I also saw One eskimO on Randolph Street in Chicago. They did their first CD top to bottom and each song was well crafted. They know how to write a hook. This song was originally recorded by Patsy Cline just before she died, but One eskimO’s version is more along the lines of the Candi Staton take in the 70s.
Yep. They’re good. Here’s One eskimO doing “Kandi”…
* It’s Friday and I have errands to run, so let’s go with something light. What new musical artist or band are you most impressed with these days? Make sure to explain yourself and maybe even give us a YouTube or other link so we know what you’re talking about.
Many Illinoisans who filed their 2011 tax returns on paper rather than electronically are still waiting for their refund checks.
Although the Illinois Department of Revenue had no estimates Thursday on how many returns remain in limbo, agency spokeswoman Sue Hofer said there are two key factors at work in the delay.
First, the department had hoped more people would file electronically and have their checks deposited directly into their bank accounts, which can result in a refund being issued within a week. About 70 percent of the returns were filed online, down from a goal of 80 percent.
In addition, because of the state’s budget squeeze, the department had about 25 to 30 fewer workers sorting and processing paper refunds.
The result?
“Paper returns are moving more slowly than they did last year,” Hofer said.
I had the opposite thing happen to me. I filed a paper return and owed money to the state. It took the Department of Revenue about two weeks to cash my check.
* Roundup…
* Governor’s office defends closing Dwight: “While it’s true the General Assembly put money in the budget to keep facilities open, they put the money back at the expense of others,” Kraft said. “For example, group insurance was only funded for six months, state aid for education was cut. The governor’s office has to look at every single area of state government, not just one single area.”
* Judge allows closure of mental hospital to proceed: “We think this governor doesn’t care about people with mental illnesses,” Heyrman said. “We are very worried this case will set a precedent for other facilities and they will close them all and take away all the money.”
* Kadner: Tinley Park center to close despite funds to keep it open
* A good friend of mine has a farm on the northern border of Madison County. He’s been complaining for weeks that his land is dry as a bone. And it turns out, he’s not alone…
About 70 percent of Illinois is in a drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a collaborative effort between federal and state authorities. Northern Illinois, described in the weekly report as “extremely-dry,” is one category away from the entire state being classified as in a drought. […]
There’s no relief in sight long-term, either. The National Weather Service issued predictions Thursday for the remainder of summer, calling for above average temperatures and below average precipitation in the region into September — a forecast State Climatologist Jim Angel called ‘ominous.’”
“We’re used to certain seasons in Illinois, but it’s as if our weather is three to four weeks ahead of schedule,” Angel said. “It’d be like if we moved Chicago to Nashville, Tennessee — we’re experiencing unusually hot and dry conditions we’re not used to.” […]
Last June, O’Hare Airport reported an average 3.39 inches of rain, while this month it has only seen 0.44 inches. The last time the task force was called to action, seven years ago, June measured 0.76 inches of rainfall.
* Comparing CEO pay increases at not-for-profits to average worker pay increases in the private sector might be a fun exercise, but perhaps the Tribune should’ve compared not-for-profit CEO pay hikes to private sector CEO raises. Either way, though, the Tribune found this when it looked at not-for-profit groups which get most of their money from state taxpayers…
A Tribune analysis of financial filings of 18 such nonprofits found that their executives received an average of 4.3 percent in pay raises in 2009 and 2010, when the economy was sputtering. That’s double the average compensation boost for private-industry workers, according to federal wage data.
Many of these nonprofit executives already earn far more than the top state officials who dole out tens of millions of dollars to these agencies every year. At one nonprofit that aims to help the working poor, the director had her pay nearly double in eight years, to about $340,000.
* Illinois pays a lot of money to these not-for-profits because it’s cheaper than doing the job itself. But doing so has created a large lobby that works to perpetuate itself…
•James Hogan, with Cornerstone Services Inc. The nonprofit serves the physically and mentally disabled in Will and Kankakee counties. He received a 1 percent raise in 2009 and a 25 percent raise in 2010, taking his total pay to in excess of $244,000. Those raises came during a time when Cornerstone publicly lamented the difficult fiscal climate of nonprofits, particularly those receiving government grants. […]
•Mary Hollie, with Lawrence Hall Youth Services. The organization provides residential care and other services to at-risk youths in the Chicago area. Hollie received a 7 percent raise in 2009 and a 9 percent raise in 2010, ending the year with nearly $284,000 in total pay.
But only New York has set caps, after Gov. Andrew Cuomo this spring ordered state agencies to limit pay at nonprofit vendors to $199,000, although nonprofits can raise private money to boost the pay or seek special permission from the state.
