Tipping their hand?
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Maybe this guy is way too overconfident that Illinois will cave in to ADM’s demands, or maybe ADM is moving to Chicago no matter what. Tribune…
D. Cameron Findlay, ADM’s recently hired senior vice president and general counsel, paid $2.619 million for a 21st-floor condominium unit in a newly built Lincoln Park tower in Chicago.
Findlay closed on the unit in early September, before the company went public with its announcement that it’s planning to move its headquarters. It has said Chicago is its preferred city, although it’s seeking $24 million in tax incentives and is entertaining offers from other states.
Victoria Podesta, spokeswoman for Decatur-based Archer Daniels Midland insisted that the company has not yet made a decision – even privately – on where it will move its headquarters.
She noted Findlay is a Chicago-area native, but that “the reasons people buy homes are private, and I won’t comment on that.”
“He works out of our corporate office, and he’s prepared to work where he’s needed,” she said.
Not to mention that the condo he bought is worth over twice as much as the company’s $1.2 million annual tax break request.
Sure would be a shame if the company missed out on a sweet state tax break because somebody found a must-have condo in Yuppyville.
/snark.
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Wrong and unmentioned
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Illinois Policy Institute’s “Director of Labor” Paul Kersey has penned an item for the “think tank” entitled “Union bosses silence ObamaCare critiques to pander to Democrat allies”…
Just a couple of weeks ago the AFL-CIO passed a sharp criticism of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as ObamaCare, in a written document at its national convention in Los Angeles. This document was the last of a string of union complaints about the national health insurance law and the way that the Obama administration has implemented it.
But now that Congressional Republicans have started to address union concerns, unions have suddenly shut up. The silence from union lobbyists and activists is not particularly surprising, but it does reveal something about the real priorities of union officials: they’d rather stick to party politics than join forces with the other side to defend their workers. […]
The union establishment is heavily invested in the Democratic Party. Illinois union-funded Political Action Committees contributed more than $25 million to candidates between 2002 and 2012, and out of that more than 80 percent went to Democrats, which is fairly typical for union PACs.
* Since he mentioned the Illinois angle, I thought I’d point out that Director of Labor Kersey missed what should’ve been a noteworthy development.
Yesterday, the Illinois AFL-CIO’s Executive Board passed a resolution on the Affordable Care Act…
RESOLVED, that the Illinois AFL-CIO urges President Obama and Congress to undertake immediate changes to the implementation and regulation of the ACA that will help millions of workers already part of effective, efficient health plans to keep the plans they have.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that non-profit multiemployer plans and other self-insured health programs should have access to the ACA’s premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions on behalf of working families, just as for-profit insurance companies will;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, the administration rescind the ACA’s corporate welfare provision, the belly button tax, in which workers and non-profit health plans unfairly subsidize the insurance industry:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the employer responsibility rules should be fixed further by extending employer responsibility requirements to more employers, especially to construction companies with five or more employees as was provided by the Merkley Amendment included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act;
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, we will view any solution that does not fully address the outlined issues as unacceptable and will do everything in our power to protect the Taft-Hartley and other self- insured plans we currently have in place.
A “think tank” should probably think. Just sayin…
* I put “think tank” in quotes because the IL Policy Institute is basically a large lobbying group. From their online lobbying disclosure report…
Notice that the group’s “Director of Labor” is also one of its lobbyists.
And in case you lost count, that’s ten registered Illinois Policy Institute lobbyists who focus on 13 rather broad policy issues.
* And that brings me to a recent Chuck Sweeny column…
Gov. Pat Quinn’s spokesman Abdon Pallasch used to write for the Chicago Sun-Times. I don’t think he was a journalism critic there, but in his new role working for the state, he has become one.
Pallasch, emailing the Register Star Editorial Page Editor Wally Haas from “il.gov” last week, took issue with a column by Scott Reeder that this newspaper ran. Pallasch rebutted points with which the governor’s office disagreed. That’s legitimate.
