The nominee for the Executive Inspector General for the Illinois Treasurer has withdrawn from consideration after controversial social media posts were revealed.
Acting Treasurer OEIG Dennis Rendleman has been on the job since February 2020 with a $100,000 a year salary.
“Dennis Rendleman is a nationally recognized expert on ethics,” said Treasurer Michael Frerichs spokesman Greg Rivara. “However, Mr. Rendleman has asked us to withdraw his nomination and indicated that he will work with the Treasurer’s Office to provide an orderly transition to a new nominee as Executive Inspector General.” […]
State Sen. Steve McClure, R-Springfield, sponsored Rendleman, saying in committee he supported him, but then requested the appointment be held back after social media posts were revealed.
“We saw bad language, we saw posts that were accusing Republicans of killing people, essentially,” McClure said. “We saw just over the top extremist language which is just totally inappropriate for someone who wants to continue to serve, by the way, he’s been serving in this capacity while making these posts, but someone who’s supposed to be an inspector general, kind of above the fray, fair, impartial, that is not what we were seeing with these posts.”
Some posts obtained by The Center Square showed Rendleman writing on Facebook “White ‘Christian’ nationalists = Taliban/ISIS/Al Qaeda” and linking to separate Politico and NPR online articles. Another post Rendleman shared showed three people wearing Klu Klux Klan outfits with the text “when you accidentally wash your KKK robe with your MAGA hat.”
“They were of the most extreme types of political discussions on his Facebook page and all of us believed they were inappropriate,” McClure said. […]
“In Mr. Rendleman’s nearly 40-year legal career, there have been no issues or concerns raised about his ability to separate his personal opinions from the objective and neutral positions with which he has been entrusted by [University of Illinois Springfield], [Illinois State Bar Association], the [American Bar Association], and the Illinois Supreme Court,” [Treasurer Michael Frerichs spokesman Greg Rivara] said.
His Facebook account is here. And people on the right keep saying that the left is pushing “cancel culture.”
It used to be that running a broadcast TV series was the top of the mountain for those in the small-screen business. These days, you’re more likely to hear about an old broadcast series like “Friends” or “Seinfeld” moving to a streaming platform in search of a second life.
The streaming era has stolen the spotlight from the once-vaunted industry, which is long past the halcyon days of “Must-See TV.” As showrunner Saladin Patterson puts it: “Right now, my kids could not tell you where ABC is on the TV.”
* The Question: How often do you watch traditional broadcast network television, and for what?
All 88 of the [southern Illinois] region’s ICU beds are in use, as COVID-19 case numbers continue to climb, leaving the area worse off than the rest of the state in terms of emergency care, according to state health department data.
There were zero ICU beds available in Region 5 as of early Tuesday afternoon, according to IDPH’s metrics.
* The U of I really needs to get its act together, like today…
As of Wednesday, 449 public school districts and private K-12 school organizations in Illinois had signed up to implement SHIELD testing. About 79 of them had actually started testing, according to SHIELD Illinois. […]
SHIELD leaders say they have plenty of supplies and capacity. But they, and school leaders, say it’s taking time for schools to communicate with parents, get parental permission and then send rosters of participating students to SHIELD.
Further exacerbating the situation, the testing organization was hit with a wave of demand in the month before school started, with hundreds of school districts signing on in late July or August. In late August, Gov. J.B. Pritzker publicly announced that all schoolteachers and staff would be required to get vaccinated or get tested for COVID-19 once a week. That month, the state also detailed an optional new test-to-stay program, in which students and teachers who are close contacts of people with COVID-19 may stay in school so long as they test negative on days 1, 3, 5 and 7 after exposure.
It can now sometimes take days for SHIELD to answer schools’ questions about implementing testing because of the high demand and a limited number of SHIELD staffers, said Ron Watkins, managing director of SHIELD Illinois, which is a nonprofit unit of the University of Illinois system. SHIELD is working to hire more people to help answer schools’ questions in the next few weeks, and upgrading its software to help make the process of getting started more efficient for schools.
