Chicago State University, a predominantly African American college on Chicago’s South Side, is about to close because the state’s incredibly corrupt and lazy governor is refusing to let Illinois have a budget.
Something is deeply wrong when in a putative democracy a single individual can inflict such a terrible damage on an entire state out of sheer malice.
Clarissa's Blog 
alternative view: it is extremely difficult to get entrenched interests / unions to make reasonable concessions.
Chicago / Illinois is increasingly being viewed in the business world as inhospitable to high-/ profitable growth, and rauner is trying to fix that by reforming tax / pension burdens to give a long-term future. He may fail, but I don’t think its an unreasonable path to try. Illinois is basically a “coast price / tax / regulatory structure” stuck in the affordable midwest (really mainly chicago metro which is what 75% of state population?). Its a tough spot. You being in southern Illinois are probably caught unnecessarily in the battle.
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So it’s OK to hold the entire state’s budget hostage because you are too inept to negotiate with people?
Yes, totally makes sense. In a dictatorship.
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I don’t think most people think the democrats in state house in peioria (sp?) are being reasonable. Recent article read as if there new budget proposal was unreasonable. Whether that is truly the case I can’t say, but its not as if he is not willing to negotiate, neither side right now has reached agreeable terms it appears.
Its tough to negotiate when there is no market (both on taxpayer side and employer / union side). Frankly you are pretty much the first state to go thru this, just as detroite and stockton california were the early biggish cities to do so. New york, New jersey, california all will face this in the next decade as they are in financial structural trouble. Probably a 2-3 decade type problem, which is really crazy!
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Ah, poor little baby, it’s tough to negotiate, life is so hard for him, he’s such a victim. Let’s all sit here and feel sorry for his enormous suffering.
If working is so tough for this crybaby, he should have stayed home , spared us all the trouble.
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I don’t think he is crying at all. He is trying to fight valiantly for what he thinks is best for the state! It’s hard from your perspective because your interests are divergent from many (but not obviously all) taxpayers.
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And if this is meant to be a kind of forced arbitrage of certain state-owned facilities and services, events indicate that this appears to be succeeding …
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It’s best for the state to have no budget for two years and feed an army of bureaucrats he hired paying them exorbitant salaries? Yes, he is waging a valiant war to make the taxpayers pay $100,000 to give his useless wife a secretary.
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“I don’t have to negotiate” is in fact an advanced negotiation tactic.
🙂
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It makes me wonder how bad the democratic challengers to these people must be if the people voted for them. Walker, Rauner, Snyder, all grade A fuckups hellbent on destroying their state institutions.
I hope these elections were a one-time thing and the voters have a severe case of buyer’s remorse by now. Even after all this if these state gubernatorial races are competitive next time, well, fuck this planet.
The absentee voters who didn’t bother voting in the midterm elections should take a long look at themselves. I know Presidential elections are sexy, but state elections are so much more important.
The democratic party leadership (lol Debbie Schultz) should be ashamed.
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Pat Quinn (the sitting Dem Governor Rauner ran against) was actually quite good. Not perfect, obviously, but he realized that something needed to be done about the state’s debt and raised the state tax. This was exactly what was needed! The tax increase was not big enough to be felt by regular voters but it was helping make things work in the state.
The problem is that this is a slow and unexciting process. So when Rauner appeared with his wild promises that he will make everybody rich like he made himself rich, that he would “create jobs by cutting taxes” (???) many people bought into his lies.
I was watching the elections and I was absolutely shocked when I saw voters overwhelmingly support every Dem measure that was voted at the same time (by the margins of 85-95%!!!) yet also voting for a Republican governor. You are absolutely right, the part leadership failed massively and shamefully.
Sorry for the rant, but this is a sore subject for obvious reasons.
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Have you heard about the mismanagement of funds at this school? Apparently they “forgot” to charge tuition for a whole semester two years ago. Plus they have the biggest student to administrator ratio in the state. Are you sure this is a school worth saving?
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A school might have its problems but shutting it down – let alone depriving the entire state of a budget – is not a way to solve them. It’s like killing a mosquito by hurling computers at it.
And it wasn’t 2 years ago. It was back in 2010.
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Still, don’t you think this is the fault of the school too? What did they expect with the administrative bloat and the mismanagement? The school is notorious for being a mess.
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No, it’s not the fault of the school that the state has no budget. Unless you believe that Rauner is refusing to sign a budget specifically to punish Chicago State. But that would be too deranged even for him.
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If this helps the school to reduce the number of administrators, wouldn’t it be worth it? I thought you opposed administrative bloat.
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Yes, this will help this school and several others to reduce the number of everything to zero. What a victory.
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