political cynicism for turbulent times
Last update July 29, 2016
School teachers in Chicago are angry again. Lots of different things tick them off, especially after their union stirs them up and incites them to protest in ridiculous red shirts.
The release of an email from Bruce Rauner written years before he became governor that suggested Chicago teachers have a literacy problem escalated the war over money for the city’s debt-ridden, underperforming educational bureaucracy.
Last update March 4, 2016
Are you resigned to Illinois being a Democratic Party oligarchy, or do you still believe that our state’s feeble nod to representative government can survive? Regardless of where you stand, the blame for school funding cuts and other fiscal torments can only be laid in one place: at the feet of the people.
Last update January 20, 2016
At the end of another abysmal 12 months Illinois can finally declare without a doubt what its greatest accomplishment was in 2015: talk. Lots and lots of talk.
This time there was a Republican at the helm.
Bruce Rauner has been sitting in the governor’s seat for a year.
Last update November 4, 2015
Where best to start with everything happening in Illinois? Do we begin with more credit downgrades,1 two Republican ex-governors turning on Governor Bruce Rauner,2 or Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to scrape up $250,000 to fund a Chicago gun buyback program?
Last update November 4, 2015
Every morning I face going to prison. While driving to work, two signs on each side of the highway threaten to take away my freedom for fourteen years for striking a highway worker. This doesn’t make me a slave exactly and hitting someone is certainly a serious matter, but it still feels like a threat to my liberty without the slightest hint of due process.
Last update June 1, 2015
He probably didn’t realize it when he said it, but Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan’s widely circulated remark about what Illinois government should do for residents “who need the government to be helpful to them.”1,2 will go down in state history for summing up the very worst thing about what his decades in office have accomplished.
Last update October 6, 2014
It’s unfortunate, but true. Even though some people are stupid that doesn’t mean they can’t vote. That’s how democracy works. You get to have a say no matter how politically impaired your views or self-centered your goals.
Is Pat Quinn running neck and neck against Bruce Rauner in the Illinois governor’s contest because people are stupid?