* I was down in Texas last weekend spending time with my brother Doug and his family. At some point, Doug played a song in his car that just blew me away. The singer was a guy named Chris Knight, who I at first thought was kinda like a Kentucky version of Steve Earle, with some early John Pryne thrown in. He’s from a coal mining family and writes songs about what he knows best…
The songs were of strugglers, stragglers, strangers and survivors, sung in a voice worn as the hills and lurching down highways we’ve driven before but that beckon still.
Knight’s record company thought he should be a country star, but that didn’t work out. He’s not really a “country” guy. I’m not quite sure he’s an “alt country” person, either. I doubt he’d want to be categorized anyway. He’s simply an honest, dark, flawed soul without a trace of the tiresome overt pandering of mainstream country. He may never make it big, but we know he’ll always be straight with his audience and true to his art.
I just can’t recommend Chris Knight highly enough. Have a listen to “Down the River,” which sent chills down the spine of my nephew Nicholas the first time he heard it. The same thing happened to me. Lyrics are here…
I’ve been thinking Wilson’s cousin
Better find a place to hide
‘Cause I’m going down the river
Yeah I’m going down the river
I couldn’t find a suitable live version of that song because all of his fans sing along the entire time on every video I watched. They are a dedicated bunch, my brother and his wife Shannon included. See for yourself. And that’s one of the more subdued reactions.
* This is one of his most “mainstream country” tunes, but his wordsmith abilities shine right through the production on “It Ain’t Easy Being Me”…
There oughtta be a bridge somewhere they could dedicate to me
I’d probably come to the ceremony with a can of gasoline
Walk on over to the other side, and there I’d light a match
Sit and stare through the smoke and flames and wonder how I’m gonna get back
The sales tax holiday on school supplies and clothing — signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Pat Quinn and set for 10 days starting Aug. 6 — should be a welcome boon for Skip Kanosky, owner of one of the area’s two education supplies stores.
But it’s not.
Despite the governor’s hope that waiving the state’s 5 percent portion of sales tax will boost consumer shopping, Kanosky — who owns The Learning Tree in Bradley — reacted to the news Thursday with a little more than a yawn.
“In Illinois?” he asked. “We can afford that?”
Yikes, man.
* If you’d like to place a small wager on your general election predictions, then by all means click here. You don’t have to plunk anything down to participate, but you can’t win any cash that way, either.
* Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. has been dodging reporters all week about revelations about how he may have participated in a discussion about funneling a million dollars to Rod Blagojevich’s campaign fund in exchange for a US Senate seat appointment. He has finally put out a press release…
“My office has received many requests for comment in response to bits of evidence offered and proffered during the ongoing Blagojevich trial. As much as I would like to clear up the misstatements made by some, and clarify my role (really my non-role) in this affair, obviously it would be inappropriate for me to do so until the trial is over. It is appropriate, however, to emphasize what has long been in the public record: I have cooperated and will continue to cooperate with all government entities investigating this matter, and I have never been advised that I am a target of this investigation. Most important, I was never part of any improper scheme with Blagojevich or anyone else related to securing the vacant Illinois senate seat.”
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Senate candidate Mark Kirk says he is done answering questions about exaggerating his military accomplishments.
Several times this week, Kirk has refused to answer questions about specific incidents during his 21 years in the Navy Reserve. He said Friday that he’ll let his official fitness reports speak for him from now on.
Those reports include glowing evaluations but offer no details on specific incidents — such as whether he came under fire while serving in Afghanistan, as he once claimed.
*** UPDATE *** I forgot to mention Sen. Dan Rutherford’s quite solid fundraising during the first six months of the year. Check it out. The GOP treasurer nominee raised almost half a million dollars, loaned himself another $200K and had more than a million dollars cash on hand. Very strong numbers for a down-ballot statewide candidate. If you forced me to make a “Pick to Click” for November, it’d probably be Rutherford.
* Other stuff…
* Carl Officer: Racism behind challenges to his campaign, other black Senate candidates
* Kirk stands by vote against unemployment benefits
* I went to college with state Sen. Mike Jacobs (D-East Moline), so I know him well and we’ve been buddies a very long time. But, as I’ve told Mike more times than I can count, he really needs to learn to zip his lip every now and then. Here he is talking about the public reaction to news that Gov. Pat Quinn handed out huge raises to his top staff during the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression…
“Taxpayers get distracted by things that don’t matter worth a hill of beans” Jacobs said .
To his credit, Jacobs went on to say that he wouldn’t have given out those raises if he was governor. But he’s flat-out wrong about how the public is being “distracted” by triviality.
