Illinois is a Mess. Here's Why.

Illinois is a Mess. Here's Why.
"Political dysfunction as far as the eye can see.
...Republicans and Democrats had rotated in and out of the governor’s mansion in the capital of Springfield for 40 years without much change in the way the state was governed. 
A lot of them were crooks—four of Rauner’s nine predecessors...went to jail. 
...Even in the rust belt, Illinois stands out for its economic sickliness. 
“We’re not Greece or Puerto Rico yet,” says Adam Schuster, an economist with the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. 
“We’re not functionally insolvent. But we’re right on the doorstep.” 
...Credit agencies rate Illinois’s general obligation bonds at just above junk status. 
The state avoids junk ratings, analysts say, only because it retains the power to tax and thus, theoretically, the power to balance its books at a single confiscatory stroke. 
For practical purposes, in other words, Illinois’s bonds are junk..."
Read on.