* With the official start of summer upon us, it’s time to recalibrate our campaign handicapping.
* The Question: Predict the outcomes of the races for US Senate and governor and any other statewide races you care to comment on. No need to explain, but it would be nice.
…Adding… Keep in mind, people, that the Green Party is on the ballot for all statewide races. Whitney got 10.4 percent last time around.
Just when Scott Lee Cohen’s push to get on the 2010 gubernatorial ballot seemed that it couldn’t get any weirder, it did.
The latest twist includes a curbside argument over money, an allegation that a woman paid someone to lie to a reporter, and an admission by that woman she gave an inebriated man money for signatures he had collected earlier.
Robert Garrett, 44, of Calumet City told me that not only was he only paid for 17 of the 75 signatures he collected – the rest were deemed illegible or invalid – but that Stephanie had just paid him to lie to me.
“While you were sitting up there talking to that man there, she paid me 20 more dollars,” said Garrett, who appeared to have alcohol on his breath. “Twenty dollars to talk to you to tell you they’re doing good, but they not.”
Yep. They’re close alright. They’ll have that wrapped up any day now. And NBC5’s blogger deserves all the credit for that bit of breaking news.
At a news conference after an appearance at a Chicago elementary school, the governor would not talk specifics about how he will address a state budget approved by lawmakers that left open a $13 billion shortfall.
“We are going to have to make cuts across the board,” Quinn said, before going on to say he hopes to avoid deep cuts to human services, health care, public safety and especially education, which make up the bulk of the state’s budget. […]
When asked where he would cut, Quinn talked about legislative salaries and government travel expenses — reductions that would amount to a tiny fraction of the massive budget gap.
Quinn has often criticized his Republican opponent, Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington, for being vague about how he would balance the budget and for suggesting that across-the-board cuts would be necessary.
“There is a lot at stake in this election. The site will be a one-stop shop for voters to find out the truth about Bill Brady,” Quinn spokeswoman Mica Matsoff said in a statement.
But Brady fired back, saying what’s portrayed on the site can be misleading.
For example, the site takes Brady to task for opposing a specific campaign finance reform proposal, one that Quinn eventually himself vetoed.
“You can’t criticize your opponent when you vetoed the bill,” said Brady spokeswoman Patty Schuh.
Oops.
*** UPDATE *** From the governor’s campaign spokesperson…
I just wanted to be clear on Senator Brady’s comments that there was anything misleading on the site.
The Governor vetoed the campaign finance bill because it didn’t go far enough for ethics reforms (HB 7) - and then Senator Brady voted ‘no” on the updated iteration of the bill that the Governor eventually signed into law (SB 1466). So, that clears up that one, now what about the hundreds of other votes on the site…
I think the people of Illinois would be disturbed to hear Senator Brady call his positions on jobs, economy, public safety, education, women and families and ethics as a “distraction from the real issues.”
Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn [yesterday] predicted lawmakers will return to the Capitol by the end of June to vote on borrowing about $4 billion to make next year’s state worker pension payment, the final piece of a patchwork budget aimed at keeping state government operating until after the November election.
The Senate Dems aren’t so sure that Quinn can do it…
Cullerton spokeswoman Rikeesha Phelon said [yesterday] that it remains to be seen when the Senate will come back to Springfield.
“We need to see evidence that the governor is effectively making the case for pension borrowing - specific evidence being at least two Senate Republican votes,” Phelon said.
That would mean three recalcitrant Democrats. I think there’s really only two. But we’ll see.
The governor also couldn’t resist jabbing the GA…
“The bottom line is the legislators this year and last year I think disappointed me and I think disappointed the people of Illinois by their reluctance to squarely address the fiscal calamity that we’re in,” Quinn said. “This goes for both parties, both houses. I think they should have done a lot better. But having said that, we have to go forward and carry on for the people of Illinois.”
He could’ve done a lot better, too, but we probably won’t hear an admission of that. It would just be too far out of character.
* Rutherford plans aggressive Chicago area campaign: During a stop Tuesday in Decatur, State Sen. Dan Rutherford said he plans to campaign aggressively in the Chicago area in his bid to be the state’s next treasurer.
A Chicago radio station is pulling the plug on former Gov. Rod Blagojevich - at least for now.
Officials with WLS-AM say they’re putting Blagojevich’s Sunday radio show on hiatus until after the Chicago Democrat’s federal corruption trial. WLS says it’s making the move out of respect for the legal process and it will re-evaluate the show’s status after the trial.
WLS has respect for the legal process? Huh. Could’ve fooled me. They let an obvious criminal take over their airwaves every week and spew his nonsense, then fawned all over him on other programs.
Until they lost their freaking minds over there, I would always gladly agree to appear on that station whenever they asked. I grew up listening to WLS. For a kid living in the country, the station seemed at times like my own personal lifeline to the outside world. I was actually giddy the first time I met Bob Sirott and John “Records” Landecker. I wanted so badly to be in radio back then so I could be like those two guys. Now, I’m embarrassed for them.
Rod Blagojevich thought he was elected by the people. He believed, and still believes, it was an adoring and fawning electorate who put him in office as their beloved king. He tells anyone who will listen that their governor was stolen from his loving people.
He never got it. He was a pawn. A dupe. A front. All dressed up as a populist reformer by the boys. For a student of history, Rod Blagojevich is pretty ignorant. He either chose to ignore, or forgot, the Cook County Democratic Party- the boys who elected him to office- was modeled after the Mob. Anton Cermak modeled his monolithic bloc based on the structure of the Capone syndicate.
One of the patterns the mob was known for was using honest appearing front men to run some of their “legitimate” operations. The front man was supposed to do what he was told and keep his mouth shut. Blagojevich ignored that part of the equation.
