* Sounds like somebody’s fee-fees are hurt. Maybe it was today’s Daily Herald story. Whatevs. Not like he’s got much of a path to victory anyway…
When I'm elected governor, if the major news networks and media of Illinois do not poll with a high degree of confidence as being trustworthy, they will be excluded from major press conferences until they do. Stop with the agendas and just report the news. #ilpolitihub_
— Kash Jackson for Governor (@KashJackson2018) August 7, 2018
* Nice response from Hannah…
Would love to know what "poll with a high degree of confidence" means. https://t.co/XqmUrkOi8a
State Sen. Mattie Hunter (D-Chicago) pointed to the years-long feud between two old friends — Emanuel and Gov. Bruce Rauner — that has prevented the two powerful politicians from working together to benefit Chicago neighborhoods that need it most.
“The mayor has a problem with the governor. Here they are, the leaders of the largest city … and the entire state. And they cannot sit down to figure out what is it that they need to do to get it done,” Hunter said.
“So I’m asking the mayor of Chicago. I’m asking the governor and the president of the Cook County Board, will you please sit down? If I need to call you all personally, I will. We are facing a crisis here in this state, especially in this city.”
* The Question: Should there be a summit with the mayor, the governor, the county board president and perhaps the legislative leaders and others to try to find some solutions to Chicago’s violence problem? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
A West Side Democrat says Mayor Rahm Emanuel should work more closely with President Donald Trump to bring resources to Chicago to combat the gun violence epidemic — declaring that the city isn’t a “Trump-free zone.”
Appearing on Fox & Friends on Monday morning, state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, said Emanuel should work with Trump to help the communities most affected by violence. Weekend shootings left 12 dead and 59 others wounded and brought Chicago once again in the national spotlight for gun violence.
Much of the violence happened in the West Side in Ford’s 8th House District. Ford told the Sun-Times three people were shot, one fatally, just steps from his church at 7 a.m.: “That’s unbelievable,” he said.
The lawmaker took to Republican friendly airwaves to push the mayor to work with the Republican president, despite Emanuel’s longstanding legal and political battle against Trump. Emanuel’s feud against Trump in a Democratic city is considered a no-risk battle to try to rebuild the mayor’s national image and his popularity among Chicago Hispanics most threatened by Trump’s immigration policies, and by the president’s threat to cut off funding to sanctuary cities.
“It is clear that the Chicago police department is not trusted with the mass genocide that’s happening on the streets of Chicago,” Ford said. “You can’t get the cooperation with the citizens in the community to help solve the crimes. Chicago right now, has more unsolved crimes than they do solved crimes. And so what we have to do is make sure that there is some trust between the Chicago police and the community and that’s not happening.”
Ford urged law enforcement to respect the people living within the affected communities and said President Donald Trump needs to step in and help.
“You have to be fair. You have to be honest. And you have to make sure that you’re respecting the people that you patrol,” Ford continued.
Seventeen leading civil rights organizations in Illinois are urging Gov. Bruce Rauner, in a letter sent to him on Tuesday, to sign legislation that would ban employment discrimination in all workplaces.
The measure, House Bill 4572, which passed the General Assembly with bipartisan support in May and is currently on the governor’s desk, would make the Illinois Human Rights Act’s workplace non-discrimination protections apply to all businesses in the state.
The letter is signed by organizations that advocate for and work to protect the civil rights of millions of Illinoisans, including women, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Muslim-Americans, immigrants and refugees, Latinos, Jewish people, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people.
The signatories include the ACLU of Illinois, ADL, African-American Lesbian Professionals Having A Say (ALPHAS), Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Chicago, Association of Latinos/as Motivating Action (ALMA), CAIR-Chicago, Chicago National Organization for Women, Citizen Action/Illinois, Equality Illinois, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Illinois National Organization for Women, Latino Policy Forum, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Planned Parenthood of Illinois, Pride Action Tank, and Women Employed.
The organizations wrote to the governor: “At a time when anti-equality forces seek to establish licenses to discriminate and civil rights laws are under attack in state legislatures and courts across the country, signing HB 4572 would send the powerful and unmistakable message that Illinois is best and strongest when state law protects all people from discrimination. Your approval on this bill would be consistent with our state’s bipartisan values of fairness, justice, and the freedom to be who you are without burden or discrimination.”
