With an eye on drawing more attendees closer to the 2012 election, Right Nation, a conservative conference that drew roughly 6,000 to Hoffman Estates last year, is postponing a second conference originally scheduled for Nov. 3-5.
Hoffman Estates Mayor William McLeod said he learned of the news a few days ago, but had “no idea why” the conference organizers backed out of those dates.
The United Republican Fund, which was organizing the event, declined to comment Wednesday.
But Joe Morris, a board member with the American Conservatives Union, which had been working with the organizers of the Right Nation conference, said he was “informed of the decision rather than participating in the making of it.”
That Morris quote seems kinda ominous.
* If you go to the Right Nation 2011 website, there’s no indication yet that the conference has been postponed…
* The Illinois Review is listed as a “participating organization,” but the self-described “crossroads of the conservative community” doesn’t have anything on its website about the “postponement” either. The United Republican Fund, which runs the show, has nothing on its Facebook page. And Right Nation’s news page hasn’t been updated since June 15th.
* The URF spent thousands of dollars on consulting contracts for Right Nation 2010, including to Illinois Review’s top person, Fran Eaton. The group was over $40,000 in debt at the end of June and had just $428.87 in the bank. It has filed no disclosure reports for large contributions in the third quarter, which ends this week.
Sears Centre General Manager Ben Gibbs noted that the arena will still generate revenue because of a cancellation provision in Right Nation’s contract.
…Adding… I’m told that the URF has formed a 501c4 organization and has money built up in that account, which isn’t public. They also claim that the event will happen eventually.
Fresh off his convincing win in last week’s Florida straw poll and his resulting dramatic rise in a major national poll, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain will be appearing at TeaCon 2011 in Schaumburg on Saturday.
According to Chicago Tea Party Coordinator Steve Stevlic, Cain will appear as part of a presidential candidate forum on Saturday afternoon from 1:00 - 4:00 that will also feature a recorded video message from Governor Rick Perry. The group is currently working on setting up a live address via Skype from Rep. Michele Bachmann as well.
The Tea Party will conduct its own straw poll following the forum, learning from the experience of the Iowa straw poll. In Iowa, voters were allowed to cast ballots before the candidates had even addressed the attendees. After hearing the speeches, many voters asked for their ballots back so they could change their votes to vote for Cain according to Stevlic, who said, “We’re not going to make that same mistake.”
Right Nation’s list of “participants” was decidedly less glittery.
* In related news, Carol Marin’s most recent column is about Jack Roeser, who was tea party almost before the original tea party…
Roeser, who operates his aerospace engineering company and nonprofit Family Taxpayers Foundation out of offices in Carpentersville, has never gotten along with the moderate members of the GOP. Or they with him.
“I’ve been called some of the most interesting names,” he said. “Like a cockroach in the caviar . . . or a member of the lunatic fringe.”
Roeser views the ascendance of the Tea Party as vindication.
Then again, Roeser has long fired away at fellow Republicans with invective: U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (“The Tea Party hates him.”); former Gov. James Thompson (“He’s the progenitor of the whole mess.”); or former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (“Elements like Hastert are slugs.”).
Directors of an Illinois company that develops and manufactures wound-care dressings plan to relocate the company to Fort Worth from Illinois, citing their pursuit of a more business-friendly home.
Ferris Manufacturing Corp. is negotiating a potential lease on 40,000- to 50,000-square-foot building in the Alliance area of north Fort Worth, company officials said. The privately held company plans to move next spring or summer.
“The taxes are oppressive (in Illinois). The business climate is terrible. Every time you turn around, they’ve got some new regulation or some way to make you uncomfortable,” said Dr. Roger Sessions, Ferris chairman and CEO.
Harsh.
Sessions is the nephew of the company’s founder and was once a football coach at the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. I am not making that up. Sessions lives in Texas.
* But Illinois did gain a bunch of new jobs today. From a press release…
Governor Pat Quinn today announced the opening of a new FedEx facility in Grayslake that would result in the creation of more than 450 new jobs, including managers, clerical staff, maintenance workers, drivers and more. Local officials, FedEx representatives and Assistant Director of Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Dan Seals gathered today to officially open the facility, which was supported by the state with an estimated $500,000 business investment package to strengthen the company’s $38 million private investment. […]
The new 206,000 square-foot highly-automated distribution center is expected to process about 63,000 packages per day between the Midwest and the rest of the country. DCEO is administering the state’s $500,000 business investment package, which consists of Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) tax credits based on job creation and Employer Training Investment Program job training funds that will help enhance the skills of the company’s workforce.
