Friday, Jul 8, 2016 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
Nearly 600,000 Illinoisans signed a petition to put redistricting reform on the 2016 ballot. The Independent Map Amendment will reform the rules and require a process of drawing maps that is transparent, impartial and fair. Illinois elections should reflect the will of the people, not the politicians.
The 2016 redistricting reform effort builds upon the previous attempts in 2010 and 2014. Our organization worked with reform groups, civic organizations, community leaders, and others to draft an amendment that adheres to the requirements of the Illinois Constitution while creating a new system for redistricting that is independent and protects the rights of minority communities.
That’s why the Independent Map Amendment is supported by a broad coalition that includes the Latino Policy Forum, Better Government Association, Common Cause Illinois, NAACP Chicago Southside Branch, Illinois Chamber of Commerce, League of Women Voters, Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, AARP Illinois, the Illinois Farm Bureau and many others.
Visit mapamendment.org to view a full list of supporters of redistricting reform and to read the latest news and editorials supporting this constitutional change.
Television ads condemning Republican Congressional candidates, linking them to the party’s presumptive nominee Donald Trump, will begin airing nationwide this week. More specifically, the ads will be aired in Illinois’ 10th congressional District.
This is a cable buy with an online component. According to Comcast, the buy is $153,680, and will run July 11-17. They’ve purchased spots on: AMC, BRVO, CNN, CSNC, ENT, FOOD, HALL, HGTV, LIF, MNBC, TBSC, TLC, TNT, USA. More info is below.
“Everyone realizes that the DCCC can’t actually attack Bob Dold on his record of effective, independent leadership that’s been endorsed across the political spectrum and in every corner of the 10th district, so they’re now falsely hoping voters aren’t smart enough to see through this laughably dishonest ad as they desperately try to prop-up their embarrassingly incompetent and hyper-partisan candidate Brad Schneider,” Dold campaign spokesperson Danielle Hagan said.
In May, Dold told Big John Howell that he wouldn’t support the divisive Trump.
How would it feel to find out your child was the school bully? Would you feel much better to learn they were only the bully’s sidekick? Well we’ve got bad news for you. Because as Donald Trump runs a campaign pitting Americans against each other. And pushing ideas that threaten our country’s security Republicans in Congress are just standing by him. But shouldn’t they really be standing up to the bully?
I want to say something to my Congressman. I’ve been a Republican all my life. I get Party loyalty. But there’s loyalty to your country. And the things Donald Trump says. About immigrants and women… Veterans… I mean, how can we put up with that? How can Republican members of Congress support that? If he’s our standard bearer, what the heck happened to our standards?
* Background from the DCCC…
SCOPE: This is a national cable television and digital ad campaign, with an additional emphasis in 10 targeted House districts
COST: Seven figures
DURATION: This will run starting Monday, through the Republican National Convention
TARGETED DEMOGRAPHICS:
* Advertisements will target independent women, 25+ years in age
PROGRAMING DETAILS:
* National Cable buy focused on CNN, MSNBC and sister networks. This will be highly targeted to key demographics and will appear in homes across the country, anywhere that the specified news programs are shown.
* Additional local Cable spot buys in specific districts on lifestyle and entertainment networks, such as HGTV, Hallmark, Food Network, TNT, USA and Bravo. This will be customized and targeted based on sophisticated targeting of persuadable voters. These specific districts will see additional spots of the ad throughout their cable network.
Logic Behind Local Cable Spot Buys:
The goal is to set the stage early and define the connection between the House Republicans and Donald Trump, leading up to Convention and before House races have engaged.
Particularly focused in districts where:
* There are well-funded Republican incumbents […]
Messaging behind ads:
* Over the last year and a half, House Republicans have repeatedly failed to stand up to Donald Trump at times that it mattered most.
* Now, he is the Republican Party’s standard bearer and every House Republican owns that, whether they support him, endorse him, or continue to hide from him when he visits their districts.
Additional Information on Timing:
* This is a nationalized election environment where voters are focused on one person, and one person only– Donald Trump. Certainly all presidential races have a top-down impact on House races, but rarely is it so lopsided to the advantage of one party.
* Donald Trump is House Republicans’ biggest negative, and through this national cable buy, with an additional emphasis and impressions in key districts, we are taking advantage of that, leaning in and not allowing House Republicans to draw any daylight between them and Trump.
* We are also ensuring that these Republican incumbents are unable to try and define themselves first.
I am writing to draw to your attention a very important charity event taking place in my district this Saturday that I believe some of you may be interested in attending or contributing to in some way. Many of you will be familiar with Peoria Journal Star Reporter Chris Kaergard and his “Budget Beard.” The typically clean-shaven Chris began growing a beard when the state budget impasse began, in an effort to illustrate the length of time it had been at any given moment since Illinois had last operated under a comprehensive annual budget. As his beard grew, so too did the public’s awareness of just how dysfunctional our statehouse had become in the wake of this conflict. His experiment has even gained quite a bit of media attention throughout the entire state.
