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Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

Welcome to Illinois! We're more than just Chicago!


We have corn (#2 producer behind Iowa in 2016)



soybeans (#1 in 2016, #1 or #2 producer last five years running BITCHES! Yeah maybe our sports teams suck but our farmers BRING IT),


corrupt politicians, (click link for fuller but still not complete list, pics are just the most recent and/or famous ones)

a budget problem that makes moving to a hurricane-ravaged hellhole like Texas a consideration,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDAgZREprNY

quote:

Despite the $36 billion budget getting pushed through, Illinois remains in a financial mess following decades of mismanagement and the recent budget fight. The state has racked up $15 billion of unpaid bills and owes a quarter-trillion dollars in pensions to state workers when they retire.

Unfortunately, the budget compromise may not be enough to put Illinois back on a sustainable fiscal path.

Moody's said on Wednesday that it may still make Illinois the first state with a "junk" credit rating despite the $5 billion being raised by the tax hike. A downgrade would make Illinois the first state to receive a "junk" rating and could likely trigger higher borrowing costs for America's fifth-largest state.

The problem is that the budget compromise lacks "broad bipartisan support" and that may "signal shortcomings" in its effectiveness, Moody's warned.
AND...
well okay, fine, Chicago.

quote:

Monday, Aug 14, 2017

* Sen. Tom Cullerton asked the Legislative Research Unit for some county-by-county data on how much money counties are getting back from the state compared to what residents put in.
Dark red means the counties’ get back 80 cents on the dollar or less from the state. Counties shaded dark black are more break even. The blue counties are doing well and the green counties do the best, getting back at least $2 for every $1 they send to the state.
The data is from 2013 (the latest they have) and the LRU warns that it isn’t exactly precise because, for instance, not all revenue and disbursements can be totally verified. So, it’s more of a rough guide. Click the pic for a larger image…

So 2018 is a midterm election year and you know what that means! GOVERNOR'S RACE!

Rauner is, of course, running for reelection, never having heard the phrase 'quit while you're behind'


He is being challenged by a slate of Democrats, from the billionaires who saw his and Trump's meteoric rise to success and thought 'more money than any human being has any right to isn't enough, I wanna be moving those levers of power too' (Pritzker, yes THAT Pritzker, R.) to billionaires who are also members of political family dynasties because that worked out so well in 2016 (Kennedy, L.)

to Chicago Aldermen with an American dream story and a downstate running mate who don't have a chance in hellpoo poo, this is the weirdest timeline nobody knows anything anymore maybe Illinois' got another skinny brown kid with a funny name in its political future (Pawar, L and running mate) Nevermind, Pawar's out of money and out of the race as 10/12/17.

to typical Illinois politicians who think they have reasonable policy positions and experience who were also runners up in a John Kerry lookalike contest (IL State Sen Daniel Biss and IL State Rep Scott Drury Drury, an ex-federal prosecutor, wisely decided to run for AG instead as Madigan's stepping down)

and a whole bunch of other people you've never heard of and perennial also-rans.

With Lisa Madigan stepping down after winning five consecutive terms, the Attorney General race is going to be interesting.

On the Republican side, former beauty queen (Miss America 2003), pro-abstinence anti-gay marriage Congressional seat also-ran Harvard Law-educated Erika Harold is running. She's African-American, losers! Ergo Republicans can't be racist you're the real racist.

On the Dem side at least seven eight contenders have thrown their hats into the ring. They include:



Now usually the General Assembly is pretty drat non-competitive but this year, oh this year, boys and girls, in this Our Weirdest Timeline, you're in for a potential treat, because a relative shitton of IL pols are deciding to hell with this hyper-partisan bullshit and retiring.

quote:

At least a dozen spots in the Illinois General Assembly will change hands in the upcoming election. 13 legislators are choosing to give up their seats (as of Aug 7th). Political analyst Linda Baker with the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute said we may even see more.

“We could turnover almost half of the General Assembly in this election with the number of people not running on their own and then those incumbents that may actually not win their seats,” Baker said.

And with turnover like that, Jak Tichenor with the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute said we'll be losing a lot of experience and expertise that takes years to develop.