This discussion definitely ought to be part of the “budgeting for results” law that Illinois passed.
Illinois House members who engineered cuts in next year’s budget for the Department of Children and Family Services said they were upset DCFS spent money on raises rather than hire more caseworkers to comply with a federal decree.
Consequently, the budget awaiting Gov. Pat Quinn’s signature cuts money for DCFS salaries, which the agency said will lead to eliminating 375 positions.
The cuts will fall most heavily on child-abuse prevention programs and efforts that focus on children still in their family homes, said DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe.
“The General Assembly’s budget gives us no choice but to cut entire functions from this agency,” he said.
Members of the House Human Services Appropriations Committee - which put together the budget approved by lawmakers - said DCFS doesn’t need to cut programs for children.
Agencies often threaten to kill off popular programs when faced with budget cuts, but this cut was pretty large.
Quinn aides released an internal report suggesting that almost all school districts are capable of assuming their own retirement costs.
Specifically, the report says that 95 percent of districts have reserves exceeding minimum recommended standards and that phasing out state payments over several years would affect their budgets only about 0.4 percent a year.
In my world, 0.4 percent is a budgetary rounding figure.
* Earlier this week, the governor’s office released a report showing that lots of school districts were sitting onbig cash reserves…
Of local school districts, Limestone-Walters Community Consolidated School District 316 could fund the most days with its FY2011 cash reserves - $2.1 million for 484 days. The rural Peoria school district is one of eight feeder districts into Limestone High School and has an enrollment slightly over 200 students.
Dunlap Community Unit School District 323, which is considerably larger, has $34.6 million cash on hand, according to the state data. That’s enough to keep the district going for 441 days.
The data showed that Peoria District 150 had $48.1 million on hand at the end of fiscal year 2011, or almost 70 days worth of funding.
Dave Kinney, comptroller at the city’s public school district, said his figures show the district with about $41 million in total reserves, though he believes that number is misleading. He said of that amount, about $38 million comes from borrowed funds used to infuse money into depleted cash accounts from previous years’ expenditures.
The figures don’t take into account further school funding cuts passed this year by the General Assembly, the fact that many districts are using their reserves to deal with previous state budget reductions, delayed payments and rising costs — points echoed by the school districts themselves.
The data showed that the Springfield School District had $16.9 million on hand at the end of fiscal year 2011, about 82 days’ worth of funding.
District spokesman Pete Sherman said officials estimate the Springfield school system will have only $1.9 million in its main education fund by the end of fiscal year 2013. The state board is even less optimistic, guessing that the district will have $667,308 on hand by the end of FY13.
* During overtime session, the media almost always uses dollars per day calculations to shame legislators into wrapping things up. So, I think that Gov. Pat Quinn’s number may have a fairly big impact, at least with the press…
New figures demonstrate how Illinois is getting deeper and deeper into the unfunded pension liability hole.
Gov. Pat Quinn says what’s now an $83 billion dollar debt is increasing by $12.6 million a day.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the state could be another $1 billion or so in the hole before the Illinois General Assembly does anything. […]
According to Quinn’s accounting, at $12.6 million a day, the delay would cost $441 million; by the veto session just after Election Day — the soonest most believe a bill could be introduced — it would be $1.7 billion. If they took a full year, the state would be another $4.6 billion in the hole.
“It’s time to go and put the taxpayers first, not politics first,” Quinn said.
Negotiations between Gov. Pat Quinn and legislative leaders about public employee pension reform hit another roadblock Thursday, with talks morphing from a discussion about retirement benefits to education funding equality in Illinois.
The issues became entwined as Democrats continue to push a proposal that would shift some pension costs from the state now pays on to suburban and Downstate school districts. Republicans oppose the plan, saying it would force property taxes to rise as schools try to recoup the extra costs.
GOP leaders say the cost-shift idea shouldn’t be connected to pension reform because it’s a school funding issue, and on Thursday asked for more time to study how money is distributed to schools across the state. […]
By asking for more time to study education funding, Republicans are attempting to force Democrats to back away from the cost-shift idea. Either Democrats peel that portion off and move forward with broader pension reforms this summer, or Republicans can put the blame on Democrats for inaction during the fall election.
“When you don’t want to talk about the free lunches for local school districts, you talk about school funding,” said House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.
But Madigan said he was confident an agreement could eventually be reached, saying it can be difficult to move plans forward in Springfield “but if you stay with it, there will be accomplishments.”