Chris has long been ready to rid himself of his now unwieldy and unsightly Budget Beard, and now that the General Assembly has passed a stop-gap measure to keep our state’s basic services operational until January, he is taking advantage of the opportunity to do so while also raising funds for select local charities that have been devastated by the absence of a state budget throughout the past year. One of these charities is Lutheran Social Services, a state-wide agency that was hit hard early on in the fiscal year.
I approached Chris about this concept a few months ago, and could not be more pleased to see that he is putting the plan into action. This event—which will take place at a local East Peoria barber shop—will allow legislators, community leaders, and members of the public to each take their own snip off the Budget Beard in exchange for a charitable donation in the amount of their choosing. This will carry on until the Budget Beard is finally gone and Chris is back to his old self.
If you cannot attend the event but are interested in donating, you may do so using the links below.
It is truly devastating for our state what has been allowed to take place throughout this past year, and I am extremely hopeful that this effort will provide some degree of comfort and relief to these agencies—though admittedly insufficient—as they continue their respective missions to serve some of our most vulnerable fellow citizens.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Mike Unes
State Representative, 91st District
The invite is here. And here are the above-mentioned links…
I talked to a buddy of mine today who used to be a reporter about this. He said the Peoria newspaper would’ve done a much greater service by, perhaps, regularly reporting on a family dealing with the loss of a crucial service over the past year.
I dunno. To each his own, I suppose. And LSSI is a charity I’ve raised money for, so I hope they can benefit.
* As anyone who has ever interviewed Gov. Rauner already knows, it ain’t an easy task. He sticks to his talking points like super glue. For instance…
Reporter: “It seems like some people almost became collateral damage with social services being cut, agencies not able to help those who need it most. What do you say to those families who are looking at this situation and saying, ‘Why couldn’t they have done this sooner?’”
Rauner: “I say the system needs to change. Our government has not been working for the people of Illinois. We have the biggest unfunded pension liability in America. We have the biggest deficit in America and we just don’t pay our bills. A lot of those bills go to human service agencies. They’ve been hanging on by their fingernails for years. This is not a recent thing. This has been going on a long time.”
The problem with the interview is that the reporter didn’t follow up. We talked about this exact same thing yesterday when a reporter asked the governor if he accepted any responsibility for the impasse. He dodged the question and the subject was dropped.
* He’s not the only one who does this, of course. I tried to get Speaker Madigan to move beyond his well-worn talking points on workers’ comp reform by asking if he’d be open to rolling back part of the 2005 legislative changes, which drove up costs. He stuck to his talking points. I pointed out that he didn’t answer the question, and he still refused to respond. And then he did it again. I asked him at the next presser if he had any thoughts about the 2005 law, and he wouldn’t answer then, either.
The difference is that Rauner talks to reporters far more often than Madigan. So reporters get more opportunities. One of the better questions he’s been asked this year was by, I think, a PAR intern who asked him to name a Chicago school which qualified as a “crumbling prison.” He wouldn’t answer the question, but that alone said quite a lot about his original remarks.
* The Question: What one question do you think the governor and/or Speaker Madigan should be asked until they finally answer it? And then explain why you believe it’s an all-important question.
* The discourse in this country and in this state is simply out of hand. And our leaders ought to know better than to say things like this…
Rauner claimed his political opponents “have so many voices. You’ve got agencies. You’ve got unions. You’ve got elected officials. You’ve got patronage folks inside my administration. And I’m fighting some of the legacy of the old Republican Party, who are bombing me. I’ve got the Democratic Party bombing me. I’ve got the media bombing me.
“I’ve got World War III on seven levels.”
Bombing you? Seriously, dude?
The comments were made yesterday before the horrific Dallas ambush, but I’ve been worrying for a while now that Illinoisans’ anger, while certainly at least partially justified, is being irresponsibly stoked by all sides for their own political purposes. I’m truly and sincerely frightened that we’re gonna end up with a Jo Cox situation here. During the Memorial Day weekend session, there were times when nobody was in the guardhouse at the entrance to the Statehouse’s southern parking lot and it made me more nervous than I ever expected.
State lawmakers received their first paycheck in more than three months this week after Republican Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger delayed the payments amid a cash crunch due to the record-setting budget impasse.
