DirecTV and Dish are using digital technology to match voter registration information with subscriber homes, and are now offering political campaigns the ability to send targeted ads to select households. For example, politically conservative satellite customers might see a TV commercial for a Republican candidate, while their liberal neighbor gets an ad for a Democrat. […]
DirecTV and Dish this year formed a partnership called D2 Media Sales to sell targeted spots to candidates and ballot measure organizers. The partnership represents the nation’s “largest household addressable TV advertising platform,” the companies said, with more than 20 million homes.
Working with a handful of consulting firms, the two satellite giants now have access to databases containing voter information on 190 million people. That trove of data enables them to create a new sales pitch: transmit ads into the homes of partisan voters, frequent voters and swing voters, in specific states.
D2 Media Sales struck a partnership in June with the Arlington, Va., political firm i360, which focuses on targeting Republican and conservative voters. Then, last week, D2 entered into a similar arrangement with Clarity Campaign Labs and TargetSmart Communications, left-leaning data firms that help campaigns mine Democratic National Committee voter databases. […]
“Instead of hitting everybody, including the people who won’t vote, or won’t vote the way we’d like them to, we focus the ads and the dollars on just the voters that candidates want to persuade,” Palmer said. […]
The DirecTV and Dish initiative is offering its service on statewide levels, but in future years could offer politicians more segmented regions, such as individual counties or congressional districts.
They need to narrow those regions down a lot more, but this could be a game-changer, particularly if cable finds a way to do it as well.
Today, the California based billionaire CEO of Uber blew into Illinois to call on Governor Quinn to veto the ridesharing consumer protection act, which was passed by the General Assembly with bi-partisan support last spring.
Travis Kalanick, the newly minted billionaire joins his allies in the Republican Party and fellow billionaire Bruce Rauner in standing against basic consumer safety. “In calling on the Governor to veto this landmark consumer protection legislation, the self-serving billionaires are throwing the safety and well-being of rideshare customers out the door,” said Lynda DeLaforgue, co-director of Citizen Action/Illinois.
If signed into law, the bill requires very simple consumer friendly protections such as requiring drivers who work more than 36 hours in a two week period to have a chauffeur’s license, and for all drivers to carry commercial liability insurance.
Yesterday, Citizen Action launched a new online petition for consumers who support basic rideshare safety in Illinois. The petition calls on Governor Quinn to sign HB4075 & HB5331 - the Rideshare Protection Act.
“Most Illinois consumers probably already think they have sufficient insurance and a safe driver who has had a proper background check when they get into a rideshare car. The truth is that unless the Governor signs these bills, Illinois will be the wild west of ridesharing. Other states such as New York have already implemented similar protections, why can’t Illinois?” DeLaforgue asked.
Citizen Action/Illinois also released a fact sheet outlining the “Top Five Uber-Bad Actions in 2014,” attached to this release.
* The fact sheet…
TOP FIVE UBER-BAD ACTIONS IN 2014
1) After an Uber driver hit and killed a 6-year-old girl in San Francisco, Uber denied responsibility and kept the little girl’s family from any insurance compensation.
San Francisco Gate, “Uber denies fault in S.F. crash that killed girl”
2) A NBC 5 Chicago investigative team report found numerous UberX drivers with criminal pasts, including an ex-con on probation with a list of felonies over twenty years long, even after company “background checks.”
NBC Chicago, “Ride Service May Pose Risk To Passengers”
3) In March, a Chicago Uber driver sexually assaulted a young woman, driving her the wrong way from home and “repeatedly fondled her legs, groin area and breasts.”
4) Lyft claimed that Uber drivers and employees had hailed and then canceled more than 5,560 Lyft rides over a 10-month period, effectively keeping Lyft’s cars busy while Uber scooped up the fares.
New York Times, “Accusations Fly Between Uber and Lyft”
5) In April, Uber began forcing their passengers to pay a so-called “safety fee.” By doing this, Uber keeps its 20% off the top and makes a rider pay extra to have a supposedly modicum of safety.
