Posted on 11/30/2015 3:35:25 AM PST by reaganaut1
The richest man in Illinois does not often give speeches. But on a warm spring day two years ago, Kenneth C. Griffin, the billionaire founder of one of the world's largest hedge funds, rose before a black-tie dinner of the Economic Club of Chicago to deliver an urgent plea to the city's elite.
They had stood silently, Mr. Griffin told them, as politicians spent too much and drove businesses and jobs from the state. They had refused to help those who would take on the reigning powers in the Illinois Capitol. "It is time for us to do something," he implored.
Their response came quickly. In the months since, Mr. Griffin and a small group of rich supporters - not just from Chicago, but also from New York City and Los Angeles, southern Florida and Texas - have poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, a concentration of political money without precedent in Illinois history.
Their wealth has forcefully shifted the state's balance of power. Last year, the families helped elect as governor Bruce Rauner, a Griffin friend and former private equity executive from the Chicago suburbs, who estimates his own fortune at more than $500 million. Now they are rallying behind Mr. Rauner's agenda: to cut spending and overhaul the state's pension system, impose term limits and weaken public employee unions.
"It was clear that they wanted to change the power structure, change the way business was conducted and change the status quo," said Andy Shaw, an acquaintance of Mr. Rauner's and the president of the Better Government Association, a nonpartisan state watchdog group that received donations from Mr. Rauner before he ran.
The rich families remaking Illinois are among a small group around the country who have channeled their extraordinary wealth into political power
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This sounds like good news for everyone in Illinois.
It is what soros has been doing on the other side for years.
The NYTimes speaks with forked tongue of bias. The left side speaks approvingly when a rich liberal moves the pendulum of politics to the left. When it is conservative, the right side speaks of menaces and disapprovingly.
So what else is new, it is the NYTimes, the liberal bastion of opinion read by all who ‘matter’; the rest of the MSM, the Democrat Party (house organ), Academia and socialists in general.
I am not sure it is. Trading one set of oligarchs for another isn’t exactly great news.
Still, I think the current governor is at least a bit more concerned with keeping the budget under control.
Too funny. The New York Times whining about power being stripped away from the Democrat Chicago machine that has controlled Illinois for decades.
Not stripped quite yet, we have that awful dem pos madigan to deal with. Locked in a budget battle right now and I’m praying our Governor holds strong. How I wish my family had kept moving west :)
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