The Illinois Department of Public Health was in the hot seat Wednesday during a House committee hearing on nursing home reform.
Nursing homes and long-term care facilities house a small part of the U.S. population, but are estimated to account for about 3 in 10 deaths from COVID-19. IDPH reported 46% of all deaths from COVID-19 in Illinois occurred in long-term care facilities.
Lawmakers had questions for IDPH representative Becky Dragoo, including the number of deaths in long-term care facilities during the pandemic, and the number of nursing homes that were cited by the state for a lack of protocols.
State Rep. Lakeshia Collins, D-Chicago, was not happy that Dragoo did not provide the number of deaths in Illinois nursing homes during the pandemic.
“If there’s no numbers that you can present to us when we get on these calls and you have to give us a follow-up, that’s a problem because you know we are going to ask these questions,” Collins said.
(U)ntil recently, the [Biden] administration had shipped the antibody treatments to states on an as-needed basis — with top health officials in early August going as far as encouraging those battling the Delta surge to seek even more supply.
But demand from a handful of southern states has exploded since then, state and federal officials said, raising concerns they were consuming a disproportionate amount of the national supply. Seven states — Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama — accounted for 70 percent of all orders in early September.
The imbalance prompted an effort to rein in control of supplies, over concerns that the government wouldn’t have enough on hand to respond to Covid-19 surges elsewhere in the country. […]
DeSantis has similarly touted efforts to make the treatment widely available, while downplaying the virus’ threat and criticizing the Biden administration’s support for vaccine mandates and school mask mandates.
* Hospital staff must swear off Tylenol, Tums to get religious vaccine exemption: The move was prompted when Conway Regional Health System noted an unusual uptick in vaccine exemption requests that cited the use of fetal cell lines in the development and testing of the vaccines. … The list includes Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, aspirin, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, ibuprofen, Maalox, Ex-Lax, HIV-1, Benadryl, Sudafed, albuterol, Preparation H, MMR vaccine, Claritin, Zoloft, Prilosec OTC, and azithromycin.
Recent charges filed against the Winnebago County Coroner inspire area lawmakers to hold elected officials accountable.
State Senator Dave Syverson is one local lawmaker trying to push a bipartisan bill into the Illinois House and Senate.
Syverson says the piece of legislation addresses how to hold accountable any elected officials potentially abusing their power.
“We want to protect the Constitution, protect those people who are duly elected from being a political victim. But in cases where an elected official, is clearly abusing their, their position, then we have to find a way to take them out of those duties,” Syverson says.
Other area lawmakers, like Senator Steve Stadelman, are also on board with this initiative.
“I think it’s something that needs to be explored it kind of sets up an interesting situation, ultimately comes down, you want the public trust your elected office,” Stadelman says.
The story goes on like that, but never explains what the bill would do. That’s because, according to Sen. Stadelman, there is no bill yet “and I’m not sure there’s a legislative fix to this situation.”
Statutorily requiring the removal of elected officials from office after they’ve only been indicted or charged with a crime would likely be problematic.
The DGA is launching a new video in Illinois that slams the growing GOP gubernatorial field for their reckless disregard for public safety throughout the pandemic.
While the rest of the field have already gotten a head start, Jesse Sullivan, the newest to join the growing primary, has quickly jumped on the anti-science bandwagon. Sullivan has repeatedly opposed measures to mitigate the spread of COVID, and he’s not the only anti-science Republican in the race. Gary Rabine, Darren Bailey, and Paul Schimpf have all similarly opposed common-sense safety measures.
Sullivan, Rabine, Bailey, and Schimpf have baselessly criticized the leadership of Gov. JB Pritzker, who acted swiftly to protect the health of Illinoisans when the pandemic hit. As Republicans flounder on public safety, Gov. Pritzker is putting Illinois back on a firm fiscal footing to emerge from the pandemic even stronger.
“As Republican primary candidates vie for the support of Trump’s extremist base, they’ve taken to spreading dangerous lies and threatening public safety with their negligence,” said DGA Senior Communications Advisor Christina Amestoy. “The growing primary field is in a full-on race to the far-right, and that means adopting an unpopular anti-science, anti-safety, and anti-Illinois platform that voters will reject at the ballot box.”
