The State Fair race is Tuesday
Monday, Aug 12, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The annual Illinois State Fair “celebrity” horse race has been moved to Tuesday this year.
The race, featuring myself and flacks from the legislative caucuses and the governor’s office will be held after tomorrow’s third official race. So, figure somewhere around one o’clock.
* It’s a whole lot of fun. The horses come so close to each other during the race that it can be a little scary at times, and they kick up a lot of mud/dirt, but I love it. The animals are so beautiful and powerful and it’s such a special treat to watch them so close up.
Here’s some video I took last year…
* Also, I’m thinking Wednesday afternoon at a beer tent for our caption contest winners. They should all contact me soon. Friday’s winner was Oswego Willy.
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Question of the day
Monday, Aug 12, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Taken as a whole, video gaming at taverns and truck stops now ranks as the second largest casino in Illinois…
As of June, there were 1,863 licensed video game establishments, but there are also at least 2,000 more applicants waiting in line.
And through the first six months of the year, the people playing the video machines across the state lost $106 million, according to Illinois Gaming Board data.
The latest list of businesses looking to get dealt in fills 170 pages on the Illinois Gaming Board’s web site.
That list of license hopefuls will surely grow if Gov. Pat Quinn allows a recently passed bill to become law. The bill adds social clubs to the list of those eligible for licenses.
* Not everybody is happy, of course…
The Illinois Church Action on Alcohol & Addiction Problems is continuing its fight against video gaming expansion, contacting local officials and communities and providing them with information about the impacts of video gambling.
“It’s because of all the harm, the increase in addiction, bankruptcy and crime,” executive director Anita Bedell said. “When you make gambling more available and accessible, then more people will be gambling, and there will be more problems.”
* The Question: Do you play video gaming machines at your local, non-casino establishments? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
survey hosting
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* If you or your organization are sponsoring a politically related event this week at the Illinois State Fair, please e-mail me the details right away.
I’ll be publishing the list first thing tomorrow morning for subscribers, so please hurry.
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How about some answers?
Monday, Aug 12, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
“Ask her,” Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan told a Sun-Times reporter last week. The journalist wanted to know why Madigan’s daughter Lisa would consider running for governor knowing that the father had no plans to step down as Speaker.
So I tried to ask her. But I didn’t get very far.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan, I was told, is still refusing to discuss in any way the “personal” conversations she had with her father leading up to her decision not to run for governor.
As you’ll recall, AG Madigan had this to say when she decided to run for reelection instead of the state’s highest office: “I feel strongly that the state would not be well served by having a governor and Speaker of the House from the same family and have never planned to run for governor if that would be the case. With Speaker Madigan planning to continue in office, I will not run for governor.”
But last week, Speaker Madigan said he had told his daughter on “several occasions” that he had no plans to step down. “She knew very well that I did not plan to retire,” he said. “She knew what my position was. She knew.”
People close to the Madigans say the polling and focus grouping always showed that the issue of her father would be a problem, but that it wasn’t an actual “deciding” issue for voters. Yes, they didn’t like the idea of a governor and a House Speaker from the same family, but they didn’t appear to be saying they would make their choice for governor based on that one thing. She would’ve won, the insiders say, regardless of what her father decided to do.
The speculation by some reporters about how the unfolding Metra scandal played a role in her decision not to run appear to be false. Her decision not to run had been made several days before the Chicago media went wall to wall freak-out over the revelation that her father was involved with a minor and aborted political patronage attempt at a mass transit agency. As if all those political hacks who sit on those mass transit agencies somehow wasn’t a tip-off that maybe politics have always been part of their operations.
Anyway, Speaker Madigan got whacked in the media for trying to influence Metra personnel decisions. Lisa Madigan announced her decision not to run for governor after her dad had been zinged for three solid days.
The timing of her decision is still quite curious, however. Why throw him under the bus on a Monday after three solid days of hugely negative press about Metra? Was she angry at his refusal to step down, or did she just not think things through? Who came up with that bright idea?
Also, did she give no thought at all to how her statement could be thrown back in her face about her current job? If being governor would be a conflict of interest as long as her father was House Speaker, then why isn’t serving as attorney general a conflict as well? If she’s really that unprepared for prime time, then maybe she made the right decision after all.
Those are just some of the questions I would’ve asked, had I been given a chance.
