If you like Chicago's parking situation, you'll love Daley's plan for your tapwater

This is a frightening story. Daley wants to privatize the city's water to help balance the city's budget. (Which he blames city workers for, with the help of our two major newspapers, despite overseeing billions in tax handouts during his disgraceful career.)

Here's what Daley had to say when asked about water privatization, according to the Sun Times:

Daley defended the privatization of assets and services as something other
cities have done and as a means to head off a fiscal meltdown. He blamed unions
for running up costs, saying that private firms can operate more "efficiently."

Like LAZ parking, whoever buys our water will "efficiently" jack up our prices because Daley is too big a coward to raise any prices himself. So he sells public land out for a quick payout, short term fix, and lets private companies beholden to no one but their shareholders play bad cop.

Tepid media response to huge pro-tax rally

300 T-bags gather in a park to throw a tantrum over "Socialism" and it's huge news.
Meanwhile, over 10,000 gathered in Springfield yesterday to push for an increase in our state income tax.

At least it's getting some press. Maybe we need some misspelled, embarassing handpainted signs of our own to get some more attention. Still, it's interesting how the articles refer to everyone at the rally as "state workers" and "interest groups," like they were there as part of a work assignment or something.

I don't buy the printed version of either Chicago newspaper, but it's interesting to see that, at least on their website, the Tribune buried this story in the business section.

These must be the kind of constructive ideas the Tribune would like to see.

From across the Mississippi at KMOX news:

Bill Brady finds more ways to save

SPRINGFIELD (IRN) -- Converting one state government agency into an
advisory group, and renegotiating employment contracts at another agency, are
two of the ways that the Republican running for governor would save taxpayer
money.State Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) would change the Illinois State
Board of Education from a policy-setting agency to one that would only advise
the governor.

That sounds kind of weird. But, hey, I bet the State Board of Education is a big part of our $13 billion budget shortfall.

Brady says the $80 million agency is currently more of a hindrance to education
than an administrator. He also complains about accountability at the board,
saying everyone there points their fingers at everyone else. “Harry Truman would
have a field day with where the buck stopped,” Brady said.

Whoa, $80 million? That fixes a whopping, oh, about 0.6% of the budget. Oh, that'd be if they removed it completely. But hey, any time you can cut hundreds of jobs and oversight for education in exchange for a drop in the bucket, it's kind of a no-brainer. (Also, I like how a guy whose criticisms are so vague can go on about "accountability.")

A field day for Harry Truman. Cute. Is he running for Governor of Missouri or Illinois?

Brady also says he would renegotiate contracts for Illinois State Police
troopers and civilian workers, because he says the salaries and pension are too
sweet compared to those in the private sector.Brady faces Democratic Gov. Pat
Quinn in the general election, as the state faces a projected deficit for next
year of $13 billion and growing.

So to be clear: Brady is advocating paycuts for state troopers and employees in the middle of a recession. (And this is from a guy violently opposed to a 1% tax hike because he doesn't want money taken out of his hands.) How much will these paycuts save? A few million? With this novel thinking, we've got almost 1% of the deficit situation resolved. But hey, at least he gets to campaign as the guy who won't raise your taxes. He's just the guy whose leadership would end your job and close your schools.

Remember, even Jim Edgar calls this clown naive.

Shocking news! Irresponsible half-truth from the Tribune!

The Trib really let us know what side they're on this week with this histrionic nonsense editorial.
The Tribune's solution to our current situation: Cut jobs! Panic! Do something! Or do nothing! Or something! Get us out of this maze of suffering!:

Halfway to nowhere
Mayor Richard Daley spoke for many Illinoisans Monday when he evoked a "Springfield bubble" in which lawmakers are oblivious to the economy around them and unwilling to bleed inefficiencies out of their operations. His government's latest economizing involves asking vendors to renegotiate their contracts with a goal of cutting the city's costs. Last week he announced an audit of health benefit rolls to purge ineligible employees or dependents — people who aren't entitled to city-paid medical care but who receive it courtesy of taxpayers.

Daley is clearly a model of transparency and economic responsibility. I guess throwing away billions in revenue in the name of privatization gives you a free pass with the Trib.

