Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Friday, Apr 1, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

I’ve just about come to the conclusion that the best training for journalists would be to require them to spend a semester or a summer working at McDonald’s or Wal-Mart, and requiring them to actually survive on what they earn there, including the paying of rent, groceries and health care.

Exactly.

UPDATE: Notice, he’s talking about those in training, not current journos. Please read before you gripe.

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Roskam on a roll

Friday, Apr 1, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Peter Roskam moves closer to being the consensus GOP candidate to replace Henry Hyde.

U.S. Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) is supporting her former adversary, state Sen. Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton), in his race for the 6th Congressional District.

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Buried nuggets

Friday, Apr 1, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Way down at the very end of today’s Tribune story:

Most students, including those in Chicago Public Schools, already face the tougher requirements Blagojevich outlined.

Already, about half of Illinois students must take three years of math to graduate, two-thirds must take two years of science, and three-quarters need four years of English, said State Supt. Randy Dunn.

So, his proposal isn’t so impressive after all.

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Question of the day

Friday, Apr 1, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Do you support the governor’s plan to more than double the number of positions at existing Illinois casinos to fund education? Why or why not?

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Income growth lags here

Friday, Apr 1, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Most of Illinois’ media completely missed a not-so-great story on Illinois’ per capita income growth this week. A Google Mews search came up with only two local stories, and one was a tiny brief in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Illinois ranked 41st in the nation in per capita income growth last year. The national average was 4.7 percent.

California was in the middle of the 2004 pack in terms of growth. Its 4.8 percent expansion gave the state the No. 25 slot. It was a tight group toward the middle. Hawaii was No. 10 at 5.6 percent and Illinois No. 41 at 4.2 percent.

There are a couple of bright sides, however.

…last yearâ€™s growth rate is the highest since 2000, when income soared 6.5 percent.

And this:

For years, Illinoisâ€™ relative wealth has meant an even split with the federal government in funding the joint federal-state healthcare program for the poor. While the federal government has paid the miminum - 50% - of Illinoisâ€™ Medicaid bills for some time, it sometimes kicks in more than 70% of the costs in lower-income states like Alabama, Mississippi and Montana.

But based on new 2004 state-by-state income statistics, a Washington research group projects the feds may finally give Illinois more than 50%.

That extra cash only amounts to about $65 million. Not much in a huge Medicaid budget, but the guv needs every penny he can scrounge.

3 Comments

Boat stuff

Friday, Apr 1, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Here is a pretty good rundown of all the gaming legislation currently pending in the General Assembly.

And here and here are some decent stories that summarize the governor’s gaming expansion proposal.

One big unanswered question for me right now is whether his proposed $300 million increase will pay for his toughened graduation requirements, or whether this is just a partially funded state mandate.

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It begins

Thursday, Mar 31, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

Buried way down in a press release today:

In addition to the $140 million in new funding the Governor proposed in his Fiscal Year 2006 Budget, the Governor is proposing an additional $300 million in new funding for education, by authorizing an increase of positions at Illinoisâ€™ existing riverboat casinos.

Waiting on a callback, but the AP says this:

His plan would allow a total of between 23,000 and 24,000 gambling positions at the casinos â€¦ up from the current 11,000.

The dam has been breached.

4 Comments

Too late

Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

I sent Blogger support a nasty email yesterday demanding to know why their system is so messed up. I received this form response today:

Hi there,

We’ve had to rollback to an earlier build this morning in order to fix some outstanding publishing bugs. This has had stability implications which we are now in the process of addressing.

Further updates will be posted to the Status blog as they become avalable: http://status.blogger.com/

We apologize for the inconvenience of the recent problems and we appreciate your patience.

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

Too late. I’m leaving. More info next week.

6 Comments

Scary stuff

Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

The feds uncovered a disturbing cache of weapons and hate literature in southern Illinois.

Federal agents and prosecutors announced Tuesday the largest seizure of machine guns in the history of Southern Illinois, and 11 people face weapons charges linked to the seized guns.

Agents seized more than 50 machine guns, silencers, 128 destructive devices, 115 improvised explosive devices, gun powder, a spring-loaded booby trap, more than 100 firearms, 19 crates of ammunition and thousands of rounds of ammunition seized from a Madison County home.

They also found a Nazi flag, neo-Nazi literature and scrawled on a wall of a home three words: “Hitler was right!” […]

Several of the guns bore swastikas, as did the wooden crates holding ammunition.

The indictment also included photographs of Randal Brown holding targets which prosecutors said were made in the likeness of blackface images.

Meanwhile, the governor wrings his hands about video games.

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What really happened

Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005 - Posted by Rich Miller

If you want to know what was really going on in the brief but very intense fight between SEIU and AFSCME over the right to represent thousands of childcare workers, read this.

For a while last week, Illinois was home to the kind of union-against-union labor war that America hasnâ€™t seen since American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions used to clobber each other while fighting for new members, in the days before the two federations merged 50 years ago.

Hundreds of organizers from both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) were pounding on doors in rival efforts to persuade the stateâ€™s 48,000 child-care workers to vote to join their respective unions. What made the campaign exceptional, however, was that the SEIU was able to enlist hundreds of additional organizers from other unions to pound the pavement on its behalf. […]

Indeed, the unionsâ€™ interventions only make sense in the context of the civil war now enveloping American labor. The unions that sided with the SEIU in Chicago are the same unions that sided with the SEIU at the AFL-CIO executive-council meeting in Las Vegas earlier this month in its battle against the administration of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Conversely, AFSCME is Sweeneyâ€™s biggest supporter. The relationships among AFSCME and the SEIU and its allies were already strained before AFSCMEâ€™s late-in-the-game decision to contest SEIUâ€™s multiyear campaign for the right to represent the child-care workers. Coming as it did less than three weeks before workers were to start voting, and on the eve of what was clearly going to be a highly contentious executive-council meeting in any event, AFSCMEâ€™s entry to the fray set off fireworks in Vegas, with SEIU President Andy Stern and AFSCME President Gerald McEntee engaging in several shouting matches and with Stern trying to get Sweeney to persuade the federation to call AFSCME off.

This is an excellent article that even delves into a bit of Illinois politics.

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