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A great idea: Force Barack’s hand - And an explanation

Friday, Sep 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The Sun-Times tried to get one of our two US Senators to answer a simple question about the raging Statehouse battle over ethics reform. The result? Obama’s campaign clammed up…

While Barack Obama left an imprint on two major ethics packages as a state senator, he ducked a plea Thursday to use his influence to safeguard landmark state legislation barring big government contractors from making campaign contributions. […]

“As a presidential candidate, this is small potatoes. But as Illinois’ U.S. senator, this is a place he could come in and quickly clean up some of the damage and serve his state,” said Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, which has pushed for the donation restrictions for three years. […]

“A 30-second phone call to the Illinois Senate president could yield huge dividends to this state,” [Canary] said. […]

Obama’s campaign refused to tell the Sun-Times whether the senator supports either version. And a spokesman ducked questions on whether Obama would speak with Jones, as Canary suggested. […]

“[Obama] encourages the Illinois General Assembly and Gov. Blagojevich to further those reforms by passing strong ethics legislation this session that limits the influence of money in the political process,” [Obama campaign spokesman Justin DeJong] said.

DeJong declined to clarify which “reforms” Obama would like to see carried out in Springfield: the original bill his former good-government ally wants or Blagojevich’s more sweeping approach that some critics believe was designed to kill the whole package entirely. […]

“If he’s the reformer he says he is, why would he not encourage cleaning up his home state, which is one of the most corrupt at this point in the United States?” said Sen. Christine Radogno (R-Lemont). “He has an opportunity to really put some action behind his words, and he won’t do it.

Canary and Radogno are absolutely right.

Gov. Palin said something at the Republican convention about how some had used the cause of reform to further their career, while John McCain had used his career to further the cause of reform. Obama can prove he can walk the walk by intervening in this fight.

Pick up the phone, Barack!

…Adding… Putting Obama on the spot like this is a classic move from the Saul Alinsky playbook. My favorite Alinsky story: A group of people wanted to pry something loose from the local power elite, so they bought a bunch of tickets to the opera (I think it was the opera) and scheduled a bean-eating party beforehand. They got their meeting.

Since Obama is a former community organizer in the Alinsky tradition, he probably used that tactic many times.

It’s pretty similar to this…

State Sen. James Meeks (D-Chicago) on Friday pressured business leaders who have bankrolled Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid to put their money and political muscle behind a more important cause: improving public schools.

Meeks showed up at a breakfast meeting of the Executives’ Club of Chicago—not to confront featured speaker and Chicago 2016 Chairman Pat Ryan, but to enlist Ryan’s help in the battle to correct the school funding disparity between rich and poor districts.

59 Comments

Rod and Sarah, Part 2

Friday, Sep 12, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Before we begin today’s discussion of my latest Sun-Times column, I want to lay down one big rule: This myth promulgated by some of her supporters that Gov. Palin had to stay at home and collect her per diem because she had a difficult pregnancy is not believable on at least a couple of fronts.

First, she was in Texas a month before her baby was due giving a speech…

The governor’s water broke during the energy conference but she stayed and gave a 30-minute speech before boarding an Alaska Airlines plane home to deliver the baby.

Second, these per diem payments go back at least to March of 2007, long before she was pregnant.

* Also, I’m not the only one who apparently saw the connection between Blagojevich and Palin. The AP ran this story after I submitted my column to the paper yesterday…

A governor who spends a lot of time away from the Capitol, whose family travels at state expense, who is criticized for not showing up at crucial legislative moments — the scrutiny of the travel and work habits of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin sounds familiar in Illinois, where Gov. Rod Blagojevich has faced similar criticism.

* OK, onto the column, with added hyperlinks…

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is now exactly where our own governor wanted to be four years ago.

Before the 2002 gubernatorial election results were even counted, Rod Blagojevich’s friends were touting him as a potential vice presidential nominee in 2004. He was a young, refreshing, telegenic change agent who had ended 26 years of Republican rule. A Midwest populist whose father was a working-class, first-generation American, Blagojevich, like Palin, had a great story to tell and the ability to tell it.

Then, everything fell apart. An obscure African-American state senator got himself nominated for the U.S. Senate in the 2004 Democratic primary, and all of a sudden nobody wanted to talk about Rod Blagojevich.

