* Press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,317 new confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 25 additional confirmed deaths.
Cass County: 1 female 80s
Cook County: 3 females 60s, 2 males 60s, 1 unknown 60s, 3 females 70s, 2 males 70s, 2 females 80s, 1 male 80s, 1 female 90s, 1 male 90s
DuPage County: 1 male 70s
Lake County: 1 female 70s
McHenry County: 1 female 80s
Peoria County: 1 female 90s
Will County: 1 female 70s
Winnebago County: 1 male 60s, 2 males 80s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 151,767 cases, including 7,144 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 32,987 specimens for a total of 1,911,743. The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from July 3 –July 9 is 2.9%. As of last night, 1,436 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 306 patients were in the ICU and 155 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
Following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IDPH is now reporting both confirmed and probable cases and deaths on its website. Reporting probable cases will help show the potential burden of COVID-19 illness and efficacy of population-based non-pharmaceutical interventions. IDPH will update these data once a week.
The trend is not our friend, but we’re still better off than a lot of other states. Even so, today’s positivity rate is 4 percent. That’s up a point and a half over the past week or so.
* Back on May 8th, Wirepoints was strenuously arguing against large IDPH regions…
The governor continues to impose a top-down lockdown strategy that makes no sense for most areas of the state. Some of his required conditions risk Illinois being shut down for an impossible length of time.
Individual counties and their respective health departments should be ready to set their own policies, suited to the particular risks and situations of their own communities. That’s particularly true now that the curve in Illinois has been flattened and the original emergency order has expired.
On May 8, IDPH reported 4,768 COVID-19 patients in the hospital (3.3 times as many as are in the hospital today) and 1,220 in the ICU (4 times as many as today). The curve was indeed “flattened,” but it flattened at a high plateau back then. They were flat-out wrong.
* Today, Wirepoints is now arguing for a single, statewide approach to reopening schools…
Full reopenings must be the standard. School districts should have the choice to do less, but anything other than a full reopening should result in a refund to taxpayers.
Pick a lane already.
* Tribune live blog headlines…
Chicago Catholic schools to require masks, temperature checks when students return this fall
Glenview’s Flick Aquatic Center closes after 2 lifeguards test positive for COVID-19
PPP loans were meant to help small businesses save jobs amid the pandemic. So why does official data show thousands of recipients retained zero jobs?
City tightens bar and restaurant regulations to help prevent COVID-19 spread
City expands reopening of Riverwalk, restoring path to full, daylong use
After historic responses to COVID-19 and civil unrest, Illinois National Guard winds down its deployment
* Sun-Times live blog headlines…
All bars must now close by midnight to prevent ‘late-night congregating,’ city says
United, pilots reach tentative furlough deal
Starbucks in-store customers will be required to wear face masks starting July 15
Employers report 15,600 job cuts to state in June
Would you go to the beach or a public pool if you could? What Chicagoans told us.
We can’t fly; we can’t hug; at least let us grin
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* Quincy Herald-Whig…
A Quincy woman has filed suit against the Quincy School Board over requiring face masks and temperature checks for her child to attend school.
Roni Quinn seeks an injunction barring the School Board from enforcing the mandates against her child, a fourth-grader attending Quincy Public Schools, and says the board overstepped its authority in issuing the requirements.
A hearing is set for 11 a.m. Thursday in Adams County Court. […]
“This is about our children’s right to an education and allowing decisions such as these to be left to the parents not our government/local officials,” Quinn said in a post on the Re-Open Adams County Illinois Facebook page.
“If you want to send your child to school in a mask, by all means you have that right. As it stands right now, no one has the right to choose to send their child to school without a mask. That is not ok. These rights belong to the parents.”
* WGEM…
In the lawsuit filed Friday morning, Quinn alleges that she, and her child, will suffer irreparable injuries based on the implementation of the mask and temperature check mandates because they infringe on the child’s right to an in-person education within the public school.
Quinn’s lawsuit goes on to allege that the mandates are not lawful as they were not implemented by legislature.
