Swami, you've been gone and your fans have missed you. Both of us. We thought you were gone for good. Thank goodness you're back. So what's up first on the plate of public policy and disputive disharmony? Signed, Dipsy in Deerfield
Ah, where to begin, Dip?
It seems to make so much sense that Swami is almost sure there's no chance for a bill being tossed around Springfield this week.
It would place on the November ballot the right of Illinois voters to recall their state officials through a petition/electoral process. It's not necessarily better than tar and feathers, but it is somewhat more orderly.
Naturally, the Guv is against it (though he claims au contraire in public which no one believes for a moment) and of course Chicago's Hizzoner thinks it's a bad idea, too. What? Democracy in Chicago? Can't conceive of such a thing.
Gosh, you think there's any connection between the jobs being done by Blago and Richie and the threat to their futures such a bill hints at? Hints? Hah! Almost guarantees.
Swami believes voters would rush like a stampede of crazed longhorns in the fall to vote for such a right, and then speed swiftly to the next voting booth and sign their hooves on a recall for the Guv.
Illinois is the only state in the union where voters wax poetic and longingly about the good old days of venerable burglar George Ryan. You can't long for the good old days without a good wax job.
Just think of it.
Under the proposed constitutional amendment, a recall election for state elected officials--governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, comptroller or treasurer--would require petition signatures equal to 12 percent of the most recent vote total for that office.
If I'm adding right, that means it would take 418,401 signatures to put a Blago recall on the ballot. Seems like an easy call to the Swami.
To get a recall vote for a state legislator would need signatures equal to 20 percent of the turnout for that office in the most recent election.
All this obvious benefit is exactly why Swami cannot decipher the crystal ball to see if it's going to pass.
With the state of political leadership in Illinois being what it is (which is to say comatose), it would seem to require more gumption than exists these days to actually pull off this trick. But Swami has been fooled before.
We shall see.
