Free Republic

llinois is America's biggest basket case: Over $150 billion in unfunded retirement liabilities. The worst overall fiscal condition of any state. Two governors and a raft of other public officials sent to prison. Corruption that costs every citizen more than $1,300 a year. Job growth that trails all surrounding states. The slow-motion liquidation of Downstate's manufacturing economy. Over 300,000 more people fleeing the state just since 2010. The venal and bankrupt political class of both parties created this toxic mess. Those who benefited served as enablers, including public employees, unions and the big business interests who always seemed to cut...

One of the Illinois co-chairs of Ohio Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign is brushing off saying that the only way Trump can be beaten is with a "head shot." The comment, by Pat Brady, a former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, came in an interview with Illinois's WGN Radio about a week ago after the last Republican presidential debate and was flagged Doug Ibendahl, a known critic of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration, which Brady supports. "If you're going to take on Donald Trump, you've got to take him out with a head shot," Brady said during the interview....

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday “welcomed” a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of “systemic issues embedded in” the Chicago Police Department and said, “I own the confusion” about his earlier opposition to the probe in the unrelenting uproar over the Laquan McDonald shooting video. Fran Earlier this week, Emanuel called the federal civil rights investigation requested by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan “misguided.” But that was before Hillary Clinton, Emanuel’s candidate for president, sided with Madigan. That’s apparently at least partially responsible for the mayor’s reversal. A conversation with Gov. Bruce Rauner, the mayor’s longtime friend, may also have played...

A national women's organization is challenging Gov. Bruce Rauner's appointments to the Illinois Tollway, saying he is violating state law by creating an all-male board. Over the past three months, Rauner has named five male directors and re-appointed another to the nine-member Tollway board, which already included three men. In addition, Rauner backed Greg Bedalov as the agency's new executive director. Bedalov replaced Kristi Lafleur, who had held the post under the tenure of former Gov. Pat Quinn. The National Council of Women's Organizations is charging that Rauner is violating the Illinois Gender Balanced Appointments Act. The 1991 law is...

(CBS) – Corey Brooks, the “Rooftop Pastor” from Chicago’s South Side who endorsed Republican Bruce Rauner for governor, now has a paid appointed position with the Rauner administration.Gov. Rauner’s office on Friday announced Brooks, senior pastor at New Beginnings Church, will be a director on the Illinois Tollway Board, the Downers Grove-based authority that controls toll roads.Brooks was among a group of African-American religious leaders in Chicago who backed Rauner, a wealthy businessman, over incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn, saying Democrats had taken black political support for granted.The tollway appointment would seem an odd fit for Brooks, a social crusader who...

Robert S. Wistrich, who died suddenly last week, was considered the foremost scholar of anti-Semitism, which he called “the longest hatred,” one that appears to be metastasizing in the current era. Writing about Nazi anti-Semitism ruffles no feathers within academia and other elite circles. Mr. Wistrich, however, had been warning that “anti-Semitism has undergone a process of growing ‘Islamicization,’ linked to the terrorist holy war against Jews and other non-Muslims with its truly lethal consequences.” This “new” anti-Semitism,” he added, targetsIsrael, the only state with a Jewish majority: “the collective Jew.” “New” is a relative term: It was 40 years...

Does Gov. Bruce Rauner's pension math add up? Is it possible to cut spending $2.2 billion immediately, save taxpayers $100 billion over 30 years, protect everyone who's already retired and amortize $111 billion in unfunded pension liability without pushing current state workers and teachers into near-poverty when they retire? I spent most of the past week trying to get an answer to that question, talking to Rauner's team, independent financial experts and key lawmakers. My tentative conclusion—I say “tentative” because deciphering actuarial tables makes nuclear physics look simple—is: probably not.

More than two dozen states have joined the Texas lawsuit opposing President Obama’s executive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, but more eye-opening is the list of Republican governors whose names still do not appear on the suit. The seven Republicans who have thus far elected not to join the suit aimed at reining in Obama are Chris Christie of New Jersey, Terry Branstad of Iowa, Larry Hogan of Maryland, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Matthew Mead of Wyoming, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Bruce Rauner of Illinois. Five of those seven states – Maryland, Iowa, New Mexico, Massachusetts and...

New Republican Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois is taking on the most powerful special interest in the state - public employee unions - and he's getting some support from Democrats. In truth, Rauner has little choice. Public union pensions are out of control. The pension crisis in Illinois is easily the worst in the nation and the Rauner administration is already looking for ways to cut benefits - a move that would have been considered sacrilegious previously but is now being considered even by Democrats. Also, Rauner issued an executive order: prohibiting unions from collecting so-called fair share fees from...

tates: Illinois entrepreneur turned governor Bruce Rauner ends the practice of forced union dues for government workers who don't want to join a union as he pursues right-to-work zones to promote growth. In Illinois, they're called "fair share" dues collected from workers said to benefit from the collective bargaining of the unions they're in thrall to, whether they want to join or not, moneys collected by force to pay for that representation. "Fair share" is a favorite mantra to liberals, but not to newly elected Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. He believes that there's nothing fair about extorting money from people...

