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Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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IF THIS IS HAPPENING IN FLORIDA, DO YOU THINK THIS IS HAPPENING IN ILLINOIS? $10 A BALLOT? REMEMBER, JB ‘BROUGHT THE BAG’ EARLY THIS YEAR…. Former Orange County Commissioner candidate Cynthia Harris filed a sworn affidavit in late August with the Secretary of State’s office alleging that illegal operations to collect third-party ballots have been going on for years in the Orlando area where voting activists are paid $10 for each ballot they collect. She described an intricate system funded by liberal leaning organizations that dispatch ballot brokers into black communities to pressure voters to turn over their ballots. The… Read more »
All the takes below are bad takes. IL’s GOP is hapless because of 40 years of Madigan’s hyperpartisan gerrymandering. His mission to destroy the IL GOP and he was successful. But this is not a problem unique to IL. Let’s use our neighbor, Indiana, as an example. The Indiana Democratic Party is a complete disaster and in total disarray. The website even says “We’re rebuilding Party infrastructure from the ground up so we can hit the ground running in the 2022 elections.” Oh, the ‘rebuild’ we know how that goes. The R’s have supermajorities in both houses, 39-11 in the… Read more »
Bailey is just fine. There’s not a single Republican voter in IL who won’t support Bailey. Bailey doesn’t need to win any Democrats – Democrats don’t vote for Republicans! Bailey needs independents and probably has them 2:1. There’s at least a 10 point shift everywhere in the country to the right. Are there enough indy’s to swing the election? Yes there are, as long as the Democrats stay home. The data crap fax is posting is that yes, Dems are staying home, and the mail in ballots are being returned very, very slowly…. Bailey is as good as any candidate… Read more »
I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure there isn’t one female Illinois Republican voter that is turned off by Bailey’s no exception beliefs around abortion for rape or incest. I’m sure the results will prove you’re correct. Not one voter will cross over. lol.
Hard to take you seriously when you make such extreme statements.
The extremist is JB Pritzker who allows Planned Parenthood to drive mobile abortion clinics around the state where partially birthed children have their limbs chopped off, or are given medicine that horrifically destroys the baby in the womb!!!
Now that’s extreme.
The R woman voter who wants abortion is D already. She was never going to vote R, never, under any circumstance. I don’t know any R women who thinks more highly of JB than Bailey because of abortion.
I’ll tell you this, just anecdotally, a female D voter who is all about abortion said to me and others last week that, while she supports abortion, Darren Bailey is not in any way ‘extreme’ he’s just a normal Republican. Not her type of candidate, but she laughs at JB’s ads trying to call him extreme.
So now you’re redefining who is a Republican? There are plenty of R’s in the state that are fiscal conservatives and socially liberal. Your brand of the party is a sure way to ensure minority status. Enjoy 4 more years of it. That’s clearly what you and many other ILGOP voters want.
Republican is not a self-identifying category but is objectively defined. We don’t live in the lib world where you are what you feel. And R suburban woman who are more upset over Bailey’s comment than JB’s child sacrfices to Moloch is not a Republican to begin with.
“Republican is not a self-identifying” What crazy world are you living in debtsor. Party affiliation is literally self declared. People aren’t born R or D. People literally self select during the primary. They also may change through life as their views change. You are reaching next level ignorant on this point. Is your contention that anyone that doesn’t believe in your same abortion views then they are not a republican? What about republicans that are against abortion but have rape or incest exceptions? Are they not republicans? That’s unfortunate considering that more than 3/4 of all republicans support exceptions. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/vast-majority-republicans-support-abortion-exceptions-rape-incest-moth-rcna52237… Read more »
Values are what makes someone a Republican, not merely saying “I’m a Republican.” The never trumpers called themselves Republicans, and identified as Republicans, yet, they hold no Republican views. Is Liz Cheney or Max Boot really a Republican?
76% of Republicans believe that abortion exceptions should be allowed for rape or incest. These are their values. You are not a Republican since you don’t share their values. Your extremism is not welcome.
