About that deleted post…
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller * It’s gone. There was a math error that I corrected, but then I discovered, with the help of a commenter, a far bigger error. So, the whole thing is gone. This is what I get when I know in my gut that something doesn’t look quite right and I post it anyway. Live and learn. Regret the errors. Etc. And thanks much to the commenters. Here’s the rest of the post with the beginning taken out and slightly edited so it makes sense… * Mayor Daley said yesterday that more money to hire more cops would be nice to fight crime, but he has no extra money lying around and wants tougher gun laws…
The cops have a lot of tools to arrest people already. More gun laws might help, but the ones on the books haven’t stopped a whole lot of criminals from breaking the law so far. What’s needed, besides for the communities in question to get their acts together, is more cops on those streets - far more than Daley’s police superintendent wants - and a much more sophisticated use of city resources. * As for the National Guard idea, there is some misunderstanding of what the Guard does and who they are. The Guard has an MP unit based in Springfield. I embedded with the unit when I was in Iraq. Many of those soldiers are also police officers back home. They are impressively well-trained and they certainly know what they’re doing. This is not the Vietnam War-era Guard of untrained draft-avoiders we’re talking about. These folks are top notch. I watched them in some pretty intense situations and they performed wonderfully. They could definitely handle a Chicago patrol duty. * Related…
* Crime fight is up to us, not the National Guard * I told you so * National Guard Proposal Draws Mixed Reactions * Congressman Davis Says Troops Not Necessary in Chicago * A brash proposal * Plea to deploy National Guard simply a cop out * Quinn not sending National Guard to Chicago without Daley’s OK * Quinn: Daley Must Request Guard Troops * Daley: National Guard only a ‘Band-Aid’ solution to crime * Daley cool to idea of National Guard troops on Chicago streets * CHA link to Chatham mayhem?
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Et tu, Robin?
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller * Democratic state treasurer nominee Robin Kelly is Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’ chief of staff. They are obviously not coordinating their campaign efforts. For the past several days, Giannoulias’ US Senate campaign has been slamming his Republican opponent Mark Kirk for not giving back all the campaign money Kirk accepted from Goldman Sachs employees. Giannoulias has also called on Kirk to give back money contributed by other corporations accused or convicted of fraud. Ms. Kelly apparently didn’t get those memos. Her campaign put out a press release this afternoon entitled, in part: “Rutherford should follow Congressman Kirk’s example.” In the release, Kelly notes that Republican treasurer nominee state Sen. Dan Rutherford has accepted $75K in campaign contributions from a Goldman Sachs executive…
Giannoulias’ governmental chief of staff then heaped praise on Congressman Kirk…
Under the bus goes Alexi. Also, notice that Kelly’s campaign refers to Kirk as a “fellow Congressman” of Rutherford’s. Rutherford is in the Illinois Senate. Kirk is in the US House. Kelly served in the Illinois House, so she surely knows the difference, or maybe not. * In other campaign news, 8th Congressional District Republican nominee Joe Walsh is in more trouble. First, it came out that Walsh didn’t bother to mention that his apartment had been foreclosed upon during the primary. Now it emerges that Walsh loaned his campaign $28,500 six months after the foreclosure. The candidate responded…
Walsh also failed to file his personal financial disclosure form. Asked if he was trying to hide something, Walsh replied…
Fox Chicago also reports that two local members in the Schaumburg Township GOP want Walsh to resign from the ticket. The two supported other candidates in the primary, however…
Ms. Schlosser was an intern for Sen. Barack Obama, by the way. * Rahm Emanuel was in Chicago today and talked to reporters afterwards about all the breathless coverage of his statement that one day he’d like to run for mayor if Rich Daley ever retires…
No kidding.