It’s true that politics here is based on the Outfit structure. What’s not true is that, after leaving Congress, Rod Blagojevich was ever considered a front man for the bad guys. He was the bad guy. He barely spoke to anyone else in power. He tucked himself into a tight little coccoon of criminal sycophants and hatched his goofy plots. And, believe, me, the man had plenty of goofy plots.
Sources with knowledge of the government’s case say prosecutors think Rezko is too risky to put on the stand. Rezko will only take the stand, they say, if the case takes a turn and prosecutors think his testimony is needed.
The sources say prosecutors fear Rezko brings with him much baggage of his own wrongdoing and that he’ll “go off the reservation,” in testimony. His presence as an Obama fund-raiser — and onetime neighbor — may also create a distraction, they say.
Most notably, however, Rezko has publicly disparaged the prosecution.
In 2008, Rezko wrote his then-trial judge, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve, to tell her he was being pressured to lie about Blagojevich and then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.
“They are pressuring me to tell them the ‘wrong’ things that I supposedly know about Gov. Blagojevich and Sen. Obama,” he wrote. “I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the governor or the senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes.”
At the time Rezko wrote the letter, he had never submitted to an interview by the feds nor had he proffered a statement to them. Such a letter can be overcome by the prosecution, but it’s still fodder for the defense and distracts jurors, said defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor Dean Polales.
* The Chicago editorial boards reacted harshly to the latest Mark Kirk controversy. Tribune…
This is not Kirk’s finest moment. It reflects the hubris he shows from time to time. We’d like to hear the congressman acknowledge that the award listed on his bio was inflated, not “misidentified.” We’d like to hear him say he’s sorry. But no.
As someone who was accused of embellishing his credentials as early as 2000, Kirk should know that all such claims can, will and should be checked out. In American politics, military service is like a platinum credit card. […]
Why is it that every time a politician makes an “unintentionally” false claim about his military record he stumbles up — not down — the ladder? Nobody who was a colonel ever says he was a corporal.
In an age of deep distrust of politicians, Kirk’s mistake - appearing to have assumed for himself credit for an award honoring an entire unit he led during the Serbian conflict in the 1990s - is a serious lapse, for which he has not apologized but lashed out at his opponent. […]
When you factor in other questions - how could he so repeatedly get wrong the name of an award for which he was supposedly so proud? - you cannot avoid other, less flattering conclusions.
Recognizing that, Kirk must apologize for having so misled voters - accidentally or otherwise. It is not unusual for business or community leaders caught in similar resume lapses to have to surrender their jobs
This is the first time in Kirk’s long career that he has received the trifecta of newspaper slams on the same day.
But what puzzles us, what makes no sense about this, is that his record — on its own — is admirable. And his opponent Alexi Giannoulias (D), as Kirk points out, never served. So what was he doing? The truth seemed good enough, but apparently wasn’t for Kirk.
That’s bothered me as well. Why embellish a pretty darned stellar record? Why, as the Sun-Times editorial points out, constantly refer to “combat” service when you really just flew over the scene in a plane? Why say you were “deployed,” which is a term of art, when you actually weren’t? Why say you “served in Operation Iraqi Freedom” when, as the Sun-Times again points out, you served “during” the conflict? Greg Sargent follows up on that one…
Kirk actually served stateside in the Navy reserves during the Iraq War. The Kirk campaign, which had previously refused to publicly acknowledge the misrepresentation or respond to repeated requests about it, sent me a statement this morning admitting they corrected the false claim:
“Kirk’s 2005 campaign Web site noted this correctly. Unfortunately, the official Web site listed the word ‘in’ instead of ‘during’ but was corrected in 2005.”
The use of “in” rather than “during” is precisely what Richard Blumenthal claimed as his excuse for misrepresenting his own record, though Blumenthal seems to have misled a bit more frequently.
* As the Tribune notes, Kirk has a hubris problem. Every politician has a hubris problem, and every politician tries to put the best spin on his or her past. But, in this country, fibbing about one’s military record has long been considered wholly dishonorable. As someone who has served with distinction and with honor, Kirk should know better. Is he overcompensating for something? Is this just a personality tick which is no big deal, or is there a deeper problem here? And was even last week’s explanation untrue? Maybe…
After years of wrongly claiming he had been named U.S. Navy intelligence officer of the year, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk says he corrected the error when his staff discovered it.
Turns out, it was the Navy that gave Kirk a heads-up after reporters inquired about the candidate’s military record.
* Today, Kirk dug the hole deeper by sending out a press release touting a statement by his former commanding officer…
Any suggestion that Mark Kirk did not earn or receive the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and the Rufus L. Taylor Intelligence Award is incorrect. I would further add, assertions I’ve seen that Mark Kirk embellished or exaggerated his record are ridiculous - he is one of the finest Naval Officers I have had the honor to work with. His intelligence, leadership skills, and keen understanding of global affairs are an asset that the Navy and, today, the Congress are fortunate to enjoy.
1) From what I’ve seen, nobody has ever claimed that Kirk didn’t earn or receive those awards except Mark Kirk, who claimed he alone received a different award.
2) There is no doubt that Kirk has embellished and exaggerated his record.
Mark Kirk’s clear exaggeration of an award — he did something along the lines of claiming to have been the MVP when his team won a championship — is winning him a real pounding in the local press, where his attempts to bluster through it seem to have failed totally. [Emphasis added.]
* 2d video shows false claim by Ill. candidate: Another video featuring Senate candidate Mark Kirk of Illinois making false claims of being the Navy’s intelligence officer of the year has surfaced as he campaigns for a seat once held by President Obama.
* Considering that Bill Brady has already run TV ads, a website counter-punch ain’t exactly sufficient. But the Democratic Governor’s Association has put up a new site blasting Brady. So, let’s give it a whirl and rate it.
* I know the spring session isn’t actually, completely, totally over yet (then again, maybe it is), but who do you think were the biggest winners and losers? Explain, please.
