* That was quick. I have a ticket to the St. Louis Cardinals game tomorrow. Believe it or not, I’ve never been to the new stadium. Looking forward to it. Going with a bunch of my oldest friends in Springfield, so it could be kind of a riot. Let’s hope so.
* One of the most anticipated bands of the year is a new supergroup called “Them Crooked Vultures” featuring Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones and Josh Homme. The album isn’t out yet, and the official tour doesn’t start until next month, but they have done a few live shows so far, including one at the Metro last month. All we have right now are pirated videos of some of those shows, so here’s one called Elephant…
A whole bunch of strangers
Who’re sporting and dangerous
* I’ve never seen her show and know almost nothing about her, but Bonnie Hunt gave Rod Blagojevich some of the beat-down he richly deserves today. Watch it…
What does it say that a daytime talk show host is more aggressive than major network TV news broadcasters?
Clearly agitated by the questions, Blagojevich raised his voice to Hunt, pointed his finger at the audience and said his name would be cleared once the tapes are released.
“They’re lying,” he said. “These are false accusations and there are taped conversations that will set the record straight. That’s the truth. I’m the one that wants you all to hear them. My accusers don’t. Now what does that tell you?”
Blagojevich became so riled by the questioning, Hunt jokingly asked for “a sidebar.”
“You went to law school, I didn’t,” she says. “I’m only a nurse, but I might inject you with something just to get you to quiet down.”
The Cook County Democratic Party, on final vote, slated Pat Quinn for governor.
* Dan Hynes campaign press release…
Dan Hynes for Governor campaign spokesman Matt McGrath issued the following statement upon the news that Pat Quinn had accepted to be slated by the Cook County Democratic Party Central Committee ahead of February’s primary:
“Is there a single core principle to which Pat Quinn will consistently adhere? Despite saying as recently as this morning that he has always supported open primaries, the Governor apparently sees no contradiction in asking and working to be slated by the Cook County Democratic Party. Long before becoming Governor, Pat Quinn sought a reputation as an outsider in part by railing against the very entity whose support he eagerly accepts today. It would seem that his prior support for open primaries was nothing more than political rhetoric. It is acts like this that give the people of Illinois reason to question Pat Quinn’s sincerity.”
* Quinn’s statement…
Statement from Governor Pat Quinn on today’s decision by the Cook County Democratic Committee to endorse his candidacy for Governor of Illinois
“I am happy to receive today’s endorsement of my candidacy for Governor of Illinois.
“As I told the committee members this morning, I have spent the last seven months doing what I have been doing for the past three decades – standing up for the people of Illinois. As Governor, I am working hard every day to bring good jobs and economic recovery to every corner of the Land of Lincoln.
“Throughout my career in public service, I have won endorsements from political groups, civic groups, and labor organizations throughout our state. As we go forward, I will continue to seek the support of groups – both large and small – as we work together to make the will of the people the law of the land in Illinois.”
A motion for an open primary narrowly failed, so Stroger’s backers pushed for a roll-call vote in which each of the 80 committeemen, including the dozen or so on Stroger’s payroll in Cook County government, had to go on record stating who they supported among the five candidates.
Stroger didn’t get a majority of that vote, either.
“I think that was a miscalculation on his part,” said Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), who came in second after Stroger.
U.S. Rep. Danny Davis came in third, followed by Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terry O’Brien and, in last place, Clerk of the Court Dorothy Brown.
*** UPDATE 3:42 pm *** Rep. John Fritchey is a ward committeeman, so he’s at the meeting. He just Tweeted this…
There will be no slated candidate for Cook County Board President.
Not a huge surprise, but another major blow to Todd Stroger.
Speaker Madigan, Ald. Burke and Commissioner Daley all voted “Present” on the motion to keep this particular race an open primary, according to a different source at the meeting.
*** UPDATE 2:17 pm *** Sen. Rickey Hendon promised pork for everyone if he was slated for lieutenant governor…
“The job is to legislate and appropriate and if I’m elected your lieutenant governor, I’ll bring back that kind of money to every committeeman in Cook County that I can help,” Hendon said.
[ *** End of Update *** ]
* Sources at the meeting tell me that a subcommittee of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee came just a couple votes shy of recommending that Gov. Pat Quinn be slated by the party against Dan Hynes. Only one motion was made, and that was to endorse Quinn. Dan Hynes had asked that the party slate no one. Another vote will take place this afternoon. Check here for udpates.
Also, the same sources say Rep. David Miller was slated for comptroller over Raja Krishnamoorthi.
Giannoulias and two of the three other Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate asked for the party’s blessing Friday.
Former City of Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman, whose job it was to investigate some of these committeemen’s loyalists on the city payroll, did not attend. He formally announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate Thursday. […]
Attorney Jacob Meister criticized all three of his opponents, saying he has “no history with organized crime” — an apparent reference to loans Giannoulias’ family’s bank made in years past to shady figures; he was not “a figure in Gov. Blagojevich’s cabinet” — Jackson was Rod Blagojevich’s spokeswoman for two years; and he criticized Hoffman for clerking for conservative Republican judges.
