* A buddy of mine and I are taking my camper out to the fairgrounds this afternoon, so blogging will likely be non-existent for the rest of the day. Talk amongst yourselves, but please be decent to each other and keep it focused on Illinois. If you want to argue about presidential politics there are plenty of websites out there that would love to have you. Thanks.
Also, FYI, my wrenched ankle has felt a whole lot better since lunchtime. It may not last, but at the moment I feel like I’m healing faster than expected. Two friends just warned me not to get too confident and hurt myself by trying to do too much, and I plan to comply - which is why I asked a buddy to help me move my camper.
I’m really excited to be attending the Illinois State Fair this year. You’ll recall that I missed much of the fair last year because of a health issue. No way was I gonna allow an ankle injury to keep me away this year. Also, I’ve been invited to participate in the “Celebrity Beef Showmanship” event this coming Friday. I haven’t shown a steer since my 4-H days many, many, MANY moons ago in Iroquois County, so I’m pretty stoked. Hopefully, my ankle will be all better by then.
Judge William Becker has ruled the Illinois law that keeps certain individuals off the election ballot in the state unconstitutional, and has ordered Michael DePoister back on the ballot.
DePoister, who is currently a member of the County Board, was seeking re-election as a Republican when he learned that the county’s Republican Central Committee then-chairman Steve Donaldson was supporting another person in the March primary. That led DePoister to announce plans to run for re-election as an Independent candidate. He then voted in the March primary using a Republican ballot.
State law in Illinois currently indicates that if you vote a Republican or Democrat ballot in the primary, you can’t run as an independent in the general election that year. Donaldson filed an objection to DePoister’s candidacy and the Effingham County Officers Electoral Board upheld Donaldson’s objection and ruled DePoister off the ballot. […]
Judge Becker said that provision was troubling, asking Mette, “If I’m not a Democrat or Republican, why is this a compelling interest for me? Why can’t I run after the primary? (Under this law) I can’t even run against the people I don’t like.”
In making his ruling, Judge Becker said, “It’s personally offensive to me that if I take a certain ballot, I can’t run…I think the statute is unconstitutional.”
It’s not just independents. People who take Republican ballots in the spring can’t run in the general election as a Democrat. We’ve seen a handful of appellate cases with diametrically opposed rulings on this topic, which is why they passed a new law.
A person (i) who filed a statement of candidacy for a partisan office as a qualified primary voter of an established political party or (ii) who voted the ballot of an established political party at a general primary election may not file a statement of candidacy as a candidate of a different established political party or as an independent candidate for a partisan office to be filled at the general election immediately following the general primary for which the person filed the statement or voted the ballot. A person may file a statement of candidacy for a partisan office as a qualified primary voter of an established political party regardless of any prior filing of candidacy for a partisan office or voting the ballot of an established political party at any prior election.
Leaders from three West Side gang factions allegedly met last week to discuss plans to shoot members of the Chicago Police Department in response to the fatal police shooting of Paul O’Neal.
The meeting took place Thursday between higher-ups from the Vice Lords, Black Disciples and Four Corner Hustlers, according to an alert issued to department members the day after the meeting.
The Four Corner Hustlers “provided guns” and have “a sniper in place” though authorities do not know where, according to the alert. The Four Corner Hustlers also are supplying the other two gangs with automatic weapons, which all three factions also have agreed to use against police, the alert states. […]
According to police sources, department members have also been advised to “limit interactions and visibility.”
And then the FOP president blamed the O’Neal family lawyer and the Independent Police Review Authority for the problem. Always helpful, that guy.
* Mayor Emanuel’s response…
There are 12,500 men and women who wake up every day, put on a uniform, hug their families, and leave their houses to spend their day protecting our families and our neighborhoods. Our city asks officers to step into harm’s way to protect us and our communities. We need to support them, work with them, and never forget their dedication to doing an incredibly dangerous job and doing it well. We can have a reasonable conversation about the need for police accountability reform, but the idea that a bunch of gang members would threaten violence against the men and women every Chicagoan relies on for their own safety is absolutely unacceptable.