If you don’t share the values of other Republicans you are not a real Republican. Is Debtsor a Republican? No he’s not.
There’s the National Review again spreading left wing propaganda. Just kidding. Nice to see the National Review call out this problem. “The Illinois GOP in particular is torn asunder by the seemingly incurable upstate/downstate divide between its voters. The state itself geographically extends all the way from the Great Lakes region down to an area that, while not quite “The Old South,” shares many of its demographics, folkways, and cultural values. As one might imagine, the center of gravity lies in Chicago and its suburbs (two-thirds of the entire state population-wise)” The center of political gravity is indeed Chicago and… Read more »
so true. It has been indicated that in Illinois, qualities of honor, decency, honesty, and empathy for fellow humans do not have any appeal for the sociopathic predators controlling State policy and public money. Better to pretend to be one of them: exploit others, lie about everything, feather your own nest and sleep well knowing there can never be any consequences (Jenny Thornley, e. g.). Medical care provision community is beginning to understand this: it is a moral dilemma to spend a work-life merely extending qaly for public sector sociopathic predators (the only ‘class’ in Illinois which may be able… Read more »
“It has been indicated that in Illinois, qualities of honor, decency, honesty, and empathy for fellow humans do not have any appeal for the sociopathic predators controlling State policy and public money” If that’s true Bailey should win in a landslide. “There’s a lot of confusion and frustration that the [Skokie] parade is being canceled, but they did the right thing, because people’s safety has to come first,” Bailey says in the video. “The shooter is still at large, so let’s pray for justice to prevail, and then let’s move on and let’s celebrate — celebrate the independence of this… Read more »
Hard to fathom that Lincoln was actually a Republican….
A Republican from a state that refused to let soldiers serving in the field during the civil war vote in national elections.
Because Illinois Democrats knew that soldiers serving outside Illinois would overwhelmingly vote for Lincoln, and Lincoln’s vision for the Confederate state’s defeat & reconstruction, and an end to slavery.
Illinois Democrats wanted a promptly negotiated end to the war, and the Confederate states back in the union with their slaves.
Democrats, liberals and progressives in Illinois have a long history of finding ways to keep Black Americans mired in hopeless and angry intergenerational poverty.
I think the most insightful thing I ever heard from a political commentator was when Charles Krauthammer was blasting some of the senate candidates in 2010 (Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell) and noted you need to pick the most conservative candidate who can win the general election. People who pushed Bailey forgot the last part of that, or worse, claimed “Principle” or some such nonsense. You can be principled and still a realist. On a secondary note, it dawned on me how many of my new, younger neighbors in Gurnee are Chicago transplants. Got out of the city, but brought the… Read more »
Even if you didn’t agree with Charles Krauthammer, he always offered fair, insightful and reasonable insight to issues and elections. He was absolutely right then and his words should still serve GOP voters today. We are in the middle of a red wave election with Illinois struggling fiscally and Bailey can’t get much traction with less than 2 weeks from the election. Oh well, 4 more years of JB.
“No Republican will ever win statewide in Illinois unless he or she can speak to the sorts of socially moderate voters (particularly in Chicago’s collar counties) who want nothing to do with a candidate that leads with their chin on abortion and who also openly wishes to saw Chicago off and send it drifting on an ice floe out into Lake Michigan.” Yep, exactly correct. I decided Bailey’s campaign was an irredeemable mess as soon as I saw his “farmer” roadside signs. That and the fact that Bailey tried to mute criticism of his past provocateur legislative grandstanding by suggesting he would… Read more »
Those collar counties are exactly why I hope that SAF-T act gets in exactly as written. I stocked up on popcorn to watch the show of a lifetime
Simple math, when you alienate 50% of the suburbs because of your social beliefs you have no chance getting enough votes based upon a fiscal responsibility agenda. Rauner won on a platform where he stated clearly that he had no social agenda but the social conservatives pushed him under the bus. Add to that the public union monopoly money impacts on Illinois elected officials and you have establishment R’s in this state feeding at the same trough as the D’s.. The Republican Party desperately needs all new leadership in this state!!!