EXTRA: Gas prices on the rise. So are the level of complaints we’re hearing

Just a thought as far as people complaining about the price of gasoline going up these days on account of the increase in the state of Illinois’ motor fuel tax.

Remember when gas prices soared this high in Chicago?

Yes, it costs less in surrounding states, which could make for an advantage if one happens to be in a bordering region at the time they need to make a automotive fuel purchase.

SUCH AS MY own circumstance earlier this week when I happened to be in Gary, Ind., and encountered a Mobil gas station charging $2.69 per gallon of gas. Other stations I witnessed in the land of Hoosiers had gas prices ranging from $2.79 to $2.95.

Yet the moment I came back to the land of civilization, the cheapest gas prices I saw were around $3.19 – with motor fuel at name-brand stations costing potentially $3.30 per gallon. With the additional cost that gas usually incurs in Chicago proper, the cost goes up further.

With the gaspricewatch.com website indicating Thursday that gas prices in the city topped at $3.45 per gallon. Much higher than the national average of $2.81 per gallon.

So excuse me (think Steve Martin in the white suit with arrow through his head) if I’m not overly swayed by a story published in the State Journal-Register of Springfield (which the newspaper picked up from the Register-Star newspaper of Rockford) that says prices on the Illinois side of the Illinois-Wisconsin border are now out of control.

An outrage? Not necessarily

THE PAPERS INDICATE gas prices at $2.78 per gallon at stations in Illinois, compared to $2.61 per gallon just north of the state line in Wisconsin.

My point is there are more drastic price differentials than what this paper is trying to pursue as evidence of an outrage. Things are worse elsewhere.

And as far as my own situation, I don’t know I’m willing to make the trip to Gary every time I need to fuel an automobile. It was a circumstance that benefitted me that one day.

Now if it turns out that the gas tax revenue increase does NOT benefit all the road repairs and other projects that the state of Illinois alleges the money will go do, THEN we can rant and rage. Until then, those of us with complaints ought to quit showing that we’re more full of gas than our cars.

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Rauner’s “Turnaround Agenda” reinforcing Illinois’ urban/rural split?

Gov. Bruce Rauner has his “Turnaround Agenda,” a set of policies meant to reinforce the anti-organized labor attitude he has expressed ever since he became a candidate for governor some two years ago.

The agenda is meant to reinforce the idea that local people should be allowed to undermine the authority of labor unions, and it is with that goal in mind that Rauner’s staff has been working to try to get local governments across Illinois to pass a resolution saying they support the agenda.

I HAVE FOUND some amusement from reading the Capitol Fax newsletter’s website in recent days, as publisher Rich Miller is running tallies of which communities are feeling compelled to express their support for the governor’s desires to make Illinois a “right-to-work” state (implying that unions interfere with people getting jobs, rather than merely protecting their right to be compensated respectably for their work).

Day after day, it seems that every rural community across the southern third of Illinois, and even a few in central Illinois, adds to the list of Rauner supporters. Then again, the voters in those places were the bulk of Rauner supporters in the 2014 election cycle – so it’s no surprise!

Monday was the day they finally got a “big” city on board – the City Council in Rockford voted largely on partisan lines (The Register-Star newspaper reported that one Democrat flipped) to support the resolution.

I know some will remember the days when Rockford was the second-largest city in Illinois and will want to think that means something. Although considering that Aurora and Naperville are both now larger, and Joliet's growing population nips at the heels of Rockford, I'd say it means Rockford isn’t what it once was.

WHAT I HAVE noticed about this is that the trend doesn’t seem to be spreading into metro Chicago. If there are any communities among the roughly 260 municipalities that comprise the Chicago suburbs that have backed the idea, I’m not aware of them.

In fact, the only area community I have heard of that even considered the idea was Crete – a Will County town that realistically can be considered the southern tip of the Chicago area and the place where some would say downstate Illinois begins.

Even then, Michael Einhorn, the long-time village president tried rewriting Rauner’s agenda a bit to soften it up. But the trustees decided to postpone any kind of action.

Reading through the suburban press these days finds a lot of quotes from suburban mayors who just don’t want to touch the issue. Which when combined with the fact that Mayor Rahm Emanuel will likely be the leader of the effort to quash Rauner’s symbolic resolution from becoming reality (because it would interfere with many of the priorities Emanuel thinks the state should have) means this is turning into the two-thirds of Illinois’ population refusing to go along.

EVEN THOUGH I’M sure the masses in the remaining third will want to see themselves as representing the true sentiments of Illinois.

All the “Turnaround Agenda” (which includes such language as, “Voters in our community should be allowed to decide by referendum whether or not employees should be forced to join a union or pay dues as a condition of employment”) is doing is becoming more evidence of the “urban vs. rural” split that has become Illinois’ character.