My main question, however, would’ve been whether Lisa Madigan really did think she could convince her father to step down. Was she that delusional? The guy ain’t going anywhere any time soon and pretty much everybody knows it.
And if she didn’t ever expect her father to retire, then did she all but lie to a whole lot of people who contributed to her campaign fund this year with the full expectation that she’d challenge Pat Quinn in a primary? I mean, it’s doubtful that many of those union leaders and prominent Democrats would’ve ponied up so much cash if they had known about her “strong” belief that her father would have to go away as a condition of her running because almost nobody would ever believe that she could pry the gavel out of his hands.
Ms. Madigan needs to stop hiding behind flimsy excuses and give this state a full explanation. The public ought to know if their attorney general all but lied to them for months.
Thoughts?
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* From a press release…
Leaders of the African American Clergy Coalition (AACC) are expressing disappointment in the LGBT’s attempted 2 million Dollar Purchase of the black community and black legislators in return for a “yes” vote on SB 10. This comes after years of racism and the lack of diversity within the Gay and Lesbian community against Black Gays and Lesbians. However with the recent setbacks on the attempted passage of SB 10 in the Illinois General Assembly, the LGBT now wants to “forget the racist past” and engage in “purchasing” the black community.
“It is mind blowing that the LGBT community has a poor track record of embracing its own Black Gay and Lesbian brothers and sisters, but now wants to purchase every African American they come across,” says Bishop Lance L. Davis, Co Chairman of the AACC.
Just two months ago, the vast majority of black legislators in the Illinois House of Representatives refused to vote” yes” on the pending Same Sex Marriage legislation(SB10). Now a renewed effort by the LGBT community is targeting the Black community in an attempt to have SB10 approved in the near future.
Davis adds “I appeal to the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus to be mindful of the LGBT’s tactics to get them to ignore the voices of their community that are strongly against SB10. This attempt to buy the black community is disrespectful and speaks to a louder issue concerning racism and the lack of respect for those minorities within the LGBT community.”
Recently, Illinois State Representative Monique Davis was quoted saying that by a ratio of 15 to 1, voters were voicing their opposition to SB10. Other African American legislators have expressed the same opposition within their respective districts.
The LGBT needs to be reminded that it cannot “buy” marriage in Illinois. They cannot “buy” the African American community and any effort to do so will work against them. They should be reminded that any effort to purchase votes of legislators in the African American community will be carefully scrutinized and any apparent violation of Illinois’s bribery laws will be reported to the appropriate law enforcement authorities for investigation.
The LGBT community continues to remain tight lipped on Trayvon Martin…..but wants to purchase the black community in the most disrespectful manner.
Um, wow.
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* Greg Hinz wondered if the gubernatorial candidates would support extending the temporary income tax hike and a graduated income tax. So he asked.
Bruce Rauner’s campaign wouldn’t clarify whether it would support extending part of the tax, but did say…
“The entire tax system needs to be reformed and the overall tax burden needs to go down to make Illinois more economically competitive and help spur job creation. Illinois needs a better-run state government, not one that continues to spend more.”
Sen. Kirk Dillard said he’d veto any tax hike and insisted on a flat tax. Sen. Bill Brady said he’d veto any income tax extension, including a partial extension.
Treasurer Dan Rutherford was somewhat more nuanced…
“I, like everyone else in Illinois, don’t want the increase to be extended or made permanent,” he says. “But if they haven’t fixed the financial problems the state has by (2015), it may need to be on the table.” […]
“I’m the only guy who’s being realistic,” he says. What I don’t know is whether Republican primary voters will buy it.
Gov. Quinn completely dodged the questions, and Bill Daley said he was against making the tax hike permanent, but favored a graduated tax…
Mr. Daley clearly would support graduating the state’s individual income tax. His spokesman says that move would “cut taxes for at least 90 percent of regular Illinoisans while asking those at the top who have done well to pay more.” He adds, “Gov. Quinn made the mistake of raising taxes (taxes that hit middle-class families hard) before they solved the pension mess. Bill says that’s like pouring water into a leaky bathtub.”
* In other news, Rutherford recently talked up some of his past success…
“Historically you can not win a state-wide race in the state of Illinois without getting 20 percent of the city of Chicago,” Rutherford said. “If you don’t get 20 you are not playing.”
During his election for treasurer in 2010, Rutherford said he received 22 percent of votes in the city of Chicago, while the Republican candidate for governor only received 18 percent.
