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Michael Madigan: The Single Biggest Roadblock to Turning Illinois Around

October 18, 2012 By 3 Comments

The Chicago Tribune refers to Speaker Michael Madigan as Mr. 16%. This is based on Madigan’s approval ratings. [Exerpts below - emphasis mine]

Michael Madigan has spent 42 of his 70 years in the Illinois House, two-thirds of them as speaker. That alone attests to his ability to mastermind the election of fellow Democrats who in turn elect him leader of their chamber.

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Michael Madigan’s Illinois has become one of the deadbeat states its residents once could mock.

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He crowns loyalists, crushes opponents.

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But in the public space he monopolizes, he punishes this broke and broken state. Illinois’ finances — its ability to pay bills, its pension obligations, its taxes, its barrel-bottom credit rating, its discouragement to employers — have debilitated its present and future.

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Madigan’s reaction is to lament, as would a victim, the crises he helped cause — and has the influence to solve. At the federal level, the senatorial Gang of Eight works to avoid a fiscal cliff, and presidential candidates clash over debt. In Illinois, Madigan and his fellow leaders haven’t had significant talks about their pension debacle in months.

Madigan is the single biggest reason Illinois is in this fiscal mess in the first place.   He is also the single biggest roadblock to turning Illinois around.

Here are more of the polling numbers on Madigan from the Tribune:

  • 16 % favorable
  • 35 % unfavorable
  • 40 % have no opinion

Polling numbers on Madigan’s Job performance:

  • 22 % approve
  • 40 %disapprove
  • 38 %have no opinion.
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Filed Under: 2012 Election, Corruption, Economy & Tax/Spend, Education, Public Pension Crisis, Top Stories
About Lennie Jarratt

Small Business Owner, Education Watchdog, FOIA expert, Founder of For Our Children's Future

  • Wolf

    Madigan maybe a point of focus for the problem but it is much larger than that. Today the Public Sector is so excessive that the party members directly or through strong dependencies are so dominant that competent and ethical representatives for the taxpayers are very rare. If one examines the local elections one sees that the Public Sector members often are the majority to continue their corruption as most taxpayers are not intelligent enough to understand the reasons for their state. Whether you examine the Democratic or Republican run operations you see the massive fraud and excessive staffing and compensation levels in the Public Sector operations. The collusion between the unions and the Politicians is uniform and the fraud is present in black and white in every Public Sector Labor Agreement. In order to reform this mess it would require major structural changes not just party changes since both are members and contributors to the fraud. The corruption and fraud over the last 50 years has reached epic levels but the resolution will soon be here as the impending default of the US will rectify many of these issues unfortunately the result may not be much better as is witnessed by history. It appears the dysfunctional Public Education System is serving this system well.