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Illinois Needs Adult Supervision
The latest post on my blog, Steve463.com:
In his weekly column published last Sunday, Rich Miller, publisher of CapitolFax.com wrote:
“I had written on my blog a few days earlier that if voters are looking for a check on J.B. Pritzker and Speaker Madigan and they can’t bring themselves to vote for Gov. Rauner, she [Erika Harold] might be a realistic option.”
With all due respect to Rich and to Ms. Harold, whom I wholeheartedly support, the real check on the excesses of Illinois’ government isn’t the office of Attorney General.
The real check on a Governor Pritzker (or a Governor Rauner, for that matter) and Speaker Madigan will come only if the Republicans can maintain or grow their numbers in the House.
As we enter the last week before the November election, it would be well to remember exactly what’s at stake for Illinois and who stands the best chance of assuring that there is at least one body in state government that stands against the worst of whatever happens, regardless of who’s elected Governor.
The Democrat in the race has shown himself to be nothing more than someone who says he’ll raise taxes on “the rich” (defined as anyone other than the group he happens to be pandering to at that particular time). Have you heard him talk about using that new money to pay down our mountain of unpaid bills and pension debt? Hell, no. All we hear is promises to spend all that new money on programs and agencies that need housecleaning and responsible oversight before they get a dime of new money.
Then consider the raft of bills that Republicans were able to kill in the last session by denying them veto-proof majorities. I mean, do you want a state-mandated $15 per hour minimum wage? A government-run workers’ compensation company that will be funded by borrowing 10 million of your tax dollars? Making a resolution by a local government objecting to the state’s prevailing wage law a criminal offense?
All that stood between legislative sanity and those bills becoming law were House Republicans who drove down the vote for the minimum wage (61-53), upheld the veto of the workers’ comp bill (65-50) and the prevailing wage bill (70-42). Do you think a Governor Pritzker would veto any of those bills? Not likely.
Republicans in the House held the line on those and many other bills which would make Illinois an even bigger economic clown car than it is now. Without a majority, we won’t even be able to do that.
Republicans need to pick up nine seats in the House to claim the Speaker’s gavel. Otherwise, we won’t be able to stop the three bills referenced above, and you can be certain that they’ll be re-introduced in the next session, along with any number of other measures that will spring from the fevered minds of people who think that money grows on trees.
With the 2020 census coming up, nothing determines the composition of the House and Senate more than the electoral map, the boundaries of which are drawn by the General Assembly. If you don’t want Mike Madigan’s map being rubber-stamped by a Democratic Governor, this is reason enough to vote for a Republican-controlled House. The map is everything, because Illinois can’t survive another decade of undisputed Democratic control in Springfield.
No matter who’s elected Governor in 2018, this state is in trouble. We’ve endured nearly 4 years of dysfunction (actually, closer to 40), and there’s a strong likelihood that the next 4 won’t be any better, regardless of whether the next Governor is named Rauner or Pritzker.
Abraham Lincoln once said that “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” This campaign has been an object lesson in evasion. Regardless of who you vote for as Governor, please make sure that we end up with an adult in the room. Put Republicans in charge of the Illinois House.
Published in Elections
Bathroom Boy pledges to raise taxes? Maybe he should pledge to pay them first. That would be a help.
Except for the 15 GOP house members that joined Madigan to overturn Rauner’s veto of the income tax hike. The Republican Party of Illinois is completely inept.
Illinois will replace the current worst governor in the country with the next worst governor in the country. Something that the state has been doing since 2002.
I see my home state hasn’t changed much since I left.
Love calling him “Bathroom Boy!” We lived in New Jersey when old Flim Flam Florio slapped a sales tax on toilet paper, among other daily items. New Jereseyans responded by sending Florio and democrat members of the legislature toilet paper…overwhelming amounts of toilet paper–full rolls, partial rolls, and most effectively, used toilet paper. Lots of used toilet paper. If Rauner really wanted to win he would have made the toilet bowl the center of his advertising. But he is incompetent on so many levels.
I am so sick of Illinois Republicans. Sick of incompetent sacrificial lambs they scrounge up to run against Jan the communist Schakowsky. Sick of pro-aborts claiming they are fiscal conservatives. Sick of state legislators who do nothing except send you a letter or postcard in an election year. I’m writing in Jeanne Ives and I hope she runs a serious campaign for US Senate starting November 7.
Get off my lawn.
As I recall, in Illinois it’s pretty much pro-forma to try to run a Republican as long as Mike Madigan is alive.
Illinois needs to be turned back into a territory, as its admission to the Union was literally based on counting livestock as voters.
@illiniguy – Why is Illinois worth fighting for? I’m planning on leaving the state – why should I stay? (For reference, my state legislators are machine dems who could eat a baby while raping a little girl on live TV and still get reelected. Even the Trib has the world’s weakest endorsement for them.
I moved out of Illinois this year. My dad will be moving out of Illinois next year. My brother moved out about 5 years ago. My sister moved out 2 years ago. I have a number of friends that are planning their exit.
I think Illinois is way past the condition in which some modest checks on further damage will suffice. I have zero confidence in the Illinois GOP to provide anything other than bandaids and slightly less of the same.
There is no species of parasite that let’s go while the host still lives. I don’t see any solutions.
Madigan et al will keep directing the flow to themselves and their allies to the bitter end and even then try to find a way to make the rest of the country pay for it and revive the corpse.
I always wondered why the Boeing Company moved its corporate headquarters out of no-income-tax Washington to high-income-tax Illinois. I hoped its corporate employees liked their new tax bills. And the winter weather.
Only the Plebs pay taxes. Not The Anointed Patricians.
This
In the end, the State of Illinois offered Boeing up to $41 million in tax and other incentives over the next 20 years, and Mayor Richard M. Daley said the city offered millions more in property tax abatement and other benefits over that period.
In addition, (I heard) that some of the officials at Boeing are big opera fans, and the Lyric Opera is right across the river.
Look for another move soon . . .
Maybe if they offered tax incentives to the citizens they would stay . . .
I wonder if it was worth it? Boeing has had a lot of labor union trouble in Washington, which is why they built a plant in South Carolina instead of expanding operations in Washington. So they move to their headquarters to Chicago, a city where Walmart is not allowed to open stores because their employees aren’t unionized? Good luck with that, Boeing. They’re like an abused wife who finally leaves her husband, but leaves him for another wife-beater.
Hey, Steve, how did the election go for you?
I was unopposed, but statewide, we got killed. My post-mortem on the election is here.