“Freaky fast” Libertarians
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* An overwhelming majority of y’all voted to make me go to today’s Libertarian Party press conference.
Thanks so much, by the way.
Ya’ goofs.
* The Libertarians used the presser to complain about ballot access. They were forced to collect over 40,000 signatures, while established parties only have to collect 5,000. They filed a lawsuit a couple of years ago to overturn the signature requirements, but the folks at today’s presser were unclear whether it was a state lawsuit or a federal lawsuit or which judge currently has the case and where it even is.
They also talked a bit about their plans if elected. The party’s gubernatorial candidate said he favors no government regulation of heroin and wants to abolish all state aid to schools, among other things. If you want to watch the whole thing, click here for the BlueRoomStream.com video.
* The policy “hook” was the party’s solidarity with the Jimmy John’s CEO, who said he’s leaving the state because of high taxes. The pitch…
Party leaders said they contacted Jimmy John’s but couldn’t get the company to cooperate.
They had a box of sandwiches, but I didn’t take one. I’m doing Atkins. No bread for me and I didn’t bother to look to see if they had a lettuce-wrapped sub.
36 Comments  
|
Cool new political tech
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* This looks very big. From a press release…
Targeted Victory, a leader in online advertising and integrated data management for political candidates, today announced a new partnership with The Data Trust, the premier right-of-center voter file and data management company, to offer easier access and sharing capabilities for The Data Trust’s warehouse of data on more than 260 million Americans. The partnership is the first of its kind for The Data Trust, which has the exclusive list exchange agreement with the Republican National Committee. […]
Through this partnership, Targeted Victory will incorporate The Data Trust’s political data inventory into its Audience Exchange, a powerful block of consumer and political data. The new segments will enable Targeted Victory’s clients to place their message in front of their most important audiences. This partnership is the first of many anticipated by The Data Trust to place its data in the marketplace to be used across all methods of contact.
* I asked specifically how this would be done and Abe Adams, Senior Director of Client Strategy & Fundraising at Targeted Victory, sent over some dot points…
· We’re building the biggest data marketplace in politics. Audience Exchange has a powerful block of consumer and political data from world-class providers like i360, Datalogix, Lotame, and now The Data Trust.
· The Data Trust has compiled records and information on about 260 million Americans. Until now, their data was only used for mail and phone outreach. By onboarding their data into Audience Exchange, we now have additional medium to touch these potential voters - online.
· This new data segment is available to Targeted Victory clients, but also available to self-service Targeted Engagement users. Targeted Engagement is the first self-service advertising product built exclusively for politics, and offers the voter data used by presidential campaigns to campaigns of ALL SIZES on the right.
· Our partnership with The Data Trust gives campaigns of all sizes access to a powerful new block of data, and will enable campaigns to target and segment audiences with more reach and versatility than ever before.
Looks pretty extensive.
* And that’s not the only move Targeted Victory is making. From Campaigns and Elections…
How can campaigns reach voters who are consuming media on multiple screens? The Republican digital firm Targeted Victory has rolled out a new partnership with Rentrak aimed at helping campaigns do just that.
Targeted Victory plans on layering Rentrak’s TV viewing data into Audience Exchange, a catalogue that uses consumer-based data from providers i360, Datalogix, and Lotame. The partnership is notable given the role Rentrak data played in 2012—the Obama campaign contracted with the data provider to better target persuadable voters based on their TV viewing habits.
* From the Q&A…
C&E: How do you expect the trend of straying away from traditional television viewing habits to continue in 2014?
Beach: I think both the broadcast and the digital mediums are growing, but I think that a larger share of this development is going digital. It’s always been that there are two groups of people: live TV watchers, who compose 17% of viewers, and “off the grid” viewers, meaning people who watch all of their content through streaming or DVR, who compose 30% of viewers. But what we’ve seen in the last year’s research is a third middle group which we’re calling “screen agnostic.” These people are trending away from only live TV, but are consuming on numerous devices. These people compose the largest group of the three, as they compose 54% of viewers. They are who we hope to target with this product.
* Meanwhile, a reader turned me on to Greenhouse…
A free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari that exposes the role money plays in Congress. Displays on any web page detailed campaign contribution data for every Senator and Representative, including total amount received and breakdown by industry and by size of donation. Puts vital data where it’s most relevant so you can discover the real impact of money on our political system.
