* I may leave comments open starting next weekend. We’ll see how it goes. I will likely be posting new stuff this weekend, so check back. We’ll talk again on Monday. Have a good one.
* This goes out to Rich Whitey, er, Whitney. Dude, that was the most publicity you’ve received in a very long time. Revel in it, man. Print up t-shirts or something. Then sell them.
Anyway, it was harder than I thought finding a video with the term “Whitey” in it that was also safe to post here. But this here’s Whitey Morgan singing a Waylon Jennings classic…
Wanna get the rabbit outta the L-O-G
You gotta make a commotion like a D-O-G
Like a D-O-G
*** UPDATE *** Earlier this afternoon, the Giannoulias campaign announced it had raised $2.3 million during the third quarter. Giannoulias didn’t announce his cash on hand amount. Mark Kirk just announced his own totals, including his Oct. 1 CoH…
The Kirk for Senate campaign today announced it started the final month of the campaign with $4.4 million cash-on-hand after raising $3.12 million from more than 6,000 individuals during the third quarter.
* Senate race roundup…
* PRESS RELEASE: Today Illinois State Treasurer and Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alexi Giannoulias’ campaign announced its best fundraising quarter to date, taking in $2.3 million in campaign contributions and shattering the previous record high by more than $1 million.
* Kirk, others listed as recipients of $200K in ‘independent’ expenditures: The Illinois State Chamber of Commerce on Thursday reported to the Federal Election Commission independent expenditures of $200,000 to benefit three local contenders. They would be Senate hopeful Mark Kirk, $107,500; 17th District congressional candidate Bobby Schilling, $60,000, and the 14th Congressional District’s Randy Hultgren, $32,000. All are Republicans.
* Mark Kirk Accused Of Hiring ‘Voter Intimidation Specialist’ For Voter Integrity Squad
* 3:13 pm - Legendary Chicago politician Ed Vrdolyak will have to serve 10 months in prison and then another 10 months in confinement, five months of work release and then another five months of home confinement.
“It was a very serious and sophisticated crime by sophisticated people who were able to pull the wool over other sophisticated people,” U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said. He added though that Vrdolyak led a life of good works.
“This has been a very long and very difficult ordeal for everyone,” Vrdolyak, 72, said of his role in a real estate scheme. “I’m sorry. I made a stupid mistake . . . it was dumb, it was stupid and I was wrong.”
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly listened to Vrdolyak’s address as well as arguments from prosecutors in Vrdolyak’s resentencing hearing for about 90 minutes. […]
Kennelly has the case now after an appeals court ruled in January in a stinging decision that the probation-only penalty Vrdolyak first got in February 2009 for the crime was inappropriate.
The decision blasted U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur for sentencing Vrdolyak to five years of probation, including community service, and fining him $50,000. The appellate court ordered Vrdolyak to be resentenced by another judge.
Prosecutors on Friday asked for nearly 3 1/2 years for the “secret handshake deal,” calling Vrdolyak a “wealthy,” “privileged” man who conspired for a kickback because he was a powerful insider who could get away with it.
This ad isn’t on the air yet. It’s only on YouTube so far.
Please, make extra special sure in comments that you remain respectful of Brady’s mother. Yes, she spoke out, but it’s his mom, for crying out loud. Go easy or be banned for life. Thanks. I’m fairly certain nobody would do that, but I don’t want to take any chances.
* Speaking of negativity, the Tribune ran a story this morning about Brady’s business…
Bill Brady says he has had to make tough decisions to help his Bloomington-based development company survive in the lingering recession—and recently filed land records show that includes offering his own home as collateral for a $1.3 million business loan.
With their company already carrying millions of dollars of debt on several stagnated developments in downstate markets, Brady and his brothers resorted to putting up their family homes in Bloomington to secure the new loan from a Peoria credit union. […]
“I would be quite surprised to see a larger developer put up their personal assets,” said Terry R. Ruhland, the group’s past president, who runs a smaller Peoria-area company. “I’m sure the Brady boys are doing what the bank requires them to do. I am sure it is something they would have preferred not do, but the rules are changing for everyone.”
*** UPDATE 2 *** Bill Ward, the Executive Vice President of the Home Builders Assoc. of Illinois, just called to say that the Tribune grossly misquoted his former president. Ward insisted Terry Ruhland told the Trib that “a lot of builders are having to put up their homes as collateral” right now because of the super=steep falloff in new home construction.
Gov. Pat Quinn slammed Republican challenger Bill Brady over a $1.3 million loan for his home building business revealed today, saying the state senator must disclose more about his finances to voters.
But in doing so, Quinn made allegations not supported by a Tribune story that reported the loan Friday.
“He used his vote in the Senate in the past to help his business…. Now we learn it’s a failing business,” said Quinn, who went beyond what the Tribune reported.
