Letter: Enough is enough

Illinois sits at a perilous and very dangerous crossroads.

The challenges facing our state government are complex, nuanced, immense and daunting.

In the past 40 years, we’ve seen many elected officials convicted on corruption charges, we’ve endured repeated and ongoing fiscal mismanagement of our tax dollars, our property taxes are among the highest on planet Earth, our educational system is mortally stressed and violent crime is the worst it’s been in three generations.

Our state has lost its way. Government leaders exhibit no moral or ethical compass or conscience. There is no leadership, creativity, innovation or consensus building.

At what point does the electorate in the once proud Land of Lincoln rise up and say “enough is enough”?

Gov. JB Pritzker is the latest iteration of a tax and spend placeholder who caters to a Democratic Party focusing on the self-preservation of power and jobs. It’s a coordinated, planned (and now), well-rehearsed strategy perfected through generations of fine-tuning the Chicago-based Democratic machine.

Gov. Pritzker and our long-blue statehouse members don’t even need a single Republican lawmaker to assemble a quorum and pass legislation.

Think about that.

Decades of Michael Madigan’s tactics have no doubt contributed to this super-majority in the General Assembly. Federal prosecutors leveled nearly two dozen charges against Madigan last year.

Democrat officials in Illinois state government operate free from checks and balances. This is hardly what our constitutional founding fathers envisioned when they painstakingly penned the framework of our democracy.

Yet Illinois voters keep electing Democrats. And, things just keep getting worse. Why is it so difficult for the Illinois voter to make that connection?

Brian J. Sterling

Cary