“A lot of those lawmakers are only in their first and second terms, so particularly on the Republican side, that's a huge loss in terms of institutional knowledge and the political culture of the capital,” Tichenor said.
Including Speaker (and true political powerhouse) Mike Madigan's daughter (and Attorney General) Lisa Madigan (who is totally not running for anything else).
This doesn't mention the whole very unpopular tax hike Republicans are gonna have hung around their necks/attempt to hang around Dem necks. Illinoisans are very pissed off and looking for someone to blame.

And that doesn't even get into all the U.S. House seats up for grabs! (more on these later)


SO LET THE GAMES BEGIN, AND MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR (also register your dumb rear end to vote, especially if you just moved)

Oracle fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Nov 10, 2017

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vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
.

vyelkin fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 14, 2021

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.
Come to Illinois

Pick your poison

High Property taxes, hut actual fun poo poo to do in Chicago

Or living in hellhole cities that died when the manufacturing jobs went overseas(shouts to my hometown Rockford) . But boy is property cheap.

You also get to complain about idiot downstaters or fat cat Chicagoans who don't know how "real" Illinoians have to get by.

Dexo fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Sep 18, 2017

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦
Why does that last map place Peoria outside of Peoria county? Like East Peoria, which is in fact not in Peoria county

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin
rockford is the best place to be from because it was dead last for like a decade straight in best 300 cities in america. Dead. Last. love it. Also it's cool that it's 'downstate' while almost being in wisconsin

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless
It's not really downstate. Kinda Chicago-lite.

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin

Volkerball posted:

It's not really downstate. Kinda Chicago-lite.

It's obviously not downstate, but is treated as such by Chicago, and anyone downstate (i.e. south of i-80) treats the north region as being part of Chicago. Just makes it even more of a lovely area. Then again it's actually quite pretty with hills and whatnot, unlike everything else until you get all the way south to Carbondale.



As for politics, I'm very excited for nonstop ads for the next year and a half. TV stations must be very excited about the prospect of two billionaires duking it out

Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

Heath posted:

Why does that last map place Peoria outside of Peoria county? Like East Peoria, which is in fact not in Peoria county

Go yell at Wikipedia man, Rauner don't pay me enough to care.

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.
Rockford is Chicago level crime and bullshit with downstate level entertainment and money.

xzzy
Mar 5, 2009

All I know about Rockford is the BMO center is a fine place to watch hockey, and Machine Shed is a fine place to add 20 pounds to your rear end.

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

xzzy posted:

All I know about Rockford is the BMO center is a fine place to watch hockey, and Machine Shed is a fine place to add 20 pounds to your rear end.

Machine shed is trizzash


And it's the loving MetroCentre

gently caress BMO center. I miss the Rockford Lightning. gently caress Hockey.

Grassy Knowles
Apr 4, 2003

"The original Terminator was a gritty fucking AMAZING piece of sci-fi. Gritty fucking rock-hard MURDER!"

Dexo posted:

Machine shed is trizzash

Also Beefaroo

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

Grassy Knowles posted:

Also Beefaroo

WOAH WOAH WOAH

Lets not say things we can't take back.

Also hey, We have a Portillos now.

Dexo fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Sep 18, 2017

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Rockford has like two of its largest construction projects ever both happening right now, so it's got that going for it. My employer also owns a road construction business, I wonder how much the state budget has affected their bottom line. I definitely know they've slowed down the last year.

Chicago also remains a place everyone loves to leave. Although I think a lot of that is restricted to the south and west sides.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Chicago-Tops-List-of-Cities-Residents-Are-Moving-From-443983463.html

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

Bird in a Blender posted:

Rockford has like two of its largest construction projects ever both happening right now, so it's got that going for it. My employer also owns a road construction business, I wonder how much the state budget has affected their bottom line. I definitely know they've slowed down the last year.

Chicago also remains a place everyone loves to leave. Although I think a lot of that is restricted to the south and west sides.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Chicago-Tops-List-of-Cities-Residents-Are-Moving-From-443983463.html

:thunk: I wonder why people are leaving the south and west sides.

