The real fake news in Illinois
The Chicago Tribune reports on Liberty Principles and Think Freely Media, purveyors of pseudo-newspapers.
Illinois in the NYT
The Times casts the Democratic primary as a contest between just two viable candidates, Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker, a millionaire and a billionaire.
All Illinois is divided into three parts
A candidate for governor wants to divide the state into three.
Recently updated
Another biblical tweet is causing him some difficulty.
Shame on John Shimkus
My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), likes to post Bible passages on Twitter. Today he posted one about hanging bodies from trees.
“A Billionaire for the Rest of Us”
I offer this parodic campaign slogan to any billionaire who’d like to use it.
Budget!
For the first time in more than two years, Illinois has a budget.
A voter-suppression effort, rerouted
Here is yet another example of the new administration’s failure to employ people who understand the workings of the institutions that the administration seeks to undermine.
Illinois, Illinois, Illinois
“This impasse has been very cleverly designed to minimize the immediate obvious impact on middle-class families that don’t have a need for state-funded social services.”
Dust storm
A wall of light brown.
An Obama thought
I’m not Barack Obama. And neither, in some ways, is he.
John Shimkus in the news
Our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), is in the news, having questioned whether prenatal care should be part of the cost of men’s health insurance. After all, men don’t have babies. That’s like a totally female thing.
Deep story, deep resentment
It’s still remarkable to me that any resident of a town that depends upon a public university for its economic well-being would not be troubled to see that university in decline. It’s like cheering as your own house burns.
DFW and Illinois
A brief tour in The New York Times.
Stranded by the State
A video series examining the effects of Illinois’s budget crisis on the state’s people.
Our state rep in action
He doesn’t do his homework.
Other states
In The New York Times , a state-by-state analysis of how many students leave their home states to attend public universities elsewhere.
About last night
Our trip to hear our state representative speak on funding for our university turned out to be an interesting waste of time.
Creative accounting
Our representative’s explanation of funding for education.
“Illinois, Illinois”
The legislature works out a short-term fix at the last minute.
Illinois budget crisis on The Daily Show
Last night The Daily Show had a six-minute story about the Illinois budget crisis. Spoiler alert: there is no happy ending.
Destruction, degree by degree
Getting rid of philosophy, etc. The present (manufactured) budget crisis in Illinois offers an easy excuse for “flexibility,” really another name for destruction.
Rauner sues Rauner
Diana Rauner, wife of Illinois governor Bruce Rauner, leads a child-advocacy group suing the governor and various state agencies for breach of contract.
Woe is Illinois
Our “pro-business” governor seems incapable of understanding that shutting down social-service agencies, decimating public higher education, and failing to pay the state’s bills do little to foster economic growth or human well-being.
Goodbye, Thompson’s General Store
“Don’t it always seem to go,” &c.
Illinois, summer and beyond
Some money is better than no money, but today’s vote does nothing to provide a secure future for public higher education in Illinois, no more than having three months’ rent on hand would provide a secure future for a tenant.
Dick Cavett on Donald Trump
His observations apply to Bruce Rauner too.
Bruce Rauner: “an epic F”
The Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn gives Illinois’s governor Bruce Rauner “an epic F” at midterm.
The Illinois higher-ed crisis makes it into The New York Times
It is good to see the Times paying attention. But I don’t know of anyone in Illinois who sees the current budget crisis as a matter of “politics as usual.”
Marketplace on Illinois
A helpful introduction to the public higher education crisis in Illinois.