* Speaking of the O’Neal police shooting case, 2nd City Cop, which has always been a vigorous defender of the police, took a look at the issue. They don’t think that charges will be filed against the cops, but there are some departmental policies that appear to have been violated…
First is the prohibition on chasing hot cars:
General Order 03-03-01
Section III - Prohibitions
Subsection C: The continuation of a motor vehicle pursuit is prohibited whenever
Item 2a: the most serious offense for which the pursued vehicle is wanted is […] a theft
And if you go to the Glossary, the definition of a Theft is as follows:
Theft - Any violation of any subsection of 625 ILCS 5/4, including Possession of a Stolen Motor Vehicle, or 720 ILCS 5/16.
We haven’t heard the complete audio tape, so we have no idea if the chase was terminated at any point, but the moment that it was determined the car was stolen, without some sort of extenuating circumstance, termination is a given, including self-termination by the officers. That item has been in effect for many years now.
However, there is a bigger order in play here. The Department’s Use of Force is deliberately written as a “preservation of life” policy and has been taught for years as being “more restrictive than state law.” The Department is going to hang one or both officers on the following violation:
General Order 03-02-02 - Deadly Force
Section III - Department Prohibitions for Use of Deadly Force
Use of firearms in the following way is prohibited:
(E) Firing at or into a moving vehicle when the vehicle is the only force being used against the sworn member or another person.
Public pension plans are reporting dismal investment returns this year, a development that will likely mean governments will have to pony up more money in the coming years.
So far, no major pension plan has reported a preliminary annual investment return of more than 1.5 percent. That’s thanks to a volatile stock market that’s seen wild swings spurred mainly by political and economic events abroad. Some smaller plans, such as the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, have reported earnings as high as 2.6 percent. Still for many, this year marked their worst earnings year since the Great Recession.
The slim earnings for fiscal 2016, which ended June 30 for most plans, is well below the average earnings target of about 7.5 percent. It also marks the second year in a row that plans have missed the assumed rate of return: Most reported an investment gain between 2 percent and 4 percent in fiscal 2015.
Plans rely heavily on investment earnings — roughly 80 cents on every dollar paid out to retirees is from investments. When plans don’t meet their earnings target in any given year, it negatively impacts their assets because annual payments from current employees and governments aren’t enough to cover the annual payouts to retirees.
Illinois’s largest public pension agrees with Bill Gross’s admonishment that it’s time to face up to the reality of lower returns and reduce assumptions about what funds can make off stocks and bonds.
Fund managers that have been counting on returns of 7 percent to 8 percent may need to adjust that to around 4 percent, Gross, who runs the $1.5 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, said during an Aug. 5 interview on Bloomberg TV. Public pensions, including the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest in the U.S., are reporting gains of less than 1 percent for the fiscal year ended June 30.
Illinois’s largest state pension, the $43.8 billion Teachers’ Retirement System, plans to take another look at how much it assumes it will make in the coming year as part of an asset allocation study, said Richard Ingram, executive director. Currently it assumes 7.5 percent, lowered from 8 percent in June 2014. Plans for the study were in place before Gross made his remarks.
“Anybody that doesn’t consider revisiting what their assumed rate of return is would be ignoring reality,” Ingram, whose pension is 41.5 percent funded, said in a phone interview. The fund has yet to report its June 30 return.
* If you’ve been following our live coverage post, you know that Judge Zagel just refused to reduce former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year prison sentence.
* The Question: Do you agree or disagree with Judge Zagel’s sentencing of Rod Blagojevich? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* The Tribune’s Rick Pearson went to the NCSL redistricting panel featuring House Speaker Madigan’s chief of staff Tim Mapes and a legislator from Iowa…
Mapes noted that Iowa’s homogeneous population doesn’t force it to come up with districts to support federal minority voting rights like Illinois and is able to have a much more streamlined process for making districts compact. […]
“Legislators like to be involved in this state on how they frame their districts. Whether they like all of it is another thing. But they like to be involved, and it’s still a big part of what we do,” Mapes said. […]
Mapes said those pushing the proposals “sort of claim to be nonpartisan.”
“But in my experience (being) around this business for a while, almost everybody’s got an agenda at some point. It may not be your agenda, but it will be an agenda,” Mapes said.
“So those (remap) initiatives have not done well as far as getting through the court system. And one currently in Illinois is before the Illinois Supreme Court, and I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is they’re going to rule pretty soon on that as well,” he said.
