Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.
They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.
Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.
They lost them for two reasons.
The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.
In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.
Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.
That fight dragged on for years.
The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.
Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.
So now it's all gone.
The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.
Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.
Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.
But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.
Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.
And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.
Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.
Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."
There it is. "Billionaire-owned."
That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.
Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.
Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."
When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.
They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.
Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.
But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."
Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.
Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.
Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.
@KinkyBedBugs Bro pretends like he used his own eth to exclusively buy a 1/1 and been fake big timing everyone else ever since lol. Keep fudding with your partners and posting forehead IP videos.
@sunnyright Nothing left but a wonderful family, 30 patents, 2 engineering degrees from MIT, a farm with a peach orchard, a herd of Wagyu cattle, a dozen inventions in my head, a clucks capacitor roaming my fields, and investors lined up to back whatever I invent next.
A Canadian soldier fell asleep during a drill, so his fellow soldiers decided to prank him by firing artillery. Safe to say it woke him up instantly lmao
@beausecurity This is screaming into the wind. Been doing it for years with oil in California. They have a narrative and don’t let reality get in the way.
The LAST major oil company that even tries to do business in California and the idiot governor does this😂Just shutter the company and move to Texas already. Leave them stranded. California refuses pipelines, refuses to produce its OWN oil, and imports from Asia. The idiocy.
Californians, if you’re hitting the road this holiday weekend, be sure to AVOID Chevron.
Pro tip: unbranded gas comes from the same refineries, storage tanks, and pipelines, and it meets the same state standards to keep your engine running clean, even if it doesn’t have a fancy name like ‘Techron.’
Big Oil is already making billions off Trump’s Iran War; don’t let them rip you off even more by overpaying for the brand name.
@lzmunsterteiger@JakeDNVR@adamcm777 Hugs and prayers. I subscribed to 24/7 just because that’s where Adam posted pieces, I loved his personality and takes on CU football over the years. It won’t be the same without him, but I’m glad I got to follow along while I could!
Solution, found 3rd party gov’t calendar and subscribed. Just very odd there isnt a “global” or “popular” holidays calendar and apple lumped every single holiday into the default US one.
Why in the world did @Apple make a holiday called Eid Al Adha a default option in “US Holidays” calendar? That isn’t a US holiday? The US has never recognized dia de los muertos even though the Latin population is >>>> than the Muslim population. Selective catering?
We're building a Moon Base!
@NASAMoonBase will serve as a habitat where astronauts live and work during long-term science missions.
Join us at 2pm ET on Tuesday, May 26, for a live news event where we’ll share updates on our lunar exploration plans: https://t.co/IJXA7xYwju
@JaKiTruth Na, it’s not wild. The criticism is because his son left the team (left/cut/whatever) after Prime was hired. Fauria is a buff legend and that will never change but he’s got personal feelings. It is what it is, unfortunately.
Worth a read:
1) Coinbase detected suspicious transfers and got in touch with LE in real time while the crime was still ongoing.
A great example of work Financial Institutions can do to stop crime. Would like to see regulators give more leeway to focus on this instead of standard "suspicious activity reporting" which bogs down LE and private sector resources, without equal impact.
2) The perps used an actual wrench to conduct a wrench attack...
3) These guys are only going to jail for 3-6 years. Not long enough.