* WTVO…
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health have won an injunction against three school districts who said they did not need to mandate face masks for in-person learning this year.
Pritzker filed a preemptive lawsuit in July to ensure school children wear face coverings to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
A lawyer representing Hutsonville Community Unit School District No. 1 in southeastern Illinois, Parkview Christian Academy in Yorkville and Families of Faith Christian Academy in Channahon wrote letters in the last month to the state board explaining that the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in a 1922 case that government cannot make rules “which merely have a tendency to prevent” the spread of infectious diseases, particularly if “arbitrary and unreasonable.”
Thomas DeVore of Greenville also noted that Pritzker has said there’s not enforcement for violators of the guidelines, which DeVore contended turns “rules” into “recommendations.” He did not return a message left at his office after hours [Tuesday].
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USPS backs off cuts
Tuesday, Aug 18, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Capitol News Illinois…
Operational shifts undertaken by the United States Postal Service in recent weeks, including spending cuts and equipment removal, are illegal, Illinois’ top lawyer and 13 other attorneys general argued in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.
By terminating workers’ overtime, eliminating a number of mail sorting machines, removing several mailboxes and rescheduling the delivery of some late-day mail, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is subverting the national election this year, the officials added. […]
Before the Postal Service is allowed to implement procedural changes that affect all Americans, officials must submit them for approval to the Postal Regulatory Commission, according to the lawsuit. That panel then accepts public feedback and makes a determination.
DeJoy did not do that, the attorneys general assert, thus operating outside the scope of his power. The lawyers are asking a federal judge to prevent the nation’s mail delivery agency from reducing services and to force DeJoy to undo all other recent changes.
This has been a huge national news story for the past several days. The union representing workers did a remarkable job of getting the word out as its members’ overtime hours were being cut and the president raged at the USPS. From yesterday…
Mayor Lori Lightfoot cast President Donald Trump and Republicans as “enemies of democracy” who are mounting a “full-out assault” on the integrity of the November election by undermining the U.S. Postal Service and making it more difficult for people to vote by mail amid a pandemic.
Last week…
Gov. JB Pritzker commented on President Donald Trump addressing issues with the United States Postal Service.
Trump said he opposes funding for the service because he doesn’t want to see it used for mail-in voting.
The governor countered Trump, reiterating that the state of Illinois is expanding mail-in voting and they are doing everything they can to make sure everyone gets the chance to cast their vote in the presidential election.
“This president appears to do anything to try to win the reelection, including taking away people’s voting rights in the midst of a pandemic,” Pritzker said. “We need to have mail-in voting available to everybody. We need the postal service to work like it has for the entire history of our country.”
* So far, I’ve heard zero complaints about any issues from campaigns about direct mail. And I’ve heard nothing yet from any county clerks about particular USPS issues. Indeed, when the Champaign County Clerk goofed (for the umpteenth time now) and printed the wrong Zip Code on return envelopes for vote by mail applications, the local postmaster said it was no big deal and the mail would be delivered. Also, Jack Shafer had a really good piece this week about how much of this was overblown…
It’s true that the USPS has sent letters to 46 states expressing its doubts about delivering all the ballots in time to be counted. But, as the Washingtonn Post also mentioned in its story, those letters were in the works before Trump’s new postmaster general took office. It’s also true the USPS needs billions of dollars from Congress, which Trump made noise about vetoing. But that has little to do with delivering ballots for the election, as he implied on Fox. It’s Trump’s particular genius for pulling together unrelated things that has liberals and election wonks in a tizzy. […]
The USPS’s capacity to deliver mail is immense, at an average of 472 million mailpieces a day. If every voter of the 138 million who voted in 2016 posted his ballot on the same day this year, that would compose only 30 percent of a normal day’s delivery. And that surge won’t happen; every voter casting a ballot outside his local polling precinct isn’t going to use USPS and not every voter who does is going to mail his ballot on the same day. […]
What about those vanishing USPS mail collection boxes? As it turns out, the USPS has been culling the boxes since 2000, when their numbers peaked and 365,000 of them stood sentinel on U.S. streets. Today, their numbers have dwindled to 142,000. Why has the USPS deleted them? Because the volume of first-class has nose-dived. In 2010, the USPS delivered 77.6 billion pieces of first-class mail, but by 2019 that number was 54.9 billion. Reduced volume makes it cost-inefficient to collect from so many scantly used boxes, so USPS has done the logical thing and removed them. (That’s why the USPS removed those mail-processing machines, too.) […]
Another thing to remember is Trump’s propensity for making big threats and then retreating. After he fed his base a slaughterhouse-sized meal of red meat by claiming he was going to impede voting by withholding billions of dollars from the USPS, he quickly reversed himself and said he won’t veto relief legislation just because it will fund the Postal Service. By Monday afternoon, he was tweeting “SAVE THE POST OFFICE!”
