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Question of the day

Monday, Jun 10, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Should Illinois Democrats try to do this, too? Explain your answer…


  32 Comments      


Work your bills, people

Monday, Jun 10, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Press release…

State Representative Adam Niemerg (R-Teutopolis) says two major accidents last Thursday along I-70 should serve as a wake-up call to the need for immediate action to improve safety in construction zones.

On Thursday afternoon there were two crashes. The first crash occurred near mile marker 99 on eastbound I-70 and involved two semis. The accident kept the Interstate shut down until 4:10 pm. The second crash involved four semis and occurred on westbound I-70 near mile marker 105. One person was hospitalized due to injuries in the crash. The Interstate was shut down until approximately 8:30 pm.

“Last year, I sent a letter to the Governor and the Illinois Department of Transportation to urge them to take immediate action to make these construction zones safer,” Niemerg said. “While some improvements have been made my office is still getting calls. We cannot have semi’s blocking traffic in small communities for hours on end, especially during summer when kids are on bikes and local communities have outdoor events. Interstate traffic needs to stay on the interstate.”

Niemerg said he has filed the Construction Zone Safe Detour Act (House Bill 4182) to improve safety in construction zones. The legislation would require GPS service providers to upload the detour and routing information provided by emergency services, Illinois State Police, or the Department of Transportation into its navigation system to properly route users of the GPS service provider’s systems. It also prohibits IDOT from conducting construction on a secondary route or parallel primary highway at the same time as Interstate construction, except in an emergency and it requires IDOT to reimburse local governments for damages caused to roads within the local government’s jurisdiction that arise from any detour around or near a construction zone authorized by the Department.

“The Democratic super majority found time to give themselves a pay raise, but somehow there was not enough time this session to work on improving public safety at construction zones and saving lives,” Niemerg said. “Solving problems like this is why we have a General Assembly in the first place. It is time to pass the Construction Zone Safe Detour Act.”

Rep. Niemerg filed that bill last October, 234 days ago. Niemerg has since picked up exactly zero co-sponsors. He didn’t even bother to sign up his fellow Eastern Bloc members.

If the object is to issue a press release and maybe convince your local news outlets that you’re working hard for the district and that the super-majority is just cold and callous to the people you represent, then by all means carry on.

If you want to pass a House bill to make things better for your community, however, you need 60 House votes, not 1.

And then you need 30 in the Senate.

And then a gubernatorial signature.

Success doesn’t happen by magic. Success takes work.

  15 Comments      


PPIL: More than 90 percent of Carbondale Health Center’s abortion patients are from out of state

Monday, Jun 10, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Planned Parenthood of Illinois…

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, allowing individual states to ban or restrict abortion access, PPIL has seen a 47% increase in overall abortion care patients and an unprecedented number of out-of-state patients traveling from 41 different states making up nearly a quarter (25%) of PPIL’s overall abortion patients (before Dobbs it was 3-5%).

PPIL health centers located near the Illinois border have seen the highest percentage of out-of-state patients with the largest volume of patients traveling from another state coming from Wisconsin and Indiana. However, the largest increase of patients traveling from another state compared to before Dobbs are coming from Tennessee and Kentucky to the PPIL Carbondale Health Center, which opened in December 2023. […]

Since Carbondale opened its doors in December 2023, 75% of their overall patients come from another state, 88% of them come from a state with restricted access to abortion or gender-affirming care. The Carbondale Health Center has become a key access point for abortion care as over 90% of its abortion patients have traveled from 16 different states, with the top 7 being Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Indiana, Arkansas, Alabama, and Missouri. […]

Additionally, 36% of family planning patients have traveled from 18 states, with half of them seeking gender-affirming care. The Carbondale Health Center sees the highest percentage of out-of-state patients seeking gender-affirming care at 20% compared to 5% in other PPIL health centers. […]

Since the Dobbs decision, PPIL has provided over $3.6 million in financial assistance and practical travel support. Before Dobbs PPIL provided around $250 in support per patient, now the average amount is almost $500 spent on a patient in need. PPIL continues to expand its capacity for abortion care as additional states like Indiana, Iowa and Florida enact measures that severely restrict or outright ban abortion.

