* Yesterday’s test launch of our new website crashed the servers. The good folks over at MCS have been working on a fix and they’ve asked that we try another test.
* Our Tweet of the Day award goes to the Illinois Radio Network’s Dave Dahl…
I’m told that b/c the state is so late paying its bills, that starting Mon, the Capitol news stand will no longer be selling … newspapers.
Yikes.
* Former Senate appropriations director Elgie Sims is running for Cook County Board against that goofy Bill Beavers. The Sims campaign has a Twitter and FaceBook page.
I tend to make shallow character judgments of bands based on whether or not I like their name.
* Echo chamber…
* Joe Calomino: Cap Fax talks about turning the heat on ACORN & SEIU today http://ping.fm/EGfFS
* Amy Sue Mertens: important to understand both sides… @CapitolFax: US Supreme Co to review chicago handgun ban http://bit.ly/EP5zR
* Matt Murphy: Check out my op-ed in Capitol Fax on why I joined the gubernatorial ticket with Andy McKenna: http://tinyurl.com/ybts9oq
* Andy McKenna: Sen. Murphy is going to be a great Lt. Gov. - together we’re going to put our house in order: http://tinyurl.com/ybts9oq
* Markos Moulitsas: RT @glogothetis: RT @capitolfax: Ditka endorses Hughes for Senate:. http://bit.ly/8LLpc || Further evidence of base problems for @MarkKirk
* William Kelly: Hey everone [sic], this is my response to Rich Miller’s attacks on Capitol Fax. Feel free to weigh in… “Since Tuesday, Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax blog has been attacking me and my campaign for Illinois Comptroller without the opportunity for counterpoint.”
* William Kelly: Hey Rich, let’s have a beer summit. How ’bout tomorrow?
* This video of 32nd House District candidate Syron Smith got me to thinking…
* The Question: Are there any legislative or local candidates in your area who are using any “new media” - YouTube, blogging, etc.? If so, what are they doing?
* Patti Blagojevich is suing her former employer the Chicago Christian Industrial League for defamation. You can read the lawsuit by clicking here.
Blagojevich claims in her suit that a top official at the CCIL accused her of “stealing” the group’s donor list. Blagojevich has said in the past that CCIL didn’t have an e-mail donor list, so she used her own e-mail list when she was hired…
In her post as director of development with the charity last year, she created a list for outreach and fund-raising, she said.
There was no such database before she arrived, Illinois’ former first lady said, so, starting from scratch, she placed 600 of personal contacts she had accumulated over the years into the index.
“The galling thing about this is before I got to CCIL — there was no e-mail list. They had no e-mail outreach at all,” she said. “I dumped all my contacts of all my friends. . . . Their list is my list.”
The controversy came to light when Michael Sneed reported that the CCIL was upset that Blagojevich was using the donor list to promote her husband’s book. That Sneed column is no longer online, but here’s the money quote…
“Patti is using the list to e-mail and mail letters to people suggesting they buy her husband’s book, and it’s very, very bad form and unethical,” [Rick Roberts, director of strategy for CCIL] said.
I don’t believe Roberts ever used the words “steal” or “stole” or “stealing,” so I’m not sure whether this suit has any merit because right up front she claims that Roberts outright said one of those words…
Roberts has falsely accused the former First Lady of stealing CCIL’s donor list - something Roberts claims is proprietary - upon her termination from CCIL.
“What we want Mr. Roberts to do right now is retract the statement and offer an apology,” Blagojevich’s attorney Jay Edelson said. “If he’s willing to do that, we’re 80 percent there.”
Roberts could not be reached for immediate comment.
One can only wonder what that other 20 percent might be.
* Former Bears coach Mike Ditka has endorsed conservative Republican US Senate candidate Patrick Hughes. Hughes is up against Congressman Mark Kirk, among others, in the Senate primary. From a press release…
Speaking to a gathering of Hughes supporters at Ditka’s Restaurant last night, Da Coach said, “I pledge all my support to Patrick Hughes and I will help him in any way I can. Patrick Hughes stands for the same mainstream values that Mike Ditka stands for. Patrick Hughes knows who he is and what he believes. He knows that Washington is not the answer to all of our problems today.” […]
Hughes continued, “I said that my campaign would seek the support of grassroots Illinois residents, not the Washington lobbyists and politicians who my major challenger Mark Kirk has courted for endorsements and money. Mike Ditka represents the values of real grassroots voters of Illinois in the finest sense.”
Maybe now Hughes will get some mainstream media coverage. The MSM has almost completely ignored the guy, although ABC7 did run a recent report that quoted Hughes whacking Kirk for missing a congressional vote to extend unemployment insurance benefits…
One of Kirk’s opponents in the Republican primary, conservative businessman Patrick Hughes opposes the unemployment benefit extension, calling it too expensive and suggested the moderate Kirk intentionally avoided the vote for political reasons.