Students in Illinois driver’s education classes will soon be required to learn something new before they can get behind the wheel. A new law requires instruction time on how to handle being stopped by the police.
Governor Bruce Rauner signed the bill into law on Friday. The change is aimed at preventing teens from panicking when being pulled over, and also from doing anything that may seem like a red flag to police. […]
“It’s important for individuals to know what conduct they should demonstrate when they’re stopped by a law enforcement officer,” Jesse White, Secretary of State, said.
Retired Chicago police officer Eddie Chapman has made it his mission to educate new drivers. Ten years ago, he wrote a poster book called “Drive Safe, Stop Safe,” which explains what to do during a traffic stop. The book is used in Chicago Public Schools.
Chapman said it’s important to stay calm, keep your hands on the wheel and cooperate with the officer.
Former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says a voter referendum aimed at imposing term limits on Chicago’s mayor and creating a consumer advocacy position won’t make the November ballot.
Quinn told The Associated Press he’s short of the roughly 53,000 signatures required by a Monday deadline. The Democrat says his goal is to get 100,000 and he’s got roughly 20,000.
He launched the petition drive in June, but wouldn’t say which election. He tells AP he’s aiming for 2018’s primary, when Illinois next elects a governor. Quinn hasn’t definitively ruled out another gubernatorial run.
* But, the AP didn’t tell the full story. I got to thinking about it last night and looked it up and realized that Quinn got a raw deal yesterday.
The binding referendums could be on ballots as early as November or in the 2018 cycle, meaning there’s potential to make Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ineligible to seek a third term in 2019. [Emphasis added.]
If he gets enough signatures, the two referendums could be on ballots as early as November. However, Quinn says getting nearly 53,000 valid signatures before an Aug. 8 deadline would be challenging.
* And this is from Quinn’s press release at the time…
Quinn said Take Charge Chicago needs to collect about 100,000 petition signatures to safely qualify the two referendums for the ballot and the goal is to collect signatures “from every city neighborhood for as long as it takes.”
In other words, he never promised to meet yesterday’s deadline.
*** UPDATE *** From Billy Morgan…
Hello Rich,
Thanks for your comment this morning about our petition drive, Take Charge Chicago.
The petition was specifically written to allow for signatures to be valid up to the deadline on December 18, 2017.
The question will be on the ballot March 20, 2018, well ahead of the 2019 municipal elections.
All of the signatures already collected remain valid.
Our goal has always been 100,000 signatures — not August 8th.
The people of Chicago have shown overwhelming support for our petition, which allows for everyday people to make the rules for City Hall, not the other way around.
We continue to travel the city collecting signatures and we receive petitions in the mail daily from citizens that have downloaded the petition online.
For the record, here is the heading of the Take Charge Chicago petition:
We, the undersigned, qualified electors and registered voters residing within the City of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, who have affixed our signatures in our own proper person to this Petition, do hereby petition, pursuant to Sections 6 (f) and 11 of Article VII of the Illinois Constitution and Article 28 of the Illinois Election Code, that the following two questions of public policy be placed on the ballot and submitted to the voters of the City of Chicago for their approval or disapproval, by referendum, at the next regular election to be held at least 92 days after the filing of this petition and if approved, each question shall take effect immediately upon referendum approval of that question. (Emphasis added.)
Tuesday, Aug 9, 2016 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
A bipartisan group of State Senators asked the Supreme Court to uphold the Independent Map Amendment:
“The court should uphold the democratic rights of Illinoisans and allow a vote this November on whether a new redistricting system should become part of our state Constitution.”
[Chicago Tribune, 8/2/2016]
Editorial boards weighed in:
“If district lines are drawn so that representatives actually have to serve a constituency rather than a carefully selected clientele, government should become more responsive.”
[The Southern Illinoisan, 8/1/2016]
“Redistricting reform is also, we believe, entirely constitutional… It relies, not on a self-interested interpretation of that 1970 document by those trying to hold onto power, but where it should and must rest: On the intent of delegates who wrote a citizens initiative provision designed to ensure that the power to elect our legislature lies, not with those legislators, but the people.”
[The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus, 8/1/2016]
“We urge justices to put aside their political leanings, carefully study the merits of Independent Map Amendment, and give it their approval. We urge justices to overturn Judge Larsen’s ruling… which hangs upon technicalities that common sense would find unconvincing.”