I’ve asked whether this is just a YouTube video or if the DGA is putting any money behind it online. My guess from reading lots of releases like this is it’s just a video, but I’ll let you know if I hear back. [I was right. Just a video.]
“The JB for Governor campaign is requiring full vaccination against COVID-19 as a condition of employment. We are leading by example and following the same science and medical advice from doctors, nurses and medical professionals that has guided Governor JB Pritzker in his strong leadership to protect the lives and livelihoods of Illinoisans during this deadly global pandemic. The best way to help end this pandemic is for all of us to listen to the science, and that means getting vaccinated. As always, we’ll continue putting the health and safety of all Illinoisans first.”
It’s not unexpected. But they’re one of the first major campaigns in the country to do this, and it’ll mean other Illinois candidates in both parties (statewide, congressional and legislative) will likely be asked about it.
As Ken Ferrie travels through parts of central Illinois this week, he sees a corn crop that has changed radically in the past seven days.
“Disease pressure is bringing fields to their knees, and a lot of that corn here will die before it can finish the race for yield,” says Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist and owner of Crop-Tech Consulting, Heyworth, Ill.
Corn that typically would be filling kernels this time of year is, instead, prematurely shutting down due to a cocktail mix of heavy disease pressure coming at it from many fronts – gray leaf spot, northern leaf blight, common and southern rust, tar spot and, most recently, Goss’s bacterial wilt and leaf blight.
“That picture-perfect photo finish you like to see with the top of the plant still green and the husk turning ripe is getting harder and harder to find as you visit these fields,” he says.
D and L-1 hybrids are a concern. Ferrie says the late disease push is particularly hard on D hybrids. These are hybrids that have kernel depth changes, positive or negative, based on populations and environmental conditions during the last 30 days of grain fill.
This post is mostly snark because I couldn’t resist putting that quote into a headline…
The silver lining is that the pressure has developed late enough that many of the D hybrids will still produce average to even slightly above-average yields but not record-setting yields.
Plaintiffs have shown there exists a clearly ascertainable right in need of protection, namely that the Children, while on school property, are being forced to utilize a device to allegedly prevent the spread of an infectious disease without a lawful order of quarantine having issued against them by the local health department. Plaintiff has shown, have shown there is a fair question that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits in that the Children cannot be required to utilize a device to allegedly prevent the spread of an infectious disease absent, inter alia, an order of quarantine issuing against any or all of the Children from the local health department.
Plaintiffs have shown they will suffer irreparable harm if an injunction does not issue, namely the Children are being refused access to their education unless they unwillingly utilize a device to allegedly prevent the spread of an infectious disease even in the absence of a quarantine order against them; and
It is clear from the pleadings that given in this order precludes the local health department from issuing a lawful order of quarantine against any or all of the Children, which could compel them to utilize a device to prevent the spread of an infectious disease. […]
WHEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
While the Children are on school property, the Defendants, are enjoined from requiring any or all of the Children who attend within the school district to utilize any type of device, including a mask, for the purposes of allegedly preventing the spread of an infectious disease unless an order of quarantine has issues against any or all of the Children from the local health department as required by the Illinois State Board of Education.
* This statement from Annie Thompson at the Illinois Attorney General’s office was issued yesterday regarding the previous case. It’ll suffice for this one, too…
We are reviewing the court’s decision. It is disappointing that some people do not support the right of all students, including those who have disabilities or other comorbidities, to safely access education in the classroom. Because we are dealing with a highly transmissible virus, the decision of some students to not wear masks affects not only them, but also the rights and health of every other student, teacher and staff member with whom they interact in a school setting. We remain committed to defending in court the governor’s actions to protect Illinois residents and our students from the spread of COVID-19, and the highly transmissible Delta variant in particular.
The same dark-money group that fueled opposition to the graduated income tax ballot measure Illinois voters rejected last year is helping launch “a statewide grassroots campaign to give voters the power to recall their elected officials.”