“My sense is that this is someone who acts like a politician, who does things based on political aspirations and not in what he truly believes in,” said Hughes.
[The top item was deleted because I am apparently too stupid to realize that today is the first day of October, so the federal campaign reporting deadline has passed. Sheesh, what a week this has been. Sorry.]
* Republican State Sen. Matt Murphy hasn’t really talked about why he dropped out of the governor’s race to be Andy McKenna’s running mate. He breaks his silence today. Click here for his entire statement, but here are some excerpts…
For more than six years, I have considered Andy McKenna a good friend. He is a decent man of impeccable personal integrity who puts others first time and again. His soft-spoken nature is not one of a career politician - that is a good thing - but a steady confidence and quiet strength that resulted in taking his family business to record heights. As the founding co-chairman of the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center, he lifted budding entrepreneurs by giving them the support and expertise they needed to create jobs throughout the Chicagoland area. Unlike Springfield, Andy has actually created jobs, balanced a budget and improved the quality of life for the people around him. I have always said this campaign isn’t about me, but the need for someone with the experience, credibility and desire to put our state on the right track. For these reasons and many others, I have chosen to suspend my campaign for Governor and proudly endorse and join Andy McKenna as his running mate.
The bi-partisan culture of corruption, mindless irresponsibility toward taxes and spending and a hostile climate toward the creation of new jobs illustrate just how far Springfield has strayed. This will all end under a McKenna/Murphy Administration. It won’t be easy, but through leadership and ideas we will bring economic prosperity back to you. Illinois faces serious problems, but they can only be solved by leading a sea change in ethics, confronting some hard choices on behalf of Illinois taxpayers, setting aside the needs of special interests and career politicians, and creating a laser focus on the interests of Illinois families. Only then will we be able to provide you with the opportunities you need to succeed.
* The Cook County GOP released a new video at its recent convention. Take a look at Why we Fight…
On Monday, a downstate judge blocked Quinn’s plan to lay off the workers. The ruling, in response to an AFSCME suit, says the state can’t proceed with the cuts until it resolves union grievances. We don’t know how many months that will take. But we have a hunch that AFSCME — which spent a nice chunk of the summer stalling Quinn’s effort to lower taxpayers’ obligations — won’t volunteer for expedited talks.
We do hope Democratic lawmakers, some of them wholly owned by state employee unions, take note of just how cooperative AFSCME has been in helping Illinois slash expenditures. Throughout 2009, many of the legislators have been assuming they didn’t need to significantly trim state spending or lean on their pals in the unions to accept even mild cutbacks. The easier solution: Raise the state income tax! Expect Quinn and legislative leaders from his party to push for that revenue gusher in 2010.
Where to begin?
First, AFSCME has submitted budget-cutting ideas worth millions of dollars. They’ve been ignored by the governor’s office and the Tribune. AFSCME was also trying to protect its contract. Hardly surprising, except for the grumpy old men types at the Trib.
Second, the vast majority of Democratic legislators knew there would have to be budget cuts. They aren’t totally stupid. What they disagreed on for so long was where to cut. And only a few of those with big facilities in their districts were hugely concerned with AFSCME. Still, if even those members were wholly owned by AFSCME then why did they vote for a budget which doesn’t fully fund state worker/retiree health care and which essentially required state employee layoffs?
Third, raising taxes was the “easier solution”? Really? That’s why income taxes were increased so high last spring? Oh, wait. Taxes weren’t increased. A tax hike bill failed miserably in the House. And passing a tax hike during an election season next year will be easy? Only in the Trib’s warped collective brain.
Fourth, every tax hike proposal - including the House proposal, the larger Senate Democratic plan and the governor’s various ideas - required budget cuts. Nobody ever put forth serious legislation which would’ve fully funded government at last fiscal year’s original appropriations levels. Nobody.
The Tribune editorial board has always had a wide streak of yellow journalism to it, going back to its founding. But, lately, that wide streak has engulfed the entire page. By regularly embracing wild, unsubstantiated charges and rejecting actual thought, the Trib has denigrated itself almost beyond repair.
As always, the Tribune’s behavior is having an impact throughout Illinois.
* Today, the Peoria Journal-Star follows the Tribune’s lead with an editorial entitled: Who’s the boss at Illinois, Inc.? The Trib edit hed was: AFSCME, running Illinois. That’s how things work in this state. Mother Tribune fires the first volley and then its little buddies follow suit.
From the PJ-Star editorial…
Who’s going to run state government, the governor and the Legislature, or AFSCME, its largest union?
OK, so a union files a lawsuit to protect its contract and its members and now all of a sudden it’s running the government? The reality is that AFSCME has fewer political allies today than it’s had in my entire career.
