I am a regular reader of your blog. Also a county board member in McHenry County and attorney. I ran for State Senate in the 90’s.
I was interested in the REO Speedwagon number you had on Friday and thought you might be interested in this story.
When I was in college in Campaign in the late 60’s and early 70’s I was lead guitar for a band called “Feathertrain”. We were very popular at one point and played all over the state.
In late 1969 our agent, Irv Azoff, wanted us to start playing 6 nights a week instead of 4. This would have caused me to flunk out of college, so , figuring that no one ever heard of a 40 year old rock n roll star, I announced that I would have to quit in time to catch up on my studies before finals.
The band then began a search for a new lead guitar player. On a gig in Peoria we met a guy named Gary Ritchrath. He brought his guitar and played for us backstage but didn’t have an amplifier so all we saw was his fingers flying over the fretboard. We couldn’t tell if he actually sounded good so we scheduled him for an audition at our practice studio in Campaign, which was directly across the street from the popular Chances R nightclub. He was put up against the former REO Speedwagon guitarist, Bill Fiorio, now known as “Duke Tomato”. Gary won.
After I had quit, Gary joined REO when their lead player left. Then they picked up our singer, Michael Murphy, who I believe sang on original version of “Storm” , and our base player, Bruce Hall. Bruce is in the video.
I met Bruce when he was still in High School in a little town outside of Champaign. We had to get his parents’ permission for him to be in the band.
Keep up the good work with the blog. It is an invaluable resource. And keep rockin’.
L.A.-based film producer Bob Teitel is graciously opening his home tomorrow, March 22 to host a private reception, “An Evening with Gov. Pat Quinn” for guests including Chicagoans who work in the industry in Hollywood and a number of local movers and shakers who are flying out to rub elbows with the stars.
Suggested donation is $1,000.
Hosts of the evening are Chicagoans in L.A. Andrew Alexander, Len Amato, Jim Belushi, Jeff Garlin, Allan Loeb, Joe Mantegna, Roland Mesa, and Chicago-based Chaz Ebert, Billy Zane and Bill Zwecker.
Today House Republicans introduced House Joint Resolution Constitutional Amendment 32 to put real “teeth” into the state’s balanced budget requirement. It demands that within 30 days of the enactment of a budget, the Auditor General’s Office must certify that the budget will be balanced with expenses not exceeding expected revenue. If the Auditor General declares that the budget is not balanced then the Comptroller will:
o Stop payment for the salary of General Assembly members and Constitutional Officers; and
o Stop all payments, besides those affecting public safety of the State, required by law, or required by the federal government
“For several years now, lawmakers have passed budgets that were absolutely unbalanced, leaving billions in unpaid bills,” said Representative Bill Mitchell (R-Forsyth). “It’s time to hold state government accountable to the taxpayers. Our balanced budget amendment will force lawmakers and the Governor to put their money where their mouths are. Pass a truly balanced budget or don’t get paid. This is a common-sense fiscal reform that is sorely needed in Springfield.” […]
HJRCA 32 also requires that within 10 days of the Auditor General declaring the budget is not balanced, the General Assembly must convene to address the unbalanced budget. Upon passage of a new budget, the Auditor General must certify if it is balanced, and only then will the Comptroller be allowed to continue payments.
Yes, it’s gimmicky, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea, although I’d be more comfortable with it if chief sponsor Rep. Mitchell had also voted for pension reform yesterday.
* And it would also be helpful if the Republicans could say what sort of programs would actually be cut because doing so would show that they had thought this through…
Mitchell said he believed schools would still be paid but was not clear on whether public union workers with “non-essential” duties would receive paychecks.
Your thoughts?
…Adding… From a longtime commenter…
come on Rich, it’s among the dumbest things I have ever heard. Who in God’s name would provide service to the state if that passed? I assume bond payments are protected but this clause would still have to be put in the bond docs and that would be adverse on our rates. Just another ill-conceived gimmick.
GUN GRABBING REPRESENTATIVE TO HOLD TOWN HALL MEETING – YOU NEED TO ATTEND
WHAT: Town Hall Meeting Held by Rep. Deb Conroy
WHEN: Tuesday, March 26, 2013, 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
WHERE: Glenside Library, 25 East Fullerton, Glendale Heights, IL
Rep. Deb Conroy is living up to her promise to be Mike Madigan’s loyal stooge in the 46th District. Although she’s only been in office a few months, Conroy has racked up a record of disgusting indifference to the 2nd Amendment. Conroy has voted to leave you defenseless against violent criminals. She has voted to register and tax your guns. And she’s voted to ban and confiscate 85% of the firearms held by law-abiding citizens.
