Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner denied that his two-day tour of the state last week had anything to do with the 2018 election, but it was pretty darned clear that he and his team were tuning up the band for the big show down the road.

Campaign funds not only paid for the tour, but political money was used to promote in it advance. I'm told Rauner's advertising on social and online media served more than a million impressions in the days leading up to the fly-around.

On April 22, Rascals Live will host a special acoustic concert with power-rock stalwarts Damon Johnson and Ricky Warwick, whose third album as members of Black Star Riders recently hit number six on the UK charts. Given that they’ve collaborated with the likes of Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Sheryl Crow, and Ted Nugent, you may wonder, after their area performance, how we were lucky enough to find them in Moline. But considering their individual backgrounds, the bigger question is: How were they lucky enough to find each other?

I suppose it’s too much to expect that we get an honest debate about the need for more state revenues in the already-active gubernatorial race. Candidates will be candidates, after all.

Governor Bruce Rauner’s campaign blasted out an e-mail last week telling supporters that newly announced billionaire Democratic candidate J.B. Pritzker wants to raise the state income tax to over 5 percent, which, the campaign claimed, would be “higher than it was under Pat Quinn!”

Never mind that Rauner himself privately supports raising state taxes to historically high levels. He’s okay with a 4.99-percent income-tax rate and a 7-percent corporate tax rate. But he also backs a new tax on sugary beverages and a new sales tax on several services. If all that were implemented, state government would be taxing residents billions of dollars more than it ever has before.

As the Senate’s two leaders tried again to find the votes to pass their “grand bargain” last week and end the state’s two-year governmental gridlock, Governor Bruce Rauner began spending more than a million dollars on two new TV ads that portray him as an everyman hero in the fight for Illinois’ future.

“Illinois is broke and broken,” Rauner says to the camera while standing in a well-kept garage and wearing a plaid flannel shirt. “And the politicians that got us into this mess, their solution is this,” Rauner says as he holds up a roll of duct tape. “Higher taxes,” he says as he yanks out a piece of duct tape. “More spending,” he says with another jerk on the roll. “No real reforms,” he says as he takes one more strong pull.

Hovering high above the heads of visitors to the Figge Art Museum, a neon sign that reads “Colored Entranced” points the way into the third-floor gallery. Anchored to the wall, the sign sits at an angle so visitors who enter from either the elevator or the stairs see it almost immediately. Bright tubes of clean red-orange light form words that contrast with and illuminate the corroded tin support from which they extend. The glow of the neon affects the surrounding space by casting light in shades of pink and violet on the white walls. A ghostly reflected image with deep red and cobalt-blue hues can be seen on the polished gray floor.

Colored Entranced is visually appealing, but the symbolic history it represents is abhorrent. Seeing it for the first time, non-black visitors may feel an unexpected pang of empathy for those who were subjected to that kind of direct segregation.

It seems natural that people competing for scarce taxpayer dollars would argue about why their area is more deserving and others less so. But we don’t see that. School superintendents don’t complain about business subsidies, mayors don’t criticize the cash paid to state universities, and Medicaid advocates don’t denounce state-paid agriculture marketing. The people who receive government money in one area simply don’t complain about other areas of government spending.