Christopher Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal takes another look at Illinois, the punchline for the nation:
If Tripping The Light Fat-tastic gets his way, there won’t be much left when New Egypt enters the American Union or when Missouri annexes Illinois from roughly Vandalia south to Cairo.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker defended Sunday his cautious economic reopening plan, which leaves schools and many businesses shuttered until the novel coronavirus is all but defeated, saying the state will be unable to return to normal “until we’re able to eradicate it.”
Rockford will be stripped for parts.
“The truth is coronavirus is still out there. It hasn’t gone anywhere,” Mr. Pritzker said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “So we all are going to have to change the way we do things until we’re able to eradicate it.”
What’s this “we” stuff, Lard Have Mercy? Illinois to Big Fat Democrat: if “we all are going to have to change the way we do things,” that means that you don’t get to waddle off to Florida whenever the mood strikes you. And flying in an airplane in the middle of a pandemic? Are you out of your cholesterol-drenched mind?
Who do you think you are? Chris Cuomo? Oh that’s right, you have a new “plan.”
The Democratic governor unveiled Wednesday his “Restore Illinois” five-phase reopening plan, prompting allegations that he had moved the goal from “bending the curve” to eliminating COVID-19 altogether by requiring a cure or vaccine before allowing the return of schools and non-essential businesses.
Not sure why anyone should pay attention to this plan since dude’s last plan somehow found itself…contraindicated. But Pritzker hasn’t “moved the goalposts,” as the Chicago Tribune believes. Mike Madigan’s Morbidly Obese Sock Puppet has changed the entire game.
In a staff editorial, the Chicago Tribune called his plan “cautious in the extreme,” noting that it bans reopening schools, barbershops, salons, gyms, bars and restaurants—and then with capacity restrictions — only after the advent of a vaccine, herd immunity, or an “effectively and widely available treatment.”
“Actually, he’s being more than just cautious. He has moved the goal posts,” said the editorial. “Pritzker’s latest plan extends the benchmarks for victory from bending the infection curve to defeating the virus altogether.”
I have not, retorted the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Governor, essentially admitting that he had done exactly what the Trib said he did.
Mr. Pritzker swung back by arguing, “If the Chicago Tribune thinks we can go back to completely normal without us having a very effective treatment or vaccine, they’re just dead wrong.”
Here’s how this is going to go down, Your Corpulence. The longer you keep kicking this can down the road (and right now, best case scenario for the Land of Lincoln is a couple of years. And you don’t have a couple of years), the more Illinois jobs are going to die and the more Illinois businesses are going to close their doors forever. What idiot would be stupid enough to start or locate a business in Illinois right now?
Taxes? Nice knowing you. State revenue? Buh-bye. And don’t get me started on Illinois state pensions. What with all the people who will be drawing unemployment, and Lord knows how Springfield’s going to afford to pay for all of those, the pension situation, which is untenable right now, will become unsolvable, absent a gigantic infusion of federal jack.
Which ain’t happening. Not if any American politician wants to win reelection anyway.
And this is where the civil war starts? No, this is where the civil indifference starts.
I can see some Illinois guy whose job is gone, whose bank account is emptying fast or whose business has just gone belly-up while he waited for some Springfield douche to decide that Everything Is All-Right. Our guy’s got nothing else on his plate at the moment so what are a few days in an Illinois slammer to him but some meals he doesn’t have to pay for?
Of course, somebody’s got to arrest him which means somebody can be there to film it which means material for freelance anti-Democratic Party campaign commercials from one end of this country to the other this fall, not just in Illinois. Of course, the identities of the Illstapo supporters who arrest our guy and others like him as well as try their cases will be widely known.
If that happens often enough, if folks who live there begin to feel that living in Illinois is no longer a benefit, they will no longer vote to increase their state taxes, oppose any representative who votes for tax increases and sharply reduce any financial obligations to Springfield they have left. Want to start the State of New Egypt and reduce “Illinois” to Chicago and its suburbs? That’ll be something historic, something that we can tell the grandkids about.
