The Democratic Governor of Illinois is a billionaire

[Otto Lidenbrock]

J.B. Pritzker holds more private wealth than any other governor in U.S. history and is the second-wealthiest U.S. politician to have ever held office, after Michael Bloomberg.

He also has accomplished several progressive ideas in his first year in office.

- Becoming the first midwest state to adopt $15/hr minimum wage.

- Legalized marijuana.

- Locked in Women's reproductive health rights by repealing a 1970s law that punished doctors for performing "unnecessary" abortions and signing a new Reproductive Health bill into law when at the same time other states were stepping up draconian bills for Roe vs Wade to be overturned.

- Legalised sports betting allowing the business to be regulated and no longer underground plus pumps money into the local economy.

- Proposal to make an amendmemt to state constitution and implement a progressive income tax rate passed the state legislature and will be put to voters next year.

- Signed an executive order expanding access to welcome centers in Illinois for immigrants and refugees. Welcome centers help guide immigrants on a path to citizenship and refugees with access to health care, education, jobs, and legal services.

- Signed bill to make Illinois the first state in the country to ban private immigration detention centers.

- Signed bill that forbids state and local police to cooperate with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to deport illegal immigrants.

- Signed Illinois to the U.S. Climate Alliance which is an initiave by governors who want to fight climate change even if the White House doesn't.

- Signed bill allowing the state to take its own action in fighting climate change, repealing past law.

- Passed a law that LGBTQ figures of history must have their achievements and positive contribution included in school textbooks and syllabus.

This is a billionaire who is doing a good job. They're not all status quo henchmen.

[elleng]

1. Thanks for recognizing they're not all status quo henchmen.

[redstatebluegirl]

2. He is great, my family back home love him.

Not real popular downstate though.

[maxsolomon]

7. Why?

Like I-74 downstate?

[guillaumeb]

8. South of I-80 it becomes more red.

And south of Springfield it becomes even more red. A classic rural versus urban situation.

[redstatebluegirl]

9. Downstate to my thinking is anything South of McLean County.

Lots of Trump country. Downstate has always been different from Chicago area, the rural area is not like it is here in Oklahoma, but it does contain a lot of voters with lower educational levels who hate brown and black people.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

23. Yep. All the downstaters that want to secede from Chicago.

Just like red states they take all the aid they can get because they can’t fund their own bridges roads and schools.

[murielm99]

10. No.

Everything is either Chicago or downstate. That is how it is defined.

[Thekaspervote]

25. Not exactly.. there's a large red area around Rockford and surrounding

Peoria and tazwell counties are pretty blue

Knox county has flipped several times

[murielm99]

51. That is where I live...

in the large red area around Rockford.

I am speaking about terminology. Everything is referred to as either Chicago or downstate.

I have lived here all my life and been an activist all my life, too. It is either Chicago or downstate...period.

[George II]

3. If JFK was President today, he'd be a billionaire. Anyone here ruing the fact that he was President?

[redqueen]

4. Not all - but Bloomberg most definitely is. nt

[redqueen]

22. Where did I say he wasn't a billionaire?

[Wellstone ruled]

5. This Fellow is a keeper.

There are some wealthy people who really care.

[Thekaspervote]

26. Indeed! We luv luv luv our new gov... has gotten a lot done.

I really hope when he’s done being gov, he will seek higher office.

[Wellstone ruled]

29. Sounds like he is pushing for

major corruption investigations on the QT. Noticed a Senate Leader getting a Wood Shed treatment.

[former9thward]

46. No that is the feds.

They are all over Springfield and Chicago. Nobody knows who is wearing a wire.

[Wellstone ruled]

48. Interesting,

Got to chat with the neighbor,his Brother in Laws are all Rabbi's and Lawyers in Chi Town.

Burke going to the Down State Crow Bar Hotel?

[former9thward]

64. Maybe.

But I think they are more interested in House Speaker Madigan.

[Wellstone ruled]

65. Okay.

Thought this would be a bit more.

[PatrickforO]

6. I still maintain, with AOC, that every billionaire represents a

failure in policy.

Tell me - do you think he could have done as good a job if his net worth was, say, $50 million?

See I just don't think we need billionaires. Not when we have 40 million Americans lacking healthcare, a crumbling infrastructure, a huge national debt and climate crisis. Not to mention the 25 million Americans who go hungry once or twice a month because they cannot make ends meet.