Quinn states that the requirement of a face mask to be admitted to a public school building is beyond the board’s authority or otherwise in violation of Illinois law.
Quinn is being represented by attorney Thomas DeVore, who recently filed a lawsuit against Gov. JB Pritzker accusing him of abusing his emergency powers with his Stay-at-Home order.
Click here and scroll down to read the lawsuit.
* Meanwhile, here’s some background on our next story. From May…
A judge on Thursday sided against an Illinois organization that claimed restrictions implemented to combat the novel coronavirus made it impossible to gather the necessary signatures to place a constitutional amendment on November’s general election ballot. […]
The Committee for the Illinois Democracy Amendment is advocating for a constitutional change that would obligate the General Assembly to take roll call votes on bills proposing “stronger ethical standards for Illinois public officials.”
It would also allow residents to propose related bills by submitting a petition with at least 100,000 signatures.
Former Gov. Pat Quinn is one of the lawyers in the case.
* The plaintiffs appealed and lost this week. From the decision…
One important question, when a plaintiff seeks emergency relief, is whether the plaintiff has brought the emergency on himself. The district judge concluded that Morgan had done so. During most of the time available to seek signatures, Morgan did absolutely nothing. He did not evince any interest in the subject until early April 2020, several weeks after the Governor began to issue orders requiring social distancing. The other plaintiffs did not do anything of substance until the suit was on file. Plaintiffs had plenty of time to gather signatures before the pandemic began. That’s a good reason to conclude that they are not entitled to emergency relief.
We add that plaintiffs also have not established that the Governor’s orders limit their speech. The orders concern conduct (social distancing), not what anyone may write or say. Orders regulating conduct often have incidental effects on speech, but this does not require courts to treat them as if they were regulations of speech. See, e.g., Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, 468 U.S. 288 (1984). Plaintiffs do not question the propriety of those orders. Cf. Jacobson v. Massachuse=s, 197 U.S. 11 (1905); Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church v. PriJker, No. 20-1811 (7th Cir. June 16, 2020). Although the orders surely make it hard to round up signatures, so would the reluctance of many people to approach strangers during a pandemic.
One more consideration bears emphasis. The federal Constitution does not require any state or local government to put referenda or initiatives on the ballot. That is wholly a mafer of state law. If we understand the Governor’s orders, coupled with the signature requirements, as equivalent to a decision to skip all referenda for the 2020 election cycle, there is no federal problem. Illinois may decide for itself whether a pandemic is a good time to be soliciting signatures on the streets in order to add referenda to a ballot.
The order denying the motion for a preliminary injunc- tion is affirmed. The plaintiffs remain free to contend to the district court that a permanent injunction would be justified if social-distancing rules are indefinitely extended, but that long-term question does not require immediate resolution.
…Adding… Rebecca Anzel has more on the decision…
Former Gov. Pat Quinn, an attorney representing the committee, said in an interview Friday he and his clients are “disappointed.”
They brought this lawsuit, he said, because “it’s impossible” to comply with state law mandating petitions be circulated in person and with the governor’s social distancing order.
“The state should not be allowed to try to cancel out the rights of voters to circulate petitions to put issues on the ballot,” Quinn said. “It makes the whole process very dangerous. We’re going to keep fighting.”
Their options, he said, include appealing the decision — the committee is “free” to pursue the issues in this case in a district court, the judges wrote in their ruling — or attempting to change the law “so voters have the option to sign petitions electronically during the pandemic, which is not going away.”
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* From Facebook…
“Will not hesitate “, “cut funding “, “comply”, are words and phrases from history that we should not forget.
Illinois needs a shakeup from top to bottom!
Posted by Darren Bailey for State Senate 55th District on Thursday, July 9, 2020
* If you click the link, there’s zero mention of funding cut threats in the story. However, if you pull up the Google cached version, you’ll see this…
…”If a certain school district or individual school disobeys these measures meant to ensure safety, ISBE will not hesitate to move forward with funding cuts and additional measures to ensure that our students and faculty remain protected from COVID-19″ the statement read.