These raises go right to the heart of what’s wrong with Pat Quinn’s governance. Cuts for you, but not for me. “Shared sacrifice” for everyone except the people demanding that sacrifice. If the Pat Quinn of 20 years ago could somehow be brought back to existence, I’m certain he’d be disgusted at what he’d see.
[Illinoisans] have been savaged in this recession. Many have not only endured pay freezes but witnessed their wages cut, their salaries whittled even further by furloughs, their retirement accounts bruised if they’re lucky enough to have them at all, their health care premiums multiplied. Unemployment in Illinois remains in the double digits.
It is against this backdrop that the governor has the gall to propose and promote digging even deeper into their pockets with an income tax increase, while continuing to borrow Illinois’ way into oblivion and making vendors wait in record numbers for payment for services long ago delivered. If Quinn doesn’t understand how badly he’s undermined his own case, no matter how real the state’s budget problems are, well, perhaps there’s just no hope for him.
No doubt this particular revelation will be featured prominently in Brady’s political ads from now until November, and should be. It is impossible to be shocked by any behavior coming out of Illinois government anymore, but this is so obviously inappropriate, such low-hanging fruit for Brady to take a whack at that, well, we just don’t know what planet Quinn currently occupies.
If he knows what’s good for him, Quinn will admit his egregious error and ask his senior staff to give back those salary increases.
* Cairo Residents Protest, Call On Quinn To Help: Not everyone in Cairo greeted Governor Pat Quinn with open arms Thursday. A few residents showed up to protest their high utility rates and call on the governor to do something about it.
* The much-vaunted website Politifact took a look at the US Senate mudslinging this week. One of the claims made by Republican Mark Kirk’s advertising is: “At his father’s bank, Alexi made tens of millions in risky loans to convicted mobsters. Then, the bank collapsed.” Politifact’s take…
In July 2009, Broadway Bank filed foreclosure lawsuits seeking to recoup $12.9 million in defaulted loans made to the pair. So there’s no question that these were “risky” loans, as the ad put it.
But what was Giannoulias’ role in these loans? He was a senior loan officer at the bank at the time, but there’s no evidence he approved them. […]
The ad, however, suggests that risky loans to mobsters caused the bank collapse, and that’s a big stretch. More accurately, the bank invested heavily in construction and development and could not weather the collapse of the real estate market. The losses sustained in loans made to Giorango while Giannoulias was a senior loan officer, while substantial, were a relative drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of the bank’s woes. […]
In summary, D’Arco’s involvement involved a loan that predated Giannoulias’ time at Broadway Bank. Stratievsky had not been charged with anything when Broadway made loans to him. As for Giorango, his relationship with Broadway Bank began long before Giannoulias came on board.
But as the Chicago Tribune detailed, the bank made Giorango an additional $20 million in new loans while Giannoulias was a senior loan officer. There’s no evidence Giannouias approved the loans, but he did some work on them. Still, we think it’s awfully misleading to suggest losses on risky loans to convicted felons led to the bank’s demise (though they certainly didn’t help). In all, we think that all shakes out to a Half True.
* Giannoulias: “He (Kirk) did violate Pentagon rules, twice actually, for improperly mingling politics with his military service”…
The Pentagon released a statement to AP saying that Kirk was twice “counseled” for mixing politics with military service. And we have a memo from the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense referring to “concerns arising from his partisan political activities during his last two tours of active duty.”
The fact that Kirk was merely “counseled” suggests these were not deemed terribly egregious violations of military policy. But the Pentagon did tell AP that Kirk signed a statement acknowledging that he knew the rules and wouldn’t break them again. You don’t sign such a statement if you aren’t deemed to have skirted the rules. We rule this claim True.
* Kirk: “Alexi Giannoulias’ top aide was a longtime BP lobbyist”…
[The ad] begins, “America’s biggest environmental disaster … Where do the candidates stand?”
By the City of Chicago’s definition, Zemenides was a lobbyist for a BP subsidiary. We think it’s highly misleading to suggest that he lobbied in any way for a federal policy that allowed the oil spill to occur. We’re not saying a lobbyist isn’t a lobbyist. But some cities define lobbyist differently.
It’s one thing to be an attorney handling landscaping and zoning issues for a company developing retail gas stations; quite another to lobby for lax federal legislation on deepwater oil drilling. The Kirk ad makes too much of very little. We rate the claim Barely True.
Politifact’s headline on that last one is: “Illinois GOP Senate candidate Mark Kirk smears opponent with BP link.” Pretty obvious how they stand.
