Apparently, our state legislature is so immensely DENSE that they've decided to make our state even more screwed up than ever. They've voted in favor of a budget which spends 56 Billion dollars, by robbing (once more) from state pensions (yes, this means the teachers' and police pensions, too), from nursing homes and pharmacies and medical facilities for the poor...
A list of U.S. states by unemployment rate places us at 9th highest in the nation (and rising) -- the hills of Tennessee are better off than are we. This comes as no surprise to those of us who know we're also in the top 1/3 of the nation for high taxes: the more you tax businesses and such, the more likely they are to leave here for more business-friendly climes (like TN).
Alongside our high unemployment, programs for the disadvantaged (an ever-growing segment of this state's population, it seems) have been cut to the bare minimum: scholarhip programs, state hospitals, mental facilities (a sore spot for me), prisons, and so forth have been financially chopped up to feed the great maw that is the upstate pork barrel. If you are one of our rural poor, you are likely to have to drive at least 20 miles to the nearest public aid office (under Blago, they cut the number of offices & shut down quite a few of them down our way) to fill out forms for programs from which you are not terribly likely to draw much benefit. And, yet, they seem to have plenty of money to bail out some portion of the upstate horse racing industry (to the tune of more than $3 million) offered up $12.6 million to renovate Chicago's McCormick Place, and spend more than $5 million annually on the international tourism program (seriously, if you go to the Il Bureau of Tourism site and click on their "international tourism" link, you get nothing but Chicago). If you look really closely, you'll see a whopping $3,000 for Rural/Downstate Health Access. I feel sick -- and, being downstate, I don't dare throw up.
So much for my being able to get meds promptly. So much for those who really NEED the help offered by the gummint. So Blago and the Chicago Democrats down in Springfield have been playing games again at the expense of our state and her future.
So what else is new?
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