Currently, the Illinois Human Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, national ancestry, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and gender identity, among other protected classes. However, those protections only apply to employers with 15 or more employees. That means, for thousands of workers, workplace discrimination is completely legal. This is inconsistent with Illinois values of fairness and justice.
HB 4572 would modernize the Human Rights Act and protect all workers from employment discrimination. The legislation also synchronizes the Illinois Human Rights Act with non-discrimination ordinances in Cook County and Chicago that already apply to employers with one or more employees.
The governor has until August 13 to act on HB 4572 or it becomes law without his signature or veto.
The governor has until Tuesday to act on a bill requiring a 21-star US flag to be flown in front of the Capitol until December 31st. It passed the House last spring but wasn't voted on in the Senate until May 2018.
The governor signed the bill the very next day. Why 21 stars? We were the 21st state, so that’s how the flag would’ve looked after we were admitted in 1818.
The Libertarian candidate for Illinois governor, who’s campaigned against the state’s child-support system, engaged in a shouting match with a judge about money he owes his ex-wife and access to child visitation.
The (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald reports Grayson Jackson balked at scheduling a meeting with his daughter at a neutral family visitation center. Lake County Judge Joseph Salvi questioned whether Jackson would show up as his gubernatorial campaign was taking a lot of time.
Jackson replied he was forced to run because of his treatment and wouldn’t be treated as a second-class citizen.
* The AP brief doesn’t really catch the full flavor of the original story, however…
“If I say you can see your daughter two or three times a week, will you show up?” Salvi asked, adding “this governor thing is taking up a lot of your time.” […]
A shouting match started as Salvi questioned Jackson’s statement he was “forced” to run, and Jackson reiterated the legal system is rigged against him. The argument ended when Salvi threatened to incarcerate Jackson for contempt of court.
“I handle over 650 cases in this courthouse, and I have never met someone as self-centered or egotistical as you,” Salvi said. […]
Jackson was in court because he owes $6,067 in fees to his ex-wife for child support, education and other related expenses. Salvi told Jackson in May at least $3,067 needed to be paid by Monday or Jackson would be jailed.
He told Salvi the money was paid through a third-party internet child support program. Salvi agreed to wait two weeks to see if the payment surfaces.
Jackson also asked Judge Salvi to recuse himself because his brother Al Salvi once mused on Facebook that he’d like Jackson to step aside so he could run for governor.
*** UPDATE *** I’m thinking Judge Salvi is gonna get the last word on this one…
It's not ego. It's fulfilling my oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. He's a domestic terrorist and should recuse himself.
— Kash Jackson for Governor (@KashJackson2018) August 7, 2018
* Click here for the confirmation. There was an expectation that he’d resign his ballot spot last week, shortly after he quit his House seat. That didn’t happen. But the House Republicans have been saying all along that this was a simple formality and he’d eventually file the paperwork.
“One of the things you may or may not like about my candidacy is I’m not raising money. The reason that I chose not to do that was predominantly because Bruce Rauner, who people think self-funds, actually takes tens of millions of dollars from the Koch brothers’ network,” Pritzker recently said.
“And I want you to know that when I stand up in front of you and tell you that I’m for a progressive income tax, and that I’m gonna fight for $15 and that I’m gonna make sure we legalize marijuana, that those are the things I really believe,” Pritzker said. “And there’s nobody who’s gonna call me in the middle of the night who backed me, who wrote me a check or something, who’s gonna say to me ‘You can’t do that thing you said you were gonna do because we won’t back you in the next election.’”
Democrat J.B. Pritzker’s governor campaign reported more than $120,000 in donations, ostensibly aimed at his “Blue Wave Illinois” effort to help build the state party and help its lower-ballot candidates in November.
The donations reported Wednesday include $89,200 from Robin Loewenberg Tebbe, chief marketing officer of the Magellan Development Group. She’s been a past donor to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, giving him a total of $10,700 in contributions in 2014 and 2016.
Pritzker received an additional $25,000 from Chicago attorney and consultant Sheli Rosenberg. She’s previously given nearly $44,000 to retiring Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s campaigns since 2006 and an additional $40,650 to the abortion-rights group Personal PAC since 2000, state campaign finance records show.