And what do you hear from Springfield? Whispers that Gov. Pat Quinn, House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton have no hope of crafting a spending plan for the next year.

Whoa. Whispers? Are they in a scary voice? Did they say anything about me?

So they might pass a six-month budget and hope nobody notices their utter failure to do their jobs. A three-bullet salute:

Passing a limited time budget while dealing with destructive election-year tempter tantrums from the GOP is an "utter failure." Please explain. No; we're moving on? OK...

• Illinois legislators, you run a severely insolvent enterprise. You have created immense spending obligations and now can't pay for them. You've turned this state into an untrustworthy deadbeat.

Who exactly do you mean by "Illinois legislators?" Do you mean the ones who refuse to raise our state income tax, THE LOWEST IN THE UNITED STATES (of all states that collect taxes, unlike the Oil Wealth/Federal Welfare projects known as Alaska and Texas). Our regressive, destructive flat tax? Or do you mean the legislators who are voting to spend money?
By creating this straw man of "Illinois legislators," the Trib helps to create this vague atmosphere of psuedopopulism that sells papers and will supposedly help the GOP in these elections.

• In response, you are doing next to nothing — for the second year in a row — to make state government run economically. Evidently you're praying that an economic recovery will give you enough new revenue to restore business as usual.

Wait. Isn't this essentially the conservative argument against raising taxes, one that the Tribune has raised countless times? That we can bank on a vibrant economy providing enough capital to take care of the public good?

• Even if that happens, it won't fix what you've wrought. Remember, your "business as usual" is a huge part of why Illinois is broke and broken. State government was billions in arrears before the Great Recession fully sank its teeth into the nearly 13 million people who live here.What to do now?

ILLINOIS HAS THE LOWEST STATE INCOME TAX. You guys like this situation. That is another "huge part of why Illinois is broke." ("...and broken?" Are you getting spiritual on us, Tribune? Are you telling us you're feeling sad, like something's... missing in your life?)

Yes, you do have foolish routes of escape from your maze.

This maze, this maze you have wrought. We are broke, and broken, in this maze. The Chicago Tribune: Providing Clumsy Metaphors Since Colonel McCormick Was Spouting Eugenics.

You can follow Quinn's advice and borrow still more billions, the better to see how much of a premium bond buyers will demand because of Illinois' second-worst-in-America bond rating.

Borrowing money is indeed far from an ideal solution, I think we can all agree. One thing that we can't all agree is true-- because it's a completely unverified assumption made every day by the Tribune and other GOP blowhorns-- is that "bleeding inefficiencies," "renegotiating contracts," and "auditing" are sufficient to fix a $13B shortfall. Show me some numbers. I'm willing to bet that these band-aid solutions don't even come close to a relevant sum-- unless these are all euphemisms for huge service and job cuts.
This is why papers like the Tribune love to smear civic employees, teachers, and public schools nonstop: they like to pretend that our education and operations budgets are completely out of control. Is it nice to run schooling and payrolls more effectively and carefully? Sure. But the Tribune asks us to accept at face value that inefficiencies and corruption explain a $13 billion deficit. Guess what: running a big state, with a huge University system, a massive and heavily taxed infrastructure, is expensive. The State of Illinois has been sitting on this insanely flat, unusually low 3% state tax for years of deficit.

(Our condolences to comatose California.)

California? Wow, wouldn't it be crazy if it was GOP/anti-tax ballot initiatives fiscal irresponsibility that helped get them in their own mess. Wait a second, I'm hearing whispers...

"In 1978, Proposition 13 imposed strict limits on local property
taxes, gutting the budgets of schools and local governments, which have been
bailed out by Sacramento ever since. It also requires a two-thirds vote to
raise taxes, granting antitax Republicans, a minority in the state
legislature, great power. Proposition 98 requires California to spend 40% of
the state budget on public schools, which places enormous pressure on other
state programs, such as higher education and the courts. These and numerous
others have put California government in something of an ever tightening
straitjacket." (Time, 2/26/10)

Or, with equal irresponsibility, you can pass a six-month budget and delay any real decisions until after the November election. This one strikes us as a suicide attempt. Given that your most crucial task in Springfield each year is approving an annual budget, imagine telling voters that you collected all your legislative paychecks — but couldn't do Job One.