It’s probably a good thing for the Democrats that Blagojevich’s star faded so fast. The shoddy, even shady, way he ran his office and his numerous character flaws weren’t fully appreciated back then.

Those character flaws and governing style have been on my mind a lot as I’ve watched the spectacular unveiling of Gov. Palin as John McCain’s running mate.

Palin has that same uncanny ability as Blagojevich to cheerily repeat a blatant falsehood over and over. All politicians do this to some degree or another, but these two seem to truly believe their own untruths.

For instance, Palin’s repeated claims to have stopped the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” are just false. Congress stopped that bridge a year before Palin was elected governor. Congress allowed Alaska to keep the $459 million earmarked for the bridge and another, lesser known bridge, and Palin eventually abandoned her campaign pledge to continue the fight. By the way, your tax dollars are still building a $25 million road to that infamous and nonexistent bridge. Why? Because if Palin didn’t build the road she’d have to give the money back to the U.S. taxpayers.

Governors Palin and Blagojevich appear to have the same hypocritical bullying attitude toward their respective Legislatures. Like Blagojevich, Palin has called numerous, rancorous special legislative sessions and often hasn’t bothered to show up for them.

Last fall, Palin’s absence during a special session provoked legislators to don “Where’s Sarah?” buttons. Rod Blagojevich called one of his umpteen special sessions last year and then attended a hockey game in Chicago.

Like Blagojevich, Palin chooses not to live in her state’s governor’s mansion. Both governors fly back and forth to the capital at taxpayers’ expense. But Palin one-ups Blagojevich because she also charges taxpayers thousands of dollars to work from her home.

Palin claimed to have fired the governor’s mansion chef, but the governor kept the woman on the state payroll as a “constituent relations assistant.” Blagojevich claims to have reduced the governor’s office budget, but he really just moved most of those employee payrolls to other state agencies.

Palin’s wars with her Legislature have produced the same horrible relationship with Alaska’s Senate president, a fellow Republican, as Blagojevich has with House Speaker Michael Madigan, a fellow Democrat. Senate President Lyda Green has pronounced Palin unprepared for the vice presidency. Madigan is Blagojevich’s chief critic.

As a result, Gov. Palin is now attempting to sidetrack a legislative investigation into her alleged attempts to have her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state police. Speaker Madigan distributed pro-impeachment talking points earlier this year.

Palin has many strengths that Blagojevich does not possess. But her shocking relish for repeating blatant lies, her eerily familiar battles with her Legislature and political party leaders, and her refusal to spend time at the statehouse while demanding others do so are all giving me an uneasy case of deja vu.

* Further reading: Zorn Webliography: `The Bridge to Nowhere’

101 Comments

Rod and Sarah

Thursday, Sep 11, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Rod Blagojevich just can’t help himself when it comes to Barack Obama. During the Rezko trial, Blagojevich often pointed out to reporters that Rezko also had connections to Obama.

And, now, this…

“I would hope the Democrats wouldn’t say that about a governor,” Blagojevich, a former state legislator and congressman, told O’Dell of criticism that the first-term [Gov. Sarah Palin] lacks experience.

“The reality is, governors every day have to make decisions for better or for worse. That’s part of the job. It’s an executive position. And it’s a position that is like what you’re going to do when you’re president. Legislators, they do different things. They debate and they pass their bills back and forth,” he said.

Oof.

Listen to the full interview by clicking here.

* I’ll have more on this tomorrow…

The time [Gov. Palin has] spent away from the capital and her state-funded travel have come under question.

That’s not unlike Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Palin has been criticized for accepting daily expense reimbursements while living at her Wasilla home. Some lawmakers have said she isn’t in the Capitol enough. And her family often travels at state expense.

Democrat Blagojevich spends little time in Springfield and last year sometimes flew daily round trips between the Capitol and his Chicago home. His state-funded travel has been questioned and tax experts even believe he could owe taxes on some because it’s a personal fringe benefit.

Background here and here.

56 Comments

About that new TV ad…

Wednesday, Sep 10, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* So, back in 2003, state Sen. Barack Obama voted for a bill in commitee that expanded non-mandated sex education classes to far younger students. Previously, sex education was available by state law only to children in grades 6 through 12.

