Defending Illinois’ ban on more than 170 semi-automatic weapons and magazines over certain capacities, Illinois has filed responses to plaintiffs suing claiming Second Amendment violations.

Researcher Casey Mulligan with the National Bureau of Economic Research compared various metrics from across the country and said Illinois did poorly on education and economic outcomes, but average on mortality. “If you’re going to ruin everything, it would be nice to be above average on something, but they didn’t do that. Pretty close results between Florida and Illinois on mortality, but Florida was good on other things, they had good economy, good on education, so that’s fake news coming from the governor. ”

Ted Dabrowski of Wirepoints explained why so many states around the nation have decided to cut their income tax rates. “One of the things we have found is that 22 states around the country have permanently cut their income taxes. The reason why is because they are all booming in revenue after all of the COVID aid.” Illinois received $8 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds but has not made any budget cuts.

Asked by prosecutors how Michael Madigan obtained that power, state Rep. Bob Rita responded: “Through fear and intimidation.” He further told the jury what happened to people who didn’t follow Madigan’s orders: When former state Rep. Kenneth Dunkin sided with former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on a vote, Rita said the Democratic Party of Illinois recruited and funded a candidate to run against Dunkin in the next primary election.

Invest in Kids takes up $75 million in the state budget, or 0.77% of the $9.7 billion budget projection for primary education in 2023. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a Chicago-Sun Times candidate questionnaire he now supports Invest in Kids.

Said state Sen. Sara Feigenholtz, who is sponsoring the bill, “This is a piece of legislation that sort of lays the groundwork about the right to charge.”

A review of the General Assembly website found the House approved 47 bills between Tuesday and Thursday that will go to the Senate. The House has until Friday to move additional bills past third reading and onto the Senate. March 31 is the third reading deadline for the Senate.

Comment: We wrote here about Casten’s proposals, which are utterly mad.

Illinois’ hold as the number one producer of soybeans in the United States remains solid, with the top eleven counties for soybean yield in 2022. Illinois had the top five counties in the country for total corn production. Illinois as a whole remains the second largest producer of corn in the country, only behind Iowa.

In February, its first month of legal sales, legal marijuana sales in Missouri totaled $103 million. In Illinois, sales to out-of-state shoppers dropped 15% in that time, and as much as 30% in stores near Missouri, market analyst Cantor Fitzgerald reported. That’s important because sales to out-of-state residents make up almost one-third of all cannabis revenue in Illinois.

“The proposals involve far more than just throwing more money at a problem and hoping it goes away. They have real substance in terms of boosting teachers’ skills in teaching reading and improving the techniques they employ…But it’s fair to ask just what is happening in Illinois schools now. Taxpayers are spending a fortune on K-12 education that is supposed to put an emphasis on the teaching of reading.”

“There’s no system to do it,” said Richard Pearson, of the Illinois State Rifle Association. “It’s kind of like telling someone ‘alright, I want you to go out and start a baseball team … How you do it, we don’t care. You have no money to do it, but good luck to you.’ The state of Illinois is just always doing stuff like this.”