“Yes, Illinois is doing well…
Our #1 manufactured product is corruption.”
what Gov. Quinn didn’t tell you
State of State Address
January 29, 2014
Word cloud of State of State Address (what we heard)
Yesterday, Gov. Quinn gave another “State of the State.” Here’s the rest of the story:
Quarter Billion Dollars in No-Bid Contracts. The Quinn administration has let 850 no-bid contracts for $259 million using “inter-governmental agreements”- a loophole in Illinois procurement law. It’s a mine field of insiders.
Read more here– the largest project in state history (outside of road construction), the upgrade of the Illinois Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS), used an inter-governmental agreement with Michigan to insure no competitive bidding on up to $190 million in contracts.
Attorney General Can’t Find Public Corruption Anywhere
Since 2002, AG Lisa Madigan has prosecuted 14 cases for public corruption– half for DUI and she lost half of those. In 12 years, she’s prosecuted two (2) cases of real fraud. Illinois has over 750,000 public employees.
$1 Million City Manager
“Bus Manager” Salary Spikes from $90,000 to $356,353
The ratio of corruption to production is forcing business out of Illinois. Illinois is now a net outward migration state.
Where are the Republicans? They’re manufacturing corruptions too. In rock ribbed red DuPage County, the community college president now makes $469,365 per year and suburban city councilmen now collect a
lifetime pension for their part-time “public service.”
The last “successful” Republican governor Jim Edgar double dips over $320,000 in gov pension and a “professor” salary at the University of Illinois.
What Quinn didn’t tell you is that regular citizens are giving Illinois a future…
In 2013, the Edgar County Watchdogs & allies are credited with firings/resignations of 38 public officials or elected officials from their positions.
We sued Republican Comptroller Judy Baar-Topinka to open the books on the Illinois checkbook. Now, all line-by-line spending since 2005 will soon be online.
2 Responses
GREAT NEWS in this article. Also good recognition for the Watchdogs! But there is one detail near Adam’s signature line that is very very troubling. “School Choice Week” should NOT be celebrated. WHY? Because school choice is actually taking public funding and giving it to unelected unaccountable no-transparency boards that run public charter and private schools. It will put public monies beyond the reach of public accountability. This in turn will fuel the “common core” transition which is NOT about better academics.
Common Core which is adopted in Illinois is actually about spreading collectivist and communist ideals through behavior-changing operant conditioning of the students. That is why standardized testing asks questions about student behavior, parents and attitudes, and then records it to permanent dociers. To find out more you should read Charlotte Iserbyt’s book “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America”, and see her current interview on Common Core which appears on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x62-DN2SWys Also read “The Great American Con Game” by Barbara Morris. It will become impossible for citizens to fight Common Core or any other brainwashing program in schools if the schools are cloaked in privacy rules out of the reach of tools like FOIA.
We all need to ask hard questions, the first of which is “Why is a conservative organization like Heartland or Heritage Foundation promoting the very dangerous hand-over of public school money to private unaccountable boards and businesses.” This is very unAmerican, but the idea appears in Communist Manifesto Plank # 10, the combination of business with education.
This recent AG Opinion as to whether FOIA applies: http://foia.ilattorneygeneral.net/pdf/opinions/2013/13-012.pdf