* Even so, the pressure seems to have worked…
The U.S. Postal Service will halt its controversial cost-cutting initiatives until after the election — canceling service reductions, reinstating overtime hours and ceasing the removal of mail-sorting machines and public collection boxes, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced in a statement Tuesday.
The declaration comes as lawmakers prepared to question DeJoy and USPS board of governors Chairman Robert M. Duncan in a Friday hearing in the Senate and at a Monday hearing in the House on those policy changes, which have caused mail slowdowns and threatened to jeopardize ballot collection during the November election.
DeJoy, a former logistics executive and ally of President Trump, took office in June and swiftly made organizational changes to the nation’s mail service, cracking down on overtime hours and banning extra trips by postal carriers trying to ensure on-time mail delivery. The result was mail delays in localities across the country that ensnared prescription medications and election mail during some mid-summer primaries.
The Postal Service also planned to take 671 mail-sorting machines, roughly 10 percent of its inventory, offline to cut costs, and had in recent days removed, relocated and replaced public mailboxes in a number of states including Oregon, Pennsylvania, California, Ohio, Montana and Arizona, among others.
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It’s just a bill
Tuesday, Aug 18, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Center Square…
As cities across the state see less revenue in the aftermath of the months-long COVID-19 shutdown orders, some are looking at pushing local pension payments out by a decade to get some “breathing room.”
Illinois Municipal League Executive Director Brad Cole said they’ll be opposing any additional unfunded mandates. One mandate he said they want to be changed is moving the pension ramp out 10 years to 2050.
“There’s no way they’re going to be able to make those heightened payments, so we need a little bit of breathing room and we’ve asked the general assembly to provide that through a re-amortization of the public safety pension funds,” Cole said. “We hope that is something they’ll consider during the veto session” […]
“We can either kick the can down the road and make the payments or stop kicking the can, declare bankruptcy and start defaulting on the obligations that are due to the pension recipients,” Cole said. “We’re not kicking the can down the road. We’re refinancing so we can continue to make payments.”
* Chicago Reader…
Republicans in Springfield have introduced two bills that would put members of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police on the commission that reviews torture allegations against former police commander Jon Burge and other cops accused of torture.
The bills have flown under the radar and have struggled to gain momentum since they were introduced earlier this year in the Illinois House and Senate. They are unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled legislature, especially at a time when police are facing so much scrutiny.
But the push to reshape the torture commission, even if it is unsuccessful, is another example of the police union and its political allies fighting efforts to expose police abuse and trying to control the narrative around police violence. […]
The House bill, HB4283, would add two sworn officers from the Fraternal Order of Police to the panel and would require a seven-vote supermajority for the commission to refer a torture claim to the courts. The Senate bill, SB3557, would replace all three of the commission’s public-at-large members with members of the FOP. […]
Already, two of the three commission spots reserved for the public are held by people who used to work for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office: Tim Touhy, a former spokesperson, and Marilyn Baldwin, a former victim-witness advocate.
