If your political views are closer to those Giangreco expressed than not, imagine if a local news personality during Barack Obama’s administration had posted something on Facebook that called his supporters idiots and put quotes around “birth certificate” the way Giangreco put the word “elected” in his Trump tweet.

The Illinois Department of Revenue notes that, had the state grown at the national average from 2000 to 2015, it would not have had to increase taxes and would still have $19 billion more in revenues. The biggest cause of Illinois’s budget woes is its personnel costs. Since 2000, pension and health insurance costs have more than tripled. In 2015, they alone soaked up more than a quarter (26.2 percent) of the entire budget. And it will get worse.

In Illinois, Lincoln’s essential premise of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” has been corrupted into “government of the casinos, by the casinos, and for the casinos” — as exemplified by the new casino legislation in Senate Bill 7. Teachers, students, public employees and the public should be outraged at the diversion of taxpayer funds away from the Illinois Treasury to benefit gambling interests.

Rats. Mold. Roaches. No heat. Toilet water. Bedbugs.