* From the US Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election…
DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying. Based on the Committee’s review of the ICA, the Committee concurs with this assessment. The Committee found that Russian-affiliated cyber actors gained access to election infrastructure systems across two states, including successful extraction of voter data. However, none of these systems were involved in vote tallying.
Russian Access to Election Infrastructure: Illinois
In June 2016, Illinois experienced the first known breach by Russian actors of state election infrastructure during the 2016 election. As of the end of2018, the Russian cyber actors had successfully penetrated Illinois’s voter registration database, viewed multiple database tables, and accessed up to 200,000 voter registration records. The compromise resulted in the exfiltration of an unknown quantity of voter registration data.
Russian cyber actors were in a position to delete or change voter data, but the Committee is not aware of any evidence that they did so.
[Redacted] DHS assesses with high confidence that the penetration was carried out by Russian actors.
The compromised voter registration database held records relating to 14 million registered voters, [redacted]. The records exfiltrated included information on each voter’s name, address, partial social security number, date of birth, and either a driver’s license number or state identification number.
[Redacted] DHS staff further recounted to the Committee that “Russia would have had the ability to potentially manipulate some ofthat data, but we didn’t see that.”
Further, DHS staff noted that “the level of access that they gained, they almost certainly could have done more. Why they didn’t… is sort of an open-ended question. I think it fits under the larger umbrella of undermining confidence in the election by tipping their hand that they had this level of access or showing that they were capable of getting it.”
• According to a Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) product, Illinois officials “disclosed that the database has been targeted frequently by hackers, but this was the first instance known to state officials of success in accessing it.”
In June 2017, the Executive Director of the Illinois State Board of Elections(SEE), Steve Sandvoss, testified before the Committee about Illinois’s experience in the 2016 elections.
He laid out the following timeline:
• On June 23, 2016, a foreign actor successfully penetrated Illinois’s databases through an SQL attack on the online voter registration website. “Because of the initial low-volume nature of the attack, the State Board of Election staff did not become aware of it at first.”
• Three weeks later, on July 12, 2016, the IT staff discovered spikes in data flow across the voter registration database server. “Analysis of the server logs revealed that the heavy load was a result of rapidly repeated database queries on the application status page of our paperless online voter application website.”
• On July 13, 2016, IT staff took the website and database offline, but continued to see activity from the malicious IP address.
• “Firewall monitoring indicated that the attackers were hitting SEE IP addresses five times per second, 24 hours a day. These attacks continued until August 12 [2016], when they abruptly ceased.”
• On July 19, 2016, the election staff notified the Illinois General Assembly and the
Attorney General’s office.
• Approximately a week later, the FBI contacted Illinois.
• On July 28, 2016, both the registration system and the online voter registration became fully functional again.
Hindsight is 20/20, but you think maybe they shoulda called the FBI when they realized what was happening?
…Adding… OK, my memory is faulty. Most of the timeline was released a while ago.
* Hacking isn’t limited to election data, however…
A computer server of a vendor with city and state contracts to sell Illinois license plate stickers and Chicago vehicle stickers at currency exchanges was exposed to the Internet in May — although city and state officials insist there was no security breach.
But that’s not enough for one Cook County watchdog, who says officials need to conduct a thorough investigation to determine what exactly was exposed and how the mishap occurred before they can give the all clear sign.
“It sounds like they’re making a guarantee, which always worries me,” Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard said.
Despite provisions in Electronic License Service LLC’s contracts with both the Illinois secretary of state and the Chicago city clerk’s office that outline the steps to take after a potential security breach — including a secretary of state guideline to hire a “forensics expert” to conduct an investigation — both offices say there’s nothing to worry about.
* Afternoon email from the National Republican Congressional Committee…
Hey there –
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is facing serious backlash after she was caught on a hot mic calling a Chicago police official a “clown.”
When asked to apologize for her comment, Lightfoot begrudgingly responded, “I’m sorry that I said it out loud.” Really?
Illinois socialists Cheri “Beltway” Bustos, Sean Casten and Fake Nurse Lauren Underwood have yet to comment on Lightfoot’s despicable remarks, which begs the question:
Will Bustos, Casten and Underwood condemn Lightfoot’s comment? Or will they stand with Chicago’s Mayor in disrespecting a 30-year veteran police officer in one of America’s most violent cities?
