Hi. This is Ken Dunkin and I’m sure you’ve heard some things about me. But, baby, I’m back.
I’m running as an independent Democrat who will hold Republicans and us Democrats accountable to taxpayers.
Silly name calling does absolutely nothing towards job creation, school funding or stopping crime in our communities.
I want to hear from you. Please go to my website kendunkin2018.com or call me at (312) 414-7106. Help offer legislative solutions. Thank you. I’m Ken Dunkin and I approved this message.
* The Question: Your message for Mr. Dunkin? Snark is heavily encouraged, of course.
…Adding… Silly me, I didn’t even check out Dunkin’s new website. I kid you not, here’s a screen cap of part of his home page…
* Gov. Rauner told the Tribune editorial board today that he was excited to have “personally recruited” Erika Harold into the attorney general’s race because retiring incumbent AG Lisa Madigan, who was “loyal to her father”…
She and I together will transform this state. Having an attorney general who’s not actually undermining me every day, just working for her dad, blocking our initiatives, never defending our administration when we’re taking strong, tough actions. It’s been a nightmare for me not to have an attorney who is working for taxpayers and our administration.
*** UPDATE 1 *** From the Kwame Raoul campaign…
Bruce Rauner already bought one constitutional office and it’s clearer than ever that Illinoisans can’t afford to let him buy another.
We’ve seen this horror movie before. Bruce Rauner and his Comptroller “shook up” Springfield with a 793-day-long budget crisis which led to multiple credit downgrades, the erosion of the state’s safety net and a record bill backlog. Now Bruce Rauner wants a taxpayer-funded legal department to help promote his anti-worker Turnaround Agenda and guard his administration in secrecy.
Illinoisans deserve an Attorney General who will stand up for them AND win on their behalf. Kwame Raoul is the only candidate who has stood toe to toe with Bruce Rauner’s anti-worker agenda and won.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Jesse Ruiz…
Governor Rauner today whined to the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board that Attorney General’s Lisa Madigan’s refusal to do his bidding has been a “nightmare.” Rauner complained about how difficult it is for him to have to deal with an Attorney General who insists on upholding the law and protecting the rights of the people of Illinois.
Rauner’s comments were eerily similar to President Trump’s recently reported complaints about the apparent unwillingness of the “Trump Justice Department” to blindly follow every whim of the White House.
Although he took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution, Rauner clearly fails to understand that the Attorney General is accountable to the people and the Constitution. We need a forceful, independent-minded advocate in the Attorney General’s office - not Bruce Rauner’s hand-picked political stooge.
I am proud of my record of standing up to the powerful. So when I’m elected as Illinois’ next Attorney General, I’ll keep on giving Bruce Rauner nightmares - and I’ll keep on fighting for everyone’s chance to achieve the American Dream.
*** UPDATE 3 *** Former Gov. Pat Quinn…
“The Office of Attorney General must be an independent lawyer for the people of Illinois, not beholden to Bruce Rauner and his ruthless agenda. Attorney General Lisa Madigan has been a strong advocate for Illinois consumers, taxpayers, and workers. Apparently, by doing her job, she’s causing nightmares for Bruce Rauner.”
Following a debate at the Tribune this morning with Governor Rauner, Jeanne Ives just disclosed a $500K contribution from Richard Uihlein.https://t.co/ndggdlwOGc
At the end of December Ives reported $404K cash on hand, including today she has added about $580K since bringing her estimated total to around $1 million.
“This helps level the playing field,” said an Ives spokeswoman. “Because of people like Uihlein, voters now will know there’s a choice in the election.”
Even bigger money would help now, but the spokeswoman said she does not know if more is coming.
Rauner’s campaign had no immediate comment. He lately has been pretty much ignoring Ives to attack Democratic front-runner J.B. Pritzker, releasing a new anti-Pritzker TV ad earlier today.
Uihlein donated at least $2.6 million to Rauner in the 2014 election cycle and gave $2 million in 2016 to Rauner’s hand-picked state comptroller, Leslie Munger, who lost to Democrat Susana Mendoza.
Ives contended Rauner’s signature on legislation that expanded taxpayer-subsidized abortions for women covered by Medicaid and state employee health insurance demonstrated that all the governor accomplished in his first term was a “progressive social agenda.”
“He told us he would veto the bill,” she said. He lied to a cardinal,” she said, a reference to Cardinal Blase Cupich.
Rauner would not say what he told Cupich about the abortion legislation, but called Ives’ allegations “outrageous.”