* The generally accepted rule of thumb when watching campaign coverage, particularly downstate, is that you can expect local newspapers will be far better at it than the local TV stations. But check out how WSIL TV covered GOP lt. governor nominee Jason Plummer’s campaign stop…
The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor visited southern Illinois Friday. Jason Plummer began the morning at a prayer breakfast, then hit the bocce ball court at Herrinfesta Italiana.
The candidate has come under fire recently for refusing to release his tax returns. Jason Plummer is the only candidate running for Lieutenant Governor or Governor who has not released his tax forms. News 3 tried to find out why, but that response never really came. When News 3 asked Plummer if he would release his tax forms, he turned the tables and questioned transparency in the Quinn administration.
“How come he hasn’t asked the members of his own party,” Plummer asked. “How come he hasn’t asked his hand-picked appointees that impact public policy about that issue?”
Plummer attended the morning’s prayer breakfast before making his way to the HerrinFesta Italiana Bocce Complex, where he participated in the Robert A. Ferarri Corporate Division Bocce Tournament. He said he frequently visited Southern Illinois during the Republican primaries, but Friday was his first trip to HerrinFesta.
“This is great. Somebody asked, ‘Have you ever played bocce ball?’ and I said, ‘Nowhere this nice,’” Plummer said. “I’ve played a lot in front yards and back yards, but this is phenomenal.”
Plummer, the 27-year-old from Edwardsville, has thus far refused requests to release his income tax returns, a subject that has become a political right of passage for serious candidates. Here Plummer says it would put his business interests at a “competitive disadvantage,” in that it would involve releasing sensitive information about his family’s company and its investors. Brady trotted out the same objections and then released the data anyway, under pressure to do so, if under overly controlled circumstances.
Look, Plummer is applying to be a heartbeat away from becoming the state’s CEO. And it was the Brady/Plummer campaign crew, after all, that questioned whether Attorney General Lisa Madigan, now first in line of succession with no one occupying the lieutenant governor’s seat, owed it to voters to release her tax data. She did, and her GOP opponent this fall is following suit. What’s good for the goose …
Beyond that, this is just a matter of Illinois voters deserving to know what they might be getting in Plummer. It should be no surprise to anyone who seeks high public office that it comes with some privacy sacrifices. Plummer has virtually no public record to judge. At 27, how much can he have to hide?
* By now, you’ve all heard about the Mark Kirk award controversy. Of everything I read, heard and saw, this video really did it for me. It’s Congressman Mark Kirk during a congressional committee hearing claiming he was the “Navy’s “Intelligence Officer of the Year in 1998.” Listen and watch closely as he emphasizes the award and the exact date, both of which are incorrect…
That video was from March of 2002. He has mentioned the award countless times during his congressional career.
Kirk has made the claim about the award over and over during the years, including to the Sun-Times and the Tribune back when he first ran for Congress. Nowhere did he ever say that a private group awarded the citation (although the Navy does officially nominate recipients), nor that it was his unit which received the award and not himself.
Kirk was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal for his Kosovo service in 1999.
As I told subscribers this morning, notice that the phrase “combat service” has been dropped as well. That’s a big military no-no. Bernie Schoenburg wrote a little about this back in January…
The wording of campaign material obviously needs to be watched carefully, to make sure what is said is the same as what it seems to say.
For example, a flier for U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Highland Park, who is running for the U.S. Senate, says: “A Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve, Mark served over Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“Served over?” What does that mean? ]…]
Kirk, calling from Washington, D.C., Wednesday, said his record referred to flights he was on. The planes were based in Turkey, he said.
“I entered Yugoslavia without a passport in a U.S. Navy aircraft, but didn’t land,” he said. “We were conducting combat operations.” That was in 1999, he said.
Cmdr. Danny Hernandez, the Navy’s assistant chief of information, said for several days last week that he was having trouble finding records to clarify the matter. Then on Friday, he said Kirk, an Appropriations Committee member who co-chairs an electronic warfare working group, had changed his Web site to incorporate a different account of the award.
Isn’t it a little bit weird that the Navy would wait until after Kirk had changed his website to get back to the reporter? I had a similar experience with the Navy months ago when I wrote about Kirk posting on his campaign Twitter page from the War Room (which Kirk has claimed he commanded, but actually doesn’t.) The Navy said they’d get back to me after they took a look into the matter, but never did. I followed up with e-mails and calls, but never heard back.
#1: Giannoulias Provided Story Diminishes Kirk’s Outstanding Service
First, the Giannoulias-provided story diminishes Kirk’s Kosovo service by describing him only as “the intelligence officer for a single squadron at Aviano.” In fact, Kirk took charge of four squadrons and served as the lead officer for a combined intelligence team – the largest EA-6B intelligence shop in the history of naval aviation.
The Washington Post does appear to have made at least a semantics error. From its piece…
A copy of one of these commendations posted on his Web site describes him as the intelligence officer for a single squadron at Aviano and says he used a “keen analysis, far-reaching intelligence-gathering network and concise and complete flight briefings” to supply aviators with updates on the threats to their planes.
The commendation medal certificate does, indeed, say that Kirk was the intel officer for a single squadron, but it goes on to note that Kirk “took charge of four deployed squadron’s intelligence assets.”
Still, for Kirk to, on the one hand, make a huge, repeated error of completely misidentifying his award and his service record and then go after Giannoulias’ campaign for the wording of a WaPo story is beyond chutzpah.
The Tribune then dutifully reported it all as a he said/he said campaign kerfuffle…
The issue of character came to the fore Memorial Day in the U.S. Senate race as Democrat Alexi Giannoulias accused Republican Mark Kirk of embellishing his military record and being a typical Washington insider.
Giannoulias then found himself defending his own lack of military service and previous loans from his family bank to people with ties to organized crime.
