Question of the day
Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* While looking for yesterday’s photo, I stumbled upon this one of Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and some guy…
* The Question: Caption?
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Today’s history lesson
Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Chicago Tribune editorial board…
Following an Illinois tradition that resembles a Stalin-esque concentration of power, the incumbent political party of North Riverside kicked the Transparency & Accountability in Politics Party off the ballot — because the ampersand allegedly made its name too long to be there legally. […]
While laws limiting ballot access are necessary to weed out genuinely ineligible candidates, election panels and court precedent have transformed those laws into a labyrinth so favorable to insiders, so undemocratic, that Josef Stalin himself would blush with pride.
* Oh, please. Stalin would’ve scoffed at such silly notions as “ballot access.” He was a real live and awfully brutal dictator, not some powerful Illinois politician that a newspaper doesn’t like. Stalin would have had the offenders murdered, or if he was in a good mood, sent to concentration camps…
After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives also became available, containing official records of 799,455 executions 1921-53,[112] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulags and some 390,000 deaths during kulak forced resettlement – with a total of about 3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.
Stalin didn’t rely on electoral technicalities in Poland, either…
The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to “create democratic institutions of their own choice”, pursuant to “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.” The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments “pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections” and “facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections.” After the re-organization of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland, the parties agreed that the new party shall “be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot.”One month after Yalta, the Soviet NKVD arrested 16 Polish leaders wishing to participate in provisional government negotiations, for alleged “crimes” and “diversions”, which drew protest from the West. The fraudulent Polish elections, held in January 1947 resulted in Poland’s official transformation to undemocratic communist state by 1949.
So, yeah, our election laws are goofy in Illinois. I don’t dispute that. But Stalin wouldn’t have been proud of us, he would have thought us weak and not sufficiently blood-thirsty. And to say otherwise is amazingly stupid.
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A little quick Rauner oppo
Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sometimes, comments here can be quite interesting. For example, this comment about possible Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner was posted yesterday…
SEIU had something called GTCR watch.org but it is no longer online. Anyone know what they found?
I looked up the site on the Wayback Machine, but nothing came up. I used “.org,” “.com” and “.net.” However, I did find this press release via the Google…
A leading private equity firm with a history of investing in companies with poor corporate governance is being taken to task by SEIU of an indictment for fraud at one of its portfolio companies.
The latest edition of GTCR Watch, a newsletter for investors, details the fraud indictment at Lason, Inc., a document printing, imaging, and storage firm incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Troy, Michigan.
An indictment for fraud brought in May 2003 by a federal grand jury in Michigan, and civil fraud charges filed on the same day by the SEC, allege that this rapid growth allowed Lason’s executives to fraudulently inflate the firm’s reported revenue, expenses, and earnings from 1997 onward.
The indictment alleges that fraudulent managerial behavior occurred at Lason while GTCR principles Bruce Rauner and Joseph Nolan served on its board and on key board committees, costing shareholders over $900 million in lost equity.
“Any institution contemplating an investment in a GTCR fund should consider the performance of GTCR’s principals as public company directors before undertaking such a commitment,” said Steve Abrecht, Director of the SEIU Capital Stewardship Program.
The report has been posted on a website, www.GTCRWatch.com, which provides investors with detailed information about the corporate governance practices of GTCR Golder Rauner, LLC’s companies.
* The company’s CFO ultimately pled guilty and was sentenced to prison…
William J. Rauwerdink, the former CFO of Lason, Inc., was sentenced to 3 years and nine months in prison for his role in the company’s accounting fraud nearly 10 years ago, according to the U.S. attorney’s office
Rauwerdink pleaded guilty last November to conspiring to commit mail, wire, and bank fraud and making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and to filing a false and fraudulent quarterly report with the SEC — offenses which date back to early 1998 through late 1999. It was also not the first time Rauwerdink had run afoul of federal regulators — as CFO of Medstat Group, he agreed in December 1995 to settle charges of insider trading in Medstat stock and was permanently enjoined by a federal district judge from committing securities fraud. […]
“Rauwerdink was deeply involved in this accounting fraud,” said a press release from Stephen J. Murphy, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Rauwerdink, Murphy said, met with other Lason executives “to ensure that Lason’s reported earnings per share met or exceeded the estimates of stock analysts.”
According to the announcement, Lason reported its inflated earnings per share figures every quarter through press releases drafted by Rauwerdink, conference calls in which he participated, and quarterly and annual filings with the SEC that he signed.
I’m attempting to get the files from that now-defunct website. Stay tuned.
* And if you’d like a hearty laugh, take a look at this Illinois Review article, which really stretches things beyond the limit with a piece called “Rauner and Six Degrees of Bill Ayers.”
They actually “connect” Rauner to Ayers via the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, which is without a doubt the most pro-corporate group in all of Chicago.
Sheesh.
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Behind Kirk’s move
Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Lynn Sweet writes about Sen. Mark Kirk’s endorsement of gay marriage…
Curiously, Kirk, the top Republican in the state, did not use the occasion to explicitly call on the Illinois House to pass a pending gay marriage bill the state Senate already approved.