* So, I asked the Pritzker campaign how the candidate reconciles his statement swearing off contributions last year with his current fundraising, even if it is for his “Blue Wave Illinois” campaign. The response from Galia Slayen…
JB has been an independent leader and thinker his entire life and that won’t change when he is governor. While JB continues to fund his own campaign, he is proud to be supporting Democrats up and down the ballot with field, digital, and fundraising through Blue Wave Illinois 2018. This is a statewide, grassroots operation ready to beat Bruce Rauner, elect candidates who will fight for working families at all levels, and lay a foundation of both donors and volunteers that will help elect Democrats for years to come.
I’m thinking that’s not really an answer.
I’ve asked the Rauner campaign for a response.
*** UPDATE *** From Will Allison at the Rauner campaign…
Pritzker is fully embracing his corrupt relationship with Mike Madigan by funding Madigan’s candidates.
* We’ve seen a lot of political/campaign reaction to the mass shootings in Chicago this past weekend. But I wanted to focus on the Chicago City Council Black Caucus’ press release yesterday that had their reaction. Here’s an excerpt…
We know that the public, particularly in the neighborhoods most directly afflicted, supports strong, coordinated and collaborative efforts between the Chicago Police Department, neighborhood organizations and congregations, and social services. We need to significantly increase investment in recreational programs and opportunities for our young people to be employed. We need means of intervention and interruption and de-escalation of conflicts between groups of young people. The organizations which do gang-intervention work and help young people to walk away from violence need increased support and funding in order to do the work that can help stem the warfare.
We call upon the Mayor and our colleagues in the City Council to take immediate action to release emergency funds and make sure that the police, the violence interrupters, the social workers and the health care workers have every resource to increase the peace and stop the carnage on our streets. Let’s treat this emergency which is taking the lives of our people, with the same urgency as we would a hurricane or an earthquake.
What the city most needs to do is ramp up its closure rates on crimes and shootings for which no one has been arrested, Dowell continued.
“The criminals are emboldened. They don’t think they’ll get caught.” The answer likely includes more police detectives, Dowell said, but also requires more cooperation by community members with police.
Sawyer, who hopes to hold a caucus meeting later this week to come up with a specific plan, underlined Dowell’s point about “solving the crimes that already are on the books.”
In many cases, “People know who did these shootings. But no one wants to police what’s going on,” for reasons including distrust and fear of gang retaliation,” Sawyer said. “Investment always is important. But if you don’t solve the crime, it won’t work.”
Former Gov. Pat Quinn on Monday filed more than 86,000 signatures to place a binding referendum on the November ballot that, if approved by voters, would set term limits for the current and future Chicago mayors and add an additional challenge for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to overcome in his bid for re-election. […]
The City Council in June voted to put three nonbinding referendum questions to Chicago voters in November. Aldermen voted to put on the ballot questions asking about uses for potential legal marijuana proceeds, the possibility of creating a new homeowners property tax exemption and whether to ban plastic straws.
The Emanuel administration has said that because a state law limits the number of referendums on each ballot to three, those in the council’s batch would leave no space for Quinn’s. Quinn insists his binding referendum is unaffected by the three-question rule because it’s a constitutionally protected right of voters to limit the number of terms their mayors can serve.
That was a jerk move by the council, but I dunno about Quinn’s constitutional argument.
Quinn argued again Monday that the crowding-out strategy won’t work. Binding referendums are in a separate category and, therefore, not subject to the three-question limit, he said, contradicting the city’s Law Department.
However, petitions always are scrutinized to death by opposing campaigns, who look to eliminate signatures from those who are ineligible to vote because they’re too young, not a citizen, aren’t registered to vote in Chicago, used the wrong notary or have moved since the last election and haven’t re-registered—among other reasons. That’s why election pros almost always urge their clients to file with at least twice as many signatures as are needed. Quinn fell well short of that standard [86,481 submitted signatures compared to a 52,519 minimum requirement].
The former governor also shot down the Emanuel campaign’s argument that election season in Chicago will be underway — with mayoral candidates already gathering signatures — by the time the binding referendum is held on Nov. 6.
“That’s been addressed by the Illinois Supreme Court in Broadview, where the court held that petition passing during the course of 2016 [didn’t matter]. It was put on the ballot. Voters voted on it. The incumbent mayor challenged it, saying the season had begun and the court just threw that out. That’s never gonna work,” Quinn said.