Pritzer has done good stuff, sure. But to say, "Well, he's doing a good job," and conflate that good job with the fact he's a billionaire doesn't really wash. Because as I say above, he could have done just as good a job for the people of Illinois with a much lower net worth. After all, someone whose net worth is over just $10 or $20 million really doesn't need to worry about money. Why does ANYONE need over a billion dollars? Why?

[murielm99]

11. Do you live here, in Illinois?

If not, you should do some research on how bad things were under our former repiggie governor. Our credit went into the toilet because he would not pass a budget.

J.B. is seeing to it that a Planned Parenthood clinic is being built close to Missouri, so the women can escape that state's restrictive abortion laws.

He has passed a gas tax to take care of our literally crumbling infrastructure.

He is working on pension reform.

He is working on a fair tax to replace our existing tax structure.

He is good to unions and supports them.

He welcomes LGBTQ inclusion in our curriculum, and has made that happen.

He has placed restrictions on what ICE can do to arrest people.

He is balancing the budget.

He is raising minimum wage.

We have had cannabis reform.

We have sports betting, which will help our budget.

He has protected choice.

What has his critic AOC done that is comparable? I don't see her staying home much to do her job.

J.B. is one of the most progressive governors in the country. He is getting results in the short time he has been in office. When your idol AOC can boast that sort of accomplishment, then she, and you, can criticize our good Democratic governor. Come to think about it, why is she criticizing a Democrat at all? Why is she advocating primarying so many of them? Aren't there plenty of repiggies who need her attention?

[PatrickforO]

15. Not my point. My point is that J.B. could do just as good a job if he weren't a billionaire.

I'm not cutting him down. All I am saying is that we as a nation don't need billionaires, and that this guy could have done all these great things for you if he had a net worth <$1 billion. That's all.

[Hoyt]

31. There are even 10 billionaires in Denmark. I get Warren needs to demonize them to pay for all

the things she's promising, but I think billionaires have a place in a growing, equitable economy. Although, we do need to tax them appropriately and ensure they do not have undue influence on the government.

[PatrickforO]

44. I'm not saying what I'm saying because I support Warren. I'm saying it because

I'm an economist, and the wealth imbalance has gone way too far. It's worse than it was in 1929.

Who was it that said every American is a frustrated millionaire? Not sure, but someone did point that out - and truly even on this site we have people who stick up for the idea that being a billionaire is OK. It's not, because it reflects a poor fiscal and taxation policy on the part of the government.

I have no objection to people becoming millionaires, or even deca- or centa-millionaires. But billionaires?

Under a decent tax policy that brings in enough revenue to fund programs like health care, Social Security, modernizing the infrastructure, and investments in our children's postsecondary education, tax revenue must be sufficient for the needed outlay plus the servicing of the current debt.

See, the real problem here is not billionaires per se, but the tax policy. We can even put a name to this tax policy problem: Grover Norquist. He's the fellow who advocated massive tax cuts for the purpose of starving the government until it is 'small enough to drown in a bathtub.'

Norquist and many other Republicans honestly believe in gutting all social programs, privatizing every government service that can be privatized and massive deregulation. This is because he believes that the only legitimate role for the federal government is defense, for which we are spending $733 billion this year. But that is misleading. With some of the hidden war costs and other non-itemized homeland security costs, we could be looking at a trillion.

Right now, our national debt, because of the giant 2017 tax cut for billionaire parasites and corporations, stands at $22 trillion, and the Republicans did this on purpose. They a) do a tax cut, b) cry poor for social (non-military discretionary) programs, and c) get everyone to accept cuts across the board for things we need like education and health care. Did you know when Medicare was first passed in 1965, it covered 100%? That's right. But Congress changed that because of this longstanding 'kill the New Deal' fight, waged as class warfare against us since 1935, and now it covers only 80% of some services, so you have to buy supplemental insurance. And Social Security? My retirement age has been raised to 66 and 8 months. Think about that for someone who has done manual labor all their life and worn out their body from it at age 60.

So, we need to seriously bump taxes. Ideally, as AOC says, we could go back to the same graduated tax bracket system we had under Ike. Under such a system, of course, the rich are taxed at a higher rate because they earn more, and the poor may actually get additional funds from the government to supplement their poverty level or slightly above income. And, corporations need to pay more in taxes. They do.

Oh, we hear the Republicans solemnly intoning how 'Murika has the highest corporate tax rate in the WORLD!' but that really isn't true. When a company like Amazon can report $10.7 billion in net profit and pay NO federal income tax in 2018, we have a problem.