“I take full responsibility for this and changed the record once my staff told me [the award] had a different title. But I received this award, the Rufus Taylor Award, as commander of this ad-hoc intelligence unit. I actually served oversees and spent 21 years now in the United States Navy Reserve.
“In this campaign I have a military record and so Alexi Giannoulias’ political goons have now gone through every detail of my military record. He has no military record. He’s never served a day in uniform in his life. As far as I can tell when I wore the uniform of the United States Navy serving in Allied Force, he was wearing a uniform too: of a basketball team in Greece.
“He has also failed to disclose his taxes and his Senate ethics forms. And so while all the other major statewide candidates for Governor and Senator have released their taxes and their ethics forms, the question I have for Alexi Giannoulias is: what are you hiding?”
Usually when a candidate goes way out like that, the other side has hit a nerve.
* As the above quote makes pretty clear, Kirk is also not totally backing down from his previous claims that he was given the award…
#4: Giannoulias Provided Story Suggests Kirk Did Not Earn Award
Fourth, the Giannoulias-provided story inaccurately suggests that Kirk did not personally earn the Rufus Taylor award since it was presented to a unit. In fact, the “unit” that received the award was an ad-hoc intelligence team that Mark Kirk established and ran to support Electronic Attack air combat operations during Kosovo. Kirk was presented with the award at the National Military Intelligence Association’s annual awards banquet.
Leader or not, it was his unit which received the award. So for Kirk to still be taking credit for that requires a whole lot of stones.
* There were lots of harsh reviews about last week’s General Assembly actions on the budget and pension borrowing…
* Watchdog Urges Quinn to Veto State Budget: Laurence Msall, president of the non-partisan Civic Federation, based in Chicago, calls the bill “irresponsible.”
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn says he wants to reduce the salaries of state lawmakers. It’s part of his plan to make cuts to try to balance the state’s $13 billion deficit.
Lawmakers granted Quinn extra powers to make those cuts himself. The governor says reducing salaries is only the beginning of the cuts he’ll be making. […]
Quinn says he also wants to cut travel expenses of state employees. He says he wants to spare health care, education and public safety.
Illinois House Republicans had a universal message for Rep. Bob Biggins (R-Elmhurst) last week: You are officially an outcast.
Rep. Biggins infuriated his fellow Republicans by switching his position and voting for a $3.7 billion borrowing plan supported by Democrats. The money would be used to make the state’s annual pension payment. Without it, the state would have to slash programs like education and human services and health care or delay the payment, which could cost the pension funds tens of billions of dollars in the long term.
The first attempt to pass the borrowing bill failed by one vote, with Republican Reps. Bill Black and Bob Pritchard voting for it. Democratic Reps. David Miller and Jack Franks both voted against the proposal.
Biggins is retiring at the end of this term, and it has been rumored for weeks that he is searching for a state job. Because of that, he has been on a very short list of Republicans who some suspected might be called upon at the last minute to help the Democrats pass a controversial bill. They definitely needed him last week.
The House Republican caucus had taken a firm position against the pension bill, claiming the plan to borrow to make the state’s pension payment was simply “kicking the can down the road.” More important, they believed that Gov. Quinn would be forced to the negotiating table if they could stop the bill, which required a three-fifths majority to pass. They thought they could use the failure of his plan to push him to cut the budget even more, or at least create chaos and make the Democrats look bad.
Immediately after Rep. Miller’s “No” vote caused the pension bill to fail, House Speaker Michael Madigan huddled with Miller, who sits two chairs down from Madigan’s official floor seat. A few minutes into the conversation, Miller made a motion to reconsider the vote and the Republicans then met in private for an hour.
Miller, the Democratic nominee for comptroller, dodged reporters after the vote and sprinted into the governor’s office. Rep. Biggins strolled in later.
Biggins spoke at length by mobile phone with a top Democratic operative after the initial floor vote. He reportedly told the operative that he was thinking about switching his vote and asked the operative for advice.
The operative offered to help Biggins obtain whatever he needed from the Quinn administration, but Biggins reportedly declined, saying there would be time enough for that in the coming weeks, if at all.
The operative then helped Biggins draft a statement to the media, which Biggins wrote down verbatim, explaining that he has had trouble remembering details since his stroke six years ago. Not long afterward, Biggins met with Quinn’s chief of staff to discuss his vote.
Democrats say that Biggins has privately expressed frustration and disappointment with his caucus and his party for weeks. He has been unhappy with what he considers to be an obstructionist minority leader who refuses to cooperate on much of anything, and was also reportedly appalled at conservative state Sen. Bill Brady’s gubernatorial nomination and gaffe prone candidacy.
Meanwhile, the House Republicans began pressuring Rep. Pritchard, who had voted “yes” during the first round. They used a strong call to party loyalty to eventually flip Pritchard the other way. Rep. Black had made it clear he would not switch his vote and held firm throughout.
When Biggins didn’t show up for caucus, the Republicans suspected he was about to flip. They were right. Both he and Miller switched to “Yes” during the second roll call and the bill passed. Miller said he received nothing for his vote, but he has a tough campaign ahead against former GOP state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka and he will need all the help he can get.
Many of Biggins’ colleagues were beside themselves with rage at his vote-switching. Rep. Jim Sacia passed by Biggins while Biggins was speaking to reporters and called him a “two-faced son of a b__.”
Rep. Black told me as many as a dozen House Republicans wanted to vote for the pension bill. They voted against it because of the absolute party position against the proposal.
So, while I can easily sympathize with Republicans who felt blind-sided by a guy who broke his word, it’s mighty tough to feel sorry for anyone who stuck with their party instead of voting their conscience.
Illinois House Speaker and Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan said all the successes of the legislative session were on the backs of the Democrats. Madigan said pension reform, nursing home resident protections and the McCormick Place overhaul, for instance, were fashioned by Democrats, whereas Republicans were “just bystanders.”