* Conservative activists in this state, along with a tiny handful of allies in Chicago’s opinion media, have stressed their “anti corruption” and “pro reform” positions above just about all else. Some cynics have claimed that the Right has done this in order to play down its “real” social issues agenda to become more politically acceptable.
But, if the cynics are right, isn’t that a smart move? By calling out corruption and pushing reform, the messengers can build credibility over time. That, in turn, can help when the same messengers push their other agenda items.
Plus, “hot button” issues often aggravate me (and many others) to no end, so I, for one, am glad to see them de-emphasized. Compromise are rendered nearly impossible because positions are so hard on both sides. And both sides usually declare as an apostate anybody who would try to walk down the middle - and are well-funded and well-organized enough to make it stick. Think Judy Baar Topinka on abortion, for instance. She considered herself pro-choice, but the pro-choice groups believed she was pro-life because she was against them on a few issues. And the pro-life groups derided her as a pro-choice extremist.
* I won’t blame the Right. Blagojevich’s arrest is most certainly behind this latest craze, but it certainly seems to me that over the past several months “reform” has replaced the usual suspects as the mindless, emotional hot button in Illinois. Nobody wants to debate the actual issues, they just want to scream at each other. Anybody who dares offer up a compromise or criticism of the reformers’ proposals is derided as a tool of the entrenched, corrupt establishment.
In the meantime, actual hot button issues are beginning to fade away. Gay marriage, for instance. That issue was once so extreme that only a tiny handful would touch it. But with Iowa, of all places, legalizing gay marriage right next door and still managing to exist, arguments against the issue are, so far, quite muted here.
As you already know, two Democratic US Senate candidates - Giannoulias and Hoffman - support gay marriage. Another Dem candidate supports civil unions, which was also a formerly untouchable position. And Mark Brown writes today about a bill that will be introduced to legalize gay marriage in Illinois…
A state senator from Edgewater said she plans today to introduce a measure to legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois, the first time such a bill would have been up for consideration in the Senate.
Sen. Heather Steans, a first-term Democrat whose district encompasses the state’s largest concentration of gay and lesbian residents, said her “Equal Marriage Act” will open a new front in the effort to provide full legal rights to same-sex couples.
Until now, gay-rights activists in Illinois have focused their efforts on gaining approval in the Illinois House for a “civil unions” bill that essentially would provide same-sex couples with most of the basic rights that accrue from marriage — without some of the controversy of calling it that.
One major reason behind this legislation is that Steans has a Democratic primary opponent who is also a gay rights activist. Here’s part of his press release…
But today’s ill-timed press conference by State Senator Steans demonstrates that she is more interested in pandering and politics than in doing the hard work of crafting a strategy and passing legislation. Today’s press conference will allow Senator Steans to tout her new bill on the campaign trail, but it will not bring much-needed rights and benefits to same-sex couples.
That’s probably correct. But, it’s also how things get moved forward over time in the General Assembly. Legislators feel political pressure, introduce a bill to ameliorate that pressure, and then eventually it may actually pass, if the pressure is strong enough. Maybe not next year, but maybe in the future. This is true on both the Left and the Right.
The press release continues…
Not once, but twice State Representatives have introduced a marriage equality bill in the Illinois House. Senator Steans did not sign on as a Senate sponsor of those marriage equality bills since she was appointed in February 2008.
Today’s out-of-the-blue press conference is a sign that Springfield won’t get the job done… again. Instead of spending her time securing the last few needed votes for the civil union bill, Senator Steans is injecting a new bill at the last minute.
Again, Steans is a Senator, not a House member. And both of her House members are solidly in the civil unions camp since they’re both sponsoring the bill. Nearby House members are also with the program. I doubt the freshman Steans would have much influence with the remaining holdouts.
And, Steans’ marriage bill may eventually help push the civil unions bill forward, or eventually force a compromise. The Statehouse argument so far has been between civil unions and the status quo. Toss gay marriage into the mix and maybe that pushes civil unions more into the center. We’ll see. But I don’t think they’ll do anything much in an election year. I could be wrong, but that’s usually a sure-fire way to heat things back up again.
* Back to reform. After pushing several positive steps towards reform, the Right is now trying to fuse their social stances with reform issues, and that position is moving into the mainstream of their party. The most obvious example is this SEIU/ACORN kerfluffle, which liberal-moderate Republican Congressman Mark Kirk has so eagerly embraced in his US Senate bid.
And they’re planning to increase the heat. From a press release posted at Illinois Review…
Despite what the left-wing media has claimed, Illinois has an ACORN problem. The corruption that has plagued our state for decades is due to corrupt groups like ACORN and its affiliates like SEIU. These groups are wasting millions of our hard earned tax dollars and our leaders in Springfield, including our Governor Pat Quinn, have strong ties to ACORN. This continuing plague of corruption seems difficult to fight but here’s how you can take the first step in ending corruption in Illinois.
