When it comes to biology, I’m a firm believer in Intelligent Design. When it comes to politics, I’m a hardcore Darwinian Evolutionist because I live in a transitional species known as Illinois. Already fundamentally transformed from the “Land of Lincoln” to “Obamaville”, Illinois may not be Detroit, but it is well on its way. Entrenched Democrat rule will inevitably erode freedom and dissolve prosperity as a bag of lye does to a rotting corpse. And don’t look now but “Crook” County looks like an extra in The Walking Dead!
If there’s one thing I hate more than living in Illinois it’s writing about it, so I hope this doesn’t come across like an illustrated journal on human papillomavirus.
Illinois is ranked:
— 50th for fiscal policy
— 47th in job creation
— 1st in unfunded pension liabilities
— 2nd largest budget deficit
— 1st in failing schools.
— 1st in bonded indebtedness
— Highest sales tax in the nation
— Most judges indicted (Operations Greylord and Gambat)
— 5 of our last 9 elected governors have been indicted, more than the other 49 states added together!
— 32 Chicago Aldermen and over 1000 state and municipal employees indicted.
These statistics come from a goodbye letter written by former State Senator Roger Keats and printed in his hometown newspaper, The Wilmette Beacon in December of 2011 as he and his wife were departing for Texas.
He writes, “I am a lifelong son of the heartland and proud of it. After 60 years, I leave Illinois with a heavy heart. BUT enough is enough! The leaders of Illinois refuse to see we can’t continue going in the direction we are and expect people who have options to stay here.”
As you read this, Republican voters in Illinois are wringing their hands about the poor field of Republican Gubernatorial candidates. We don’t like any of them. All of them, to one degree or another, are typical of the Illinois GOP – pathetic. There is no good candidate because there is no candidate that is willing to say that the first thing they’ll order is a private audit of every state checkbook and an open invitation to the FBI’s corruption unit. Illinois doesn’t need a governor, it needs an exterminator.
Until someone stands up and announces, “There will be blood” and “Long jail sentences” and “Right to Work” and “War with the mafia (I mean the Unions),” then there is absolutely no reason to write a check, plant a yard sign, go door to door, or even to vote. The intelligent thing to do is to escape. Osgiliath is over run, flee to Indiana or Texas! Illinois needs an Elliot Ness but the Illinois GOP offers us a choice between Barney Fife and a recently deputized Goober.
The mere ability to choose our own prison guards is not the freedom that our forefathers had in mind. Unless you’re a missionary, a prosecutor, or a vulture, there is nothing for you here in Illinois. Get out while you can, before the experiment in “Democrat (with token RINO) Rule,” sucks you into a Detroit-like abyss.
In an ironic way, the death of Illinois may be “Da Coaches” fault. Mike Ditka lamented recently that his greatest regret was not running against then State Senator Barrack Obama back in 2004, “Biggest mistake I’ve ever made … Not that I would have won, but I probably would have and he wouldn’t be in the White House.”
As the coach of the Chicago Bears, Mike Ditka made famous the name, “Grabowski.”
Responding to those who had contrasted his hard-nosed, black and “blue collar” team with the brie and Chablis West Coast types, Iron Mike said, “There are teams that are fair-haired, and those that aren’t so fair-haired. Some teams are named Smith, some Grabowski. We’re Grabowskis.”
The name, “Grabowski,” came to symbolize the hard working, no nonsense, Midwestern ideal of the City of Big Shoulders. Sadly, just before the New Year, Illinois Review carried the latest “Dear John” letter from Former Congressional Candidate, Rich Grabowski.
“I was born and raised, and have lived most of my 47 years of life, on the south side of the city of Chicago and in the nearby southwest suburbs. In all my years here, I never would have imagined the extent of the damage and the demise of this once great Midwestern state that I grew to like. To see what’s happening socially and economically, right under our noses and occurring in mine and my children’s lifetime, to our state now seemingly like a dead carcass run over several times being picked apart and devoured by the political vultures and the policies they’ve created that caused our state’s current brutal demise.”
Grabowski, like Keats before him, is also fleeing to Texas and he closed his farewell, writing, “With a realistic unemployment rate of 16% in northeastern Illinois currently, and an outflow of jobs to other states, the deck is stacked against my kids finding gainful employment and moving out on their own by the age of 30. I have four teenagers who will soon be competing with 30, 40 and 50 year olds for even a simple McDonald’s job right out of high school. I feel I have an obligation to my kids, in the very least, to put them in a thriving economic area where their talents, abilities and education will quickly and easily take them to where they will want and need to go to become successful. Remaining in Illinois did not provide that as a viable option to me.”
Keats and Grabowski are an omen. And this is why Illinois will not recover – it is bleeding red and turning blue. Freedom loving patriots are fleeing to red states and the life sucking, prosperity crushing leeches are becoming more entrenched with greater leverage. The good people that are leaving are business owners and they take with them 50 to 100 jobs as they go. They are patriotic families who are a crucial part of a moral and fiscal immune system. They are grandparents looking to retire who want to stay near their children and grandchildren but are forced to choose southern states to avoid the penalty of exorbitant property and sales taxes. And they are men like these, Keats and Grabowski – former civil servants who wanted to make a difference, who tried to make a difference, yet came to the conclusion that it was just too far gone.
“We live in the most corrupt big city,” writes Keats, “In the most corrupt big county in the most corrupt state in America. I am sick and tired of subsidizing crooks … I feel as if we are standing on the deck of the Titanic and I can see the icebergs right in front of us. I will miss our friends a great deal. I have called Illinois home for essentially my entire life. But it is time to go where there is honest, competent and cost effective government. We have chosen to vote with our feet and our wallets.”
It’s sobering to read that since I’m still standing on the deck of the Titanic and I just spilled the last of my martini but these men are just a sampling of the 25% of the Illinois population that left with a life vest and a seat in the lifeboat.
Illinois has a cancer. We’re coughing up blood, our limbs are starting to turn color, we’ve lost control of our bowels and what does the GOP offer as a remedy? – The lollipop on the receptionist’s counter. We need a hazmat team to clean up an Industrial wasteland and the GOP sends us the pool boy from the Country Club. Sorry friends, but I’ll not waste my time trying to decide between Rauner and Dillard and the other frauds that are bucking to be the guy to fill Mike Madigan’s coffee cup. It’s a fool’s errand.
To my fellow Illinoisans, my only advice to you is DON’T VOTE! – PACK, MOVE, SLAP THE DUST FROM YOUR SANDALS and don’t look back!
Image: Courtesy of: http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/12/illinois-new-license-plate.html