The Broadview case, however, was about a somewhat vague term limits referendum that the village board claimed was prospective in nature. Quinn’s proposal would be retroactive. So, that’s a whole different can of worms. And it may not survive based on that.
Phil Gonet, president of the Illinois Coal Association, said the state produced 62 million tons of coal in 1990 and employed about 10,000 people in the industry. By 2014, though, he said, coal employment plummeted to about 4,500 workers statewide, while overall production budged only slightly, to 58 million tons.
“We produced about the same amount of coal as we did in 1990, with about half the people,” he says.
And in 2015, Gonet said, more than 57 percent of Illinois’ coal production came from a handful of mines that use longwall mining, a highly mechanized technique that removes large sections of coal at a time.
The increasing use of mechanization means that even if the industry were to recover, there would be fewer jobs to be had.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, 3,219 people were employed in Illinois coal mines in 2016.
(N)et generation from coal sources declined by 53 percent between 2006 and September 2016, while electricity generation from natural gas increased by 33 percent and solar by over 5,000 percent —from 508,000 MWh to just over 28,000,000 MWh. The solar growth only includes utility-scale facilities. In fact, between September 2015 and September 2016 alone, distributed solar photovoltaic generation increased 35 percent nationwide, while estimated total solar —both utility-scale and distributed generation—increased by 52 percent across the country.
These shifts in electric generation source are mirrored in the sector’s changing employment profile, as the share of natural gas, solar, and wind workers increases, while coal m ining and other related employment is declining . It is important to note, however, that the majority of U.S. electrical generation continues to come from fossil fuels (coal and natural gas) and that, under latest EIA modeling in the Annual Energy Outlook 2016, will continue to provide 53% of total U.S. electricity in 2040.
* With that in mind…
Liberal Chicago Dems like @JBPritzker are advocating for the complete eradication of coal and the power and jobs that coal provides. These radical policies will cripple many of the towns and families across #IL, including ones that I represent. #StopTheWarOnCoal#twillhttps://t.co/YxcTR3ro8d
You’d be hard-pressed to find a town more closely identified with coal mining than Marissa, Illinois.
More than a dozen coal mines operated within a 3-mile radius of the village during its first 100 years. Its annual homecoming is known as the Marissa Coal Festival. A massive miners monument stands in the park, and a “Coal Country” exhibit greets visitors at the entrance of the history museum. […]
Enter Chad Easton, Marissa’s new 37-year-old mayor. He has found himself in the unlikely position of promoting solar energy as a way to help the former coal community cope with high power costs.
Plans call for construction of two solar farms, one 5 acres and one 11 acres, on village property on the west edge of town. Officials expect them to eventually provide all the electricity for the wastewater-treatment plant and most of it for other village buildings, saving thousands of dollars a year.
“That’s a big change,” said Easton, who got interested in solar while serving as a village trustee, before he was appointed to replace retiring mayor Jerry Cross last month.
The future is not coal.
*** UPDATE *** From the Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition…
Republicans and Democrats who worked to pass the Future Energy Jobs Act recognize that the foundation of Illinois’ jobs economy lies in renewable energy. There is nothing “radical” about this rapidly growing industry, its job creation rate that outpaces Illinois’ overall jobs growth, billions of dollars in new private investment, workforce development training, and the cost savings it brings to consumers and communities throughout the state.
For years, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been staunchly opposed to allowing video gambling machines at bars and restaurants in the city, hoping instead to land approval for one big downtown casino.
But unregulated devices that look and work almost exactly like video poker machines are popping up in places all over Chicago.
Thanks to these machines — often referred to as “sweepstakes” — the city has become studded with what effectively are mini-casinos in gas stations, convenience stores and even a laundromat.
Unlike the video poker machines that the state has regulated and taxed since 2012, the other machines don’t pay state or local government. And the state does not conduct background checks of sweepstakes machine operators or the businesses that install them, as is required for video poker licenses.
A WBEZ investigation found some bars that were deemed unfit for video gambling have simply installed sweepstakes machines instead.
Go read the whole thing. It’s a very well-written investigative piece. And these machines are not confined to Chicago.