On the road back to Chicago. I was just released from the hospital. Deo Gratias!
* Infamous media critic Howie Kurtz once gushed that the Chi-Town Daily News was “pioneering a new form of low-cost, street-level reporting.” Apparently, that’s no longer the case. From Gapers Block…
Breaking news: The Chi-Town Daily News Folds - more details soon.
I can just hear the Sun-Times and Tribune now: “See? We’re not the only ones with horrific business models!”
UPDATE: The C-TDN owner says everybody got it wrong. I asked him why he was laying off people if he wasn’t really folding. His response: “The new product isn’t going to launch immediately — the plan is in the next 8 weeks. While we expect to be better funded than Chi-Town, we’re not in a position to pay reporters when we don’t have anywhere to publish their work, or one that we can sell ads in to support their salaries.”
…Adding… Ironically, the latest Tweet from Chi-Town Daily News’ owner was: “Rolling in green!”
* Follow the link in this Ramsin Canon Tweet for some hilarity…
Some facts @wbez DIDN’T report on from the Cook County Democratic Organization meeting. http://tr.im/yrAr
* I’ve pretty much settled on a new look for this website. I should be rolling it out in a couple/three weeks.
* The Question: Is there anything - information, plug-ins, links, content, etc. - that is currently not on this website which you would like to see added?
* The big Sun-Times front-page headline today is about government “pension millionaires.” But that label is a bit misleading. The paper calculates the term “millionaire” based on those who have “collected more than $1 million each from their pensions.”
If you retire at 65 and collect a $40K average annual pension check for 25 years, then you’re a millionaire, according to the Sun-Times.
Still, the millionaire roster includes some impressive names. Noted reformer Dawn Clark Netsch has collected $1.4 million in pension checks since January of 1995. Jim Thompson has pulled in $1.7 million since 1991. Former New Trier High School superintendent Hank Bangser has raked in $1.1 million just since July of 2006.
The state’s richest government pension goes to Dr. Alon P. Winnie, former chairman of anesthesiology at Cook County Hospital and the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago. Winnie, 77, has two pensions that total $447,233 a year. He has collected more than $3 million since retiring. He doesn’t think that’s excessive: “If you were with a good company, you’d have a helluva lot better benefits.”
Emil Jones Jr. is about to hit the pension jackpot.
The retired Illinois Senate president’s state pension this year: $81,016.
In January, a year after his retirement, it skyrockets 51 percent, to $122,334, far more than his final Senate salary of $95,313.
That’s when the Chicago Democrat cashes in on two pension sweeteners that legislators set up for themselves: a longevity bonus for serving more than 20 years in the Illinois Legislature and a cost-of-living increase.
* JBT’s pension shows why current law ought to be changed…
Topinka’s current yearly pension is $141,482.
That’s 23 percent more than what she was making when she retired from state government in January 2007.
Topinka’s pension isn’t based on her final salary of $115,235.
Instead, it’s based on a salary of $130,324 — the salary that had been set for the state treasurer’s post at that time but which the Illinois Legislature didn’t fund at that level until seven months after she retired, according to Timothy Blair, administrator of the General Assembly Retirement System.
Nearly 6 in 10 voters in the latest survey said the [ethics reform] measures enacted by lawmakers and Quinn would have little or no effect on curbing corruption in Illinois, while roughly a third of voters said such measures would have at least some impact.
The actual poll question, which is not published online…
The governor and the legislature recently enacted tougher state government ethics reform measures to curb political corruption. How likely will these reform measures eliminate political corruption?
5 very
30 somewhat
30 not too
30 not likely at all
The Tribune’s pollster did not ask whether the bills would “curb” political corruption, as the narrative claims. The pollster asked whether the bills would “eliminate” political corruption.
No law will ever eliminate political corruption. Frankly, I’m amazed that 35 percent would think any legislation would completely do away with corruption.
But, it’s almost certain that the Tribune editorial page will use this ridiculous polling result to bash the GA again and again.
At the same time, 3 out of 4 voters favor term limits for statewide elected officials and want to see the same applied to the leadership positions in the state Senate and House, the poll showed.
That’s no surprise. Other polls have shown similar support.
But the pollster told respondents that statewide officials can “serve as many four-year terms as they like,” as if there was no such thing as elections.
Sheesh.
Respondents were told that legislative leaders “can also serve as long as they like.” Former House GOP Leader Lee Daniels might not agree with that one.
Illinois voters are ambivalent about the job Gov. Pat Quinn has done in his first seven months, even as he prepares to seek a full term in next year’s election, a Tribune/WGN poll found. […]
The statewide poll of 700 registered voters found 39 percent approved of the job he has done since then, while 26 percent disapproved and 35 percent had no opinion. The telephone poll, conducted Aug. 27-31 by Market Shares Corp., has a 4 percentage point margin of error. […]
Almost half of Democrats, 47 percent, approved of the job Quinn has done while 19 percent disapproved. Another 34 percent had no opinion.
