Rauner declared victory in Illinois and immediately promised to lower the state tax his predecessor had raised. We are all screwed. The state’s economy only just started crawling out of a hole, and now this loser will visit his incompetence on us all and destroy these hard – won gains.
For those of you who are not aware of Rauner, the only talking point of his entire campaign was that he wants to abolish the minimum wage. He had nothing coherent to say about anything else whatsoever.
I agree. Rauner is horrible.
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I don’t even want to go to work today because I know that all of my colleagues are shattered by this news. This is an absolute disaster for our university. But it is an even greater disaster for the teachers’ union, low-wage workers, and everybody who needs to work for a living.
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It’s sad because public higher education in Illinois is generally quite good. The University of Illinois system has so many wonderful schools. And this Rauner fellow has all but promised to destroy them. I think he wants to follow what Walker did in Wisconsin and Walker absolutely gutted public education. (And, unsurprisingly, Walker also made it exceptionally easy to homeschool in Wisconsin.)
I just don’t understand why anybody finds this platform to be a good idea. Strong public education is an unequivocal good. I truly don’t understand why voters are complicit in destroying it.
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A man came by a couple of weeks ago to stomp for the Republican candidate for state representative.
“Sorry,” I said, “I work for [name of my university]” and tried to close the door.
The man was genuinely confused by my comment. He asked me to explain what the connection was between working for the [public] university and being against this candidate.
So I explained. At length. The poor guy must have been very sorry he asked by the end of it.
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Illinois is the second worst of the “sinkhole states” i.e. those states who assets cannot cover their debts. In the case of your state this is due to years of underfunding the pension fund with the result that it has only $28 billion in assets available to pay unfunded liabilities of $204 billion as of this year. Another way to put it is that each Illinois taxpayer would have to send $43,400 to the state in order to fully pay off the debt which represents 93% of the average state personal income of $46,780.
So how does the new incumbent intend to deal with this problem? Why cut personal and corporate taxes under the discredited neo-Liberal Reaganomics which hasn’t worked once in the last thirty years! If you want to see where this leads, check out the Kansas economy under Governor Brownback where the loss in revenue due to his previous embracement of this theory has lead to job loss and massive cuts in state spending (read downsizing education).
But it gets worse.
“In Illinois, Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn was defeated by Republican challenger Bruce Rauner, who made his fortune as one of the namesakes of Golder, Thoma, Cressey & Rauner (GTCR) – a financial firm that manages more than $40 million of the state’s $50 billion pension system. Rauner — who retains an ownership stake in at least 15 separate GTCR entities, according to his financial disclosure forms– will now be fully in charge of the pension system.”
Talk about putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop! The plan will probably be to change the pension fund investments from safe forms to higher risk with the promise of higher returns. Unfortunately most of the profit will be lost in fees to the pension fund managers of which I’m sure GTCR will be a major player and the possibility will be loss in the event of bad investments and/or downturns in the economy.
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““In Illinois, Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn was defeated by Republican challenger Bruce Rauner, who made his fortune as one of the namesakes of Golder, Thoma, Cressey & Rauner (GTCR) – a financial firm that manages more than $40 million of the state’s $50 billion pension system. Rauner — who retains an ownership stake in at least 15 separate GTCR entities, according to his financial disclosure forms– will now be fully in charge of the pension system.””
– OK, I didn’t know this part. Now I have to say good-bye to my pension plan, it seems. Thank you, dear residents of Illinois.
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“For those of you who are not aware of Rauner, the only talking point of his entire campaign was that he wants to abolish the minimum wage.”
People in Illinois voted for him after also voting on referendum questions showing that they support an increase in the minimum wage, more funding for education by taxing millionaires, and greater birth control coverage.
So I don’t know what they saw in Rauner.
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Hkatz: I know!!!! I was observing the election at the gym and almost fell if the treadmill when I saw this. People in Illinois are overwhelmingly in support of raising the minimum wage! Yet they go and vote for Rauner! WTF????????
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Rauner win based on:
1) Class warfare: “The Winnetka businessman’s anti-tax message appeared to resonate in the relatively wealthy suburbs, and the massive effort to get voters to the polls he bragged about for months perhaps proved effective when the votes were counted.”
2) Your area: “a strong showing in traditionally Republican downstate, helped Rauner swamp Quinn’s dominance in Cook County.”
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20141104/news/141109228/
Also huge amounts of advertising paid for by black money i.e. your favorite billionaires
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I almost lashed out against your humorous remarks about my favorite billionaires. I have no sense of humor left on this subject.
The Illinoisans who voted for Rauner and Co and whom I know did that for a single reason: they hate Obama. He is an alien to them because he’s black. They don’t care about anything else whatsoever. And I tried getting them to discuss issues. It was useless.
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Rauner isn’t important in IL state politics. Mike Madigan was re-elected. (Surprise, surprise.) He and his consortium run the state. Quinn always looked ineffectual because as “governor” he was not able to “govern”. Rauner has less sway than Quinn within state political circles. (NOTE: IL’s main problem is a fiscal deficit. Most of that deficit snowballed during Rep. governorships. (Remember Big Jim Thompsen? IL’s first gay governor. Also, started the “borrowing” from the state pension plan.)
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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