Although the group’s organizers aren’t yet revealing details about their campaign, the Illinois Opportunity Project, a conservative tax-exempt organization that does not have to disclose its donors, is joining forces with state Sen. Jason Barickman and state Rep. Mark Batinick, both Republicans, in the effort. Both lawmakers have been outspoken critics of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s handling of the pandemic.
The IOP, which is connected to the conservative Illinois Policy Institute, spent nearly $1 million to successfully oppose the graduated income tax ballot measure. Now we’re wondering how much it would spend to potentially create a recall referendum.
The first step is getting the idea on the ballot.
Plans to kick off its campaign Wednesday were delayed because media attention was focused on Pritzker signing the clean-energy bill. A spokeswoman says the recall effort will be launched next week instead.
All this comes on the heels of California Gov. Gavin Newsom easily beating back a recall effort this week, a signal of the uphill challenge Republicans here would face.
Illinois doesn’t have a recall law on the books and Pritzker is likely to have won a second term before one can be put in place, potentially putting the focus on legislators. […]
Illinois GOP political operative Jon Zahm, who has worked on statewide policy campaigns, says, “I am all for recalls and citizen referendums being easier to access for voters. However, when I was deeply involved in term limits and fair maps, the Democrat-majority Supreme Court threw out the petitions on technical grounds. I support these new efforts to educate voters and fight for change. But it’s a very steep climb.”
1) The press conference wasn’t intended to “launch” any actual recall “effort.” I checked in with Rep. Batinick and asked whether he supports recalling Gov. Pritzker: “Nope,” was his response.
2) Batinick has hardly been an “outspoken critic” of the governor’s mitigation measures. “I’ve supported most of the governor’s mitigations,” he told me today.
3) Yes, we already do have a recall law here. Illinois voters approved a recall amendment to the Illinois Constitution in 2010. It was designed to be almost completely unworkable…
The recall of the Governor may be proposed by a petition signed by a number of electors equal in number to at least 15% of the total votes cast for Governor in the preceding gubernatorial election, with at least 100 signatures from each of at least 25 separate counties. A petition shall have been signed by the petitioning electors not more than 150 days after an affidavit has been filed with the State Board of Elections providing notice of intent to circulate a petition to recall the Governor. The affidavit may be filed no sooner than 6 months after the beginning of the Governor’s term of office. The affidavit shall have been signed by the proponent of the recall petition, at least 20 members of the House of Representatives, and at least 10 members of the Senate, with no more than half of the signatures of members of each chamber from the same established political party.
4) The first step is not getting a recall on the ballot. The media event was designed to highlight HJRCA4, a proposed constitutional amendment that’s stuck in the Rules Committee. Synopsis…
Proposes to amend the Suffrage and Elections Article of the Illinois Constitution. Provides for the recall of all State Executive Branch officers, legislative leaders, the Auditor General, members of the General Assembly, and local government officials. Makes changes to the procedures for the recall of the Governor. Effective upon being declared adopted.
5) The California recall process “sucks,” Batinick told me…
You should never have a system where someone with 49 percent of the vote can be replaced with somebody with 20 percent of the vote. It also should not be used so blatantly for partisan purposes
This proposal, Batinick said via text, would be much better…
What we proposed was to follow the normal replacement process. So if Blagojevich were to be recalled he would’ve been replaced by the lieutenant governor - Quinn.
We have a 60 percent threshold to recall somebody. It needs to be a super majority.
Finally, people only think about recall in terms of governors. We’ve had local officials do their jobs from Florida at townships. When that’s discovered there should be a process to recall those people.
ILL back in the market today with $360Mish sales tax backed Build ILL bonds…trimmed size of tax exempts, raised taxables by 10M…the 10-year in deal landed at 45 basis point spread to AAA with 5% cp, compared to 40 bp spread, 4% cp last month & half of the 89 bp spread in 2018
one more time, in english, which sometimes I forget how to speak…state's 2nd foray into market with remainder of nearly $500M deal fared along same lines as last month & that was good news as the spread to what a top rated borrower pays is at best levels in very very long time.
