* From a Daily Herald story about the legality of pension reform…
Just as Gov. Pat Quinn has used an orange cartoon snake named Squeezy to try to illustrate the harm the state’s pension debt does to the state budget, a 1960s report on the same topic included a tornado, sucking up cash.
And your little dog, too!
* I’ve never heard this General Assembly reform ever suggested before the Alton Telegraph did so…
What we find objectionable is that the “leaders” get an extra $20,000 just for serving in purely party posts. If these duties are so important to the goals of the individual parties, why shouldn’t the party organizations be responsible for the compensation, rather than taxpayers?
No extra leadership stipend? Well, that would sure make things different.
Set for trial in less than nine months, indicted state Rep. Derrick Smith dipped into his campaign fund to pay at least $37,500 to the criminal defense lawyers representing him in his federal bribery case, newly filed state campaign records show.
Smith made that expenditure to the Henderson Adam law firm on March 29, 2012, just days after being arrested for allegedly accepting a $7,000 cash bribe from an undercover FBI informant in exchange for offering to help a fictitious daycare center operator in his district obtain a $50,000 state grant.
He waits until now to reveal this payment to his lawyers? Over nine months after he was required to report it? What the heck?
* The media will probably have a field day with the proposed Sneaker Tax…
The cost of a new pair of basketball shoes could jump by 25 cents under a proposal floated this week by anIllinoislawmaker.
State Rep. Will Davis, D-Hazel Crest, wants to create a new tax that would generate an estimated $3 million annually for a youth job preparation program. He said the added cost would likely go unnoticed by most consumers, while helping finance a program for kids during tight budget times.
It’s not necessarily a horrible idea, if you don’t mind taxes, but I just don’t see it going anywhere. Why? This…
Rob Karr, senior vice president of Illinois Retail Merchants Association, said the organization will fight the proposal because it would create an unnecessary amount of additional paperwork for store owners.
“It imposes significant administrative burdens on the retailer,” Karr said.
Don’t mess with IRMA.
Also, it’s just a bill. Remember that. It ain’t a law. Bills get introduced all the time and never go anywhere. For example…
“I think we need drug testing for welfare recipients. I think the savings to the state can be tremendous, in the multimillions, for sure,” [State Rep. Adam Brown, R-Decatur] said.
Halvorson addressed the issue while speaking at a candidates forum organized by local clergy and church leaders and held Saturday at Lax Mortuary in Kankakee. Halvorson, along with state Sen. Toi Hutchinson, were the candidates scheduled to speak at the forum. Former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds made an unscheduled speech at the end of the event.
That’s two spit-takes in one graf. They debated at a mortuary? And Mel Reynolds unexpectedly showed up to give a speech?
Wish I’d seen that one.
* The Question: What would be the “best” place to hold a candidates’ debate?
The death of a friend he made on a quest to learn more about the needs of black communities has inspired a suburban state senator to look into authoring legislation regulating the use of Tasers.
“It rips my heart apart,” state Sen. Dan Duffy, of Lake Barrington, said of the death of Philip Coleman, a 38-year-old hospice executive and Rainbow/Push coalition member. Coleman died Dec. 13 after police, called by Coleman’s mother, used a Taser on him twice to restrain him.
Duffy, a Republican, hopes to build off previous stun-gun legislation that was introduced by Chicago Democratic Rep. Monique Davis but failed to move out of the Illinois House in the last General Assembly session.
“We need to look at stricter guidelines and training regarding the use and power of these weapons,” Duffy said, noting his research after Coleman’s death made him aware of higher stun-gun use against minorities. […]
But with questions surrounding Philip Coleman’s death, Duffy is calling for “better judgment and discretion before you’re out playing with a Taser.”
“Even though it’s not a gun, it’s just as powerful,” he said.
I happen to agree that stun guns are a lot more powerful than some law enforcement agencies will admit and that they appear to be used disproportionately against minorities.
Just call me stunned that a pro 2nd Amendment guy like Duffy would be willing to impose such restrictions on what the police deem to be a self-defense weapon.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that a poll taken Jan. 30 of 1,255 likely Illinois Democratic primary voters shows Attorney General Lisa Madigan leading Gov. Pat Quinn by a very large margin.
Madigan also leads Quinn and former White House chief of staff Bill Daley in a three-way contest, according to the poll, but Quinn leads Daley in a one-on-one race.
And a large plurality of Democrats disapprove of the governor’s job performance. The We Ask America Poll has a margin of error of +/- 3 percent. About 18 percent of the results came from non-landline users.
In the poll, Madigan leads Quinn by 25 points, 51 percent to 26 percent. Among women, who almost always comprise a majority of Democratic primary election voters, Madigan’s lead is 53-22, while she leads among men 46-30.
