Editorial Roundup: Illinois
Champaign News Gazette. August 30, 2023.
Editorial: Gallows humor no reason to send someone to gallows
Some jokes go over like a lead balloon but rarely fall so flat as to prompt a SWAT team to storm the joke-teller’s house to make an arrest.
But that’s exactly what happened to Waylon Bailey, a resident of Rapides Parish in Louisiana.
He thought the world could use a little gallows humor levity during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic — March 2020. So he made a Facebook post indicating the powers that be were overreacting to the threat.
His intent was to compare the pandemic to the zombie apocalypse from “World War Z,” a 2013 movie starring Brad Pitt.
It read as follows:
“SHARE SHARE SHARE!!!! JUST IN: RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER, IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH ‘THE INFECTED’ SHOOT ON SIGHT….Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt.”
It’s hard to know how the ordinary person would interpret that admonition — confusion, disgust, laughter.
But common-sense challenged officials at the sheriffs office responded by sending a dozen full armed and equipped SWAT team officers to arrest Bailey for making a “terrorist threat.”
What were they thinking? Perhaps the better question is whether they were thinking at all.
The local prosecutor knew better than to make a mountain out of this molehill. He refused to prosecute.
Bailey then filed a lawsuit alleging a breach of his constitutional rights, only to watch a federal trial judge dismiss his claim on the grounds that the responsible officials enjoyed qualified immunity.
If that’s not bad enough, the judge concluded — incredibly — that Bailey’s arrest was warranted because he “may very well intended to incite lawless action.”
Last week, a federal appeals court panel reversed the dismissal and stated the obvious.
The three-judge panel said there were “no facts that would lead a reasonable person to believe that Bailey’s post caused sustained fear. No members of the public expressed any type of concern. Even if the post was taken seriously, it is too general and contingent to be a specific threat.”
A simple reading of part of Bailey’s message — “weneedyouBradPitt” — should have made that clear.
“The post did not direct any person or group to take any unlawful action immediately or in the near future. ... at worst, his post was a joke in poor taste, but it cannot be read as intentionally directed to incitement,” the appeals court stated.
News accounts of the appeals court ruling have characterized the decision as another victory for free speech — effectively the right to tell a joke.
If so, it’s a victory that comes at great cost — traumatic arrest, adverse publicity, years of litigation. What this whole affair demonstrates is the absence of reason on the part of some of those with too much power.
It seems clear that Bailey will win his lawsuit — if it goes to trial. He’ll probably be offered a generous out-of-court settlement that will come at taxpayer expense.
His constitutional rights were not just violated — arrest and jailing without probable cause — but smashed flatter than a pancake. Circumstances, perhaps, could have been worse, but not by much.
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Chicago Tribune. September 3, 2023.
Editorial: Want to snag an effective tax cut? Stay out of all the new Illinois casinos.
When riverboat casinos first opened in Illinois in the early 1990s, the state’s most powerful politicians were conspicuous by their absence. The lure of government money flowing from gamblers had proved too much to resist, but no politician wanted to be photographed dropping coins into a slot machine.
There were no speeches in front of the blackjack tables. When the big-time pols did show up, they cut a ribbon and bolted. No time even to hit the buffet. Too risky, given the public ambivalence about turning casinos into something people found in their hometowns.
Contrast that with what happened in downstate Illinois on Aug. 25 when Gov. J.B. Pritzker heralded the arrival of the new Walker’s Bluff Casino Resort in the Carterville area in southern Illinois.
Not only did the governor speechify at the opening of the state’s 14th casino — a bigger number than many people realize — but he did so at the elbow of his lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton. This was a sufficiently important event for both of them to show up, even though casinos (some in temporary facilities) have been coming hard and fast in the Land of Lincoln.
The recent ribbon-cutting follows the openings of the Hard Rock Casino in November 2021 in Rockford and the American Place Casino in February 2022 in Waukegan, as well as the Golden Nugget in June in Danville.
Chicago, of course, is up next, with a temporary casino slated to open — possibly in the next two weeks — in the Medinah Temple in Chicago’s River North neighborhood and a massive permanent operation to follow in a couple of years on the site of the Tribune’s Freedom Center printing plant.
You can expect heaps of media coverage and columnizing on the merits of Chicago’s first casino, especially since it needs to establish itself as nice, safe and crime-free. The Bally’s casino, eventually, will be the state’s largest such operation, but it will hardly be the newest for long. The 70,000-square-foot Wind Creek Chicago Southland casino is purportedly coming in early 2025 to East Hazel Crest with, the casino currently says, 1,350 slot machines, 56 table games, entertainment, dining and a 252-room hotel.
