Last week the Illinois Senate voted 39 to 11 to pass SJRCA 75, the dangerous Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the effort to amend the U.S. Constitution to say: “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”

This legislation is now in the Illinois House for consideration and debate.  State Representative Lou Lang (D-Skokie) is the chief sponsor.  

On Wednesday, Governor Pat Quinn dressed up the demands of a hostage-taker into a state budget address—again.

In advance of the permanently temporary personal and corporate income tax increases he imposed on Illinois in 2011, Quinn argued that without the tax increases, social service providers would suffer.

In fact, he would see to it that they did.

Quinn’s less than subtle message to the human services community was that if they wanted to avoid seeing the invoices they submitted to the state for services rendered put into the permanently permanent pay-no-mind bin in the Governor’s office they best fall in line.