Gawker, “Why is Uber Charging You Extra to Not Get Assaulted?”
We’ve seen most of this before, and I read somewhere this week that Lyft is being accused of the same highjacking scheme as Uber. Also, Citizen Action is very close to organized labor, which is backing the taxi companies in this fight.
* Man, it’s only August 20th and it seems like October. At one point yesterday afternoon, CapitolFax.com was loading slowly, so I called my local web hosting company to ask what was going on. They said the site was getting 50 visits per second. I thought we were under attack or something. But no. It was all legit traffic.
We ended up with over 290,000 page views yesterday - twice the number we had on the day Rod Blagojevich was arrested (which stood as a record for a very long time) and more than all days but one during the record-setting month of this past May, when we came close to 5 million page views.
To put this into perspective, Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish had about six million page views last month. Sully’s blog is read all over the world. This blog is read almost solely in Illinois.
What was that line in Godfather, Part II? “Michael, we’re bigger than US Steel.”
Just kidding.
Sullivan has far more unique visitors than we do here, but our folks come back constantly throughout the day and into the evening. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank all of you for your presence here.
* Despite the increase in traffic, comments have remained mostly civil. Thanks for that as well. The newbies have yet to arrive, however. They’ll undoubtedly descend upon our beloved website to spew their DC talking points as we get closer to election day, even though, as I said, it’s already starting to feel like the home stretch.
* And speaking of the fast-approaching election, things are getting a little testy behind the scenes between the two campaign staffs. Gov. Quinn’s campaign communications director Brooke Anderson blocked some Rauner comms staff from following her Twitter account today. One of Rauner’s guys sent me this…
From Brooke…
A. Whiners. B. I’ll make them a deal: they can follow my personal Twitter if they’ll disclose their candidate’s full tax records!
Lol
Heh. She does use that account quite a lot for her job, though. And the Rauner staff hasn’t Twitter-blocked anyone from the Quinn campaign… yet.
Anyway, it’s a small thing, but I do expect this situation to get plenty worse by November. My pre-election party for top campaign staff should be interesting.
* 1:46 pm - An attorney close to the lawsuit over Bruce Rauner’s proposed term limits amendment just called to say the appellate court has ruled against Rauner and upheld the lower court ruling that forbade the measure from appearing on the ballot.
You’ll know more when I know more. The deadline to certify the ballot is Friday. So, the Supreme Court would have to act almost immediately or a court would have to suspend the deadline date, and neither of those may be in the cards.
Based on the cases discussed above, some components of the Committee’s proposed amendment may very well comply with article XIV, section 3. However, the proposed amendment is ultimately invalid because of its term limits provision. CBA II viewed term limits as a matter of the “eligibility or qualifications of an individual legislator,” and in turn, neither structural nor procedural.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Press release…
With the Appellate Court’s ruling today, Bruce Rauner, Chairman of the Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits, has directed his legal team to immediately file an appeal with the Illinois Supreme Court to quickly take up the matter of whether or not voters will have the opportunity to vote on the Term Limits and Reform binding constitutional amendment in November.
“Let the people of Illinois decide for themselves if they want to term limit legislators. Time is running out - the Illinois Supreme Court needs to take the case. Nearly 600,000 Illinoisans signed the petition to put our amendment on the November ballot and the State Board of Elections has certified that we submitted enough signatures to be on the ballot. The people deserve to have their voices heard.” Bruce Rauner said. “The Illinois Supreme Court should not ignore the people of Illinois.”
“Our Term Limits and Reform amendment was carefully crafted to meet all the requirements that the Illinois Supreme Court very clearly laid out in its 1994 decision and we are hopeful that the Illinois Supreme Court will find in favor of the citizens of Illinois,” Rauner concluded.
Um, no, it clearly was not “carefully crafted to meet all the requirements that the Illinois Supreme Court very clearly laid out in its 1994 decision.” Look at that excerpted line from the appellate decision above. This was doomed from the start.
* Nothing is official yet, but a hearing officer ruled in favor of the Libertarian Party’s petitions this week, and there’s a full State Board of Elections meeting Friday to make it official…
The Libertarian candidates appear likely to prevail in their case. On Aug. 15, a hearing officer ruled the Libertarian candidates had enough signatures to be on the ballot. In the past, the elections board has generally followed the hearing officer’s decision, but it doesn’t have to. A 4-4 tie would favor the Libertarians.
* The Green Party lost its case at the hearing officer level, but the party has filed suit to get its candidates on the ballot…
On Thursday morning, Judge J. John Tharp Jr. is scheduled to rule on a motion for preliminary injunction in a ballot-access lawsuit filed by the Illinois Green Party. […]
The Green Party’s lawsuit argues Illinois has thrown up so many hurdles for non-established parties that the whole process is unconstitutional. If Tharp grants the preliminary injuction, it’s likely the Green candidates will go on the ballot because counties have to get started on the process soon to have the ballots ready for early and absentee voting. The chairman of the Illinois Constitution Party has said his party plans to join the Green lawsuit, but it has not yet done so.
The Green Party lawsuit affects only statewide candidates. The party’s candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Metropolititan Water Reclamation District already are assured of their places on the ballot.
Statewide political campaign in desperate need of a copywriter and proofer. The candidate loves to see himself on Facebook and Twitter, but to date, we’ve made way too many mistakes with typos and bad photos.
Key Responsibilities include: proofing the videos that the campaign makes to make sure we aren’t saying something false in them, editing and writing Facebook status updates and email blasts, watching the campaign posts on blog comment sections to make sure they don’t post stupid things and even holding up a ‘meet the candidate sign’ so he doesn’t have to.
Dress code: Need to be able to wear a suit. Even to places you shouldn’t.
We’d prefer someone who has worked with celebrities or perhaps infants. Either way, someone who is willing to tolerate vanity and a ‘pay attention to me!’ type of attitude from the boss.
If you have a library of tall/height puns, all the better.
Must be able to spell the words “Treasurer” and “Treasurer’s Office” properly.
More than a little insidery, but still somewhat amusing. Plus, I’ve never seen that tactic used before.
…Adding… The Tom Cross campaign says it’s not from them and not authorized by them.
CTU boss Karen Lewis officially files to run for Chicago mayor
Actually, no. She merely filed a D-1 for a new campaign committee, Citizens to Elect Karen Lewis Mayor of Chicago.
* Lewis talked about this last night in Beverly. “I did file my D-1 in order for us to comply with campaign finance laws in Illinois.” She also said she’d be passing petitions. “The decision will be based on what the people want,” she said. Watch…
She’s obviously putting some thought into this campaign and issues that will come up, and appears to be inching forward. “I am so seriously considering this,” she said. “Before, I was just thinking about it.”
Karen Lewis said Tuesday that a $1 million pledge of support from the American Federation of Teachers “automatically changes the calculus” of a potential mayoral campaign.
But apparently not enough to push the Chicago Teachers Union president any closer to deciding whether or not to actually challenge Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
“I want to run things on my time line,” Lewis told a capacity crowd of union members at Morgan Park’s Beverly Woods Banquet Hall.
“I speak to rank-and-file cops and firefighters who tell me all kinds of things,” Lewis said. “What we have is a demoralized city work force that doesn’t feel appreciated.”
Lewis said if elected mayor, she absolutely would put more police on the streets, but didn’t mention how’d she pay for such a move. She also said she’d put an end to hiring workers from outside of Chicago to run city departments. Lewis wouldn’t say whether she’d oust Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, but said she would get “rid of the title CEO. Call it what it is: superintendent.”
Asked how she’d handle Chicago’s financial mess, including massively underfunded public pension systems, Lewis said the city would “have to get more creative about revenue,” including considering a commuter tax and a tax on financial transactions in the city. But she offered up no specifics beyond that.
Lewis didn’t shy away from criticizing Emanuel directly, at one point saying he’s intent on lying about his record. “Rahm Emanuel thinks Chicagoans aren’t very bright,” she said.
Disclosure of income tax information continues to be a campaign issue for Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Deerfield) even after he made his 2013 return public.
Schneider submitted his 2013 federal and state tax returns Aug. 12 after taking a permitted extension from the April 15 filing date and made them available for viewing by the media Aug. 14.
Submitting his return as a married person filing separately drew criticism from the campaign of former Rep. Robert Dold (R-Kenilworth). Dold and his wife, Danielle Dold, filed a joint return for 2013, as they did in previous years.
“After stalling for months and ignoring demands (to release) his tax returns from the years immediately before he took office, Congressman Schneider (masks) his 2013 returns to conceal his household income from the public,” Dold Campaign Manager James Slepian said.
Schneider is not disclosing information about the career of his wife, Julie Dann. She is a senior managing director for Mesirow Financial, according to the company’s website.
The income tax issue first surfaced in 2012, when Mr. Dold was still in office. Mr. Dold released his returns and challenged Mr. Schneider to do the same, with his aides suggesting that the returns would show Mr. Schneider really wasn’t the successful businessman he claimed to be but pretty much lived off of the income from his wife, Julie Schneider, a senior managing director at Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc. here.
Mr. Dold since has renewed his challenge and Mr. Schneider eventually agreed to release his 2013 return — something that has become fairly standard in American politics. But he filed for an extension, and it wasn’t until just before the weekend that the Schneider campaign actually released anything.
What it released was not the return but a one-page summary, indicating that Mr. Schneider had federal adjusted gross income of $220,216 last year, tax liability of $60,678 after $28,000 in federal deductions, and received a $13,491 refund.
* From the Bob Dold campaign…
“The great lengths that Congressman Schneider and his staff have gone to keep his background under wraps are astonishing to say the least – nearly two years of defiance, a four month delay in sharing already publically known information and now mocking the public’s demands by filing separately from his wife. His deceptive actions have gone from troubling to disgraceful,” said James Slepian, Dold for Congress Campaign Manager.
“While his own party has called the releasing of back years of returns as the ‘low bar of disclosure’ and ‘an easy test of whether he is worthy of the public’s trust,’ it would be wise for the Congressman to remember that his seat in Congress doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to the people of the 10th District. If he can’t be trusted to answer their questions about his past, he can’t be trusted to represent them in the future,” Slepian concluded.
Since Congressman Schneider knew that the media and the very people he represents have called for this transparency since the 2012 campaign, then:
Why did he still file his returns as an individual instead of with his wife as he has always done?
Why did he delay the viewing of his returns for over four months?
Why is he still refusing the release his 2011 and 2012 returns, and did he pay all of the taxes he was legally required to pay in those years?
I can certainly see the reasoning behind the attacks, but they’d probably better tread lightly on the wife issue.
The national political tide isn’t looking good for Democrats, but in Illinois this November, down-ballot candidates have an even bigger problem: the drag of Gov. Pat Quinn.
Absent from the Governor’s Day lineup were any of the three Democrats facing competitive re-elections in the Land of Lincoln: Reps. Cheri Bustos, Brad Schneider and Bill Enyart.
Bustos and Enyart hail from the northwest and southwest corners of the state, respectively. President Barack Obama carried their districts in 2012, but Quinn lost them by large margins two years earlier, and this fall is looking even more troubling for the governor.
Schneider is facing a rematch with former Rep. Bob Dold in the 10th District — the Republican he ousted in 2012 by a mere 1-point margin, even as Obama won there with 58 percent. The district is located in the northern Chicago suburbs, and while it votes Democratic in presidential cycles, it sent moderate Republican Mark S. Kirk to the House for five terms before he rose to the Senate.
Former Judge Ann Callis, the Democratic nominee taking on Rodney Davis in the Springfield-based 13th District this fall, attended the breakfast. But she did not speak, nor did she bring with her any sort of large presence of supporters or staff to boost her candidacy.
While vulnerable Democrats avoided sharing the spotlight with Quinn during their day at the fair, GOP candidates and elected officials clamored to share a stage with Rauner. They included Kirk, Rep. Aaron Schock and Rodney Davis, and each talked more about Rauner and a rising Republican tide in this traditionally blue state than they did about Obama.
Davis represents Springfield and he has some former aides working on Rauner’s campaign. Mark Kirk isn’t up this year and Schock barely has an opponent.
Absent from the festivities were Republicans Mike Bost, [Bost was apparently there, but I didn’t see him] Bobby Schilling and Bob Dold. Yet their Democratic opponents were zinged by RollCall for not showing.
Look, there’s no doubt that Quinn will be a drag on most of these races, particularly Downstate contests, and those Dem candidates don’t wanna be seen anywhere near the guy. But at least use the same standard when judging them.
* Also, the reporter described how some of Quinn’s backers were bused to Springfield. That happens every year and Rauner did the same exact thing. And she said there was no energy at the Quinn Director’s Lawn event. Was she even there? I thought they did a decent job firing up the crowd - not as well as Rauner did, but decent enough for showbiz.
* Democratic pollster Garin Hart Yang Research Group has Bruce Rauner ahead of Gov. Pat Quinn by 44-41. Two percent lean toward each candidate. The firm conducted the poll for Sen. Dick Durbin. These are likely voters, which makes it even more interesting since most of the polls showing a tight race are simply registered voters (where Dems do better). Greg Hinz…
But a Garin Hart Yang survey released on May 14 had Mr. Rauner up six points, 46 percent to 40 percent. And another in April had the race 49 percent for Mr. Rauner to 39 percent for Mr. Quinn.
All of those polls were taken before the Quinn campaign and an independent group, Illinois Freedom PAC, began dropping millions in ads that slash Mr. Rauner for not paying enough income taxes, investing overseas and other rich guy sins. But the new survey was taken after those ads hit, specifically last week, on Aug. 12 to 14.
What I find particularly interesting is that Mr. Quinn’s numbers haven’t moved much since spring; he’s still right around 40 percent. But Mr. Rauner’s numbers have dropped — a classic sign of a negative campaign that is making some voters reconsider their position.
President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in the state is negative, with 51 percent disapproving of his performance and 47 percent approving. He was up 50 to 49 in the survey as recently as April.
Again, keep in mind that this is a Democratic pollster, but numbers is numbers and candidates like to know exactly where they are. To do otherwise would be foolish.
* Other stuff…
* Tribune poll: Chicago voters split on luring Obama library
* Greek parade organizer: Rauner, Quinn lineup left him sleepless: Parade organizer Basilios Dimitrios Mataragas, who is also president of the Federation of Hellenic American Organizations of Illinois, said he didn’t know of an attempt to kick Rauner out… “Four days before, I could not sleep because the pressure I was under for who I put in front and who I put behind,” Mataragas told Early & Often. “I felt, I cannot play anybody’s political campaign. We were not there to promote anybody’s campaign.”
* Korecki: Rauner pushes Uber; but Quinn’s camp uses it more often: For Quinn, the total is about $674. For Rauner, it’s about $581.
* The Question: Should the Quinn campaign keep that slogan or come up with something else? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
Bruce Rauner today confirmed eight gubernatorial debates and candidate forums leading up to the November election.
“I look forward to comparing my vision of freezing property taxes, rolling back the Quinn-Madigan income tax hike and reversing the governor’s education cuts to Pat Quinn’s failed record of job losses, broken schools and Blagojevich-style corruption,” Rauner said. “I am running to be governor for all people in Illinois and our debate schedule should reflect the diversity of our state.”
Rauner’s proposed debates and candidate forums include:
Illinois Agricultural Legislative Roundtable Candidate Forum - Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Metropolitan Planning Council Candidate Forum – Thursday, August 28, 2014
Chicago Tribune Joint Endorsement Session - Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Polish-American Leadership Political Action Committee Candidate Forum - Wednesday, September 10, 2014
League of Women Voters/PBS Peoria Debate - Thursday, October 9, 2014
Urban League/Business Leadership Council/DuSable Museum Debate - Thursday, October 14, 2014
Lake County Municipal League Candidate Forum*
League of Women Voters /ABC7 Chicago Debate*
*Dates Pending
I’ll let you know what the Quinn campaign says in response.
*** UPDATE 1 *** The response…
Below is the statement of Quinn for Illinois Communications Director Brooke Anderson following news that Bruce Rauner refused eight neutral debates with Gov. Pat Quinn and proposed a phony alternative of concocted venues to help himself:
“The public knows virtually nothing about Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner and he wants to keep it that way. In limiting the number of debates to a paltry three, he is hiding from a transparent airing of his views and plans for Illinois.
“This is unworthy of a candidate for governor and a disservice to the people of Illinois. Mr. Rauner won’t let us know about his finances. He won’t let us know about the shady dealings of his business. He won’t let us know about his foreign investments and partnerships. He won’t let us know about the exotic vehicles he uses to dodge Illinois and U.S. taxes.
“In the 2010 election, Republican nominee for governor Bill Brady readily agreed to five debates without condition.
“By hiding from debates about the future of Illinois, Bruce Rauner is letting us know ONE thing: he wants to hide from the judgment of the people. By doing so, Mr. Rauner is disrespecting Illinois voters.”
In addition, Bruce Rauner attempted to mislead the public and brand five additional appearances as “debates,” which they are not. For example, the first two events noted by Rauner in his list - hosted by the Metropolitan Planning Council and Illinois Agricultural Legislative Roundtable - are not even joint appearances, much less debates. At both events, the candidates will arrive and speak separately. The Chicago Tribune endorsement session is not a debate but a session closed to the general media. The Polish American Political Action Committee is a small group whose chair is the head of Polish Americans for Rauner. The president of the Lake County Municipal League is also the chairman of Mayors for Rauner and a Rauner business associate who recently put up an illegal sign to help Rauner’s campaign.
Below is a list of 11 confirmed debates the Governor of Illinois committed to, with Rauner’s denied participation noted:
1. Sept 17th: Daily Herald
2. Oct 1st: Governor’s State University
3. Oct. 7th: University of Illinois in Champaign
4. Oct. 9th: League of Women Voters/ PBS Peoria
5. Oct. 14th: Urban League and Business Leadership DuSable Museum
6. Oct 16th: League of Women Voters / ABC7 Chicago
7. Oct. 19th: Elmhurst College
8. Oct. 23 - NBC5/U of C Institute of Politics
9. Oct. 28th- CBS2/Daily Herald/WBBM Radio
10. Oct. 30th: WTTW/ Chicago Tonight
11. Date TBD by debate host: WGN/Channel 9 (Oct. 22nd or Oct. 29th)
The criticisms, particularly about the forums, are valid.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Two of the debates on this list, Governors State and CBS2/Daily Herald, were not on the original list of debates Quinn demanded earlier this month. So, they’re padding the numbers here.
Also, I’m hearing that the CBS2 debate was also supposed to include Andy Shaw of the BGA and that might have been why Quinn didn’t agree to it then, but is saying he would now.
*** UPDATE 3 *** My phone blew up with text messages from the governor’s campaign after that second update. A sample…
We are not padding #s
We listed the gov state as tentative - and he other two weren’t confirmed - they have since been confirmed
*** UPDATE 4 *** This video clip was slipped to me a few minutes ago. It shows Bruce Rauner promising Carol Marin that he would return to the station for a debate against Gov. Quinn…
Transcript…
Carol Marin: With 30 seconds to go, do each of you promise, assuming one of you is chosen, to come back and meet your opponent on the Democratic side in another one of these forums?
Bruce Rauner: I would look forward to that day. Pat Quinn’s the worst governor in America and I look forward to debating him.
* On September 18, 2012, Bruce Rauner appeared on a panel in Chicago to discuss Illinois economics and taxes. He was asked about Jimmy John’s CEO Jimmy John Liataud’s decision to leave Illinois…
“I’m deeply saddened, outraged and ready to fight to make that not the case for you [Liataud] and your fellow entrepreneurs. We have got to change the direction of our state. And the rest of us in this business community who’ve been here for our whole lives to say ‘enough, no more, we’re not going to stay in this death spiral, we want great entrepreneurs to stay and thrive and build your companies and your jobs here in Illinois.’ That’s what our future’s about.
“Backstory on us, I’m in the venture capital business, private equity business. We’ve helped start almost a hundred companies. We’ve financed the growth of hundreds of companies. And we’ve been integral to the location decision of where they will base their operations, where they will base their headquarters. We’ve been the driving factor in much of that decision.
“It’s driven me nuts for decades that we are unsuccessful in convincing many of the entrepreneurs that we back to headquarter in Illinois. And many of the companies that we’ve helped started in Illinois have decided to leave the state. I know dozens of business owners who’ve left. I know dozens of others who are ready to leave. I know many successful business executives who were born and raised here and they changing their residency. They’re changing it to Florida, they’re changing it to Texas, they’re changing it to Nevada. We’ve got to say ‘Enough. No more.’
“And it’s, it’s in part about taxes, but it’s really about confidence and value. We’ve got to have confidence in our, in our government institutions. And in Illinois, for good reason, we have almost none.
“I mean, I, if we, if you were going to invest in a new plant that would come to Illinois, I’d like to say yes, but I’d have to say no.”
* The Quinn campaign wants you to focus like a laser on that last sentence, so a top official sent along this short clip…
Out of context, that could very well work in an ad.
* But I think the “we’ve been integral to the location decision” line could also be important. Why? Well, yesterday, Rauner said this…
“I have never closed a plant and moved those jobs overseas or that sort of thing. That’s not what my business was. Never done that.”
* Now, let’s get back to H-Cube, the outsourcing company mentioned in the governor’s new TV ad. The company eventually changed its name to Zenta. The governor’s campaign passed along some intel on the company, including this…
Zenta Downsized 25 Person Group to 12, Trained Indian Managers, and Began “Transferring Process Related Functions to India.” According to a case study listed on the Zenta website in November 2009: “[The] Client had a 110,000 loan, $25 billion residential master servicing portfolio in an industry with shrinking margins and increasing client service demands. Zenta Solution…Downsize 25 person group to 12. Remaining U.S. employees refocused on client management. Train Indian managers in U.S. Brought in experienced U.S. management. Indian managers return to Chennai to train new team…Begin transferring process related functions to India. Results: Reduced operational costs by 60%… Developed a leading third party master servicing platform in the U.S.” [Zenta.com, 11/09]
* From the DGA…
According to Rauner American job loss to low-wage markets like China, India and Mexico by announcing that “Not every job should be in America.”
Now that he’s squarely on the record concerning outsourcing at the expense of American jobs, here are a few questions for the tycoon who told a blatant falsehood concerning the outsourcing strategies of his own companies:
Question 1: What about Zenta?
“GTCRauner formed an outsourcing company in 2005 that, at its very outset, made clear it would deliberately exploit cheap labor in places such as India, China and the Philippines. Combining under the Zenta brand name, the conglomerate was designed specifically to send a wide range of American white-collar work overseas. In some cases, low-wage workers from places like India came to the United States to be trained by the very people whose jobs their firm would take. Rauner’s firms claimed they pioneered the outsourcing of jobs in the financial services and real estate markets. In fact, sending jobs overseas to exploit cheap labor was their guiding principle. They exploited American workers, too, and were successfully sued for labor violations.”
It’s pretty clear that Rauner wasn’t telling the full truth when he said “I have never closed a plant and moved those jobs overseas or that sort of thing. That’s not what my business was. Never done that.” He apparently did do that.
* And that “Not every job should be in America” line is gonna come back to bite Rauner for sure. From Illinois Freedom PAC…
Yesterday, Bruce Rauner fiercely defended his record of outsourcing U.S. jobs, saying “not every job should be in America.”
