Citizen Suburban Times Weekly 3-18-2020

Citizen Week of March 18, 2020

| Vol. 3 | No. 32 | www.citizennewspapergroup.com

SUBURBAN TIMES WEEKLY

Illinois Department of Revenue Director David Harris (right), agency economist Marty Johnson and Alexis Sturm, director of the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget, brief the House Revenue and Finance Committee on Wednesday at the Capitol in Springfield about their forecast for revenue growth in the upcoming fiscal year. Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock

FORECAST: STATE SHOULD SEE MODEST REVENUE GROWTH IN FY 2021

State revenue officials say tax collections have been coming in about as expected so far this fiscal year, and they predict modest revenue growth in the fiscal year that begins July 1. SEE PAGE 3

NEWS

POLITISCOPE

ART SCENE

Map Tracks Coronavirus Outbreak In Near Real Time PAGE 3

Why federal judges with life tenure don’t need to fear political attacks from Trump or anyone else PAGE 2

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The Art Institute of Chicago showcases Malangatana: Mozambique Modern PAGE 4

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2 | CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of March 18, 2020

POLITISCOPE

Why federal judges with life tenure don’t need to fear political attacks from Trump or anyone else

BY AMY STEIGERWALT

What is life tenure for federal judges?

The vast majority of United States federal judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, as I describe in my book, “Battle Over the Bench: Senators, Interest Groups and Lower Court Confirmations.”

These judges, known as “Article III” judges for the part of the Constitution that establishes their role, “hold their offices during good behaviour,” which in modern parlance means they serve for life. (The exceptions are federal bankruptcy and magistrate judges who serve for set terms and handle a limited set of issues).

The result is most federal judges serve until they voluntarily retire, die or, in extremely rare cases, are involuntarily removed through impeachment.

2. Why do federal judges have life tenure?

In England, the king appointed judges and could remove them at will, so judges had strong incentives to issue rulings that pleased the king to keep their jobs.

The Framers of the Constitution instead wanted an independent judiciary able to act as a buffer against an oppressive legislature or executive. As Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist 78, the Framers granted federal judges life tenure to protect them from undue political

Amy Steigerwalt

influence: “In a monarchy it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince; in a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body.”

Life tenure is intended to allow judges to issue rulings that go against the majority or ruling elite without fear of retribution. And these protections are necessary: Federal judges routinely rule on the most important and controversial issues of the day and consider whether state and federal laws are constitutional, raising claims of “countermajoritarian” behavior by scholars and politicians alike.

Public criticism of judicial decisions is also nothing new: Newly inaugurated President Thomas Jefferson vehemently derided the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, perhaps the most consequential Supreme Court decision, which ultimately

established the power of judicial review, or the ability of courts to strike down laws as unconstitutional. Jefferson even tried to block the court from ruling on the case by canceling the court’s June 1802 term.

President Barack Obama famously criticized the justices of the Supreme Court for their ruling in Citizens United v. FEC while they sat silently at the 2010 State of the Union.

Present Trump has more recently criticized various federal judges for their rulings in cases addressing the travel bans, during the trials of people associated with his administration and 2016 presidential campaign, and just recently suggested Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg should recuse themselves from any cases dealing with the Trump administration.

Concerns have been raised about Trump’s comments criticizing federal judges, including by Chief Justice John Roberts, who said there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges.”

Life tenure, however, means that the targets of these attacks need not fear losing their seats on the bench.

3. What are the pros and cons of this system?

Life tenure allows judges to make hard and potentially unpopular decisions without fear of retribution.

In all of the examples mentioned above, the judges faced nothing more than public criticism.

Judges without life tenure, alter-

natively, face the possibility of losing their jobs. Many states have chosen to implement some type of electoral system to increase accountability for judges sitting on state courts.

Elected state judges must therefore make their constituents happy to ensure reelection.

Studies have found, for example, that elected state judges are more likely to rule harshly in criminal cases as elections approach to stave off criticisms of being “soft on crime.”

Other studies find elected state judges change their sentencing behavior to match constituent preferences, and that elections may lead to increased disagreement on the courts.

Life tenure shields federal judges, however, from being accountable for their actions. Impeachment is the only remedy, even for blatantly discriminatory or even illegal behavior. But, systems that increase judicial accountability raise concerns about what forces may be influencing a judge’s decisions, whether that is public pressures, campaign donors or political elites.