* I asked Jackie Matthews at the ISBE why the board changed its statement…
ISBE tracks all of our correspondence regarding COVID-19 to media and others. We have no record of ever providing the statement that was originally quoted in the article, and we wouldn’t have, as it did not reflect our current or any past position.
The news outlet was not able to show how, when, or from whom they sourced that statement. I reached out this morning with the accurate information and they updated their story.
Wow.
* So, I called the station and talked with the boss. He said the story was posted by a reporter he’d hired a week ago. The reporter claimed that he got a statement from ISBE. But, the executive said, “I looked back at our emails, and I’m not saying he’s lying, but I found no confirmation that he got a statement from them.”
Yikes.
Meanwhile, ISBE is being inundated with furious phone calls and emails over what is literally (and deliberately) fake news.
* In other news, this is causing a huge uproar in the Anna area. WSIL TV…
The Union County Fair Board has issued a full statement explaining why they canceled the Union County Fair.
During a special board meeting by the Union County Fair Board on July 7, 2020, a motion was made to cancel the upcoming 2020 Union County Fair. […]
The Board stated in late June they were notified that all food vendors were not being issued permits in the state of Illinois and carnival vendors received the same news in early July.
According to the Board, after trying to get permits from the state, they received a call from the Governor’s office telling them to cancel the fair. The Board told the office they were still attempting to have the annual event. Members say they were told if the fair was held, they would lose funding for the remainder of the Governor’s term.
* From the fair’s Facebook page…
With all of our dealings to the State of Illinois in the attempt to get vendors permits, we must have caught the attention of the Governor’s office. We say this because not 10 minutes after trying get permits issued, a board member received a call from Governor Pritzker’s office. The caller stated that we will need to cancel our fair. Our board member proceeded to tell him that we WOULD be having a Union County Fair one way or another. His response was quickly met with a statement that we will paraphrase for you:
If you attempt to have a fair……in any way……then your funding from the State of Illinois will be cut……not only for this year, but for the remainder of Governor Pritzker’s term and if re-elected, that term too.
* Jordan Abudayyeh at the governor’s office…
The Governor’s Office has no record of a call with Union County representatives where these alleged comments were made. Counties around the state have made the tough decision to cancel their fairs to protect the health and safety of their residents and the Governor understands how unfortunate it is to have to cancel an event that people look forward to all year because the administration was also forced to cancel the Illinois State Fair. The virus knows no borders and the Governor’s top priority is ensuring the people of this state stay healthy.
So, I called the number listed for the Union County Fair’s board. I spoke with the board’s secretary, Dale Moreland. Mr. Moreland said he did not receive the call, the board president did. Moreland didn’t have the name of the person who was allegedly from the governor’s office because the board president didn’t catch it.
We talked some more (some of my favorite childhood memories revolve around the Iroquois County Fair, so we have several things in common), and it became apparent that this probably wasn’t somebody from the governor’s office who made that call.
As you know, a lay person may just say “governor’s office” when they mean somebody at a state agency. And Mr. Moreland after a bit said, “I don’t know if he was from the governor’s office. He probably was in the permit division.”
Whatever the case, state employees shouldn’t be making these sorts of threats. Whoever it is ought to be found and harshly sanctioned.
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Audit finds cybersecurity issues at IDES
Friday, Jul 10, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Mike Miletich…
The Illinois Auditor General has released a two year compliance report for the state’s Department of Employment Security.
While the audit addresses issues with finances and equipment records, the biggest takeaway is weakness in cybersecurity. The report only covers issues within the department from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2019. So, it does not include the massive data breach within the IDES unemployment system discovered this May.
Auditor General Frank Mautino wrote IDES is responsible for computer systems with large collections of confidential information: names, addresses, social security numbers and tax information. However, the audit explains the Department failed to classify data to ensure that information would be protected from cyber attacks.
“Department officials indicated due to the nature of the work done by the Department, almost all data sets are classified as high risk,” stated Jim Dahlquist, Administrative Manager for the Auditor General’s office. “However, this documentation could not be provided during the engagement, which resulted in the finding.”
