The Illinois Democratic/Republican Party System Is Failing Us

Until we do something about today’s corrupt state politics that perpetuate an unethical “winner-take-all” economy for wealthy egomaniacs at the expense of everyone else, we will remain victims of both Republican and Democratic legislators who align their interests with Money and who pass laws that sustain their political opportunism and concentrated economic privilege and power. 

Until we do something about today’s deregulation and tax reductions for the wealthy minority that are the result of organized political action by and in support of the wealthy sector, we will remain victims of insidious financial reforms (like breaking a constitutional contract with public employees) that will not resolve the deficit problems but accommodate and reinforce the enormous inequality of organizational resources of corporate self-seekers. 

Until we do something about today’s political and economic tyranny and the lack of accountability for destroying a representative democracy and a just economy, we will remain victims of Super PACs and their vast resources of money and influence committed to reforming the rules and policies that will adversely affect the lives of the middle class and disenfranchised (from Why Is Madigan’s House Bill 4479 Unjust).

Until we do something about this polarization between the rich and the rest of us that protracts corrupt policy-making for “special-interests” patrons, where donations create obligations, allegiances and reciprocities, we will remain victims.   

And what should we say about the fact that unions are also "special interest" groups with lobbyists who have to compete like jockeys on a filthy "fixed" race track that is impossible to win because the legislative game is rigged by the highest bidder? What are we going to do about our quiet indifference and acquiescence that sustain this politically-bankrupt state of affairs?

“Unions, organizations formerly steeped in the doctrine of class struggle and filled with those who sought broad social and political rights for the working class, have been transformed into domesticated partners of the capitalist class. They have been reduced to simple bartering tools. The social demands of unions early in the twentieth century that gave the working class weekends off, the right to strike, the eight-hour day, and Social Security have been abandoned” (Chris Hedges).

Until we do something about our slowly weakening unions that continue to play this corrupt game of politics, thereby supporting either the Republican and Democratic parties which are one and the same “Money Party” corrupted by briberies (so-called campaign funding) made legal, we will remain victims (from “We Mean Business” = No Representative Democracy). 

“[Moreover, until we do something about House Speaker Michael] Madigan, [who] controls far more than just half of one of the three branches of Illinois government [and who] holds a second job as the chairman of the Democratic Party of Illinois [and controls all legislation in Illinois], a third as the boss of Chicago’s 13th Ward, and a fourth as a name partner and the chief rainmaker of Madigan & Getzendanner,  (Together, they make up what one former Cook County elected official calls ‘the Madigan Political Industrial Complex),’” we will remain victims of complicity (from Emperor Madigan).  

-Glen Brown