SCORCHED EARTH

If Tripping The Light Fat-tastic gets his way, there won't be much left when New Egypt enters the American Union or when Missouri annexes Illinois from roughly Vandalia south to Cairo.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker defended Sunday his cautious economic reopening plan, which leaves schools and many businesses shuttered until the novel coronavirus is all but defeated, saying the state will be unable to return to normal “until we’re able to eradicate it.”

Rockford will be stripped for parts.

“The truth is coronavirus is still out there. It hasn’t gone anywhere,” Mr. Pritzker said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “So we all are going to have to change the way we do things until we’re able to eradicate it.”

What's this "we" stuff, Lard Have Mercy?  Illinois to Big Fat Democrat: if "we all are going to have to change the way we do things," that means that you don't get to waddle off to Florida whenever the mood strikes you.  And flying in an airplane in the middle of a pandemic?  Are you out of your cholesterol-drenched mind?

Who do you think you are?  Chris Cuomo?  Oh that's right, you have a new "plan." 

The Democratic governor unveiled Wednesday his “Restore Illinois” five-phase reopening plan, prompting allegations that he had moved the goal from “bending the curve” to eliminating COVID-19 altogether by requiring a cure or vaccine before allowing the return of schools and non-essential businesses.

Not sure why anyone should pay attention to this plan since dude's last plan somehow found itself...contraindicated.  But Pritzker hasn't "moved the goalposts," as the Chicago Tribune believes.  Mike Madigan's Morbidly Obese Sock Puppet has changed the entire game.

In a staff editorial, the Chicago Tribune called his plan “cautious in the extreme,” noting that it bans reopening schools, barbershops, salons, gyms, bars and restaurants—and then with capacity restrictions — only after the advent of a vaccine, herd immunity, or an “effectively and widely available treatment.”

“Actually, he’s being more than just cautious. He has moved the goal posts,” said the editorial. “Pritzker’s latest plan extends the benchmarks for victory from bending the infection curve to defeating the virus altogether.”

I have not, retorted the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Governor, essentially admitting that he had done exactly what the Trib said he did.

Mr. Pritzker swung back by arguing, “If the Chicago Tribune thinks we can go back to completely normal without us having a very effective treatment or vaccine, they’re just dead wrong.”

Here's how this is going to go down, Your Corpulence.  The longer you keep kicking this can down the road (and right now, best case scenario for the Land of Lincoln is a couple of years.  And you don't have a couple of years), the more Illinois jobs are going to die and the more Illinois businesses are going to close their doors forever.  What idiot would be stupid enough to start or locate a business in Illinois right now?

Taxes?  Nice knowing you.  State revenue?  Buh-bye.  And don't get me started on Illinois state pensions.  What with all the people who will be drawing unemployment, and Lord knows how Springfield's going to afford to pay for all of those, the pension situation, which is untenable right now, will become unsolvable, absent a gigantic infusion of federal jack.

Which ain't happening.  Not if any American politician wants to win reelection anyway.

And this is where the civil war starts?  No, this is where the civil indifference starts. 

I can see some Illinois guy whose job is gone, whose bank account is emptying fast or whose business has just gone belly-up while he waited for some Springfield douche to decide that Everything Is All-Right.  Our guy's got nothing else on his plate at the moment so what are a few days in an Illinois slammer to him but some meals he doesn't have to pay for?

Of course, somebody's got to arrest him which means somebody can be there to film it which means material for freelance anti-Democratic Party campaign commercials from one end of this country to the other this fall, not just in Illinois.  Of course, the identities of the Illstapo supporters who arrest our guy and others like him as well as try their cases will be widely known.

If that happens often enough, if folks who live there begin to feel that living in Illinois is no longer a benefit, they will no longer vote to increase their state taxes, oppose any representative who votes for tax increases and sharply reduce any financial obligations to Springfield they have left.  Want to start the State of New Egypt and reduce "Illinois" to Chicago and its suburbs?  That'll be something historic, something that we can tell the grandkids about. 

Want to be annexed by Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana or all four?  Might as well; their money is still good and Springfield's dead in the water.  That's why any talk of a "civil war" any time soon in this situation would be silly.  Americans know that to have a top-shelf civil war, you have to give a damn.  And it's hard to fight a shooting war over a place no one cares about any longer.

UPDATE: Seemed appropriate.  The BBC breaks ranks.

UPDATE: Down in the comments, Frank postulates an interesting theory.

Theory time: On the assumption (quite possibly wrong) that Fatboy cannot really be this stupid, this whole exercise is actually an attempt to make the situation in Illinois so bad that even Trump and McConnell would have to endorse that massive Fed bailout. The real enchilada is, as you noted, the wildly over-promised and under-funded state, Cook County and Chicago pension systems, which were already beyond absurd before the CCP Flu showed up to make life fun again for lefty politicians. In other words, it’s all a show for DC.

That's not a crazy idea at all and no way would I put this kind of brinkmanship past Illinois Democrats.  After all, they've got a once-in-a-lifetime "crisis" so why not make good use of it?  Who knows when the next potentially-deadly pandemic will come around so why not get the Republicans to kill a whole lot of Democratic birds with one stone while we have the chance?

Here's one reason.  The idea of the Congress allocating billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to alleviate the effects of Democratic avarice and thievery in one state, a state they don't even live in, is probably not going to sit at all well with people who have lost jobs, businesses and/or their savings to the Chinese Flu.  And that's putting it mildly.

The ONLY way the Congress ought to even agree to debate this idea, never mind actually pass it, should contain a condition that Illinois federal and state Democrats would never accept.  Namely that if any funds are voted, federal and state Illinois elected officials are to have absolutely no say in how those moneys are spent or what they're spent on.

Or how any other federal moneys are spent or what those moneys are spent on.

For all practical purposes, Illinois is to resume territorial status, de facto and de jure.

If no federal funds are voted, the status quo is resumed.  If money is spent, Illinois must then reapply for statehood.  Maybe they're allowed back in, maybe a new state (or two) is carved out, maybe the place is shared out among Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin and/or Indiana or maybe the whole place is turned into an overflow parking lot for the Green Bay Packers.