If anything, Rauner by pushing this resolution (thinking that it will pressure legislators into giving in to the governor’s anti-union beliefs) is making that split bigger than usual.

I’d argue he’s becoming the source of the problem, rather than any attempt to become a solution.

HONESTLY, I WON’T be surprised if a lone suburban community or two wind up backing “Turnaround.” Naperville in onetime GOP bastion DuPage County took up the issue Tuesday night. There always are a few exceptions to the rule. But this isn’t a revolution sweeping its way across Illinois – the way Rauner backers would have us think.

If anything, I wonder if Makanda (the Southern Illinois municipality that was the long-time home of now-late Sen. Paul Simon) is the true way of how the Land of Lincoln thinks.

It seems their village officials voted to support the resolution earlier this month without realizing exactly what it meant. The Southern Illinoisan newspaper reported that village President Tina Shingleton said officials thought it was just a call for local control of local government.

Rather than part of an agenda to undermine organized labor and the people who work at such jobs – a desire that Makanda officials are now desperately trying to undo to avoid looking even more foolish than they already do!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Will “Turnaround” be the issue that breaks up the Emanuel/Rauner friendship? Or at least membership in that pricey wine club?

EXTRA: Over the (Capitol) Hill club?

“Illiana,” it seems, has provided the charter members of a new caucus of Congress – veteran politicians who became too old to have the continued trust of their constituents.

MANZULLO: Veteran pol lost in March

Illinois’ primary back on March 20 provided the original House of Representatives member when long-time Rockford-area Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., lost a bid for re-election to Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

THE POLITICAL ANALYSIS and speculation in our state said that the two Republicans pitted against each other by Democrats who drew the political boundaries for the upcoming decade fought it out, with the voters ultimately deciding that they’d rather have freshman Congressman Kinzinger, who’s only 34, to represent them.

He was young and fresh and seemed like he could have a long political career ahead of him; as opposed to Manzullo – who will be remembered in the Rockford-area as a political legend.

But as someone who was only four days away from his 68^th birthday on Election Day in Illinois, he was seen as having his best days in the past, during his 20 years in Congress.

That same sentiment seems to have been expressed in Indiana, where that unique breed known as Hoosiers held their primary elections on Tuesday and decided to dump their long-standing, internationally-renowned member of the U.S. Senate.

RICHARD LUGAR, WHO turned 80 last month and had been in the Senate since 1977, lost to Richard Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer.

Mourdock is the guy who made his alliances with conservative ideologues who were desperate to dump Lugar, who wasn’t willing to play their partisan games to the degree that they wanted.

LUGAR: Followed Manzullo lead Tuesday



No rational person would have ever used the “liberal” label on Lugar. Then again, they spewed enough rancid rhetoric that it seems the people of Indiana were more than willing to back a younger man – even though at age 60, Mourdock isn’t the kid with the potential for a lengthy stint on Capitol Hill that Kinzinger offers.

But when going against one of the grand old men of the Senate (or at least as grand as any of them are, these days), it didn’t take much for people to be willing to dump a political legend (Lugar’s star was much bigger nationally than Manzullo’s, but both of them had strong admiration locally).

OF COURSE, BOTH of those politicos still have some time left. Their terms don’t run out until early January of 2013. We still have both Lugar and Manzullo serving in Washington for the rest of this year.

Although both now have the “Lame Duck” label dangling around them, and I’m sure the ideologues are now going to start up the chants at their first opportunity about how unjust it is that men who lost their most recent elections could still be in office for another eight months.

I’m not anxious to see either man leave, because their departure will mean yet another victory for the forces that want to play political partisanship games to the hilt.

For Kinzinger, his fate is secure. There is no Democrat challenging him come Nov. 6, and any independent candidacy that might crop up will be purely a token effort.

BUT IT HAS me wondering if, in Indiana, Democratic nominee Joe Donnelly (a congressman from the area around South Bend, Ind., and Notre Dame) has a chance to defeat Mourdock – particularly if the help he can get from Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago political operatives extends beyond the fund-raiser they held for him in Chicago back in March.

Then again, maybe not.

For I suspect that the Republican operatives who are thoroughly ashamed that their state “went blue” (Electoral College votes going to Barack Obama for president instead of John McCain) in 2008 are going to pull out all the stops to switch the state back to the Republican column.

I doubt that those Chicago-oriented people of Hammond and Gary will be strong enough to overcome the rest of the state. If they were, perhaps Lugar would have prevailed on Tuesday.

AND WHEN THEY return to Washington for more work on Capitol Hill, perhaps Lugar and Manzullo can become a pairing; although not quite an Odd Couple.

They are the physical evidence that sometimes the voters can manage to overlook experience and first-hand knowledge in the ways of governing JUST to strike an ideological viewpoint.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Richard Lugar's concession speech, particularly his opening paragraph, doesn't strike me as the ramblings of a liberal, which is what his critics would have us believe.