Join us on Thursday Night as we launch our Illinois based grassroots movement called Say NO to ACORN. Here are the details:
Join us on Thursday Night!
When: 7:00pm CDT on Thursday, October 1st
Where: Dial by Phone (724)-444-7444, Call ID: 65215
Who: Joe Calomino, State Director of AFP-Illinois, Fran Eaton, Editor of IllinoisReview.com and Warner Todd Huston, Editor of PubliusForum.com
For a Republican primary, this is a very politically astute move - if somewhat dishonest. ACORN Illinois doesn’t get “millions” of dollars from the state government. It’s been shut down for two years.
Anyway, just a few trends I’ve been noticing and I thought I’d share my admittedly somewhat random thoughts. Yours?
The number of people living in poverty in Illinois grew by more than 240,000 in the past decade, a research group said.
There were more than 1.5 million people living in poverty last year, a poverty rate of 12.2 percent. That’s up from a 10.7 percent rate in 2000, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data by the Chicago-based Social Impact Research Center at the Heartland Alliance.
Nearly 526,000 children lived in poverty last year, a 16.8 percent rate — up from 14 percent in 2000.
Nationally, the poverty rate was 13.2 percent — 39 million people — up from 12.4 percent. The child poverty rate rose to 17.8 percent from 16.1 percent.
Mixed-income housing is the crown jewel of the Chicago Housing Authority. Ten years ago the agency began its billion-dollar public housing overhaul. The idea behind mixed income is to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and unite different economic classes of people. The Plan for Transformation is behind schedule, at the mercy of a tough economy and subject to ideological debate.
“It’s just one of the deals, you sign it. Whether it’s an enforceable agreement is a much more interesting question for someone in my business,” said Pound, an attorney.
“Who can enforce that contract?” He said. “Frankly, as an international organization to come to the courts of Chicago and try and enforce that contract — lots of luck.”
But even as Chicago’s bid organizing committee “counts noses” — as one Chicago 2016 official referred to lobbying and locking in IOC votes — there can still be question marks.
That’s because the IOC votes by secret ballot, so there’s no way to really know who kept their promise.
The sale of the Old Chicago Main Post Office remained a muddled affair Wednesday after the buyer who won it at auction missed a deadline to close the deal. Bill Davies, a globe-trotting investor who pledged $40 million at the Aug. 27 auction for the vacant hulk that spans the Eisenhower Expy., did not close the sale despite having the available funds, said a person representing him.
Since last year, doctors in the state’s Health Connect program for people on Medicaid have been getting bonuses of $25 per patient if they meet national benchmarks for prevention and management of asthma, diabetes, breast cancer and other chronic conditions.
About 90 percent of doctors from 4,100 sites involved in the program qualified for payments in 2008, and so far, $2.9 million in bonuses has been paid out, the department said Wednesday. The payments give doctors an extra incentive to get patients to do such things as fill prescriptions or get their kids vaccinated, officials said.
To get a bonus, doctors have to perform better than 50 percent of Medicaid doctors nationally.
* SEIU and ACORN have now become an issue in the 10th Congressional District GOP primary. From a press release…
Robert Dold, Republican candidate for Illinois’ 10th Congressional District, today is calling on his Republican opponent, liberal State Representative Beth Coulson, to cut ties with SEIU after Congressman Mark Kirk’s recent revelations of SEIU’s deep ties to the corrupt group ACORN.
Coulson was endorsed by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in her State Representative campaign in 2008, and until recently proudly displayed the endorsement on her Congressional website. It was taken down after Republican activists expressed their outrage.1 Coulson has received numerous donations from the corrupt group totaling thousands of dollars throughout her career.
“Sadly, this is business as usual for Springfield,” said Dold, former Investigative Counsel for the Government Reform and Oversight Committee. “Beth Coulson should have the courage to cut ties completely with this tarnished group and return their tainted money. I will never accept a single contribution from this organization, and when I’m in Washington I will do everything in my power to make sure that no hard-earned taxpayer dollars go to ACORN.”
IllinoisReview has compiled a list of some Republicans who took money from SEIU.
* Once again, Pat Quinn referred to Dan Hynes as an ankle biter…
“There’s always going to be ankle biters on the sidelines who weren’t in the arena when it really counted, chirping away. But I don’t think they’re helping solve the problem. The comptroller wasn’t part of the solution, and it doesn’t appear that he ever will be.”
Quinn gets on a phrase and can’t get off of it. Chirping on the sidelines is another one. He referred to Hynes as an ankle biter last month in southern Illinois when asked about a Hynes critique…
“There’s a lot of ankle-biters out there running for office,” he said. “They’re going to tear me down, but I think the people of Illinois know I’m good and true when it comes to standing up for them.”
* Little surprise here. Congressman Danny Davis may be leaning towards reelection. From The Hill via Progress Illinois…
Davis said Monday that he is prepared to file for re-election to his Congressional seat if he decides to drop his bid for Cook County Board president before this fall’s deadline.