So the reality is that our tax system needs to be overhauled to create a confiscatory environment for billionaires to turn them into millionaires. Corporations were nominally taxed at 21% in 2018, but loopholes still made the effective corporate tax rate around 9% that year. We should be charging maybe 15% with fewer loopholes.

There's a lot to this, but I'm not simply saying that billionaires are a 'failure in policy' because I think that sounds cool. Their existence really IS a failure in policy.

I have no objection whatever to someone working really hard and becoming a multi-millionaire. That's fine. But I do object to someone amassing a billion or more in wealth and making money hand over fist and paying a lower percent of those capital gains in taxes than an office admin. That just isn't right. Beyond the obvious moral problem with such imbalance is the impossibility of sustaining such a system in the long term. It is very much a house of cards.

Now, we could go into a whole text on monetary, fiscal and tax policy, but I think I've covered enough basics here.

Bottom line: billionaires are a failure in policy because they reflect an unsustainable imbalance in wealth.

[Hoyt]

50. Yet, Warren has not said one thing about the Deficit or Debt, other than proposing

to keep piling on spending.

She's going to need a lot of billionaires to produce the revenue she needs for her campaign promises.

[PatrickforO]

67. Well, now we are into monetary policy, Hoyt.

One hundred and six years ago, the federal government transferred its mandate to be the central bank (under Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution) to the Federal Reserve under the Act of that name, signed into law by Woodrow Wilson on December 22, 1913.

You can read about the whole history of central banking in the US here, so I won't belabor it with a giant explanation. It is a great essay from a great site on American history. Easy for a layperson, but such a fascinating topic! We are economic creatures, and the evolution of monetary policy over our history is utterly riveting. At least to me.

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/general/a-brief-history-of-central-banking/central-banking-in-the-united-states.php

In a nutshell, the battle has always been about the nature of the central banking system, since Section 10 of Article 1 of the Constitution forbids states to coin their own money, making it clear the founders felt the need for a national central banking system.

However, some felt the bank should be controlled by the government, and others felt it should be banks. Some felt the currency should be backed by gold or silver, and others felt it should be backed by the 'full faith and power of' the government, i.e. fiat currency.

We had two central banks, one lasting from the 1790s to 1811, and the second lasting from 1816 to 1836. Lincoln financed the Civil War with greenbacks, and by 1865, those clean-cut British bankers had flooded the country with counterfeit currency. That's why the Secret Service was created, you know - not to protect the president, but to battle counterfeiters.

The arguments went on through reconstruction, and came to a head in 1896 when William Jennings Bryant thundered from the podium that we would not be crucified on a cross of gold! Gotta love really good rhetoric.

Then, in 1907 there was a panic. Since there wasn't any central bank per se, and there was little regulation, banks got over extended and there were 'runs' where everyone showed up at once out of fear to get all their money back.

Well, the banks couldn't do it because they lend out at least twice as much money as they have on deposit - that's one of the main ways money is created - through loans. So people found empty vaults, and in those days there wasn't any Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), so when the bank went belly up, depositors literally lost their life savings. It was ugly.

So the Fed came into existence just six year later. And then, when the New Deal happened in the mid-thirties, FDIC was created and things went pretty well. Problem is, the government finances its deficits by selling T-Bills. These are bought by various investors. Now, the debt is so big, debt service is about 9% of the total federal outlay.

Some say the Fed should be abolished and we should go back to a government controlled central bank. That has advantages, but the bankers would fight it by counterfeiting, for sure, and if money supply was increased too much to fast, we'd end up with inflation. However, the main advantage would be that we wouldn't have to pay interest - the central bank would finance infrastructure projects or social programs or defense, and then would get that money back through taxation, as did the old American colonies.

The biggest advantage to a government controlled central bank would, of course, be that we could accelerate paying off the debt by printing more money.

Should we begin advocating this, though, which really could be a good solution if run right, the bankers would kill to prevent it. Warren knows this because she knows all this forwards and backwards.

But we must consider Executive Order 11110, issued in June 1963 by JFK. Some say it was an effort by Kennedy to rein in the power of the Fed by allowing the treasury to issue silver-backed notes, and Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire, posits that this order may have had something to do with the November 22, 1963 assassination. Because that order was repealed in 1964, and all government redemption of notes with silver was stopped in 1968.

Warren knows that, too.

I am supporting Warren because I think she's smart enough to get some really good monetary policy through if she's elected, in addition to some good reform of our tax code.