With negotiations now pushed almost to August, it’s looking more and more like this is an issue that is destined for dormancy until the post-election veto session in November. How convenient. Now lawmakers from both parties can campaign on the fact that they really, really want pension reform and they are certain it won’t cost anyone anything.
We can only hope that the bond ratings agencies have more faith in and patience with our elected officials than we do.
Off and on for the past few years, I’ve tried to defend Illinois’ honor against the crazier attacks by outsiders while still candidly acknowledging that this state has some real problems which absolutely must be solved.
That ain’t easy, to say the least.
Ever since Barack Obama was elected president, his enemies have been trying to highlight Illinois’ truly awful problems to somehow taint his administration. A big target was put on our backs, and far too many of our neighboring Republican governors have been way too eager to play along with this stupid game.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, in particular, have delighted in overstating our problems to make themselves look better back home. Walker constantly painted Illinois as the bogeyman during his recall attempt. Daniels compared us to “The Simpsons” TV show. Both have repeatedly vowed to poach businesses and jobs from us, which didn’t really work, but the two got a whole lot of media attention, and that was the point.
I now know what it must have been like for family members to constantly feel the need to defend the beer-swilling, trouble-making Billy Carter or the beer-swilling, trouble-making Roger Clinton after their far more responsible brothers were elected president. He’s blood, so you gotta step up. But, man, you just wish he’d check himself into rehab, buy some presentable clothes and get a real job for once.
Believe it or not, there really are signs that the people running this state finally understand that we can’t keep operating the way we have been. But it took so long for that message to sink in that we’re way behind almost every other state. And I’m still not convinced that we won’t somehow relapse.
Almost all the money from last year’s huge income tax increase has been sucked up by pension payments, which got so high because the state has never put enough cash into the systems.
Doing the responsible thing and making the full pension payments meant that the state hasn’t been able to pay down billions of dollars of overdue bills and this year was forced to slash money for health care and education and close prisons even though the corrections system is already overcrowded.
While a good chunk of those past-due bills will be paid off this year, and while a severe Medicaid-funding crisis appears to have been resolved by making painful cuts and raising the cigarette tax, pension payments are projected to grow so much that our precarious, horrible credit rating is under serious threat.
Gov. Pat Quinn met with the four legislative leaders Thursday to try once again to hammer out a deal on public employee pension reform.
Quinn claimed that each day of delay meant $12.6 million was added to the pension funds’ unfunded liability.
No agreement was reached.
Instead, the two Republican legislative leaders insisted that the always intractable school-funding issue be put on the table with the seemingly intractable pension issue. No further meetings are scheduled until August.
Also on Thursday, Illinois’ auditor general reported that the state government has a deficit of almost $44 billion — worst in the nation.
After I read the auditor general’s report, I started researching quiet, peaceful, inexpensive getaways. Enough, already.
As much as I hate to admit it, I have to get out of this state. I don’t know yet when I can go, and my plans certainly won’t include Wisconsin or Indiana, but I really need to leave Illinois and all its troubles behind for a little while.
The state’s overall deficit climbed to nearly $44 billion last year, easily the worst in the nation, the Illinois auditor general reported Thursday.
The red ink grew by 16.8 percent in a single year, Auditor General William Holland said.
The new report includes all of Illinois’ assets and liabilities and gives a broader picture of the state’s financial condition than simply reviewing the annual budget.
With no cash available, more state payments were late and for larger amounts, the audit found. Illinois ended the fiscal year with $4.7 billion in unpaid bills. The state fell further behind in paying tax refunds. Bookkeeping was slow and disorganized.
Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka on Thursday released the following statement regarding her office’s State of Illinois Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. The report details the financial condition of the State at the end of the last fiscal year on June 30, 2011:
“Our latest financial report shows that Illinois’ deficit has doubled in the last five years to more than $43 billion. It provides yet another cautionary note that we need to rein in spending and address the growing costs that are devouring the state budget. Positive steps were taken this year toward getting our financial house in order, but we clearly still have a long way to go to fully clean up this colossal mess.”
* Justin Bieber’s show last night was said to be a total bust…
Justin Bieber has been sold to us in forceful amounts, but maybe it’s not working after all. His TV special last night on NBC, “All Around the World,” was a bust. For an 8pm show aimed at pre-teens, it finished fourth out of five shows at that hour. Bieber got a very lackluster 0.9 rating in the 18-49 demo and scored just 3.3 million viewers– about half the number of top rated “So You Think You Can Dance” on Fox. It was also beaten by “Dogs in the City.”