“They want to win an election. They’re not real good at winning elections. They want to win an election, so they got a campaign plan for November which says there are lots of problems, not completely solved. Democrats are in the majority, they should’ve done better,” Madigan said.
And that general theme is, in fact, pretty close to what Republicans have in mind.
“I think people are tired of wasteful spending and watching people continue to borrow and spend money they don’t have and not improve the job climate. If those are the issues that are resonating, then those will be the issues of the day,” said House Republican leader Tom Cross said. “I do think people have been paying attention more than they ever have before. I think they will look at the party in charge.”
* Nothing quite typifies the ridiculous snake oil sales pitch of Rod Blagojevich as this…
“When I’m governor again…” said former Gov. Rod Blagojevich during his final talk-radio show before his federal corruption trial starts Thursday.
Blagojevich surely knows he can never be governor again. After removing him from office, the Senate voted to bar him from holding “any public office of this State” ever again. He can’t ever run for governor or any state or local office. He can’t even be appointed. He’s just blowing smoke and being Rod - the total huckster.
He also announced during his Sunday radio program that he would run for office some day. Under the Constitution, he can only run for a federal office in Illinois, and I highly doubt that he could ever win either a congressional seat or the US Senate. He’s done. Washed up. Wiped out. Gone.
Rod Blagojevich lawyer Sam Adam Jr. has long said the best weapon his defense team has is the government’s view of it.
“We’re a joke,” he said. “They think I’m a clown.”
Adam has had great success with Cook County cases, but that infamous schtick of his doesn’t work all that well in a federal courtroom with a no-nonsense judge. The rules are a lot different, which is why defendants in these cases almost never get off. Adam’s father and the rest of the team are more experienced in those matters, so Blagojevich will get a mostly competent defense, but the clown show will almost certainly be reined in.
They’re not yellers, they’re not flashy and they’re loathe to speak in front of cameras (they refused interviews for this piece).
Hailing from Harvard, Stanford and Northwestern, you might call them the Brainy Bunch; they are the buttoned-down opposites of the defense team.
“Here there was an opportunity for them to get side-tracked with all the TV cameras and [Blagojevich] TV interviews and they didn’t do it,” said Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor who now heads Kroll investigations in Chicago. “They haven’t been distracted by the circus.”
They’re also the same trio who put notorious Blagojevich fund-raiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko” behind bars two years ago.
“They came of age in the Rezko trial,” said Patrick Collins, an attorney at Perkins Coie and former federal prosecutor familiar with the team’s work. “That was a high-profile trial, there was a lot at stake.”
The team is likely to use a “no-nonsense, just-the-facts-ma’am” approach, Collins said — a stark contrast to the “shock and awe” of the fiery defense team.
Some observers with knowledge of the government’s case expect it to be presented in mostly chronological fashion, with Monk an early witness. Few have been closer with Blagojevich than Monk, who roomed with the future governor at law school and later served as a groomsman at his wedding. A one-time sports agent, Monk managed Blagojevich’s campaigns as well as the governor’s office for much of the first term.
Government documents indicate that Monk will testify that he, Rezko and another top fundraiser, Christopher Kelly, plotted with Blagojevich to cash in on the governor’s office even before Blagojevich was elected in 2002. They allegedly schemed to extort campaign contributions or kickbacks from people hoping to do business with the state and planned to divvy up money with Blagojevich once he left office. […]
Monk’s testimony may also serve as a bridge to discussion of alleged illegal activity that occurred near the end of Blagojevich’s six years in office. In fall 2008, Blagojevich allegedly was taped discussing extortion schemes with advisers, Monk included. Some of the talk allegedly revolved around how Blagojevich could leverage his power to pick a Senate replacement for Obama to either secure a Cabinet post in the new administration or a lucrative job in the private sector for the governor or his wife, Patti.
“You’re going to see all these little independent storylines that the prosecutors will try to weave into one larger one,” Cramer said. “The tricky part is going to be putting all the pieces together, so the jury starts to see a pattern.”
* Has the Blagojevich PR strategy of showing up everywhere and acting the clown worked? This analysis seems plausible…
[Former federal prosecutor Laurie Levenson] said Blagojevich’s greatest success may have been in showing the world that he’s prone to scattershot thinking.
“It’s just Blagojevich-like, nobody takes me seriously,” Levenson said. “I’m just an odd duck, and I always say over-the-top things. I don’t mean them. I’m a rogue personality, and the statements I’ve made have to be viewed in that context.”
Indeed, several prosecution witnesses who are former Blagojevich aides are expected to testify they often ignored his directives because they knew they would change the next day.
On trial, Blago will ask, ‘What has changed in Springfield since I was impeached?’ A very valid question with very painful answers,” said Serafin. “The irony is a real-life federal jury becomes Quinn’s most important focus group.”
As mentioned above, federal trial rules are strict and tough and the judge has already warned against stuff like that.
That’s thanks in large measure to something called the state Property Tax Assessment Freeze Program, which offers a financial incentive in the form of a break on property taxes to owners of historic homes and homes in designated historic districts across Illinois, to put money into rehabilitating the houses and condos.
The Smiths’ home is among only about 3,200 houses and condos statewide that have been accepted into the tax-freeze program since 1985, state officials say, with most of the homes in Chicago that are in the program clustered in pockets along the lakefront.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens denied a request by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to delay his June 3 corruption trial.
Blagojevich had sought a delay until the high court ruled on unrelated cases challenging the federal honest-services fraud law. The justice’s ruling was announced by the court’s public information office. No written decision was issued.
The “tax-amnesty” bill (SB377) is expected to raise $250 million from tax scofflaws who might otherwise never pay. The deal is that, as long as they pay before Nov. 8, they get out of the usual fines.
