Capital Facts

    Gov. Bruce Rauner regularly attempts to "go over the heads" of the news media and talk directly to the public without any journalistic filters.  Usually for people in his particular position, that's just not possible.  Governors aren't presidents, after all.  They can't deliver "Oval Office" addresses that are carried live by television networks or give stump speeches that cable news networks regularly broadcast.  They don't have millions of Twitter followers or Facebook video watchers.

    As we've all seen over the past several months, Gov. Bruce Rauner is adamantly refusing to provide any help whatsoever to Chicago, which is struggling mightily under the weight of years of fiscal misfeasance, until his Turnaround Agenda demands are met. A long-sought education funding reform bill, a 911 emergency call center fee, even a bill to allow the expedited sale of the Thompson Center have been hit with Rauner's broad (and often false) brush of being a "Chicago bailout."

A new statewide poll finds that strong opposition to an income tax hike to solve the state's budget problems significantly eases when the tax increase is coupled with a property tax freeze.

    The thin-skinned, strong-arm Statehouse partisanship of the past two and a half years reached out and infected the Illinois Conference of Women Legislators' annual fundraising gala last week.