“Building winning moments” is Wind Creek’s slogan.
Yeah, right. Building plenty of losing moments, too.
“Hospitality, jobs, economic development — that is what today’s announcement represents,” a cheerful Pritzker said in Carterville, with the slots as his backdrop.
The new downstate casino also represents big money for the state. Each casino is required to contribute one-time fees to the Pritzker administration’s Rebuild Illinois fund within 30 days of opening. For Walker’s Bluff Casino Resort, that sum reportedly amounts to a hefty $25.3 million in upfront cash.
We’ve no problem with legal gambling, a fun leisure activity for people who can afford to partake and can manage to do so in moderation. But that upfront money has to be clawed back from somewhere, and in the case of the Carterville casino, it will come in part from the people of that community, where the median income for a household in the city at the last census report was $36,969 and the median income for a family was $44,722.
In Carterville, according to the 2020 census, some 15% of the population currently find themselves living below the poverty line. That means plenty of people living right by this casino who have very little disposable income.
There are jobs and economic development coming, for sure, and there is no doubt the new flow of revenue for the state, but there also will be Illinoisans who are losers.
Our advice is to the good people of Carterville, and elsewhere in downstate Illinois, is to note that this casino is projected to be so lucrative for its investors that they were willing to make an upfront payment of $25.3 million just to snag the license. And that’s before the ongoing tax that the owners have to pay on what casinos euphemistically call the “hold.”
We’ve already complained about how the original riverboats, approved in the 1990s with a promise to revitalize struggling downtowns in cities such as Aurora and Joliet, have abandoned that promise without any meaningful pushback. And we’re still wondering what pending exits from those downtown areas (yet more new casinos!) will do to those two urban cores.
That’s certainly something Pritzker and the state should be thinking about, along with jobs and revenue. These are developments that extract their pound of flesh.
Regular Illinoisans might want to consider that when the state comes up with a massively expanded revenue stream like that from casinos, one way to avoid contributing is simply to stay away and find something better to do with your money. That way, you get the benefit of the casino’s hefty new contribution to the state coffers without actually having to pay anything yourself. Illinois does not have to be rebuilt on your back.
Effectively, staying out of an Illinois casino can be just as a good as a tax cut.
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Arlington Heights Daily Herald. September 1, 2023.
Editorial: Secretary of State’s Skip the Line program promises a real improvement in customer service.
One of the reasons Democrat Jesse White held onto the Secretary of State’s office for so long is because of his outsize personality and likability. Had he decided to run for another term, he likely would have won it last year -- at age 88.
The office itself hadn’t changed dramatically during his 24-year tenure, mind you, although wait times seemed to have improved at driver’s license facilities.
His successor, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, however, in a short time has initiated a number of changes that will provide greater speed and convenience for the wide array of people who interact with the office, including all of us drivers.
Ask anyone for a list of frustrating experiences, and odds are good that waiting in line at the DMV is right up there.
Today marks the start of the Secretary of State’s Skip The Line program, whose aim is to reduce wait time by requiring scheduled appointments for those who have to be there and expanding business hours at DMV locations. It also allows for many routine tasks to be performed online rather than in line at a DMV facility.
Skip The Line includes renewing your driver’s license or state-issued ID online or ordering a new license plate sticker by going to ilsos.gov;
The busiest DMVs in the state, including Aurora, Deerfield, Des Plaines, Elgin, Lake Zurich, Lombard, Naperville, Schaumburg and St. Charles, will require reservations for in-person services, such as getting a REAL ID, which requires a number of types of identification and proof of residence, or taking a driver’s test.
You can visit the website or call (844) 817-4649 to make an appointment.
No more running to the local DMV over lunch to get a quick license renewal to find that you’ll never get out of there in time and ending up being late getting back to work, abandoning the line when it’s clear you won’t get back in time or not getting a chance to eat lunch.
You’ll be able to find a time and day that works best for you -- or at least have the confidence that if you have to leave work to go to the DMV, you’ll be in and out quickly.
What the Secretary of State’s office has needed for decades is a greater attention to the needs of its customers, and this will go a long way in improving on that record.
However, not everyone is anticipating smooth sailing -- or is merely throwing cold water on the idea before it even begins.
Dave Syverson, a Republican state representative from suburban Rockford, said, “I am not convinced that this approach will offer all residents an improved experience,” he wrote in a news release.
Sure, this limits one’s sense of spontaneity.
But we can’t imagine how taking a system based on managing a mob, requiring people to start lining up hours before the DMV opens and changing it to one in which people can better manage their time can be a bad thing.
We call sour grapes.
END