The State of the Twilight Zone

12:39 am, 1/19/06

The State of the Twilight Zone
Governor Blagojevich has given his State of the State address, and it is comedy gold.

A little more than three years ago, the people of Illinois decided to bring us together to chart a new course. To make Illinois once again the land of opportunity. To shake up the system here in Springfield that accepted mediocrity and failure. To make state government begin again to work for the people, rather than the other way around.

Despite facing one of the most challenging periods in our state's history, Illinois today is now leading the nation in taking steps that help real people, people who work, middle class families, build better lives. We are making real progress - but there is much more to do.

Wow, it's a good thing Illinois abolished mediocrity and failure, as signed into law by Governor Mediocre R. Failure himself. Yesterday, I took steps towards becoming an incredibly wealthy jetsetter surrounded by Italian lingerie models, but I'm still a single guy in a one bedroom apartment. Likewise, Illinois is allegedly leading the nation and making progress in "taking steps", but not in actually achieving, what with Illinois household incomes collapsing, downstate manufacturers announcing layoffs as they flee the state, etc. "We're still trying!" isn't much of a boast after three years of not mere failure, but actual tangible harm and disgrace. In fact, the only way that the Governor can figure out to put middle class families to work and improve their lives is to hire them himself:

Our jobs bill means creating more than 85,000 jobs through mass transit construction, more than 7,000 jobs through school construction, and more than 140,000 jobs through road construction....

We can build roads all around our state: roads like Route 51 in Decatur, widen I-55 outside of Chicago, widen Route 13 from Marion to Carterville, improve Route 2 in Rockford, Route 5 in Moline, build the Technology Boulevard in Peoria, start work on the Mississippi River bridge, and realize the dream of making Route 336 a gateway from Chicago all the way to Kansas City.

Projects like these help companies reduce the cost of moving products to market, help people get to and from work, and by the way, when we're out there pitching Illinois to businesses, selling them on our infrastructure has proven to be one of the best arguments we can make.

And there's another reason to pass this bill. If we don't, we risk losing $3 billion in federal transportation funds to other states....

These are things that need to be done. So we should do them. And if we do them, we will give people all around Illinois the opportunity to go to work. 230,000 jobs all across Illinois. Jobs in every part of Illinois. Jobs in your district. Not a handful of jobs, a lot of jobs.

And when I say jobs, these are good jobs. Laborers laying asphalt for the expansion of Route 2. Ironworkers fabricating the support beams for the new Mississippi River Bridge. And do you know what these jobs pay? They can pay anywhere from $40,000 all the way to $120,000 a year.

"We can build roads all around our state." It'll be fun! The Governor even goes on to say "please". Desperation isn't usually listed among desirable leadership qualities, and while Blagojevich wants to build roads, they'll be roads to nowhere if he doesn't address the underlying marketplace burdens that are crushing the business environment in Illinois.

Of course, it's odd that Illinois is supposed to be in an emergency rush to make their federal match, since in theory, there's supposedly plenty of money: The Governor has long been praising himself for all the steps he took to streamline government, on the advice of the hugely expensive bureaucracy of consultants he hired to tell him how to do it. (Nevermind that other state agencies then determined that these savings did not exist.)

Also unsurprising:

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library is outdrawing the Clinton Presidential Library.

Well, duh. The irony here though is that Blagojevich is sounding like he himself is feeling a little adversarial towards the Union, given that he spends half of his speech attempting to go "Governor Blanco" and divert blame for all known problems in the world, real and imagined, onto the federal government:

And we did all of this despite policies coming out of Washington...When the federal government stalled...When Washington wouldn't raise the minimum wage...When Washington...When Washington...This administration in Washington...That may be acceptable policy in Washington...Washington gave us a program called No Child Left Behind. They told us they wanted better schools, but what we ended up with...But now Washington is making it even harder....Washington has its priorities all mixed up....There is perhaps no starker difference in our values and those of the current administration in Washington...Congress just cut funding for...Washington today can't get it right....Only in Washington...even if Washington won't...This administration in Washington has been equally hostile...they simply do not support women's reproductive rights...And in Washington, there's nothing realistic on the horizon...if we rely on Washington to act...How the federal government can let that happen...Everyone in Washington said...We can't keep waiting for them to act. You and I both know they won't....we have grappled with policies from Washington...Some in Washington, and many of the skeptics here in Illinois, may disagree with our priorities.

I encourage the Governor to secede, by taking a plane, perhaps his last taxpayer-subsidized journey (which, ironically, have been subsidized by funds that were originally earmarked for road construction), to Toronto and never coming back. I'm sure he can get a job in their mayor's office:

No law abiding citizen needs an Uzi or an AK 47 to be safe or to hunt. The federal assault weapon ban expired more than a year ago. Everyone in Washington said they were for extending the ban - even the President himself. And yet they let it lapse - and never looked back.

We can't keep waiting for them to act. You and I both know they won't.

So I say it's time we reinstate the assault weapons ban in Illinois....

Last year, we tried to pass the assault weapon ban and we came close. I called many of you to ask that you vote for the bill. Back then, some of you told me you wanted to, but couldn't because you were afraid of drawing a primary challenge. Well, the filing date for primary challenges has passed, and now it's time to pass this bill.

"Don't do what the people want you to do, do what you know that a rabid liberal is supposed to do!" The meaningless invocation of well known models of weapons (meant to confuse and terrorize people into thinking this has something to do with machine guns) aside, any rational person can reason that the burden is on government to prove that there is a need to intervene in private lives, not on citizens to prove that they need to be allowed to do something. Despite Blagojevich's insane wailing when the ban lapsed in September of 2004, there has been no rampage of violence. In fact, as Blagojevich himself proclaims, crime has continued to drop, a trend that was not in any meaningful way impacted by the original ban, either.

Seriously, I just... Wow.