The audit findings are here.
* Meanwhile, IDES’ problems continue…
Thousands of people are continuing to call the Illinois Department of Employment Security, hoping for a different result. Tira Clement has been on that merry-go-round since she was laid off in early May. Within days, she applied for unemployment but was rejected. She then applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), but was told to try for regular unemployment instead.
“I kept trying to call in, kept trying to call in, it was always busy; and then the system would just hang up on you, so you could never actually speak to someone regarding the problem,” she explained. Finally, she heard back.
“I get a call on a Saturday morning, from someone and they said that yes, I was eligible for PUA, they didn’t know why the system was doing this. They said that it was a glitch and that they had to put a ticket in with their supervisor,” she explained. She was told that, in about a week, she should be able to apply. But instead, nearly two weeks later, she’s still couldn’t get anywhere.
“We’re calling ourselves the PUA Illinois glitchers. There’s a whole group of us who are in this situation.” Clement says she’ll likely be brought back to work in the fall, but she’s afraid of what will happen in the meantime. “Savings is running out, and I need someone from IDES to look at what’s going on with me and tell me what I’m supposed to be doing. I have no idea, and no one to talk to.”
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Schools prepare to reopen
Friday, Jul 10, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* CTU press release…
Nearly 5,000 educators responded to a member-wide Chicago Teachers Union survey, issued in mid-June, which asked them to begin thinking about the conditions required for Chicago Public Schools to safely re-open in the fall without risking the health of students and their families, and school staff and communities. Caught between the gross ineptitude of Donald Trump’s U.S. Department of Education, and the uncertainty from Chicago Public Schools, more than 85 percent of CTU member respondents feel they should not or might not go back to work in the fall without a detailed plan and resources that will help guarantee the safe re-opening of our schools. […]
The Union is currently in negotiations with CPS on guarantees that schools will have what is necessary to open safely when appropriate. More than two-thirds of members surveyed said they would not return to work without masks, gloves and other PPE provided by the district, and required for everyone who enters a school building; the daily sanitizing of every surface in the building; a plan that would limit the number of students physically present in classrooms; class sizes that allow for students and staff to always be six feet apart; and multiple hand-washing stations throughout a building.
More than 85 percent of CTU member respondents feel they should not or might not go back to work in the fall without a commitment to school-based safety teams providing input on safety needs and plans; daily COVID-19 testing and temperature screening for everyone entering the building; a nurse or other health professional in every school, every day; remote learning options for particularly vulnerable students and staff; a transportation plan for students that involves distancing on school buses as well as Chicago Transit Authority buses and trains; and a social worker or counselor dedicated to helping students and staff in every school, every day.
Ninety-six percent of members said adequate devices and Internet connectivity for every student must be in place before returning to school, highlighting the digital void that exists for many Black and Brown students on the South and West sides of the city. Nearly 70 percent of rank-and-file members were not at all comfortable or mostly uncomfortable with the idea of medically compromised educators being forced to work in-person, in school in the fall.
Members in more than two dozen positions, from clinicians, social workers and special education, to art, Pre-K and PSRPs, submitted to the Union detailed concerns about what a return to in-person work must look like for their particular job and job duties.
Clinicians, for example, cited adequate space to meet with students (“i.e. not a closet”); special education teachers spoke of the need for PPE working in therapy situations or with students who do not comprehend social distancing (“Keeping students with autism or cognitive disabilities six feet apart will be a problem”); speech/language pathologists must have a way for their mouths to be visible to students so they can provide articulation therapy with speech sound errors; and primary teachers noted that “little people want to hug and they need a teacher’s touch,” while in Pre-K, keeping preschoolers social distant from one another may negatively impact them educationally, socially and emotionally.
School clerks, often in the most trafficked part of the building, should no longer be required to perform nurse duties of administering medicine or tending to injuries and illnesses.
