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Saturday, February 28, 2015 ■ The Voice ■ www.mcdonoughvoice.com
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CAPITOL FAX
ON COMMUNITY
Rookie governor facing possible gridlock
The remarkable story of Blind Boone
A
rookie mistake has led to some big problems. House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton both believed that Gov. Bruce Rauner would ask to postpone the scheduled February 18th budget address. The current fiscal RICH year’s outlook was so inMILLER credibly dire (by the Democrats' own making), that the veteran Democratic leaders figured Rauner would want to first tackle that problem before moving on to the mess in next fiscal year’s budget, which begins July 1st. Rauner declined, declaring that a deadline was a deadline. He should've asked for a delay. Rauner claimed during his budget address that a deal on the current fiscal year’s problem was just "days away." Speaker Madigan agreed with the governor's prediction immediately after the speech. In reality, though, the governor's address undercut his negotiating stance so badly that Senate President Cullerton told Reuters two days later that the negotiations had gone completely off the rails. The problem is very real and twofold. First, Democratic legislators were open to giving the governor wide authority to move money around in this fiscal year's budget to patch the gaping holes that they themselves caused last year when they passed the monster after failing to come to terms with the reality of the expiring income tax hike. But then Rauner revealed that he wanted to do pretty much exactly the same thing in the coming year's budget as this year's, and the bitter pill of those cuts woke legislators up to some very harsh realities. By now, you know the litany. Slashing municipal revenue sharing in half, eliminating a $165 million state heating assistance program funded by utility ratepayers, cutting higher education's funding by 31 percent, seriously chopping Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals, pharmacies and nursing homes, not to mention the long list of cuts to relatively tiny social service programs added by individual legislators over the years. Democrats reacted by saying they might be willing to allow Rauner to do some of that this fiscal year, but letting him do it again next fiscal year would be dangerously close to making those drastic cuts permanent. Secondly, Rauner failed to even mention the possibility of new revenues during his address. By law, the governor cannot base a budget proposal on revenues which don't yet exist under state statute. But there's nothing in the statute books barring him from at least mentioning a few revenue options that he could live with. For example, Rauner said repeatedly during the campaign last year that he wanted to eliminate corporate tax loopholes and put forward a modest plan to tax some services. He also adeptly refused to rule out the prospect of raising the income tax back up a bit before walking it down over four years. Some still hope that the governor is open to those ideas and may not have mentioned them as part of an ongoing negotiating posture of forcing Democrats out of the weeds. That may well turn out to be true, but Rauner planted himself so firmly on the far economic fringe with his budget address that he gave the distinct impression of policy immobility. Instead of coming off as a bipartisan leader, he looked like an intractable hardliner. His proposed sacrifices were completely one-sided - the poor and downstream governments bore pretty much the entire brunt. The rich and well-off were asked for nothing. What we have here are two seemingly diametrically opposed philosophies. On the one hand, Rauner wants to permanently cut sacred cow programs to start aligning state revenues with state expenditures. And he was possibly silent on new revenues as a way to force the Democrats to make the first move on that front. On the other hand, the Democrats see Rauner's deep and drastic cuts as an irresponsible way to fund an unaffordable January 1 income tax reduction which mainly benefits the well off. And they want the governor to propose some revenue ideas before they're willing to entertain any cuts to this fiscal year's budget or next. In other words, while Rauner's budget was most definitely a punt to the General Assembly, the legislative Democrats appear to have just punted the ball right back to the guy. Show us some revenue alternatives, they're saying, and maybe we'll talk. But you go first. So, if the rookie governor had just put off that budget address by a couple weeks or so, he might have solved this fiscal year’s very real problems and survived to fight another battle over next fiscal year’s problems. Instead, we’re looking at possible gridlock.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.