* In other news, NBC5’s Steve Bryant reported on something that I’ve been telling you about for weeks…
Rasmussen: Cohen Taking Votes from Brady
*** UPDATE 1 *** Here’s your exclusive weekly preview of WBEZ’s show Best Game in Town. From the producer…
We gather a roundtable of political consultants to talk about the week that was. And this week was all about ads.
Dave Kohn, Jeff Leitner and Delmarie Cobb join host Steve Edwards to talk through the final weeks of the various campaigns.
In a meeting with Crain’s editorial board late Wednesday, at which he also suggested that city pension funds potentially are headed toward insolvency, the retiring Chicago chief executive said voters won’t stand for a repeat of the “Beirut by the Lake” racial and ethnic turmoil of two-plus decades ago.
Voters “don’t want a divisive campaign,” Mr. Daley said, speaking with some vigor. “It’s a completely different city in 21 years. People don’t want to go back to that past.”
The turmoil of the Harold Washington era gave Chicago an international PR wound that took “many years” to disappear, Mr. Daley added. A repeat would be “unacceptable.”
* The Question: What advice would you give the next governor of Illinois?
*** UPDATE *** So, here it is. St. Clair County Clerk Bob Delaney didn’t mail out absentee ballots to military service members because it would’ve cost him $2 a pop. Sheesh…
Delaney, a Democrat, said if he had mailed out the ballots before the court ruling had come down, putting the Constitution Party back on the ballot, “I would have had to redo the whole thing again” — at a cost of $2 per ballot, Delaney said.
Figures Illinois election officials sent to the Justice Department on Friday show no evidence of an effort by Democratic local election officials to hold back ballots from Republican-leaning soldiers serving overseas:
• Of the 16,575 absentee ballots requested in Illinois, only 1,832 — 11 percent — have been requested by servicemen and women serving overseas.
• The vast majority of absentee ballots are going to non-military citizens living overseas or who will be out-of-town on Election Day, college students studying abroad, etc. — voters who have no automatic tendency toward either party. And, actually, under the new no-excuse-necessary absentee voting laws, voters need not even be out of town to vote absentee. […]
• Far more Illinois servicemen and women serving in-country have requested ballots – 5,650 – than servicemen and women serving out of country: 1,832.
• Half the absentee ballots requested are being e-mailed and so could be e-mailed back just as quickly.
[ *** End Of Update *** ]
* Remember how St. Clair County Clerk Bob Delaney defended his decision to mail hundreds of military and overseas absentee ballots 16 days late despite federal law? Well, Delaney now says the State Board of Elections knew about his decision…
Delaney said he informed the Illinois State Board of Elections of his decision to delay the ballots’ mailing after receiving an e-mail message several days before the Sept. 18 deadline.
“I told the state what I was doing, the state board knew it,” he said.
But according to the state board’s executive director Dan White, the board told Delaney that he needed to comply with the law. Delaney was told he couldn’t wait for a final court decision on whether the Constitution Party would remain on the ballot. Delaney waited anyway.
“We told him not to delay printing up the ballots and that he had to abide by state and federal law,” White told me this afternoon. “Yeah, we knew, but we also told him what he had to do.”
* I also asked Director White about a report at Breitbart’s Big Government website which is headlined: “Illinois Elections Officials Caught Lying About Military Ballots.” An excerpt…
On September 14th, Justin Weinstein-Tull, an attorney at [the Department of Justice’s] Voting Section contacted Dan White, Executive Director of the Illinois State Board of Elections regarding the September 18th deadline to mail military ballots […]
On September 20, Cris Cray, Director of Legislation at the Illinois State Board of Elections, sent this reply to Weinstein-Tull: In response to your request to monitor our local election officials, please be advised that Illinois military and overseas ballots went out between September 3rd (Illinois law) and September 18th (Federal law). From this point forward, all requests received will be mailed out that same day.
White said that the e-mail to DoJ was “based on incomplete information” that the Board had at the time. “We had a helluva time getting information” from the local election boards, White said.
The problem with that story, however, is the board knew that Clerk Delaney was intending to resist compliance by the time that e-mail was sent to DoJ.
* You can read the complete list of election boards that allegedly didn’t comply with state and federal law by clicking here. Most of those were sent just a few days late. St. Clair County was by far the biggest offender at 1,274 late-mailed overseas ballots.
34 counties were late, but White said the Department of Justice is narrowing its focus to just a handful of jurisdictions that were really late, sending out the ballots on Oct. 4th, 5th or 8th. And all but one of those counties involved just a few late-mailed ballots. St. Clair was by far the worst.
Leaders in the Illinois Republican Party are pushing the U.S. Justice Department to extend the deadline for turning in military and overseas ballots. State Chairman Pat Brady said that if the Justice Department does not extend the deadline, he would file a lawsuit in federal court. Chairman Brady said: “if a meaningful extension is not granted, we will file a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of our servicemen and women.”
Kirk has jumped on the news that some Illinois counties did not meet a deadline for mailing ballots to soldiers serving overseas. Kirk, a member of the Navy Reserve, calls it a disgrace.