  6 Comments      


Gotion under fire

Monday, Jun 10, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Wall St. Journal

Leading Chinese battery companies with ties to Ford Motor and Volkswagen should be banned from shipping goods to the U.S., a group of Republican lawmakers said, alleging their supply chains use forced labor.

Contemporary Amperex Technology, the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric cars and a partner to Ford, and Gotion High-Tech, a battery company partially owned by Volkswagen, should be added immediately to an import ban list, the lawmakers said in two letters sent to the Biden administration, which are scheduled to be released publicly on Thursday.

The lawmakers called for Contemporary Amperex, also known as CATL, and Gotion to be added to what is known as the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The letters sent to Department of Homeland Security Undersecretary Robert Silvers came from Rep. John Moolenaar, head of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party; Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee; Sen. Marco Rubio; and others.

The letters from Sen. Rubio, US Rep. Darin LaHood and others are here and here.

* But this goes beyond Gotion. AF

CATL is the world’s biggest electric vehicle-battery maker, involved in the production and development of a range of batteries including cylindrical cells and solid state batteries.

The company has been supplying carmakers like BMW, Ford, Stellantis and Elon Musk-led Tesla.

That’s a huge portion of the industry.

* Reuters

Any allegation that Gotion “uses or is related to forced labor is baseless and absolutely false”, the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters, adding that the selection of partners is based on “strict review mechanisms and evaluation criteria”. […]

CATL said in a statement that the allegations against it were “groundless and completely false”, and that it was in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

Business relations with some suppliers which were cited, it said, “ceased long ago”.

* Pritzker spokesperson Alex Gough…

We fully trust the federal government’s review of the company and as a result, an industry leader with numerous breakthroughs in battery technology now calls our state home. We are proud to cement our status as a leader in the EV industry by bringing $2 billion in investment and 2,600 jobs to Illinois.

* Jeanne Ives is jumping in, appearing on WLS Radio to attack Gotion and releasing statements like this…

No Illinois taxpayer should be forced to support a deal with a company using slave labor and is run by a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Where are the Democrats demanding that the $537 million deal be canceled and the $125 million Pritzker already gave them be given back?

  22 Comments      


Bad law takes a turn for the worse (Updated)

Monday, Jun 10, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column

A state law essentially designed to prevent Republicans from appointing legislative candidates to the ballot after the March primary was ruled unconstitutional by a Sangamon County judge last week, but her ruling only applied to the 14 Republican plaintiffs in the case who are running for the Illinois House and Senate.

The law prohibited local party slating of legislative candidates when no candidate had run in the primary. But, as Circuit Judge Gail Noll noted, the bill was passed and signed into law after the 75-day post-primary candidate slating process had already begun. The timing, Noll declared, imposed a “severe restriction on the right to vote,” based on an earlier Illinois Supreme Court precedent. The General Assembly could have passed a bill to stop the practice in future elections, but not in the middle of the process.

A total of 15 Republicans were slated to the ballot and turned in petitions after Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill into law.

Another GOP candidate, Jay Keeven, filed the day before Pritzker signed the legislation. Keeven was widely seen as the target of the law because he is running against Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville. Stuart represents a somewhat swingy district, but she outperformed every statewide Democrat on the ballot in 2022. No statewide Democrat lost the district, but some came close, losing by a fraction of a point (Kwame Raoul and Michael Frerichs). The district is one of the few pickup opportunities the Republicans have this fall.

Another Republican House candidate, Timothy Szymankowski, was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, so the ruling does not yet apply to him. Szymankowski filed to run against Rep. Natalie Manley, D-Joliet.

The law is blatantly unfair and a prime example of super-majority Democratic Party overreach. But it’s extremely unlikely that any of the plaintiffs have even a tiny shot of winning. Pritzker defeated Darren Bailey in the 14 districts covered by the ruling by an average of 47 percentage points.