“I have enough signatures to turn in for the nominating process for re-election to Congress, should I choose to do so,” Davis said in a phone interview. […]
Davis has encountered competition in the Cook County Board race. Davis, who served on the board before he came to Congress, is one of several black candidates in the open-seat race for Cook County Board president — a circumstance that could lead to the election of a nonblack candidate next year, much to the dismay of local black community leaders.
According to a couple of Democratic operatives familiar with the race, Davis thought he could clear the field if he ran, but that hasn’t happened.
More than 250 African-American ministers met to endorse a black candidate for Cook County board president on Tuesday, but the lack of consensus only served to illustrate the difficult political dynamics.
“This is not about person,” [Albert D. Tyson III, senior pastor at St. Stephen AME Church] said. “This is not about personality. This is about whose best going to service us and who has the best possible chances of being elected against the forces of evil.”
“The forces of evil.” Sheesh.
Todd Stroger was also at the meeting…
“I think in government there should be an African American who is at the top,” Stroger said before making a reference to the influence of his post. “So, I think there should be some unity behind a candidate. A good candidate. Me.”
He lives in another world, campers. A world that none of us will ever visit.
* Speaking of other worlds, Ab Mikva thinks David Hoffman is less of a long shot than Barack Obama was…
“Barack was probably an even longer shot than for both president and for senator than David is … he was barely known in the rest of the state or the city,” Mikva said.
Yeah, but he raised a lot of money, ran a super-smart campaign and was a natural. He also had something that Hoffman completely lacks: Campaign experience, including a defeat.
* Here’s something else to consider when backing longshots in the primary…
Once the ballot is finalized in a few weeks, the campaigns will heat up. The primary is Tuesday, Feb. 2 – the earliest it’s ever been. That doesn’t leave much time for little-known candidates to separate themselves from the pack, and the holiday season will make that job even tougher.
Tougher and a whole lot more expensive. It won’t be easy to go from relative obscurity to beating a well-known, well-funded candidate by February 2nd.
* Other stuff…
* Gov. Pat Quinn will join Chicago’s Olympic delegation in Copenhagen and said one of his main jobs will be “kissing as many babies as possible.”
* Stroger talks sales tax, pensions with suburban residents
* High-speed rail hits another speed bump: House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, introduced legislation Tuesday that would bar the state from spending money on a segment of the line in Springfield that is designated as the high-speed rail route.
* A new Government Accountability Office audit out of DC has found some serious abuses of the Medicaid prescription program.
The GAO looked at five states, including Illinois. Those states alone made up 40 percent of Medicaid’s prescription-drug payments in fiscal years 2006 and 2007, according to a story in USA Today…
[The five states] are not fully taking advantage of federal databases or technology that could spot fraud, the report said.
Not good at all.
Here’s what the GAO found…
• About 65,000 cases in which Medicaid beneficiaries visited six or more doctors and up to 46 pharmacies to acquire prescriptions — a practice known as “doctor shopping” that allows purchasers to exceed the legal limit of drugs.
• Sixty-five doctors or pharmacists writing or filling prescriptions after being banned from Medicaid, some for illegally selling such drugs.
• About 1,800 prescriptions written for dead patients and 1,200 prescriptions “written” by dead physicians.
Dead voters, dead patients and dead doctors. A perfect fit for Illinois [/snark].
In the big picture, we’re not talking about a gigantic dollar amount here. It’s less than $33 million per year for two years - and that’s all five states combined. If Illinois shares equally, that’s less than $7 million, or about $3.5 million in state dollars at a 50-50 match.
With the state’s ongoing budget problems, this could become an issue, however. The full GAO report is here.
* More budget stuff…
* Play Whac-a-Mole to plug budget gap: The governor tried to appease everyone without solving anything.
*** UPDATE *** William Kelly has asked his supporters to come over here and comment because he thinks we’re being unfair to him. He apparently doesn’t respond well to criticism.
I’ve already deleted several comments from his supporters because they are commenting under different names with the same IP address. Very stupid move, and usually done to make it look like somebody has more supporters than they actually do. Those people are banned from the blog for good. They probably don’t care because they’re newbies anyway. Still, if you come here, expect to play by the rules or you’ll just be deleted.
Thanks.
[ *** End of Update *** ]
* I guess it takes all kinds to make a political world.
William Kelly, the host of a twice a week Comcast Cable TV show which airs after midnight, has tried and tried to get noticed by a wider audience, without a lot of luck.
Kelly began his quest by challenging Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias to a charity boxing match. No coverage resulted and there was no response from Giannoulias, of course.
Then, Kelly stopped Giannoulias in front of a US Senate campaign fundraiser on the morning of September 11th to interview him. Giannoulias smiled, said “It’s good to see you, Bill” and walked away. Kelly sent out a press release claiming he had “flustered” Giannoulias, but that’s not really what the videotape showed. The video did earn Kelly a write-up in a Washington Times blog, but little else.
