Gubernatorial hopeful J.B. Pritzker had the most damning take on President Donald Trump, calling him “a racist and a bigot and a xenophobe and a liar.”
* Sen. Daniel Biss touts himself as a math wiz, but one of his papers had to be retracted, which is an exceedingly rare occurrence…
The Sun-Times inquired about some errors made in the Evanston Democrat’s mathematical papers, including an “erratum” — or an error in printing or writing — made to the Annals of Mathematics about a 2003 paper and another “erratum” submitted for a paper he wrote in 2006. Another paper from 2002 was retracted. Some of the errors were noted on Retraction Watch, which tracks scientific errors.
The website in February noted a retraction in a paper Biss wrote in 2002. “Topology and its Applications” wrote that the article was retracted “after receiving a complaint about anomalies.” The editors asked for further reviews “which indicated that the definitions in the paper are ambiguous and most results were false.” The website followed up and said the journal noted the findings were “inaccurate” but “not fraudulent.” […]
Biss’ campaign noted that “in a few cases” some of his papers “didn’t stand up.” But they said “revisions” are part of a normal part of the academic process. A CBS News story from 2015 noted that just 0.02 percent of some three million mathematical papers were retracted, but retractions are not necessarily seen as a bad thing. Instead, many view them as a better option than scientists and mathematicians choosing to let their errors live on in the academic realm.
“Theoretical mathematics is a field built on proposing new ideas that are scrutinized by peers over time, revised and perfected to move understanding forward,” Biss’s campaign said. “Whether it was training at MIT or the University of Chicago, Daniel has had dozens of academic papers reviewed by his peers and published. In a few cases, further research has found that the case posited in the original article didn’t stand up, and he revised his findings.”
* Biss recently got a very detailed question about the issue at an event. Biss had been invited to explain his support for the pension reform bill…
AUDIENCE QUESTION: I have a question about your general candidacy. From what I’ve read, it seems you’ve had two camps in your professional life so far, when you were an academic and now as a politician. And I see, you know, some of your history in both of those having two big blunders. Excuse me, but two big blunders. As far as your academic career, you made some fame and notoriety for yourself by publishing a few papers, and they were put into very good mathematical journals, for which, you know, you were applauded for. But as you know, a Russian mathematician found that the math that was involved in the proofs was fatally flawed, and so you were forced to withdraw those publications from the press. And I imagine that affected, you know, being at the University of Chicago too, your publication record, maybe your tenure track. I don’t know about those details, I’m just speculating.
Now at that time then, you also decided to switch courses then and go into politics. And you’re most famous for what you just talked about, and that is the SB1 bill. Because it is the bill you co-sponsored that had the most far-reaching affects to the state of Illinois. But again, a big blunder. A catastrophe really, I would call it, because of course it enraged state employees. I was at Eastern Illinois University. We spent two years raging against that bill that you co-sponsored. We’d go to Springfield, we rallied, we sent postcards, we’d make phone calls. And we got nowhere, of course it was passed like you said, and ultimately the Supreme Court of Illinois deemed it to be illegal. And it went up in flames. So what was the outcome of that? Nothing good. That bill that you co-sponsored disen- not disenfranchised but disappointed so many Democrats, and I know some of them, good Democrats, who said I’m not voting on the Democratic ticket this time around when Quinn went up for governorship. And some of them said they were even going to vote for Rauner, but they were good Democrats otherwise. And Rauner won by a sliver, and I think it’s a fair statement that some have proposed, that a lot of the blame for Rauner coming to power and wrecking the devastation that he’s done must be laid at your feet because of the SB1 bill.
So now you want us to endorse you as governor to fix the mess that you helped create. So my question here, I guess, is why did it take you almost four years to come to the conclusion, from 2013 to now, that it was a mistake? Because I saw a video of you in 2013 being not apologetic and being defensive about that bill when you were being challenged by some retired professors, or teachers rather. And then I met you about a year and a half ago in Mattoon, at an event that the local Democrats put on. And I asked you about the SB after you gave your talk and you were equally defensive and not apologetic. So now I hear – and I hear that you went on Fred Klonsky’s radio show and you were apologetic. So I assume that’s true. And I hear today that yes, you regret having done what you did. But why would it take so long? Excuse me for being cynical, but it happens to coincide when you’re running for governor. So can you calm my fears about your record and what it’s all about?
BISS: Sure. About my academic record, you know I’ve published dozens of papers and it’s very normal in the course of academic life for a subsequent academic to come and poke holes. And I think my academic record was strong, and I’m proud of a lot of the work that I did. The great majority of which, of course, did hold up. And I think that’s a standard part of the push and pull about that. Happy to go into more detail about that if you’re interested, but I think that’s probably not what most of the people here are hoping to hear.
So I’ll say a couple things. The first thing is that I think your timing is a little bit, a little bit off. Certainly for several years now I’ve been giving that spiel, almost identical to what I just said, since long before I was even considering running for governor, much less actually running. I spent a lot of time, a lot of sleepless nights during that effort and after that effort thinking about what that all meant. And I think an important turning point was the supreme court decision that helped contextualize, as the courts are very useful in doing, not just what that narrow piece of legislation itself meant, but what the opportunities the state of Illinois had at the time were. And if you recall, the argument that the attorney general used to defend the bill in the court was exactly this kind of, ‘hey listen, this is rough, this is frustrating, this is hard, but really we had no choice but – and so we had to.’ And that’s the argument that people who supported the bill used, and that’s the argument that the court shot down.
