State of IL Collapse: No Budget, Lowest US Credit Rating, AFSCME Ready to Strike

[PsychoBabble]

If you haven’t been following the rolling disaster in the State of Illinois, you should. Like Kansas, it is governed by a right-wing ideologue who is intent on crushing the Unions. He has refused to compromise with the State Legislature on a state budget … for 2 effing years.

Louisiana is in a similar mess. Kansas Governor Brownback just vetoed a Legislature compromise bill that would have thrown the state a budgetary lifeline, preferring, it seems, to go down with the ship of “trickle-down economics” — even when the state has been hemorrhaging money so badly it had to slash public education to the bone. Any sensible analysis would conclude that Brownback's ~ "No Taxes, 'Cause Magical Money" approach was a disaster at almost every level. But he persists in acting like it IS working. And then there is Illinois ....

The State of IL appears to be giving NO money to support its Universities, at the moment:

“For a year and a half now, Illinois has been without a full operating budget. Typically that would mean a government shutdown, but a series of court orders and stopgap compromises have extended limited funding to some services.

Some institutions, like state universities, are continuing to operate while receiving no money from the state. Illinois’s unpaid bills are piling up, and its credit rating has been downgraded to the lowest in the country.”

The problem with ANY ideology — and especially any FUNDAMENTALIST one, religious or non-religious — is that it leaves no room for facts and alternative data. BELIEF becomes the central tenet, and no amount of data to the contrary can dissuade true-believers. It is also why religious beliefs, however positive they are in other realms of our lives, should not be utilized in our common-good public space for policy-making.

Whatever your religious beliefs, this is why church and state MUST remain separate. State policy must somehow be connected to results and the greater good, and open to change based on new data — not “belief.” It is also why we MUST have a functioning independent press — they are the “ civic vegetables” our moms made us eat, that make us healthy. Without them, we may grow sick and die prematurely. Even when we/politicians don't LIKE them, we still need the press for a healthy democracy.

That is my rant after reading this article below on how the State of Illinois is collapsing, and Radical Right billionaire Gov. Rauner is showing no signs of doing anything other than exactly what Brownback has done in Kansas … taking the entire state down with him and his pathetic, anti-social agenda:

“For the first time in four decades as a union, 28,000 Illinois state workers could be going on strike, facing down a Republican governor who campaigned on the promise to force a showdown with the union …

On the campaign trail, Rauner cited President Ronald Reagan’s blow to the Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) as inspiration for how to deal with the state’s unionized workforce. Reagan permanently replaced 11,000 striking federal employees in 1981, in one of the most dramatic government acts of union-busting in U.S. history.

“I may have to take a strike and shut down the government for a few weeks and kind of redo everybody’s contract,” Rauner told an audience of enthusiastic Republicans in a video that surfaced during his 2014 campaign. “I will do it proudly.”

His administration has also floated the possibility of deploying the Illinois National Guard to replace strikers …”

I think you can draw your own conclusions. Keep reading at the source. It gets worse …

http://www.labornotes.org/2017/02/illinois-state-workers-authorize-strike-against-governor-who-invoked-legacy-patco

As I have said before: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?"

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

1. I just left Illinois in December

After living there, this time, for 6 years. Among the "Joe Sixpack Mr. Man in the Street" folks I ran across daily, I have to point out that almost none of them had any grasp of the severity of the crisis. They don't recognize that it is a crisis and only have some vague sense the State has money trouble. I'm talking mainly about truck drivers, construction workers, mechanics, etc.

Additionally, many of them, where I was down state, don't vote. or worse, vote for the very turds who will in turn do their utmost to screw them for their trouble and support.

I feel for the residents of Illinois. At the same time I'm glad I'm not there anymore.

[PsychoBabble]

3. Great added perspective -

Thanks!

[madokie]

2. Same can be said for Oklahoma now

mattress Mary is going to take us down with her too. and I don't mean that in a GOOD way either

[lunasun]

4. Thanks Ruiner!