What a Mope

Daley has GOT to love having this goof around to take all the heat off him and his shenanigans:

• Facing criticism from both parties, Gov. Blagojevich went before skeptical House members today to make a last-ditch appeal for his proposed $7.6 billion gross receipts business tax and warned of “devastating” budget cuts if the plan isn't passed.

  “We can do this and do big things for the people of our state, or we can sit back and do nothing,” Blagojevich told the full Illinois House.

$7.6 billion in new taxes on businesses that businesses are just going to pass along. And where will all this new tax money go?

• “Schoolteachers will have to be laid off because school districts won’t have the money they need to be able to fund our schools. New textbooks won’t come because the school districts won’t have the money they need. Football teams might not get the uniforms at their high school football games because we don’t have the money we ought to have for our schools.”

Oh yes, the schools. Rod? Successive governors have been throwing money at the teacher unions for years and we still haven't seen commensurate increases in test scores, graduation rates, literacy achievement, etc. Paraphrasing Reagan, this state isn't in trouble because taxes are too low - it's in trouble because it spends too much on fixed political games, crooked contracts, insane golden parachutes for certain political animals and an entire litany of failed social programs. This ought to fail, and fail badly.