The bill now goes to Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn — who, of course, is looking for every dime these days.
The bill passed almost unanimously, with just one “no” vote: Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, the Republican nominee for governor and Quinn’s election opponent in November.
We haven’t yet been able to ask Brady about his opposition. Other opponents have generally complained that the measure rewards people who have failed to pay their taxes, letting them off the hook for fines they should pay, while not offering anything to taxpayers who’ve paid on time.
There may be at least two reasons besides the gubernatorial candidate’s issue stance and the political season for that “No” vote. The first, of course, is the fact that Brady didn’t pay state income taxes in 2008, as well as asking for and receiving a $1,616 refund.
The second is that Brady’s tax returns showed he underpaid his federal income taxes by $137,800 and paid a $4,388 penalty in 2004.
The Illinois Senate on Thursday endorsed a taxpayer-backed retail development that supporters say will bring thousands of jobs to Southern Illinois.
The proposal, approved on a 34-17 vote, would use sales tax receipts to subsidize Swansea developer Bruce Holland’s plans for a “destination development” on 400-acres in Marion.
Senate approval came after a failed bid by officials in Mount Vernon to expand the project to their community. Mount Vernon Mayor Mary Jane Chesley told senators that the proposal will put her community at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to drawing retailers and consumers. […]
“This bill will take away from the City of Mount Vernon,” said state Sen. John Jones, R-Mount Vernon. “I cannot stand by and let the city of Mount Vernon be destroyed.”
Sen. Brady voted for the bill and Gov. Quinn is expected to sign it, which will make this the “Worst Law Ever.”
The bill on Quinn’s desk was written by the coin machine industry’s lobbyists and hustled through the legislature with no input from state regulators or the public. Nothing good ever comes of that.
The Gaming Board’s staff long ago signed off on the bill when approached by gaming lobbyists. The proposal had public hearings in both chambers, which the Gaming Board and gaming opponents attended and testified to.
* As you know, I vowed not to cut my hair or trim my beard until the General Assembly adjourned for the summer. Since the session doesn’t appear to be over, do you think I should ignore my wife, loved ones and friends and keep the promise? Or should I go ahead and cut and trim?
* Voices for Illinois Children has published a graph which shows unemployment rates for Illinois (in blue) and the US (in red) during the deep recession of the early 1980s. Click on the pic for a larger image…
This shows two things:
1) Illinois’ unemployment rate has tracked closely with, but has always hovered above the national rate for decades. Most of us who watch this stuff already know that, but too many people don’t. This has always been a problem here and it’s mainly because we’ve relied so much on manufacturing. During the 1980s, many of those jobs moved to the non-union South. In the 1990s, they went to Mexico. Now, they’re going to China, although a friend of mine is losing his factory job soon because the plant is moving to Mexico.
Here’s a more up-to-date graph of Illinois and US unemployment since January of 2008…
Closely tracked, but always above. This is the way it’s always been here.
2) I’ll let Voices for Illinois Children’s Larry Joseph explain this one…
In January 1983, Illinois was in the depths of a severe recession. Unemployment in the state had reached 12.9 percent, substantially higher than the current rate of 11.5 percent.
Nonetheless, the General Assembly and the Governor instituted a temporary 18-month income tax increase to bolster state revenues. The individual income tax was raised from 2.5 percent to 3 percent and the corporate income tax from 4 percent to 4.8 percent.
During the first quarter of 1983, the state’s unemployment rate was 12.9 percent, up from 8.3 percent in mid-1981. By the third quarter of 1984, after the income tax surcharge had expired, unemployment had fallen to 8.7 percent — a drop of more than 4 percentage points. Over the same period of time, nation-wide unemployment declined from 10.4 percent to 7.4 percent.
There is no indication that the tax increase had an adverse impact on the state’s economy. The recovery in Illinois was shaped primarily by macroeconomic conditions, not by changes in state tax policy. [Emphasis added.]
We need to be far less concerned with our income tax rates and far more concerned with doing things that create jobs. With corporations and individuals spending money on debt reduction rather than expansion or purchasing, the government needs to step in and fill the void. [Hat tip: Progress Illinois]
The unemployment rate in the Chicago metropolitan area continued to improve in April, falling to 10.7 percent from 11.2 percent in March, the Illinois Department of Employment Security reported today.
The rate was up from 9.8 percent in April 2009 and was above year-ago levels in all 12 metropolitan areas for the 35th straight month, but the increases have been consistently smaller in each of the four most recent months, IDES said. The rate was 11.3 percent in February.
The Chicago metropolitan area lost 84,500 jobs last month from a year earlier.
“Four consecutive months of smaller increases in (the unemployment) rate is encouraging because it offers another measure that indicates this national recession might be nearing an end,” IDES Director Maureen O’Donnell said in a statement. “Knowing that unemployment rates look to the past, and knowing that Illinois has added more than 51,000 jobs so far this year, suggests that we are closer to escaping the pressure that the Great Recession has exerted on our local job markets.”
We found your weakness
And it’s right outside your door
*** UPDATE 2 *** Congressman Mike Quigley, the co-chairman of the Congressional Hockey Caucus, faced off with Rep. Patrick Murphy this morning. Rep. Bob Brady of Philadelphia then playfully attacked Quigley and pulled Quigley’s Hawks jersey over his head. Watch…
On what could be the final legislative day until November, Gov. Quinn’s bid to borrow $3.7 billion to pay for state pensions stalled in the Senate, where GOP gubernatorial nominee Bill Brady and fellow Republicans withheld support.
“We’ve been able to stave off more pension borrowing on the backs of our children and grandchildren,” said Brady, of Bloomington.