I installed the app for my Safari browser. This is what happens when you hover over an incumbent’s name…
Very, very cool. Now, if only they’d expand the app to include challengers.
* From a MapLight press release…
MapLight, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks the influence of money in politics, announces the launch of an extensive mapping project examining the geographic origin of contributions to legislators by state; contributions from companies to legislators by state; and roll call votes by state and district on key bills in Congress. For the first time, it will be possible to instantly see and understand the role money from outside sources plays in local races and the geographic alignment of support and opposition to key legislative initiatives.
Have you run across any cool political apps/tech lately?
* Related…
* NGP VAN and Catalist partner for NEA’s ‘Activist Continuum’: Catalist is providing statistical algorithms and NGP VAN is taking their calculations and plugging them into their “Continuum” interface, which “give end-users dynamically updated information about member activities – and better tailor communication to match the topics and types of activities that members are most interested in,” according to Stu Trevelyan, NGP VAN’s CEO.
18 Comments
|
Question of the day
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Congressman Aaron Schock and Bruce Rauner have apparently buried the hatchet. Greg Hinz…
Schock and Rauner had what I’m told was a productive peace-making session over several cups of coffee a few days ago.
* Greg is right, as usual. From Schock’s Twitter feed…
* The Question: Caption?
53 Comments
|
A sign of the times
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* AP…
Private schools in Illinois will now have to conduct annual drills to prepare for potential school shootings and review their security preparations.
Legislation signed into law Saturday brings the state’s 1,800 private schools in line with requirements already in place for public schools.
* CNN, by the way, has a useful take on school shootings…
After Tuesday’s shooting at an Oregon high school, many media outlets, including CNN, reported that there have been 74 school shootings in the past 18 months.
That’s the time period since the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were shot to death.
The statistic came from a group called Everytown for Gun Safety, an umbrella group started by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a passionate and public advocate of gun control. […]
CNN took a closer look at the list, delving into the circumstances of each incident Everytown included. Everytown says on its web site that it gleans its information from media reports and that its list includes school shootings involving a firearm discharged inside or on school grounds, including assaults, homicides, suicides and accidental shootings.
CNN determined that 15 of the incidents Everytown included were situations similar to the violence in Newtown or Oregon — a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school. That works out to about one such shooting every five weeks, a startling figure in its own right.
Some of the other incidents on Everytown’s list included personal arguments, accidents and alleged gang activities and drug deals.
CNN also has a list and brief descriptions of the 15 shootings.
Just because a shooting isn’t a massacre doesn’t mean schools shouldn’t be prepared to deal with smaller incidents.
15 Comments
|
A complete waste of time and money
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* I’m pretty sure I’ve covered this angle already because it’s so maddening…
The state spent almost half a million dollars on a flawed study of Gov. Pat Quinn’s now-defunct anti-violence program — the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative — after officials rejected a more rigorous evaluation that would have been free, auditors say.
The $498,351 study by the University of Illinois at Chicago didn’t even examine whether the program helped reduce violence, according to Auditor General William Holland’s office. […]
The University of Chicago offered to conduct a controlled “outcome evaluation” of the program on a pro bono basis, Roseanna Ander, executive director of the crime lab, said.
That kind of study would have measured the program’s impact on violence, she said. “Crime and violence are such important social problems that it is important to take every opportunity to learn as much as possible about what works.”
But Shaw decided to award a no-bid contract to UIC to do a less rigorous “process evaluation” at a cost of nearly $500,000, auditors said.
* This was buried deep down in the story, but it’s an important point…
Other documents from the auditor general’s office reveal that Shaw selected the University of Illinois at Chicago for the contract even though the governor’s office preferred the University of Chicago.
Oy.
* Ms. Shaw will be the focus of a hearing today…
A panel of lawmakers looking into reports of financial irregularities in Gov. Pat Quinn’s $55-million anti-violence grant program will meet today to decide whether to subpoena the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative’s former director to testify.
Barbara Shaw has already turned down an invitation to testify before the Legislative Audit Commission. The bipartisan group of lawmakers is digging into the stinging audit done by Auditor General William Holland that uncovered widespread abuse of funds in a program he maintained was hastily rolled out without adequate oversight.