Most if not all of these candidates were apparently recruited by the Illinois Policy Institute. And the IPI-affiliated Liberty Justice Center filed the lawsuit.

Let’s go back to Republican House candidate Keeven, who was believed to be the target of the law.

“I got my petition filed before the Senate passed that bill and the governor signed it, so I am on the ballot,” Keeven confidently told the Alton Telegraph last month, not long after Pritzker signed SB 2412 into law.

The House Republicans were also convinced that Keeven’s candidacy would be safe after the law took effect. They had recruited Keeven, a former Edwardsville police chief, to challenge Stuart. He was not part of the Liberty Justice Center’s successful lawsuit, but few thought Keeven would need that protection.

However, Matt Dietrich, a spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Elections, told me Keeven could very well be tossed off the ballot when the board meets next month.

Since Keeven wasn’t a plaintiff, Dietrich said, “he’s not going to get the protection if this order stands up,” on appeal. “Keeven could still be objected to based on the new law, and our board could say, ‘OK, it’s the law.’”

But Keeven filed the day before the law took effect, I pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dietrich said.

But Keeven got in before the law took effect, I again said.

“Yeah, but what does the law say?” he asked. “The law says no one is eligible for the 2024 ballot for the General Assembly unless there was a primary candidate from that party.”

Oh.

He’s right: “However, if there was no candidate for the nomination of the party in the primary,” the new law says about the local slating of legislative candidates, “no candidate of that party for that office may be listed on the ballot at the general election.”

So, the law doesn’t necessarily ban local slating. The statute bans listing those slated candidates on the ballot, which is what the State Board of Elections will decide about Keeven next month. And since Keeven wasn’t part of the lawsuit, he’s not protected from a legal challenge at the board.

If the board tosses Keeven next month, he could always resort to the courts. But Noll’s ruling carries no precedent, so a different judge might possibly rule a different way, unless or until an appellate court steps into the broader case.

Welcome to Illinois.

…Adding… Sara Albrecht at the Liberty Justice Center…

We are not affiliated with the Illinois Policy Center in any way. John Tillman was one of our founders but has left the organization in 2020. We have always been a separate 501c3. The extent of our relationship is that I do serve on the IPI board, but I also serve on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Harris Theater and many others and I don’t think those would be considered affiliates of LJC. We litigate cases in 35 states and while we were founded in Illinois, our state of incorporation is Texas as of December 2023.

Regarding Jay Keeven—he was the first person we asked to join our lawsuit challenging the slating law. We felt that because he had filed before the law was signed, it was important to include him to protect his filing. He declined. When we added a group of candidates after we secured the PI, we went back to Mr. Keeven and asked him once again to join the plaintiff class. He again declined. We invited all the slated candidates to join the suit, many had their own attorneys and declined along with Mr. Keeven.

  23 Comments      


Selected press releases (Live updates)

Monday, Jun 10, 2024 - Posted by Rich Miller

  Comments Off      


« NEWER POSTS PREVIOUS POSTS »
* Reader comments closed for the weekend
* Isabel’s afternoon roundup (Updated)
* Repeal IFPA Now
* Rep. Morgan calls congressional AI proposal 'as dumb as it is risky' (Updated)
* Governor moves some universities to 'no position' on his community college baccalaureate bill
* False alarm - Pritzker will not be traveling to Utah on May 31
* Still not a done deal, but Bears now focusing far more intently on Arlington Heights
* Free clinic warns it can’t replace state health insurance program for undocumented residents
* It’s just a bill
* Stop Credit Card Chaos In Illinois
* Sen. Peters reports good haul in first 72 hours (Updated with Biss $ numbers and comparison to 'influencer')
* Powering Illinois’ Energy And Economic Future
* Open thread
* Isabel’s morning briefing
* SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Supplement to today’s edition
* SUBSCRIBERS ONLY - Today's edition of Capitol Fax (use all CAPS in password)
* Selected press releases (Live updates)
* Live coverage
* Jackson says he didn't formally endorse Robin Kelly
* Yesterday's stories

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