“There are a lot of politics swirling around the bill,” said Rauner, who repeatedly added that “the simple fact is I support a woman’s right to decide.” The governor said his choice to sign the bill was either to “follow what I believe or do politics.”
* Other highlights…
"That was quite a filibustering screed." - @GovRauner to the often-interrupting @JeanneIves at their @Trib_ed_board joint-appearance where she oddly defended Madigan from being called a crook by Rauner who made the implausible claim he can unseat the speaker. @wlsam890#ilgov
"you don't need legislative authority to propose a balanced budget. He never proposed a balanced budget" Ives says….Rauner counters………"That's false." ……
Listening to the Rep. Jeanne Ives talk about coalition building to get things done.. is the best thing I have heard so far.. Rep. Ives the bridge builder said no one ever. #Twill
Rauner says Madigan "would love nothing more" than Ives to win the GOP primary because "I am the only person at this table who can beat Pritzker in November."
What will be different in second term? Rauner: "Not only will I be able to block the gerrymandering from Madigan this time, but I led the effort to get two lawsuits to SCOTUS. These two lawsuits will transform Illinois."
Rauner: "My first few years in office, I've laid the dramatic change for my second term." Ives: "That is completely untrue." Watch: https://t.co/KI76s2eQNT
And the time he cites as getting over on Madigan, he says he got Ken Dunkin not to come down to Spfld on the arbitration bill. He got voted out in '16, he's back on the ballot now. Your choice, 5th District.
“After manufacturing a 736-day budget crisis, adding billions to our state’s bill backlog, holding school funding hostage, and decimating Illinois’ social safety net, there aren’t many questions that are easy for Bruce Rauner to answer,” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “After today, it’s no surprise Rauner doesn’t want to defend his failed leadership.”
Daniel Biss today released the following statement in response to WCIA-TV’s report detailing how JB Pritzker transferred hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Hyatt Hotel Corporation stock from offshore accounts in the Bahamas to shell companies established in South Dakota and Nevada:
“JB Pritzker has claimed to be the solution, but today’s report detailing his latest tax scandal is more proof that he’s a continuation of the problem.
“JB’s repeated tax schemes don’t just cheat the state — they cheat middle-class and working families who have to make up for his tax evasion with higher taxes and reduced services. JB transferred money from offshore accounts to out-of-state shell companies that were not listed on his Statement of Economic Interest. This report has raised some alarming questions, and now JB Pritzker is asking us to take him at his word that he paid his fair share in taxes while still refusing to release his full tax returns. We should all be offended.
“We can’t trust a billionaire who benefits from the broken system to fix it. And we certainly shouldn’t elect one as the next governor of our state.”
OK, this was part of an interesting turn of events. A WCIA story was posted at 3:58 Friday morning, but was then taken down. Click here for the original, which I saved on my hard drive, and click here for the revised story, which was posted Friday night.
* The initial explanation for why the first story was taken down…
The Pritzker campaign has asked for time to respond to this story. We have decided to temporarily suspend the article until we can include their full response. https://t.co/bqW35mXmEu
An anonymous Twitter account accused @JBPritzker of “financing his campaign by liquidating offshore assets.” The SEC documents we found don’t prove that. They do show Pritzker dumped $220M in stock just as his prospects for a job in @HillaryClinton’s cabinet went up in smoke. https://t.co/BlY2qsXKyn
* The Pritzker campaign, however, still has problems with the revised story…
This “story” connects completely unrelated dates and facts and is a lesson in why regurgitating an anonymous political twitter account is so dangerous. Before taking anonymous information riddled with innuendo and parading it around as news, it would serve the voters to get the facts right first.
Below are excerpts from the story and bullets correcting inaccurate information:
In a series of tweets reminiscent of the now infamous WikiLeaks rollout of hacked DNC emails, the mysterious schemer peddled a web of tax avoidance theories which claim, with scant evidence, that Pritzker began filling his massive campaign war chest by “liquidating offshore assets” and funneling the money through shell companies in Nevada and South Dakota.
* This sale in question only concerns a domestic trust.
* No disbursements from offshore trusts ever went to trust companies in South Dakota or Nevada.
* Money from offshore trusts only goes to charity, and this sale has nothing to do with an offshore trust.
* The documents show the trust being a domestic trust.
SEC filing forms show the shares were cashed out and distributed into the Pritzker Family Foundation, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity. According to tax documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service in 2015, the Pritzker Family Foundation reported it held over $104 million in assets that year.
* This is false. The SEC documents do not show that.
* This sale is from a domestic trust set up in Illinois.
* It doesn’t matter where the trustee or the trust company is located, taxes have to be paid based on where the trust was set up.