“We are pleased that FedEx Ground has chosen Illinois as the location of their newest distribution center,” DCEO Assistant Director Dan Seals said. “With investments like this, we are continuing to fuel the state’s economic growth, creating jobs and supporting Illinois businesses.”
* In a related story, Republican Congressmen Joe Walsh, Don Manzullo, Bobby Schilling and John Shimkus have sent a letter to Gov. Pat Quinn about our tax situation…
As Members of Congress overseeing a vast federal budget that itself is in the red, we certainly understand the difficulty in trying to solve budgetary issues. However, raising individual income taxes by 66 percent will only exacerbate our wider problem and take more Illinois residents off the tax roll when they leave our state. Middle class families are already stretched thin. A family of four earning $60,000 a year right now has an additional $1,040 to pay in taxes each year. We understand this might not seem like much but for the families in our districts this is money that they cannot afford to lose.
The largest employers in the state of Illinois are struggling too. Illinois has the third highest corporate tax rate in the country and this takes away from their competitive edge and ability to create new jobs. Many of our large employers based in Illinois could leave as a result of the new 9 percent corporate tax rate that was raised from 6.8 percent in January. These are critical jobs that must be protected. We are willing to work with you on this issue as similar measures are considered right now in Congress.
That first paragraph almost reads as if the state hadn’t yet passed the tax hike. Kinda weird. Also, our “largest employers” will probably end up getting state aid to stick around.
We elect congressmen to run the country. We elected Pat Quinn to run the state. He doesn’t give advice to Congress, and he doesn’t need advice from congressmen, either.
Quinn routinely offers his advice to anybody and everybody, whether they listen or not.
The governor’s office passed on a chance to comment.
* And speaking of Congress and the state, I mentioned in passing yesterday that Congressman Bob Dold was criticized for railing against the stimulus bill and then showing up for an unveiling of a $4.9 million renovation of a Metra station paid for with those stimulus funds. Greg Hinz says Dold just handed his foes some ammunition…
Congressman Robert Dold, R-Winnetka, has just given a little gift of sorts to whoever will be his Democratic foe next year. […]
“Jobs are created by small businesses growing and adding employees, not through handouts of taxpayer dollars,” one Dold press release [during the 2010 campaign] stated. The stimulus “handouts” merely “add to the growing federal debt,” another 2010 press release from Mr. Dold read.
Asked how he can celebrate spending from a program he slammed, Mr. Dold’s spokeswoman replies that he “was pleased to accept the invitation from Metra to attend this event in the 10th District. The office regularly works with Metra.”
But it goes farther than that. Dold showed a real enmity toward capital projects in his last campaign. For instance, here’s a press release from his Republican primary race against former state Rep. Beth Coulson…
Coulson is a Springfield-Insider who has sponsored tax and spending increases:
Sponsored HB656, the RTA sales tax increase in 2008 that raised sales tax in several Illinois counties by $500 million per year to fund a bailout of the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority). The sales tax increased helped Chicago become the highest taxed city in the nation. […]
Voted for the spending portion of the 2009 Capital Bill which included taxpayer monies for special works projects in her district, but voted against initiatives to fund those projects (HB255 & HB312) piling more debt onto Illinois taxpayers. […]
Voted for a $750 million pork spending bill that would have funded projects started by imprisoned former Governor George Ryan. Former Governor Rod Blagojevich vetoed $550 million of the pork spending bill, but Coulson voted to override most of Blagojevich’s line-item vetoes (SB1239, 2003).
As Congressman of the 10th District, Dold will bring small business common sense to Washington by cutting taxes for families and small businesses, ending Congressional leaders’ irresponsible borrowing and spending, and advocating a realistic and balanced federal budget.
The RTA praised that quarter-point press release at the time…
“The new funding and reforms will allow us to bring our system up to a state of good repair and ensure that we are operating efficiently,” said Steve Schlickman, RTA Executive Director.
And, of course, the capital bill mentioned above also included transit funding.
So, bash the stimulus, bash the RTA sales tax, bash state capital spending, but, by gosh, don’t miss a chance to cut a ribbon at a subsidized train station with one of those over-sized scissors…
Also, Dold has campaigned often at Metra stops. It’s a requirement for suburban politicians. But I’m wondering if he told those commuters how he felt about funding their rides?
* Related…
* ADDED: Congressman: Don’t tax the rich: Cutting taxes and eliminating restrictions on corporations are the two main pillars of Schilling’s plan to spur the economy… “It wasn’t the millionaires and billionaires that created Obamacare, cap and trade, the over-regulation by EPA and OSHA – it was the administration and the people that he appointed in,” Schilling said.
