THIS is “what the matter is with Illinois”

Last updated on: April 18, 2014 at 9:44 am by Jane the Actuary

THIS is “what the matter is with Illinois” 2014-04-18T09:44:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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(Sorry, I again failed to observe the “bottom line on top” dictum. Please read to the end!)

So earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal editorialized on “What’s the Matter with Illinois?“; the site Reboot Illinois provided significant excerpts as well, and all the bloggers had fun with mocking Illinois and pointing to its neighbors with Republican governors, most notably Michigan and Wisconsin.

Meant to comment on it when it appeared. My immediate reactions at the time that Illinois is not just blue, but corrupt — both with respect to the outright criminality that landed our last two governors in prison, but also the larger history of shady deals (Quinn signing a long-term, generous union contract with the largest state union immediately prior to receiving their endorsement in the last election) and entrenched power in the hands of a few (namely, a political structure that gives the speaker of the House exceptional power). We also have a penchant for trying to mitigate our high taxes through nearly limitless tax give-aways to powerful corporations, at a cost to the powerless. (See this post from October.)

At this point, too, the Democrats in power basically seem to have concluded that they can raise taxes with impunity, with the philosophy that anyone who would have left Illinois for a lower-tax state has done so already; everyone else is trapped here for one reason or another. Yes, that’s pretty much what Speaker Madigan said when proposing a millionaires tax in March.

But the State simply cannot get a handle on what it means to budget. The latest? In the news today, the relevant House committee endorsed a plan to spend $100 million out of the projected $500 million construction cost for the Obama presidential library. What’s the rationale? Madigan says, “The state of Illinois will spend over $1 billion in construction this year alone, so $100 million is not out of line,” and, besides, “close to $100 million in state money” was earmarked for the Abraham Lincoln presidential library in Springfield.”

If Madigan truly can’t understand that the state doesn’t have the cash to spend on this project, that it should be the responsibility of Obama and his supporters to fund-raise the money, and that the Abraham Lincoln library was a state-sponsored historical museum, with no living president available to garner the cash, and if he can’t recognize that the chances of Obama selecting a site other than Chicago are slim so there’s no real need to “bribe” him in the first place — well, of course, he does understand all those things. He just doesn’t care. He wants to use the state treasury to give $100 million to Obama. He has the power to ensure the votes go his way. And that’s all he cares about.

Oh, and the tax hike from 3.5% to 5%? No one believed that it was temporary. Everyone just took it for granted that all its supporters were lying through their teeth.

And that’s the bottom line. The story of Illinois is not a matter of Red Model vs. Blue Model. It’s a matter of Honest Government vs. corrupt and self-serving government.

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