* All applicable federal and state (Illinois) taxes were paid as a part of this transaction.
According to insider transaction documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Pritzker began unloading his shares of Hyatt Hotel Corporation stock on August 19th, 2016, less than one month after Julian Assange first published emails damaging to Hillary Clinton on WikiLeaks. At the time, Pritzker was heavily invested in Clinton’s presidential bid, donating over $15 million to Priorities USA Action, the pro-Clinton super PAC then run by current Pritzker campaign manager Anne Caprara.
* The timeline of Hillary Clinton’s campaign has nothing to do with the timing of the sale.
* At the time of the first sale, August 19, there was no indication that Hillary was going to lose the election.
* The Pritzker family has restrictions on when they can sell Hyatt stock. Other Pritzkers sold stock around that time as well.
It was only after the trove of WikiLeaks emails was released, some of which contain fundraising emails and conversations with Pritzker himself, did he begin moving money out of his Hyatt fortune in the Bahamas to establish what would become, ostensibly, a hedge bet against Clinton’s unlikely loss in November. Pritzker personally signed off on the documents that show he used shell companies established in South Dakota and Nevada to complete the multi-million dollar transactions.
* Again, this transaction has nothing to do with the Bahamas. If you look at the linked document it’s from 2010, not 2016.
* The Pritzker family has restrictions on when they can sell Hyatt stock. Other Pritzkers sold stock around that time as well.
* Hillary Clinton’s campaign had nothing to do with the timing of the transaction. Again, everyone thought she was going to win until election day. Even Trump’s campaign thought he was going to lose on election night.
* They’re not shell companies, they’re trustees
* No money from offshore trusts ever went to trust companies in South Dakota or Nevada.
Each of these stock transactions appears to have been conducted legally, but Pritzker’s political rivals will almost certainly raise questions about the timing and the ethics of the maneuvers, the civic duty of would-be public servants to pay taxes, the apparent contradiction between his transactions and his public statements calling on the wealthy to “pay their fair share,” and his pledge on Tuesday night to create a “truly blind trust” that would separate him from conflicts of interest.
* These transactions were done legally. Period.
* Trusts for JB’s benefit paid all applicable taxes on these transactions as Mark reports in the paragraphs previously.
The longtime top watchdog for Illinois’ troubled child-welfare system — who’s been highly critical of the agency’s former director leading up to his resignation amid a corruption scandal last year — is now being replaced by Gov. Bruce Rauner.
Gov. Bruce Rauner announced last week he’s appointing a replacement to Denise Kane, who was the first-ever inspector general for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. […]
Kane’s colleagues in the child welfare system are calling her tenure as “effective,” “fearless,” and “tenacious.”
The change in leadership comes after Kane published what will be her final annual report of DCFS, which included a biting critique of former Director George Sheldon’s leadership. Sheldon resigned last year under the cloud of a corruption investigation by Kane’s office into contracting and hiring. He was also facing questions about the death of 17-month-old Semaj Crosby, whose family had repeatedly been investigated by DCFS before her body was found under a couch in her Joliet home.
In the same report, Kane wrote that around the same time she was investigating Sheldon, DCFS contended she was overstepping her boundaries. […]
When asked if Kane’s biting report played a role in Rauner replacing her as DCFS’ watchdog, Rauner spokeswoman Rachel Bold responded, “It did not.” Kane’s term expired this year, after she served for governors from both parties over five administrations.
* I checked in with Ben Wolf, a top attorney with the Illinois ACLU who has been working on the DCFS problem for years. Wolf is quoted in the WBEZ story saying nice things about former IG Kane, but I was curious what he thought about this new turn of events.
“The more we learn about this decision, the more troubled we are,” Wolf said. Kane had a “record of independence and courage,” but the Rauner administration “replaced her with somebody who appears to be an insider,” Wolf said.
“That’s not the kind of background that we would endorse for an inspector general at this very troubled agency.”
The worry, as I take it, is that the Rauner administration will “solve” some of DCFS’ problems by appointing somebody who won’t be as aggressive.
Wolf went on to point out that Kane’s replacement, Meryl Paniak, had been an ethics officer at DCFS. If she was in that post during DCFS’ recent troubles with its former director’s “contracting practices,” he said, “that would only add to our concerns.”
Paniak was Chief Counsel in the Office of Legislative Affairs at DCFS before being upgraded to IG.
However, in her defense, Paniak has an MSW in social work and served as an attorney for the Cook County Office of the Public Guardian starting way back in 1992.