* But Bieber’s 3.3 million viewership was still way more than any of the cable TV news networks attracted Tuesday night at 8pm Eastern…
* Emotions are definitely running high in southern Illinois over Gov. Pat Quinn’s decision to close some state facilities down there. As I told you yesterday, the Southern Illinoisan reported that Sen. Gary Forby (D-Benton) said he’d like to release the prisoners from the Tamms “supermax” prison onto Chicago streets in retaliation for closing the prison. But nobody covered something else that Forby said…
* If you can’t watch videos at work, here’s what Forby said…
“You know, I’m not real sure, I’ve been hearing it for a long time, ‘Why don’t we do away with Chicago?’ You know, I’m just about there. I’m about ready to just cut ‘em off and push ‘em right out into the water. I mean, Put Pat Quinn on the nose of the boat. Put him right on the nose of the boat, all right, and push him right out into the water.”
* Meanwhile, I don’t see a basis for this statement…
[Randy Clark, a lieutenant who has worked at Tamms for 13 years] said he believes southern Illinois is being targeted politically. He said the workers at Tamms are devastated by news of the closure, which could happen Aug. 31.
Phelps noted the two southern Illinois counties Quinn won in the 2010 election were Alexander and Jackson, each of which have a correctional facility slated for closure — the Tamms “super-max” prison in Alexander County and the Illinois Youth Center in Murphysboro. Quinn said he intends to close the Southern Illinois Adult Transition Center in Carbondale, as well.
If Quinn is using politics to target those facilities for closure, then it’s some of the most backwards politics I’ve ever seen. If politics is the reason, then why is he closing facilities in the only Downstate counties he won? Clark’s argument just doesn’t stand up.
* The controversy continues over the decision by Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez not to defend the state’s ban on gay marriage because they believe it’s unconstitutional. As you already know, lawsuits were recently filed by the ACLU and others against Cook County Clerk David Orr, who issues marriage licenses. The crux of Alvarez’s decision…
Alvarez’s office said it “will admit the salient allegations within the complaint and concede that the equal protection clause of the Illinois Constitution prohibits discrimination in the issuance of marriage licenses based upon sex or sexual orientation.”
“We are in agreement with the plaintiffs that Illinois laws that prohibit same sex marriage are unconstitutional. We believe the plaintiffs are correct in their assertion that the Illinois Constitution upholds marriage equality for same sex couples just as it does for opposite sex couples,” the statement said.
* Since Madigan and Alvarez won’t defend the law over constitutional grounds, there’s some debate on whether anyone else can step forward, and there’s much consternation about the decision itself…
Peter Breen, executive director of the Thomas More Society, a private bar association that represents the Catholic Church, said the group “will be seeking relief from the court,” though he didn’t say exactly what that would be. Some experts have suggested the society could seek the right to defend the ban, though that’s considered a long shot.
“You can’t just say you feel it’s unconstitutional,” said Breen. “This … puts people of the state of Illinois in a difficult place because their elected representatives are not defending their interests. If there is no argument or disagreement, then you’d really have a hollow judgment.”
David Erickson, a former prosecutor and state appellate judge who now teaches at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, said it also potentially puts a private bar association in the position of being demonized for stepping forward to defend a state law. Erickson believes the law is unconstitutional but said Breen is right.
“Show me where it says any elected official, especially a prosecutor, can say, `I won’t defend law passed by a legislative body that is my coequal,’” Erickson said. “Only one body can say it’s unconstitutional and that’s the (Illinois) Supreme Court.”
But fellow Kent College professor Douglas Godfrey said Alvarez and Madigan have a professional responsibility to ensure claims have merit, whether they’re filing a lawsuit or defending one, and “in essence … said we don’t think Illinois’ law will stand muster.”
Each prospective holder of a State office or other State position created by this Constitution, before taking office, shall take and subscribe to the following oath or affirmation:
“I do solemnly swear (affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of …. to the best of my ability.”
In 1996, then-state Sen. Peter Fitzgerald successfully ushered through the General Assembly a Defense of Marriage Act. His effort was to draw a line in the sand, to clarify where Illinois stood on same-sex marriages.
Sixteen years later, that law is endangered — something that few could have imagined when it was adopted.
Why is it so ridiculous to contemplate whether other Illinois marriage prohibitions should be tossed to the wind as well? With only sexual orientation bias as the argument against banning same-sex marriage, why should polygamous relationships be banned by the state? If morality is irrelevant, why should there be any marriage bans?
