J.B. Pritzker, Democrat billionaire, beat Governor Bruce Rauner, Republican billionaire.
Rauner, who served for four years, is a hard-right Republican.
Will Pritzker find a new path and act like a liberal Democrat or will he be Rauner-lite?
Here are Fred Klonsky’s wishes for J.B. Pritzker and the Democratic controlled Legislature of Illinois:
I am providing a list of new year’s resolutions for the new governor and the old legislative leaders.
An elected representative school board for Chicago.
The voters of Chicago have made their views clear that we want one. Every other school district in the state has the right to elect their school leaders. No hybrids. No ifs. No buts.
Pass a plan for a graduated income tax, leading to a constitutional amendment, and put it on the ballot.
The state’s revenue supply is not enough to pay the state’s bills with a system in which the richest and the poorest working people in the state pay the same income tax rate.
Repeal the 3% cap on pensionable teacher salaries.
Contract bargaining should return to a collective bargaining process between local school boards and teacher representatives.
Get rid of the Charter Commission.
The Charter Commission’s sole job is to overturn the decisions of local communities whether to have a charter school or not. Legislative attempts to restrict its power have failed. Now is the time to just get rid of it.
Repeal the private school tax credit.
As part of the budget deal with Governor Rauner, the Democrats agreed to a dollar for dollar tax credit for private and parochial schools. This was a deal hatched by Mayor Rahm, Rauner and Cardinal Cupich. In 2019 it should be unhatched.
Open the link and read them all!
I wish Governor Cuomo would read Fred Klonsky and follow his sound advice for New York!

Excellent plan. Any chance for a Public Education Charter to organize folks around a common agenda in prep for 2020? Fred’s agenda points the way to turning around the privatization policies of both parties.
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I don’t have much confidence in multi-millionaires and billionaires running for office and winning. It doesn’t matter if they are Democrats, Republicans, Independents, or libertarians.
Maybe there should be a law that once you are worth more than one million dollars, you can’t run for election or stay in office.
How many of the super rich turn out to care about the rest of us after they are elected?
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Suggest you read the wikipedia bio. In my opinion, Pritzker is not someone who should hold political power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Pritzker
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Laura, he does. And the only good thing to be said about Illinois is that Rauner was worse.
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Some day all of our leaders will be billionaires.
Then we will know that we have finally made it as a country.
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I thought all of our leaders were already billionaires. …. Oh, I forgot, Donald Trump isn’t a billionaire. He just lies and claims to be one. If DT farts, its a lie. If he belches, its a lie. If he snorts through his nose, it’s a lie. Each time he takes a breath, he lies twice. Once for the exhale and once for the inhale. When he eats or drinks, every time he swallows it is a lie.
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Yes, I wrote that knowing that Trump is not a real billionaire.
Actually, I have often wondered how many other alleged billionaires are not real. As we have seen with Trump, billionaire on paper does not mean much.
Faux News and Faux billionaires.
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So, as I understand your response to my blog post, because you think Pritzker should not be governor, now that he is, we
make no demands upon him?
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“I wish Governor Cuomo would read Fred Klonsky and follow his sound advice for New York!”
There you go again making assumptions … In this case, that Cuomo can read (to say nothing of follow sound advice)
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