Madigan’s lead over Quinn in Chicago is 46 percent to 30 percent and it’s 51-28 in suburban Cook County, while she leads Quinn 53-23 in the suburban collar counties and by a massive 53-21 downstate, according to the poll.
Madigan has not yet decided whether she’s going to run for governor. People close to her are divided over what they think she will do. She reportedly plans to take her time with her decision.
A Public Policy Polling survey taken in November had Madigan leading Quinn 64-20, but that poll was of just 319 “usual” Democratic primary voters with a margin of error of +/- 5.5 percent.
Still, PPP does excellent work, so if you average the two polls you get a 57 percent to 23 percent lead for Madigan over the governor. If Madigan’s decision is heavily weighted toward whether she can win the primary, she will give it a go.
Quinn has a better shot against Daley — a white, Irish Democrat from Chicago who may not bring much more to the table than Dan Hynes did in the 2010 primary.
According to the We Ask America poll, Quinn leads Daley by five points, 38 percent to 33 percent. November’s PPP survey had Daley leading Quinn 37-34, so average those two results and you get an essential tie at 36 for Quinn and 35 for Daley.
We Ask America found that Quinn leads Daley in the city 45-30, but Daley leads in suburban Cook 40-36. Quinn has a narrow half-point lead in the collar counties and leads by less than two percentage points downstate. The Daley name ain’t what it used to be.
Could Daley be a spoiler who helps Quinn in a three-way race? Not according to the We Ask America poll. It says Madigan leads a three-way contest with 37 percent to Quinn’s 20 percent and Daley’s 15. Public Policy Polling did not test a three-way race in November.
Madigan’s lead among women in a three-way contest is pretty big. She gets 38 percent to 17 for Quinn and 13 for Daley. Among men, her lead is a bit smaller at 34 percent to Quinn’s 24 and Daley’s 18.
Madigan leads Quinn and Daley in Chicago by 35 percent to 22 to 17. Her lead in suburban Cook is 35-18-18. She leads 36-17-16 in the collars and is ahead by a very big 40-19-11 downstate.
Public Policy Polling had Quinn’s job approval rating among Democrats at 40 percent, with a 43 percent disapproval. Last week’s We Ask America poll had Quinn’s approval among Dems at 37 percent, with a 42 percent disapproval.
Women give the governor a slightly lower disapproval rating than men — 41 percent of women disapprove, 46 percent of men. But just 36 percent of Democratic women and 37 percent of Democratic men approve of the way Quinn is handling his job.
Quinn won the 2010 primary and general elections despite low approval ratings. So, he’s been here before.
What he didn’t have to do back then, however, was take on one of the most popular politicians in Illinois. PPP’s November poll pegged Lisa Madigan’s favorable rating at 68 percent among Democrats, while just 16 percent had an unfavorable view of her.
If Madigan runs, she likely wins the primary election. Daley is another story. Like 2010, a Daley-Quinn race will be a hard-fought and bloody battle that could end up being pretty close.
If Quinn has to get a single primary opponent, Daley is the one he wants.
Subscribers have crosstabs.
* Related…
* Illinois attorney general collected $1.1B in 2012: Of that amount, more than half came from collections litigation, including funds from child support, damage to state property, unpaid educational loans, fines and penalties. The rest was split between tobacco litigation and estate tax revenues.
* AFSCME has declared today and tomorrow to be action days on its contract. From the union’s Facebook page…
Anything going on in your office or shop?
* Meanwhile, the Southern Illinoisan, which forcefully opposed the closure of the Tamms state prison, ran a recent editorial about a couple of assaults on prison guards, including this one…
Less than two weeks ago, on Jan. 19, Menard Correctional Center in Chester was placed on lockdown after an inmate assaulted a correctional officer. Fortunately, the staff member’s injuries were limited to bruises, but a spokeswoman for the department of corrections expressed concern about the attack. […]
You may also recall Tamms was defended by some as an appropriate home for the “worst of the worst” state inmates before falling victim to protestations of inhumane conditions and excessive costs. Opponents of Tamms’ closure also said the super-maximum prison helped control inmate violence throughout the correctional system because prisoners did not want to get sent to the facility as punishment.
Ty Peterson, of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the bargaining unit for prison staff, said the employee attacked at Menard recently was transferred to the correctional center from Tamms, which still housed some inmates until the end of the year.
Are you beginning to see a disturbing pattern? Is what we are seeing at Pontiac and Menard the “new normal” for correctional centers in Illinois?
Wait. The guard was transferred from Tamms to Menard, not the prisoner. I’m not sure I get it.
