Who do you think is responsible for the performance of elected representatives and the thousands of agencies/bureaucracies throughout local, state, and federal government? Who do you think is responsible for protecting your unalienable rights?

Perhaps it is you? I bristle at the endless complaining about politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate leaders' under-performance, especially when coupled with unreasonable expectations that those folks make all the changes necessary to relieve our discontent.

Why on Earth should they when we choose not to do our own part in America's governance? The old adage "Labor respects what management inspects" is no less true for We the People. We are the managers, and in today's political and civic environment, the huge majority of us completely abdicate our personal duties and responsibilities required to live in a free and open society.

If Bruce Rauner manages to successfully back away from his recently unearthed statement from December that he favored reducing the state's minimum wage by a dollar an hour, he will have dodged a very serious political bullet.

According to a new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll, the idea is absolutely hated in Illinois. Asked if they would be "more likely or less likely to vote for a gubernatorial candidate who supports lowering the state's minimum wage to the national rate of $7.25 an hour," a whopping 79 percent said they'd be less likely. That's definitely a result that could move actual votes on Election Day, particularly in the context of the messenger - a hugely wealthy political unknown whose advertising campaign is trying hard to turn him into a "regular guy."

Women were 84 percent less likely and men were 73 percent less likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to lower the minimum wage by a buck an hour, according to the poll taken January 8 of 1,135 likely voters with a margin of error of 3.1 percent. Democrats were 90 percent less likely, while independents were 77 percent less likely, and even Republicans were 63 percent less likely to vote for such a candidate.

On December 19, the Scott County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to adopt the following language for the information-technology (IT) policy for county staff: "The IT Department will maintain a copy of all e-mails sent or received for a period of three years from the date in which they are sent or received. Records may be retained for a longer time period if it is subject to a litigation hold."

A day earlier, I published an open letter to the board asking it to defer action. (See sidebar.) At the meeting, I was allowed to address the board prior to the vote, and the 14-minute audio recording of that exchange is available below.

Prior to the meeting, I had phone conversations with Chair Larry Minard and supervisors William P. Cusack and Carol T. Earnhardt. On these calls, it was explained to me that "all the important e-mails will be saved." When asked about details - such as who will be determining what e-mails are important - the answers varied from department heads to staff to one or two county attorneys. When pressed what the criteria were for retention past three years, the answers included "We just have to trust staff to know what to do" to "The frivolous e-mails will go." The policies of the State of Iowa and the City of Davenport were cited several times in these phone calls and at the meeting, but no particulars were given. The party line was that these entities destroy old e-mails much sooner than the county was proposing.

House Speaker Michael Madigan's spokesperson said last week that his boss' statement opposing further corporate "handouts" basically "speaks for itself." But does it?

Madigan invoked the populist gods last week as he called for an end to the "case-by-case system of introducing and debating legislation whenever a corporation is looking for free money from Illinois taxpayers." Companies requesting the tax breaks, Madigan said, "pay little to no corporate income tax to the state, contributing little or nothing to help fund the very services from which they benefit significantly."

It would be much easier to believe Madigan had he not just last month pushed a bill over to the Illinois Senate that would give Univar a tax break to help the West Coast corporation move its headquarters to Illinois. Not coincidentally, Univar has an existing facility just next door to Madigan's House district.