Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, July 21,2011

How Stand for Children snuck into the Statehouse

Stand for Children’s national director Jonah Edelman spoke a little too freely at an Aspen Institute event this month. Edelman openly bragged about how his group had outfoxed the teachers

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, July 14,2011

Why Quinn canceled union pay raises

By Rich Miller

There are lots of different angles to Gov. Pat Quinn’s highly controversial decision to unilaterally refuse to pay scheduled, contractual pay raises to unionized state employees, so let’s

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, July 7,2011

The counts they didn’t get Blago on

By Rich Miller

While Rod Blagojevich’s jury found him guilty on 17 felony counts last week, jurors found him not guilty on one count and deadlocked on two others. Not much has been written about those other co

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, June 30,2011

The Senate president’s side of the budget story

By Rich Miller

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton has received a lot of bad press, sharp condemnation from Republicans and even some quiet criticism from his own members over the past month. But Cullerton made

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, June 23,2011

Why the Senate Dems backed down on spending

By Rich Miller

Gov. Pat Quinn was willing to offer up only the tiniest of face-saving possibilities to the Illinois Senate Democrats last week: Drop your budget demands, and we’ll talk about them this fall, bu

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, June 16,2011

Why legislators may be back in July

By Rich Miller

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton says he had a simple message for House Republican Leader Tom Cross in the waning hours of the spring legislative session: “See you in July.”As you

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, June 9,2011

Madigan wins workers’ comp battle

By Rich Miller

In all the years I’ve covered Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, he has never allowed his chamber’s Republican minority leader to best him. A minority leader might score a win here an

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, June 2,2011

Quinn is out of touch on budget

By Rich Miller

Shortly after Gov. Pat Quinn introduced a budget this year which was way out of balance, called for even higher taxes and increased state spending, the General Assembly decided to ignore him.That was

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, May 26,2011

Too much mapmaking mischief

By Rich Miller

Statehouse paranoia and angst are always at an all-time high every 10 years in Springfield.Why? The new state legislative district maps are drawn, and that highly political process always involves gen

Politics - Rich Miller | Thursday, May 19,2011

Corporations make Illinois pay to keep them here

By Rich Miller

With the economy the way it is, just about every state in the country is frantically scrambling to keep their local corporations from leaving, or attracting new jobs by doling out huge government ince