House Speaker Mike Madigan, Gov. Bruce Rauner and everyone will shake hands and get to work saving our universities, needy people, health care, roads and all that, right?
"It's clear that any bill designed to help needy populations has a hard road to travel," said Representative Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat and chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee that is responsible for the program.
For the politician whose favorite sobriquet is "The Comeback Kid," Harlem, idolizing and insular, may well prove to be the ticket to redemption, an expiatory stop among the needy and historically abused along the road to Damascus.
They've forsworn taxes, many of them, but they also promised to educate children, to build roads, to care for the needy and to do all of those things government is expected to do.
But in general, we learn, the wealthy waste out of spoiled carelessness (like discarding imperfect crops or being rigid about expiration dates), the poor out of needy inadequacy (a lack of refrigeration or decent roads).
That's nearly 20 cents of every state dollar going to pay people who aren't working for us anymore, with 80 cents left for schools, roads, prisons, day care, health care for needy and on and on.
The Pentagon plans to continue airdropping packets of food into Afghanistan, military officials said this week, even though the United States plans to rebuild Afghan airbases and open roads that would allow much larger deliveries into needy areas.
Did the mayor really believe it was a good idea for police officers, emergency medical technicians and other public workers to man a road race instead of caring for the city's neediest?
The functions of the U.S. counties vary from state to state, but in most states they include law enforcement, judicial administration, road construction and maintenance, the provision of public assistance to the needy, and the recording of legal documents.
In ever needy Afghanistan, Al Rashid Trust is one of the biggest doers of good deeds, rebuilding roads, feeding the poor, providing limbs to amputees and supplying sewing machines to widows so they can eke out a living.