IT’S TIME DEB CONROY HEARD FROM GUN OWNERS
It’s very important that as many gun owners as possible show up for Conroy’s town hall meeting. When you get there, be sure to make your voice heard. Let Conroy know that you will not take the blame for crimes committed by raving lunatics, gang bangers, or hardened criminals. Let Conroy know that you vigorously oppose licensing, registration and insurance schemes. Let Conroy know that you demand to be allowed to carry a defensive firearm for the protection of your self and your family. Remind her that her constituence is not limited to Mike Madigan.
Be sure to wear IGOLD hats or shirts to the town hall. If you see members of the media there, approach them and tell them your story. Tell them that you are a law-abiding firearm owner and that you are sick and tired of people like Conroy and Madigan and their schemes to take your guns away from you.
CONROY’S #1 JOB IS TO BRING CHICAGO-STYLE GUN CONTROL TO THE ENTIRE STATE OF ILLINOIS
The only thing that can stop people like Conroy is the resolve of gun owners who refuse to let Conroy and her pals destroy the 2nd Amendment. So, plan to be there at the Glenside Library on March 26th. Plan to be there no later than 5:15. The gun grabbers will try to close the doors early to keep gun guys out of the meeting.
PLEASE DO THE FOLLOWING:
1. Pass this alert on to your gun owning family and friends.
2. Post this alert to any and all Internet blogs or bulletin boards to which you may belong.
* The Daily Herald’s Mike Riopell properly understood the significance of yesterday’s House action…
Supporters of big public employee pension cuts approved by the Illinois House Thursday say they’ve gotten past the hardest vote on the long-festering issue.
As they’ve debated for more than a year, lawmakers had been waiting for an indicator showing how powerful House Speaker Michael Madigan would want to move forward.
He provided some direction Thursday just before the House voted 66-50 to limit the annual cost-of-living increases to teachers’, state workers’ and lawmakers’ retirement benefits.
“I think we’re in a position to finalize preparation of a bill and move a bill from the House to the Senate that treats all aspects of the problem,” Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, said in a rare speech from the House floor.
Last week, the House voted to raise the retirement age and cap how much of a retiree’s salary could count toward his or her pension.
Approving the most controversial parts of an eventual pension reform package could symbolize an easing of gridlock on the issue.
Currently, retirees receive a 3 percent compounded annual increase in their pension benefits. The bill approved by the House limits that 3 percent increase to the first $25,000 of pension income.
After that limit is hit, retirees will get only a flat $750 a year increase in benefits. The House bill also delays the start of COLAs until age 67 or five years after a person retires. If the bill is enacted into law, current retirees who do not fit either category would get no further COLAs until they met one of those two standards.
According to the Illinois Teachers Retirement System, here’s how the cost-of-living adjustment change proposed in House Bill 1165 would effect a retiree who currently receives the average annual pension amount of $48,216.
*Current COLA: Pension grows to $49,662 in the second year and $51,152 in the third year
*Capped COLA: Pension grows to $48,966 in the second year and $49,716 in the third year.
Nekritz said HB 1165 would save the state $100 billion by the year 2045. It would cut well over $1 billion from the state’s pension payment next year, she said.
Supporters estimate the changes would reduce the unfunded liability by as much as $19 billion. There would be savings of as much as $2 billion more in the other two bills the House approved last week. One would cap the salary on which benefits are based to the limit set for Social Security, currently about $113,000 a year. The other would delay the retirement incrementally, based on workers’ ages now. Younger workers would have to retire later.
All three measures are part of larger legislative solutions backed by Cross and Rep. Elaine Nekritz, D-Northbrook – and the one that failed in the Senate on Wednesday, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Biss, an Evanston Democrat. The jubilation stems from the fact that together, according to Cross, the approved House measures account for two-thirds of the $30 billion reduction in unfunded liability the Cross-Nekritz proposal aims to create over the next three decades.
Opponents to HB 1165 say it is an unconstitutional reduction in employee benefits and unfair to retirees who planned their finances around the benefits they were promised when they left their jobs. “What’s not fair to do is to go to them and say, ‘You have to make up the entire liability,’ when over half the liability is because the state of Illinois never made its payments,” said Rep. David Reis, a Willow Hill Republican. He said lawmakers should instead accept a union coalition offer for employees to pay a larger percentage of their wages toward their pensions. “There are other avenues out there that have been negotiated with the various unions that may prevent a lawsuit, that I think would help us accomplish what we’re trying to do.”