But Pallasch stumbled into the world of “not fine” when he questioned whether Reeder, who has covered state government for two decades for newspapers, is practicing bonafide journalism because he now works for The Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative policy and research organization.
“The Illinois Policy Institute is not a journalism organization nor is it independent,” Pallasch wrote. He then “informed” us that the group is “a Koch Brothers-linked interest group that refuses to disclose where it gets its $3 million in ‘donations’ a year.”
Pallasch also said “The Charles Koch Institute lists the Illinois Policy Institute as a ‘partner organization’ for its ‘Liberty@Work’ program. The Koch Brothers Institute lists internships at IPI.”
And I say, so what? Uber-liberal billionaire George Soros funds liberal groups, and the libertarian Koch Brothers fund conservative groups. But in this country it has never been any government official’s job to define what’s journalism and what isn’t.
* I wholly agree that it’s not the government’s role to define who is and who isn’t a journalist. Abdon wasn’t really doing that, however. He was just pointing out where he thought Reeder got stuff wrong and where his pay check originated. He has no legal authority to define anyone or anything.
But where Abdon (or Chuck) failed is not mentioning that Scott, who I’ve known for many years and always liked and respected, now works directly for a Statehouse lobbying outfit.
* So, if your newspaper is OK with running a lobbying outfit’s stuff, that’s cool. But perhaps it should be mentioned?
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Question of the day
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Veto session is less than two weeks away.
Which reminds me, I need to get some suits to the cleaners.
Anyway…
* The Question: Do you think a pension reform bill will be passed by both chambers during the veto session? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
customer survey
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Today’s tweets
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Bill Brady…
Gee, I wonder what Republican gubernatorial candidate in an historic Republican landslide year could’ve prevented such a remap outcome by simply winning like almost everybody else did?
Wait. It’ll come to me. Don’t tell me.
Hmmm…
* Brady also tweeted this pic of him smiling with Joe Walsh…
* Meanwhile, an Illinois Democratic legislator is holding a seminar on shredding paper documents. The wrong message, perhaps?…
* I did not know this…
* Not much impact…
* Same as it ever was…
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Famous last words
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Sun-Times…
At a news conference on Tuesday venture capitalist and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner told reporters it’s irrelevant that he’s never served in state office. Rauner said he believes he can still easily navigate the waters in Springfield.
“This is not rocket science. Springfield is not some complex thing where you need an advanced engineering degree to understand it.”
* If you watch the video clip, you’ll see he continued…
“This is the same process we do in business every day. And we’ll have allies to help us navigate the subtleties of Springfield. It ain’t that hard.”
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More of the same DC crud
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* The Hill…
A liberal group is launching ads targeting vulnerable Republicans in 10 top districts over the shutdown.
The ads, from Americans United for Change, hit the lawmakers for siding with “Tea Party Republicans” to shut down the government and urge viewers to call their congressman and tell him to end the shutdown. […]
Brad Woodhouse, Americans United for Change’s president, said in a statement that the House GOP’s refusal to pass a clean continuing resolution to fund the government was “the act of extortionist Tea Party Republicans, plain and simple.”
* I just don’t think this ad is all that memorable or effective. Watch it…
* But at least those ads are on TV. The Republicans are staying web-based. From a press release…
The National Republican Congressional Committee released a new web video today that calls on Bill Enyart to stop voting against crucial bipartisan legislation that funds critical government services throughout the duration of President Obama’s shutdown. Since the shutdown went into effect, Enyart has voted against funding for our nation’s veterans, low-income women and children, the FDA and the National Institutes of Health.
The White House has been rooting for the shutdown, telling reporters that they are “winning” as Americans suffer. While President Obama and National Democrats play political games, House Republicans have passed these important funding bills without Enyart’s support.
“Bill Enyart has turned his back on women, children, and our nation’s veterans throughout President Obama’s shutdown, and it’s time for him and his liberal allies to stop the partisan games,” said NRCC Communications Director Andrea Bozek. “The House has passed bipartisan bills to help the American people while the shutdown continues, and Enyart has continued to turn a blind eye to those in need of funding.”