[Sauk Valley Media, 7/28/2016]
* Nicole van Rensburg owns a suburban medical marijuana dispensary and wrote this for Crain’s about the current state law…
The current application is cumbersome, onerous and time-consuming. It requires submission of proof of residency, consent to a background check via a Livescan fingerprinting vendor and completion of several forms related to medical history, age, identity and more. The fingerprinting requirement is particularly difficult for patients suffering from serious medical conditions, and it appears to be unnecessary—no other state requires fingerprinting.
Once the application has been submitted—and this assumes that all portions of it have been correctly completed—it takes 30 to 45 days on average for the state to issue a patient’s card. If people can get an opioid prescription filled in a day, then why should they have to wait so long to get a medical cannabis card? While these delays may be the result of larger budgetary and human resource issues facing the state, it is our hope that some of the laws and rules that make the process so difficult can be changed.
Second, Illinois should consider adding medical conditions that affect large numbers of people. Chronic or severe pain afflicts over 100 million Americans, with total costs reaching as much as $635 billion per year—that includes health care costs and estimated loss of productivity—and is the most common qualifying condition for medical cannabis in other states. It has been reported that nearly two-thirds of registered cardholders in eight other states treat their chronic or severe pain with medical cannabis. Chronic or severe pain is currently not a qualifying condition in Illinois.
According to a study published in the June issue of the Journal of Pain, “Expanding evidence indicates that herbal cannabis has analgesic effects in neuropathic and nonneuropathic pain….There are at least five high-quality randomized controlled clinical trials establishing analgesic efficacy of smoked cannabis.” Many chronic pain sufferers are turning to cannabis as an alternative treatment and a means to reduce their use of pharmaceutical painkillers. They find that a cannabis regiment is equally as effective as pharmaceuticals but with far fewer side effects.
* The process is indeed cumbersome, and it’s expensive for patients. From a patient advocate…
Each applicant has to do a digital fingerprint scan service ($60+) to PROVE that they are not a drug felon (or other violent crime convict), active in law enforcement, or have a Commercial Driver’s License.
I contacted the lawyer that won the case against the state (for illegally blocking the addition of qualifying conditions to the medical cannabis program). He agrees that it is unconstitutional to block anyone from medicine based on their profession or criminal history. He believes that with a plaintiff, he can win the case AND additionally have the fingerprinting requirement for all applicants removed as that is also a violation of privacy and civil rights. […]
The whole state just decriminalized under 10 grams. The federal government is negotiating the transition of cannabis off of Schedule I designation. How much longer is cannabis going to be illegal? Why the draconian application process/bureaucratic institution for access to a non-toxic plant? Let’s move in the logical direction instead of letting this department sink it’s money-thirsty fangs into the sick patients of Illinois.
Did you know that when the new changes to the medical cannabis program were implemented on 8/1, the fee jumped from $100 to $300? Yeah, like getting into this program isn’t enough of a challenge. We knew that the cards would expire in 3 years, but no one NO ONE heard a word about charging $300 in advance for a 3 year card!! — They aren’t processing an application every year, so why charge the same $100 fee for every year? — totally insane… trust me, I know too much about how this department is using deficiency letters to discourage patients from pursuing their medical cannabis card.
* She then followed up on the “deficiency letters”…
1) Making a patient that has endured cancer treatment be re-fingerprinted to get access to a non-toxic plant.
2) Patients get a deficiency letter 4-6 weeks after they apply. Then, if they comply and provide anything they ask, it takes 14-30 days more to get the card!!
3) Those that don’t comply in the 45 day time frame lose their application fee.
4) Requiring an entire year of records from the VA to prove “ongoing care” is not in the law and is a violation of privacy.
5) Requiring the veteran’s DD214 to include character of service is not a part of the law but was added to the recently released application forms (8/1/16).
I’ve worked for 10 weeks with an agency that assists patients with the application process. I can’t un-see what I have witnessed. Just this week, a patient got the deficiency letter: Caregiver’s Fingerprint Consent Form is blurry. I went right to my file and resubmitted this document which is perfectly clear and sent it “actual size” — not compressed. This patient and many many more get these letters even though their application is PERFECT! The patient will be confused, frustrated and discouraged by the letter of deficiency. They abandon their application and the state keeps the application fees.