While House Republican Leader Jim Durkin’s bill specifically reserves two seats for Chicago FOP members, the Senate bill would apply to people who are “members of a law enforcement organization representing law enforcement officers in a county of more than 3,000,000 inhabitants.” Neither bill has an advanced even a click.
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Question of the day
Tuesday, Aug 18, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sports editor at the Hobbs, New Mexico News-Sun…
Paging Rep. Bailey! Rep. Bailey!
* The Question: New Illinois motto?
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* Last November…
State Rep. Curtis Tarver II (D-Chicago) was arrested Monday night in the Woodlawn section of Chicago and charged with carrying a weapon with an invalid concealed carry license (CCL), according to Chicago police.
Replying to an inquiry from Chicago City Wire, the CPD Office of Communications said that at approximately 8:32 p.m. on November 18 officers on patrol in the 6500 block of South Stony Island Avenue stopped a vehicle with a broken headlight. They asked the driver, whom they identified as Curtis Tarver, 38, if there were weapons in the vehicle.
“The driver handed officers a weapon that was in the vehicle, as well as a concealed carry license,” a CPD communications officer wrote in an email. “Further investigation revealed the license was revoked. The subject was taken into custody and charged accordingly.”
Tarver and (later) the CPD both claimed the matter was a simple clerical error on the part of the police.
* So, keep in mind when reading the rest of this that Rep. Tarver had a perfectly valid concealed carry license that even the police say he handed to them when he was stopped (by, as it turns out, six police cars). The question was whether his FOID card had expired. It hadn’t. And yet he was cuffed to a bench for nearly seven hours.
Press release today…
State Rep. Curtis J. Tarver II released the following statement Wednesday after charges against him of an expired concealed carry license were dropped:
“On November 18, 2019, after being subjected to a routine traffic stop originally for having a nonfunctioning headlight, I was arrested for allegedly not having a valid Firearm Owners Identification Card (FOID) which would have triggered the revocation of my Concealed Carry License (CCL). At the time of my arrest my FOID as well as my CCL were both valid through the years 2029 and 2024 respectively. This update was not reflective within the Chicago Police Department (CPD)’s database unbeknownst to me.”
“Although the possession of my disclosed firearm was legal, I was subjected to unjust treatment by CPD officers, which included being pulled over by six police cars in my district and being handcuffed to bench for nearly seven hours.”
“Against CPD policy, I was demanded to hand my firearm to an officer. I continued to explain that this must have been a clerical error, as I was in legal possession of my firearm. Despite this explanation I was transported the 4th District police station, where one of the officers tried to persuade me into ‘taking this charge.’ It wasn’t until 2 a.m. when my sister, who is also an attorney, told them I was a lawyer and also formerly worked for the department that investigates police misconduct that they finally allowed me to speak with anyone after being denied a proper phone call.
“Ironically after learning of my profession, less than 15 minutes later I was released on bond after multiple hours of unfair and unjust treatment. Before I could be released I was forced to remove my sweatshirt to ensure that any visible tattoos I have would be present in my mugshot.”
“Experiences such as these shows the fallacies within the conduct of CPD. As a Black man from the Southside of Chicago, I am not looked at as an Illinois state representative during these interactions with law enforcement. I hate to imagine what could have happened that day if I was not fully knowledgeable of my constitutional rights, and what many of my constituents may be coerced with while interacting with law enforcement.”
“These charges being dropped vindicates my innocence, which I have always maintained, due to the clerical error within the database. I take considerable efforts to ensure that I am always in compliance with our state’s laws and following safe practice for handling a firearm. I am committed to solving issues relating to gun violence, illegal sales of firearms, and strengthening background checks. I look forward to continuing this work for the communities I represent.”
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* Press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today announced 1,740 new confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 27 additional confirmed deaths.
