* Republican attorney general Erika Harold has a new TV ad. I’m told this is a significant buy…
I think one of the goals here is to make it as tough as possible to portray her as a crazy right-wing extremist. Also, look closely and you’ll catch a glimpse of the building that houses Madigan & Getzendanner. Nice touch.
In Illinois, politicians have turned corruption into an art form. I’m Erika Harold, and this scheme is one of the worst.
Mike Madigan and Kwame Raoul team up to raise property taxes. In Chicago, Madigan’s business does property tax appeals for the powerful - higher taxes, higher profits. And Kwame Raoul, his top donor gets massive tax breaks from the county while you get higher taxes.
I’m Erika Harold. As Attorney General, I’ll make the politicians pay for their corruption, not you.
I know a lot of you are tired of the MJM stuff, but get used to it because the Republicans are convinced it works, particularly against people who aren’t very well known (as in Sen. Raoul). And because the Madigan issue is being used - and will continue to be - up and down the ticket throughout the campaign, the message will be amplified. So, try to look at this as an average voter.
* The accompanying press release lays out the strategy…
For fourteen years, Kwame Raoul has done Mike Madigan’s bidding in Springfield, serving as his partner in the Illinois Senate. Whether it’s gerrymandering legislative districts, blocking term limits, pushing unbalanced budgets, skipping pension payments, or hiking income, sales, and property taxes, Raoul has been with Madigan and his agenda every step of the way.
One of Kwame Raoul’s biggest offenses is our state’s broken property tax system. Rather than reforming the system to protect homeowners, Raoul literally teamed up with Madigan and attempted to push property tax hikes on homeowners in Chicago.
Meanwhile, Madigan’s law firm continued to rake in millions by appealing property taxes for the wealthy, and one of Raoul’s top donors received million-dollar reductions in property taxes, leaving Illinois families with the bill. It’s a broken system the Chicago Tribune said “pits rich against poor” and rewards politically-connected lawyers like Madigan, but Kwame Raoul has done nothing but make the problem worse.
Erika Harold will fight to reform our state’s broken property tax system and unlike Kwame Raoul, Erika won’t cozy up to politicians like Mike Madigan who profit off the system - she will hold them accountable.
Now, with all that in mind…
* The Question: Your rating of this ad?
*** UPDATE *** Raoul campaign…
“Erika Harold doesn’t want voters to know what she believes in, so she’s lashing out to distract from her extreme record in her first, negative television ad,” said Raoul communications director Aviva Bowen. “She doesn’t want voters to know that she would make abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest. Or that she would take health care away from thousands of Illinois families and children born with preexisting conditions. Erika Harold even said she would put a foster child with known child abusers instead of loving gay parents. At a time when the Trump administration is attacking our most fundamental rights with unrelenting force, the role of attorney general has never been more important. Voters won’t believe what Erika Harold believes, but they deserve to know it.”
This year’s Coal & Mining Expo opened Wednesday at the Marion Cultural and Civic Center.
A meeting of the minds was highlighted by the presence of four CEOs from the nation’s top coal companies — Alliance Coal, Knight Hawk Coal, Peabody Energy and Prairie State Energy — and was bookended by political stumping from the state’s top coal supporters and political hopefuls this fall.
Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, was the first to take the stage and said unlike others in Washington, “we love coal,” he said of the other Republicans on stage with him. […]
Speaking next was Erika Harold, the Republican nominee for Illinois attorney general. She told those in attendance that the last thing Illinois needed was another attorney general who capitulates to environmentalist groups.
With all of the challenges that Illinois faces, the last thing that Illinois needs is another attorney general who will do the bidding of the environmentalist activist groups.
For the first time in 16 years, the Attorney General’s seat will be an open seat, and that’s because Lisa Madigan, who severed as Attorney General for the past four terms, dropped out of the race a month after I announced my candidacy. This provides the state with a much-needed opportunity to move the Attorney General’s office in a new direction.
Lisa Madigan often used this office in activist political ways, targeting industries such as the coal industry, on the basis of her own personal views as opposed to simply following the law. Whether it was joining with other states attorneys general in lawsuits that targeted the coal industry, or working to enact rules that unduly burdened the coal industry, Attorney General Madigan has used her office to pick winners and losers in the energy industry as opposed to advocating for a balanced and fair playing field for everyone.
My opponent, state Sen. Kwame Raoul, would be more of the same. He’s from Chicago, was appointed to President Obama’s former state senate seat, and is strongly backed by Mike Madigan and the Cook County Democratic machine. And as a state Senator, he’s championed legislation that would hurt the coal industry.
A specific example is Senate Bill 3005, which he sponsored this past legislative session. SB3005 would have given legal standing to any person, regardless of whether or not they lived in Illinois, to use Illinois courts to challenge the decisions of Illinois state agencies. So if a mining company followed the procedures to obtain a permit, and state agencies found that the permit should be granted, SB3005 would have allowed a political activist from California or New York to have legal standing to come into an Illinois court to challenge the state agency’s decision and to try to block the permit from being granted.
