I finished off my visit to Springfield with a visit to the current state capitol (somebody, please move the smokers out of the doorways) and the Museum of Funeral Customs (very interesting actually, especially the video about Lincoln's Death Train).
President Harry Truman had a phrase that "if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog." The current governor of Illinois might want to make sure he owns one! Every state employee and food server in Springfield had nothing nice to say.
They're angry that so many jobs will be lost when cultural sights that bring tourists to town are shut down. They're angry he refuses to live in Springfield and insteads lives in Chicago, using a private plane to fly back and forth at great expense while state workers are losing their jobs. They're angry the DOT is going to be moved out of Springfield and thousands of state workers will have to uproot their lives. What about the press organizations? Most can barely afford a Springfield bureau. How will they cover the billion dollar business of the Department of Transportation if it's moved down to southern Illinois, they ask. To state employees, it feels like disrespect.
"Why doesn't he shut down the governor's mansion instead of our state parks and cultural heritage sites? He refuses to live in the Governor's mansion and the only use it got was when the Saudi Ambassador came to town to see the Lincoln Museum after the Ambassador gave a gigantic donation," they ask.
Illinois hasn't paid it's bills on time for years (hospitals routinely wait a year to be paid) but one state worker summed up best how broke the State of Illinois is. "This week," she said, "I received a call asking me to count the rolls of toilet paper in my department's storage closet because the State didn't have the money to buy more for other departments running out and needed to know if we had some we could send to other buildings. Now that's broke."
There's no need to worry about freedom of speech in Springfield. The budget, yes. But not freedom of speech.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment