Talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Campaigning in a Carhartt work jacket and an $18 watch, near-billionaire businessman Bruce Rauner waltzed into the governor’s mansion by spending a record $22.7 million of his own money on attack ads. Since then, he’s ruthlessly slashed social programs while opposing higher taxes for the wealthy. As a strategy to force Democrats in Springfield to pass legislation gutting union rights, he’s currently refusing to sign off on a state budget, which means we can’t even pay lottery winners. The silver lining is that Rauner has more-or-less pulled the plug on the Illiana, a pet project of his predecessor Pat Quinn. This highway boondoggle slated for the area south of the metro region would have destroyed farmland and induced suburban sprawl, as well as putting taxpayers on the hook for $500 million in borrowing.
