Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar » 2008

Monday, May 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

Tired of all that spam at CraigsList? Do you want a targeted audience to advertise your particular service, business, job opening, housing, etc.? Are you looking for campaign workers? Would you like to post your resume (free of charge) to move up in the world you’ve chosen? Do you have a fundraiser or event that you want the Statehouse types to know about?

Well, then head over to InsiderzExchange right now.

You can even keep track of classifieds, resumes and the calendar via RSS feeds.

It’s quite something…

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Rezko Trial Watch *** UPDATED x2 ***

Monday, May 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Closing arguments started today in the Tony Rezko trial…

[Assistant U.S Atty. Reid Schar] pointed out that in his opening statement, [Rezko’s defense attorney Joe Duffy] had mentioned that Rezko was so concerned about the appearance of impropriety that he had backed off the opportunity to get leases for his franchise restaurants at the Illinois Tollway after his friend, Rod Blagojevich was elected governor.

But in testimony, Schar pointed out, “We never heard about tollway leases and the defendant walking away.”

Instead, Schar said, witnesses testified that Rezko had inserted himself into numerous state business deals while trying to hide his involvement and the cut he expected to take.

*** UPDATE 1 *** Interesting…

Schar described Rezko as Levine’s “insurance policy.” Levine, Schar said, was intent on using his position on two state boards to extort money, but he needed Rezko, who was close to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, to make sure Levine stayed on the boards.

“On the night of April 14 [at the Standard Club] Levine invested $3.9 million of his insurance in Tony Rezko,” Schar said.

Earlier in the trial, prosecutors submitted Levine’s bill from the dinner as proof that he was at the Standard Club on April 14, but there was nothing on the bill that suggested Rezko was there with him.

To underscore that notion, Schar pointed to another piece of evidence presented at the trial: phone records that showed in the middle of the time the meal was taking place, Rezko placed a cell phone call to Tom Beck, the chairman of a state hospital board on which Levine sat.

Levine said one of the key deals he and Rezko discussed at the dinner was a plan to get the hospital board to approve a new McHenry County hospital in exchange for a $1 million bribe from a corrupt contractor who was to build the facility.

*** UPDATE 2 *** The prosecution is expected to wrap up closing arguments about 3 o’clock or so…

Should Schar wrap up before 3 p.m., Rezko defense attorney Joseph Duffy told the judge his preference is to begin his closing immediately thereafter and go for about an hour. The judge had given Duffy the option of waiting until tomorrow to start his closing, but, apparently, he wants to launch right in.

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Question of the day

Monday, May 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* A Senate committee approved an amended version of House Bill 946 last week…

Authorizes the issuance of special NASCAR license plates

* Question: What other special license plates would you like to see in Illinois?

Snark heavily encouraged.

[Hat tip: SGOPs]

97 Comments

On pay raises and making things worse

Monday, May 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The Sun-Times editorializes today on the sorry spectacle surrounding the pay raise votes…

But all this squabbling over a pay raise serves only to underscore the buffoonery that passes for the state legislative process these days.

State lawmakers should be required to actively vote themselves a pay raise — up or down. Forget this nonsense of raises that kick in automatically unless they are voted down.

In the real world, a pay raise comes with a job well done.

Nobody in Springfield is doing any kind of a job.

* Meanwhile, the Civic Federation blasts the governor’s job performance today…

Gov. Blagojevich is biting off more than state government can chew in his proposed 2008-09 budget, an independent analysis of his $49.7 billion spending plan concludes.

The state simply cannot afford $1.9 billion in new and expanded initiatives the governor wants — including a $300 per-child tax credit and expansion of state health insurance programs, according to the Civic Federation, a nonpartisan research group that includes Chicago-area business leaders.

The federation’s 62-page budget report — released today at www.civicfed.org — also criticizes the governor’s plan to lease the state lottery to finance a $25 billion statewide construction program.

In addition, the federation says several business tax proposals that the governor claims would generate $722 million are bad for the state’s overall fiscal health.

Read the full report at this link.

* The administration responds…

A spokeswoman for the governor’s budget office said the Civic Federation failed to take into account that state government provides important services. And the report offered no ideas on keeping those services in place during a bad economic cycle, the spokeswoman said.

What the “report fails to recognize is that there is a huge human aspect to what government does,” Blagojevich spokeswoman Katherine Ridgway said. “We would like to hear the federation’s ideas on how the state can really help people during the national economic downturn.”

I’d like to hear how the governor plans to get his programs passed first. Just having bright, shiny ideas (or rehashed, old ideas) doesn’t mean squat unless you can pass them. So far, the track record hasn’t been great. I doubt voters believe he deserves a pay raise, either.

