I was talking to my mom on the phone last week and just as I was about to hang up, she stopped me short and insisted that we talk about Governor Pat Quinn's big-time raises to his top staff.
If you've missed the story, Quinn gave out raises of as much as 20 percent to his senior staff while those same people were busily cutting everybody else's budgets and devising tax-increase strategies.
Unlike the state's mind-boggling $13-billion budget deficit, this is a very easy issue to understand for people who don't pay close attention to politics.
My mother does follow Illinois politics quite a bit, however, and she appears to be just as incensed about the immorality of handing out selective pay raises during one of the worst fiscal crises in history as she is about the abject political stupidity of Quinn's decision.