead to more readmissions and reduced federal funding under the Affordable Care Act. While bedbugs have not been found to transmit infections to humans, they leave itchy bites after feeding on people’s blood, which can lead to secondary infections when victims scratch, opening themselves up to bacteria.

This is especially problematic in hospitals, where there is a greater likelihood of catching the highly potent and contagious staph infection known as MRSA, says Dr. Jorge Parada, medical director of the infection prevention and control program of Loyola University Health System in Chicago. “You don’t need one more ingredient to increase your risk of infections in the hospital,” he says. Read more >>

Report: 1 in 3 Seinors Dies With Alzheimer's Or Dementia

A staggering 1 in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, says a new report that highlights the impact the mind-destroying disease is having on the rapidly aging population.

Dying with Alzheimer's is not the same as dying from it. But even when dementia isn't the direct cause of death, it can be the final blow - speeding someone's decline by interfering with their care for heart disease, cancer or other serious illnesses. That's the assessment of the report released Tuesday by the Alzheimer's Association, which advocates for more research and support for families afflicted by it.

"Exacerbated aging," is how Dr. Maria Carrillo, an association vice president, terms the Alzheimer's effect. "It changes any health care situation for a family."

In fact, only 30 percent of 70-year-olds who don't have Alzheimer's are expected to die before their 80th birthday. But if they do have dementia, 61 percent are expected to die, the report found. Read more >>

US Adds 300,000 New Millionaires

The rising stock market has pushed America's millionaire population close to its all-time highs before the recession.

According to data from Spectrem Group, the Chicago-based wealth research firm, there are now 8.99 million U.S. households whose net worth totals $1 million or more (not including primary residence). That's up from 8.6 million in 2011 and just short of the all-time record set in 2006, when the United States had 9.2 million millionaire households.

The stock market's rise has been the biggest driver of millionaire creation. With this year's gains, Spectrem said, the United States may have already exceeded its all-time record.

Most of the benefits from rising stocks have gone to the wealthy, since the top 10 percent of Americans own more than 80 percent of all stocks, according to research from Edward Wolff of New York University. But the recent stock surge has also created a new gap within the wealthy, or at least between millionaires and the so-called affluent. Read more >>

Workers give up in Los Angeles

Just over 100,000 of workers have left the Los Angeles labor force since the beginning of the year, according to seasonally adjusted data from the California Employment Development Department. The decline stands in stark contrast to other major metropolitan areas. New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Francisco are all seeing their labor forces grow.

So what's going on in Southern California?

The real estate boom and bust hurt L.A. far more dramatically than those other cities, and a lack of construction jobs may partially explain why some workers have stopped looking for employment. Construction jobs have recently started to come back slowly, but in L.A. they're still off by about 50,000 jobs from 2007 levels. Read more >>

Low-wage work force grows 30% as the number of jobs shrinks

Low-wage workers in Chicago are better educated, older and rely more on that income these days to meet basic needs than 10 years ago. And there are substantially more of them. That’s according to a new report released by Chicago-based Women Employed and Action Now Institute that shows nearly one in six low-wage workers here last year held a college degree.

The report, authored by Marc Doussard, assistant professor in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, defines low-wage workers as those making $12 an hour or less. The report revealed the share of payroll employees ages 18 to 64 working in low-wage jobs rose from 23.8 percent in 2011 to 31.2 percent last year. That’s a more than a 30 percent rise in the proportion of such workers.

Meanwhile the share of households with a low-wage earner that got all income from low-wage earnings rose from 45.7 percent to 56.7 percent. That’s evidence more people are relying more on those dollars to meet basic needs rather than for disposable income. Read more >>

Next School Crisis for Chicago: Pension Fund Is Running Dry

One of the most vexing problems for Chicago and its teachers went virtually unmentioned during the strike: The pension fund is about to hit a wall. The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund has about $10 billion in assets, but is paying out more than $1 billion in benefits a year — much more than it has been taking in. That has forced it to sell investments, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to pay retired teachers. Experts say the fund could collapse within a few years unless something is done.

“There’s a huge crisis,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan research organization in Chicago that works on fiscal issues. “The problem does not get easier by waiting. The problem gets bigger, and starts to become an insurmountable obstacle.”

Teachers in Chicago, as in many cities, do not earn Social Security credit for their years in the classroom. Read more >>

Chicago's teachers set up picket lines

Striking for the first time in 25 years, Chicago's teachers set up picket lines this morning after talks with public school officials ended over the weekend without resolution."Rahm says cut back, we say fight back," picketers dressed in red T-shirts chanted this morning outside Chicago Public Schools headquarters.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis announced late Sunday night that weekend talks had failed to resolve all the union's issues.  “We have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike,” she said. “No CTU members will be inside of our schools Monday.”

After an all-day negotiating session Sunday, school board President David Vitale told reporters the district had changed its proposal 20 times over the course of talks and didn't have much more to offer.
“This is about as much as we can do,” Vitale said. “There is only so much money in the system.” Read more >>

Soybean Futures Rise To Set Another Record

U.S. soybean futures leapt to a record, buoyed by strong demand and concerns that global supplies will remain tight well into next year. Soybeans for September delivery gained seven cents, or 0.4%, to close at $17.7025 a bushel at the Chicago Board of Trade. Soybeans topped the previous record closing high set Wednesday and are up 48% for the year.

