Reality usually worse than imagination. Campaigning against Chicago just the same old partisan political nonsense?

There’s nothing new about a local political person trying to score points for themselves by trying to portray Chicago as a rat hole.

Rauner allies ad could have found a real Chicago school in bad shape if they tried

The city does comprise only about one-quarter of Illinois’ overall population (about two-thirds if one includes the entire metro area), and there are those who figure getting all the rural Illinois people all riled up can create a large mass of support for themselves.

BUT SOMETIMES, IT just comes across a little too stupid to be believed, and I want to believe that the people of Southern Illinois who are being hit with the latest such use of this tactic by Gov. Bruce Rauner will be intelligent enough to see through this.

At stake is a television spot put together by Rauner backers who are airing it on stations in the Cape Girardeau, Mo./Paducah, Ky. and Carbondale television market. It’s intent is to claim that local state legislators who are Democrats are really nothing more than lackeys of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

Because we’re all supposed to realize that Madigan is the root of all evil in Illinois, particularly since he actually lives within the city of Chicago proper (near Midway Airport, to be exact).

This particular television spot includes one moment that brings up “Bailout for Chicago Public Schools” and uses a stock photo image of one of the most decrepit buildings one can envision.

WINDOWS ALL SMASHED up, Doors broken. It’s a wonder the place hasn’t been condemned!

As though that is what has become of the Chicago Public Schools and that is what Madigan and allies are willing to waste state funds on trying to save.

The only problem is that the image comes from the Shutterstock.com website and is described as being an “abandoned office or school building.” And as the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield points out, a look at an alternate image of the same building shows the mountain range off in the background.

 

MADIGAN: Why not just put horns, forked tail on him?

This image meant to depict the Chicago Public Schools in all their decrepit-ness may not actually be a school, and it certainly isn’t from anywhere in the city. The only thing we have close to mountains in Chicago are the landfills of old containing all the garbage our grandparents’ generation accumulated during their lifetimes.

WHICH GIVES THIS particular advertising spot the stink of all that garbage. It’s as nonsensical as Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s revoking of the Washington Post’s credentials to cover his campaign on the grounds their coverage is “phony and dishonest.”

It’s really pathetic to use such an image, because of the same fact I always bring up whenever a reporter-type person gets accused of exaggerating facts in a news story. They deserve our ridicule because they’re lazy.

Reality always turns out to be more absurd than anything they could possibly make up. They could have found a real school in decrepit condition and used that image. Of course, that would have required them to do some extra work. And work is just so hard!

Of course, we in Chicago will never see this particular television spot. It wasn’t meant for us, and we’ve never given any thought to the specific legislators (John Bradley of Marion, Gary Forby of Benton and Brandon Phelps of Harrisburg) who are supposedly Madigan’s lackeys.

RAUNER: Will demonization strategy work?

BUT THIS IS part of the Rauner strategy of trying to cut into the sizable Democratic caucus of the General Assembly that has shown the will to stand up to all the anti-labor union rhetoric the governor has spewed in the name of “reform.”

Maybe he thinks he can succeed where other Republican politicos have failed – in trying to demonize the Madigan name as the very image of Chicago that many of them just do not comprehend. It’s on such a larger scale than anything they ever envisioned for their own lives.

Which makes this ad more of the same nonsense, and perhaps the root of the real problem – we’d rather complain about each other than try to work to resolve the real problems that exist.

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EXTRA: Is state’s budget battle about to devolve into Chicago vs. rural Ill. brawl? Yes, if Rauner gets his way

It’s no secret that Gov. Bruce Rauner is prepared to play partisan politics hardball in his effort to force the General Assembly into giving approval to at least a few of the anti-organized labor measures he views as essential to benefit business interests in Illinois.

But for someone who claims he’s being revolutionary and shaking up the way things are being done in this state, his tactics seem so retro. So repetitive of the past.

HOW ELSE TO view the appearances the governor made Monday in Marion and Belleville? Both of which are Southern Illinois communities whose legislators are of the Democratic Party persuasion.

They are part of the majority that is so large that Democrats can literally ignore Rauner’s rhetoric. They can override anything the governor chooses to veto – which ultimately puts the power of government in the hands of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and state Senate President John Cullerton, both Chicago Democrats.

So how does Rauner try to overcome a Legislature that is stacked against him? By trying to change this from Democrat vs. Republican to Chicago vs. the rest of the state.

Trying to make it so that those non-Chicago area communities that have Democratic Party representation will bolt from following their legislative leaders and choose to back him instead.

TURNING THIS INTO an urban vs. rural brawl could work amongst some people. After all, much of the reason that former Gov. Pat Quinn didn’t get re-election was the perception among some Illinoisans that they wanted a rural-oriented leadership within state government.

But if that attitude had truly been prevalent in 2014, then Rauner never would have won the Republican primary to begin with.

Which is why I believe that if Rauner is truly to be successful, he’s going to have to be more broad-based in his appeal than to be the governor of rural Illinois. And I don’t think tactics like the ones he used on Monday are going to accomplish that.

Rauner made a point of criticizing the local legislators in Marion and Bellville (a St. Louis-area suburb) to, “stand up for taxpayers instead of Speaker Madigan and President Cullerton.”

