Illinois is the new California

Under left-leaning Governor Quinn, who was lieutenant governor before his recent election, Illinois is now among the top 10 biggest government default risks in the world, behind not only California, but also Kazakhstan and Botswana, for example.

Per CMA Datavision, credit defaults swaps recently were $309,100 per $10 million in debt. This is consonant with what happened in socialist California, and where, after Democrat Gray Davis was elected in 1999, he turned what was then the sixth largest economy in the world, with a $12 billion dollar surplus, into a state that had more red ink than all the other 49 states combined at the time.

Unfortunately, we are almost all “California” now — and particularly Illinois. The California socialist experiment has always taken every single state or country that has ever tried it into poverty, and of course, it will not be the Learjet liberals in Hollywood who suffer, nor any of the other politically correct rich (think Martha's Vineyard on the other coast), but rather those least positioned to protect themselves, while at the same destroying the business and entrepreneurial environment whereby “regular folk” can work their way up the ladder.

Compassion? As Dr. Arthur Brooks has written, if liberals even gave blood at the rate of conservatives, there would be approximately 50 percent more blood available to hospitals. People can do a thousand times more, with a million times more love, for 1 percent of the money, than the government can even think of doing do with its Dept. of Motor Vehicles type “compassion.”

Lessen the inefficient nanny state and leave us our money, so we can help others directly.

Jim Vanne

Aurora