* DuPage ROE press release…
The DuPage Regional Office of Education (ROE) announced that in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, they have partnered with BloomBoard, a leading platform for educator advancement, to support DuPage County schools in providing effective blended instruction. The partnership will make BloomBoard’s Fall Readiness Program available to DuPage County school districts.
“As our schools make decisions on how best to educate students this fall, we welcome the opportunity to partner with BloomBoard to provide DuPage educators with a comprehensive professional learning option to prepare themselves for blended instruction,” said Darlene Ruscitti, regional superintendent of DuPage County Schools.
The advantages of BloomBoard’s programs will be two-fold: its Fall Readiness Program will coach educators to up-level their blended learning instruction to meet students’ academic and personal needs during this pandemic, and its micro-credentialing framework will provide districts a customizable continuing education program that can align with each districts’ needs long-term, support teacher growth, and lead to improved student outcomes.
* East Moline…
At their first in-person school board meeting since March, United Township High School Board members voted to approve a Return to Learn plan that will see students both on campus and learning remotely.
Administrators presented their plan Wednesday at a special meeting. Superintendent Jay Morrow said the blended learning approach would deliver high-quality education while prioritizing staff and student safety.
Administrators said they had been working since March to develop plans that prioritized as much face-to-face instruction while also adhering to the COVID-19 guidelines issued by the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Public Health. […]
Morrow said busing would continue, with about 24 students, one for each seat, on each bus. Morrow said state guidelines allowed for 50 individuals in one space, but the district did not feel comfortable with that. He said he felt confident the district could manage with the reduced capacity.
* Near Peoria…
Nearly 95 percent of parents surveyed with children in Morton schools intend to send their children back to class in August despite the COVID-19 pandemic — according to the school district.
The results of that survey were shared with the school board on Tuesday by Superintendent Jeff Hill — where more than three-quarters of students had parents participate in the poll, upwards of 2,400 in all out of a total school population of approximately 3,100.
Hill said more than 64 percent of parents indicated that their children will return to school, without conditions. Another 30 percent said their kids would be present with certain stipulations.
According to the release, of that 64 percent, more than half said they felt strongly that students should be permitted to take a break from the mandatory wearing of masks at some point during the school day.
* On to ISU…
[Illinois State University President Larry Dietz] rolled out a list of safety measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19, including a requirement for students, staff and faculty to wear face coverings in all campus facilities. The university will have a mix of classes that are online, face-to-face or a hybrid of both. […]
The fall semester will begin Aug. 17 and end Dec. 11, but all classes will be online after Nov. 20.
“This decision is being made in an effort to provide students who can stay home with the opportunity to do so and to de-densify campus immediately following fall break and the Thanksgiving holiday — when many students, faculty and staff visit with friends and family, as well as travel,” said Dietz.
* UIUC…
To anyone considering taking in this weekend’s Greek Reunion activities, University of Illinois officials have a request: Don’t.
Danita Young, the UI’s vice chancellor for student affairs, wrote a lengthy letter to students detailing her concerns in advance of the annual event, set for today through Sunday.
“The continuing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic makes any large gatherings a significant risk for the spread of this deadly virus,” Young wrote.
The Greek Reunion has no status as a university-endorsed event. It isn’t sanctioned by the UI and has no ties to the school’s Fraternity and Sorority Affairs programming.
* Big Ten…
Almost four months after the college sports world halted because of the coronavirus pandemic, another seismic change happened Thursday.
Illinois, along with the rest of the Big Ten, will play a conference-only schedule with its fall sports teams this upcoming school year. That is, if it’s able to do so.
Those are the words from the Big Ten, which released a lengthy statement Thursday afternoon announcing the news but offering up no specifics.
No revised game schedules were released. No updates about whether fans would be able to attend said sporting events — again, if they even happen.
What’s happening in your own school districts and colleges?
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* Jennifer Smith Richards of the Chicago Tribune and Jodi S. Cohen of ProPublica Illinois…
A 16-year-old boy in Kalamazoo, Michigan, died this spring after workers pinned him to the floor at the residential facility where he lived — after he’d thrown a sandwich at lunch. While held on the ground, he told them: “I can’t breathe.”
