Wow! "All living former presidents of Peru are either in prison or under investigation for corruption charges."
Well, to maintain the tradition, Illinois voters doubled down, and just did this:
>"... As Chicago's longest serving alderman faces prison time, his spouse will become the state's most powerful judge.
The state's high court justices on Sept. 10 elected Justice Anne Burke to chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, succeeding former Chief Justice Lloyd A. Karmeier. (snip)
Burke's rise to chief justice comes while her husband, 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke, faces a 14-count indictment on federal corruption charges.
In January, federal prosecutors accused the alderman of attempting to extort
the owners of a Burger King franchise in his ward by withholding a remodeling permit
in order to pressure them to hire his private law firm to handle their property tax appeals.
..." [1]
[1]( https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/illinois_suprem...)
Frequently overheard conversation:
"Oh hey, I'm from Illinois, too!".
"Oh yeah? Where from?"
"I grew up in Naperville."
"... Oh, you're from Chicago," which might be said with or without judgement but is meant as a clarification; I'm from Illinois, you're from the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area or 'Chicago' for short. Other than the Cubs, the Bears, the Bulls, Budweiser, and WGN on basic cable, we share nothing culturally with you. You don't know how to drive, run an airport, or talk good. What's with the pizza and the green river?
If it were up to me we'd have like 100+ states so that people don't have to deal with sharing a state with and potentially get told what to do by some jerks that they have nothing in common with. I usually pick NY as my poster child example but IL works too.
Edit: Down-voting me won't make Chicago and downstate reconcile their differences.
It’d be great for the vast majority of Americans but is probably unlikely to happen because the people spending the most money will convince the primarily poor and less well educated rural populace that they’ll be giving up their votes and it’ll diminish their power despite an almost universal lack of satisfaction with our Congress among Americans of all shades and stripes.
They’re forever in popular culture and music seen as being the heart of the political machine.
Obama's involvement in the matter was hotly debated at the time.
*Even they profit from their office and do favors using the office but it's not a quid pro quo.
From that standpoint there's something to be said about getting [away from] private donations for election campaigns. The odds that the incoming president has already been bought and paid for before the votes are even tallied is quite high.
Of course campaign time is already probably too late. Who is going to be encouraged to run in the first place?
Edit: accidentally inverted a sentence.