By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner | Wirepoints
Love Trump or hate him, he won on an agenda to disrupt the country’s broken border, the economy, and how Washington itself works. But even as many Trump detractors soften their stance against him, agreeing that too much has gone too far in America, Illinois is going the other way. Gov. J.B. Pritzker and leaders of the Democratic party are working hard to Trump-proof Illinois. They, their public sector union allies and a friendly media don’t want any disruption of their ironclad control over Illinois, never mind the continuing decline of the state.
Now, we’re not arguing for Trump to come and directly target Illinois for disruption, though we’ll benefit from much of what the president does at the federal level. Disruption at the border, great. We’ll happily accept the relief. Disruption of the massive, distortionary green energy subsidies, also great. Illinoisans’ energy costs have been jumping of late. Disruption of the rules and actions that limit free speech and force feed DEI on our institutions. Absolutely. Good riddance to the cancel culture of the past few years.
But the real disruption Illinois needs is local and Illinois-specific. We don’t need Trump for that. We don’t need the feds. We don’t need outsiders. What we need is for us to do it ourselves. Ordinary Illinoisans disrupting what’s wrong with our state. Dismantling the laws that now make Illinois an extreme outlier on the many fiscal, economic and demographic issues that matter most.
That disruption starts with clawing back the extreme powers that state legislators have given the public sector unions over the last few decades – in exchange for support at the ballot box. There’s perhaps no other state in the country where the politicians and the public unions are more intertwined than Illinois. Take Chicago, where the unions and the politicians have become one and the same: Brandon Johnson is a CTU boss, the head of Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago mayor all in one.
It’s gotten so bad that Illinoisans are now subservient to their public servants.
How about disruption at Illinois’ failed schools, where 1.1 million of the state’s public school children can’t read at grade level? We’ve written ad nauseam about how Illinois’ education system gave up long ago on ensuring kids learn how to read and do math. It’s not an exaggeration, as we wrote recently in Fresh data: Illinois officials graduate record 88% of students despite tragic literacy, numeracy rates.
The disruption must be 100% universal school choice, like what’s happening all around Illinois. Universal choice means any family – of any race and any means – that wants to send their kid to a school of their choice can access an $8,000-$10,000 voucher or an education savings account. Imagine a single mom in Decatur being able to take her kid out of the Decatur Public Schools, where just 10% of all kids read at grade level, and to try instead a private school obsessed with reading and learning.
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