A few months ago, Gov. Quinn locked himself into position when he criticized state Sen. Bill Brady, his opponent in the race for governor, for paying no income taxes for two years. Brady’s businesses had tanked with the economy, and he used various tax laws, including President Obama’s stimulus program, to get a complete refund of his state and federal income taxes one year and of his federal taxes the next. Those refunds included all taxes withheld from Brady’s legislative paycheck. Quinn hit him hard.
I was down in Texas with my brother Doug last Friday when U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias revealed that, just like Brady, he had received a complete refund on his state and federal income taxes, including on his state treasurer’s salary. Financial troubles at his now-defunct family bank allowed him to take huge deductions that wiped out his entire tax liability.
My brother hasn’t lived in Illinois for quite a while, but is politically active in Texas. He predicted that Quinn would now have to drop his “he didn’t pay taxes” attack against Brady or risk hurting his fellow Democrat Giannoulias.
Nah, I replied. You don’t understand Illinois. Giannoulias is running for the U.S. Senate. Nobody who’s anybody really cares about U.S. senators in Illinois. Plus, this tax issue is, to quote Rod Blagojevich, bleeping golden. It will work incredibly well in TV ads. Quinn is behind in all the polls and desperately needs that issue to undercut Brady on economic issues by painting him as a completely out-of-touch, uncaring, rich white guy. The governor will toss Alexi under the bus any day now, fellow Democrat or no fellow Democrat, I told Doug.
Sure enough, Quinn told reporters a few days later that Giannoulias should have paid his taxes. The governor wasn’t about to give up a prime campaign issue just to guard another Democrat’s back.
Quinn was actually beaten to the bipartisan punch by Republican Rep. Mark Kirk, who is running against Giannoulias. Kirk took a shot at fellow GOPer Brady while blasting Giannoulias for not paying income taxes. Kirk then launched a statewide radio advertising campaign blasting Giannoulias.
Like I said, the issue is golden. Bleeping golden.
Whenever I post a story about this tax issue on my blog, a nasty fight develops in the comment section between people who say that Brady and Giannoulias were just following the law and those who believe it’s an outrage that some rich guys didn’t pay taxes on their taxpayer-funded salaries.
I fall on the side that says both men should’ve paid taxes on their government salaries, no matter what. I can understand the other side, and I can even see the long-term danger in effectively creating two tax codes, one for politicians and one for everybody else.
But there’s just something not right when an elected official like Brady can afford to loan his own campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars and then accept a complete refund of his income tax withholding. Giannoulias says he’ll donate all of his refunded cash to charity, so he obviously doesn’t need it. Why couldn’t they help fund their own salaries like the rest of us are doing?
Plus, in an era when everybody seems to be stark, raving angry about, well, everything, I reserve the right to be mad about this. If nothing else, it irks me to no end that these guys could think they could get away with this during a campaign.
And now, in yet another weird twist to what was already a supremely weird election year, you can’t tell the attackers without a scorecard. Only in Illinois.
* McConnell stumps for Kirk: Thursday night, a committee including State Representative Jil Tracy (R-Mt. Sterling), former State Sen. Laura Kent Donahue and other Republicans hosted a fundraiser for Congressman Mark Kirk. The headliner of the event was the Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
* Prosecutors are moving pretty fast in the Blagojevich trial, and the judge knocked down yet another defense request…
After just five weeks of testimony, prosecutors in Rod Blagojevich’s case say they’ll rest their case on Tuesday.
The government’s case was expected to last until August.
The defense asked if they could start their case the following week. Judge James Zagel said that was unlikely, but he might give them until Wednesday or Thursday to begin.
I was talking to an attorney last night who said most lawyers love Zagel for his dry sense of humor, fair rulings and his judicial temperament. Some lawyers will even camp out in a courtroom to watch Zagel on the bench, she claimed, adding she believed that jurors will probably identify with Zagel through the course of the trial and that his constant rulings against Blagojevich’s lawyers would be a very bad thing for the defense.
* So, I was reading through the latest Rod Blagojevich surveillance recording transcripts last night and one kinda jumped out at me. The recording was made November 7, 2008 at 1:12 in the afternoon and featured Blagojevich talking to his deputy governor Bob Greenlee…
GREENLEE: (Reading to Blagojevich) Um, uh, “I’ve been predicting Emil for awhile”, somebody says. Um… (dial tone) (PAUSE)
GREENLEE: “Just observing, Deb Mell is coming off as brazen, ungrateful and arrogant.” This is a pro-Claypool post.
BLAGOJEVICH: Yeah.
GREENLEE: Um, (clears throat) somebody else suggested Sandy Jackson for the Senate.
BLAGOJEVICH: Oh yeah?
GREENLEE: Um… (PAUSE)
BLAGOJEVICH: Doesn’t sound like a lot to me.
