Living in Illinois has its ups and downs... the winters can be brutal (every year Ben laments at how good he had it growing up in California...he's a trooper!). The property and sales taxes are atrocious (Chicago's sales tax is currently 10 percent - out of control!). It's one of the flattest states in the country... I'm not sure if this is good or bad? But we do have Lake Michigan, good schools, all that Chicago has to offer with fun shopping, museums, restaurants, etc. And we all know - Barack Obama hails from the great state of Illinois!
But sadly, Obama is one of the few good things that have come from Illinois politics. Today our lovely governor, Rod Blagojevich (bla-goy-a-vich) was arrested on corruption charges for attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by Obama. Our last governor, George Ryan, is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for fraud and corruption. When Blagojevich was running for office, he vowed to clean up the state's corruption. Hah! Instead he went to the dark side himself.
I read a statistic today that stated, "at least 79 [Illinois] elected officials have been convicted of wrongdoing since 1972." This includes three governors, 15 state legislators, two congressmen, one mayor, 27 aldermen, 19 Cook County judges, etc. These are elected officials, people we have put our trust in to represent us and make wise decisions with our tax dollars. In the meantime, Illinois has a budget deficit of $2 billion. What a mess!
Sorry for the political ramblings. I'll post a video clip of Eli tomorrow :)
2 comments:
What really disturbs me is that, despite the huge number of politicians caught cheating the people out of one thing or another, there are still those who think they can get away with it. That means that enough people DO get away with this kind of corruption that it still happens. So sad.
It's a pretty crazy story, isn't it? Did you see John Stewart last night? He was pretty funny about it. But, like you said, at least you have Obama!
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