I know it is wonky, Hoyt, and that many on here feel social policy is more important than economic policy, or that environmental policy is most important, but I say if we get our economic house in order, it will be easier to pass broad environmental and social reforms.

[brooklynite]

59. How much were you forced to pay J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter books and movies?

And what is the exact amount of money she SHOULD be allowed to have (which of course everyone else will agree with)?

[Blue_true]

60. You are an economist.

You should know that even if we taxed upper income at 80-90%, there still would be billionaires and very rich millionaires.

I don't disagree with the notion that rich and super-rich people are shirking their societal responsibilities, I aggressively disagree with your claim that if all of them did properly meet their societal responsibilities, there would be no billionaires.

[Blue_true]

58. There are plenty of billionaires in Sweden and Norway.

The notion that there shouldn't be billionaires is an intellectually lazy concept. The question should be how do we get spectacularly wealthy people to pay their fair share of supporting society?

[Hoyt]

61. Exactly.

[AtheistCrusader]

38. Maybe it's what drives him to do these great things.

[Blue_true]

57. Like I tell people that complain to me.

If you don't like how things are done, give me ideas that can work.

So, other than billionaires shouldn't exist, how would you solve the societal problems that you keep listing?

BTW, taxing him at 80% would still leave him a billionaire, I think he is worth $7-$12 billion. You do the math.

[mucifer]

76. I voted in the primary for Daniel Biss. Another Jewish liberal running for IL governor

Biss was a math professor at University of Chicago a middle class man. Brilliant guy. He lost and admits Pritker is doing a great job.

I never thought Pritzker would be a decent governor because he really did buy the office. I know it sucks that people buy political offices. But, they do.

Pritzker is an outlier. He is extremely wealthy and doing an awesome job.

[Stuart G]

18. Thank You for posting this...I agree. I live in Illinois and change will come, positive change.

Pritzker will do things that others have talked about.

[Thekaspervote]

27. Add to that ...he secured a 2.2 billion dollar trade deal with Taiwan for our corn and soy farmers

[PatrickforO]

45. That's brilliant! But I stand by my statement that we don't need billionaires

because they reflect poor fiscal, monetary and tax policy, and because the current imbalance in wealth is unsustainable.

But the trade agreement was in fact brilliant.

[murielm99]

53. Damn!

I forgot about that one...and we farm.

[Jose Garcia]

14. If he had a much smaller net worth, he may not have had the resources

to become Governor.

[PatrickforO]

16. Which is why we need to get rid of dark money and Citizens United.

My point is we do not need billionaires as a matter of policy. Good monetary and fiscal policy precludes a huge wealth imbalance, which is what billionaires in general represent.

[AtheistCrusader]

37. Getting rid of citizens united muzzles Unions. You know that, right?

[PatrickforO]

47. Oh, boy is THAT misleading.

I'm sorry, but that is really a right wing talking point. Seriously. The corporate money that goes into the super pacs dwarfs union spending. According to the Brookings Institute, in 2014 a total of $236.8 million was given to super pacs. Of that sum, $178.1 million (75%) was from corporations. A 3 to 1 advantage in 'free speech' dollars. In 2016, total receipts of super pacs went up to $4 billion. Think about that for a minute.

Now think about cui bono. Who benefits from this?
1. the media because they cash in on advertising revenue.
2. corporations because they are now able to exercise more influence on legislated policy
3. billionaires because under the doctrine that a dollar is counted as free speech, they have an outsized amount of 'free speech'

Now, who loses?
1. we do because a) the media reports what is in its interest to maximize revenues, b) our voices are dwarfed by the massive economic campaign financing machine, and c) corporations are who ends up getting represented by those we elect to represent us.

It isn't working out, is it?

Here's the link to the Brookings study.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2017/03/31/vital-stats-corporate-and-labor-pac-spending/

[AtheistCrusader]

72. SEIU spent 80 million in 2016 on direct political action/advertising through their voluntary funded

PAC.

That's one Union. Unions need to have a voice in politics on behalf of their members.
You could solve this issue by making PAC contributions from Corporations voluntary rather than internally funded corporate grift.

Execs and board members have a legal fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, and I've never seen this done, but it would be interesting to see shareholders collectively sue a corporation for spending exorbitant amounts on political issues.

Suing isn't a solution though, limiting HOW a corporation funds a PAC is the solution. Congress can level the playing field by requiring voluntary individual funding of PAC's without touching Citizens United.