“The current statutory definition banning gay marriage in Illinois does not violate Illinoisans constitutional rights. In fact, it is just the opposite,” Reis said. “Allowing gay marriage in Illinois would violate our citizens’ religious freedoms by forcing religions to recognize marriages not in accordance with their beliefs.”
* We still don’t know how much this proposal would save, but it’s now a law…
Gov. Pat Quinn has signed a law that ends free health care for state retirees and requires them all to contribute to the cost of health care, based on their ability to pay. […]
Currently, retired lawmakers get free health insurance after four years of service and retired judges after six years. Additionally, retired state and university employees get free health insurance after 20 years of service.
Beginning July 1, all state retirees would pay a premium based on their years working for the state and ability to pay. The law doesn’t include teachers.
State Sen. Dan Kotowski claimed via press release last month that the proposal would save “about $200 million every year.” But that’s pretty much the only cost savings estimate out there, mainly because, as Kotowski noted in his May 10th press release, “it’s unclear how much retirees will specifically have to pay towards their insurance premiums.”
* According to the time stamp on the e-mail I received, Quinn’s office made the announcement of the bill signing at 5:08 this morning. Quinn portrayed the action as a way to “preserve health care benefits for state retirees.” From his press release…
Governor Pat Quinn today signed a bill into law to help ensure that state of Illinois retirees will continue to receive access to quality health care, while also lowering the cost to taxpayers. Illinois currently offers free health insurance to retirees after 20 years or more of service, at a time when no other state offers a healthcare benefit of this size. […]
The purpose of the new law is to increase fiscal responsibility by requiring all state retirees to help with the cost of health care based on their ability to pay. Currently, retired legislators receive free health insurance after four years, retired judges after six years, and retired state and university employees after 20 years of service. The result is that approximately 90 percent of retirees are not contributing anything for the cost of their health insurance. The annual cost to taxpayers is nearly $800 million. This law ensures the state will be able to continue offering quality healthcare coverage for retired employees, while making healthcare benefits more affordable for taxpayers.
Many Midwestern states, including Iowa and Minnesota, do not provide any subsidy for retired employees. Instead, they provide access to their plans and leave the entire cost to be paid by the retiree. Other states offer a very limited subsidy. For example, Florida offers retirees a monthly subsidy of $150, while the retiree covers the remaining cost. While some states utilize a formula similar to Illinois’, where the amount of the subsidy is based upon years of service, no comparable state offers free health insurance after 20 years. This law allows Illinois to continue offering affordable health insurance that is based on a retiree’s ability to pay and length of state service.
While the bill goes into effect July 1, final decisions on rates will be made following labor negotiations and approval by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.
By the way, the health insurance that retirees get is not “free.” They still have to make their co-pays and satisfy their deductibles. What Quinn is referring to here is the monthly premium.
*** UPDATE *** From AFSCME…
Statement of Virginia Yates, president of AFSCME Retirees Chapter 31:
“This bill jeopardizes affordable health care for state and university retirees. The governor saying his action ‘preserves health benefits’ is political doubletalk, and his claim that our health coverage is ‘free’ is false. In fact, seniors like me and 114,000 other retirees and dependents already pay $3,000 a year or more in co-pays, deductibles and premiums. By cutting retiree health care at the same time he’s handing out hundreds of millions in tax giveaways to big corporations, Governor Quinn shows his priorities are out of touch.”
About Virginia Yates
Virginia Yates worked for 27 years at the Murray Developmental Center. A Korean War veteran, she lives in Centralia.
* Jayette Bolinski at Illinois Statehouse News takes a look at the last person expelled from the Illinois House. His offense was ratting out his fellows…
History probably would have overlooked Illinois Rep. Frank Comerford’s speech to law students in Chicago, except for one thing — he named names.
“To say that the Illinois Legislature is a great public auction, where special privileges are sold to the highest corporation bidders, is to put the statement mildly,” Comerford, a Cook County Democrat, told a gathering of Illinois College of Law students and faculty on Jan. 27, 1905.
A 30-year-old lawyer and just months into his first term as a legislator, Comerford then detailed the names of lawmakers rumored to be on the take, how much cash changed hands and where the conversations took place.
Days later, facing fellow lawmakers poised to kick him out of the House, Comerford said he believed the students had a right to know how laws were made here, and that bribery was rampant.
“I was lecturing to the student body of a college — not making charges upon the floor of this House or in the newspapers. I reserve the right to my opinion; I believe now, as I did then, that the stories told me are true,” he said.