At least 70 people have died in law enforcement custody in the last decade after saying the words “I can’t breathe,” a recent New York Times investigation found. But just as adults have died after being restrained, so have children.
And though we encountered no fatalities, we also repeatedly saw those words among the 50,000 pages of school incident reports on restraint and seclusion that we reviewed for The Quiet Rooms investigation, published last year. School workers documented they had restrained a child in a face-down, or prone, position and the student pleaded to be let up, saying he or she couldn’t breathe. […]
The Quiet Rooms investigation, published by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois, found that in 100 public school districts, children were physically restrained more than 15,000 times between August 2017 and December 2018.
School employees often took detailed notes on these incidents; they wrote down that students said “I can’t breathe” while being restrained at least 30 times over the time period we investigated, according to our analysis of the records. It likely happened more often than that, as we didn’t track every incident in which it was noted that students had trouble breathing.
We found that in about 1,800 of the restraint incidents we logged, school workers used face-down restraints, which at least 31 other states have banned at schools.
* They then provided three examples. Here’s one of them…
At the Southwest Cook County Cooperative for Special Education in Oak Forest in August 2018, a boy who refused to finish his classwork and kept repeating “I want to die” was sent to a seclusion room.
He tried to get out of the padded room by throwing himself against the door. Workers then restrained him because he did not “get his body under control,” according to the incident records.
“Oh my God, I can’t breathe, ow. God, I swear to God you broke my right arm,” school employees recorded him saying.
The school has since stopped using prone restraint, the executive director, Gineen O’Neil, said.
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Rivian raises another $2.5 billion
Friday, Jul 10, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* AP…
Electric vehicle startup Rivian says it has raised another $2.5 billion in funding from accounts advised by investment firm T. Rowe Price.
The company has a contract with Amazon to build 100,000 electric delivery vans starting next year at the former Mitsubishi plant in Normal. Rivian also is rolling out a pickup truck and an SUV for sale to consumers next year.
The company said Friday that investors in this round include Soros Fund Management, Coatue, Fidelity Management and Research, and Baron Capital Group. Amazon and hedge fund BlackRock have invested previously and also are part of this round, Rivian said.
* CNBC…
Rivian’s all-electric product plans, which were delayed several months due to the coronavirus pandemic, include the R1T pickup, R1S SUV as well as a line of vans, which Amazon pre-ordered 100,000 of last year for its delivery fleet over the next decade.
The all-electric pickup and SUV are expected to launch early next year, while Amazon expects to have 10,000 of the vans in its fleet by 2022. Rivian has said the pickup and SUV, which debuted in late 2018, will achieve a driving range on a single charge of more than 400 miles – in-line with Tesla’s top Model S Long Range Plus.'’
Rivian will produce the vehicles at a former Mitsubishi Motors plant in Normal, Illinois, which was purchased for $16 million in 2017. The company is spending more than $750 million to equip, renovate and expand the facility ahead of production.
The fact that Rivian already has the 2.6 million-square-foot plant, including a paint shop that’s nearing completion, puts it ahead of others such as Nikola and Tesla, which has yet determine a location for production of its Cybertruck.
* Axios…
The bottom line, via Axios transportation reporter Joann Muller: Rivian is biting off an extraordinary series of manufacturing challenges all at once for a startup that has never built a vehicle. Even experienced automakers struggle to launch new vehicles smoothly.
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Question of the day
Friday, Jul 10, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* From yesterday…
House Speaker Michael J. Madigan released the following statement Thursday:
“While reading Sidney Blumenthal’s book ‘All the Powers of Earth’ concerning the pre-Civil War period a few months ago, I learned of Stephen Douglas’ disturbing past as a Mississippi slave owner and his abhorrent words toward people of color. I advised my staff to research and confirm the history to support removing the Douglas portrait from the House chamber.
* The Question: What book should Madigan read next? Explain.
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Open thread
Friday, Jul 10, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Keep it Illinois-centric and please be polite to each other. Thanks.
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