Another potential issue with life tenure is age. Life expectancy has increased exponentially and there is no mechanism other than impeachment to remove someone involuntarily who is showing signs of impaired judgment or decline in mental cognition.

4. Is this system likely to change?

Probably not. While states have ex-

perimented with a large variety of judicial selection and retention systems, efforts to reform the federal life tenure system remain largely in the arena of academic law school debates.

The proposed reforms generally modify life tenure around the edges, rather than doing away with it altogether.

One of the most widely supported proposals concerns a mandatory retirement age. Others propose term lengths.

The foremost barrier is that changing the system requires an amendment to the Constitution, which requires a constitutional amendment be proposed by a two-thirds vote of each chamber of Congress and then ratified by three-quarters of the states. In this highly polarized time, that’s unlikely to happen.

What is more possible are legislative attempts to make retirement more attractive to sitting judges, such as the current “Rule of 80”, established in 1984, which encourages retirement or partial retirement while still allowing judges to draw their full pay.

But, overall, independence is a defining virtue of the American federal judiciary, one that has been mirrored by countries around the world.

Amy Steigerwalt is a Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University.

NEWS Academy Encourages Consumers To Learn More About the New Nutrition Facts Label The updated Nutrition Facts Label can help the public make more informed decisions about their food and beverage choices. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, understanding the label can make you a wiser shopper and help you eat right.

“Nutrition Facts Labels help you find out which foods are good sources of particular nutrients such as vitamin D or dietary fiber,” says Registered Dietician Nutritionist Lauri Wright, a national spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in Jacksonville, Fla. “Nutrition Facts Labels can

help you compare similar foods so you can select those lower in salt, saturated fat, trans fat and added sugars.”

Many manufacturers already have started to use the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s updated Nutrition Facts Label, which was announced in 2016. The new label must

appear on all food items by January 1, 2021.

The updates are based on the latest information about nutrition and the links between what people eat and chronic diseases such as obesity and cardiovascular disease. The new label reflects the most significant changes since its inception in 1993.

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COMMUNITY

Forecast: State should see modest revenue growth in FY 2021 Current year revenues meeting earlier estimates Continued from page 1

BY PETER HANCOCK Capitol News Illinois phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com

Springfield – State revenue officials say tax collections have been coming in about as expected so far this fiscal year, and they predict modest revenue growth in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

“All three large categories – individual income tax; corporate income taxes and sales taxes – are trending upward,” Revenue Department Director David Harris said recently in an interview after briefing the House Revenue and Finance Committee.

That new estimate is essentially the same as

earlier estimates upon which Gov. JB Pritzker based his latest budget proposal. Overall, according to the report, the state should see about $40.7 billion in revenue from both state and federal sources. That’s an increase of about $656 million, or 1.6 percent, in base year-over-year revenues.

And if voters in November approve a constitutional amendment to allow for a graduated income tax, where people are charged higher rates on higher levels of income, Illinois could see an additional $1.4 billion during the last six months of the fiscal year, bringing the total to $42.1 billion.

Even without the constitutional amendment, individual income taxes are expected to grow about 3.5 percent, to $20.1 billion.

Marty Johnson, chief economist for the Department of Revenue’s Research Office, said wage growth in Illinois has been sluggish in recent years, compared to the national average, but she said the current tight labor market, combined with the state’s higher minimum

wage, should push wages up in the coming year.

“So certainly, wages and salaries are moving in the right direction,” she said. “We will see that in our forecast for both income taxes and sales taxes.”

Sales tax receipts are projected to grow 3.4 percent, to just over $9 billion, while corporate income taxes are expected to hold steady at just under $2.5 billion.

Johnson noted that the state saw a bump in corporate income taxes during the current fiscal year due to an amnesty program lawmakers approved in 2019. Discounting that, she said, corporate income taxes are expected to grow 0.5 percent.

Those estimates are based on the department’s economic outlook for both the state and the nation.

Johnson described the outlook for the national economy as “stable” as fears about an economic downturn are receding with the signing of a “Phase I” trade deal with China that is expected to boost U.S. exports, includ-

ing agricultural products.