CHICAGO - In one of his first public interviews since being picked by new Governor Bruce Rauner to be the state's new school superintendent, Rev. James Meeks told WLS 890 AM this morning that he intends to implement the Common Core curriculum in the state's schools. Meeks, a Democrat, headed the Illinois Senate Education Committee while he was a state senator serving his Chicago-based district. He continues to pastor the 15,000-member Salem Baptist Church and has become an advocate of school choice over the years. ...

It's par for the course for politicians to back away from campaign pledges. But one might have at least expected that Republicans would not consider tax hikes. Unfortunately, even that modest assumption is suspect as Governor Rauner Set to Inherit Illinois' Sea of Red Ink. Illinois faces a sea of red ink because shrinking income tax revenue will fail to keep pace with rising pension and health insurance costs, according to outgoing Gov. Pat Quinn's latest three-year budget forecast. The projections from the Office of Management and Budget warn that the estimated $4.1 billion bill backlog expected at the close...

Illinois's new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, will be sworn in today, and he is facing what most experts agree to be the worst fiscal crisis of any state in the nation. The Democrat-controlled legislature simply can't restrain itself.  That, and a pension time bomb set to go off in the next few years, swamping the state's finances, makes Rauner's job the most challenging of any new governor elected in November. Some of the numbers in this Reuter's report are incredible: Pension payments are projected to jump to nearly $7.6 billion in fiscal 2016 from $6.8 billion this fiscal year....

State Government: Bruce Rauner became Illinois' 42nd governor on Monday, the first Republican since 2003. He inherits a state that's been dubbed "America's Greece," but it's another opportunity to show what a GOP chief executive can do. A big part of the GOP tsunami in 2014 occurred at the state level, with Republicans expanding their hold on governors' mansions and legislatures with wins in blue states such as Maryland, Massachusetts and President Obama's Illinois. The number of GOP governors has grown to 31 from 21, control of legislatures has expanded to 68 of 98 partisan legislative chambers, and Republicans now...

With Bruce Rauner’s election in Illinois, the Republican Governor’s Association has checked this bluer-than-blue state off its Democrat tick list. It must feel good—but I’m less than sanguine. For the better part of a year, powerful Chicago Democrats have been whispering in my ear, extolling Rauner’s virtues. I heard similar insider political “chatter” about Barack Obama from these same Democrats long before he ran for U.S. Senate. Even the left-leaning Chicago Sun-Times suddenly changed its no-endorsement policy to back Rauner — and only Rauner — without even the basic formality of a candidate questionnaire or interview.

PPP's final polls for Governor in Florida, Michigan, and Illinois find incredibly tight contests in all three states. Florida is the closest. Rick Scott and Charlie Crist both have 44%, with Libertarian Adrian Wyllie polling at 6%. PPP usually has a policy of not releasing poll results to the decimal, but when we find a tie on our final poll of the cycle somewhere we make an exception. Crist is at 44.0% to 43.8% for Scott- in terms of raw respondents to the poll that's 526 for Crist and 524 for Scott. Wyllie may be playing a spoiler role for...

Economy In Crisis: A new study by the Illinois Policy Institute shows in the past four years, the number of new food-stamp recipients in the state has outpaced new jobs nearly 2-to-1. Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, locked in a tight re-election battle with self-made billionaire Republican Bruce Rauner, has been arguing that Illinois, arguably the bluest of blue states, has turned the fiscal corner and is on its way back. The recovery may be slower than Quinn wants it to be — but, he says, it is real. It is an odd recovery, though, that makes more people dependent...

If you want to know which individual political race has the biggest stakes in 2014, look no further than the Land of Lincoln. The Illinois governor’s race pits incumbent Pat Quinn, a Democrat, against upstart non-politician Bruce Rauner. Why are the stakes so huge? Because Illinois is arguably the worst-run state in America. It’s a blue state that has been run for many years by corrupt and bungling politicians including Rod Blagojevich, who went to jail for trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat, and Mr. Quinn, who has run the state’s finances into the gutter. This year shows no...

MOLINE - Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner has pulled out of Thursday's Rock Island County Republican Party Lincoln Day Dinner citing fear of being linked to what his campaign calls "inflammatory" views of a local, African-American pastor. Rev. Don Johnson was initially scheduled to speak at the event but was dis-invited by Rock Island County GOP Chairman Bill Bloom in an effort to assuage Rauner's concerns. However, the change failed to appease the campaign, which announced that Rauner would no longer keynote the event. Defending the decision, Rauner's office released a statement saying, "Bruce (Rauner) condemns the inflammatory remarks written...

Bruce Rauner, the billionaire Republican nominee for Illinois governor, is doing all he can to turn himself into a career politician named Mark Kirk. Fresh off a closer-than-expected primary victory over three underfunded opponents, Rauner is avoiding social issues at all costs and hewing to a throw-the-bums-out message against the unpopular Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn. Rauner has on his staff four Kirk alumni in his effort to replicate the moderate GOP senator’s path to blue-state victory. And like Kirk — and unlike Republicans in almost everywhere else in the country — Rauner avoids bashing President Barack Obama, who remains popular...