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is portrayed as wearing clown makeup. Democratic congressional candidates — including an Air Force combat veteran — are labeled “socialist losers” or anti-Semites. Others have been singled out as Lyin’ Lucy McBath, Fake Nurse Lauren Underwood, Little Max Rose and China Dan McCready.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, with the blessing of House Republican leaders, has adopted a no-holds-barred strategy to win back the House majority next year, borrowing heavily from President Trump’s playbook in deploying such taunts and name-calling. After losing 40 seats and the House majority in November, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the committee’s new chairman, and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, decided that their messaging needed to be ruthless. […]
Ms. Underwood, Democrat of Illinois, is “Fake Nurse Lauren.” (Ms. Underwood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Michigan and worked as a research nurse, never worked specifically with patients.) Representative Collin C. Peterson, Democrat of Minnesota, is “Cranky Collin.”
* NRCC follow-up…
Greetings -
The New York Times recently confirmed that Fake Nurse Lauren Underwood “never worked specifically with patients.” Yet, in an interview weeks before the 2018 election, she lied directly to the camera, saying “I, as a nurse, have looked into my patients’ eyes.”
Yikes.
NRCC Comment: “Lauren Underwood is a fake nurse.” -NRCC Spokeswoman Carly Atchison
* Another classic…
Hi!
Sexist Sean Casten doesn’t think women belong in rooms where impactful decisions are being made. He also believes the best protectors of women’s rights are… men. Specifically himself.
In a fundraising email, Sexist Sean warns Illinoisans that if his challenger - Evelyn Sanguinetti - wins, a Latina woman will be in “those rooms where decisions are made that will impact our nation,” (terrible!) and goes on to presume she wouldn’t protect women’s rights.
NRCC Comment: “Sean Casten is a sexist misogynist who doesn’t think women, especially Latina women, belong in rooms where big decisions are being made. Blatantly fundraising off his misogyny is a new tactic for sexist Sean and we look forward to seeing how it works out in 2020.” -NRCC Spokeswoman Carly Atchison
They’re entertaining to read, but are news organizations actually publishing them? I checked some of their quotes on Google and it doesn’t look like it. So, they’re apparently just shouting into an abyss for now. Maybe outlets will start picking them up as the election nears.
Extending a trend that’s been developing for several months, the Illinois Department of Employment Security today reported that the state has gained nearly 100,000 nonfarm jobs in the past 12 months. That’s the biggest pop since July 2015, when a year-to-year increase of 105,300 was recorded. Figures shortly before that were much smaller and have dropped off since until now. […]
The specific figures come from household surveys conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and IDES. They show that, between June 2018 and this June, total non-farm employment in the state increased 94,700, to 6.266 million, a rise of about 1.5 percent. […]
The recovery appears to be fairly broad-based, with educational and health services, leisure/hospitality and professional/business services all showing healthy gains.
As a result, the unemployment rate continued to drop, off .3 percent to 4.1 percent in the Chicago area and down .7 percent to 4 percent statewide.
The national unemployment rate was 3.7 percent in June.
Across the country, the escalating costs of medical school have driven young doctors away from lower-paying specialties, such as pediatrics and psychiatry, as well as jobs in rural or less wealthy areas.
The lack of primary care physicians is particularly acute in California, which has a growing aging population and the country’s largest Medicaid population — and one of the lowest state reimbursement rates for doctors in the country. California is projected to have a shortfall of 4,700 primary care clinicians by 2025, according to a 2017 report by the University of California, San Francisco.
The new program aims to change that using revenue from Proposition 56, which imposed a tax on tobacco products, to help physicians pay back their loans. It will disburse a total of $340 million. To qualify, the physicians, who receive up to $300,000 each in debt relief, must agree to spend a third of their time with Medi-Cal patients over the next five years. As part of the first round of funding, announced this month, 247 physicians will receive $58.6 million and 40 dentists will receive $10.5 million in debt relief.
Nearly 1,300 providers applied for the awards, according to the Department of Health Care Services. The program’s administrators said they assessed candidates based on personal statements, work history and specialization, among other factors. Applications for the next round of awards will be accepted in January.
Since the state was flooded with applications, maybe they should increase the mandatory five-year service period to ten.
Illinois also has an aging population, very low Medicaid reimbursement rates and shortages of physicians in certain specialties.
