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"Behold a case study in how Democrats change the rules to limit political competition and entrench one-party, public-union rule.... Abortion politics and Donald Trump helped Democrats in Illinois as in other states. But Democrats in the Prairie State have also used every lever available to entrench their power. That includes a constitutional amendment they placed on the ballot enshrining the right to collective-bargaining that will augment government union power. The sound you don’t hear is the national press deploring any of this, or even reporting it."
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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The dismissal of Independent Maps was the last straw. Even under that map, the Democrats would’ve still held a majority. We still couldn’t do it. Had to gerrymander everything.
All this concern about voter suppression among minorities ignores that conservative and independent votes are suppressed when there is no competition. Keep competition to a minimum and pretty soon competition disappears altogether. No competition is bad for everyone.
Democracy died with Mitch McConnells reign of terror for the UniParty.
The loons at WSJ Opinion doing mop up.
Michigan Proposal 2: amended Michigan’s Constitution to mandate drop boxes, allow unlimited third-party funding of ballot harvesting, prohibit election audits except as conducted under the supervision of the secretary of state, and ban voter ID laws. https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/16/another-brick-in-the-blue-wall-of-fraud/
Yep and Proposal 3 passed too which enshrines Michigan as a Sanctuary State for Abortion Mills. Looks like I can’t go home again.
Democracy has died in the USA never mind Illinois, as it has in most Western Countries since COVID. Look at my UK. Sunak “installed’ because Truss dared to cut taxes to spur growth (Even Biden admonished her). Goes against the WEF order. Do no think for one minute we have Democrats V Republicans anymore. Or free & fair elections. We have a UNI-PARTY. Politicians on both sides that have become millionaires, working together to screw us over. The die (outcome) was cast on the 2022 Mid-term Elections even before the vote Do not believe me? do your DD on FTX.… Read more »
For those behind a paywall, here is the article; it is damning! Democracy Dies in Illinois A case study in how progressives entrench themselves in power. By The Editorial Board Nov. 16, 2022 “President Biden says last Tuesday was “a good day” for democracy, but he must not be paying attention to what happened in Illinois. Behold a case study in how Democrats change the rules to limit political competition and entrench one-party, public-union rule. Democrats held supermajorities in both legislative chambers and a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court before the election. But their ex-boss Michael Madigan’s corruption… Read more »
That means it’s working.
Again, there was another AOL article saying IL is #1 in people leaving. Do you think Democrats are leaving? Most aware Republicans have left, so the IL GOP, except downstate, is done for. Almost all went to red states. Good thing is they do not bring any IL politics with them, they make the red states stronger.
***—The sound you don’t hear is the national press deploring any of this, or even reporting it.“—***
I heard a startling bit of information on Dennis Prager’s show recently…
A large majority of young voters mistakenly believed that the SCOTUS ruling *banned* all abortions (just like they believed covid killed 50% of the infected)…
Thats why it was such a big issue with them…
Yet the MSM did nothing to correct this *misinformation*…
I am afraid we are hurtling towards *Idiocrasy* at breakneck speed…
I get the sentiment of the Journal’s Editorial Board, however the simple fact is that Illinois has exactly the governance and finances that a majority of its’ voters have voted for – time and again. That’s not “dead democracy.” Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s democracy manipulated by a mendacious cabal of Big Dem, Big Doc, Big Union and Big Media taking advantage of really stupid voters. Sadly, for the rest of us, it’s awfully hard to fix stupid. The good news is that at least we can rely on our “everyone’s above average” public school… Read more »
A majority of voters in Cook County and the 4 or 5 collar counties who control the state. For the most part 90 or so of the 102 counties are very conservative and vote red.
Yes but those counties don’t have very many people. The majority lives in Cook and collar counties and as such the majority decides.
Congressional Republicans not honoring their oaths to the constitution except ie Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Similarly, IL business and civic leaders not stepping up to clean up IL. Add to that mix, the rep party in IL following blindly djt, and also feeding from the IL Combine. IL republicans need to moderate, and clean up corruption in their ranks. Then they need to revamp and figure out how to win. They have been and continue to be ineffective. IL Dems are hooked to the hip with well financed public unions, and they both play hardball. We need a balanced… Read more »
You can’t do anything without a balanced media, journalism is dead. It is now political propaganda for one party. Uniformed voters is what they want and what they now have. This will never end and only spread.
The sound you will hear is the steady outflow of productive native born Illinoisians leaving the state. Kinda like when you get closer and closer to a waterfall.
Let the full impact of that sink in: Democracy is dead in Illinois. That is not exaggeration.