This unfettered expansion of standing would exacerbate Illinois’ already overly litigious environment. It would hurt job creation by driving up the cost of business in Illinois. And it would harm industries like the coal industry that simply want a predictable and consistent and fair playing field.
Unsurprisingly, environmental activist groups strongly backed Sen. Raoul’s bill. In fact, the Illinois Environmental Council took credit for it as being their initiative in the first place.
With all of the challenges that Illinois faces, the last thing that Illinois needs is another attorney general who will do the bidding of the environmentalist activist groups. As attorney general I will follow the law, I will enforce the law, I will refrain from picking winners and losers. And I will advocate for a fair playing field. I will also listen more and be willing to constructively engage with groups to be able to understand their industry and to see how Illinois’ regulatory environment may be inhibiting economic growth. […]
The coal industry is an extremely important one in Illinois, and you deserve an Attorney General who understands that. And you deserve an attorney general who will not use the office’s vast powers to try to destroy coal as an industry. And I will be that attorney general.
Thank you for what you do to support jobs in Illinois, to create energy options for consumers and to sustain a way of life for generations of mining families now and the years to come. Thanks so much for having me.
…Adding… A clever comment…
This is a rich vein that I expect Raoul to mine to great effect. I’d start with a map of Chicago overlaid with rates of childhood asthma and simply take it from there.
*** UPDATE *** From Jen Walling, the executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council…
Erika Harold’s misreading of SB3005 is concerning.
Far from allowing out of state plaintiffs to challenge permits, SB3005 would allow only those adversely affected by a project to challenge a permit. As I hope any candidate for attorney general would understand after researching the issue, “adversely affected” is a term well-established by case law to refer only to those who can demonstrate injury in fact caused by a project. Constrained by this precedence, standing could not possibly be extended to a resident living in California or New York, as Harold mistakenly claims.
The standing provisions contemplated by SB3005 are already available under federal and Illinois law on permits related to coal mining or coal power plants, meaning SB3005 would have literally no impact on the coal industry, despite what industry talking points may say.
He’s called him corrupt for years, but Gov. Bruce Rauner on Monday said he “hopes” Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan has been “doing something illegal” and he “hopes he gets prosecuted.” […]
“I do know that Speaker Madigan has a pattern of putting up sham candidates in many elections, not just this one,” Rauner said. “So I hope they get to the truth of it. And frankly, I hope if the speaker, clearly he’s been doing unethical things. I hope he’s been doing something illegal and I hope he gets prosecuted.” […]
Madigan spokesman Steve Brown called the comments “another day of rambling” by Rauner.
“It’s the exit interview Bruce Rauner is conducting as he prepares to leave office after four years of failure,” Brown added. “There’s no unethical conduct. There’s nothing there.”
What do Gov. Bruce Rauner, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and Cicero Town President Larry Dominick all have in common?
They all have been tentatively scheduled for depositions in a federal lawsuit that accuses Mike Madigan of winning elections by recruiting “sham” candidates.
Jason Gonzales claims in the suit that Madigan put up two “sham” candidates with Hispanic names to try to split the Hispanic vote in the March 2016 Democratic primary. Madigan beat Gonzales 65.2 percent to 27.1 percent. The other two primary candidates received a combined 7.8 percent. […]
Madigan’s deposition was scheduled for July 18, but Madigan spokesman Steve Brown on Thursday said the deposition was canceled by Gonzales’ attorney. Brown said it hasn’t yet been re-scheduled.
During a July 5 status hearing, [US District Judge Matthew Kennelly] told lawyers, “I don’t care whether it ends up being 10 depositions or 10,000. The first named defendant in the case [Madigan] is getting his deposition taken.”
The governor, speaking with The State Journal-Register after an event honoring veterans, said the November election “is for all the marbles,” saying his opponent, Pritzker, is “totally aligned under Madigan,” while he and statewide Republican candidates stand for lower taxes, jobs and term limits. […]
When asked to be more specific about the alleged corruption Madigan and Pritzker have partaken in, Rauner pointed to Pritzker’s potential offshore holdings and the much-lampooned $230,000 property tax break he received after the removal of toilets from a mansion he owns in Chicago.
“What sort of a person — who inherited billions of dollars and wants to raise the income tax on working families in Illinois — would say, ‘Let’s raise the income tax, but I’m going to keep hiding my billions of inheritance in the Bahamas so I don’t pay my income taxes?’” Rauner said. “What kind of person does that? That’s despicable.”
Rauner continued, “What kind of person inherits billions, buys a mansion in the city of Chicago that’s worth millions of dollars, disconnects the water lines to the toilet so he can claim it as uninhabitable to cut his property tax bill by $230,000? That’s despicable. That’s tax fraud. That puts more tax burden on the working families in Chicago and takes money away from the Chicago schools.”