And he’s not the only one. 21 House Republicans voted against the pension bill yesterday, many of them conservatives.
* There will be another post on yesterday’s House pension votes, but here’s my Sun-Times column…
What we have in Springfield right now is an epic legislative stalemate over an issue of absolute importance.
On one side we have the Senate president, John Cullerton, who says he wants to make sure that any pension reform legislation has a chance of being constitutional. On the other side, we have pretty much everybody else.
And I’m not sure why.
Cullerton came up with a plan that makes a whole lot of sense. His legal team was dubious at first that any public worker pension benefit could be reduced because our state constitution expressly forbids it:
“Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.”
The transcripts of the constitutional convention clearly show that the language was concocted to make sure that the General Assembly adequately funded the state pension systems or risk certain calamity when the whole thing crashed and burned. Like now.
Eventually, Cullerton’s lawyer applied a legal theory known as “consideration.” The pensions are contracts, so to alter those contracts you have to offer something of value in exchange for taking something else away. Offering continued access to government-subsidized health insurance premiums in exchange for taking away annual cost-of-living adjustments was what they came up with.
Almost immediately, though, the super-duper elite Civic Committee claimed that the idea would “lock in” billions of dollars in retiree health-care obligations. It would actually do no such thing. Illinois law allows the government to raise or lower retiree premiums based on the state’s fiscal condition, and a judge recently threw out a constitutional challenge to the statute.
The Civic Committee, a group of wealthy business executives headed up by former Republican Attorney General Ty Fahner, also has claimed that Cullerton’s proposal wouldn’t save enough money. But last year, Fahner supported a bill that actually would have increased state costs in the short term and saved the state just a few billion dollars over the long term.
Fahner has been all over the place. He supported a pension bill sponsored by House Speaker Michael Madigan last year, then claimed a few months later that the pension problem was “unfixable.” He demanded that cost-of-living increases be eliminated altogether, but now backs a plan that allows COLAs on the first $30,000 of pension income.
Cullerton took the plan endorsed by Fahner and grafted his own pension reform language onto it. Cullerton’s “consideration” proposal wouldn’t take effect unless and/or until the courts ruled that the Fahner-backed proposal was unconstitutional.
Fahner didn’t like that idea, either. And he and lots of big-business types lobbied hard against it, along with a certain editorial board down the street, and forced Republicans off the bill. That killed the proposal, and the Fahner-backed bill was defeated as well.
Meanwhile, the House has passed a few bills that will save some significant money, including a proposal approved Thursday that caps COLAs at $750 a year or 3 percent, whichever is less. The House has already approved legislation increasing the retirement age and capping pensionable income at $113,000.
What the House hasn’t done is take up Cullerton’s “consideration” idea, but the Senate president adamantly refuses to back off what he considers to be the only constitutional way forward.
And that, in essence, is what’s behind this doozy of a stalemate.
Somehow, this problem has to be resolved. I expect we’ll see lots of public bashing of Cullerton over the next several weeks to force him to back down. He doesn’t deserve it.
Illinois’ unemployment spiked for a second straight month in February, hitting 9.5 percent. But state officials say the increase is at least in part to increasing numbers of people who have started looking for work again.
The Illinois Department of Employment Security said the rate sharply rose to 9.5 percent in February from 9 percent in January. National unemployment fell to 7.7 percent in February.
* However, the Illinois Department of Employment Security explains the numbers…
Illinois added 12,400 jobs in February, continuing a three-year pattern of job growth that has intensified in the past seven months. Job growth has encouraged more people to look for work, especially those who gave up during the recession. Their re-entry into the labor force pushed the February unemployment rate to 9.5 percent, according to preliminary data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES). Data is seasonally adjusted.
“This is the counter-intuitive part of an economic recovery. If job creation is picking up, how can unemployment be picking up as well?” IDES Director Jay Rowell said. “Job growth gives workers who previously gave up their job search hope that they, too, will be hired. As such, they re-energize their work search, jump back into the labor force and push up the unemployment rate.” […]
Illinois businesses are hiring. More than 100,000 help-wanted ads are on Illinoisjoblink.com, the IDES employment website that links job seekers with employers. Keyword matching technology increases the likelihood of a successful new hire and compares favorably to private efforts that cost hundreds of dollars.