* The Question: Should Illinois institute a similar program? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please…
The capital bill sets aside $80 million to assist mental health facilities all over the state, according to a recent announcement by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. […]
With diminishing financial support, state psychiatric hospitals and community facilities were forced to close their doors. Chicago used to have 20 community facilities, but is currently down to five.
“We used to have 33,000 state psychiatric hospital beds,” [Mark J. Heyrman, facilitator with the Mental Health Summit and Mental Health America of Illinois] said. “Now, we have fewer than 1,200.” […]
“There are areas of the city [and] there are areas of the state where it’s a long drive to get to a community health provider,” he said. […]
While it is unknown where the $80 million will be directed, Heyrman stated 2019 has been good for mental health services in Illinois due to more money from the Medicaid budget, which will be used to build more physical spaces for provisional services.
“This is the best year we had,” he said. “I can’t remember how long it’s been.”
A new Illinois law aims to ensure that parents of justice-involved youth who need costly mental health services don’t have to trade custody for treatment for their child. […]
In the past, [Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert] said, if a child or teen got arrested and it was found what they really needed was mental health treatment, “the delinquency judge would have to adjudicate the child a ward of DCFS and then that could be paid for, otherwise the parents would have to pay out of pocket.”
That meant if parents couldn’t afford the roughly $100,000 a year for residential treatment, they had to choose: keep custody but forgo mental health services and risk the child entering juvenile detention, or give up custody to the Department of Children and Family Services and get them into treatment. […]
Families facing these circumstances in the future could be spared from having to trade custody for treatment, with one caveat: the family must have a state grant known as the “Family Support Program” to pay for the services, or have an application pending with the Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
An AFSCME spokesman said that local union leaders who work at McFarland Mental Health Center and representatives from the Illinois Department of Human Services central office had a “substantive meeting” Wednesday morning.
The meeting laid out “concrete steps to address our concerns and make McFarland safer for employees and patients alike,” said Anders Lindall, the public affairs director for AFSCME Council 31. […]
The workplace safety issue seemingly came to a head early last week when a patient choked an employee until she lost consciousness. […]
An earlier news release indicated that employees accused facility management of routinely dismissing violence against staff as “part of the job.” They also said management ignored calls to increase hiring, improve training, provide needed equipment or make other changes to improve safety. […]
Lindall credited DHS representatives for being “responsive to the situation.”
* Related…
* Illinois To Create Online Database Of Mental Health Resources For Students, Parents And School Staff: “But what makes this interesting, and something that we’re supportive of, is the fact that we can be sharing resources with other districts and see other what resources other districts are using to potentially get new ideas or new interventions or new supports,” [Matt Liberatore, president of the Illinois School Counselors Association] said.
* Rep. Chris Miller (R-Oakland) just called me to announce that the “Restore Illinois PAC and the Eastern Bloc” have booked Confederate Railroad for yet another concert.
After Gov. Pritzker’s administration canceled the band’s Du Quoin State Fair performance, a local Harley Davidson dealership booked it to play on September 5th.
Rep. Miller (no relation) said the band will play at the Effingham Performance Center on August 27th, the same day they were supposed to perform at the fair.
“Our theme is ‘JB may give you 21 new tax hikes, but we’re going to give you Confederate Railroad in concert tonight,’” Miller said.
The Eastern Bloc is probably best known for supporting a resolution calling for Chicago to be kicked out of Illinois.
The Restore Illinois PAC is run by Reps. Miller, Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) and Blaine Wilhour (R-Beecher City). It had just $12.65 in its bank account at the end of June, but Miller and Bailey are well-off (and have received lots of federal farm subsidies), so they can probably recharge that account pretty quick.
The Southern country-rock group Confederate Railroad lost a second summer fair gig after objections over the use of the Confederate flag in its logo.
The band’s Aug. 1 date at the Ulster County Fair in New York’s Hudson Valley has been canceled, a spokesman for Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan said Thursday. Illinois this month canceled a state fair appearance by the band, whose logo features a steam locomotive flying Confederate flags.
“The Ulster County Fair must be an event that everyone can enjoy while representing the values of all members of our community,” Ryan said in a prepared statement. “Any showcasing of a symbol of division and racism runs counter to that principle and will be vigorously opposed by my administration.”
Madigan announced Friday that his political organization had retained an “independent counsel” in Kelly Smith-Haley, of Fox Swibel Levin & Carroll, LLP.