[mucifer]

77. Yeah, we probably would have had a better mayor in Chicago if Rahm didn't buy it.

[murielm99]

21. He financed his campaign himself.

The fact that he did not ask for any money helped me to allot my own modest contributions to other candidates and other races.

He had money left over from what he set aside for his campaign. He gave that money to each of the Democratic county central committees in the state. Some of the smaller committees in red areas have money to work with for the first time.

We had large swathes of red in this blue state. Some of that is changing, due to demographic change and the disillusionment with our state and federal governments. But we still have to work hard to keep our state in the blue column.

There is no excuse for anyone dividing our party. Anyone who advocates primarying good incumbents or criticizing a good Democrat who gets things done should think twice.

[Thekaspervote]

28. Amen!

[PatrickforO]

49. I'm NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT criticizing Pritzker. Listen, won't you?

And I'm NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT advocating that he be primaried.

Do me the common courtesy of NOT putting words in my mouth thank you very much.

I'm saying that the fact we have billionaires is due to a failure in monetary, fiscal and tax policy.

I'm saying that this whole thread implies that Pritzker needed to be a billionaire to do all the great stuff he's done.

I'm saying that is a fallacy in logic, because it CONFLATES being a billionaire with forwarding good policy and getting things done, which is not true. Billionaire politician does not equal politician who is good and gets things done. They are not related. Good policy, mathematically is NOT necessarily a subset of 'billionaire.'

But don't be telling me to think twice when you yourself did not seem to think even once about what I'm actually saying. I HAVE BEEN ATTACKING FISCAL AND TAX POLICY THAT ALLOW US TO HAVE BILLIONAIRES, not a single guy who happens to be a billionaire who is also a Democrat and has done good things.

For God's sake!

[whathehell]

33. Finding and acknowledging the existence of a good Billionaire

does not mean you want to make more billionaires, good or bad.

[AtheistCrusader]

36. Why in the hell do you care how much someone achieves, if they paid their fair share along the way?

Or to flip your question around, 'WHY do we need arbitrary limits on personal wealth? Why?'.

Billionaires that got there by shirking taxes, offloading employee benefits to taxpayers, etc, yeah. They're shitbags.
But there are people who have achieved that level of wealth without ripping off literally everyone who works for them, and society as a whole.

It's possible to achieve staggering levels of wealth without being a robber-baron. Why would we limit those folks too?
And if those people paid their way, I don't lay the crumbling infrastructure and lack of health care at their feet. If they pay their workers, pay benefits, etc, it's not their issue.

[PETRUS]

62. I gather you take the system and of capitalism its moral legitamacy for granted. nt

[AtheistCrusader]

70. No, but a mixed market economy, yes.

There are lots of things worth regulating, but this specific sort of cap on income regulation doesn't solve any problems.

[PETRUS]

74. Thanks for the reply.

I ask because producing a billion dollars of wealth (wherever it ends up) has only ever been accomplished through the efforts of a lot of people. (And the use of natural resources, of course – who “owns” those, at any given point, is determined by politics and violence.) Who gets what portion of the proceeds from these collective efforts is the result of rules created by humans (i.e., not ordained by god or nature or anything), and enforced by the state and its monopoly on violence. A significant portion of every billionaire's fortune consists of the fruits of other people's labor. A system that allows an individual to capture that amount of wealth for themselves is just as arbitrary as a system that doesn't. Some kind of justification is necessary for the both the rules and the results, whatever they are. Personally, I believe that a set of policies that prevents individuals from accumulating too much wealth and power (relative to others) would solve a hell of a lot of problems.

[Cal Carpenter]

63. The truth is

you can't become a billionaire without either doing those things ("shirking taxes, offloading employee benefits to taxpayers, etc, yeah. They're shitbags." ) or making exorbitant bank off of companies and people who are. They are stealing wealth from those who actually generate value.

I'm not saying it's as simple as a zero sum game, but billionaires wouldn't exist if it weren't for unconscionable exploitation of workers and resources.

[AtheistCrusader]

73. I disagree. Entire new emergent technologies can result in billions in wealth without what I would

describe as stealing wealth.

In existing fields/markets, a lot less likely, but certainly possible when some new technology/class of product appears on the market.

[stopdiggin]

39. you're fighting a (theoretical) battle

against a proposition that was never advanced (either in the OP or the string thus far).

and conflate that good job with the fact he's a billionaire doesn't really wash.