Soybean prices have surged for much of the summer as a severe drought has eroded the size of the coming U.S. harvest. Prices have picked up additional steam lately following reports of higher than expected demand. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said weekly export sales of soybeans totaled 721,300 metric tons, which was at the high end of traders' expectations, showing that demand for U.S. soybeans hasn't waned as prices have hit highs.

Such reports, combined with supply squeezed by drought, have made for an explosive market. "It's like watching kindling, and the smallest spark sets it on fire," said Sterling Smith, commodity strategist with Citigroup Inc. in Chicago. Read more >>

Banks Can Legally Steal Customer Funds From Private Checking Accounts

In 2007, the Sentinel Management Group (SMG) collapsed, leaving many customer segregated funds lost after they had been used as collateral. After a plethora of lawsuits and creditor claims, a decision earlier this month in the 7th Circuit Court placed the banking cartels ahead of customer claims for funds returned. Essentially, the Bank of New York Mellon (BNYM) sued to be first in line for return on stolen customer account monies – and won the right by the US court system.

In the mainstream media (MSM), the SMG collapse and subsequent ruling in favor of BNYM was touted as a difficulty “for customers to recoup money lost”.

SMG, a Chicago-based futures broker, had stolen more than $500 million in segregated customer funds to use as collateral on a loan to BNYM for in-house proprietary trading operations. Their books were audited by the National Futures Association (NFA), however the NFA admitted that they could not understand the convoluted mess they were provided by SMG to sign off on. And yet they did; and approved the audit. Read more >>

Foreclosure Filings Increase in 60% of Large U.S. Cities

Foreclosure filings rose in almost 60 percent of large U.S. cities in the first half of 2012, indicating many areas will have more distressed homes on the market later this year, RealtyTrac Inc. reported.

More than 1 million homes in metropolitan areas with populations of at least 200,000 received notices of default, auction or repossession, up 1.5 percent from the last six months of 2011, the Irvine, California-based data provider said today in a statement. Among the 20 largest markets, Tampa, Florida; Philadelphia; Chicago and New York City had the biggest percentage increases in filings.

The gain in foreclosure actions followed a probe into abusive lender practices that delayed bank seizures nationwide. More repossessions will buoy deals “in many local markets where a shortage of aggressively priced inventory has been holding up sales,” RealtyTrac Chief Executive Officer Brandon Moore said in the statement.

A $25 billion bank settlement announced Feb. 9 eased loan terms for some borrowers and set new guidelines for the five largest U.S. mortgage providers. Recent laws passed in Nevada and California, meanwhile, have made it harder for loan servicers to resume property seizures, Daren Blomquist, a RealtyTrac spokesman, said in a telephone interview. Read more >>

NATO Signs Deal with Northrup Grumman for 'Global Surveillance Capabilities'

As part of NATO's planned multi-year and multi-billion dollar investment in an increased global surveillance capability, building what it calls an 'Allied Ground Surveillance (AGS)' system, the 28-nation military alliance penned a deal with defense contractor Northrop Grumman on Sunday for a fleet of unmanned aerial drones along with the requisite command and control base stations needed to operate them.

The signing of the deal took place between Northrup executives and NATO officials in a quiet room away from the boisterous street protests taking place outside the NATO summit on the streets of Chicago, where citizens voiced their opposition to NATO's continued military presence in Afghanistan and it's increasingly violent role in world affairs in recent years.

NATO has relied heavily on the use of drones owned and operated by the United States in its recent military operations in Afghanistan and in Libya, but this acquisition will allow it to have a vast capability all its own. The system will cost close to $1.7 billion dollars, with billions more needed to maintain and operate the system over the next two decades. More...

Chicago Police Accused of Planting Evidence in ‘Molotov Cocktail’ Plot

Lawyers for three protesters arrested on terrorist-related charges ahead of the NATO summit have accused police of entrapping them and encouraging an alleged bomb-making effort. The three were arrested on Wednesday night when members of the Chicago police department battered their way into an apartment in the Bridgeport area of the city.

The Chicago police department said the men, described as self-proclaimed anarchists and members of the “Black Bloc” movement that has disrupted international gatherings in the past, were arrested on Wednesday and charged on Friday with conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive incendiary device.

Supporters of the three men disputed the charges, saying the men had come to protest at the NATO summit peacefully and that the police had confused beer-making equipment with explosives. A lawyer for the three, Michael Deutsch, said undercover police officers had entrapped them by infiltrating the group and encouraging the bomb-making effort. The Chicago police department declined to comment on the tactics employed in the case. More...

Donations to Salvation Army drop 10 percent

Image via WikipediaDonations to the Salvation Army’s iconic red kettles are down 10 percent in the Chicago area this year when compared with the same time last year, the organization said today.

The dip is likely due to a combination of factors, including the country’s continuing economic struggles and a decrease in both the number of bell ringers and the number of sites where the kettles can be placed, said Lt. Col. Ralph Bukiewicz, divisional commander for the Chicago region.

“Having fewer sites, fewer workers and a greater need throughout (the area) seems to be creating an ever-widening gap,” Bukiewicz said.

The kettles first appeared throughout the area this year on Nov. 18 in an effort to raise $13 million, Bukiewicz said. As of Tuesday evening, the organization had raised about $7.3 million, or just over 56 percent of its goal, Bukiewicz said. More...