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When it comes to cuts, almost nobody is willing to step up
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller * As we’ve seen many, many times before, people don’t want their taxes raised and instead want “waste and inefficiency” cut by government to solve the state’s deficit problems, but they don’t want any big programs cut. Here are the latest results from the Paul Simon Institute’s poll of southern Illinoisans…
But when asked about cutting where the real money is, people are opposed…
The Southern Illinoisan’s lede about the poll was priceless…
Heh. * As we’ve already discussed, the Civic Federation has pulled its support for a 2-point tax hike because the governor isn’t cutting enough and is piling up too much debt. Notice how Lawrence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, gets around a tough question asked by my buddy Ben Yount…
He won’t answer it for good reason. Almost nobody wants to touch this issue. The public is not alone by any means. * Bill Brady responded to the Civic Federation announcement via press release…
Except, the Civic Federation actually supports a much larger tax hike than Quinn does. They just can’t support this budget proposal by Quinn. They’ve never once said “solve the whole problem with cuts and tax cuts,” as Brady does. * But if you think Brady’s statement was delusional, just check out the governor’s Office of Management and Budget statement which they just released…
Where, oh were, to begin? I don’t read the Civic Club report as recognizing “that we are moving forward on changes that will secure our state’s finances” at all. They look at the proposed budget as a cop-out. The Civic Federation also points out that Quinn wants to use a tax increase to negate his education cut. Instead, they say, they oppose Quinn’s proposal “to raise taxes primarily to avert spending cuts rather than to pay down the deficit or reduce the State’s other growing liabilities.” That’s kinda circular logic. The state cut education last year and filled the hole with federal money which is now gone. So, it is now in deficit. * The anti government employee furor has spread to Saturday Night Live… * Related and a roundup…
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Question of the day
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller * James Warren asks his readers a question…
The answer…
* The Question: Keeping in mind that the gas tax (Road Fund money) is not a price percentage-based tax like the sales tax on gasoline (which goes to General Revenue), but a per-gallon tax, do you think that the state’s gas tax should be automatically indexed to inflation?
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Cook upgrades Kirk and the jabs keep coming at Giannoulis
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller * Famed political prognosticator Charlie Cook just upgraded Mark Kirk’s chances of winning the US Senate seat. Cook had the US Senate race as a “toss-up” but he moved it a notch to “lean Republican” in the wake of Broadway Bank’s demise…
Chris Cillizza looks behind the subscription firewall…
Frankly, I’ve personally had this race in the “lean Republican” column since Lisa Madigan bowed out and Kirk jumped in. As I’ve written before, Kirk is a nearly perfect Republican statewide candidate. Historically, the GOP must win suburban Republican wome to defeat the Democrats statewide. Kirk’s pro-choice, anti-gun positions are right in line with theirs. And we’ve known about Giannoulias’ bank troubles for over four years, when Speaker Madigan started using them against Giannoulias in the 2006 Democratic primary. Also, the ad buy mentioned by Cook is, apparently, mostly for show. According to three different buyers, Giannoulias spent just $2,500 on Springfield cable and $20,000 on ABC7 in Chicago, during the early morning news, noon news and the 1 am news. * Cillizza goes on to observe…
Um, well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. This Kirk campaign press release just found its way into my in-box…
And this story sure looks like Kirk-generated OR to me…
* Whatever the case, Giannoulias ain’t getting out of this race, the political hooplah surrounding Wednesday’s presidential visit to Quincy notwithstanding. All the huffing and puffing turns out to have been much ado about not a whole lot. Not to single him out or anything, but Eric Zorn was among many who read the tea leaves and proclaimed that Obama’s failure to invite Giannoulias to stand by his side was yet another sign that the White House wanted him gone…
Well, the latest news is that Giannoulias has been invited to attend tomorrow’s festivities at the same time that every other state officeholder was invited. It’s not a campaign event, so the White House sent invites Monday to all statewide officials and people like Senate President John Cullerton, who isn’t going because it’s a session day. The only real “scandal” here is that the White House waited until two days before the event to send out invitations to his home-state VIPs. Everybody really needs to take a breath. Just look at the way The Hill is preparing to parse every one of the Preznit’s words…