* Former Belleville mayor Roger Cook will try to unseat Costello
While impeached ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich awaits sentencing, the state watchdog that polices lawyers has asked the Illinois Supreme Court to suspend his law license in a move that could deal yet another indignity to the state’s defrocked chief executive.
Blagojevich’s legal team has until Oct. 11 to tell justices why the felon should not have his law license suspended after a jury this year convicted him of trying to sell the state’s U.S. Senate seat and extorting a hospital official for campaign contributions and another jury last year found him guilty of lying to the FBI.
“While the judgment of conviction has yet to be entered in respondent’s criminal case because the sentencing hearing has not been conducted, due to the egregious breadth of respondent’s conduct while governor of this state as concluded by two separate juries, an interim suspension is appropriate at this time,” wrote Jerome Larkin, administrator for the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission in a late-August filing with court.
Such a suspension, if imposed by the court, likely would be a precursor to an outright disbarment.
* The Question: Aside from prison and losing his law license, what other punishments should Rod Blagojevich face?
Snark is heavily encouraged, of course, but please stay away from any sort of violent imagery. Thanks.
* When the Argonne National Laboratory says there’s a real problem, I tend to pay attention…
It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date.
Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.
“We believe these man-in-the-middle attacks are potentially possible on a wide variety of electronic voting machines,” said Roger Johnston, leader of the assessment team “We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine.” […]
Almost all voters in states like Georgia, Maryland, Utah and Nevada, and the majority of voters in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Texas, will vote on DREs on Election Day in 2012, says Flaherty. Voters in major municipalities such as Houston, Atlanta, Chicago and Pittsburgh will also line up in next year’s election to use DREs of the type hacked by the Argonne National Lab. […]
“This is a fundamentally very powerful attack and we believe that voting officials should become aware of this and stop focusing strictly on cyber [attacks],” says Vulnerability Assessment Team member John Warner. “There’s a very large physical protection component of the voting machine that needs to be addressed.”
The team’s video demonstrates how inserting the inexpensive electronic device into the voting machine can offer a “bad guy” virtually complete control over the machine. A cheap remote control unit can enable access to the voting machine from up to half a mile away. […]
This type of attack is particularly troubling because the manipulation would occur after the voter has approved as “correct” the on-screen summaries of his or her intended selections. Team leader Johnson says that while such an attack could be mounted on Election Day, there would be “a high probability of being detected.” But he explained that the machines could also be tampered with during so-called voting machine “sleepovers” when e-voting systems are kept by poll workers at their houses, often days and weeks prior to the election or at other times when the systems are unguarded.
Johnston said the machine is “incredibly easy to tamper with” because all the crucial electronic components are accessible and can be easily modified. The Accuvote TS’ enclosure isn’t tamper resistant so hjackers can work on the machine without leaving visible signs, he added.
“All we had to do was find out what the machine was doing in terms of communication,” Johnston said. “We just had to understand the various components and how the data was being sent. We needed to understand what signal had to be sent to fool the machine into thinking the voter had touched the screen at a particular location.”
The experiment shows that e-voting systems are susceptible to more than just cyberattacks, which get the most attention but are harder to pull off as the perpetrators must have some knowledge of the machine’s software, hardware and firmware.
The so-called man-in-the-middle attacks don’t require knowledge of the voting machine’s proprietary software or hardware, Johnston said. “All you need to do is understand the communication between the different parts of the system. Then you just sit there and listen and do whatever mischief you want to.”.
Although it wouldn’t take a nation-state to pull of a successful attack, he said. Someone with limited computer science knowledge and electronic parts costing about $25 could do it, without needing to even solder anything and leaving no trace behind, according to the researchers.
E-voting systems have been plagued by criticism about security issues, so much so that elections officials in various states have abandoned touch-screen systems over security and fraud concerns.
Dominion Voting Systems, which now owns Diebold and Sequoia, did not respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment from CNET this afternoon. E-voting system vendors in general have argued that security problems identified are either overly theoretical or have been fixed with hardware and software updates.
Previous demonstrations of e-voting hacks involved cyber attacks where knowledge of the operating system and hardware were required, according to Johnston. However, that was not the case in these demonstrations, he said.
“It would be pretty easy to pull off,” Johnston said. “The bigger concern is that this attack is so straightforward. It suggests that there hasn’t been much thinking about security in these voting systems.”
While it would be relatively easy to make this type of attack more difficult to do by making modifications to the voting machine, stopping the attack cold would require more effort and a “careful examination of the security protocols used,” he said.
* Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he’s against this tax hike idea proposed by the Chicago Inspector General, but that hasn’t stopped the fear mongering…
Chicago officials this week tossed around the idea of a commuter tax — charging suburbanites who work in the city of Chicago a 1 percent income tax — as a way to bring in additional revenue.