The proposal, sponsored by Sens. Carol Ronen, Maggie Crotty, Susan Garrett and others (but not Obama) passed Sen. Obama’s Health & Human Services Committee on a 7-4 vote.

It was backed by the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the Lake County Health Department, the IL Public Health Association and the IL Champter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others.

* One of the changes, besides the school grade range, was this (all changes underlined)…

All course material and instruction shall be age and developmentally appropriate.

* One of the stated goals of the bill was to make sure that younger children were informed how to avoid sexual predators, and the language on that section of existing law was tightened up (again, proposed additions are underlined)…

Course material and instruction shall teach pupils to not make unwanted physical and verbal sexual advances and how to say no to unwanted sexual advances and shall include information about verbal, physical, and visual sexual harassment, including without limitation nonconsensual sexual advances, nonconsensual physical sexual contact, and rape by an acquaintance. The course material and instruction shall contain methods of preventing sexual assault by an acquaintance, including exercising good judgment and avoiding behavior that impairs one’s judgment.

* The bill came up in Obama’s 2004 campaign against Republican Alan Keyes when Keyes made this point during a candidates debate…

“Well, I had noticed that, in your voting, you had voted, at one point, that sex education should begin in kindergarten, and you justified it by saying that it would be “age-appropriate” sex education.”

* Obama responded to Keyes…

“We have a existing law that mandates sex education in the schools. We want to make sure that it’s medically accurate and age-appropriate.

“Now, I’ll give you an example, because I have a six-year-old daughter and a three-year-old daughter, and one of the things my wife and I talked to our daughter about is the possibility of somebody touching them inappropriately, and what that might mean.

“And that was included specifically in the law, so that kindergarteners are able to exercise some possible protection against abuse, because I have family members as well as friends who suffered abuse at that age. So, that’s the kind of stuff that I was talking about in that piece of legislation.” [Emphasis added]

Keyes was so outrageous on everything else that nobody really bought into his argument.

* Sen. Susan Garrett, one of the co-sponsors, said today that, as she remembers the bill, it never required schools to teach sex education and it allowed an opt-out, both of which are correct.

* This is what Obama told the Daily Herald in 2004…

“‘Nobody’s suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,’” Obama told the Daily Herald. “‘If they ask a teacher ‘where do babies come from,’ that providing information that the fact is that it’s not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.’”

* However, the proposal was certainly controversial. It was never brought to the full Senate for a vote and the Republicans were against it. Even so, former GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney tried to make it an issue, but it never caught fire.

* And, now, it’s become part of the presidential campaign via an ad by Sen. John McCain…

* From the ad…

“Learning about sex before learning to read? Barack Obama. Wrong on education. Wrong for your family.”

* From an AP story…

McCain’s ad is to air in parts of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri and Wisconsin, as well as on the Discovery channel.

* Mclatchy fact checks the ad and pronounces it way off base…

This is a deliberately misleading accusation. It came hours after the Obama campaign released a TV ad critical of McCain’s votes on public education. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did vote for but was not a sponsor of legislation dealing with sex ed for grades K-12.

* Marc Ambinder also jumps in…

But the gap between the implication (Obama has liberal, radical views about sexuality) and the reality in this ad is pretty big and fairly consequential.

* The Obama campaign is furious…

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

* My own take: The bill in question was just too hot to deal with at the time, and remains so today. Too often in Springfield, legislators vote for legislation in committee just because it’s supported by a friend, or a fellow party member, or to advance it along because they support the concept but realize that it needs further work.

Obama has said time and again that he supports the concept of teaching sex ed to kindergartners to help them avoid sexual predators, but that’s not completely what this bill was about. If he wanted to just help kids learn the warning signs, he could’ve sponsored a bill to do only that. This bill went beyond that scope.

For instance, here is some of the proposed language…

Course material and instruction shall present the latest medically factual information regarding both the possible side effects and health benefits of all forms of contraception, including the success and failure rates for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Again, this was all supposed to be age and developmentally appropriate, but the above language had absolutely nothing to do with keeping very young kids safe from sexual predators.