Smith-Haley “will provide independent review of allegations, conduct investigations, and provide recommendations for updating policies and procedures, including clear rules for conduct and penalties for violations,” Madigan wrote in a letter to Democratic lawmakers. […]
Smith-Haley’s two brothers, Mike Smith and Bill Smith, both work at Cornerstone Government Affairs - a public relations and lobbying firm that hired another top Madigan aide, Will Cousineau, eight months ago. […]
Smith-Haley confirmed Tuesday that her brothers work with Cousineau, though she said she has “no ties to Cornerstone” and has met Cousineau “briefly” but “never spoken with him in a one-on-one setting.”
“This is exactly what I do for all my clients,” the employment attorney said, adding, “I would not have taken the assignment if I was not going to be independent.”
Madigan’s longtime attorney Mike Kasper asked Smith-Haley, with assistance from others at her firm, to serve in that role after two high-ranking operatives in the speaker’s inner circle were dismissed over misconduct allegations within a week.
Smith-Haley said she and Kasper know each other because their daughters attend school together, but she has never done any work for him before.
“Our firm has been brought on to help the client look at previous investigations to see if it was handled in accordance with their policies and if not what needs to change,” Smith-Haley said in an exclusive interview Wednesday - conducted just after Kasper and Smith-Haley met. […]
J.B. Pritzker, who has received much of the party’s official backing, has also for the first time shared criticism of Madigan’s handling of the situation, saying, “The people investigating Speaker Madigan’s operation should have no political or other ties to the speaker.”
* The Sun-Times puts all that into context for this week’s news…
A lawyer hired by Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan last year to investigate allegations of sexual harassment within his political organization — including those leveled against longtime political aide Kevin Quinn — is the sister of two lobbyists who reportedly paid Quinn $2,000 earlier this year.
Kelly Smith-Haley was retained by Madigan in February 2018 to “receive and investigate harassment allegations” regarding the speaker’s political staff, according to a Feb. 16, 2018 letter Madigan sent to the House Democratic caucus and to staffers. […]
Smith-Haley’s brothers, Mike Smith and Bill Smith, both work at Cornerstone Government Affairs, a public relations and lobbying firm. Bill Smith is a senior consultant, and Mike Smith is a principal and director at the Washington-based firm, which also operates in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune on Wednesday reported Quinn received two checks for $1,000 each from Cornerstone Government Affairs in January, four months before his home was raided by federal agents. It’s not clear what authorities were seeking in the raid.
Among Cornerstone’s clients is ComEd, which has acknowledged being served with a federal grand jury subpoena seeking lobbyist records. The utility’s large stable of lobbyists include many with close ties to Madigan.
It’s like living in a small town. Everybody knows everybody.
It’s a small town, son
And we all support the team
*** UPDATE 1 *** ILGOP…
“It’s hard to believe that Speaker Madigan had no knowledge of $10,000 worth of payments from his close allies to his disgraced former employee, Kevin Quinn after Madigan had dismissed Quinn for sexual harassment. Yes or no, did Speaker Madigan have any knowledge of these payments? Why were his close allies paying Quinn after his dismissal?” - Illinois Republican Party Spokesman Joe Hackler
*** UPDATE 2 *** NRCC…
In case you missed it, the Chicago Tribune is detailing the shady financial dealings of four ComEd lobbyists who are under federal investigation for providing payments to an ousted Illinois political operative.
What else do these corrupt lobbyists have in common? They’ve all donatedthousands to Socialist Loser* Betsy Dirksen Londrigan’s congressional campaign! Betsy even appears to be close friends with one of the men under investigation.
Betsy is the first to decry corporate PAC money (even though she’s accepted hundreds of thousands from the DCCC), but will happily take money from corrupt Chicago lobbyists? Yikes!
NRCC Comment: “Socialist Loser* Betsy Dirksen Londrigan is a hypocrite and she can’t have it both ways. Betsy should return every penny from the DCCC and corrupt Chicago lobbyists, or come clean to voters about who is really funding her socialist campaign.” – NRCC Spokeswoman Carly Atchison
*(U.S. House Election Results 2018, The New York Times, January 28, 2019).
*** UPDATE 3 *** Ouch…
To the Democratic Women’s Caucus:
I have now been waiting for a year & a half for you to support me publicly, or even address me by name in a statement. Where are you? What is your stance? We all want to know.