The Legislative Audit Commission will meet at 1 p.m. at the Bilandic Building, where the panel is scheduled to vote on whether to subpoena Shaw, 66, of Chicago.
* From last week…
The subcommittee that will decide Monday whether to compel Shaw to testify includes Sen. Jason Barickman, R-Champaign; Sen. John Mulroe, D-Chicago; Rep. Robert Rita, D-Blue Island; and Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill.
At this point, it’s not clear whether three votes exist to force the issue with Shaw. It also isn’t clear what ability, if any, the commission has to enforce a subpoena should Shaw or anyone else that may be subpoenaed not agree to testify.
“I’m not sure at this point,” Rita told the Sun-Times by email when asked if he intended to vote to subpoena Shaw. “(I’d) like to review more information.”
I reached out to Rep. Rita, but haven’t heard back.
* Meanwhile…
House Speaker Michael Madigan intends to sign off on a subpoena of the former state administrator Gov. Pat Quinn put in charge of launching his scandal-tainted Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, an aide to the speaker confirmed Friday.
“As far as I know, the speaker is prepared to sign off on subpoenas and, I think, move this process along,” Madigan spokesman Steve Brown told the Chicago Sun-Times’ Early & Often political portal.
That assurance came after Republican members of the Legislature Audit Commission delivered a letter to Madigan, D-Chicago, and Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, protesting their role in personally signing off on the issuance of any subpoenas tied to the ongoing NRI legislative probe. […]
Republicans contended in their letter Friday that subpoenas should be signed off on by the co-chairs of the Legislative Audit Commission and not Madigan and Cullerton. They pointed to two earlier instances in which subpoenas were issued by the audit panel without signatures from the House speaker and Senate president personally.
But Brown countered that having the leaders involved strengthened the process.
I’m told by his spokesperson that Senate President Cullerton believes “the Commission has the authority to issue subpoenas without the leaders.” She added, “It’s our understanding that subpoenas are going to be issued.”
* You can watch a live video stream of this afternoon’s hearing by clicking here.
17 Comments
|
Today’s must-read: Exelon’s free-fall
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Exelon’s stock price has plummeted 60 percent since its 2008 peak. Last year, the company cut its dividend by 41 percent. Crain’s has a very good story about what has happened to the former titan. It basically boils down to a toxic combination of a quickly changing industry model, natural gas prices and its unregulated price market…
As its nuclear plants increasingly look like an albatross rather than a boon, Exelon is at a crossroads. The future of power generation and distribution is uncertain, but demand for electricity is slack and likely to remain so because of improvements in energy efficiency. Many predict that the industry gradually will move away from behemoth central power stations like Exelon’s nukes. Instead, it would feature smaller plants that can cycle on and off with fluctuations in demand coupled with on-site power sources in homes and businesses such as solar panels or even small-scale natural gas generators.
Mr. Rowe’s successor, CEO Christopher Crane, faces a series of difficult options, none of them obvious winners. Exelon could try to buy more regulated businesses, hedging risks in the power markets with predictable returns. It could attempt to catch up to rivals that have aggressively pursued renewable energy, although it’s late to the party and would have to pay top dollar. Or it could split into two companies: a regulated, supersized electric utility and an unregulated power generator.
The decisions Mr. Crane and his board make in the next several years could determine whether Exelon remains one of the country’s leading forces in the power business or cedes that position to companies that have moved in different directions.
“What does (Exelon) want to be when it grows up?” says Julien Dumoulin-Smith, an analyst at UBS Securities LLC in New York.
The company’s fate matters greatly to Chicago. The parent of Commonwealth Edison Co., Exelon has 26,000 employees, 12,500 of whom work in Illinois, including 6,700 in the Chicago area.
Go read the whole thing. Interesting stuff. And why should you read it? Exelon is a hugely powerful company and it’s not afraid to pull levers and strings when it needs something. I get the feeling it needs something.
13 Comments
|
Perils of privatization
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* As this Sun-Times story shows, privatization often means less sunlight…
Chicago’s Navy Pier — touted as the biggest tourist attraction in Illinois — has long been a patronage haven where political insiders turned for jobs and lucrative deals to sell everything from expensive meals to gumballs.
Who was cashing in used to be a matter of public record. It no longer is, since the state of Illinois and City Hall turned over operation of the government-owned pier to a private, not-for-profit group three years ago for $1-a-year rent.