Not to defend the weird toilet decision, but the house was obviously uninhabited. Pritzker made it legally uninhabitable for tax purposes. I don’t see the “fraud” there. If he was living in the house while paying taxes as if he wasn’t, that, to me, would be fraud. As it stands, it’s just a rich man’s ploy to lower his taxes. Also, lowering one person’s property taxes takes no money away from schools because others have to pick up the slack.
*** UPDATE *** I’m told that Blair Hull, a longtime Democratic Madigan foe and a Rauner contributor, is also being deposed. And…
Asked about being deposed, Rauner says he doesn’t know Jason Gonzales, the plaintiff. Says Madigan “has a pattern of putting up sham candidates in many elections.” https://t.co/TiSDNMEWMq via @suntimes”
* Clarence Page avoids the easy route of angrily venting hyperbolic vitriol about crime and gun violence in his latest column…
But I did find some good news from Gary Slutkin, the University of Illinois at Chicago epidemiologist who founded Cure Violence, formerly known as CeaseFire, an anti-violence program that has been adopted by more than 20 other cities, including New York and Los Angeles.
Last year I wrote about how Slutkin had predicted a rise in violence when the program lost its state funding amid prolonged political gridlock. Unfortunately Slutkin turned out to be right. The only districts that didn’t experience a surge were two that found funding elsewhere.
More than 750 people were killed in Chicago in 2016, the highest total since 1997, and more than 4,300 were wounded by firearms.
Dr. Gary Slutkin, the University of Illinois at Chicago epidemiologist who founded the CeaseFire Illinois violence-reduction program also known as Cure Violence, warned Gov. Bruce Rauner in a March 2015 letter of a probable surge in Chicago shootings if the program’s funding was not restored. […]
After a 2007 interruption in funding by Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, for example, the program shut down 15 sites and shootings spiked. Funding was restored a year later — and violence returned to its previous level.
So, the governor was warned in 2015 and for good reason. Shootings spiked the last time the program’s funding was slashed. And then, just as predicted, they spiked again. This stuff can be measured. (Rahm Emanuel also cut its funding, by the way.)
But after funding was restored this year, Slutkin told me in a telephone interview, gun-related violence in the affected districts “dropped by 30 percent in the first six months of this year.”
Unlike more traditional programs, Cure Violence doesn’t focus on root causes of violence or saving one child at a time. Its “violence interrupters,” some of whom are ex-offenders themselves, focus on individuals who have a beef that can lead to the sort of retaliatory attacks that boil up behind most of the city’s homicide statistics.
Slutkin came up with the idea while working with the World Health Organization to fight AIDS, cholera and tuberculosis epidemics in Africa. Treat violence as if it were a virus? That’s the idea and it works, according to a 2008 Justice Department evaluation and various university studies.
All emphasis added.
* Policing, racism, morality, economic development, lead in water and guns are all issues that we can (and probably should) debate ad infinitum. But there is something in front of our very eyes which is proven to work right now and desperately needs more support. Is it the be-all, end-all? Nope. Don’t be silly. There is no such thing.
But violence interruption programs measurably and consistently work, and yet they are constantly short-changed or even cut altogether. That makes zero sense to me.
Look, if giving the police a cool new weapon was shown to lower violence then I’d bet every cop on the planet would have that weapon ASAP. So, if we absolutely must, then let’s start thinking of violence interruption as a weapon against violence. For the umpteenth time, it’s something we know that actually works to reduce violence. Get on with it, already.
…Adding… The JB Pritzker campaign reached out to point me to a Tribune story that we discussed last week…
He encouraged an injection of funding for on-the-street violence interruption groups in the short term.
“I’m just reminding you that it is that massive defunding that occurred and the unwillingness and, you know, lack of responsibility that this governor has taken for the defunding of our human services that has led to this problem,” Pritzker said.
“This is not a one-day. It’s not like it happened only one time. It’s been happening consistently over the last few years and look at the timeline,” he said. “It’s true that our (increased) violence around the state of Illinois, not just the city of Chicago, has been almost concurrent with the defunding of those services that people rely upon. Those are their connection to civilized society and when they’re gone and they close down, you can’t snap your fingers and put ’em back.”
* Related…
* The Doctor Who Tries to Cure Gun Violence By Treating It Like a Contagious Disease: People act because of the way they were treated by others — i.e., they pick up these behaviors in subconscious ways — and the brain is hardwired to copy other behaviors. Contagion means that something is contagious if it produces more of itself. Flu begets more flu, for example. The same principle is also true for violence, though it’s not true for everything: High blood pressure, for example, doesn’t cause other people to have high blood pressure. With violence, it’s just what we empirically see in nature — the greatest predictor of violence is exposure to a preceding event of violence. We also know there’s an underlying process that causes this to happen: There are neurons on the brain that cause copying, which is the principle way people pick up all kinds of behavior. Violence is a very powerful type of behavior for copying because it’s so electric and emotional that it actually causes even more copying. These are predicable biological processes.