Rutherford also stressed to his supporters that Republicans need to start embracing communities of diversity, and start making their presence known in those communities.
“The majority reason why we as Republicans faulted and faltered is because we just didn’t show up,” he said. “I think part of success is showing up.”
Keep in mind that Bill Brady was heavily attacked in the Chicago media market for being out of step with the area’s values, while Rutherford’s opponent barely laid a glove on him. However, Rutherford’s opponent was a black female, so that’s something.
* Sen. Dillard also talked up his past…
Dillard, who is Assistant Senate Republican Leader, said he is a conservative reformer in the General Assembly who never voted for a tax increase.
“I am tested, I am proven,” Dillard said. “I also once ran [the office] of the last clean competent governor of Illinois, Jim Edgar … I care about the future of this state greatly … We inherited a $1 billion deficit and left a $1.5 billion surplus when I was there, running the Edgar administration. We paid our bills in 17 days and we had an unemployment rate below the national average … Wall Street increased our credit rating during that administration for the first time in state history.”
Dillard said he has a track record of being able to make a Democratic-led legislature do things not in its DNA, ” to live within its means.”
Dillar said during the Edgar administration, “We made Michael Madigan the minority leader and we can do it again.” Madigan is the state’s majority leader.
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Simon officiating at “mock gay marriages”
Monday, Aug 12, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* AP…
Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon and Congressman Mike Quigley are officiating mock same-sex weddings during a festival in one of Chicago’s gay neighborhoods. […]
Simon attended Northalsted Market Days Sunday. She says the idea is to illustrate the commitment of same-sex couples. Quigley performed about one dozen ceremonies Saturday. He says it’s to draw attention to the fact that Illinois doesn’t have same-sex marriage.
The Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago also participated.
* Simon posted a photo of one of the mock marriages on her campaign’s Facebook page…
One of the more interesting things about this comptroller’s race is that if Sheila Simon wins the Democratic primary, her Republican opponent Judy Baar Topinka also strongly favors gay marriage. It doesn’t really impact the way state checks are cut, but an important electoral constituency will have an interesting choice to make.
* And it’s becoming clear that the incumbent doesn’t much care for her new opponent…
Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka said her opponent in the upcoming race for comptroller does not understand the role of the office.
“According to her, we’re supposed to go out there and ferret out crime, and we sound like junior G-Men,” Topinka said.”Well, I’ll give her a junior G-Man badge and she can run around with that. But that’s not what we do, and that’s not what the law says we do. SO I suggest she reads what the law is so she knows what the office does. We really put a lot of time and effort, and she wants to make it into Attorney General Lite.”
Topinka said Attorney General was Simon’s original goal, but she has turned to the office of Comptroller when those plans fell through.
“She wanted to be Attorney General, she told everybody that,” Topinka said. “She said that if Lisa Madigan ran for Governor, she was going to run for Attorney General because she is a lawyer and she wanted to be Attorney General. But when Lisa wouldn’t run and held up that position, she’s now looking at comptroller as a consolation prize. We’ll I’ve got to tell you, we hold this place together, this is not a consolation prize.”
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Hey, AT&T! What is this? 1997?
Monday, Aug 12, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* I spent several hours at the Illinois State Fair over the weekend. The grounds looked great and we had a fantastic time, except for one problem.
Both days, after 5 o’clock in the afternoon, AT&T’s mobile phone service wouldn’t work. Calls in or out were sporadic at best, and texts took numerous attempts to work, if ever. Internet? Fugetaboutit. And when the nightly concert started, everything completely shut down. No calls, no texts, no nothing.
The AT&T system was obviously totally overloaded.
* My friends who use other carriers said they had no problems at all. It was just AT&T, so there’s no excuse for the giant corporation’s lousy service.
* I missed a chance to meet up with some folks. While a serious bummer and extremely frustrating at the time, it wasn’t a huge deal, I suppose.
But what about the kids who needed to reach their parents, or parents who needed to arrange a time and place to pick up their children? Pay phones? Yeah, right. This is 2013. There are no pay phones. We’re supposed to have cellular service now.
* I’ve been meaning to download the SJ-R’s State Fair iPhone app. It looks pretty good. But I’m glad I didn’t get it because I would’ve been even more frustrated.
Yes, people talk and text on their mobile phones way too much, but, whatever. They pay good money for the service and they have a right to expect that they can use their expensive communications devices at large annual events, where people get separated all the time.