We’re locked in some bazaar alternate reality form of government— the great fake-progressive kleptocratic oligarchy formerly know as Illinois. I’m still astounded how those on the take can get away with claiming their virtuous concern for everyday folks, equality or equity? They are non of that.
Democrats do this because they have the votes to do so. IL has a lot of Democrats. They’ve bent the rules very far in their favor. Democrats vote for this. It’s the people of the state.
So the people have decided this? Sounds like democracy to me. Not really the death of democracy but more of the side effect. Majority rule can be painful when it takes advantage of the minority.
Well, yes, in theory the people have decided this. However, I have my serious doubts about the legitimacy of some of the elections. There’s great incentive to commit voter fraud and there is virtually no oversight of the process. The chances of ever getting caught are slim and no one since the Feds investigated in 1982 has done anything about it. Right now, as we speak, the dupage county clerk is arguing that she has the right to count likely fraudulently tallied votes in any manner she chooses, and to compare the ballot signatures with the actual signature on records… Read more »
“Right now, as we speak, the dupage county clerk is arguing that she has the right to count likely fraudulently tallied votes in any manner she chooses, and to compare the ballot signatures with the actual signature on records is a disenfranchisement of voters.” And a judge told her she needs to count them according to the law. Checks and balances. Just because someone tries to do something in an election doesn’t mean they can. Trump trying to have Pence alter the outcome of a presidential election comes to mind. Also, statewide democrats won by a landslide. It wasn’t even… Read more »
If you think JB and the down ballot D’s got 2,500,000 and 2,100,000 votes, in the last two midterms, when going back to 1978, no Democrat has ever received more than 2,000,000 votes, well, then you’re naively accepting the results of the election. The fraud is right there, staring everyone the face, and now we have one county clerk who was dumb enough to get caught, and you still refuse to even acknowledge, that yeah, that is kind of weird. I understand I’m in the minority view, and no IL GOP candidate will tread into the ‘election denier’ category. But… Read more »
The thing is this: I no longer blindly trust our institutions. Any of them. They’ve lied and rigged everything for too long. I certainly no longer trust elections either. We have some of the most insecure ballot collection elections in the entire world, we have clerks openly engaging in ballot fraud, and there is virtually no oversight of any of it. We have JB spending hundreds of millions of dollars in his ground game to gather ballots and it twice gathered more ballots than any other Democrat candidate since 1978. And if you want me to trust the institutions, they… Read more »
Every single poll showed that JB was going to win. Almost all of them showed that he would win by 10 plus points. Even Bailey’s own polling showed he would lose. You are a conspiracy theorist and an election denier. People call you that because that’s exactly what you are. You and others have no proof. Even in your example of DuPage county, she wasn’t stuffing ballots or making them up. She was matching signature incorrectly. The judge correctly remedied the situation. Were any of those ballots that didn’t follow signature match deemed fraudulent? Until then all you have is… Read more »
As for polls, one poll released several weeks before the election by the IBA showed that Bailey and Salvi were at 25%. How accurate were those polls again? The reality is that we have extremely lax voting laws, some of the most lax in the entire world. Yes, the entire world. We have a law that says unpostmarked, undated ballots can be counted that arrive two weeks after the election. They only need to be signed by somebody! Now, for the first time ever, we have evidence of a county clerk counting a contested race arguing, in court, in front… Read more »
The billions of dollars missing from FTX’s exchange were recently disclosed as ‘loans’ to his girlfriend’s trading company, and $1B of it was a personal loan to the company’s founder. He stole the money, they all stole the money. Calling it loans doesn’t change the fact that the money was stolen. Just like with this election. Counting undated, unpostmarked and late arriving ballots two weeks after the election is not ‘Democracy’. Questioning this practice is not ‘disenfranchising voters’. It’s fraud, that’s what is. Calling it democracy doesn’t make it democracy just like calling $4.5 billion in missing customer’s crypto funds… Read more »
Jeez, PPF, read the damn article. It’s about why it cannot validly be said that the people decided this. And there is much more to that case than this editorial was able to include, which I intend to write up.
I read the article Mark. Nothing in it said anything about fraud in the election. Nothing in it said voters weren’t able to vote. Your complaints are no different than the left complaining about voter suppression. Plays well to the base but everyone else sees it for what it is. “It’s about why it cannot validly be said that the people decided this.” Where does it say that Mark? Did the people not get to vote? The article was filled with complaints how the majority drew maps in their favor, just like it’s done in every state. If people were… Read more »
We can better take this up when I write a further column on why democracy is in fact not functioning in Illinois, which your comment here by no means addresses.