They ought to have given the MoE for that smaller sample size. It would’ve been quite high.
The same MoE point applies to the Trib’s story this week about Todd Stroger’s low support among African-Americans. Stroger’s campaign claims the Tribune pollster surveyed just 81 registered African-American voters to come up with this result…
Only about 1 in 5 African-American voters polled approve of the job Stroger is doing or want to see him re-elected, while more than half oppose him.
* By the way, the Dan Hynes gubernatorial campaign has now released a couple of their own polling questions from last month. The poll was conducted August 19-23 of 800 likely Democratic primary voters.
Pat Quinn job approval among Dems…
Excellent 8
Good 37
Only fair 42
Poor 8
I’ve said for months that Quinn’s approval rating is centered in the mushy middle. People just don’t have a hard opinion of him.
The Pat Quinn reelect numbers among Democrats show much the same…
Vote to reelect Pat Quinn 27
Consider someone else 45
Definitely vote for someone else 18
Don’t know 10
They’re not sold on Quinn yet.
* Related…
* Cook County Board President Todd Stroger asks committeemen to slate him for re-election - Committeemen likely to decide on an open primary
How, given everything he had going for him and the object lesson of his Republican predecessor behind bars serving as a constant reminder to remain above reproach, did Blagojevich become the first governor of Illinois to be impeached and removed from office?
How did he go from potential presidential candidate to potential federal inmate and national laughingstock in six short years?
Maybe there’s a good explanation, innocent or otherwise. Maybe not. But the search for that explanation is why one might purchase and carefully read “The Governor,” as I did.
How could this have happened?
How could this have happened? Because he’s a crook.
This has been yet another edition of “Simple Answers to Simple Questions.”
* Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Schillerstrom kicks off a new Internet video campaign with his spoof of the popular Dos Equis ads. Have a look…
* I’ve written about this topic before, but I’ve done it in a different way today. My Sun-Times column…
‘You were around the old timers who dreamed up how the families should be organized,” mob attorney Tom Hagen reminds stool pigeon Frank Pentangeli in “The Godfather, Part Two.” “How they based it on the old Roman legions and called them regimes . . . with the capos and soldiers, and it worked.”
Substitute “regimes” for “party caucuses,” “capos” for “deputy and assistant leaders” and “soldiers” for “rank-and-file legislators,” and it’s an almost perfect fit for how legislative leaders have organized the Illinois Statehouse.
And just like the old Roman legions, the Statehouse operates on loyalty.
Rank-and-file members are almost totally loyal to their leaders, which they perpetually demonstrate by voting for their leaders’ re-election and showing deference to their leaders’ decisions in all matters.
The leaders are, in turn, loyal to their members’ interests, and they show it any number of ways. Members are rewarded with jobs for friends and family, promotions to “capo” slots and sponsorship of important legislation.
The leaders’ most important job is protecting their members from election challenges by the other political party. And that brings us to my favorite mob movie, “GoodFellas.”
“All they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the FBI can never understand — that what Paulie and the Organization offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can’t go to the cops. They’re like the police department for wiseguys.”
Mobster Henry Hill’s real-life description of how mob bosses operate pretty much gives you the key to understanding how things work in Springfield.
Now, I don’t consider legislative leaders to be gangsters. But even the leaders would have to admit that the organizational mind-set is strikingly similar.
As with organized crime, protection is the absolute key to legislative loyalty. As a class, politicians are a fearful bunch. They live in terror of losing their jobs, offending the wrong people or any number of things. And the leaders know that once a rank-and-file member is convinced that he or she is safe in the hands of a competent, fearless leader, then everything usually falls right into place.
If a member has an election opponent, the leader steps in with gigantic mountains of campaign cash, armies of trained staff and anything else that’s needed to win. Even if the incumbent loses, the rest of the caucus can still feel safe if they believe that the leader did everything humanly possible.
The leaders also do their best to protect their favored interest groups. Legislation that hurts those groups is either killed or watered down. In exchange, those interest groups show loyalty by filling up the leaders’ campaign funds and hiring their former top staffers as lobbyists.
You can watch this protection-loyalty game play out almost every day.
For instance, several House Republicans privately said they wanted to balance the state budget by voting for an income tax increase during the spring session. But they didn’t dare because House GOP Leader Tom Cross was dead set against it.
House Speaker Michael Madigan has without a doubt perfected this leadership style. His protection skills are impeccable, and few members have had the courage or even the inclination to go against his will. Most of those who did have paid a very serious price.
Henry Hill was hidden away for years in the federal witness protection program after he testified against his boss, Paulie Cicero. Nobody opposing Madigan would ever wind up like that, of course. But they fear Madigan like nothing else.
Perhaps now you can understand why the reform groups are finding it so difficult to change the way things are done in the Illinois General Assembly. Even if the members really wanted serious change, the system is specifically designed to strongly discourage anyone from actually fighting for it.