So, like just about everybody else in the world, Kelly has now jumped on the SEIU/ACORN bandwagon and tried to talk to Giannoulias at a fundraising event this week. Giannoulias kept walking. Hard to blame him. Here’s the video…
From Kelly’s press release today…
“You are seeking and have accepted the endorsement of SEIU. Don’t you think it is better to do an investigation of SEIU first?” asks Kelly. “Under what circumstances would you consider returning the $? Under any circumstances?” When Giannoulias can’t take it anymore, he hides behind his two female assistants. One says to Kelly, “You have to make a contribution.” Kelly retorts, “I am making a contribution.”
* Kelly is actually running for comptroller as a Republican. This has to be one of the oddest campaign strategies I’ve ever seen. Giannoulias is the treasurer. So, what’s the beef? I just don’t get it. Strange.
It’s really all for naught anyway because he’s gonna get creamed by Judy Baar Topinka in the GOP primary. And I gotta wonder how long Comcast is going to tolerate him using his TV show to boost his campaign and vice-a-versa.
But, hey, this is a free country. It’s actually kind of fun to watch Giannoulias squirm a bit. But this is weird, man.
* Secretary of State Jesse White formally kicked off his reelection campaign yesterday. If he wins, and it’s more than just highly doubtful that anybody could beat him, he’ll get a fourth term. And if he serves out that term, he’ll have held the job longer than anyone else in Illinois history. But this will almost undoubtedly be his last campaign…
“I’ve enjoyed this ride,” White said. “I want to ride it one more time, and I will always, always work on behalf of the people of the state of Illinois.”
White ran in 1998 and promised not to use the office as a springboard. Jim Edgar and George Ryan had both used their SoS tenure to get them elected governor. But White’s promise has meant that nobody else has been able to move up the ladder. SoS is a much coveted job, to say the least. So, while he’ll be lauded for the next year by members of both parties, inside many will be plotting their 2014 bids.
Most of the heavy-hitters showed up for White’s Chicago announcement yesterday…
On Tuesday, White was endorsed by fellow Democratic state office holders Gov. Pat Quinn, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. Comptroller Dan Hynes, who is challenging Quinn in the Democratic governor primary, did not appear because he was spending time with family, but also supports White, a campaign spokesman said.
Not too sure what to make of Hynes’ no-show.
…Adding… I’ve been told that Hynes’ twin sons had a birthday yesterday. Completely understandable why he missed the event.
White didn’t just announce in Chicago. He also headed Downstate…
During a full day campaign run, starting in Chicago, stopping in Springfield, and ending in Marion, White made his intentions clear. He intends to hold office and do the best he can for Illinois for four more years. […]
During his stop in Marion, White spoke of what his office has been able to accomplish in past 11 years, including lowering the automobile accident death rate in persons 15-20 by 40 percent, increasing Internet traffic for the ISS office by 78 percent, and initiating a ban on texting while driving that will start in January of 2010.
White is a talented politician. He won all 102 Illinois counties in 2002 - an amazing feat. His work with the Jesse White Tumblers made him a hero in many minds. Few people even want to drive past Cabrini Green, let alone go in there and turn so many kids around…
Citing White’s biography – U.S. Army paratrooper, Chicago Cubs player, founder of the Jesse White Tumbling Team – [Attorney General Lisa Madigan] said, “It’s no wonder that Jesse White is the most popular elected official in the State of Illinois.”
And he wisely made some early moves to clean up his office which have allowed him to stay in the office…
He inherited an office that was embroiled in a scandal that sent dozens of people to prison, but cleaned it up by banning employees from making campaign contributions to him, and by hiring an independent inspector general, former U.S. Attorney James B. Burns, who is still on the job today.
He’s about as close to unbeatable as one can get in politics. It’s no wonder that the Republicans had to search high and low and ended up with an amateur from Aurora to run against him.
Cook County officials have averted a disastrous property tax error affecting 80,000 long-term homeowners, but the discovery could further delay the mailing of second installment property tax bills.
Twenty employees of Chicago’s scandal-scarred Buildings Department were summoned to the commissioner’s office Tuesday to explain why their names appeared on a list of city employees who allegedly accepted $100 and $200 gift cards from a permit expediter-turned-government witness.
The gift cards were allegedly distributed in 2005 by Catherine Romasanta, a former expediter caught up in the federal investigation known as Operation Crooked Code who testified in the trial that culminated in last week’s conviction of former supervising building inspector Michael Reese.
The “four most egregious offenders” have now been charged in the videotaped fatal beating of Fenger High School honor student Derrion Albert, Chicago’s top cop said Tuesday.