The idea was one of a list of potential cost cuts and money makers compiled by the city’s Inspector General Joe Ferguson that could reduce a budget shortfall.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has ruled out tax hikes for now, but some aldermen favored the commuter tax notion.
The idea didn’t sit well with commuters, however, nor potential commuters.
Andrea Laue of Mokena, who has been commuting to Chicago for 15 years for work, said she thinks the income tax idea is “absolutely ridiculous.”
“Since I work in the city, I am already buying food and drinks, retail items, and eating out at restaurants, and paying the higher city and county taxes that are imposed on most of these items. By working in the city, I am already generating revenue for the city, and now they want to penalize me for it,” Laue said. “This on top of Metra talking about raising the cost of train tickets. I’m not going to be able to afford to work downtown anymore!”
Not gonna happen. Period. End of story. Stop frightening people, for Pete’s sake.
* And after increasing the income tax and voting to raise electricity rates, how much chance does this tax idea have in Springfield? Slim to none…
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is floating a unique plan to help solve the city’s budget problems. He is pushing a proposal to lower the sales tax, but the mayor also wants to increase the number of items and services that are taxed.
Under the mayor’s proposal, everyone from barbers to lawyers will have to pay the sales tax.
“I’m not for a toll on Lake Shore Drive, I am not for a citywide income tax, I’m not for increasing property taxes, I’m not for increasing sales tax,” he said. […]
Any change in the sales tax formula would require approval by the Illinois General Assembly and the governor’s signature. The mayor revealed Wednesday morning that part of the process is already in motion.
“I have advocated and I’ve talked to the speaker and Senate president about lowering the sales tax by expanding what is, in fact, taxed,” Emanuel.
First of all, even if they do a service tax, it won’t include barbers. They’ve killed just about every attempt to tax their services in the history of the republic. No way will that happen. Also, this…
…it’s one of those ideas that’s been kicking around the State Capitol literally for decades. But it’s gone nowhere. Retail store owners dream that the rate affecting them might actually go down, making them more competitive with Indiana. But a man who represents 23,000 stores across Illinois is skeptical.
“Mayor Emanuel’s been very successful in his first 140 days in office. But I’ve been around here a long time. People have talked about broadening the base for the 35 or so years I’ve been around. And it’s not gotten done yet,” said David Vite of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association.
A spokesman for Senate President John Cullerton confirmed Cullerton did speak with the mayor and supports the concept of reducing but expanding the sales tax. In fact, a similar bill actually passed the Senate two years ago, but was never called in the House.
Emanuel would have to use all of his chits for a very long time to get this passed. Don’t bet on it.
Give [Inspector General Joe Ferguson] credit for serving up a pile of options. And give the mayor and aldermen credit, this time, for not rejecting them out of hand. Last year, departing Mayor Richard Daley conjured up a package of cheap fixes that he knew would leave a mess for the next mayor, and the City Council let him get away with it. Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke, 14th, dismissed Ferguson’s suggestions then as “nothing new.” Daley’s better ideas included raiding the rainy-day fund and declaring a TIF surplus. A complete punt.
But this time it looks like aldermen are listening. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has vowed spending discipline and an end to the one-time gimmicks. Emanuel said Wednesday he’s against tolls on Lake Shore Drive, but he backed some of Ferguson’s cost-saving ideas. He also revived his campaign idea to lower the city’s sales tax rate and broaden the base on which the tax is collected. Ferguson included it in his idea menu.
So … tolls on Lake Shore Drive? Nobody seems to like that one. That’s fine. But Ferguson has offered plenty of other ideas. Emanuel is cooking up plenty of his own. Anybody else? Speak up.
Just imagine what that editorial would read like if somebody close to Gov. Pat Quinn had proposed these ideas. Oh, the humanity.
It would be nice if we could get reasonable editorials like this on everything, but I’m not holding my breath.
Soaked with beer and champagne, Albert Pujols and Lance Berkman embraced in the St. Louis Cardinals plastic-wrapped clubhouse, basking in a celebration no one thought possible less than a month ago.
Chris Carpenter and the Cardinals completed one of baseball’s greatest comebacks on Wednesday night, clinching the NL wild card with an 8-0 win over Houston and a later loss by Atlanta.
The Cardinals got their playoff spot when the Braves fell to Philadelphia 4-3 in 13 innings.
St. Louis trailed Atlanta by 10 1/2 games on Aug. 25, then won 23 of the last 31 games to finish its improbable charge.
“Any time you’re on a playoff team and you make a run like this, you invest a lot of yourself in the season with a great group of guys,” Berkman said. “It just makes it special.