The governor proposed borrowing for the pension payment over 8 years. That’s hardly an intergenerational debt. However, skipping the pension payment will cost tens of billions of dollars due to lost interest on investments over the next few decades. That truly is intergenerational, and that’s what Brady and his fellows just caused, unless the Senate can find the votes for the borrowing plan. From Kate Grossman, a Sun-Times editorial page editor…
Skipping a pension payment costs much more than borrowing. If the state skips, it could lose at least $20 billion in investment income over 20 years. Borrowing $3.7 billion now would cost about $1 billion.
We urge the Republicans and the two wayward Democrats who don’t support pension borrowing to mull over this simple math for the next two weeks.
[Democratic Sen. Heather Steans] said she may be able to support a smaller borrowing effort if it was part of a budget package that also included more spending cuts and a way to raise revenue, such as an income tax increase.
Yeah. An income tax hike in a year like this. That’ll happen.
* Logrolling isn’t illegal, but it doesn’t appear to have happened on the pension borrowing proposal in the Senate…
[Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno] also said the Quinn administration approached Republicans with “promises of facilities or perks or money for their districts in exchange for votes. It’s unsavory at best or illegal.”
Sen. Larry Bomke, R-Springfield, said previously he had been contacted by Quinn about supporting the borrowing plan. He said nothing was offered.
“No, and I didn’t ask for anything,” Bomke said. “He just asked if I would vote for it. I said, `Governor, why do you need me? You’ve got 37 (Democratic senate) votes.”’
Notice that Bomke didn’t say he was opposed to borrowing, just that the Democrats should do it on their own. The State Journal-Register is fed up with this attitude…
Their political party before their state. Their Republican colleagues before their constituents. The leader of their caucus before the taxpayers.
Those were the choices state Reps. Raymond Poe, R-Springfield, and Rich Brauer, R-Petersburg, made on Tuesday night. Poe and Brauer voted against a plan to borrow $3.7 billion to make the state’s full payment, on time, to the pension systems.
Two Republicans were said to have “broken ranks” because they voted with the Democratic majority to approve the proposal.
Republican state party chairman Pat Brady almost seemed more concerned that Rep. Bob Biggins, R-Elmhurst, missed a Republican caucus meeting than the fact that Biggins was one of only two Republicans who voted for the borrowing plan. State Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, was the other.
Does anyone think it was a coincidence that the two Republicans who voted in favor of the plan aren’t up for re-election?
“Without the borrowing to make the pension payment, the pension payments get in line with everybody else,” Madigan said. “They become a matter for the governor and the comptroller in terms of managing the cash-flow.”
Also, the governor received some extraordinary powers from the General Assembly this week…
But other options may exist. Part of the emergency budget powers granted to Quinn allow him to tap surpluses in special state accounts to cover state spending, though the money must be paid back within 18 months with 1 percent interest.
Quinn already proposed borrowing $1 billion from those accounts, but lawmakers didn’t limit how much he could take so long as it doesn’t impede the cause or effort for which the account was created. The Senate’s budget pointman said upward of $3 billion might be available for the governor’s use.
*Borrow $1.2 billion against future tobacco settlement proceeds.
*Allow Gov. Pat Quinn to hold up to $2 billion of state spending in reserve.
*Allow Quinn to borrow money from restricted state funds.
*Give state until Dec. 31, instead of Aug. 31, to pay bills left over from this year.
*Eliminate cost-of-living pay increases for state lawmakers next year.
*Cut daily expense money for lawmakers from $139 to $111 next year.
*Cut mileage rate paid to lawmakers from 50 cents to 39 cents.
* Related…
* Borrowing out; $6.6 billion deficit still in for Illinois budget
* Madigan: Lawmakers Won’t Return to Springfield Yet: The House approved — but the Senate would not consider — a bill to borrow the money to make pension payments. Madigan says an “emergency budget act” gives Gov. Pat Quinn enough latitude to try to make things work. “We acknowledge that we’re running a deficit, like 47 other states,” says Madigan. “Gov. Quinn is entitled to extraordinary budget powers, the ability to borrow from other funds.”
* Kadner: Miller says his vote just the ‘Right Thing’
*** UPDATE - 1:48 pm *** Quinn’s campaign finally whacks back at Brady on his votes…
A far more serious breach that deserves immediate investigation is Brady’s repeated votes on legislation that served to financially benefit himself and his business interests. Senator Brady can’t possibly claim he didn’t know there was a conflict of interest.
The people of Illinois who pay his salary need to know why Senator Brady repeatedly voted on bills that he knew would promote development projects in which he plainly had a substantial and personal financial interest.”
They couldn’t have done that on Sunday or Monday? Sheesh.
[ *** End of Update *** ]
* As we’ll see in a bit, this isn’t the first time that Bill Brady has demanded that Lisa Madigan investigate Pat Quinn’s fundraising. From a press release…
Gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady is calling for an investigation into Governor Pat Quinn’s acceptance of $75,000 in campaign cash from the Teamsters Union just before his amendatory veto on McCormick Place that would have benefitted the union.
“It’s appears to be another shameful example of pay-to-play politics,” Brady said. “The people of Illinois deserve a thorough investigation.” Brady will ask Attorney General Lisa Madigan to begin the investigation.
I’ve been wondering all week why Gov. Quinn’s campaign has all but ignored an explosive but little-noticed story.
Quinn has been silent about the revelation that his Republican opponent Bill Brady had voted for three different bills that directly helped his struggling real estate company develop a project in Champaign.
The area that Brady was developing had no sewer system, and Champaign was having trouble buying the property easements to lay pipe, so the town asked the General Assembly to give it “quick take” powers that would allow them to seize the land for a fair price.
A very high-level Democrat who is often the target of media investigations told me the other day that he would be sent to prison if he voted to directly benefit his own business.
It’s one thing if, say, a farmer votes for a bill backed by the Illinois Farm Bureau that would help lots of farmers throughout the state.