But even as 17-year-old Eugene Bailey was ordered held without bail Tuesday, police Supt. Jody Weis pleaded for the public’s help in identifying three more people seen in an amateur video that has shocked viewers around the globe.
Unions representing the city’s police officers, firefighters and public works employees have negotiated amendments to their contracts, which are designed to reduce by $600,000 the city’s $1.5 million budget shortfall.
* The template I chose for our new website is currently unable to handle the sort of high-volume traffic that we experience here on a regular basis. We’re working on a fix, but we’re also taking the new site offline for a while because it was killing this site as well (they’re both on the same servers).
Be patient. We’ll get it worked out somehow. I’d hate to have to start all over again, though. Sheesh, that was a lot of work.
* Gov. Pat Quinn is hosting a rally of university types this afternoon at UIC. The rally is designed to boost Quinn’s efforts to pass legislation to fund the rest of the year’s MAP scholarship grant program. The money runs dry at the end of this semester.
But as I told subscribers in detail yesterday, Quinn has blamed everybody else except himself for this mess. Dan Hynes’ campaign issued a press release earlier today suggesting six questions that should be asked of Quinn at the rally.
Question 2…
In July you said you had “no reservations about signing the budget bill” and that it “stabilizes our budget,” even though it slashed funding for the MAP program by 50 percent. This weekend you blamed the General Assembly for the crisis, calling it “unacceptable” that it “decided to only fund the first semester of college scholarships.” How do you justify laying the blame so squarely on others even though as the Governor you have had the authority all along either to push to fund the program fully, or to restore funding?
Quinn made that “no reservations about signing the budget” comment during a July press conference that we videotaped at the time. Quinn, you may recall, surrounded himself with his budget staff during the media event.
I’ve isolated Quinn’s “no reservations” comment for you today. Also in this clip, Quinn talks about how he would have to “manage” the budget “very well” to make sure everything went smoothly. I guess that didn’t happen? Watch it…
Question 3…
Even after it became apparent that hundreds of thousands of students who rely on MAP grants were being put in a terrible bind, why haven’t you used any of your remaining allocation authority to restore funding?
As I told subscribers yesterday, the governor used his wide discretionary authority (given to him by the General Assembly) to squirrel away $180 million in a reserve account. But throughout this MAP debate, Quinn hasn’t said Word One about using that cash stash to help keep the scholarship program alive. The program is short about $225 million. Instead, he wants to raise income taxes to shore up the program or hike the cigarette tax by a buck a pack.
* In other political news, the National Journal today defended its decision a few weeks ago to raise the competitive rating of Illinois’ US Senate race to the second-most vulernable seat in the country…
If there was one ranking that generated controversy last time, it was Illinois. Surely, the critics suggested, Obama’s home state would never replace him with a Republican. In the end, the true-blue nature of Illinois — along with an expected serious financial investment from a White House laden with Chicagoans — would surely assert itself come November 2010. Right?
We’re simply not convinced that the field of Democratic candidates — with the possible exception of former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman — can present the sort of “outsider” credentials to avoid being lumped (fairly or not) with Rod Blagojevich, et al. Plus, it’s hardly unusual for a state’s voters to develop a “throw the bums out” mentality when one party has overstayed its welcome. Even so, can Rep. Mark Kirk (R) convince voters that his nine years in D.C. qualify him as the heir to the “outsider” mantle?
Thoughts?
Hoffman, by the way, was endorsed today by Abner Mikva.
* One of the problems with witch hunts - aside from the fact that they’re too often used for nefarious purposes - is that they eventually start to burn those who merely associated with the alleged witches. Things can get way out of hand because it becomes impossible to stop the endless strings of associations that can be made.
And so it goes with this ACORN thing. Not content to just bash the organization, it’s now been deemed necessary by some that those who’ve associated with the group must also be demonized.
Enter Republican US Senate candidate Mark Kirk.
You’d think with all the boasting about how Kirk is the heavy-duty GOP primary front-runner, that someone known as one of the most liberal Republicans in DC (which is somewhat of a misnomer because DC GOPdom is so rightwardly skewed) wouldn’t have to prove he’s just like those bloggers at Illinois Review.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. IR does a very good job on many, many things. But the site has been obsessed with ACORN lately and has been pairing the group with the Service Employees International Union in a single name for weeks. Kirk eagerly jumped on the IR bandwagon yesterday and produced a complicated flow-chart to demonstrate why the US Census should disown SEIU because the union has supported ACORN in the past.
ABC7 didn’t cover the presser, and neither did NBC5 or CBS2. The Olympics coverage is pretty much drowning out almost everything right now. Fox Chicago had a preview of yesterday’s Kirk presser on its early morning show, but nothing else has been posted on its site.
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican Senate candidate, said Monday the Census Bureau should drop any involvement with the Service Employees International Union for the 2010 population count. But at the same time Kirk had to acknowledge receiving past campaign donations from the union at the center of a partisan firestorm.