Look forward to it Mark. This article doesn’t lay out anything that supports the headline so maybe you can do a better job. Try and write it with some fair balance. Here are some tips. If you’re going to complain about gerrymandering make sure you point out that this is not unique to Illinois. Also make sure that you point out that gerrymandering had absolutely nothing to do with statewide elections. Think of the great job DeSantis did in Florida and how both parties when in power try to take advantage of the map drawing. Make sure that you point… Read more »
How kind of you to offer all these helpful hints to Mark – I’m sure he’s grateful.
BTW: don’t confuse ‘sour grapes’ with facts, PPF. Illinois is in deep trouble thanks to one-party rule and dishonest maneuvering.
In 2018 JB promised ‘fair maps.’ He didn’t deliver now, did he? Or, perhaps, ‘fair’ has a different meaning for Dems?
“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“don’t confuse ‘sour grapes’ with facts” What fact was presented that showed that the people of Illinois were denied their opportunity to vote in a democratic election? I would love to read some of these “facts”. “PPF. Illinois is in deep trouble thanks to one-party rule and dishonest maneuvering.” I agree. It’s why I was so disappointed with Bailey as the nominee. We all knew the outcome back in June. “In 2018 JB promised ‘fair maps.’ He didn’t deliver now, did he? Or, perhaps, ‘fair’ has a different meaning for Dems?” I agree with you again. JB went back on… Read more »
Independent commissions are not the answer. They too are dominated by partisan hacks. Partisan gerrymandering is a part of the political process. the supreme court said so and is correct. Every state does it. However, IL’s maps are completely insane. They are infamous and every pundit on the radio/twitter/tv brings up IL’s crazy maps. Now, the maps were drawn in secret, at the last minute, by Democrats, and rammed through the legislature after conducting a bunch of meaningless public hearings. This is not disputed. But why did the draw them so crazy? If I had to guess, they did it… Read more »
“Partisan gerrymandering is a part of the political process. the supreme court said so and is correct. Every state does it.” I agree debtsor. I also agree that non-partisan map makers don’t exist. In order for Illinois Republicans to fix that they will need to start winning state wide elections. Their voters need to be motivated to vote regardless of representation running in their local district. Anything else is just conceding to the Dems. That being said, it doesn’t mean democracy died. For the record, when the left complains about the electoral process and how they get more total votes,… Read more »
IL candidates have won midterm statewide elections in the past 40 years during midterms. Fitzgerald, Rauner, Thompson, Edgar, Kirk, Topinka, and others too. It was a battle between the parties and no one ever got more than 2,000,000 votes. And then JB Pritzker showed up with $200,000,000 and increased D turnout exclusively by about 700,000 votes which resonated up and down the ballot. IL R turnout stayed roughly the same. Does JB really excited voters to vote for him? Doubtful. He likely has a great GOTB (gather up the ballot) campaigns. $300,000,000 over two elections campaigns pays a lot of… Read more »
You continually repeat the history of vote totals while ignoring the massive amount of Trump hatred that existed in 2018 and 2020 election. Trump single handedly motivated the dems and independents to come out and vote in droves. You have a conspiracy theory with absolutely zero proof. You ignore other opinions that don’t align to yours and then are shocked on Election Day when things don’t go your way. Just 12 days ago you were droning on and on about how Bailey had a chance and how it would be close. How Republicans were energized to come out and vote.… Read more »
Pretty much my thoughts exactly.
Yes you are correct in saying the voters decided this. But what is the breakdown of the voters? How many are public union members vs the average citizen? There are also many Republicans who are union members not just Democrats who vote for this. If you add up all the union members both working and retired and include their family members you can easily add up to 2M voters all of which are on the receiving end. This is why I said a while back that Pritzker will get at least 2M votes and Bailey needed close to 2.5M to… Read more »
Editorials like this are difficult to read. IL has one last chance in 2024 to fix this mess. and it involves ballot harvesting. I suggested that downstate districts keep counting until the Republican won but they didn’t listen. Now we upstate have to ballot harvest churches, vfw halls, rodeos, gun ranges, farm auctions, etc. We need between 1.2 and 1.4 million MORE votes in 2024 to return the presidency to its rightful owner. I sure hope right now, behind closed doors, IL republicans are formulating a plan. I doubt it though, today I got an email from the IL GOP… Read more »
IL GOP are the worst in the Country. As you said, they have more red districts in New York and California. The biggest issue with Illinois is they have the strongest UNIONS in the Country – and just look at what they have done to this once great State.