LLSix
Jan 20, 2010

The real power behind countless overlords

I moved to Decatur recently. Looks like we picked an exciting year. It'll be interesting living in a blue state. It seems like people around here are pretty conservative though. It's really shocking to hear Rauner talking about how terrible his state is. Does he not think that reflects poorly on his governership?

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

LLSix posted:

I moved to Decatur recently. Looks like we picked an exciting year. It'll be interesting living in a blue state. It seems like people around here are pretty conservative though. It's really shocking to hear Rauner talking about how terrible his state is. Does he not think that reflects poorly on his governership?

Illinois outside of Chicago is probably only slightly more blue than like Kansas.

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦

LLSix posted:

I moved to Decatur recently. Looks like we picked an exciting year. It'll be interesting living in a blue state. It seems like people around here are pretty conservative though. It's really shocking to hear Rauner talking about how terrible his state is. Does he not think that reflects poorly on his governership?

The people living in Illinois hate Illinois so much that making GBS threads on it is likely to win votes. You know, the Trump method.

The X-man cometh
Nov 1, 2009
Central Illinois is like living in the Deep South but with lovely food. DuPage County went more for Trump than Mississippi, though, so that doesn't say much for Chicagoland.

When does Automatic Voter Registration start? That's going to be a big help for the lesser known candidates, but it'll play hell with field operations.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

LLSix posted:

I moved to Decatur recently. Looks like we picked an exciting year. It'll be interesting living in a blue state. It seems like people around here are pretty conservative though. It's really shocking to hear Rauner talking about how terrible his state is. Does he not think that reflects poorly on his governership?
There's islands of blue and purple - Peoria, Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, Carbondale, Quad Cities - basically all the mid-size cities and university towns. But most of downstate is both rural and Republican. It's like an extension of Iowa.

IIRC, Decatur is particularly red, because the only university of any size is the tiny Millikin, and it's mostly been defined by agriculture and ADM.

http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/illinois/

Growing up around Chicago, and now living in Blo/No, I have found that the Chicago/Downstate divide is way more bitter than any left/right divide in Illinois. Folks around here across the political spectrum just can't believe that Chicago provides more money for the state than it spends, and dumping on Chicago is a winning strategy no matter which party you're from.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
It's the classic rural/urban divide only really accentuated because Illinois only has one real city but it's a loving huge and important city, so of course all the conservative rural people are angry that the enormous city is more important and has greater influence than the sparsely-populated and economically-depressed rural regions.

vyelkin fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 14, 2021

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

vyelkin posted:

It's the classic rural/urban divide only really accentuated because Illinois only has one real city but it's a loving huge and important city, so of course all the conservative rural people are angry that the enormous city is more important and has greater influence than the sparsely-populated and economically-depressed rural regions. We just have a catchy name for it because Chicago is also shoved off into the corner of the state.

And yet, y'all spend ten times the amount of effort bitching about how people downstate are dumb than you do discussing the major systemic issues in the city and the state. Way to be a part of the solution.

xzzy
Mar 5, 2009

Because as we all know, the most effective way to produce change is to discuss the REAL ISSUES on a comedy forum.

Big Black Dick
Mar 20, 2009

Honestly, we don't think about it much. gently caress off to Iowa already.

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


So wait Volkerball, John McCain's grandson, lives in rural Illinois?

Monkey Fracas
Sep 11, 2010

...but then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you!
Grimey Drawer
I :love: my corrupt failing shithole state

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

Volkerball posted:

And yet, y'all spend ten times the amount of effort bitching about how people downstate are dumb than you do discussing the major systemic issues in the city and the state. Way to be a part of the solution.

Like we haven't discussed issues with our state tax code or the need for a ConCon before. Also why are you bitching on a forum. You should be the change you want to see in the world.

(LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT MISTER)

Also I live "downstate", and whoo boy are we dumb.


icantfindaname posted:

So wait Volkerball, John McCain's grandson, lives in rural Illinois?

p much, yeah

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011
.

vyelkin fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 14, 2021

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

xzzy posted:

Because as we all know, the most effective way to produce change is to discuss the REAL ISSUES on a comedy forum.