Cook County: 1 female 40s, 1 male 40s, 1 male 50s, 1 female 60s, 1 male 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 80s, 1 unknown 80s, 2 males 90s
DuPage County: 1 female 70s
Jefferson County: 1 female 80s, 1 unknown 90s
Kane County: 1 male 80s
Kankakee County: 1 male 80s
Lake County: 1 male 60s, 1 male 80s
LaSalle County: 1 female 70s
Madison County: 1 male 80s
Morgan County: 1male 90s
Perry County: 1 male 80s
Rock Island County: 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 1 male 80s
St. Clair County: 1 male 60s
Will County: 1 female 90s, 1 male 100+
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 209,594 cases, including 7,782 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 34,175 specimens for a total of 3,439,272. The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from August 11 – August 17 is 4.3%. As of last night, 1,510 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 335 patients were in the ICU and 128 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.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered. Information for deaths previously reported has changed, therefore, today’s numbers have been adjusted. For health questions about COVID-19, call the hotline at
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* Bloomberg…
Is there anything the government can say to get people to wear masks during a pandemic? There’s one message that had some positive effect, at least in Illinois.
A recent survey of more than than 2,000 state residents offered respondents five different messages and gauged whether they made people more or less likely to wear a mask in public, as compared to a control group that saw no message. Comparing masks to helmets and seatbelts was the only message that had a positive impact on people’s decisions. […]
About 92% of respondents who were shown the message that compared masks to helmets and seatbelts were likely to wear a mask, compared to 89% of the respondents in the control group. A 3 percentage point increase may not seem like much, but Civis says messages like these tend to have a lower effect for issues that people have already been highly exposed to. “People have heard so much about it that their opinions are strongly held,” Crystal Son, health care analytics director at Civis, said in an email. “Given the saturation of messaging around Covid and masks, a 3 [percentage point] treatment effect is both statistically significant and meaningful.” […]
The worst-performing message showed the World Health Organization finding that masks may reduce Covid-19 spread by 85% and included text that began, “The science is clear.” That strategy led to a 3 percentage point decrease in mask-wearing likelihood as compared to the control group. The other message with a negative effect showed images of people wearing masks with text over it that read, “If it gets us out, we’re all in,” with smaller text explaining that wearing a mask lets people get out of the house. Messages invoking a potential second wave of coronavirus and the risk of infecting elderly family members had neutral effects.
The researchers also broke down the responses regionally. In areas outside of northeast Illinois and the Chicago metro area, the comparison to seatbelts and helmets had an even greater effect, increasing mask-wearing by 5 percentage points. It was also more effective in rural areas, showing a similar increase of 5 percentage points, compared to 3 percentage points among urban and and suburban areas. The four other messages, however, were no more effective among any of these groups.
The full poll is here. The poll was paid for by Civis, which is helping the administration with its response.
* They tested five messages…
As you know, the first one tested best and they’re using it. That one also had a projected “backlash probability” of just 3 percent. The “85 percent” message had the highest backlash probability, at a whopping 90 percent.
There’s more, so click here.
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* Today, new COVID-19 restrictions are imposed on Region 4, which covers the Metro East. Click here for more info. There are exceptions, though. Here’s Molly Parker with one…
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is located in Region 4. But Doug McIlhagga, SIU Edwardsville spokesman, said the campus was informed by the Illinois Board of Higher Education that reducing the number of people who may gather from 50 to 25 people in the Metro East does not apply to classrooms.
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* Sun-Times…
With attendance down to a trickle due to the pandemic, officials at Chicago’s Navy Pier said Tuesday the lakefront attraction will close Sept. 8 and will not reopen until next spring.
The decision means more than 70 local businesses that operate at the pier must close. Major attractions such as the Ferris wheel and the Chicago Children’s Museum already are closed.
Navy Pier CEO Marilynn Gardner said the attraction is facing a $20 million deficit this year because of lost business due to COVID-19. The pier closed March 16 and reopened June 10, but has seen summer attendance at less than 20% of normal rates.
“While this was a very difficult decision for the organization, it was a necessary one to proactively ensure the long-term success of one of Chicago’s most treasured and important civic institutions and the communities it serves,” Gardner said.