And watching that argument play out, watching both sides make those arguments during the course of the previous year as the litigation happened and seeing the court decision really made a big impact on me. And I don’t want to go through the calendar in a sort of argumentative way, but I remember talking in the summer of 2015 in a way that was almost identical to what I just said to you.
[Rep. Jeanne Ives] said she and other Republicans remember in the 2014 primary when Rauner told them he was personally anti-abortion but had no social agenda, and instead would focus on economics. She later learned that Rauner had privately signed a statement that same year with an abortion rights advocacy group — which didn’t become public until this year — that he supported the public funding of abortion.
“It just feels he was the Manchurian candidate all along and we’re just now figuring it out,” Ives said.
Rauner’s campaign spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski responds: “It was well-known in 2014 that Bruce was pro-choice. Any claim to the contrary is preposterous.”
So, how could Rep. Ives fall for this? You’ll recall that even the late Jack Roeser, who at the time was the state’s most prominent pro-life activist, said during the 2014 campaign that Rauner is a “morally right-to-life guy” even though Rauner had said he was pro-choice.
* One of the answers is right in front of us and it hasn’t been covered much, if at all, by the media. This is what Gov. Rauner said during his HB40 press conference last week…
The passions, the emotions, the sentiments on both sides of these issues are very powerful. I respect them very much as a person.
The moral argument against HB40 is very powerful. In my view, it’s not debatable. It is irrefutable. I respect it very much.
Through my life, I have respected that view and supported candidates for office who are pro-life. And I have voted for and supported public officials and public servants in office who are pro-life.
So, he firmly believes that the moral argument against the legislation he signed into law is “irrefutable.” He’s been saying stuff like that for years and that’s what people like Rep. Ives and Roeser heard, or wanted to hear.
On the other side of this issue, the arguments, the position for women’s rights, women’s equality, women’s health are very powerful. I support them. I personally am pro-choice, I always have been. And I’ve made no qualms about that when I was elected governor. And I have not and never will change my views.
I personally believe that a woman should have, must have the right to decide what goes on in her own body. […]
I also believe that no woman should be forced to make a different decision that another woman would make purely based on her income.
When he talks to pro-life people he emphasizes his belief that life begins at conception. And when he is with pro-choice people he emphasizes his pro-choice beliefs. And that allowed him to get elected, but now this dichotomy has caught up to him.
* The elephant in the room is that Rauner’s money bought silence. His big checkbook convinced people to look the other way or bite their tongues. Terri Koyne, a former county party chairman, penned this for the Illinois Review…
The ILGOP was broke at the time and Rauner promised unlimited funding. This was their opportunity to publicly cast aside the Platform and the party’s conservative base (something that they had been doing for years behind closed doors, by the way).
Long story short – they willingly sold the party to Bruce Rauner.
The ILGOP selling out was bad, but who was the most deceptive during the 2014 election? By far, it was his supporters on the ground who were the most dishonest in all this. I include some of the Tea Party-type groups in this category. These devoted supporters were bullies and almost militant at times. The people I dealt with were telling people that Rauner was “personally pro-life”, and when further questioned on the issue, would quickly follow with “But we shouldn’t be focused on social issues this election anyway. Rauner said he won’t do anything to expand abortions in Illinois, so we need to stay focused on fiscal issues.”
* Rep. Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) referred to Rauner’s signature on HB40 last week as “unconscionable and the ultimate betrayal of trust of the majority of Illinois citizens who oppose the destruction of unborn children at taxpayers’ expense.”
Morrison is one of the most pro-life members in either chamber. This 2014 video has been making the rounds lately. Part of it shows Rep. Morrison explaining why he supported Rauner’s campaign at the time. It’s definitely worth a watch…
The primary’s over. We had four candidates running. I had friends in each one of the four camps, believe it or not. I stayed out of it as far as an endorsement goes, but now Rauner’s our candidate. […]
With the second-highest unemployment rate in Illinois and likely to climb higher if we can’t turn around this economy, funds for crisis pregnancy centers, for right to life groups, for Illinois Family Institute, they dry up. If someone can’t afford to have a roof over their head, they can’t write a check to Dave Smith at IFI. […]
You know the issue, whether it’s marriage, whether it’s right to life, it’s not strictly fought in the legislature. That battle is not fought in the courts, it’s not fought alone in the legislature, it’s not fought alone in the schools.
Three reasons: Partisanship, economics and it’s not solely a legislative issue.
On HB40, Rauner put himself in a trick bag by taking two diametrically opposed positions. He was going to burn somebody.
Rauner decided he could betray the ones who took his money; figured they were bought and paid for, a reasonable assumption. After all, they were complicit in all the damage he caused running up billions in unpaid bills and taking the wrecking ball to social services and higher ed. They sure weren’t looking out for their constituents by supporting Rauner’s actions then.
So now some Republican lawmakers are “outraged?” Then give Rauner his money back. Refuse to take any more from him. Show that your principles outweigh his principal.