Word of Comerford’s speech hit newspapers Jan. 31, and that is how the representative from the 2nd District came to be the first and only lawmaker expelled from the state’s House for “besmirching its good name and reputation” — and it took only nine days for them to do so. Notably, nothing happened to the legislators who allegedly accepted the bribes. Lawmakers said Comerford failed to back up his claims.
So, the next time somebody says that Rep. Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) should be given all due consideration by the House after his indictment for allegedly accepting a $7,000 cash bribe, point that person to Jayette’s article.
* Rep. Dennis Reboletti thinks the rules ought to be tightened…
Reboletti said he anticipates the House rules will be changed in the future to identify the level of misconduct that can trigger an investigation. Theoretically, the way the rules are written, a speeding ticket, a cross word or political ax-grinding could trigger an investigation if at least three representatives request an investigation.
“Just because a representative says something on the House floor or in his or her district, like Comerford did, you don’t want to just base an investigation off of that,” he said. “There has to be a more substantive reason for bringing that course of action.”
I’m not so sure about that. Putting hard and fast rules in place means that if they forget to include a crime the accused legislator could use that loophole to escape expulsion. Kent Redfield thinks differently, however…
Kent Redfield, a political science professor at University of Illinois Springfield and an expert on Illinois government, said the General Assembly historically has dealt with situations like Smith’s on case-by-case basis, which is reflective of the political culture in Illinois.
“We generally tend to treat things as kind of ad hoc — deal with this particular situation, make it go away, as opposed to saying are there systemic issues here that we ought to deal with,” he said.
“My guess is that we are going to deal with this particular situation — that at some point Rep. Smith will be expelled before the end of his term — and then we’ll wait for the next incident to occur and then deal with that.”
By the way, according to Jayette’s piece, Rep. Comerford had the last laugh when he ran as an independent in a special election a few months after he was expelled and won his House seat back. He went on to become a judge.
* The Question: Should the House and Senate adopt rules which specifically define the minimum allegations to trigger an expulsion, or should expulsion continue to be done on a case by case basis? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* A rally yesterday to protest Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close some Downstate prison facilities provoked some pretty harsh legislative responses. Democratic Sen. Gary Forby…
“This governor does not care about Southern Illinois. That’s the bottom line,” Forby said, stating if the governor believes the prisoners housed in Tamms don’t need the kind of maximum security treatment they get in the Alexander County prison, then they should be released into Chicago.
Um. Wow. Forby wants Tamms prisoners released into the streets of Chicago? Seems kinda harsh. Then again, Forby has yet another expensive reelection race coming up, and Quinn ain’t all that popular down yonder, so I see what he’s doing here. Just playing to the home folks. But, man, that’s a bit much.
From the crowd, a shout suggesting voters recall the governor was heard.
“If we had the power, we would recall him (Quinn),” Bost answered.
Well, you do have the power, Representative. Recall is quite difficult to do, but the General Assembly has the power to get it moving. Perhaps instead of throwing documents into the air, you might want to read the Constitution.
* Meanwhile, here’s former Chicago Police Supt. Phil Cline, who has worked hard against medical marijuana legislation, on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s proposal to issue tickets for minor pot possession…
Calling marijuana “a gateway drug to other drugs,” the former superintendent said he’s concerned that, “The easier we make it for people to use it, the worse it’s gonna be for society … . Marijuana is still a harmful thing. At ages where they can be influenced by things like that, do you want your kids to be smoking marijuana before school?”
No, Mr. Cline, I don’t want kids smoking marijuana before school. I don’t want them drinking whiskey before school, either, but whiskey is a legal product and incredibly dangerous. Frankly, I’d rather that kids not eat sugar-filled Twinkies before school, but children can legally buy those edible atrocities over the counter.
But what I really don’t want, Mr. Cline, is people being arrested and sent to jail because they smoked a joint. Let’s be honest here. You want to lock people in steel cages for putting a substance that you disapprove of into their own bodies.
And this debate shouldn’t be about children anyway. Kids should not smoke pot. Stipulated. Adults probably shouldn’t smoke it, either. Agreed. But putting people in prison is simply not the answer. It’s a horrifically failed policy and it must end.
* Bad things happen when the feds start nosing around your business. The chances that they’ll find something are pretty good, and if the feds want you, they’ll get you. Just ask Raghuveer Nayak…
Raghuveer Nayak, a figure in the U.S. Senate seat scandal that helped bring down Rod Blagojevich, was arrested at his Oak Brook home this morning and charged with paying bribes and kickbacks to doctors for sending patients to his string of surgery centers.
