Watch Berkowitz & Martin discuss the Titanic style end to IL’s Springfield spring session- on Cable & Web.

This week’s edition of Public Affairs (taped on June 17) airs:

–In Chicago this morning, 8:55 am, Cable Ch. 19

–In Chicago tmw night, 8:30 pm and midnight, Cable Ch 21

— On the Web, 24/7 by clicking here.

–In 25 Chicago Metro North and Northwest suburbs, Tuesday at 8:30 pm on either Ch 19 or Ch35 (See below for more airing details)

— in Aurora, this Monday, Wed and Saturday at 6 pm, Cable Ch 10

— in Highland Park, this Monday and Wed, 8:30 pm, Cable Ch 19

— in Rockford, this Thursday, 8:30 pm, Cable Ch. 17

**********************

Jeff Berkowitz (Public Affairs’ Host and Illinois Channel Chicago Bureau Chief) and Terry Martin (Illinois Channel’s Executive Director) discuss why the Illinois legislature was unable to pass Governor Pritzker’s desired energy legislation and why that might be a good thing for all concerned!

In a cameo, the Governor articulates his primary IL energy goal—to promote clean energy to deal with Climate Change, apparently by example, since IL can’t influence U. S. “Climate change policy,” let alone world-wide causes of carbonization, led by China, India and Russia, who couldn’t care less about such stuff. 

It’s possible the Governor has his eye on a Presidential run in 2024, and he wants to virtue signal his support for clean energy by becoming the first Midwest coal state to terminate coal production (by 2035) and natural gas production (by 2045).

Former GOP Primary Gov candidate and State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) punctures the Governor’s climate change obsession with facts and calls Dems who support his energy policies “Morons and crazy.”

Berkowitz discusses why Competitive Power Ventures (“CPV”), a Silver Spring, Md.-based power generator, threatened to pull the plug on a massive, gas-fired 1.3 billion dollar facility it’s building in Morris if the energy bill as drafted was passed.

Senate President Don Harmon was quoted in Crain’s Chicago last week, explaining why his Senate Democratic Caucus’ pulled the plug on the energy bill: “There are significant investments and significant jobs associated with those (gas) plants. People could be out of a job (next Monday) if we passed that [energy] bill today (June 16).”

CPV’s CEO said it could live with IL terminating natural gas production in 2045. But, it couldn’t live with legislation giving state authorities the power to act in an arbitrary and capricious way to raise the requirements for plant de-carbonization over the next two decades. Business just can’t make billion dollar investments with that kind of uncertainty.

In short, Berkowitz and Martin discuss how the Democratic Party run IL legislature needs to mend its ways, especially when it comes to such important matters as the State’s energy and budget policy- and conduct orderly, detailed and thoughtful hearings and distribute and place on the State’s website the relevant analyses and proposed legislation months, not minutes, before the legislative vote.

Also discussed was the passage of legislation creating an unmanageable, bizarre twenty-one member, elected CPS school board that would take power in 2027.

Further, Martin and Berkowitz discuss the passage of legislation commerorating the public notification in Galveston, TX  on June 19, 1865 of the end of U. S. slavery.  The legislation will make Juneteenth a state public holiday, starting with June 19, 2023.

Berkowitz and Martin argue what would be much more important and helpful to low income minorities would be the IL legislature and cities across the state, (especially the inner cities) instituting strong school voucher- school choice programs. These programs should allow blacks and other minorities (only 30 percent of whom read at grade level in 3^rd grade at CPS) to escape their failing schools by using the taxpayer money currently going to public schools to attend any school (public or private) of their choice.

Berkowitz also argues that the IL legislature and the cities and counties across the state (but especially in the inner cities of IL) need to do much more to protect black and other minorities from homicides, shootings and other violence in their communities.   

********************

This Tuesday’s Chicago Metro suburban episode of Public Affairs (featuring discussion by Jeff Berkowitz and Terry Martin of the close of Springfield’s spring legislative session last week) airs at 8:30 pm in 25 North and Northwest suburbs on:

–Comcast Cable Ch. 19 in Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, parts of Inverness, Lincolnwood, Morton Grove, Niles, Northfield, Palatine, Rolling Meadows and Wilmette and on

Comcast Cable Ch. 35 in Arlington Heights, Bartlett, Glenview, Golf, Des Plaines, Hanover Park, Mt. Prospect, Northbrook, Park Ridge, Prospect Heights, Schaumburg, Skokie, Streamwood and Wheeling.