Krug: All fingers still point at Quinn
I listened to House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, on WGN-AM on Thursday morning as he talked about the budget mess.
Interesting stuff. If answering a question without answering the question is art, Madigan was Matisse.
During this on-air appearance, he accepted no blame for the stalemate and warned of the impending state shutdown that would be created if a budget is not passed soon. He pointed at Sub-Gov. Pat Quinn.
Never mind that Madigan probably is the most influential Democrat in the state or that Quinn is a Democrat or that seemingly everyone in Springfield with a Mont Blanc pen in his or her jacket pocket is a Democrat.
Madigan was practicing textbook politics. Classic misdirection. And in case you forgot, we live in a state where the players are bigger than the game. I know you didn’t forget. How could you? Like me, you’re just a pawn in this game.
There has been no shortage of fingers pointing at Quinn. My index finger is tired from wagging it at the Sub-Gov. But some physical therapy is a small price to pay to maintain the focus, and now is not the time to relent.
I’ll continue to wag it until my elbow goes numb. Not because Quinn got us into this mess, but because he isn’t doing enough to get us out.
Quinn is not leading. He isn’t even managing. And as woeful as our top officials have proved to be in the past decade, Quinn is coming off as nothing less than an empty suit in this tiff.
Gleefully stamping a veto mark on a partial budget looked great for the cameras, but it accomplished little. Check that – nothing. Oh, wait. It did squeeze some people in social services, those desperate to do the jobs that reward their souls much more than their bank accounts, to join the hue and cry to raise the state’s income tax from 3 percent to 4.5 percent. Aside from that, let the record reflect, it did nothing.
We published a poll at NWHerald.com last week that asked who was most responsible for the failures that have led to failed attempts to pass a new fiscal budget. More than 40 percent of respondents blamed former Gov. “Hot” Rod Blagojevich. With all the other allegations that he faces, bungling the budget is the least of his concerns. And it’s incredible what Blago has managed to do while kicking back on the sofa with his hairbrush and watching Patti eat bugs on TiVo.
Looking back at the past year, it was relatively easy to get rid of Blago and even easier for Quinn to ascend to the big chair. He was the transparent heir apparent, and his hand probably still remains sore from all the congratulations he received for not being born a “Blagojevich.”
But Illinois is no better off now than it was before Quinn was seated. In fact, it might be worse. If anything, at the onset of Quinn’s tenure, one at least could take solace in the fact that everything seemed to be better because Blago was gone. Now? Well, we’re not looking to take back Blago, who put the “fun” in dysfunction. But Quinn’s approach to fixing the mess isn’t exactly revolutionary.
Fixing messes is tough stuff, and the route that Quinn has taken – which includes holding social service agencies hostage – is deplorable. He wants more money to spend. We don’t need Madigan to remind us of that every time he’s within a shout of a microphone. That much is clear.
No, now we need to hear from Quinn. We need to understand why social services can be funded only if the state income tax is raised. We need to know what bonds together these two very specific and distinct concepts and why funding social services can’t be mutually exclusive from raising the state’s income tax by 50 percent.
So far, I haven’t heard such an explanation, and neither have you, because they aren’t stitched together as Quinn might lead you to believe. There are any number of things to cut, but when he cuts the funds for copiers and fax machines, it’s not nearly as jarring as threatening to take away someone’s physical therapy or a warm meal.
Illinois is a huge state, and the revenues that this state shakes out of the pockets of its residents are massive. At a time when a large percentage of Illinoisans have been asked to do more with less, our government is asking us for more and threatening us with less.
If Quinn truly is a leader, he will use his powers to order the Legislature back to Springfield next week and work this out. As it is now, legislators aren’t scheduled to return until July 14, the day that paychecks for the state’s employees would be issued.
No budget, no checks. More pressure. A bigger mess.
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Your team in our pages: There are roughly a zillion kids playing organized sports in McHenry County. OK, so I am rounding up. But let’s agree that youth sports are huge. Soccer, basketball, softball, baseball – you name it. And every one of those kids’ teams has a team photo taken at the beginning or end of the season.
I know it’s a thrill for kids to see their pictures in the newspaper. We hear that all the time. And I’d like to see more of them in our Neighbors section. So share them with us.
Send them in to Neighbors Editor Rob Carroll at rcarroll@nwherald.com. Make sure that you include the names of the players as they appear in the photo. We’ll run ’em. If you want to ask Rob a question about the process or just want to let him know how your kid scored the winning run for the Giraffes in their win over the Hippos, give him a call at 815-459-4122.
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People in glass houses: People were all atwitter over the unveiling last week of the new clear boxes that have been installed atop the Sears (soon to be Willis) Tower in downtown Chicago.
Poking out over the edge of Skydeck Chicago on the 103rd floor of the tower, the see-through box is constructed of half-inch-thick glass and allows visitors to look straight down at the street. If you are counting, that is about 1,300 feet down to the ground, or roughly 1,294 feet above the top step on a 6-foot ladder.
The folks at the Skydeck call it “The Ledge.”
I call it “One Room in Which I Never Will Stand.”
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Outage outrage: When I first got into the newspaper business, the newsroom had just graduated from typewriters to a magnificent word-processing system in which all of the characters on the 12-inch monitor were light green.
You might be typing three times faster than the words appeared on the screen, and every so often the story you were writing might just disappear forever. But we all thought that it was the best thing ever, even if it meant needing glasses thicker than Coke bottles. It was such a luxury not to have to type on an IBM Selectric, to not have that annoying vibration from the keys messing with your biorhythms.
We now work on monitors the size of TV screens, with full color display and speed that is unparalleled. So when our Internet connection is cut off, as was the case in the newsroom for a few hours Thursday morning, it brought much of what today’s journalists might do to a standstill.
Technology turns us into such softies.
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And finally … : See you this afternoon at the Independence Day parade in Crystal Lake. Lots of hard work and effort behind the scenes are required to pull off something of this magnitude. Here’s to all those who have pitched in to make certain that this great annual event didn’t fade away.
• Chris Krug is executive editor of the Northwest Herald. Contact Chris by calling 815-459-4122 or via e-mail at ckrug@nwherald.com. Keep up with Chris’ rants, raves and insights by following ChrisKrug (no space) at Twitter.com.