I know you're addressing Quinn, Madigan and Uncle Cullerton, but they are far from the only officials reponsible for a lack of progress. Look, the state GOP and state democrats are very, very far apart on budget issues. It's an election year. Most people are sitting on their hands because they don't want to give their opponents ammunition. Maybe 2 year terms for state reps are part of our state's ongoing problems.

Laurence Msall of Chicago's Civic Federation puts it well: "The bond rating agencies are telling lawmakers to develop a long-term plan for addressing the deficit, paying old bills and confronting pension liabilities. A six-month budget would be the exact opposite of what Illinois needs to do to avoid a further downgrading."

The Laurence Msall, and the Civic Federation, who insist that without tax increases, we would face "'very massive cuts' in basic social services?" (Huffington Post, 2/25/10) Or the Laurence Msall and Civic Federation who call for a tax hike twice that proposed by Quinn? Oh wait, that's the same guy. So you're quoting someone arguing that we need either tax hikes or massive cuts in education and transportation (and state spending that provides work, of course), as evidence for your argument that, in so many words, we're in debt because Democrats are dragging their heels on "auditing" and "accountability." If you were my student, Tribune Editorial Board, you would need to re-write this paper.

What's more, a partial-year budget would be a terrible disservice to school districts, other governments and social service providers that rely on state payouts. How are they supposed to balance their budgets if you won't even write yours?

What kind of example are you setting for the [teachers of] children? The governments, the social services that we want you to cut funding for? What about them?

Legislators, you've had an enormous amount of time to fundamentally change how Illinois conducts its numerous business affairs. Yet citizens haven't seen you take the kinds of sensible steps that thousands of private-sector employers in this state have taken.

Ah, private-sector employers. I see where this is going.

If you had, we'd have read oodles about moving most Medicaid patients to managed care, privatizing services, reducing current employees' benefits and otherwise implementing the long lists of proposals promulgated by the Civic Federation, the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Illinois Policy Institute, the governor's Taxpayer Action Board and other responsible voices.

I'm not going to get into managed care and reducing employee benefits here, but I'd point out that most of these proposals involve the tax hike opposed by the Tribune.

Instead, in 2009 and 2010 you've done … what? Msall tells us he keeps asking many of you to identify even one state program you've eliminated since the start of this recession. Even one. All he gets is silence.

A whisper of silence?

No single idea can erase the terrible indebtedness that Illinois faces — and that worsens every day.

(This writing is atrocious, btw.)

But that's no excuse for not embracing the dozens of constructive ideas that would reinvent how Illinois conducts its affairs. Doing so — pension reforms included — would save many billions of dollars this year and in succeeding years.

How will taking money and benefits from people who will then be increasingly dependent on social programs save many billions of dollars. Unless by "saving" you mean "shifting into a different column, one that we can blame unions for."
Let's be frank here. What they mean by "constructive ideas" is cutting jobs and services, in the middle of 11+% unemployment. Thereby increasing dependence on social services... which will have been cut.

Legislators, if your plan really is to cynically keep stalling and then pass a partial-year budget, just tell all of us now.

SNAP! The Trib is salty!

You are fiddling while Illinois burns.

You are counting your chickens before they hatch. We are leaving no stone unturned. Good God, legislators, can't you see we're trapped in a maze of brokenness?!

If this continues, citizens will need to elect a General Assembly that at least knows how to pass a yearly budget.

This was a little anti-climactic. Regardless, working our way through this mess, it's clear that the Tribune editorial board is claiming that cutting services and "better auditing" (ie cutting a few inefficiencies and the like) is the only way to deal with a $13 billion shortfall. What does this mean? Less money for schools and transit, slashing jobs and pay. If you think that what Illinois needs is less school funding, higher unemployment, and lower-paid workers, the Tribune and their Illinois GOP buddies make sense. Otherwise? This is sheer irresponsibility.