Chi Trib on Saturday is its best day. Today’s editorials, for instance, get right to the heart of their matters, offering data not blather and making a reader think. The first is about the rude, crude dunces in our state senate arguing their need for a pay raise, or rather Sen. Rickey Hendon, who gets ugly talking to reporters.
The state house rejected the pay raise 94-8. Hendon, chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, says they want one but won’t admit it, and in fact want to “pimp” the senators, i.e. get them to do the dirty work, presumably as a true-life pimp gets whores to do it. On the other hand, a pimp is a sales rep, I thought, for women who need them to find higher-paying customers. (Looking for help on this one.)
He also slammed his presumed colleague, Sen. Susan Garrett, who apparently is rich and has a big house. “Have you seen her house? Go up there. Mind-boggling.” Garrett, he said, is among “the filthy rich [who] are always the ones saying, hey, we don’t need the raise.”
As opposed, for instance, to senate president Emil Jones, who earlier complained: “I need a pay raise! I need a pay raise!” and added jocularly to reporters this day, “I’ve got to get me some food stamps.” The senate crown sits easily on that man’s head.
Garrett to reporters in self-defense:
This bill should not be reflective of what kind of money legislators have in the bank. . . . It should be reflective . . . of letting taxpayers know that we believe we deserve a raise or don’t deserve a raise. It should not be personal.
As for the pay-raise:
[S]ome of the legislators have missed the point, if they think they need the raise because, you know, they’re not making $150,000 a year. We’re here as public servants and we’re not here to assume we should be entitled to be receiving major increases every year when the rest of the state and other state employees are suffering.
The Trib concludes that the senate should reject the pay raise, adding that if the pay were performance-based, “they’d be sending the money back to the taxpayers.”
Oddly, this conclusion is not posted. Neither is the second editorial, “Rose Bowl secrets.” So buy the paper.
Later: The conclusion has been posted, but the 2nd editorial remains a hard-copy-only treasure.
Blithe Spirit 