*** UPDATE *** From Kyle Hillman at the National Association of Social Workers, Illinois Chapter…
I think the timing, regarding the switch at DCFS, should give everyone pause – however, I would caution people from piling on Meryl Paniak. Our work with Paniak has been nothing but professional throughout the years. She is a strong advocate for the children in DCFS with an educational background that could bring a fresh look at oversight. She is hardly a Bruce Rauner insider and ACLU Illinois would be wise to keep their criticism toward the action of Kane’s removal rather than an unfair character hit against someone who has spent her career working to fight for children in state care. At minimum give the appointee an opportunity to prove her independence and professionalism in the job.
As he campaigns for the Democratic governor nomination, Downstate schools administrator Bob Daiber is calling for Illinois to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, saying it’s time to guarantee equality for men and women.
“I am proud of the fact that my staff that works for me is 80 percent female, and I have great relationships,” Daiber said at a late October forum in Chicago. “Because I build my office on one word: respect. And I think that’s what all women want, and that’s what I am all about.”
But records show that Madison County taxpayers paid nearly $500,000 to settle a 2010 lawsuit after a federal jury found Daiber retaliated against a woman by laying her off after she complained she wasn’t being paid as much as a male colleague.
Daiber described the case as an “unfortunate situation,” but denied retaliating against the employee. Daiber said he tried to work with her to find a resolution, and added that he has built a reputation as a fair employer who has worked to help women achieve leadership roles in education and government.
Ouch.
…Adding… According to the Daiber campaign, the county’s insurer paid the settlement.
Today, Citizens for Rauner launched a new TV ad entitled “That’s the One I Would Want.”
Despite Pritzker saying that “no one knew the FBI was investigating the man,” it was widely reported that the FBI was looking into Blagojevich’s corruption well before Pritzker’s fateful conversations with the soon-to-be federal inmate. In this ad, Pritzker can be heard asking Blagojevich to appoint him as State Treasurer, very clearly stating “that’s the one I would want.”
JB Pritzker is just another corrupt insider who is part of the problem. The people of Illinois deserve to know the truth.
Today, JB Pritzker and State Representative Juliana Stratton hosted a panel with DACA recipients to discuss the policy changes needed at the state and federal levels to protect immigrant communities and help families thrive. As JB and Juliana moderated the panel, they learned about the obstacles DACA recipients face pursuing a college education, obtaining work permits, and securing healthcare for their families.
“Illinois should be a welcoming state where everyone is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve,” said JB Pritzker. “But right now, immigrant families across our state are under assault by a racist, bigoted president and his partner in Springfield, Bruce Rauner. We can’t remain silent, we need to listen to immigrant communities and stand together to protect the people of our state. There is no doubt DACA recipients deserve every opportunity to thrive in Illinois and when I’m governor, immigrant families will never have to question if they have a partner and an advocate in Springfield.”
* Today…
On Thursday, February 1, Daniel Biss will kick off a seven day tour visiting colleges across Illinois to meet with voters and share his vision for an Illinois that works for all of us. Daniel has fought in the legislature and on the campaign trail to make higher education accessible to every Illinoisan, including advocating for free in-state tuition at public colleges and universities and introducing, passing, and overriding Bruce Rauner’s veto of the Student Loan Bill of Rights.
“Students have so much at stake in this election,” said Daniel Biss. “Under Bruce Rauner’s administration, students have lost their MAP grants and seen academic programs cut while being asked to pay more and more every year. This tour is about acknowledging the challenges of the last three years and charting the road forward for the next thirty. It’s about joining together on our campuses and in our communities to build a state that guarantees every Illinoisan the opportunity to pursue higher education, exercise their right to healthcare, and earn a living wage.”
Over the course of the tour, Biss will visit 13 college and university campuses across Illinois.
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and primary challenger state Rep. Jeanne Ives will appear before the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board at 11 a.m. Monday for an endorsement session that will be streamed online here.
It’s the first time since Ives announced her campaign that voters will have a chance to see the two candidates together. And it might be the last.
No televised debates between the two are scheduled, and Rauner has been careful not to talk about Ives much, once suggesting she is a “fringe” candidate.
* Meanwhile, the Ives campaign sent this out yesterday…
Yesterday, State Representative Jeanne Ives, a conservative reform Republican for Governor, made several campaign stops in Southern Illinois. Ives spoke to voters and press at Meet & Greets in Newton and Litchfield, Illinois. Later, she delivered the keynote address at the Jersey County Lincoln Day Dinner, during which she defined the choice Republican voters have in the 2018 election. Ives told the audience, “Bruce Rauner doesn’t understand you. He doesn’t respect you. And that is why it was so easy for him to betray you.”