Munger’s office said Thursday that lawmakers’ April paychecks went out this week. That should be welcome news to some lawmakers, who argued their work on a stopgap budget bill that was signed into law last week should clear the way for the payments to be released. […]
But the timing had nothing to do with the stopgap budget agreement reached last week by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly. Rather, the monthly payments finally reached the top of the state’s nearly $8 billion pile of IOUs — the same queue in which contractors who provide everything from care for the elderly to food for prisoners must wait before they get paid.
It’s unclear when legislators will receive their checks for May and June. Comptroller spokesman Rich Carter said that will “depend on incoming revenues and availability of funds.”
The governor believes they shouldn’t be paid until the budget crisis is resolved but he says that’s not the law right now, and changing it would likely never come up for a vote.
Indeed, some might contend that legislators, having made such a mess of Illinois’ finances, ought to be paid last — maybe even not paid at all.
It’s our opinion that Munger made exactly the right decision in treating legislators just like she treats everyone else. Why should they be exempt from the pain of having to cope with the inevitable financial complications?
Who knows? The inconvenience might serve as an incentive for them to get serious about cleaning up the state’s financial mess.
After all, they — at least theoretically — are the masters of their fate. That’s why no one should begrudge legislators getting what they deserve — whether it’s timely salary payments for doing their jobs or the same financial complications for not doing so that they are visiting upon others.
One legislator cracked to me yesterday that many of his constituents think legislators ought to pay the state to keep their jobs.
There was a total of $2.7 million in political contributions this week, which is more than double last week’s total of $1.2 million. $1 million of this week’s total was a transfer from the Illinois Republican Party to the House Republican Organization on July 1st. While transfers between candidate committees are capped at $53,900, political party committees are able to transfer unlimited funds to other political party committees at any time.
Susana Mendoza, the Democratic candidate for Illinois State Comptroller, was a top earner this week with $326,200 in reported contributions. A large chunk of her contributions this week came from organized labor. The International Union of Operating Engineers, The Construction & General Laborers’ District Council, and the Laborers’ Political League Education Fund all maxed out their contribution limits at $53,900 each.
The Senate Democratic Victory Fund was the third highest top earner for this week, bringing in a total of $217,400. Labor was also a major contributor to this committee, with the UA Political Education Committee and the Finishing Trades of Chicago donating $53,900 and $50,000 respectively.
Illinois State Board of Elections data shows that labor unions and union-related PACs transferred and contributed over $826,000 to Illinois political committees this week.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tammy Duckworth of Illinois hauled in $2.7 million during the second quarter as she tries to unseat Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, her campaign said Thursday.
Duckworth’s campaign also said the two-term Hoffman Estates congresswoman had $5.5 million in the bank to start July.
Kirk campaign manager Kevin Artl said he did not have comparable information to release Thursday. The latest campaign-finance reports must be filed by July 15, and Duckworth’s campaign released only highlights, not the full report. […]
In the 10th Congressional District, the campaign of Republican Rep. Bob Dold of Kenilworth said it took in more than $850,000 between April and June and started the month with more than $2.3 million.
The Old State Capitol, Dana-Thomas House and Lincoln’s New Salem state historic sites will soon expand hours to seven days a week, the Illinois Historical Preservation Agency announced Thursday.
Because of budget cuts, the three sites had been operating four or five days a week.
Justin Blandford, superintendent of state historic sites in Springfield, called it “a really big deal.” Blandford said he has a staff of 10 people who manage the local sites.
“We’re not getting any more funding,” he said, noting that the move is independent of the six-month state budget agreement that was reached by the governor and legislature last week. “It’s about management of our cultural resources and efficiency.”
Just because Illinois lawmakers approved a stopgap budget doesn’t necessarily mean that drivers again will receive reminders in the mail that it’s time to renew their license-plate registrations.
The budget approved last week provides $35 million to cover the Secretary of State’s operations through December, but the office hasn’t determined yet whether some of that money should be used to start sending the notices again.
A spokesman said Secretary of State Jesse White’s staff will study other office expenses before making a decision about resuming the renewal reminders.
* It seems to me that drivers will eventually figure this out on their own, so discontinuing the process could save some real cash. But, maybe I’m wrong. Your thoughts?
* I have been suggesting for months that Chicago’s violence problem is a public health emergency. So, when Crain’s Chicago Business ran this op-ed by Karen Teitelbaum, the president and CEO of Sinai Health System in Chicago, I decided to share it all with you today…
About the numbers, there is no dispute. Deaths and injuries from gun violence in Chicago are our modern-day version of the plague. We have surpassed 300 homicides already this year, with 13 people killed by guns on Father’s Day alone. On the heels of another summer holiday, reports count 2,021 shooting victims so far this year, moving rapidly to overtake the 2,988 victims in all of 2015.
If we continue at this pace, we can expect to see 30,000 Chicagoans killed or wounded from gunshots in the next 10 years. Morbidity and mortality from such violence are two of the most dramatic examples of health disparities in our city, profoundly impacting communities of color.