When this agency assists the patient, we immediately respond to the letter of deficiency. We see how regularly these deficiency notices are inaccurate. Because we push back on these situations, I’m pretty sure they hate us.
The law was made overly strict so liberal legislators could pass it with conservative support. I was OK with that at the time because I wanted to see it signed into law, but it’s way past the point that we move forward without all the “This Is Illinois” nonsense bureaucracy.
Today, the Democratic Party of Illinois is launching a new tumblr to highlight Republican Mark Kirk’s Trump-like habit of making offensive, embarrassing comments and the backlash Kirk’s gaffes have received. The title, “$#*% My Senator Says,” is a play on [S**t] My Dad Says, a New York Times bestseller.
“Republican Mark Kirk’s Trump-like tendency to make offensive comments isn’t just embarrassing — his frequent gaffes belittle the office he holds. They are a good reminder of why it’s hard to take anything he says seriously,” said Democratic Party of Illinois spokesperson Sean Savett.
Head-turning Kirk quotes featured on the Tumblr include:
And then it goes on for 45 minutes with the 27, 8×10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one as evidence against him.
More troubling in recent weeks, to our thinking, have been a couple of scurrilous accusations by Democratic Senate candidate Tammy Duckworth against her Republican opponent, incumbent Sen. Mark Kirk. If we ever thought Duckworth might be above cheap shots, we know better now.
Duckworth loaded the two false accusations into a single tweet on June 8: “Kirk, who called for the mass arrest of 18,000 African Americans, was apparently fine w/ Trump’s #StillTooRacist call for mass deportation.”
Did Kirk in fact call for the arrest of 18,000 African-Americans? No.
Is it true Kirk has no objection to Trump’s call for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants? Also not true.
At that time, it was just a single tweet, so I didn’t get too fired up about the whole thing. Yes, it was underhanded, but it was only one tweet.
He has said that um, you know, he thought that, um, all the members of the uh, uh, uh you know 15 thousand plus of African-American men should be jailed because they’re suspected of being members of a gang, without due process.
* A state legislator saw yesterday’s post of Rep. Bob Martwick’s rant about Comptroller Leslie Munger holding up state lawmaker pay checks until there’s a formal state budget passed and weighed in via text message…
What’s next? Reinstate the death penalty and we’ll pay you? Or how about that abortion bill? Vote on that and you’ll get paid.
Yes, Munger’s move is undoubtedly popular, but that lawmaker does make a decent point. A precedent has clearly been set here. What if a Democratic comptroller decided to hold up paychecks until a gun control bill was passed, or until home care providers got a raise, or… ?
…Adding… A text message from a top Republican official….
I don’t know why these Democrats think publicly complaining about how they can’t get paid helps their cause with the voters - it only makes people like Leslie more and like them less. On the substance of their arguments, there is no slippery slope because no conditions have been set, no blackmail is going on, no tying of pay to specific votes or issues — she is the comptroller and we have a cash flow crisis with billions of dollars in unpaid bills. And as Democrats argued powerfully on the floor when urging passage of their unbalanced budget, all she needs to do to make an unbalanced budget work is choose not to pay certain bills. Well, you get what you ask for. That’s what makes this situation so unique and perfect — legally and politically.
* The Chicago media is all over Patti Blagojevich’s letter to the federal judge who is expected to decide today how much more prison time that former Gov. Blagojevich will serve. But this previously undisclosed letter on RRB’s behalf caught my eye…
Another unnamed inmate, whom Rod Blagojevich met at the Federal Prison Camp in Englewood, Colorado, said he has “no entitlement issues, does not display any narcissistic behavior, and is not self-centered.”
So, in my opinion, either Rod has had a complete personality transplant, or (donning my special tinfoil hat) he wrote that letter himself. I mean, for crying out loud, he had oodles of self-centered, narcissistic entitlement issues when we knew him. Could he really have changed that much behind bars or is this just a cynical ploy to address longstanding criticisms of his behavior?
I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
* The hearing starts at 10:30 this morning, so we’ll have a ScribbleLive feed up by about 10, when Mrs. Blagojevich is expected to arrive.