* Tribune…
Closing as the weather turns colder and visitorship typically decreases will help the pier limit its losses in a year when the not-for-profit entity was already projecting falling $20 million short of anticipated revenues. That’s more than a third of last year’s $58.9 million take, according to the executive. […]
One new business may open, however. The new 222-room Sable Hotel atop an existing pier building is nearing completion, and pier officials said it could go ahead and open while the rest of the pier is closed, according to Robert Habeeb, CEO of Maverick Hotels and Restaurants, the developer of the property that will operate under the Curio Collection by Hilton umbrella.
“As of today our goal is to open the hotel on time Nov. 1,” Habeeb said Monday evening, although he emphasized that, as with everything during the pandemic, plans are subject to revision.
“We understand their rationale for closing,” he added, speaking of pier officials. “It’s a very sad circumstance for all of us, but we get it. We now have to step back and assess our own position.”
Who’s gonna want to stay at a Navy Pier hotel if the pier is closed?
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* Nick Vlahos at the PJStar…
During the ‘82 WIU homecoming game, [Gov. Jim Thompson] Thompson sipped peppermint schnapps from a toilet plunger, the [United Press International] report stated. He also received a kiss from a bearded female impersonator named “Candie,” who left a lipstick stain on the governor’s cheek.
It made good Thompson’s pregame promise to “join all you party animals at halftime,” UPI reported. The governor apparently turned down several toilet-plunger offers before he relented. […]
“You’ve got to remember, Western is kind of an unruly school,” Thompson told the [Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library during a 2014 interview]. “The group started towards us, and I said, ‘Who are they?’ These big guys in dresses, wigs, holding the plunger came right at the (university) president and I.
“I thought to myself, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s one thing to be handed a beer, it’s another thing to be drinking out of a toilet plunger. So I refused, and they finally went away.”
The next day, the story broke about what or what didn’t take place in the Hanson Field stands. Thompson said it was “ginned up by Adlai.”
“It was just not true,” the governor said. “My wife came down, and I said, ‘Listen, before you read this story in the paper, let me explain.’ And I didn’t know whether she believed me or not, since she was inclined to think that I might have done something stupid like that. But I didn’t.
“I did a lot of stupid things, but that wasn’t one of them.”
I cannot stop laughing.
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* Background is here if you need it. This statement was released yesterday by Democratic state Senators Bill Cunningham, Sara Feigenholtz, Robert Martwick and Tony Munoz; and state Representatives Jaime Andrade, Kelly Burke, Jonathan Carroll, John Connor, John D’Amico, Anthony DeLuca, Elizabeth Hernandez, Fran Hurley, Yehiel Kalish, Martin Moylan and Mike Zalewski…
This Saturday, less than a week after hundreds of rioters looted portions of the city’s central business district, the women and men of the Chicago Police Department were subjected to a well organized and unprovoked attack while attempting to maintain order during a series of protests downtown. Video of the incident clearly showed dozens of individuals forming in groups and charging police lines shortly after they opened umbrellas to disguise their activity. Footage also showed a protester repeatedly beating an officer with a skateboard. At least 17 officers received medical attention for injuries.
Peaceful demonstrations are always welcome. In fact, they are beyond welcome, they are an important and justified part of our democratic process that allow Americans to express outrage over incidents of injustice, as was the case after the brutal and senseless murder of George Floyd.
However, violent demonstrations are never justified. Looting, theft, and criminal damage to property are never justified. And unprovoked attacks against police officers are not only unjustified and lawless, they are an attack on all Chicagoans and an insult to those who protest peacefully. We strongly condemn the actions of those who initiated organized attacks against the Chicago Police Department this weekend and we express our support and appreciation for the officers who risked their personal safety to protect our city and state.
That starkly contrasts with a statement released Sunday by a mostly younger, more liberal group of legislators who said they “are wholeheartedly with the protestors.”
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Open thread
Tuesday, Aug 18, 2020 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Keep it Illinois-centric and be polite to each other. Thanks.
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