Another vigil, moment of silence or chanting in the streets will not change this awful trajectory. We need answers that lead to solutions, and we need them now.
Answers that work—that provide real and sustainable change for the better—cannot come without research. Without the research that tells us the root causes of gun violence, how toddlers and children find guns in the house, why 60 percent of gun deaths are by suicide and what interventions can curb it, we are just guessing, feeling our way in the dark.
It is an outrage that Congress has specifically prohibited the Centers for Disease Control from funding gun violence research. Following the massacre in Orlando, the American Medical Association House of Delegates last month did the right thing and resolved to lobby Congress actively to overturn this policy.
We can hope for change in Congress, and we must support efforts to move policy, but last month’s Senate votes demonstrated once again how hard it will be to get that change. And with a presidential election looming large, it is unlikely major issues will be addressed until after January.
Chicago cannot wait. To find those answers, we have to come together as researchers, as funders, as leaders, as policy makers, as parents and as people who value life.
As Dr. Leslie Zun, the chairman of the Mount Sinai Hospital Emergency Department states, “We can save lives and continue patching people up who have been shot, but we would much rather be seeing less trauma and more ways to curb the escalating volume of violence that sends these critically wounded patients our way.”
If Chicago is rich in anything, it is rich in intellectual capital and civic commitment. We need to bring together those of us in Chicago who have the research expertise, experience and commitment to health care disparities to identify the causes and solutions to Chicago’s plague. We need to tap those in the streets who fight this violence daily to share their thoughts and strategies. We need our civic leaders and corporate community to support those efforts. We need our university researchers to share their skills. And we need the active participation of our city policy makers to launch this effort.
Every day we see the devastation of gun violence in our emergency room. Every. Single. Day.
There are great examples of public health research saving lives, from rear-facing infant car seats, to earlier cancer detection, to smoking cessation. Now is the time to use these same scientific approaches and Chicago’s considerable resources to find the solutions to reduce gun violence.
Sinai Urban Health Institute has been reaching out to fellow researchers, civic leaders, academic resources, public health experts and others who share our urgency to find a solution to disrupt the violence in Chicago.
We believe in our collective power to bring some of the finest research minds together, and we will have a real impact on this epidemic. This is not an idea; it’s an imperative.
As noted above, the federal government won’t be any help, so my only addition would be that the state needs to get directly and actively involved in this endeavor as well. This crisis cannot be solved solely by the police, prosecutors and the judiciary.
I could have snarked it up on the blog yesterday, but at a core level I care about this state and the role of state government. It’s what made Blagojevich and then Quinn and now Rauner so infuriating. Blagojevich saw state government solely as a way to promote himself and to get political money. Quinn always wanted to be governor and appeared to have no idea how to run a state. And now we have Rauner who wanted the Captain’s chair to start a revolution and seems to have only recently learned that the job comes with actual responsibilities. Like daily responsibilities.
My advice.
Right now, identify five key issues or problems. Then put his administration on alert to identify five doable things to address those issues. As you solve those problems, let people know. Create the image of competent, professional management of our state. That’s what we need: someone who can identify real problems and solve them, not complain about them. We’ve got 11,999,999 people to complain. We need 1 to step up and solve. He wanted to be that 1.
Yes, workers comp is an issue. But you’re not going to solve that today. The Rauner administration can solve all kinds of real world problems without ever needing the General Assembly. Zika Virus. What’s his Public Health director doing? What information can he provide to average Illinoisans who only see media, or worse, social media reports that make it seem like the end is near. What is the state doing? Offer an expert assessment of the issue. Boom. Relevant issue. Creates headlines. Look professional.
Next …
State government – and the real world — is filled with stuff like that. Governor’s shouldn’t need to run to the General Assembly to solve every problem.
Look, you and I both know the Edgar administration wasn’t run by saints. But it gave off the impression of competent management.
I mean, this guy is a near billionaire businessman. Stop worrying about beating Madigan and start showing people that you are a great governor (unless you aren’t and can’t).
* Sorry for the delay this morning. Like many of you, I was up late last night watching the horror unfold in Dallas and had trouble getting going today. Use this as an open thread while I pull some posts together, but do your best to keep your anger to a minimum, please.
…Adding… From the governor…
“The ambush attack on Dallas police officers is outrageous. The men and women who work every day to protect everyone, including those exercising their right to free speech, deserve our respect and support. The shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota that led to last night’s protests, are deeply distressing. All of these events speak to the lack of unity and trust in many of our communities and underscores the urgency in addressing that lack of trust. Diana and I pray that the victims, their families, and our entire country find strength, healing and peace to rebuild trust among our neighbors and communities.”