* The web video is overly wordy and features a comment by Speaker Boehner, which undoubtedly reduces its effectiveness. Watch…
* More from the NRCC…
“Congressman Bill Enyart is in a real trouble. His votes against funding veterans’ programs and critical funding for women and children are going to haunt him for the next 13 months. Southern Illinois families deserve to know he’s turned his back on them out of loyalty to Nancy Pelosi.” – NRCC Spokeswoman Danielle Varallo
* They tried exactly the same thing last year, painting Democrats as being against liberal causes. It didn’t work. This, however, might resonate because it plays into the overwhelming public disapproval of Congress…
U.S. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) is heading up an effort to shutdown a congressional gym and spa used by U.S. House members during the government shutdown.
Foster is calling it the Shutdown Prioritization Act or SPA, which he says would force U.S. House Speaker John Boehner to remove the exclusive gym and spa from the list of essential congressional services.
“Members of Congress should not enjoy access to their exclusive gym and spa while Capitol police go without pay, children are being turned away from Head Start and veterans are left wondering if their benefits will come in the mail on November 1st,” Foster said in a statement.
A 2011 Slate article described the exclusive gym, saying it included “standard cardio and weight machines, plus a swimming pool, basketball courts, and paddleball courts. There’s also a sauna and a steam room. Its three televisions are typically set to some combination of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and ESPN.” […]
“Not only are Members of Congress still able to access the taxpayer-funded gym, sauna and steam room while tens of thousands of federal employees remain furloughed, janitorial staff are still required to clean and maintain the gym and restock it with towels and other “essential” items,” Foster said.
* Related…
* Democrat Durbin praises Republican Kirk for “stepping up,” backing raising debt limit
* Quinn sends Boehner letter amid threat of more state layoffs
* Shutdown disrupts Head Start programs, threatens to force layoffs
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Watch out for the quiet ones
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Yesterday’s blog post about Illinois House candidate Richard Chapman’s pledge to oppose Sharia Law resulted in quite a bit of mocking in comments. For instance…
The Wing Nut wing of the Republican Party!
* But, in reality, Chapman has been a quiet, moderate, work-a-day mayor of Shorewood…
Ask Mayor Rick Chapman what Shorewood means to him, and he’ll tell you: it’s all about the people.
That was the overarching message of his 2012 State of the Village Address last week-Putting people back to work. Giving people a break on their taxes. Bringing people, and their businesses to Shorewood. Chapman said he was both “proud and lucky” to be offering his tenth of such speeches to the Shorewood community.
“I’ve got a good story to tell,” he said “So it’s easy for me. Shorewood seems to be in good shape.”
Chapman said that 2012-13 continued to be a time of recovery for the village, as it has begun to see a resurgence of sales tax revenue. December 2011 saw the first month sales tax revenues exceeded $300,000 since fiscal year 2007-08.
Tax rebates offered to big box retailers also are coming to an end, and the village is beginning to see more and more tax dollars come in to fund the village coffers, he said.
Additionally, Chapman told the audience there had been no village layoffs since 2009.
“The downturn from 2009-10 caused us to re-think how the village staffs and services its community,” he said. “Through that, we have become more efficient.”
That efficiency-minded government also turned its attention to construction and infrastructure, said Chapman, who praised a 2011 partnership with the City of Joliet to extend a sewage and water system along Black Road. The project, which was cumbersome to commuters, was well worth the struggle, Chapman said, as it resulted in better water service for Shorewood residents and a more comprehensive system for Joliet’s West side. Shorewood loaned Joliet the $14 million for the project, and is being repaid with water service.
* More…
[Chapman] said that he admires the effort that Cross has put in to his work in Springfield on behalf of the residents of the 97th district and wanted to insure that they continue to have a strong advocate in the general assembly.
“We need to maintain that,” he said.
He even raised the village’s tax levy during tough times in 2008.