Nayak was charged with mail fraud, interstate travel in aid of racketeering and filing false income tax returns in a 19-count indictment, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Prosecutors are seeking $1.8 million in “alleged fraud proceeds,” including forfeiture of Nayak’s Oak Brook home, his Rogers Park One Day Surgery Center and his Lakeshore Surgery Center.
Between 2000 and 2010, Nayak allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to physicians who would refer patients to Nayak’s medical centers, the indictment alleges. “The physicians deceived their patients by not disclosing that they were being paid for making referrals to Nayak’s facilities,” the indictment charges.
In one kickback scheme, Nayak paid one person, identified only as “Individual A,” more than $2 million in checks drawn on his surgery centers’ accounts. In return, “Individual A” gave Nayak cash equaling about 70 percent of the value of the checks, according to the indictment.
The Sun-Times had reported in 2010 that Nayak, who was a close Jackson family friend and campaign contributor, told federal authorities Jackson directed him to approach the Blagojevich camp with a $6 million offer.
He also told authorities he secretly paid to fly a female friend of Jackson to Chicago from Washington, D.C., at Jackson’s request.
Jackson subsequently apologized for his relationship with the woman, whom he described as a “social acquaintance,” but the congressman remained steadfast in his denial that he never directed anyone to offer Blagojevich money in exchange for the Senate seat. […]
Nayak and Jackson Jr. also were longtime friends, though Nayak has been a thorn in the side of the congressman since Blagojevich’s arrest in 2008.
Nayak was the unidentified emissary of Jackson cited in the criminal complaint against the then-governor, which said Blagojevich believed Nayak was offering $1.5 million in exchange for appointing Jackson to Obama’s former Senate seat.
Jackson has denied the allegation.
In 2010, the Sun-Times reported that Nayak had cooperated with investigators and told them that it was Jackson who directed him to talk to Blagojevich and offer him not $1.5 million but $6 million in exchange for the Senate seat. Nayak said the conversation was between himself and Jackson, with no one else present, and took place while Nayak was in Washington, D.C., during an October 2008 trip.
So, if he was cooperating with the feds on Congressman Jackson and now the feds have scooped him up, should we then infer that the Jackson thing is over and the feds have decided to just bust Nayak for other stuff?
* The New Yorker has an article up about how Republicans, who once supported an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, are now against it. It’s a really good piece and you should definitely read the whole thing.
The article includes a section about a study done at Stanford on “motivated reasoning,” which is defined as “when a person is conforming their assessments of information to some interest or goal that is independent of accuracy.” Standford psychology professor Geoffrey Cohen tested students who had described themselves as either very liberal or very conservative…
The students were shown two articles: one was a generic news story; the other described a proposed welfare policy. The first article was a decoy; it was the students’ reactions to the second that interested Cohen. He was actually testing whether party identifications influence voters when they evaluate new policies. To find out, he produced multiple versions of the welfare article. Some students read about a program that was extremely generous—more generous, in fact, than any welfare policy that has ever existed in the United States—while others were presented with a very stingy proposal.
But there was a twist: some versions of the article about the generous proposal portrayed it as being endorsed by Republican Party leaders; and some versions of the article about the meagre program described it as having Democratic support. The results showed that, “for both liberal and conservative participants, the effect of reference group information overrode that of policy content. If their party endorsed it, liberals supported even a harsh welfare program, and conservatives supported even a lavish one.”
In a 2006 paper, “It Feels Like We’re Thinking,” the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels looked at a National Election Study, a poll supported by the National Science Foundation, from 1996. One of the questions asked whether “the size of the yearly budget deficit increased, decreased, or stayed about the same during Clinton’s time as President.” The correct answer is that it decreased, dramatically. Achen and Bartels categorize the respondents according to how politically informed they were. Among the least-informed respondents, Democrats and Republicans picked the wrong answer in roughly equal numbers. But among better-informed voters the story was different. Republicans who were in the fiftieth percentile gave the right answer more often than those in the ninety-fifth percentile. Bartels found a similar effect in a previous survey, in which well-informed Democrats were asked whether inflation had gone down during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency. It had, but many of those Democrats said that it hadn’t. The more information people had, it seemed, the better they were at arranging it to fit what they wanted to believe. As Bartels told me, “If I’m a Republican and an enthusiastic supporter of lower tax rates, it is uncomfortable to recognize that President Obama has reduced most Americans’ taxes—and I can find plenty of conservative information sources that deny or ignore the fact that he has.”