But she also warned of clouds on the horizon, such as the possibility of increased trade tensions as well as the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has disrupted manufacturing supply chains and threatens to disrupt the travel and tourism industry.

Johnson said the Illinois economy has been lagging that of the U.S. during the economic expansion, which has now lasted 111 months.

She said the tight labor market has driven down the state’s unemployment, last reported at 3.5 percent in December, a 50-year low. But she said that number is expected to climb to about 3.9 percent by the end of the current fiscal year in June, and could hover around 4.1 percent for the next fiscal year.

“This tight labor market is expected to translate into decelerating job growth and hit some of the limits that we can expect, so we won’t be adding the jobs as we have in the past, but it’s still solid performance that’s expected,” Johnson said.

NEWS

Map Tracks Coronavirus Outbreak In Near Real Time The Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering has built and is regularly updating an online dashboard for tracking the worldwide spread of the coronavirus outbreak that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Lauren Gardner, a civil engineering professor and CSSE’s co-director, spearheaded the effort to launch the mapping website.

The site displays statistics about deaths and confirmed cases of coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV, across a worldwide map.

It also allows visitors to download the data for free. “We built this dashboard because we think it is important for the public to have an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds with transparent data sources,” Gardner said. “For the research community, this data will become more valuable as we continue to collect it over time.”

Making the data available for download is “critical” for researchers, she added. The map is publicly available at the following links: * Desktop version * Mobile version The statistics behind the data visualization are being collected from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Health Com-

An online dashboard for tracking the worldwide spread of the coronavirus outbreak that began in the Chinese city of Wuhan has been built.

mission of the People’s Republic of China, and Dingxiangyuan, a social networking site for health care professionals that provides real-time information on cases.

Gardner said “local level case data” from Dingxiangyuan, media reports, and the local CDC “can provide more timely assessments of

the outbreak, compared to the national level reporting organizations, which take longer to filter up.”

Media outlets including Newsweek, PBS News Hour, and ABC News have cited the dashboard in their reporting about the outbreak.

The website provides a link to a downloadable Google Sheet that contains information on confirmed and suspected cases in more than 30 Chinese locations as well as for the nations of Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Colombia, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, and the United States.

The CSSE website does not yet predict where the flu-like virus is likely to spread.

Last year Gardner and a team of researchers identified 25 U.S. counties that were most likely to experience measles outbreaks in 2019. The predictive analysis, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, was based on international air travel volume, non-medical exemptions from childhood vaccinations, population data, and reported measles outbreak information.

The link to the full dashboard can be found here: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/ opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

New ‘test-blind’ policy is first of its kind for an Illinois institution Northern Illinois University recently announced it will eliminate the use of standardized test scores for general admission and merit scholarship decisions. This new “test-blind” policy will begin for students applying to NIU for the fall of 2021.

Any high school graduate who applies to NIU with a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or above will be guaranteed admission. All freshman applicants will be automatically considered for NIU Merit Scholarships, based on their GPA. The sweeping change includes the

University Honors Program, with students applying to that program for the fall of 2021 no longer required to submit standardized test scores.

National higher education studies and NIU’s own data show a student’s high school GPA is a better www.citizennewspapergroup.com

indicator of future academic success than performance on a standardized ACT or SAT test. Research shows that the costs and inaccessibility of test preparation resources and courses often inhibit minority and low-income students, as well as students with disabilities.

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ART SCENE

The Art Institute of Chicago showcases Malangatana: Mozambique Modern Born in Mozambique, Malangatana Ngwenya (1936-2011) was a painter, a poet, a revered national hero, and a pioneer of modern African art. On view through July 5, the Art Institute of Chicago will be showcasing Malangatana: Mozambique Modern, an exhibition that brings together over 40 key paintings and drawings that highlight the years between 1959 and 1975.

It was during this time that Malangatana developed a signature painting style, characterized by a dense assembly of figures on the picture plane, the phantasmagoric depiction of animals, humans and supernatural creatures, and a composite palette of bright and dark colors.

Moreover, in this period, Malangatana imbued his paintings and drawings with social commentary and critique of the colonial situation in Mozambique.

In choosing the subjects of his work, Malangatana took a decidedly allegorical approach, taking inspiration from local religious practices, his own cultural background, and life under Portuguese rule.