Want to be annexed by Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana or all four? Might as well; their money is still good and Springfield’s dead in the water. That’s why any talk of a “civil war” any time soon in this situation would be silly. Americans know that to have a top-shelf civil war, you have to give a damn. And it’s hard to fight a shooting war over a place no one cares about any longer.
Go here to comment. Pritzker is considered a bad joke in Illinois. Towns and businesses are simply ignoring him and reopening. My prediction is that most of Illinois will be reopened by Memorial Day.
And I thought Cuomo was bad news………glad to see people are ignoring this dimwit.
I’m honestly puzzled. What is New Egypt? Does he mean Little Egypt?
I assume that was the reference Mike. There was a movement to have Little Egypt break from Illinois in 1861. It came to nothing, but I think that Lincoln probably would have lost a popularity poll to Davis for most of the war in Little Egypt.
This is now becoming a dilemma for law enforcement, especially downstate. My brother, for example, is chief of police in a small rural town in the northwest part of the state. The whole county has less than five deaths and about fifteen total cases. Two of the three deaths were, you guessed it, very old, very sick people in nursing homes. Now he watches as a town that had been on the economic rebound slowly dies again. When those businesses start reopening despite Jabba the P’s orders, he will be caught between the snowflake Democrats, a very loud minority, and the rest of the town, trying to decide if there is a valid law he has to enforce. I already told him what I think, but I don’t have to work in that town like he does, so it’s easy for me to say. Just one more unnecessary result of our worldwide overreaction.
Pritzker had 30 days of emergency power. He is attempting to get around it by repeating the initial disaster declaration, a dubious procedure to get around the plain reading of the statute. I have my doubts as to whether anyone is going to be successfully prosecuted for disobeying one of Pritzker’s edicts.
The Mayor of my town has already announced that Dwight law enforcement is not going to enforce Pritzker’s edicts and the Grundy County States Attorney has indicated that his office will not be prosecuting violations of Pritzker’s shut down rules. The spirit of 1776 lives in Illinois. Down with King Pritzker!
Frank, does the LEO oath of office in Illinois swear to uphold the US Constitution, (as it does in my home state)? It is upon this fact that the vast majority (over 90% in VA) of lawmen refuse to enforce violations of the 2A.
That’s all your brother needs to know.
@Exnoaaman: Seems like a good point. I don’t know what his oath said but I bet he does.????
Also, Don, thanks for the info about Dwight and Grundy County.
Will pass both comments on.
My recommendation, for what’s it worth, is to merge eastward, keeping the southern border of the Ohio river. If you merge westward, across the Mississippi river, with Missouri, you could control / regulate all traffic on the Mississippi, a historic strategic strangle point.
Update. My brother says, paraphrasing, “that’s all well and good but Pritzker controls all the state business licenses and can revoke them and the businesses will never get them back.” I suggested that sort of action wouldn’t last long in most state courts outside of Cook County, but he remains unimpressed. And he is a staunch Republican and Trump supporter, FWIW. ????????♂️
controls all the state business licenses and can revoke them and the businesses will never get them back.”
Oh yes, they would, with the government paying punitive damages. It is hard to overestimate the rage building against Pritzker in this State, even among otherwise apolitical people.
Don, if a business were to win such a case, how does a broke / bankrupt state pay? Settlements against future tax revenues? Also would the jurisdiction be the location where the business resides or the State Capitol where the Dictator resides?
I don’t whether we’re lucky in PA or not. Gov. Wolf (the big bad one) has declared “yellow zones,” where partial reopening may occur. “Red zone” counties are under strict, stay-at-home restrictions. Five counties (one next to mine) are protesting the red zone classification. They’ve had few new cases per day (almost reaching Wolf’s 50/100,000 requirement and reaching that if nursing home deaths were omitted). Some of these counties say they’re going to reopen anyway this Friday. Wolf says if they do, they’ll lose federal aid, business and liquor licenses. County DA’s have said they won’t prosecute stores that open up again. We’re also blessed with a trans-gender head of the State Dept of Health who was a child therapist, but not an epidemiologist.