No one tried to do that by any stretch. No one said that being wealthy MADE Pritzker a good politician. The point was that having money did not PRECLUDE him from being a valuable civil servant.
Now go on and have your argument about income inequality and a corrupt system. Meanwhile, the man in question has done good things for a state that that has had some pretty darned crummy leadership in the past (including the past governor who was practically a parody of right wing ideology)

[Blue_true]

55. You seem to have followed a typical pattern.

State that no one should be a billionaire then point to a list of societal problems without giving one proposal on how to solve them, other than no one should be a billionaire.

The fact is that even if our upper income tax rate was 80%, there still would be lots of billionaires. Maybe the issue isn't billionaires existing as much as it is high earning people likely are not taxed properly when compared to those making a lot less. If people that make billions were taxed at 50-70%, there would be money to solve the problems that you point out and those people would still be very rich.

[TreasonousBastard]

69. What policy? Are we supposed to ban billionaires now? Quite frankly, I don't think it's...

anyone's business how much you have. It is, however, very much our business how you got it and what you do with it.

[murielm99]

13. I repeated much of what you said down thread.

Apparently it did not get through to someone who thinks being a billionaire is more important than being an effective Democrat and leader.

Thank you for posting this.

[BannonsLiver]

17. Bloomberg is opposed to the first 2 things on your list

I think some have made it about the money with him but a lot of his views are really terrible and not in line with what the party should be about. Steyer is rich too but even though I don’t plan on voting for him I feel like he’s more in line with my own views.

[highplainsdem]

19. Thanks for posting this! It's important to remember that not all billionaires are the bogeymen

some on the left like to paint them as.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

20. Bloomberg thinks there should be no minimum wage

And he thinks social security and Medicare should be cut.

[pbmus]

24. J.B. is the best thing that has happened to Illinois in a very long time....

He has done more in 9 months than any politician anywhere...

[Thekaspervote]

30. Isn't it great!!!

[pbmus]

34. Absolutely fantastic...I just worry about his health....!

[yaesu]

32. and Bloomberg didn't decide to run until that great wealth was being targeted

He was petty quiet before this about republican attacks on things that really matter. Lets just hope that big money and the corporate media doesn't decide who our GE candidate is. If it does, say hello to 4 more years of tRump and the final end of Democracy.

[Turin_C3PO]

35. Doesn't change the fact

that he doesn’t need all those billions.

[stopdiggin]

40. and he, along with almost all Democrats, would agree to measures

that would advance a more level playing field. So you don't want his help (or obvious political skills) because he's one of THEM?

[Turin_C3PO]

42. I didn't say

he’s not a good man or that we should shun his help. I just think he should be taxed a lot more.

[murielm99]

54. He thinks he should be taxed a lot more, too.

He has said so. And look at his proposal for the Fair Tax.

That will need a constitutional amendment here. We are working on it.

[beachbumbob]

41. JB is the real deal in the sense of those at the top who feel compelled

to give back, the same that FDR had, JFK had. I had the great fortune to shake his hand during his campaign and carry on a 30 min conversation with his wife.

[murielm99]

56. He showed up everywhere,

even at smaller venues and early on in the campaign. I saw him many times and interacted with him and his staff.

I did not work on his campaign. I did not have to. He had many very professionally attired and professionally behaved staffers. They went everywhere. This also freed me to work on other campaigns.

He even made stops all over the state when the election was over. He met with people and thanked us for our votes and our help.

He is like Durbin that way. He is accessible and he listens.

[beachbumbob]

68. His wife is pretty good in own right too. I tire of those in our party who wish to

vilify wealth and success outright. JB and his family give back so much to the people of Illinois over the past few decades. He would make the right kind of president and my hope is he will run one day for it.

[mucifer]

78. I remember seeing him at the women's march right after trump got in. I was annoyed and

moved away in case i got stuck in a photo with him.

I did not at the time want a billionaire governor and I was sure he was lying about policy.

I was wrong.

[aidbo]

43. And he should still be taxed heavily. Hopefully he would agree.

[mahina]

52. Well good. Thanks.

Bloomberg is still an absolute sneak in snakes clothing and no kind of Democrat. Look at the millions he’s spent to keep the Senate red and stop climate action, keep the turtle in power, support Kavanaugh, nope nope nope.

But I’m glad about this guy.

[Humanist_Activist]

66. He shouldn't be a billionaire, but he rolled back Right to Work in Illinois, so that's something. nt

[Polybius]

71. Nearly everyone who attacks billionaires would love to be one

I don't attack the good ones. I can't blame him for having money. He does good with it.

[grantcart]

75. His sister was Secretary of Commerce for Obama