* Related…

* Our Opinion: Selling state assets no way to fund projects

* One voice of reason amid pay-raise debate

* Our Opinion: Hard to justify pay hike for lawmakers

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The politics of fear

Monday, May 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* My Sun-Times column was pushed back to Monday because I got bumped by a special Roger Ebert column on Friday. Not like I could complain. He is Roger Ebert, after all, and Monday has a much higher readership than Friday. It came out OK for me. Here’s the beginning…

The politics of fear is as old as politics itself. And it usually works. At least for a while.

President Bush’s more visceral opponents have decried his administration’s blatant use of fear to railroad through legislation that curtails Americans’ freedoms. “If this legislation to [fill in the blank] doesn’t pass, then the terrorists will win and we’ll all die,” has seemed to be the rallying cry since 9/11.

They have a point, but Bush’s detractors ignore how fear of “Commies” was used so successfully for decades in this country.

Before the Godless Communists, it was the Germans, the Japanese, the unions, the Anarchists, the Confederates, the Indians, the Mexicans (several times, including today), plus far too many more to list here.

Many of these fears were legitimate, some were not. And almost all were misused as blunt instruments against political opponents — an ugly, divisive and destructive tactic.

All of that occurred to me as I watched the coverage of Gov. Blagojevich’s latest political stunt.

* The “stunt” I referred to was the governor’s anti-violence “plan” that he attached to the capital bill. This is what Blagojevich had to tell reporters after the unveiling…

“This is an emergency,” Blagojevich told reporters after the announcement. “Children are being shot and killed. And for lawmakers to say we can’t do it, that’s exactly the reason why there’s so much violence out there today and so we’re just not gonna take ‘no’ for an answer.”

No lawmakers had yet said that they couldn’t do what the governor wanted. Blagojevich briefed just a couple of them beforehand, so how would he even know how lawmakers felt? The governor hadn’t submitted legislation containing the proposal, so lawmakers hadn’t even seen it. Heck, they probably hadn’t even seen the press release at that point.

What he meant was that he would make the choice very clear to the General Assembly: “If you don’t vote for my capital plan, then you’re siding with the killers.”

* And the homestretch…

As if the Statehouse atmosphere wasn’t poisoned enough with broken promises, stalled legislation, rising deficits, corruption allegations (most of them against the governor himself) and general dysfunction, now we’re going to be subjected to crud like this?

Fear-mongering doesn’t work forever. Bush’s use of the tactic isn’t producing the results it once did, partly because we’ve become almost dulled to the overuse of fear and partly because he’s been so discredited in the public’s eyes.

Blagojevich is even more discredited than Bush, if the polls are correct, so it’s doubtful that this gambit will work to persuade a skeptical General Assembly and an angry public to climb aboard. Just the opposite.

And that’s too bad because his plan is pretty good.

* A reporter friend who was at the event read the column this morning and sent this e-mail…

[Blagojevich] bolted for the exits as we surrounded him attempting to ask (gasp!) QUESTIONS! It was like one of those shots of Britney Spears coming out of court after being caught binge drinking with an infant.

We all owe George Ryan an apology

He may have a point.

* I couldn’t resist sharing with my syndicated newspaper column readers the Automated Rod Blagojevich Story Generator posted here by an anonymous commenter…

Sometimes, you run across something so perfect that you just have to share it.

Last week, an anonymous commenter on my blog composed a thing of pure beauty. The Automated Rod Blagojevich Story Generator is a very funny satire on how our state politics are stuck in a bizarre, ever-repeating spectacle.

* Meanwhile, the New York Times takes a look at the damage the Rezko case has inflicted on Blagojevich. There isn’t anything new in the story at all, but I thought you’d like to know about it.

* Related…

* Gadfly Quinn transforms image as he clashes with Blagojevich

* Tony Rezko trial nears conclusion as prosecution, defense strategize on best closing arguments

* 10 key developments in case of gov’s indicted fund-raiser

* Embattled Blagojevich’s agenda could take hit with Rezko verdict

* Who’s who in Rezko corruption trial

* What to expect on last day of Rezko trial

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Trouble for Ozinga? Plus: Oberweis tries mending fences

Monday, May 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Business owners are routinely involved in lawsuits, and that can sometimes make for tough times on the campaign trail. This one doesn’t look good for Martin Ozinga…

Chicago-area businessman and 11th Congressional District candidate Martin Ozinga III lost his bid Friday to get out of a deposition in a Marshall County lawsuit. Ozinga’s concrete and construction company is suing an 83-year-old farmer in a real estate dispute. After hearing five people had directly contradicted statements Ozinga made in a sworn affidavit, Circuit Judge John Barra denied his lawyer’s request to block the deposition and ordered it to go forward later this month. […]

Orland Park-based Ozinga Bros. Inc. is suing to force Raymond Kunkel and his family farm corporation to sell 190 acres outside Henry, near the site where the company is developing a gravel pit and Illinois River port project with the city. […]

He claimed in the affidavit he “has had no contact or communication of any kind” with Kunkel.