O
ne cultural factor that has had huge positive impact on American racial prejudice is the emergence of talented, popular Negro performers. In music, everyone can name figures who emerged in the 20th century, but the first JOHN black musician who became a celebrated figure HALLWAS in towns across the country started playing concerts in 1879 and was famous by 1900. He was pianist J. W. Boone—always called “Blind Boone”—and he eventually performed twice in Macomb. The story of Blind Boone would make a touching, inspiring film, yet he is unknown to most contemporary Americans. His mother was a runaway slave who gave birth to little John in 1864, while working as a cook in the 7th Militia camp of the Union Army. His father was a white soldier, a bugler in that unit, who took no responsibility for the illicit child. Boone had “brain fever” (probably encephalitis) as an infant, so doctors removed both of his eyes in an effort to cure it. The disease eventually subsided, but he was then blind for life. Fortunately, someone in his home town of Warrensburg, Missouri, who heard the impoverished, five-year-old boy play a tin whistle, gave him a harmonica. Because he could reproduce the various tunes that he heard, locals eventually sent him to the St. Louis School for the Blind, where he played the piano for the first time. However, his later habit, at age 10 or 11, of sneaking off at night to listen to piano music at nearby bars, got him expelled. Then he wandered around St. Louis, a blind child-beggar, surviving by playing his harmonica for handouts. He returned to Warrensburg, in the mid-1870s, where he sometimes played with local musicians. According to a biographical sketch about him, in the online resource “Wikipedia,” “He was actually kidnapped for a time [at age 14] by a gambler and showman, Mark Cromwell, until Boone’s stepfather, Harrison Hendricks, caught up with them in Mexico, Missouri. In 1879 Boone was ‘discovered’ by Columbia [Missouri] contractor John B. Lange, Jr., who put Boone on the road, as Blind John. Only meager financial success was attained until Boone was boarded for two months at the home of George Sampson in Iowa. Mrs. Sampson was an accomplished pianist herself and taught Boone how to properly play the great European masters. . . . Upon Lange’s return to Iowa, he found that his young protégée had acquired much new skill, and with the addition of a vocalist, he [created] the Blind Boone Concert Company.” Traveling from town to town, they soon made very good money, and by the turn of the century, Blind Boone was playing over 300 concerts a year—often in schools, churches, and lodge halls, as well as opera houses. He was very popular not only because he was blind, although that added to his appeal, but because he was a fabulous pianist. His performances typically featured works by Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, and others, as well as his own compositions, including a concert waltz, “Aurora,” and an interpretation of a terrible storm, called “Marshfield Tornado,” which always brought huge applause. As one newspaper said, “No one would have believed it possible to achieve such startling sound reproductions on a piano.” He also sometimes provided piano interpretations of “A train,” “A Music Box,” and “A Drummer Boy.” His rhythmic originality led to early ragtime compositions, such as “Southern Rag Medley #1: Strains
from the Alley.” Ragtime became a celebrated forerunner of jazz. Many American newspapers celebrated his talent, including the “Newport [Rhode Island] Herald,” which said of his 1919 concert, “Boone is a pianist of remarkable ability, his execution being exceedingly clean and rapid, his tone of excellent quality, and his interpretive powers very strong and suggestive. He plays with ease the most difficult pieces and has a wonderful touch.” Beyond that, he always asked some local pianist to play any classical or contemporary composition on his piano, and then he would sit down and reproduce it exactly (and more powerfully), having heard it only once. The audience would often leap to its feet with a burst of applause. It is not surprising that he was called “a musical prodigy,” “a wonder,” “a genius,” etc. Boone’s company also included one or two black female vocalists, such as Marguerite Day, Stella May, or Emma Smith. Miss Day, for example, sang Negro “plantation songs,” such as “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground,” and Civil War tunes like “Marching through Georgia.” In 1909 Blind Boone performed in Macomb, at the Chandler Opera House. He was surely the first black headliner to perform there—and he lived up to his reputation. As the “Macomb Journal” reported, “The concert given at the Chandler Opera House last night by the Blind Boone Concert Company was a pronounced success, both in the character of the performance and the large attendance. The classical music of Liszt, Schubert, and Gottschalk was played with as much ease as the most popular airs of the day. The two lady vocalists pleased the audience greatly with their singing, too, and were forced to re-appear a number of times in response to hearty applause.” As that suggests, Boone and his singers were a huge hit, and of course, that helped to diminish racial prejudice, which was part of local culture at that time. When Blind Boone returned in 1921, to play at the Illinois Theatre, which had replaced the Opera House as our downtown performance hall, the “Macomb Journal” proclaimed that “Blind Boone is a favorite in Macomb” (surely never before said of a black man), and “a very large crowd” was expected. No doubt the audience was impressed, but as was common, no review of the concert was written. That 1921 event was advertised as a “Farewell Concert of the Famous Musician,” for Boone was planning on retiring. But due to financial difficulties that emerged after his original manager died, he continued to perform for several more years. Boone died of heart problems in 1927, having performed some 10,000 concerts in cities and towns across the country—as well as in the British Isles, Canada, and Mexico. He has since been celebrated in books like Jack Batterson’s “Blind Boone: Missouri’s Ragtime Pioneer” (1998) and Madge Harrah’s “Blind Boone: Piano Prodigy” (2004). A statue of Blind Boone now sits, playing an undulating piano keyboard, in Warrensburg, Missouri’s Blind Boone Park. However, it is not just his musical impact that is important. As the Macomb concerts reveal, his ability to appeal across race boundaries, getting white audiences to identify with a black performer and appreciate his sensitivity and talent, also make the enormous struggle and groundbreaking success of Blind Boone a great American story.
Author and local historian John Hallwas is a columnist for the McDonough County Voice. Research assistance was provided by WIU archivist Kathy Nichols.