Hey Rich. FYI some high comedy on the Boycott DuQuoin Facebook page amidst all the racism and off-topic posts. Apparently Black Diamond Harley who is hosting the band instead of the fair has altered the band logo without their permission to replace the rebel flags with American flags, and the Facebook group is going ballistic. My favorites are the amateur lawyers spouting legal theories for the band to sue on when the poster can barely spell.
I don’t know if anyone else noticed but I did. Black Diamond took it upon themselves to alter the Confederate Railroad image by removing the Confederate flags & adding the American flag. Dont get me wrong I love Old Glory. But wasn’t this supposed to be a form of protest against the liberal censorship of this band. Black Diamond scheduled a concert for them & we are boycotting the fair because of the censorship but now BD has jumped on the PC bandwagon & CENSORED the band’s album cover……WOW!!! The Band could of done that themselves & still be playing at the fair…..THE MESSAGE GOT LOST SOMEWHERE!!! Oh well they have a sold out show, guess the message doesn’t matter….. UGH!!!
(N)nearly a month after signing the massive gambling package into law, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has yet to name a chairperson and fifth member to the gaming board, which soon will be responsible for scrutinizing a host of gambling interests licking their chops at a slew of new licenses.
What’s the hold-up on Pritzker’s appointments? The process of “working to identify qualified candidates,” the freshman Democrat’s office says.
And insiders say the job is a tough sell.
That’s the best bet for what’s behind the delay, according to two men who previously led the board currently tasked with licensing, taxing and regulating 10 casinos and the 32,000-plus video gambling machines sprinkled across nearly 7,000 establishments statewide. […]
”It’s not an attractive job. Not at all, especially for the chairman,” says retired Cook County Judge Aaron Jaffe, who led the board for 10 years starting in 2005. […]
[Former chairman Don Tracy] estimates he spent up to 400 hours per year on gaming board business on top of his private practice, making several trips a month from the state capital to Chicago for regular meetings with staff.
It is a lot of work and the stipend is $300 per meeting, twice a month.
Gaming expansion is a huge part of the vertical infrastructure funding package. The board has enough members for a quorum, but the Pritzker administration needs to get on top of this. It’s July, for crying out loud.
On Wednesday, July 17th, [congressional candidate Betsy Dirksen Londrigan] held a joint press conference call with a campaign finance reform group called End Citizens United. The campaign sent invitations to local media and asked them to RSVP.
WCIA has learned an unpaid volunteer working on behalf of the [US Rep. Rodney Davis] campaign crashed the call, lied about his name to pose as reporter for a college newspaper, and ambushed Dirksen Londrigan with pointed arguments, including jabs at her husband’s career.
The caller identified himself as Jim Sherman with The Alestle, the SIUE student newspaper.
According to a call log provided to WCIA, the phone number used to dial into the conference call matched the cell phone number for Nick Klitzing, the former Executive Director of the Illinois Republican Party who most recently worked as the deputy campaign manager for former Governor Bruce Rauner.
Reached by phone, Klitzing confessed to committing the hoax and said, “I was willing to help. I’m just a volunteer.”
Falsely identifying yourself as a reporter is not only highly unethical, it’s also an amateur move and truly stupid.
Confronted with the established facts of the story and Klitzing’s confession, Davis’ campaign manager Matt Butcher initially tried to deny having any knowledge about the phone call.
WCIA gave Butcher another 24 hours to explain how an unpaid volunteer living in Chicago could have possibly been aware of a closed press call happening downstate, and how that volunteer might have known to parrot Congressman Davis’ talking points. Yet, Butcher still declined comment.
It’s unclear if Congressman Davis has any knowledge of the hoax phone call his campaign commissioned, or if he’s aware of WCIA’s persistent efforts to seek any comment or explanation from his campaign manager. His staff has taken the unusual step of repeatedly ignoring phone calls, text messages and emails from WCIA’s political reporters, and no longer sends press releases or notices of media availability to WCIA’s political staff, despite frequent requests to include them in media releases.
I reached out to Maxwell to ask if his station was just being iced out by the campaign or if the government side was also stonewalling. He said both sides had cut the station off.
So, the congressman is refusing to communicate in any way with the largest TV station in his district.
Really smart.
*** UPDATE *** Clarification…
Just to be clear, the Congressman still appears on WCIA’s morning show on occasion, and his DC office sends some releases to our Champaign newsroom. They have stopped communications with our Springfield bureau, even after repeated requests and attempts to restore contact. https://t.co/Yyp5EgUKAJ