GREENLEE: I’m still going. There’s just so many of these posts, and they keep getting pulled down. Um, the anti-Claypool post and pro Jan Schakowsky post.
BLAGOJEVICH: I don’t care about that.
GREENLEE: Uh…
BLAGOJEVICH: (To wife) It’s Faith Hill, Patti, look at ‘er.
GREENLEE: That’s it.
BLAGOJEVICH: Not so good.
GREENLEE: We need more, I’m want to see how many have been pulled down.
BLAGOJEVICH: (Exhales loudly). (PAUSE)
It looked to me like they were talking about comments on this blog. Sure enough, they were. A post that day discussed possible US Senate appointments and ran a list of names of people considering Rahm Emanuel’s US House seat. Apparently, I was deleting a whole bunch of them, but I don’t recall why. Maybe some of you do.
Blagojevich used to tell me that he didn’t ever read the blog, but his staff told me that they often read it to him or printed it out for him.
The exceptionally long recording of Dec. 4, 2008 continues with Rod Blagojevich explaining to Deputy Gov. Robert Greenlee and his pollster Fred Yang that Jesse Jackson Jr. and Lisa Madigan were “equally repugnant” to him personally.
“If they were both drowning and I could only save one, I really think I’d save Jesse,” Blagojevich is heard saying on tape. “From a personal standpoint, he’s less repugnant to me than she is.”
In a fiery, emotional plea, former Police Chief Vito Scavo asked the Melrose Park Police Pension Board to recognize his more than three decades of service to the village and let him keep his pension despite his multiple felony convictions.
The police officers under his command “would have followed me anywhere,” Scavo, 62, told the board, many of who have known Scavo for decades. “I was honorable, honest and hard-working. That’s what this is about.”
He was convicted of strong-arming local businesses to use the private security firms he illegally ran out of the police department.
Bryant Brewer, 24, of 5800 Block of South Wolcott, faces one count of first degree murder, four counts of attempted murder and one count of armed robbery, according to police.
Brewer allegedly gunned down officer Thor Soderberg with Soderberg’s own weapon outside a police station near 61st and Racine Avenue Wednesday afternoon.
The Cook County Sheriff’s office received information at around 6:30 p.m. Thursday that a visitor or an inmate brought a weapon into the facility, prompting an immediate lockdown of all 10 divisions at Cook County Jail located at 3015 S. California Ave.
Ald. Joe Moore (49th) called the stash “embarrassing” and a “colossal waste of money.”
“The fact that they have all these blue carts in storage is just an indictment of the city’s failure to live up to its commitment to bring recycling to two-thirds of the city,” Moore said.[…]
Ald. Tom Allen (38th) said he has no problem with the stockpile, adding, “Nobody saw this perfect storm of economic meltdown coming. I assume they bought ‘em in bulk, which gives you a better price.”
* Des Plaines medical firm pays $7.3M to settle federal charges of kickback scheme
* Carthage alderman arrested, charged with embezzling $13,000 from fire department
Bobby Smith, 44, now an inactive volunteer firefighter and former secretary and treasurer of the Carthage Clipper Fire Department’s Benevolent Association, posted 10 percent of a $3,000 bond after his arrest. His first court appearance is July 15 in Carthage.
Smith is no longer on active duty as a volunteer firefighter, though he is still an alderman on the Carthage City Council.
* The latest Rasmussen Reports poll has some major movement in the governor’s race. Numbers in brackets are results from the pollster on June 7, April 28, April 5 and March 8…
Brady: 43% [47% 45%, 45%, 47%] Quinn: 40% [36% 38%, 38%, 37%] Some Other Candidate 9% [8% 5%, 7%, 6%] Not sure 8% [10% 11%, 10%, 9%]
The survey, taken Wednesday night, follows Quinn’s announcement late last week that he was cutting state spending by $1 billion as he wrestles with one of the worst state budget deficits in the country. State legislators wrapped up their session earlier this year, leaving Quinn with a $13 billion deficit to resolve. […]
Given Illinois’ economic problems and the national political environment, Quinn is in a surprisingly tough race despite the powers of incumbency and the state’s strong Democratic tendencies.
Eleven percent (11%) of Illinois voters now have a Very favorable opinion of Quinn, while 27% view him Very Unfavorably.
Brady is seen Very Favorably by 15% and Very Unfavorably by 16%.
These numbers are consistent with the earlier surveys. At this point in a campaign, Rasmussen Reports considers the number of people with strong opinions more significant than the total favorable/unfavorable numbers.
* How would you rate the job Pat Quinn has been doing as Governor… do you strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, or strongly disapprove of the job he’s been doing?
The survey of 500 Likely Voters in Illinois was conducted on July 7, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC
