•April 20, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

When I was a kid, we played a game called “king of the hill.” One boy at the top of a heap of some sort would fend off others who tried to pull him down and replace him.

That’s pretty much the game of life as well. Our DNA, forged millennia ago, drives us still today to play king of the hill.

Media mogul Ted Turner said that money is how we keep score of who is winning in this game of life. And so it is in Illinois, its government and politics, always individualistic in the extreme.

This self-interest has led to our current budget impasse.

On the one side, we have Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, a small government guy (an insider tells me the governor has staff around him who “hate government”). Rauner and his uber-wealthy friends want to whack government because they see it as needlessly draining wealth from the individual.

In sharp contrast, many Democrats such as House speaker Mike Madigan are career politicians quite comfortable with government. Indeed, many have increased their wealth through government.

For example, for almost half a century Madigan has been piling up money at his property tax appeal law firm, as deep-pocketed clients have come to him almost solely because of the speaker’s role as a political power broker.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.