How many times have I heard a Republican say he would balance the budget if elected causing some people to vote for him because they believed him? When asked how, the standard is to eliminate waste and corruption. But since both parties don’t really want to do that, nothing is done.

            The Republican nominee for Illinois Governor gave an honest answer for the abortion question. He said he is “against it for now.” Many Republicans have run in their primaries saying they are for Trump before the primary and afterward say Biden is the legal President. They never bring Trump up again knowing he is an anchor to anyone wanting to win in November.

            Primaries are for the far right and left and not for the majority of the public. That is the reason why so many voters stay home on the bi-years when the Presidents aren’t running. Not even half will vote and those who do will hold their nose.

            A few states and many areas have open primaries where a voter can vote for the best person in either party and then the top vote-getter in each party is on the general election ballot. Maybe that would allow for less party control and more individualism.

            To reduce the B.S. and lies, the media and the editorial Boards need to keep asking the probing “How will you do it?” questions instead of participating in the illusion of reporting.

        The Illinois primary for Governor is approaching and it is already decided for the Democrats. Billionaire J.B. Pritzker will be running for re-election and can basically self-fund his campaign. Of course running for the Republican nominee, two don’t need the average donor to help with their campaigns.

            Richard Irwin has been flooding the media with ads promoting a selective history of his career. He is spending millions he doesn’t have but multi-billionaire, north of twenty-five, Ken Griffin will foot whatever it takes. Griffin has hated Pritzker for decades.

            Darin Bailey has his own golden eggs from billionaire Richard Uihlein. He has only contributed 3.5 million so far as known against Griffin’s 20 million to Irwin.

            We all know and understand those millions will make the eventual nominee a puppet of their sugar daddy and the rest of us will have no say. After Griffin put millions into convincing Illinoisans to vote against the graduated tax because he would be treated so unfairly, a few more would make sure it doesn’t come up again.

            If you want to contribute find some poor candidate who has morals and hasn’t had their strings connected yet. One thing about Pritzker is nobody owns him and he was willing to raise taxes on himself.

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.

I was once deeply involved in an organization where the leader was in power for a single year. Because the term is only one year, that person must be very experienced before hand or most of the year is spent in learning, not leading.

Because of internal politics, an inexperienced person who wasn’t able to go out to inspire the people or know the organization was elected to lead. Few people want to work with the person because of the leader’s personality, inexperience, lack of knowledge, and paranoia. Some were able to take necessary positions and to put the organization over their distaste of the leader and the constant conflicts with that leader. One of the conflicts was the group leader had come from wealth and could not understand how the great majority of the people in the organization aren’t wealthy.

The next leader wasn’t an inspiring person but did his best to halt the slide and allow the next person to set the stage for the coming year. The next leader was the most experienced person the organization had produced in years and was able by appointing dedicated people to many positions and by sheer willpower, excited the people to do good things.

The above strikes me as what is happening in the White House. The current leader is inexperienced, paranoid, has thoughts of grandeur, and hard to work for. The country has fallen into a moral decay. I believe the next president should not be one who wants to do great things but one who can halt the slide and calm the people. The one after that might be elected to inspire and put our country on a greater path. Obviously I think Joe Biden is the calming person with Amy Klobuchar as his vice-president. Both are the moderates we so desperately need at this time.

As I said previously, should I decide to follow the urging of people to voice my opinions as a nominee of the “Chance for Sanity” Party for President of the United States of America, I will continue to put forth sane ideas on many issues.

The current administration talks about making America Great Again, but it is merely a facade. Our country’s infrastructure is literally falling apart and empty words are of no help. Our country and others destroyed Europe and Japan during World War II. Since then, they have built anew while we have water and sewer systems that were built a century ago or earlier.

Our streets and highways are beginning to resemble a lunar landscape. Our interstate highway system was supposed to have the German autobahn as its model but instead of building for longevity, Eisenhower decided speed and cost necessitated building cheaper roads. That trade off is why we keep repairing them every few years then repairing the repairs. We need to change our existing specifications to one of longevity and put the burden of repairs for shoddy work on the contractors.

We cannot expect this critical problem to be fixed in a few years. The rebuilding will take decades. We must fix the most dangerous situations first. Hundreds of our bridges may fall today, so rebuilding bridges must be first in line. Sewer and water systems must start to be repaired at the same time but in conjunction with the towns and cities. Much of those repairs are going to be under city streets so those repairs must be in concert with the city’s street repair program.

Both of these problems are critical and solving them will be costly. Gasoline taxes have been used in the past for funding America’s transportation system. The problem with that tax is we are in the early stage of an electric car revolution. Electric cars will use the roads but pay no taxes to repair them. Heavy electric big rigs are a future goal so we must find another way to fund the repairs. As cities became more congested and residents own fewer cars, public transportation will become even more critical to moving people around.

Currently public transportation is funded by gasoline taxes and rider fees. When those fees get too high people go to car ownership and it is now likely to be electric. We all need an excellent transportation system whether we get on a road or not. Our food and materials is road bound so eliminating the gasoline tax and instituting a five percent increase in the corporate and individual income tax would pay for all our infrastructure needs. States and local taxing bodies may still tax by the gallon.

More plans concerning critical issues will be forthcoming.