MADISON - ST. CLAIR RECORD

With all of the stories and statistics being furiously emailed around recently about job loss, businesses leaving, crushing debt, and unfunded obligations, you might think, as has often been said, that Illinois state government is broken.

You would be wrong. Illinois state government is generating precisely the results it was set up to generate.

In fact, I do not understand all the wailing. Given the structures of the public sector systems tasked with delivering education, health care, and transportation, the current outputs from these systems are nothing if not predictable.

You may have been analyzing the performance of these systems starting from the faulty premise that state government is your government. It is not.

The benefits derived from your money are not for you. The benefits are for them. The "them" are the Chicago Nine, the nine Chicago Democrats who live within approximately five square miles of one another and who control $70 billion worth of government and 125,000 public sector jobs in Illinois.

State government is about them, their functionaries, their nephews who need jobs, and their interests. They use just enough of your money to create a dependent and dependable voting base and they divvy up the rest.

So when you learn that the Chicago Public School system spends nearly $23,000 per high school graduate, more than twice the state average, do not be alarmed.

When you are told that despite spending millions of dollars to automate state tollways, employee headcount has actually gone up at the Illinois Toll Highway Authority, do not get upset.

When you hear that private sector workers with bankrupt pensions are financing public sector employees with multiple pensions, do not pay any attention.

Just rest easy knowing that state government is working out quite well for those it has been set up to benefit. And, uh, please do pay your taxes on time.