Mm-hmm.

Driving around with ballots on the floorboard of the car, just left them out there.

People took pictures of ballots on the floorboard of his, of his chief judge... or, uh, his, uh, chief, uh, deputy clerk's car.

And, and here we are now...

And by the way, this is his second screw-up so far this year.

I mean, this thing hasn't even really even started.

But he actually, uh, all of the ballots, all of them are screwed up because he's got the county clerk in the wrong position, which who the heck cares about it being in the wrong position? Except that, oops, the, the, the machine that counts them wasn't counting them correctly because it was in the wrong position.

Yep, yep.

And so where do we stand with this whole higher education funding system?

Well, as you know, there is a push to change the entire model of which higher ed is funded, which, by the way, I think you do need to change because what we're doing now is crazy.

We just simply add a percentage or subtract a percentage, you know, every year, depending on what the budget says.

Some years you're up 2%, some years you're down 3%, but there's actually no... on how well you're doing or educational attainment of students graduating or do the students have jobs waiting for them when they do graduate.

It's just, you know, here's, you know, oh, it's a good year, here's some more.

Oh, it's a bad year, we're going to take some away.

I mean, but it has nothing to do with quality or, you know, there's no contextual relationship to anything related to actual educational attainment of the students.

But you know what's lacking in the article shaping as any information about how much it's actually costing rate payers and taxpayers to subsidize this because we know it wouldn't happen without a huge subsidy and that's the problem here and the idea that they still are going to decarbonize illinois meanwhile all around us all the other states are running power plants with the carbon footprints and this is just such a joke but i mean they are applauding they're patting themselves on the back for another 600 megawatts of new utility scale energy storage project projects that'll be online by 2030 come on

I don't think that's working in the wake of this Carol Amon's indictment.

So, listen, what's interesting about this is apparently the governor's defense was, well, we said no to her daughter getting on the payroll several years ago, right? So then the question becomes, well, wait a minute, if you knew that she was trying this several years ago, how many other grants did you authorize after that? And why did you not verify or look into or check into during that time, the status of where the actual dollars were going.

Now, look, the other thing, too, is, let's be clear, these are allegations.

She's been charged.

She's entitled to defend herself in court and have a jury hear the facts and weigh the evidence, all that.

What I think, though, is clearly on display is that that grants, and you see them all the time, every session, you know, the budget suddenly goes, oh, look at that, there's another $300 million that pops in at the last minute, right before it gets voted on, of all these Port Member Initiative projects.

You know, come out of nowhere.

That's when they said they were going to decide whether or not you were going to have a special session.

And what were you doing, sir?

Yeah, this is honestly the most...

I haven't done that in a long time, but we're doing these America 250 citations to the people, places... groups that have given greatly to the history of our state and to the history of our country.

And so I kicked it off for the 4th of July.

We went to the Tuscola American Legion pancake breakfast and gave them a citation and had all the... you know, recognized all the veterans that are there at the pancake breakfast and just went from there to Charleston's American Legion pancake breakfast and kept going.

We had Casey, we had Hinesboro fire department, Mansoon fire, uh, Diane, uh, I know near and dear to your heart over in Paris, we hit the challenger league volunteers.

They put on a July 4th tournament every year for the, for the challenger kids over there, um, recognize them.

Would you want people to connect with your office suggesting people or things that are happening?

You essentially said we've had a tremendous growth in spending, a tremendous growth in new taxes, and really the state has nothing to show for it in terms of economic and job growth.

That's right, and listen, I think it's important to take a step back from this budget.

Well, yes, it's the biggest one ever, and yes, there's $800 million in additional taxes, but you've got to look at J.B. Pritzker's entire eight years in office.

This is the end of his second term.

This is his eighth budget.

And when you look at the cumulative impact, spending is up $16 billion, 40% increase in spending in just eight years in the state budget, 40 plus taxes and fees he's raised on the people of Illinois, okay? So across the board, when you look at what this guy's doing, if more taxes and bigger government actually helped people, Wouldn't everybody in Illinois be happy right now? I mean, my goodness, 40% increase in spending, 40 plus taxes have been raised.

I mean, if prosperity, if you found prosperity through bigger government and more taxes on people, then Illinois ought to be just, you know, we ought to be, you know, living it up right now.

You're not the right color.

In

your left pocket.

they're taking $150 million of the sales tax on gasoline, which is far more, you pay far more in sales tax than a penny, but kind of taking $150 million of that out of your left pocket and spending it on welcome centers for illegals and illegal health care.

So $150 million goes out of your right pocket.

So when you do the net-net on that, you're still net negative as a consumer, as a citizen.

Even with giving your penny back, thank you guys for our penny, you're still in that negative.

You're still losing more money than you're gaining.

Is that true?