Fix this, please.
Thanks.
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Don’t underestimate Rauner
Monday, Aug 12, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* I’ve spoken with Bruce Rauner in a smallish, private setting, and he was pretty good one-on-one, but he may have improved his skills. Our frequent commenter OneMan was at a fundraiser over the weekend and watched Rauner in action…
I have to say he really seemed to know what he was doing when it came to working a crowd at a lower priced ticket event.
I don’t know if it was the listening tour, his consultants or whatever, but even when he talked to the dude with a serious skin condition wearing a Joe Walsh t-shirt, he seemed to be able to speak with an ease that, to be blunt, I have never seen from a rich guy candidate before (even better than Jack Ryan). He seemed more comfortable (or at least more relaxed) than Dillard.
Still don’t think I will vote for him, but I am starting to think he shouldn’t be underestimated.
I don’t disagree at all.
* Speaking of Rauner…
According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, Rauner has the top two largest expenditures thus far in 2013. All told, he spent $749,205 on two ad buys in June alone.
By comparison, Gov. Pat Quinn spent the second biggest chunk of change among the six gubernatorial candidates — $15,599 for a poll.
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Bobby or Pamela? You decide
Monday, Aug 12, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* My Sun-Times column has been moved to Sundays…
Last March, the president of the influential and heavily corporate CEO-populated Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago told a long and involved story.
The tale was about how he and some members of his group had tried to browbeat the New York credit ratings agencies into lowering Illinois’ bond ratings. The ratings hadn’t yet plummeted to where they are now, so the idea was to use ratings cuts to put pressure on Illinois to enact a tough pension-reform law that drastically reduced benefits for current and future public employee retirees.
There were a “couple” of interactions on the phone, he told his Union League Club audience, and “in one case it was in person.”
“How in the hell can you guys do this?” Ty Fahner summed up the gist of the argument made to the ratings agencies. “You’re an enabler to let the state continue.”
Fahner said he believed the calls had stopped because, he said, he and the Civic Committee members “don’t want to be the straw that breaks the back.”
He also appeared to take some credit for the ratings downgrades. “But if you watch what happened over the last few years, it’s been steadily down. Before that, it’s been the blind eye.”
But then, after I’d written about his speech in the Sun-Times and on my CapitolFax.com website, Fahner wrote me to say he made it all up.
“You gotta be kidding me,” was my initial reaction after I read his e-mail to me last week. That was a pretty darned complicated story to just invent on the fly.
“I misspoke,” Fahner wrote. “I didn’t call the ratings agencies, nor did any of our Civic Committee staff.” He later clarified that he knew of nobody at the Civic Committee who had ever “contacted the rating agencies to urge Illinois be downgraded or for any other reason.”
Yep. It was all just a fantasy, kinda like that time on “Dallas” when Patrick Duffy’s character Bobby Ewing was killed off and then Duffy decided a few months later that he wanted to return to the show, so the producers announced that the entire season had just been a bad dream by Pamela Ewing, Bobby’s wife, played by Victoria Principal.
I’m not sure if Fahner is Bobby Ewing or Pamela, but Fahner’s comments had definitely become a nightmare.
Fahner’s law firm currently has a contract worth as much as $2 million to — irony of all ironies — handle the state of Illinois’ bond work. So, if Fahner was telling the truth back in March, he was boasting about advocating against one of his firm’s big clients. Also, the current chairman of Fahner’s law firm is a Civic Committee member. Not to mention that many of the big financial CEOs who are Civic Committee members run companies that do lots of Illinois bond business.
Fahner is no average Joe. He is a former Illinois attorney general. The Civic Committee he runs is loaded with corporate titans. The guy has clout.
A pension-reform bill that Fahner wholeheartedly supported could’ve passed months ago, but Fahner refused to agree to a compromise. Senate President John Cullerton offered to construct a bill that would allow Fahner’s more draconian pension reforms to take effect, but if the courts struck the language down as unconstitutional, then Cullerton’s rival proposal would kick in.
In perhaps the most frustrating moment during the three long years of agonizing pension-reform battles, Fahner’s opposition pulled Senate Republicans off the bill, which doomed it to failure.
And here we sit today with nothing. No pension reform. Nothing.
Thanks, Ty.
Pleasant dreams.
Discuss.
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