It’s quite another thing if that same farmer voted for a bill which helped only himself.
This ought to be big news, and it’s full of rich targets for campaign press releases.
“Brady voted to pad his own pockets,” is one hit that springs to mind. The “sewer” stuff writes itself.
The same guy who didn’t pay federal income taxes for two straight years was involved in a project subsidized in part by federal funds. But Quinn’s campaign didn’t take the bait.
He should’ve done something, because now the governor has found himself on the defensive.
Last year right about this time, Quinn got into trouble when it was revealed that a campaign staffer was asking lobbyists to set up fund-raisers. This happened near the scheduled end of the spring legislative session, so all of those lobbyists had bills awaiting the governor’s signature or veto.
The lobbyists leaked the story, and Quinn was forced to apologize. He vowed not to do any more fund-raising until after the session was over.
Apparently, that promise didn’t apply to this year’s spring session.
On Thursday, my buddy Greg Hinz at Crain’s Chicago Business broke the story that the governor had received some very large campaign checks — totaling $75,000 — from the Teamsters Union in late April. At the time, the Teamsters were fighting legislative attempts to change McCormick Place’s union work rules. The work-rule changes remained in the McPier reform bill that passed both chambers, and the Teamsters were furious. They threatened to sue to block the changes.
Not coincidentally, Quinn has been saying that he was worried that the bill would prompt lawsuits.
Quinn eventually decided to slap the bill with an amendatory veto. Buried within the text was a provision that killed off a small McPier union and handed its members to the Teamsters.
Think of it as a consolation prize.
The Legislature voted to override Quinn’s veto Thursday.
Quinn alienated every public employee union in the state last month when he signed a pension reform bill into law. Those unions contribute millions of dollars to campaigns, and they’re not giving him any money now. He couldn’t afford to also alienate the big unions at McPier.
So, it was pretty much a given that his amendatory veto was pure politics. What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that Quinn had already taken a large pile of cash from the Teamsters.
When Quinn got into that fund-raising trouble last year, Brady almost immediately called on Attorney General Lisa Madigan to investigate.
Maybe she ought to take a look at both of them.
And call me paranoid, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s why Quinn has been so strangely silent about his opponent’s serious ethical lapse.
* By the way, the Tribune followed up on Greg Hinz’s piece without any attribution. And notice the lede…
Only a month before Gov. Pat Quinn rewrote legislation to help the Teamsters at the McCormick Place convention center, the labor group gave the Democratic governor $75,000 in political donations, his campaign acknowledged Thursday.
On the southwest fringe of Champaign along Interstate Highway 57 stands the Curtis Road interchange, its ornate limestone overpass and decorative red-brick towers surrounded by acres of open farmland.
You have to read 25 grafs into the piece before you find the Brady bills stuff.
Sure makes you wonder why the two stories are so different.
* Contrast to the last couple of days, the Capitol is quiet today after the Senate adjourned without voting on the pension bonding bill. President Cullerton restated last night that the votes to pass the bill were just not there…
* Leader Cross said he does not consider this session a victory for Republicans given that the pension bonding bill is struggling in the Senate. Have a look…
* Speaker Madigan spoke to reporters after the House adjourned Wednesday. Here are those videos in case they were missed…
* Sen. Brady held his own presser last night and went to work on Gov. Quinn for the McPier amendatory veto and the Democrats for trying to borrow the $3.7 billion pension payment. Reporters also tried to get the Bloomington Republican to reveal more details of where he would cut from the budget. Brady again stressed his belief the state could save a good chunk of change by auditing the Medicaid system. The presser is below in three parts.
* Employment signs pointing up in Illinois, officials say
The department called the trend toward month-to-month declines a significant sign of an improving job market. Through the first four months of the year, the state has added 51,000 jobs compared to the same period of 2009.
Ameren Corp. plans to ask state regulators Friday for another hearing on its request for higher electric and natural-gas delivery rates after the original $130 million proposal was cut to $10 million.
At the same time, the company announced Thursday that it will pass cheaper wholesale electric costs on to Illinois customers June 1.
A typical residential customer who uses 10,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year will save approximately $68, or about 6 percent on their total annual bill for electricity, said Johnson.
In Cook County, drug crimes represented a bigger share of felony cases than any other major county in the United States, according to a federal study released Thursday.
The Justice Department study — a snapshot of 39 counties in May 2006 — found that drug crimes were the most serious charge filed against 57 percent of felony defendants in Cook County.
Also in Cook County, only 9 percent of the felony cases involved violent crimes, the lowest percentage in the United States, according to the study. The percentage of property crimes and public crimes, such as driving under the influence, were in the average range among the 39 counties.
* Daley: ‘Understands’ what prompted home intruder shooting
* Daley blames beach arrests on drinking, texting high schoolers
Bombardier, the Pennsylvania manufacturer of the L cars, has been working on a modification tol improve the brakes, according to the CTA, which said the trains haven’t experienced any brake failures but that, under certain conditions a component was found to be affected by vibrations, whch the transit agency said could, over time result in a loss of braking friction.
Just 500 votes separated CTU President Marilyn Stewart from her toughest challenger in last Friday’s election. More than 19,000 teachers cast ballots. Stewart didn’t get enough votes to avoid a runoff.
Last night, third place finisher Deborah Lynch announced she’s throwing her support behind challenger Karen Lewis. The fourth place finisher has also endorsed Lewis.
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* I went to bed last night with a toothache and woke up with half my face swollen up. Not good. So, I’m gonna get me some medical attention. Barton will put up Morning Shorts and some videos. I’ll be back later.
*** UPDATE *** Strong antibiotics and pain killers were prescribed and now I’m back to work. Sorry for the delay, and particular apologies to subscribers for not publishing something today. I was a little freaked out when I woke up and saw my face was all swollen, and I’m usually not easily freaked.