He did, however, mention the bill in an interview with the Illinois Radio Network…
“I think from what I’ve seen in my talks with Chris Radogno, it would appear that it’s coming soon,” he said in the radio interview. “I do prefer states doing this. I would hope we would restrain our appetite for power in Washington and not take over marriage law for the whole country.”
I’ve said before that Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady’s support of gay marriage might have more to do with distracting from the few actual GOP votes for the bill than convincing Republicans to vote for it. Just one Senate Republican voted for gay marriage, yet Radogno is predicting ultimate passage. Just one House Republican has announced his support for the bill so far, but there appear to be a small handful of others waiting in the wings.
What Brady’s and Judy Baar Topinka’s - and now Kirk’s - endorsements do is attach high profile faces to a proposal that enjoys broad support, particularly among the young. Yes, it could give cover to some Republicans and let them vote for the bill, but the vast majority of votes for this thing will be Democrats.
Don’t get me wrong. This is a smart play by the GOP. They can have their cake and eat it too, as long as the bill becomes law.
* Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking lately that the “Lincoln” movie was somewhat of an allegory about the modern-day legislative push for gay rights. Sen. Kirk apparently saw the same message…
“I must say I was pretty influenced by the latest movie by Steven Spielberg about Abraham Lincoln. You just think as a Republican leader, my job is to make sure that each generation is more free and has more dignity as an individual which is a unique gift of the United states to the world. The thought of treating a whole bunch of people just because of who they love differently is in my view against that Lincoln tradition, which was brought so well to life by the movie,” Kirk said, according to audio of the interview IRN provided to the Sun-Times.
“I thought the country was ready for it,” Kirk said. “The gay community is larger than it ever has been before. And it’s not in the 1950s closet, so most of of us have gay acquaintances at work or at church and we know them. And the thought of discriminating against our own friends and coworkers is an anathema to me.”
* And as you might imagine, Illinois Family Action is not pleased with Sen. Kirk…
Kirk and U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Illinois Republican Chairman Pat Brady can hide behind the utterly false rhetoric of equality and compassion and thus conceal from America and perhaps themselves their complicity in the destruction of this once great nation.
And what will this mean for America? Diminished religious liberty, diminished speech rights, diminished parental rights, increasing numbers of children denied their inherent right to know and be raised by their biological mother and father, and the ultimate destruction of marriage.
Wait a second. IFA is definitely a strongly pro-life group, and yet they’re bemoaning adoption? What the heck? I thought they were proponents of adoption? I mean, this is from their website…
(T)he truth is that conservative Christians lead the way in worldwide humanitarian relief efforts, they continue to build hospitals and orphanages and schools in many nations, they are active in drug and alcohol rehab programs in the inner cities of America, and they are at the forefront of the pro-life, pro-adoption movement. [Emphasis added.]
Dissing adoption just doesn’t make sense from the pro-life crowd. Seriously, if you totally believe that abortion is murder, then why quibble with who adopts those children and saves their lives as long as they’re law-abiding, loving parents?
* Related…
* Harris: ‘We’ll have marriage equality in Illinois by summer’
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Chaos is not a plan
Wednesday, Apr 3, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* This sort of thinking about state finances really bothers me…
Some people apparently believe in magical fairies. You can’t just wish away the desire of investors to make money. Illinois has one of the strongest bond payment guarantee laws in the entire country. Smart bond buyers know they’re gonna get paid. And since Illinois’ fiscal troubles have driven up the state’s interest rates, savvy investors want to make some money.
Hoping for total chaos is not a plan. And it’s really, really wrong-headed.
* It would be nice, however, if Illinois could follow California’s lead and start getting itself out of this fiscal mess…
Buyers awaiting progress on plans to overhaul the worst- funded state pension system demanded about 1.33 percentage points of extra yield above benchmark munis for 10-year tax- exempt debt that Illinois sold yesterday. That’s almost triple what California had to pay last month.
To raise public awareness of the pension burden, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn released a video in November showing a cartoon of “Squeezy the Pension Python” threatening to strangle the capitol building in Springfield.
To raise public awareness of the pension burden, Democratic Governor Pat Quinn released a video in November showing a cartoon of “Squeezy the Pension Python” threatening to strangle the capitol building in Springfield. Source: AP/Courtesy of Gov. Pat Quinn’s office
In sales about a year ago, the Illinois yield penalty was only double that of the most-populous state. Since then, Standard & Poor’s has cut Illinois twice, to A-, six steps below AAA, as legislators failed to advance a pension fix. Meanwhile, the company raised California’s credit for the first time since 2006, to A, one level higher, after Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, proposed a budget for the year beginning July 1 that would leave the state with its first surplus in almost a decade.
“It’s a different credit situation — California has definitely made some difficult steps,” said Robert Miller, who helps oversee $32 billion of munis in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, at Wells Capital Management. He said the company didn’t buy the Illinois offer because the spreads were too narrow. “Illinois at this point is more of the status quo.”
California’s governor is now predicting a surplus. He’s cut and cut and cut again and raised taxes. He’s also been lauded for pension reforms, but those reforms are only for new hires. Illinois did that in 2010.
* Related…
* Illinois bond sale includes pension penalty
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