People are expressing their actual views itt. It doesn't make a difference here, but people whitewashing the corruption and mismanagement that have lead to the CPS and pension crises by constantly trying to deflect towards completely unrelated, insignificant issues, is only going to enable the problem in the long run. And it seems like that's generally the route people are choosing to take.

Big Black Dick posted:

Honestly, we don't think about it much. gently caress off to Iowa already.

I'd bet it's the majority of discussion. Guess our SA Chicago demographic is just short on pensioners and teachers.

Oracle
Oct 9, 2004

dwarf74 posted:

There's islands of blue and purple - Peoria, Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, Carbondale, Quad Cities - basically all the mid-size cities and university towns. But most of downstate is both rural and Republican. It's like an extension of Iowa.

IIRC, Decatur is particularly red, because the only university of any size is the tiny Millikin, and it's mostly been defined by agriculture and ADM.

http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/illinois/

Growing up around Chicago, and now living in Blo/No, I have found that the Chicago/Downstate divide is way more bitter than any left/right divide in Illinois. Folks around here across the political spectrum just can't believe that Chicago provides more money for the state than it spends, and dumping on Chicago is a winning strategy no matter which party you're from.

I've lived in both areas of the state and while in Chicago noone spared a thought for anyone downstate. South of I-80 might as well not have existed. Most of their ire/dumping was reserved for suburbanites who dared claim they were actually from Chicago when they were from like, Schaumburg.

Downstate Christ, its like a jealous ex who moved back home and constantly keeps tabs on what could have been, exulting in every problem and setback and grumbling about every success and how it'll personally cost them.

Volkerball
Oct 15, 2009

by FactsAreUseless

Dexo posted:

Like we haven't discussed issues with our state tax code or the need for a ConCon before. Also why are you bitching on a forum. You should be the change you want to see in the world.

(LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT MISTER)

Also I live "downstate", and whoo boy are we dumb.


p much, yeah

We have, but there's still a ton of really grating hot takes itt from people who just want to talk poo poo. I don't think you're all idiots all the time fwiw.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Oracle posted:

I've lived in both areas of the state and while in Chicago noone spared a thought for anyone downstate. South of I-80 might as well not have existed. Most of their ire/dumping was reserved for suburbanites who dared claim they were actually from Chicago when they were from like, Schaumburg.

Downstate Christ, its like a jealous ex who moved back home and constantly keeps tabs on what could have been, exulting in every problem and setback and grumbling about every success and how it'll personally cost them.
Yeah, part of the problem is that downstaters know that folks in Chicago and the suburbs spare nary a thought for the rest of the state. :)

I mean, I hardly knew that Bloomington, IL existed until I started at IWU.

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.
Lol at blaming the teachers and pensioners for not turning down money that was given and promised to them.

Bird in a Blender
Nov 17, 2005

It's amazing what they can do with computers these days.

Chicagoans don't even vacation downstate, we all go to Wisconsin and Michigan. I think that giant cross outside of Effingham (I think that's where it is) scares everyone off.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Bird in a Blender posted:

Chicagoans don't even vacation downstate, we all go to Wisconsin and Michigan. I think that giant cross outside of Effingham (I think that's where it is) scares everyone off.
Mostly vampires

xzzy
Mar 5, 2009

Garden of the Gods is quite nice!

Struggling to come up with anything else worth visiting down that way though.

Monkey Fracas
Sep 11, 2010

...but then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you!
Grimey Drawer
Starved Rock is cool- go down there once a couple times a year at least.

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.

xzzy posted:

Garden of the Gods is quite nice!

Struggling to come up with anything else worth visiting down that way though.

Come to Springfield, we have all the Abe Lincoln stuff you could ever want to see.

Good point keep talkin
Sep 14, 2011


xzzy posted:

Garden of the Gods is quite nice!

Struggling to come up with anything else worth visiting down that way though.

Bottoms Up Bar & Grill Wednesdays around 5. Whole fried chicken for 6 bucks and dollar beers.

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Trevor Hale
Dec 8, 2008

What have I become, my Swedish friend?

Dexo posted:

Come to Springfield, we have all the Abe Lincoln stuff you could ever want to see.

I legit love the Lincoln Library.

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