Rauner's Stella bests Stanley Kowalski's

“Stella is doing her part to raise breast cancer awareness and we are, too.”

-Gov. Bruce Rauner explaining pic of family dog Stella wearing a breast cancer awareness bow.

How's Rauner raising breast cancer awareness? Cutting $13 million from state sponsored

cancer screening for the poor. All things considered, I'll take Stella's contribution over that of the governor.

End term limit movement, not legislative terms in Illinois

Illinois has big problems but lack of legislative term limits is not one of them. Bruce Rauner promoted enacting term limits during his 2014 gubernatorial bid to demonize the Democratically controlled legislature. Why? They serve as a firewall between 13 million Illinoisans and Rauner's drive to privatize Lincoln's Land for his billionaire buddies. Billionaire Bruce has ponied up $46 million this year to degrade Democratic legislative strength. Billionaire buddies Richard Uihlein and Ken Griffin have chipped in millions more from the $33.3 million they've given conservative candidates nationwide. With oligarchs like Rauner, Uihlein and Griffin pulling the purse strings, we may as well change our state name to Illinoisistan.

But aren't term limits good for democracy and governance? A glance at the 15 states with term limits tells a cautionary tale. Four of those states are among the 18 who have heartlessly denied expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Six restrict voting rights to suppress minority voting. And a whopping 13 restrict a women's right to choose. So much for good governance with term limits.

Gov. Rauner may be touting term limits for legislators but certainly not for lobbyists. A pernicious side effect of term limits is it further empowers long term lobbyists to mentor the legislative 'newbies' unfamiliar with the ways of power and influence.

We've had a good system of term limits for 240 years now. It's called 'elections' and in 2018 it will set Governor Rauner's term limit at ONE.

Pass the transportation lock box amendment

As a retired 42-year veteran of the logistics industry, I strongly oppose calls from some public interest groups to vote down the Illinois Constitutional Amendment preventing pols from raiding the state transportation fund to pay for state services other than repairing/replacing roads, bridges and other critically needed infrastructure. Infrastructure is the state's circulatory system. Neglect it, as state leaders have done for years, and your put the state body politic at great risk, just as if you spent money for personal heart health on fatty foods, drugs and booze, destroying your own precious circulatory system.

Opponents want lawmakers stop raiding the fund to balance the budget. Yet they don't advocate for a fair and adequate progressive state income tax which could support critical state services, including the social safety net, without having to steal from protecting the most important structural component of personal safety while traveling the state. Motorists pay user fees they rightly expect be used to keep infrastructure safe, preventing damage to their vehicles and their bodies. 

Some opponents trivialize infrastructure as mere opportunity to give lawmakers "the opportunity to scissor pretty red ribbons back home." Those pretty red ribbons provide good middle class jobs which pay desperately needed state taxes. Those pretty red ribbons keep folks off welfare. Those pretty red ribbons could save your life.

Breen's bi-partisan pose pure poppycock

My state rep Peter Breen sure put one over on the local media endorsers in the Illinois 48th. They've all fallen for Breen's self-styled posturing as a bi-partisan freshman in the Illinois House. One argued: "He has succeeded in getting a handful of Democrats on board with his bills to advance his legislation." They all tout bills he got passed in his freshman year with Democratic support. Yet all these bills have no impact the devastating budget cuts affecting a million Illinoisans, one out of every thirteen. They have no impact on the escalating delay in paying state vendors, driving many to desperation; some to bankruptcy. They have no impact on poor woman who must stop working because critically needed state childcare was withdrawn. They have no effect on entrepreneurs avoiding investing in Illinois because it refuses the most basic fiscal responsibility: passing a sound budget.

The budget impasse resulted from the most radical departure from gubernatorial-legislative bi partisanship in Illinois history when Republican Governor Bruce Rauner refused to approve a budget until Democratic lawmakers acquiesced to non-budgetary measures reducing middle class state wages, busting unions and cutting the social safety net. That's not bi-partisanship; that's blackmail, and it has never occurred before in our Illinois lifetimes. And when Peter Breen walked into the Illinois House in January, 2015, he said 'This approach is for me.' Breen joined the governor in lockstep to lock out the needy, workers, state vendors, students and entrepreneurs. Firing off dozens of constituent emails in his first term, Breen reiterated endlessly he'll, in effect, run Illinois over the fiscal and moral cliff to turn on the governor's 'turnaround' agenda.

A truly bi-partisan and compassionate Illinois Republican once said "You can't fool all of the people all of the time". The Breen corollary is "You only need to fool a majority of the people every two years". Maybe this year he won't.