Still, McCain’s TV ad is way, way, way over the top and is terribly misleading, if not downright scandalous. It probably deserves whatever criticism it gets.

41 Comments

Question of the day

Tuesday, Sep 9, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* You may want to click on the pic for a larger version so that you can fully appreciate the look on the governor’s face…

Caption contest!!!

55 Comments

Top 10 reasons for avoiding DC

Tuesday, Sep 9, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller

* A bit of snark this week in my syndicated newspaper column…

On rare occasions somebody will ask me if I’ve ever given any thought to moving up to the “bigtime” political scene in Washington, D.C.

I have a standard reply.

Never.

Here are my top ten reasons…

10) Partisanship can be intense in Illinois, but rarely will you see political followers swoon over gigantic flip-flops from their party leaders here like they have nationally with Barack Obama and John McCain.

Obama says change comes to Washington, not from Washington, but picks a running mate who has been in the U.S. Senate since Richard Nixon was president, and the Democrats cheer wildly. McCain spends months ridiculing Obama’s lack of experience on the national stage, then chooses a veep who was chairing the Wasilla, Alaska PTA six years ago, and the Republicans go gaga. What a pathetic scene.

9) Our last two governors have been even more unpopular than our current president, but at least they haven’t started any wars. At least, not yet. Perhaps I shouldn’t be giving Rod Blagojevich any ideas. I shudder to think what might happen to Indiana or Wisconsin.

8) Arrogance abounds in Illinois politics. But everybody in D.C. from the president all the way down to the janitors on K Street believe they reside at the center of the universe. It’s a terminal illness, and nobody out there is immune. Barack Obama was immediately dismissed by the Beltway crowd because nobody knew who he was. Oops.

The same goes for Gov. Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to some of the harshest press coverage anyone has seen in years. If you don’t regularly attend cocktail parties with the D.C. elite, you are nobody and therefore are not to be respected.

Unlike Washington, D.C., we give people a chance here in Illinois. Rod Blagojevich, an unknown, backbench Congressman vaulted to our state’s highest office without anyone really claiming that he didn’t have the “right” sort of experience.

OK, maybe we made a mistake with that one.

7) A national columnist referred to Bill Clinton as the “first black president” and was taken seriously. Rod Blagojevich called himself Illinois’ first black governor, and was widely ridiculed. We just have more perspective on things.

6) US House: 435 members. U.S. Senate: 100 members. Illinois House and Senate: Only one member who matters in each, the House Speaker and the Senate President. As a reporter, the Statehouse is just much easier to cover than the U.S. Capitol.

5) For security reasons, the American president is practically condemned to living most of his term in the White House. Our governor can live wherever he wants, which, come to think of it, is mostly in a bunker far away from reporters who want to ask him about his various scandals. So, maybe that’s not a great big difference.

4) Illinoisans are far superior to those D.C. folks because we long ago figured out Barack Obama’s eery supernatural powers.

Obama managed to kick an incumbent off the ballot the first time he ran for state Senate, which is about as rare in Chicago as a pro-gun politician. Then, billionaire Blair Hull self-destructed in the 2004 Democratic U.S. Senate primary after allegations surfaced of spousal abuse. Then, Obama’s Republican U.S. Senate opponent Jack Ryan was forced off the ticket after a sex scandal involving the candidate and his own wife.

Then, the state Republicans convinced Maryland resident Alan Keyes to run against Obama, only to discover soon afterwards that Keyes’ daughter was an Anarchist lesbian. Hull, Ryan and Keyes can now barely show their faces in Illinois.

I’m not sure I’d want to be John McCain or Sarah Palin.

3) Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White is a 74 year old man who can do a standing backflip. No kidding. Eat your heart out, Condoleeza Rice!

2) Unlike Vice President Dick Cheney, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn has never shot anyone in the face.

And the Number One reason I prefer covering Illinois to Washington, D.C.: I couldn’t bear to leave my readers at the [insert news outlet name here]!

Have you any additions?

…Adding… Let’s hope Gov. Blagojevich doesn’t get any bright ideas from this story…

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem” allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

Like Blagojevich, Gov. Palin refuses to live in the capital city. Unlike Blagojevich, taxpayers are giving her a per diem to live at home.