But at a news conference Friday, Kirk didn’t specifically accuse anyone of delaying the ballots for political reasons.
As we have reported… it was the Illinois Republican Party’s objection (done under the name of two phony “objectors” recruited by Pat Brady’s operation) to the statewide slate of Constitution Party candidates that caused the delay. Ironically, the Constitution Party’s slate was led by a military veteran: U.S. Senate candidate Randy Stufflebeam. Randy served his country for 22 years in the United States Marine Corps.
Pat Brady should have known that when he backed objections to 23 candidates that there would be a good chance he might infringe on the voting rights of our military personnel. But it’s pretty obvious Brady didn’t care.
The intent of the Republican and Democratic parties in filing objections isn’t just to kick “competition” off the ballot – rather the main purpose is to keep the candidates occupied and to drag out the process. A candidate tied up in court can’t be out campaigning.
But state elections chief Dan White notes that counties and cities like Chicago can wait until as late as Nov. 16 — two weeks after the election — to count any straggler votes.
* Phil Rogers tells us how the feds plan to use Tony Rezko against Rod Blagojevich, despite Rezko’s now infamous letter to his judge proclaiming his innocence and accusing prosecutors of forcing him to tell lies about his dear friend…
In a filing Thursday, federal prosecutors said longtime fundraiser Tony Rezko came to them in July of 2008, offering to cooperate in their investigation of former governor Rod Blagojevich. […]
Rezko had previously written a letter to his own trial judge, Amy St. Eve, accusing the government of pressuring him to lie about Blagojevich and others. But in Thursday’s filing, prosecutors state that Rezko had in fact recanted that letter, “and admitted it was false when written in an attempt to secure bond during his trial.”
The motion filed by prosecutors goes on to say that Rezko offered damning evidence against his longtime friend. Prosecutor Reid Schar declared that “on the very first day Rezko began being interviewed by the government, Rezko incriminated the defendant and himself in far reaching corruption schemes.”
The problem, of course, is that even if Rezko really did tell the truth to the government after lying to the judge, he’s still an admitted liar. And a felon. And probably looking to cut himself a deal. Not the most sterling witness.
“They are pressuring me to tell them the ‘wrong’ things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama,” Rezko wrote St. Eve in an April bid to be released on bail during his trial. “I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator,” Rezko continued. “I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people.”
“I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru or Winter. I am simply an honest, humble immigrant who believes in the American dream,” Rezko wrote as he was kept in solitary confinement in a downtown lockup earlier this year. He was speaking of numerous people who testified at his trial or talked to prosecutors. […]
In his letter, Rezko states that he’s been under pressure by federal prosecutors to give information on Obama and Blagojevich. However, Rezko has never submitted to an interview by the feds nor has he proffered a statement to them.
In a 34-page filing Thursday, prosecutors said Sam Adam Jr. and Sam Adam Sr. made statements to the media that included made-up numbers and outright lies, all in an effort to speak to the next jury. Blagojevich was convicted of just one count — lying to the FBI. He faces retrial on 23 other counts next year.
The filing takes the Adams to task, saying they made up numbers, telling TV crews a retrial would cost the government up to $30 million.
Prosecutors say that sum nearly equals the annual budget of the U.S. attorney’s office, including rent, civil cases and salaries and expenses of more than 150 non-Blagojevich prosecutors.
“The defendant’s allegations of misconduct are just broad statements or rhetorical questions that make for nice quotes in newspaper articles, but are completely unfounded,” prosecutors wrote. The accusations are just a shield to distract the public from Blagojevich’s own misstatements, prosecutors said.
As an example, prosecutors pointed to Blagojevich’s repeated accusation that the government lied about what was on its secretly made recordings.
“The trial made clear, however, that the government accurately quoted transcripts in context and it was the defendant who was convicted of lying,” the government said.
The rising numbers are expected to stall soon, after attorneys general in all 50 states announced Wednesday they are investigating problems with foreclosure documents, including mortgage loan-servicer employees signing hundreds of affidavits saying they were familiar with foreclosure cases without first reading the documents — a practice known as robo-signing. Other documents were signed without a notary public present, which violates state law. Major banks have halted their foreclosure proceedings while they try to rectify the situation.
Some mental health professionals suggest the recent rise in suicides can be traced in part to the lingering detritus of the economic recession, primarily unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies. Other officials, including Lake County Coroner Richard Keller, said they’re also troubled by the recent cluster of teen suicides, including five Barrington High School students who have died since the fall of 2007.
“We obviously have been increasingly concerned about teen suicide,” said Jeff Arnett, spokesman for Barrington Community Consolidated School District 220. “But the fourth student suicide was the tipping point. The entire community and the school district knew that something had to be done.”
Based on sales activity in those two suburbs over the past 12 months, it would take more than 10 years to sell all those homes, by far the biggest supply of any suburb or Chicago neighborhood.
Burke says with the lagging economy, it makes sense to have some work done by the private sector. He points to zoning and economic development as two areas where some of the work could be privatized.