* So, the lesson here is that you can’t always tell. The person who sent me Chapman’s flier knew Chapman and didn’t originally know if the guy was a Democrat or a Republican. He thought Chapman was just a moderate, reasonably successful and popular local mayor.
* Meanwhile, Chapman’s tea party primary opponent calls himself “The Bat.”
I kid you not. “The Bat.”
Check out his campaign logo…
Republican voters may have a tough choice in that district. An anti-Sharia Law crusader or a caped crusader.
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More like this, please
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Rick Pearson’s story on the unveiling of Bruce Rauner’s new running mate is an absolute must-read. On Rauner’s refusal to say where he stood on the proposed ADM tax break…
While comfortable ripping the governor for a “lack of leadership,” Rauner acknowledged he didn’t know enough about the Decatur-based agribusiness giant’s tax break request to say whether he would approve it. […]
Rauner’s response marked the latest case in which he has declined to state his position on an issue. He repeatedly has refused to express his position on same-sex marriage. He’s even dodged saying whether the state should have a mandatory helmet law after his campaign helped facilitate media coverage as he rode his motorcycle to Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair.
Rauner has become the king of the dodge, so it’s only right that this be shared with voters.
* On Evelyn Sanguinetti, the new LG candidate…
Sanguinetti was an assistant attorney general handling workplace discrimination and wage issues under former Republican Attorney General Jim Ryan. While in the job, she said, “from a distance, though, I saw the corruption. I saw the insider dealings. I saw the special-interest back-scratching. It shocked me.”
But Sanguinetti did not say whether she reported any instances of corruption to her bosses or authorities.
Man, what a great follow-up question that was. My hat’s off to Pearson.
The only question I didn’t see asked was how Rauner’s choice was the “perfect” person to take over as governor should (God forbid) something happen to him. But, nobody has asked that question about any of the running mates so far, so whatever.
And, just to be clear, when I say we need more stories like this, I mean stories on all the candidates, not just Rauner.
* Now, compare Pearson’s piece to the milquetoast Chicago AP report…
“I’m sure a 4-foot-11 Latina with an Italian last name and three small children is certainly not what the career politicians out in Springfield expected,” she told reporters in downtown Chicago. “My journey has not been the usual journey. It certainly hasn’t been typical, but I can tell you this: It’s been very American.”
The daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Ecuador was born in Florida and studied music at Florida International University. She works at a private downtown Chicago firm and teaches at The John Marshall Law School, where she earned a degree in 1998.
“She has the tenacity, the guts to take on the special interest groups in Springfield,” Rauner said.
* Unlike Pearson, the Sun-Times zoomed out, but it was still a decent piece…
Judging by their running-mate picks, the four Illinois Republican candidates for governor recognize their party needs an image makeover.
While there are four white males competing in the Republican primary, each has chosen either a woman or a minority as his choice for lieutenant governor in the GOP quest to take control of the governor’s mansion. […]
Republicans nationally are aware they suffer from an image problem, namely that their proverbial tent is too small. In last year’s general election, Democrats won the majority of women and minority voters — particularly Hispanics and African Americans.
The trends were no different in Illinois, said Dick Simpson, professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“There is no fundamental difference,” Simpson said. “They’re seen as a white-only party. They’ve been losing the women’s vote in Illinois just like in the nation. They’ve particularly lost the Latino vote. The women’s vote has been going to the Democrats for some time.”
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Yep, the estimates are way off base
Wednesday, Oct 9, 2013 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Yesterday, we talked a bit about the Illinois Department of Corrections’ rather large cost estimate of a bill proposing mandatory minimum sentencing for repeat gun possession violators. The Sun-Times looks at the other side…
(T)he University of Chicago Crime Lab released a report Tuesday saying the cost of housing those additional inmates is dwarfed by the “social costs” of the crimes they commit when they’re not locked up.
The crime lab studied a group of people placed on probation in Chicago for aggravated gun possession in 2011.
