Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker delivered what Shia Kapos at Politico (screenshot below) described as a 'combined State of the State and Budget Address' to the Illinois General Assembly in Springfield .   For the most part (and despite the early days of blogging being *in* politics), I have veer'd my blog into the [garden diary] lane and out of the [politics] lane. But, I was struck by the moment this week in Illinois.  Shia's column (or newsletter) lead with Pritzker's speech and how MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was so inspired by Governor Pritzker's speech that she 'opened her show playing three minutes of it." Screenshot of Politico Illinois newsletter about Pritzker's budget address I am not a state budget expert (nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night ), but I've read some of the coverage coming out of the speech and there's certainty some good news and some...well...not so good news.  At least for Illinois and Illi...

A few weeks back, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a bill that provides for a path to create a new State of Illinois flag .  Redesigning government flags has been *a thing* for a while - which can be directly traced back to this TED Talk by Roman Mars on vexillology .  And....he was right:  government flags are terrible - with a few exceptions.  Since that TED talk, there's been a bunch of movement(s) to bring new flags forward - all of which have been signficant improvements on the previous (usually low-thought, ugly flags with writing on them).   The Illinois flag - which features the seal of the state - is one of those terrible flags.  It has all the marks of a terrible flag (per Roman Mars):  has too many colors, has tiny symbols that are hard to see when flying on a tall pole and (I think the worst of bad-flag sins) has writing on it.  Now...the State of Illinois has PLENTY of big and signficant problems and the state flag SHOULD be ...

Early this morning, the folks at ProPublica Illinois released a widget that documents the fundraising and spending of the gubernatorial candidates in Illinois .  Well...it shows most of the candidates - the ones who are *in* the race with a shot at winning their respective primary.  I'm embedding their widget below.  ( Also...one cute thing to mention here:  the url of the story is at: their domain/nerds/story.  Nice touch, right?? ) Loading... There's obviously some interesting things going on here in the race ( like JB Pritzker's burn rate ?!?) that smarter and more tuned in political people can provide context on, but the reason I'm posting this is that it reminds me of the old days. The old days?  Yeah...like back in the mid-aughts when there were plenty of local bloggers - and specifically local political bloggers - that had their own little homesteads on the Web .  That's when I fell in love with the Web and met so many people ...