But Barra heard Friday that Kunkel and four witnesses have signed their own affidavits stating Ozinga met with Kunkel in a rural Henry farmhouse in June 2004 to work out the terms of the deal that is now in dispute.

Not good at all. Allegedly lying under oath and a big man forcing a little guy to sell land to make the big man bigger? Nope. Not good whatsoever.

* Meanwhile, I’ve already told you several times that the Ozinga campaign has been in high attack mode recently, but this piece gives us an idea of some of the themes the Democrats plan to use…

Ryan Rudominer, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the political environment in Illinois has led to the Republican Party choosing “inexperienced, unprepared, and controversial self-funders who are wildly out of touch with Illinois’ struggling middle-class families.”

* Halvorson tried to claim that she “improved” the recently agreed ethics bill by sitting on it for a year…

“(The Republicans) claim I’ve been sitting on this for a year,” Halvorson said. “I’ve been working on this for five years. I wish it was only a year. We do not, in the Senate, have to pass a bill that we don’t think is right. I did not think the bill in its current form was good enough.”

I don’t see the logic there. The original bill would bar campaign contributions to constitutional officers from contractors under their control who had at least $25,000 in bids or contracts with the state. The “new” bill basically just raises that floor to $50,000. That was worth waiting a year so the governor could continue to raise campaign contributions?

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is relying heavily on state-tied donors to pay off massive legal bills in the face of a federal corruption investigation — a probe that focuses on the very link between state contracts and such fund-raising. […]

• State contractors chipped in at least 55 percent of the $1.5 million Blagojevich raised from individual donors in the last half of 2007.

• Those contractors reaped nearly $6 billion in state business since Blagojevich took office in 2003.

• Road builders and construction companies were the most lucrative source of the campaign cash — $455,750.

* In other congressional campaign news…

Since losing the March special election to now-Rep. Bill Foster, Oberweis has been contacting people involved in the race, people who commented on the race, and people (like yours truly) who covered the race. He’s been meeting with as many of these people as he can, trying to pick their brains and find out where his campaign went off track.

I’m calling it the What Went Wrong World Tour, and I promise, that’s my last snarky comment about it because I honestly respect him for doing this.

According to Oberweis’ new campaign spokesman, David From of Burnham Strategies Group, the idea came from Oberweis. And From said they’ve learned a lot from the meetings so far. One of the most important lessons, he said, has been that voters haven’t gotten to know Jim Oberweis the man — father, grandfather, community member.

I still say that I doubt he can stick to that line. We’ll see.

27 Comments

Morning Shorts

Monday, May 12, 2008 - Posted by Kevin Fanning

* Student-led effort lobbies online for civil unions bill

* Payday loan law loophole swallows borrowers whole

Illinois is the only state with a cap on payday loans but no cap on longer-term loans.

* Chance to update state constitution will be in voters hands

* Cubs chairman raises specter of taxes to pay $400M tab

Former Gov. Jim Thompson said Friday he can’t understand why the Cubs are still touting the idea of renovating Wrigley Field with sales and amusement tax growth generated by the project when a plan to finance the $400 million overhaul without raising taxes is sitting on Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell’s desk.

* Rosemont mayor antes up tax revenue to gain casino

Rosemont’s mayor still wants a casino — so much so that he is now willing to give up millions of dollars in tax revenues to land one.

* Chicago roads may undergo bumpy transition to bus-only lanes

* Officials launch updated Web portal for Medicaid information

* Union: IDOT has plenty of room

A major state employee union thinks the Illinois Department of Transportation has room in its headquarters building to house the Division of Traffic Safety that is now headed for southern Illinois. IDOT says the union is wrong. Two Springfield lawmakers said they’re thinking about making their own visit to the building to see who is correct.

* Bernard Schoenburg: Ex-Rep. McKeon sees setbacks in efforts to end bias

* Strattons big in Illinois politics

* Schools Lobby for Makeover Dollars

* Cook health chief hasn’t left yet

* Hospital board slights suburbs

“It’s frustrating because this just lends credence to people talking about seceding.”

* Lincoln, Douglas to duke it out again

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