More than 60 percent were re-arrested for a crime within a year — and seven percent for a violent crime.
The lab concluded the social costs of those crimes were five times higher than the costs of housing them in prison.
* That’s not all the study found…
We believe that [the Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council’]s very careful analysis of the potential costs of the proposed bill is almost surely an over-estimate of the actual realized costs from enacting the law.
The reason we believe SPAC’s estimates over-state the likely costs of the policy is because of their implicit assumption that the increased certainty of punishment for UUW that results from the law would not deter any illegal gun carrying behavior. We cannot determine at present the exact amount by which the SPAC analysis will overstate the actual realized costs, because we cannot currently know by exactly how much UUW will be deterred. But the size of the deterrent effect on UUW could be quite large.
An increase in the certainty of punishment for UUW in Pittsburgh was found to reduce shots fired reports by 34 percent and hospital-treated assault gunshot injuries by fully 71 percent (Cohen and Ludwig, 2003). Zimring (2011) shows that as New York City policies changed in the direction of increasing the chances that UUW would result in arrest, and changed court practices to increase consistency of punishment for UUW cases, gun violence fell alongside reductions in total prison commitments.
Put differently, as a logical matter if the deterrent effect of the law change on illegal gun carrying were large enough the prison costs of the new policy could in principle even be negative – that is, reduce DOC costs.
* More…
Over 63% of these [Aggravated] UUW probationers are re-arrested for some crime within 12 months, with 7% re-arrested for a violent crime specifically. We estimate the average social cost of crime committed by this population of UUW probationers per year to equal $115,602, more than 5 times the estimated DOC cost of incarceration per person per year.
Our estimates, if they are correct, imply that the additional 6,083 person-years of detention time generated by the new mandatory minimum law would avert over 3,800 crimes, including over 400 violent crimes, through “incapacitation” alone. (Incapacitation is the mechanical crime-reducing effect that arises because people in detention are physically prevented from committing crimes against the general public). The total social cost of crime averted would equal over $700,000,000, or more than 5 times SPAC’s upper-bound estimate for the DOC budget costs of implementing the new policy. Any deterrent effect of the new law on gun crime (which we believe would be likely based on existing research) would serve to increase the ratio of benefits to costs.
All emphasis added.
* IDOC’s spokesman wanted me to tell you this…
Regarding the suggestion that IDOC’s numbers on the impact of mandatory minimums are inaccurate: we utilized current admission numbers for the legislative scenario, so there was no double-counting. We did not create large portions of the total projected increase by re-counting and including prisoners who are already incarcerated.
Please note the increase comes via mandatory minimums plus 85% Truth-in-Sentencing. Utilizing both structured sentencing routes will up the ante considerably. The impact is based primarily on longer prison terms as both mandatory minimums and 85% Truth-in-Sentencing take effect. The prison population would simply grow because of far fewer prison exits,
Also unmentioned was that the Sentence Policy Advisory Council (SPAC) and Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) came up with a $900 million impact–and they started the analysis three years prior to IDOC’s. Had they projected further out, they would have been even closer to or surpassed the $963M which IDOC calculated in operating and construction costs. Thank you.
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* State Sen. Jim Oberweis told Illinois Review he’s leaning heavily toward running for US Senate against Dick Durbin…
(T)he state senator (and former statewide candidate) told us he is “90% in” when it comes to actually making the run. He said he would make a final decision about the GOP Primary race as early as next week.
The national Democrats will almost undoubtedly try their best to tee off on Oberweis (who has a habit of engaging his mouth before his political brain) and make him a symbol for the GOP the same way they did with Todd Akin in Missouri (and others) last year.
A disastrous Oberweis campaign is about the only way I could see Judy Baar Topinka losing her reelection bid. In 2010, the Republicans had a pro-choice, pro gay rights, pro gun control moderate (Mark Kirk) at the top of the ballot. It helped the rest of the ticket. I don’t see Oberweis helping all that much except for maybe firing up the base, but the GOP base is always fired up about something.
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