God must have a sense of humor, because I don’t think Kurt Vonnegut himself could have written something with darker humor.
It would be sued through the Court of Claims, which has jurisdiction throughout the State. Of course a federal civil rights violation lawsuit could be filed in Federal Court. For the Central District of Illinois the suit would be filed at the Federal courthouses in Urbana, Springfield or Peoria, depending upon where the wronged business would be located.
You do get the money eventually, but it takes a while. The last time I sued the State, it took two years from the entry of judgment. The State botched up the interest calculation and my client got more than he was entitled to.
PS…it was Wolf/PA Dept of Health that, as in NY, sent covid-19 cases to the nursing homes.
I am told by a friend that two restaurants (both chains) were open for business, with seating, for Mother’s Day. Both were packed. I have no idea how that happened and people knew about it, but more power to them. Of course, this is totally “illegal” under Gretchmer the Terrible’s reign.
.
A judge has denied the AG’s demand to close a barber shop in a town near Flint.
One good thing came all this. I finally got around to cleaning out my garage. Took ten years worth of dead batteries, cfl bulbs, broken electronics, motor oil etc. to the household hazard waste facility.
There’s a headline over at Instapundit: L.A. COUNTY ‘WITH ALL CERTAINTY’ WILL KEEP STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS IN PLACE THROUGH JULY.
Who and what are the people doing all this goalpost moving trying to protect? Their constituents from the virus, or Democrats from Trump’s reelection?
California of course will almost certainly not be contested in the presidential election. I still think the motive is partisanship which shows how partisanship can flourish even when it makes no sense. What this may demonstrate to an increasing number of Californians however is that California is currently controlled by delusional ideologues.
We can see where this is going. Back in late April the President of the Illinois State Senate sent a letter to all Illinois Congressmen outlining the state’s request for federal financial aid— to the tune of $44 billion.
Governor Pritzker made sure to specify that a sizable block of that aid was to be “unencumbered”, presumably so it could be applied to Illinois’ mismanaged, failing pension fund.
I imagine that, if the leaders of states like Illinois and California have thought about their states’ long-term economic future at all, they simply assume that the taxpayers of the less incompetently run states will act as their personal ATMs and cough up all the cash they need. They insult Trump, yet they will hold out their hands and demand he give them billions.
Don, California, New York and Illinois are all considered to be uncontested in the November election. They will continue to destroy their own economies in order to get Trump. The thing is that it won’t change the Trump vote in other states. I do wonder if it will affect their own in his favor? I’m sorry that you have to be punished with the rest of Illinois.
I think it will drive up Trump’s votes in those states. A lot of people in Illinois, for example, are not happy campers, to say the least. We are more unhappy with each passing day as we see other states beginning to return to normal.
“or the State Capitol where the Dictator resides”
Actually, he doesn’t. He resides mainly in Chicago, as did the last 3 governors before him. Though he did pay (with his own money) to have the Governor’s Mansion in Springfield nicely re-landscaped and have other improvements made.
It’s really hard to tell how people in Springfield are actually reacting to all of this. Nearly everyone in town works either for the state or in the healthcare field (two large regional hospitals, plus a medical school and a rather large clinic system) so they may tend to be more on the pro-lockdown side, but then again, I don’t see a whole lot of people on the street wearing masks or always observing social distancing.
Meanwhile, state agencies right and left are setting aside their usual procedures via emergency rules based on the Governor’s various executive orders and proclamations. Some of them are designed to lessen the burden on the public — for example, expiring driver’s licenses and plate stickers won’t have to be renewed until 90 days after the disaster declaration(s) end — but others seem to be setting aside agencies’ responsibilities for oversight and due process, or allowing single agency officials to make decisions that used to require approval from more than one person. Plenty of fodder for future legal challenges there….
Illinois got what it voted for
Part of Illinois got what it voted for. The sane part of the State did not.