AMONG THOSE WHO came under criticism Monday were state Sens. Gary Forby of Benton, Bill Haine of Alton and James Claybourne of Belleville, along with state Reps. John Bradley of Marion, Brandon Phelps of Harrisburg, Jay Hoffman of Swansea, Jerry Costello of Smithson and Daniel Beiser of Alton. Not exactly like-minded, identical communities.

Yet all the rhetoric is generic. The Southern Illinois and St. Louis-area legislators are being treated as an anonymous lump by the Rauner backers.

Which sounds so much like the accusations that Raunerites are making about the same legislators – that they’re acting like generic Chicago-type pols. I have always found that line of logic to be so laughable.

Unless Rauner really believes that the only way for them to think independently is for them to behave in lock-step unison with the business-oriented thought process he’s trying to impose on all of Illinois.

SO RAUNER IS trying to split the Democratic caucuses in the Legislature based on geography – hoping to isolate Chicago and its inner suburbs which account for about 45 percent of the state’s population and which has made it clear on many occasions that it has no support for the trash that Rauner talks.

Which may be the strength that legislators in opposition to Rauner may have to being able to remain firm to their principles and not be forced to give in to the guv.

There are a lot of people who have their own ideas about what constitutes reform, and they all have a right to be taken into account.

The sooner the governor realizes that fact and the notion that is way is not the only way to achieve reform (and a balanced budget), the sooner the nonsense talk will come to an end at the Statehouse in Springfield.

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Urban versus rural – Who will prevail?

I will be the first to admit that I write from an urban perspective. The little exposure I have received to the more rural parts of this country just seems too isolated from reality for me to ever want to live there.

PHELPS: Chicago owes concealed carry?



Which is why it can seem as such a “shock” to our sensibilities when political people from rural areas try to come up with public policies meant for all of us – they just come across as too radically different to make much sense.

THIS IS TRUE no matter what part of the United States one is in. This isn’t just an attack on those people from the rural parts of Illinois – the ones who always complain that Chicago prevails over their lives because two-thirds of the state’s population lives in the Chicago metro area.

I also comprehend the idea of compromise, and that everybody ought to be getting something. Yet I can’t help but wonder just how far compromise is expected to go before it starts causing negative impacts upon us all.

I started thinking about this again after reading an Associated Press dispatch about the fact that the Illinois House of Representatives is expected to take up the issue of people carrying concealed firearms on their person when they meet on Thursday.

It has been reported that part of the reason the Democratic leadership isn’t just squashing this issue as vehemently as they have in past years is because of a thought process that says urban Illinois residents this year got to see the abolishment of the death penalty and the recognition of “civil unions” for gay couples.

SO WE OWE rural people one of their ideas as law, and they’re choosing “concealed carry.”

In that wire service report, the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, is taking the attitude that this idea is owed to rural Illinois, saying, “Agree or not, abolishment of the death penalty – lot of downstaters would disagree with that. Civil unions – lot of downstaters disagree with that. We haven’t got anything. This is one thing we ask.”

But do we really owe rural Illinois the “right” to wear a shoulder holster in public with a loaded pistol? Or letting a person keep the weapon in their purse or gym bag or whatever they happen to be using to carry their belongings?

Admittedly, the bill recommended earlier this week by a rural-motivated Illinois House committee includes exemptions that the gun-rights advocates are upset with – no firearms on college campuses or in government buildings, and businesses would have the right to declare their officers off-limits to such weapons.

BUT I CAN’T help but think that any legislator who decides to vote for this, just because they want to buy into the logic that we “owe” rural Illinois something is being ridiculous. They’re probably the type who, as parents, give a child anything they want just to keep them quiet.

There comes a time to say “No,” particularly when it involves firearms, since only the absolute biggest fool believes that a pistol is something that a person is entitled to. It strikes me as being something similar to an automobile – which just about every public official I have ever encountered agrees is a privilege. There is no “right” to drive!

Sadly enough, this kind of logic isn’t limited to just firearms. Or Illinois. I kind of wish this were just a problem for our state. It would make me feel less concerned if it were just something in the soil of central Illinois that causes local people to think like this? Instead, it’s more widespread.

Take our neighboring state of Indiana, where their state Legislature this spring (their session is complete, while we still have a month to go) approved a bill that says the state has the right to withhold federal funds that it is supposed to distribute to the Planned Parenthood group of women’s clinics.

OF COURSE, TO some people, the very name “Planned Parenthood” means nothing more than “Abortion Clinic!!!!!!!!” That is what is motivating this action.

State officials who supported this measure want to kill off Planned Parenthood in Indiana, even though reports indicate that only four of the group’s 16 clinics in the Hoosier State even offer abortion among their services. But those people who come from isolated communities where a woman has trouble getting an abortion just because the service isn’t readily available now want to make the whole state as isolated as their rural home towns.

DANIELS: Giving the ideologues something



Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels often gets the ideological label of “moderate.” Sure enough, he was influential in keeping that state from giving in to base instincts and trying to follow the lead of Arizona with regards to getting local officials involved in federal immigration enforcement.

But let’s keep in mind that Daniels has indicated he will sign this Planned Parenthood measure into law when it gets to him. Daniels has his own aspirations to run for president, and perhaps he thinks he can get the GOP nomination in 2012 and turn the general election into an “Illinois versus Indiana” campaign.

SO MUCH FOR being moderate. Then again, he doesn't want to get tagged as the "liberal Republican" by people like Sarah Palin!

I’m sure both of these matters will wind up in the courthouse, no matter how they are resolved politically. What a way for this to end.

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