As such, many of the symbols in Malangatana’s paintings show the artist’s early exposure to Christian education and motifs that reference religious and cultural practices of the Ronga people to which he belonged.

Though largely self-taught, Malangatana took painting classes in the late 1950s at the Industrial School and the Núcleo de Arte da Colónia de Moçambique (Colonial Arts Center of Mozambique)—the latter a center of artistic activity in

Malangatana Ngwenya. The Fountain of Blood (A fonte de sangue), 1961. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Lloyd H. Ellis Jr.

the capital Maputo (then Lourenço Marques). In this period, Malangatana became active in the artistic and cultural milieu of Maputo and found his first teachers and sponsors in artists and architects João Ayres, Augusto Cabral, and Pancho Guedes.

While his first paintings show traces of the styles of European modernism he encountered in

his art education and through the interaction with his mentors, Malangatana soon established his unique aesthetic, ranging from his distinct color palette to the inclusion of elements from daily life in fantastical scenes.

“Malangatana’s stunning aesthetic will captivate audiences. This, paired with the social impulse of these works as well as his larger

oeuvre and life, make him a truly prolific, civically engaged artist–– someone that we can all learn from. He is also a figure that had a tremendous impact on Mozambican art history, so I am delighted to be part of a team that is bringing further visibility to his work,” says Felicia Mings, academic curator at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The changes in Mozambique’s

political history during the 1960s and 1970s significantly impacted Malangatana’s life and work. A Portuguese colony until 1975, Mozambique was among the last African countries to gain independence from colonial rule. As the quest for liberation grew with the formation of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) in 1962 and the beginning of the armed resistance against the Portuguese in 1964, a strong anticolonial sentiment and a need for new artistic and cultural forms emerged.

Malangatana had touched on social and political themes in earlier work, but from the mid-1960s through the 1970s he articulated them more explicitly, while always retaining an allegorical tendency in his approach.

The works in this exhibition invite us to consider the simultaneous development of Malangatana as an artist with the emergence of modern art on the African continent, as his work exemplifies the confluence of artistic innovation and political liberation that has shaped the history of modern art in Africa during the second half of the twentieth century.

Malangatana: Mozambique Modern is the first survey of Malangatana’s early work after his death in 2011, and champions the work of this pioneering modern artist at the Art Institute.

Malangatana: Mozambique Modern is organized by Hendrik Folkerts, Dittmer Curator of Contemporary Art; Felicia Mings, Academic Curator; and Constantine Petridis, Chair of the Department of Arts of Africa and the Americas.

TRAVEL Royal Caribbean Group adopts policy allowing cancellations up to 48 hours before sailing With COVID-19 adding uncertainty to travel plans around the world, Royal Caribbean Group said it will give guests greater control over their vacation decisions, allowing guests to cancel cruises as late as two days before departure.

The “Cruise With Confidence” policy allows guests on Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Azamara and Silversea to cancel up to 48 hours before a sailing.

Guests will receive a full credit for their fare, usable on any future sailing of the guest’s choice in 2020 or 2021. The policy applies to

both new and existing cruise bookings.

“Our previous policy set earlier deadlines for guests to cancel their cruises, and that added unnecessary stress,” said Richard Fain, the company’s chairman and CEO. “Trying to guess a month or more in advance where areas of concern about coronavirus might be is challenging for medical experts, much less

a family preparing for vacation.

“When circumstances are as fast-changing as they have been recently, it’s good to know you have the option to take a rain check,” Fain said. “We think putting more control in our guests’ hands helps them make informed decisions about whether to keep their existing vacation plans or trade out for a more convenient time or itinerary.”

In addition to easing concerns for booked guests, Fain said the policy would also give consumers more confidence in making new bookings, knowing that they could later

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adjust their plans without penalty.

The policy applies to all cruises with a sailing date on or before July 31, 2020, and will be offered by the company’s global brands: Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Azamara and Silversea. Full details of the “Cruise with Confidence” policy can be found at the respective brand websites.

Additional information can be found on www.royalcaribbean.com, www.celebritycruises.com, www.azamara.com, www. silversea.com, www.tuicruises.com, www. pullmantur.es, or www.rclinvestor.com.

CITIZEN | Suburban Times Weekly | Week of March 18, 2020

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Respond online, by phone, or by mail.

Complete the census at:

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