Sheesh. Again, this is a government trip, paid for by the taxpayers. If Obama does say something about the election, he’ll be violating the law. As I’ve written before, people were telling Giannoulias to get off the ticket four years ago when he ran for treasurer against Speaker Madigan’s choice. He kept moving ahead. After he won that primary, pundits made a huge deal out of the fact that Madigan didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with Giannoulias, and suggestions were made that he’d be better off exiting. He kept moving forward. Last year, all were in a tizzy when the White House brought in a large handful of possible US Senate candidates, including Lisa Madigan, for public wooings. Giannoulias stuck with the plan. Since he won the primary, it’s been an almost non-stop cry for Giannoulias to go. But he ain’t going anywhere, despite the rumor first spread by Rod Blagojevich that Giannoulias would be moved aside and somebody like Rahm Emanuel would replace him. Pure, utter fantasy. The trouble is, some people want it to be true so much that they can see “evidence” everywhere. Again, I’m not trying to pick on Zorn, because this “I want it to be true so it will be true because I will help make it so” bias is so prevalent. Y’all can keep shouting if you want, but I cannot foresee a probable circumstance where he steps aside. * Zorn adds…
Really? I like Ben a lot, but he must not know Illinois too well. Let’s see, Blair Hull, Jack Ryan and Alan Keyes - and that was just in 2004. About the worst thing I know that happened to an Illinois US Senate candidate was when Frank L. Smith ran in 1926. The Senate held special hearings during the summer after word got out that Smith’s campaign was being financed in whole by what is now ComEd and other utilities. Smith was chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission at the time. Oops. Now that’s bad. Smith won anyway, but the Senate refused to seat him when Gov. Len Small tried to appoint him that December (the incumbent died after the election). The Senate refused to seat him again when Smith showed up to claim his seat in March of 1927. He resigned a year later and Gov. Small was so upset that he refused to appoint a replacement, leaving Illinois with only one US Senator until after the next election. * The Tribune editorial board once again goes after Giannoulias today…
Did Broadway make mistakes? Heck yes they did. Did those mistakes become fatal when the national economy tanked? Heck yes they did. But where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah. Now I remember. The exact same thing happened to Tribune Co. They way overleveraged, then the economy tanked, newstand sales dropped like a rock and advertising revenues dried up and then they found themselves in bankruptcy court. Oops. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and Giannoulias has already taken the blame for his share at the bank. Giannoulias doesn’t take any blame at all in his new ad, however, and that’s the real issue here. On that point, I wholly agree with the Tribune.
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McQueary asks the right question
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller * Kristen McQueary really nailed it this week with this observation…
Good point. Kristen goes on to give us some color behind the Bill Brady tax returns controversy…
Forcing Chicago reporters to travel to Springfield is probably akin to demanding that Pinckneyville residents pick up their tax refund checks in the Loop. It ain’t a popular move. * Gov. Pat Quinn is doing his best to keep the Brady tax issue alive. Quinn took two whacks at Sen. Bill Brady yesterday. First, he criticized Brady for only allowing reporters to “glimpse” the returns on Friday afternoon. Second, he blasted Brady for not paying income taxes on his “very handsome” state Senate salary. It’s worth a watch it… * Meanwhile, Quinn took some heat from Latino leaders last night. Quinn didn’t attend the event, sending his COO Jack Lavin and his Hispanic point person Billy Ocasio in his stead. Congressman Luis Gutierrez wasn’t exactly impressed…
Oof. Problem is, Quinn wasn’t at Speaker Madigan’s event. Gutierrez continued…
Quinn’s not defending Ochoa for good reason. McCormick Place is teetering on the brink of collapse. Not to mention that Speaker Madigan despises the guy. * On the other side of the political spectrum, Sarah Palin is returing to Illinois for a state party fundraiser…
* And former Gov. Jim Edgar said last night that he will be voting for Sen. Brady, but repeated his vow to stay out of direct involvement with any campaigns…
I had a two-hour lunch with Edgar and Samuel Gove yesterday while I was in Urbana to speak to the U of I’s Institute of Government and Public Affairs. It was absolutely fascinating. Too bad I can’t write about it, but we talked mostly about Illinois history.
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Your morning video
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller * Baby Ian loves the White Sox. The kid obviously has good taste. But you absolutely must check out little Ian’s thoughts about the Cubs… It’s so satisfying in these trying times to see that at least some children are being raised right. This is a Major League Baseball open thread. Enjoy.
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Protected: SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Today’s edition of Capitol Fax (use all CAPS in password)
Tuesday, Apr 27, 2010 - Posted by Rich Miller
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