Despite having lost the Democratic presidential nomination, “the Bernie revolution” will continue with the “next phase” launching nationwide Wednesday night.
Some 2,600 watch parties and meetings are set to take place across the country tonight as former Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) addresses thousands of his supporters to “lay out some of the next steps we can take as a movement to empower a wave of progressive candidates this November and win the major upcoming fights for the values we share,” according to Our Revolution President Jeff Weaver, who also served as Sanders’ presidential campaign manager.
During his first State of the State address on Wednesday, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner proposed raising the state’s minimum wage to $10 over seven years, pushed his plan for right-to-work zones and vowed to keep his campaign promise to increase education funding. Progress Illinois provides highlights from Rauner’s speech and rounds up reaction to his agenda for the state.
The financing of political campaigns is one area where the gap
between what voter’s want and what the law of the land is appears vast.
In last week’s election, there were referenda in Illinois and across the country calling for nothing less than an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in order to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. Yet U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) pretty much acknowledged to Crain’s Chicago Business that Congress has no interest in passing campaign finance reform laws.
The 2010 U.S. Supreme Court case Citizens United v. the Federal Election
Commission did not just increase money in politics. It galvanized a
fierce backlash to federal campaign finance laws that, thanks to the
ruling, acknowledged “corporate personhood” – the idea that corporations
have the same First Amendment, and campaign contribution, rights as
individuals.
Illinois is synonymous with political corruption, but a new study gives hope to the Land of Lincoln. Illinois has the seventh strongest campaign finance laws in the country, according to a report released yesterday by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington, D.C. government watchdog.
As with a CPI study Progress Illinoisexamined
in February on overall public corruption by state, the campaign finance
report is not concerned with past shenanigans but current law, and
Illinois ranks well on both citizen access to financial records, and decently on
rules placed on the financing of political parties and individual
candidates.
Despite having lost the Democratic presidential nomination, “the Bernie revolution” will continue with the “next phase” launching nationwide Wednesday night.
The financing of political campaigns is one area where the gap
between what voter’s want and what the law of the land is appears vast.
Illinois is synonymous with political corruption, but a new study gives hope to the Land of Lincoln. Illinois has the seventh strongest campaign finance laws in the country, according to a