Welcome to Illlinois.
Home of the corrupt Governor Patrick Quinn (D) who spent upwards of $55 million in 2010 to help buy inner-city Chicago votes in his re-election bid that year as part of the anti-gun Neighborhood Recovery Initiative.
His “initiative” is falling apart at the seams as the FBI is now investigating.
There’s already been plenty of bad press as he program was nothing more than political corruption at its finest.
The program included a hire-a-thug program, where the NRI would pay convicted gang bangers and street thugs to help “reduce violent crime”. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work out as planned. In just one case, a pair of hired thugs were busily committing home invasions until half of the duo accidentally discharged his shotgun into the back of his partner’s head while rushing into one victim’s home.
Another $2.1 million of the program went into the company owned by Cook County Clerk Dorothy Brown’s husband, Benton Cook. It was called the Chicago Area Project and if you guessed Mr. Cook wasn’t “working” for free, you would be correct.
The latest – courtesy of the Sun-Times:
The state spent almost half a million dollars on a flawed study of Gov. Pat Quinn’s now-defunct anti-violence program — the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative — after officials rejected a more rigorous evaluation that would have been free, auditors say.
The $498,351 study by the University of Illinois at Chicago didn’t even examine whether the program helped reduce violence, according to Auditor General William Holland’s office.
State Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said the study leaves taxpayers in the dark about whether the $54.5 million program made an impact in some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the Chicago area.
“We don’t know whether this money was flushed down the toilet,” he said.
No, Rep. Reis. It wasn’t flushed down the toilet. It went into someone’s pocket to help finance the Democrat Machine in Chicago.
Move over Rod, got you a roomy.
Three in a row? I sure hope so. We’re the best state ever!