Navy Pier Inc. doesn’t have to explain how it’s spending $115 million in government bonds that were sold to pay for a face-lift for the 98-year-old pier, either. […]
(F)ormer Mayor Richard M. Daley’s handprints are all over Navy Pier Inc. Five months before Daley left office in May 2011, his former chief of staff John Schmidt incorporated Navy Pier Inc. The deal for NPI to take over control and governance of the pier was signed a month before Daley departed City Hall, taking effect in July 2011. Also, NPI’s board includes Daley’s daughter, his former campaign manager, two of his former chiefs of staff, his onetime top City Hall lawyer and civic leaders who were longtime Daley supporters. […]
Beside a roster of pier employees and salaries, Brodsky also declined to make public contracts that Navy Pier Inc. has signed with restaurants and other vendors — all public information before his group took over in July 2011. […]
On Friday, the Better Government Association, which also was denied Navy Pier Inc. records, filed suit against McPier and NPI in Cook County circuit court to get them. The watchdog group argues the not-for-profit agency was created to shield pier operations from public view.
* And as this AP story shows, sometimes it doesn’t work as originally advertised…
Illinois’ private lottery contract has never reached the lofty sales promises it used to win a bid four years ago and is expected to fall more than $200 million short of what it owes the state when the budget year ends June 30.
But Northstar Lottery Group says it’s been hamstrung by state officials, with whom they have an already frosty relationship and accuse of throwing up road blocks — from canceling games it wanted to launch to prohibiting the sponsorship of Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival in 2013 because of headliner R.Kelly.
Regardless, Northstar’s 10-year contract with the state details that falling short of its goals by 10 percent two years in a row is grounds for ending the partnership, no questions asked. It missed targets by almost 20 percent last year, and is on track to do the same this year. […]
When Northstar took over the 40-year-old program, it promised contributions of $1 billion to the state in the fifth year of its contract. But it has been about $400 million short since in its first three years — money that is supposed to go toward schools, charitable organizations and a $31 billion capital construction program launched in 2009.
* So, what could possibly go wrong?…
Last year North Riverside officials received a letter from a state agency ordering the village to start paying more into its underfunded pension accounts or face a financial reckoning.
The ultimatum and a shortage of cash prompted the village to consider an unusual solution — privatizing its fire department. […]
The letters, obtained by the Tribune, detail an enforcement mechanism that will allow the department to divert sales taxes and other revenue from a town’s coffers to local police and fire pension funds starting in 2016.
The mechanism was included in a 2010 law that requires local governments to pay enough toward their police and fire pensions each year to make the pensions 90 percent funded by 2040. Currently, the state requires municipalities to make annual payments but does not have the same enforcement tool.
North Riverside officials are publicizing the fire department privatization plan in advance of a Department of Insurance hearing Thursday, during which they plan to pitch the idea.
Discuss.
25 Comments
|
Not a surprise at all
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Governing Magazine took a look at state legislative contests throughout the country and then rated each state chamber’s likelihood of parties holding onto control…
ILLINOIS
Senate: Projected Safe D; Current 40-19 D
House: Projected Safe D; Current 71-47 D
The gubernatorial race — a slugfest between unpopular Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn and deep-pocketed GOP businessman Bruce Rauner — could have a trickle-down effect on state legislative contests if one of the candidates gets a strong upper hand. But the Democrats have big leads in both chambers, so the party would have to experience a major wipeout to lose its majorities. A likelier outcome is for the House Democratic supermajority to fall
.
Hard to disagree there.
The Senate has just two contested races and the Republicans need to pick up five seats to escape from their super-minority status. Not gonna happen. The HGOPs only need to pick up one net seat to emerge from the super-minority dungeon.
23 Comments
|
Today’s quotable: “Do or die”
Monday, Jun 23, 2014 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Sun-Times’ Natasha Korecki on billionaire Ken Griffin’s $2.5 million contribution to Bruce Rauner…
A Republican operative who has had conversations with Griffin but was not authorized to talk publicly about them said, “This is do or die for the state of Illinois, that’s how he feels,” and insisted Griffin had no interest “other than the solvency of the state.”
