The City of Chicago edition of “Public Affairs,” airs on Cable Ch 21 (CAN TV) tonight at 8:30 pm and midnight and tomorrow night at 9:25 pm.

You can also watch the program:

— (24/7) by clicking here.

— in 25 Chicago Metro north and northwest suburbs next Tuesday night (June 29) at 8:30 pm on Comcast Cable Ch 19 & Ch. 35 (See this blog later this week for more specifics on suburban airing details )

– in Aurora this Wednesday and Saturday at 6 pm on Comcast- Aurora Cable Ch. 10

-in Rockford this Thursday at 8:30 pm on Comcast Cable Ch. 17

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Jeff Berkowitz (Public Affairs’ Host) and Terry Martin (Illinois Channel’s Executive Director) discuss in this week’s Public Affairs at length why the Illinois legislature was unable to pass Governor Pritzker’s desired energy legislation.

In a cameo, the Governor says his his primary energy goal is to promote clean energy to deal with Climate Change. Apparently, this is to set an example, since IL obviously has no influence on U. S. “Climate change policy,” let alone world-wide energy policy.

More likely, Governor Pritzker’s IL energy policy reflects that he has his eye on a Presidential run in 2024, and he is virtue signaling 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 argument with some real world energy facts and calls Dems who support Pritzker’s 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 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.”

CPV 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 (June 19) a state public holiday, starting with June 19, 2023.

Berkowitz and Martin argue what would 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.