Kept in the dark and covered with manure, our mushroom legislators cast important votes without adequate deliberation.

Comment: Oh, please, Ralph. The pensions covered by the new consolidation law discussed here represent only about 4.5% of our pension problems. The sponsors never offered a shred of analysis proving the claimed savings. Though this consolidation step is sensible in concept, the General Assembly mucked it up with other problems. See our own article on that linked here.

Governor J.B. Pritzker is pushing a plan to make energy production in Illinois 100 percent renewable by 2050. Currently about 6 percent of the state’s electric production comes from renewables. The idea that we can completely replace coal and natural gas by 2050 is a fantasy.

Against this sorry backdrop — the certainty of ever more tax gouges, the worsening corruption eruption — Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his fellow Democrats want voters to approve their open-ended amendment to enable graduated income taxes. Higher tax rates would hit big earners first. What lawmakers refuse to admit publicly — just try asking them — is that they’ll next raise rates on middle-class taxpayers, too. That’s where the real money is.

Setting the stage for a potential battle with one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, a Northwest Side alderman and three other Democratic committeemen on Friday picked a successor for former state Rep. Luis Arroyo.

They did so with the use of Arroyo’s proxy votes — though he faces federal bribery charges, Arroyo remains the 36th Ward committeeman. That led another Democratic committeeman to leave the meeting, declaring “the fix is in.”

Arroyo didn’t attend, but 30th Ward Ald. Ariel Reboyras cast his own weighted vote and Arroyo’s proxy. In the end, Eva-Dina Delgado, an assistant to