* I don’t know how you first reacted, but a wave of dread enveloped me when the announcers suddenly fell silent and the lights began extinguishing during last night’s Super Bowl blackout. It was kinda like the feeling I used to get during the Cold War at the start of those “We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin” announcements.
* I had to turn to Twitter after a couple minutes because CBS just wasn’t giving anybody any information about what was going on. Thankfully, ABC was on the case…
ABC News reporting Dept. of Homeland Security says “nothing nefarious” about Superbowl power outage #superbowl#abc7chicagonews
* After feeling a sense of relief that we weren’t under attack again, I noticed that lots of people I follow retweeted the Johnny-on-the-spot Oreos post…
The Oreo graphic was “designed, captioned and approved within minutes,” according to Sarah Hofstetter, president of the cookie brand’s digital agency of record, Dentsu-owned360i. All the decisions were made in real time quickly because marketers and agency members were sitting together at a “mission control” center, or a social-media war room of sorts, at the agency’s headquarters in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Manhattan. Among those who were there were two brand team members from Oreo, and nearly a dozen creatives, strategists, community managers and social-media listeners.
* I have to admit that I was confused at first about the #SB47 hashtag, thinking it must be a bill number. I even looked it up. Nope, that couldn’t be it.
Apparently, I spend way too much time thinking about Illinois politics.
Your own thoughts?
…Adding… My favorite Super Bowl ad also had a local angle. Ram Trucks used the late, great Illinoisan Paul Harvey in its moving spot…
Share the video and Ram will make a donation to “support FFA and assist in local hunger and educational programs.”
Hutchinson also has the endorsement from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. On Wednesday state Sen. Napoleon Harris dropped out of the race and put his support behind Hutchinson.
Yes, Hutchinson was endorsed by Preckwinkle, but Sen. Harris endorsed Robin Kelly.
Everybody makes mistakes. Things happen and it’s usually no big deal. And I know there are a lot of candidates in the 2nd Congressional District race, but that story was really messed up.
* The AP wasn’t the only confused media outlet. The Hill…
While Hutchinson has high name recognition in the district following her 2010 primary challenge to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), having no money is a bad spot to be in heading into the home stretch of the campaign.
No. Halvorson ran against Jackson.
Yes, the two names are similar, and Hutchinson once worked for Halvorson and got her Senate seat. And I’m always worried that I’m gonna screw up those names myself. But doesn’t the Hill have a ton of editors?
* Anyway, feel free to discuss the AFSCME endorsement, which I told you about over the weekend…
The progressive union AFSCME today announced their endorsement of Toi Hutchinson in the upcoming special election in Illinois’s Second Congressional District. AFSCME cited Hutchinson’s strong record of looking out for middle class interests in making its decision.
“AFSCME Council 31 is proud to endorse Toi Hutchinson for Congress,” the union’s executive director Henry Bayer said. “Toi has a strong record on retirement security, affordable health care, tax fairness and other issues vital to union members and all working people. AFSCME will educate our more than 7,000 members and retirees in the Second Congressional District about her leadership, and encourage them to get out and vote on February 26.”
AFSCME Council 31 is a leading voice for working families throughout Illinois, with 100,000 active and retired members who provide the essential public services that residents rely on. AFSCME is the nation’s largest and fastest growing public-service union with more than 1.6 million active and retired members, including nurses, corrections officers, caregivers, EMTs, sanitation workers and more. With members in hundreds of different occupations, AFSCME advocates for fairness in the workplace, excellence in public services and prosperity and opportunity for all working families.
“When I’m in Congress, I’ll keep working with AFSCME and stand with President Obama to protect the services and programs that people across the country need and depend on,” said Hutchinson. “For too long, Congress has focused on the budget deficit instead of the opportunity deficit. When I’m elected I’m going to work hard to invest in exactly the kinds of initiatives that empower people and communities.”
* Meanwhile, a Kelly partisan wonders about Sen. Hutchinson’s 2012 NRA questionnaire. Hutchinson received an “A-” from the group last year..
The National Rifle Association’s 2012 questionnaire for Illinois state legislature candidates directly addresses questions about assault weapons bans and bans on high capacity ammunition magazines:
• Question 10: Do you support state legislation banning the lawful manufacture, possession, ownership, purchase, sale and/or transfer of any firearms?
• Question 11: Would you support state legislation restricting the possession, ownership, purchase, sale and/or transfer of semi-automatic firearms used for hunting, competitive shooting, collecting and self-defense?
• Question 12: Would you support restricting or banning magazines that hold more than ten rounds?
How does Senator Toi Hutchinson answer those questions? Can we conclude those answers were to the liking of the NRA.
Unless proven otherwise by the Toi Hutchinson campaign, the answer is “yes.” The answers were to the liking of the NRA.
