http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/3262506-522/illinois-indiana-daniels-chicago-leaders.html(Phil Kadner wrote this today:
Mitch Daniels is having a good time making fun of Illinois.
Daniels is not a performer on “Saturday Night Live” or a stand-up comic.
He’s the Republican governor of Indiana. That’s the home of fecal greaseballs, Hoosiers and hicks.
Well, that’s the way people in these parts used to look at Indiana before their co-workers, friends and relatives started moving there for a better standard of living.
On Tuesday, Daniels appears on WLS-AM Radio’s “Don Wade and Roma” show and compared living near Illinois to being neighbors of the Simpsons. You know, it’s like living down the block from that goofy family that’s always doing something bizarre and completely wacky, he said.
Earlier, in interviews with Indiana newspapers, Daniels said he was looking forward to Illinois passing its income tax increase.
“We already had an edge on Illinois in terms of the cost of doing business, and this is going to make it significantly wider,” he said.
You could almost hear him tittering, “Hee, hee, hee.”
In his six years in office, Daniels has cut the state budget and eliminated government programs, avoiding tax hikes.
I’ve written previously about the gleeful manner in which Indiana business leaders and public officials view the zany behavior of Illinois politicians.
Many years ago, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley took passenger fees collected at Chicago airports and handed that money to Indiana for development of the Gary/Chicago International Airport.
Those millions of dollars could have been used to develop a south suburban airport near Peotone, creating construction jobs for local residents, but that was exactly what Daley didn’t want.
When former Republican governor Jim Edgar implied he was going to use that money to build a new Illinois airport, Daley protected his Chicago airports by funding the Indiana airport that he felt would never actually compete with Midway and O’Hare.
Daley was right. Southland political leaders, with the exception of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-2nd), of Chicago, didn’t even squawk.
When Illinois launched its riverboat casinos, it conveniently neglected locating one near the Illinois-Indiana border. As a result, the parking lots of casinos in Gary and Hammond are full of vehicles with Illinois license plates, while tour buses loaded with senior citizens from the Land of Lincoln drop off their passengers.
But the biggest boom to Indiana’s growth may be the property tax situation in Illinois. As this state refused to sufficiently fund the public schools, local property taxes soared to do so.
Young people seeking to buy their first house were priced out of the market. Businesses, watching their profit margins erode, moved to Indiana.
And during this entire time, the Illinois budget crumbled. This state has about $6 billion in unpaid bills and a pension debt so large the numbers are hard to grasp.
That’s bad publicity for Illinois and good news for Indiana.
Added to all that crazy behavior the corrupt administrations of two governors, and this state does look like its being run by some out-of-control cartoon characters.
None of that seems to register with our leaders in Springfield, who seem to have no idea how badly they’ve screwed up the image of this state.
The governor of Indiana thinks Illinois is a joke.
During Tuesday’s radio show, Daniels seemed to realize at one point how cruel he sounded, sort of like the rich kid in the mansion laughing at the poor boy with holes in his jeans.
So he said it’s never a good thing to see your neighbors in serious financial trouble and expressed some hope that there will be better times ahead for Illinois and Wisconsin (snicker, snicker).
Some people point at the tax burden as the biggest problem in Illinois. But it isn’t.
The real problem is that our leaders, who fancy themselves kingmakers and wheeler-dealers, are a joke.
Every time they try to solve a problem, they create an even bigger one. And it’s always someone else’s fault.
In the words of Homer Simpson, “Operator, give me the number for 911.”