On the heals of a congressional vote to de-fund ACORN, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is calling on the U.S. Census to sever all ties to Illinois’ largest union, the Service Employees International Union, because that union, Kirk says, is too close to ACORN.
Kirk also urged the firing of the National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, who he blames for under-estimating Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
* Obviously, Kirk is following the classic GOP presidential election strategy. Move way right in the primary and then move to the center for the general. Reassure the Downstaters and the more right-leaning suburbanites that he’s with them now. Then worry about assuaging the moderate independents later. He’s also obviously taking advantage of the fact that SEIU has endorsed the Democratic frontrunner, Alexi Giannoulias.
But, as I’ve pointed out before, this SEIU thing is a landmine for Illinois Republicans.
State Rep. Beth Coulson is considered the best bet to hold onto Kirk’s US House seat, but she’s been endorsed by SEIU in the past.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Kirk Dillard received an SEIU contribution earlier this year.
The Republican State Senate Campaign Committee accepted $10,000 from SEIU in March.
House Republican Leader Tom Cross took a $10K contribution in February from SEIU Healthcare, which was once a brother/sister of ACORN Illinois, back when the group existed (there are actually two $10K contris listed from SEIU to Cross on the same day, but that could be a duplicate computer entry).
As explained at the top, it’s dangerous to conduct a guilt by association witch hunt of SEIU when so many of Kirk’s fellow Illinois Republicans have been taking the union’s cash over the years. If SEIU is guilty of its associations with ACORN, then what does that say about the Republicans who have associated with SEIU? Where does the witch hunt end? Does he want to burn them all?
Maybe that’s why yesterday’s presser was so lightly covered.
New data shows about 240,000 more Illinoisans lived in poverty in 2008 compared with 2000 and researchers say those statistics don’t fully reflect the current recession.
According to U.S. Census data made public Tuesday, the state’s poverty rate was 10.7 percent in 2000 and jumped to 12.2 percent in 2008.
The median household income in Illinois dropped from $60,203 in 2000 to $56,235 in 2008.[…]
The poverty rate, a set of federal measures, means that a four would live on $21,200 or less.
Many delegates for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid have landed in Copenhagen this morning. Meanwhile, a group in Chicago plans to protest the city’s bid later today.
The inspector general’s office is recommending the firing of the No. 2 man at Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications for alleged contract irregularities that cost taxpayers $2.25 million.
Former Chicago Housing Authority chief Terry Peterson, who has emerged as one of Mayor Daley’s closest political confidantes, is the mayor’s choice to replace departing CTA Board Chairwoman Carole Brown, City Hall sources said Monday.
Judge Ronald Guzman enjoined the City of Chicago and Ald. Robert Fioretti, 2nd, from denying the hotel a cafe due to a long strike by hotel employees. Guzman wrote that “the only reasonable conclusion” was that the alderman refused to sign off on the hotel’s application because he’s a strong backer of the striking union.
In its suit, the hotel claimed that the alderman’s actions violated the National Labor Relations Act, which forbids state and local governments from trying to tip a labor dispute to one side. By the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, a federal law takes precedence over local law — or in this case, an unwritten but real political practice, the judge ruled.
Guzman found that Fioretti was exercising “aldermanic privilege,” a long-standing pillar of Chicago politics that makes an alderman a final arbiter of zoning matters in his own ward.
Cook County State’s Atty. Anita Alvarez has notified two of her investigators that they may face administrative charges for discrediting her office after a convicted felon escaped from their custody this month and eluded police in a two-day crime spree.
This time, it was on 111th Street, a few blocks from Fenger High School. The cell phone video shows an honor student, caught up in a gang fight, being clubbed to death. Our hope is that the video will lead to the identification and punishment of all those responsible for the death of the boy, 16-year-old Derrion Albert.
Three teenagers have been ordered held without bail on charges of first-degree murder in the beating death of a Chicago student who was walking home from school.
Rockford police officers, who say they are already understaffed, feel betrayed by a city that intends to lay off eight officers this week, police union President Aurelio DeLaRosa writes in a letter addressed to union membership and released during Monday night’s Rockford City Council meeting.[…]
“(The union) feels this mayor is a threat to the health and well-being of every person in this city,” DeLaRosa writes. “Someone should start mayoral impeachment proceedings.”
Buses carrying 188 Illinois National Guard troops on the last legs of their trips home from Afghanistan fanned out across the state Monday, bringing to an end a yearlong deployment that cost 18 of the state’s soldiers their lives.
One in every 228 Illinois drivers will hit a deer this year, according to a State Farm analysis.
Illinois deer-car collisions are up 3 percent from five years ago, a slight uptick compared with the 18 percent increase in collisions around the country in that same time period, State Farm is reporting.
The insurance agency’s research suggests that every 26 seconds in America, someone slams a deer with a vehicle.
