I just watched an excellent report on “Chicago Tonight” about Michael Madigan by Amanda Vinicky. She had lists explaining Madigan’s control of the Democratic Party by being its chairman and house speaker. She used Republican house members to back up her report. Congratulations to her on her research.

Now the problem she didn’t cover. Vinicky didn’t cover the Republican Party’s control over their people. I was sitting with a state representative when a staffer came in and handed him a paper list. He said this is the list of how he was to vote for these five proposals in a few minutes. The Representative had no idea what they were about so he couldn’t see what all was in them.  Unless they had been “discussed” in one of the many committees he was on, he had no time to look into that. He said if he didn’t vote the way he was told, the party wouldn’t support his re-election with funding and tell the road builders to donate at his golf outing. Without toeing the GOP line, he could not do things for his district. He had an extremely moral mentality. He got contracts for his business that he might have gotten anyway, but if he didn’t toe the line his customers would have been persuaded to go elsewhere. He had more money before he was in office than after. Integrity costs.

It’s easy to pick on Madigan because of his overt power, but the Republican Party’s people are on the same committees and get campaign funding from many of the same people, companies, and groups. Why do you think we have crappy new roads and repairs on good roads at high prices? Golfing is expensive. Money corrupts and lots of money corrupts absolutely. Many states are worse than Illinois.