A Citadel spokeswoman had a simple reason for Griffin’s support:
“This contribution was given in the hopes that it would help Rauner get his message out to the people of Illinois,” Citadel spokeswoman Katie Spring said. […]
Taking it all together, there’s one conclusion: $2.5 million isn’t the last check Griffin writes in this governor’s race.
45 Comments
|
* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…
The group attempting to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to change Illinois’ indisputably hyperpartisan legislative redistricting process is running into some well-publicized petition problems.
Here’s what’s behind the difficulties.
Almost 90 percent of the “Yes for Independent Maps” petition entries tossed as invalid by the Illinois State Board of Elections this month were for people who were either not registered to vote or weren’t registered to vote at the address shown on the petitions, official documents show.
Yet, the state’s media, led by the Chicago Tribune editorial page, has almost solely focused on problems with signatures that don’t match up to voter registration cards. It’s either a gross misunderstanding of the situation or a deliberate deception.
The state board used a computer program to choose 25,000 petition entries at random out of the 500,000 or so entries turned in by the remap reform group. Board employees then examined the entries and struck 13,807 as invalid, for a failure rate of about 55 percent.
Of those, 7,535 entries (55 percent of the total rejected) were from people who were not registered to vote, according to Board of Elections Director Rupert Borgsmiller. Another 4,565 (33 percent) were signers who weren’t registered to vote at the address shown on the petition. The Yes for Independent Maps folks say they believe they can “rehabilitate” 4,130 of those, but that would be highly unusual. They need to restore somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 petition entries.
But despite the fact that the remap reform group mainly lost petition challenges based on voter registration, the news media has stubbornly continued to focus on the relatively tiny fight over whether petition signatures matched up to signatures on voter registration cards.
The reality is that just 937 petition entries (7 percent of the total rejected) were tossed because the signatures didn’t match up to voter registration files. Another 721 (5 percent) were tossed because the Board’s staff examiners couldn’t read the signatures and/or the address to figure out who the person actually was.
Yet, a Chicago Associated Press story published last week focused solely on “signatures,” as did a Tribune news story, as did two Tribune editorials, as did pretty much everyone else.
Obviously, if the problem is merely matching up signatures, that’s a subjective exercise and ripe for potential abuse. But the real problem with the remap petitions is unregistered or improperly registered voters. These things simply are not subjective.
“It’s because of a backroom process, an uneven, rushed process, that it had gotten to this point,” remap reformer Michael Kolenc told reporters last week. The “uneven” process has also been highlighted three times by the Tribune editorial board and it’s yet another grotesque distortion of the facts.
A June 5th Tribune editorial claimed “Individual examiners’ invalidation rates ranged from 17 percent to 86 percent.” In one of two editorials last week, the Tribune finally admitted that they were talking about just two Board staffers. “Should we take the word of the elections board examiners as gospel? One examiner disqualified 86 percent of the signatures he or she checked. Another examiner disqualified only 17 percent.”
So, what about those two examiners? Well, if you look at the actual data you’ll see that the two staffers in question examined only a handful of entries. A tiny sample of a 5 percent total sample can mathematically explain any wild individual variations.
The Board assigned 38 staffers to the examination task. One staffer looked at just a single entry, so let’s toss him out. Of the rest, the number of signatures examined ranged from 1,714 down to 91, for an average of 676 examined and a median of 711.
The staffer who “disqualified only 17 percent” examined just 92 petition entries. The staffer who “disqualified 86 percent” looked at just 183 entries. The overwhelming majority of the examiners had pretty close to the final rate of 55 percent invalid.
Director Borgsmiller also noted that in the last two days of the examination process, his staff’s validation rate jumped to over 60 percent. Borgsmiller said that most of the petitions looked at during that period were from Downstate. The Yes for Independent Maps group had several solid Downstate volunteers, particularly in central Illinois.
The bottom line here is that this state’s media has fallen for spin that’s made the Board of Elections look like some evil entity. If that’s so, then why did the Board certify Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner’s widely hated by insiders term limits constitutional amendment last week? The most likely answer is almost always the simplest. Rauner obviously ran a tight ship. The remap folks apparently did not.
35 Comments
|
|
Support CapitolFax.com
Visit our advertisers...
...............
...............
...............
...............
...............
...............
|
   
|
Hosted by MCS
SUBSCRIBE to Capitol Fax
Advertise Here
Mobile Version
Contact Rich Miller
|