Recently, Bartels noticed a similar polarization in attitudes toward the health-care law and the Supreme Court. Using YouGov polling data, he found that less-informed voters who supported the law and less-informed voters who opposed it were equally likely to say that “the Supreme Court should be able to throw out any law it finds unconstitutional.” But, among better-informed voters, those who opposed the law were thirty per cent more likely than those who supported it to cede that power to the Court. In other words, well-informed opponents realized that they needed an activist Supreme Court that was willing to aggressively overturn laws if they were to have any hope of invalidating the Affordable Care Act.
Orin Kerr says that, in the two years since he gave the individual mandate only a one-per-cent chance of being overturned, three key things have happened. First, congressional Republicans made the argument against the mandate a Republican position. Then it became a standard conservative-media position. “That legitimized the argument in a way we haven’t really seen before,” Kerr said. “We haven’t seen the media pick up a legal argument and make the argument mainstream by virtue of media coverage.” Finally, he says, “there were two conservative district judges who agreed with the argument, largely echoing the Republican position and the media coverage. And, once you had all that, it really became a ballgame.”
* I think we’ve seen a similar situation here. Compare the reactions to what Gov. Pat Quinn has done to unions to what Gov. Scott Walker has done up in Wisconsin.
Quinn unilaterally tossed out the collective bargaining process when he said he wouldn’t honor contractual pay raises. He’s also gone hard after retiree health care and pensions. Yet, there were no giant demonstrations at the Statehouse like there were in Wisconsin when a Republican governor attacked the unions.
* Also, look at the budget. Some very liberal Democratic legislators backed some very deep budget cuts this year after their party had decided to become more fiscally conservative. We’ve talked about the DCFS cuts and how it could lead to massive layoffs. Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, one of the most liberal members of the entire General Assembly, oversaw those cuts and she defended them to WUIS reporter Amanda Vinicky…
But legislators on the House committee in charge of funding for human services stand by the reductions. Democratic Representative Sara Feigenholtz of Chicago, who chairs the panel, says legislators protected services directly affecting children. But she says they cut personnel funding after learning the agency gave its employees what she called “significant” raises.
“It was a little disappointing to some of our committee members who vocalized that the department needs to restructure its priorities. There were a lot of very unhappy committee members,” Feigenholtz said.
No offense meant to Feigenholtz, who is a decent person, but I can’t help but wonder what her reaction would be if she was in the minority party and these very same cuts were being made.
* After word got out that Gov. Pat Quinn was going ahead with his planned prison closures, Treasurer Dan Rutherford sent out a press release…
“I do not agree with Governor Quinn’s apparent final decision to close seven state correctional facilities and youth centers in the near future. Closing prisons will only exacerbate the overcrowding we face in Illinois with our prison population. Overcrowded prisons pose a real danger to employees and local communities. I took a similar stand back in 2008 when the previous governor abruptly suggested closing multiple state facilities without a comprehensive plan. As a state senator, I proposed legislation that would have put into place long-range strategic planning on certain facility closures. I am again calling on the state to implement business principles by having strategic long-range plans for its major state facility assets.”
* But the governor’s budget office pointed out all the spending pressures caused by pensions and Medicaid and claimed it had a good rationale for closing the facilities…
The Department of Juvenile Justice has a declining population of youth which means the state no longer needs eight state detention facilities. We have chosen which facilities to close based on the needs of our youth. In the case of Murphysboro, there is another IYC facility nearby in Harrisburg. Also, the facility has the capacity for 256 youth and currently houses less than 20.
In the case of Joliet, the physical plant does not provide the rehabilitative environment that our youth need. A more rehabilitative model of juvenile justice where youth are served and supported in the community instead of being incarcerated has been shown to result both in safer communities and better outcomes for our youth.
Tamms is only half full and very costly to operate with an average inmate cost of more than three times any other prison in the state. Approximately $64,800 compared to $21,405. The security level at Tamms for high level offenders can be safely replicated at other existing facilities. Closed Maximum security inmates will be transferred to Pontiac Correctional Center and Menard Correctional Center. These facilities will be able to supply the level of security needed for these inmates without compromising safety for staff or inmates. Tamms minimum security inmates will be relocated appropriately throughout other facilities around the state.
Dwight is located within 22 miles of Pontiac Correctional Center, 45 miles from Stateville Correctional Center, and 45 miles from Sheridan Correctional Center. Dwight houses women, and the female prison population is trending down. Between 2005 and 2011 IDOC female prison admissions decreased 41%.
Overall, these closures will allow the state to better live within our means and address the state’s most pressing needs.
Rutherford, who is widely expected to run for governor, is planning to hold two media availabilities today to criticize the closures, including an event in Chicago this afternoon.
