patrick.net

thunderlips11 says

Are Cook County state legislators so dominant, they always control a majority in the Illinois legislature? Enough to wholly control two Senators without compromise with any help from other power centers there?

Yeah, right now they have more than half the power in Springfield. And, if they want to play hardball, 51% of the power would let them choose 100% of the two senators.

thunderlips11 says

I doubt Cook County would be happy about Federal Mandates that they had to come up with the money to fund, instead of getting the funding to go with the mandate. Or instructing their Senator to refuse to vote for the bill unless it included such funding.

Politicians care about voter finances less than the voters themselves care. Any one around here who pays attention is aware of some of the special deals and favoritism which is hitting us in the pocketbook right now. Property taxes have doubled in the last decade and we have the highest retail sales tax in the nation. Yet, somehow, the total government debts here total over 100 billion dollars. 100 BILLION! At least corporate taxes are going down and down. The Cook County pols have done a masterful job of screwing their own constituents for their own benefit and, for the right deal, they'll sell us out in the Senate too.

What's going on? To oversimplify things, the most powerful politician in Illinois now is the Speaker of the House. Not only can he bottle up legislation but he has an enormous campaign fund in which he can reward his pals. He gets huge campaign contributions even though he's in a 100% safe district. The fact that he heads the most influential tax appeal firm in the state sure doesn't hurt, either. It's widely believed he slates the patsies who reliably fall to loyal Republicrats.

Most voters don't follow this sort of political complexity. They vote for the best sounding name or the guy with the best haircut or somebody who they imagine would be their coolest drinking buddy. Or they vote against the guy whose grandparents came from the wrong country or the bald guy or that guy who's doing the Devil's work.

But, everyonce in a while, the general dissatisfaction with a politician will reach a critical mass of outrage. Curiously, the average voter finds some minor sex scandal to be far more offensive than finding himself being economically pimped out to special interest groups.

But, if we're really mad at Senator X, we vote against Senator X. Simple enough.

thunderlips11 says

ecause current rules allowed Cook County Democrats to not only back a Senator, but help him to the highest office in the land...

At worst, it'll be the same as now :)

When Barack Obama was a Senator, he was, in a slight way, accountable to me. That slight accountability would be gone if he was accountable only to an organization which gets to play by it's own rules.