While many of us rightfully focus on the corruption, scandals and dissipation of American might and credibility in Washington due to the actions of President Bush and his enablers in the Congress, the press, the church and corporate America, those of us who are blessed to live in Illinois are scratching our heads about being ruled by ineffectual, fueding, purportedly corrupt democrats. Illinois certainly is not a poster child for Democratic skills in leadership, effectiveness and in representating the best of our polity.
After rampant corruption and ideological exhaustion led the voters of Illinois to choose a Democratic governor, an all Democratic cast of constitutional officers, a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, Illinois stands as a poster child for Democratic misrule. A budget cannot be passed. The Governor is acting Bush-like, refusing to budge from a promise not to increase state income or sales taxes, though Illinois income tax rates rank low and are completly unprogressive. The Senate President seems fixated on helping our utilities jack up electrical rates (though Illinois for decades had some of the highest electrical rates in the country due to decommisioning and other charges related to its heavy dependence on nuclear power, but when nuclear power became cost effective due to high carbon energy prices all of a sudden Illinoisians were asked to pay "market prices" for electricity) and on pet causes including a state university which graduates fewer than 20 percent of its students but finds funds to pamper its high maintenance president. The House Speaker is an old time Irish pol who looks after teachers but not education and who runs the House using carrot and stick techniques that Al Capone could appreciate. The constitutional officers, with the notable exception of the well liked Secretary of State and an Obama-supported Treasurer whose family banking business apparently lends to organized crime, are mostly second generation pols (like Chicago's second mayor Daley ...... the Governor only counts as a son in law). These second generation types - Hartigan and yes another Madigan - win plaudits for being slightly goo-goo (reform minded) but they certainly don't touch their own families' rice bowls. And then we have the entire state Democratic apparatus - including such solons as Durbin, Obama and Emanuel - helping cover up the fact that the previous President of Cook County was on his death bed so that his son, Stroger the second, could assume control of a huge county bureaucracy which he proceeded to lard with his own favorites while gutting health care resources for the poor and uninsured.
What is the point of this post? To say Democrats better get their act together and show Americans they can lead. Whether it be in Illinois or in the Congress. A state with the population, the wealth and the resources of Illinois could be a true pioneer in education, health care, the treatment of immigrants, investment in tranportation infrastructure and public transport, the building of low cost housing, better resource management, environmental rebuilding ........ but all those democrats running the state apparently cannot change a light bulb, let alone replace an incandescent one with a compact fluorescent.
Illinois is a 100 percent Democratic show. Show me the government.