Neal Waltmire, Communications Director for Illinois Freedom PAC, released the following statement in response to Rauner’s remarks:
Spoken like a true vulture capitalist, Rauner defends his record of destroying middle class jobs and shipping them out of the United States.
When candidates for Governor speak of creating jobs, we assume they are talking about here in Illinois. But when Rauner talks job creation he means in foreign countries, conveniently leaving out the American jobs that will be destroyed in the process.
Rauner’s statement proves once again that his barometer of success is not creating middle class jobs or growing local companies. His primary metric is how much profits he and his billionaire buddies can suck out of our economy.
Rauner - and the executives he picks to run his companies - will do just about anything to make money, even if it means destroying middle class jobs, abusing and neglecting vulnerable citizens, and bankrupting companies.
Tom Gaulrapp, a Freeport resident whose job was outsourced to China in 2012, hit the nail on the head when he told a group in Rockford last month that this election is about “keeping one of these vulture capitalists who thinks it’s a good idea to pack up our jobs and move them somewhere else, to keep him from being in the governorship of Illinois.”
* Then there’s Polymer Group. From another opposition research file that was tossed over the transom…
Rauner was on the Board of Directors, including the audit committee, of Polymer Group until 2003. Under GTCR and Rauner’s leadership, Polymer posted five straight quarters of losses starting in late 2000 through 2002. While the company wasn’t making money, Rauner and GTCR were loading it up with debt. And in 2001-2002, Polymer defaulted on its loans to creditors three times and its bond rating was slashed to “D” by S&P. To cut costs, the company laid off 500 workers, 14% of its workforce and moved some jobs to foreign countries. Later, in May 2002, Polymer Group filed for bankruptcy. Despite all of this, according to the Daily Deal, GTCR “managed to escape with a profit.” […]
Polymer Group Laid Off 500 Employees, 14% Of The Workforce. “Johnston said the corporation is progressing with plans to lay off more than 500 employees, or 14 percent of the work force, to trim costs. He said less than half of the cutbacks are complete, but most of the reduction will be finished by early 2002. [Post And Courier, 1/1/02]
The jobs were moved to Canada, which isn’t “overseas,” but still technically a foreign nation. And keep in mind that Rauner said his firm exerted control over operation and HQ sitings.
* But the Rauner campaign is countering with its own claims of Quinn outsourcing. From a press release…
“The fact is Pat Quinn is invested in the Caymans and has engaged in business outsourcing as governor. Pat Quinn has clearly reached all out desperation mode with his new false and misleading attack. Only a failed governor who wants to cover up his own record of tax hikes and job losses would make outrageous claims like these.” – Rauner Spokesman Mike Schrimpf
* Details…
The Quinn Administration Gave Maximus A Two-Year, $76.8 Million Contract To Scrub The State’s Medicaid Rolls. “The Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which administers Medicaid, said the verification process is “well within the time frame mandated by the new law.” The state last Thursday finalized a contract with Maximus Health Services to conduct the review. The company gets paid on a per-case basis and is expected to earn about $76.8 million during the two-year contract.” (Doug Finke, “GOP: Quinn Administration Slow To Review Medicaid Eligibility,” The State Journal-Register, 9/18/12)
Maximus Describes Itself As Providing “Business Process Outsourcing.” “MAXIMUS (NYSE: MMS), a leading provider of government services worldwide, announced today that several case studies highlighting the Company’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Business Process Management (BPM) solutions were recently featured in the Gartner research report, ‘Use BPM to Drive Revenue, Not Just Efficiency.’” (Press Release, “MAXIMUS Business Process Management Highlighted in Gartner Research Report,” Maximus, 1/15/13)
AFSCME Denounced The Maximus Contract As “Outsourcing.” “‘It’s time to end this failed experiment with outsourcing a critical public watchdog role to a private, for-profit corporation,’ AFSCME director Bayer said. ‘The arbitrator’s order will bring oversight back to state government where it is directly accountable, and save money in the process.’ The backdrop to the Maximus contract was a backlog in Medicaid eligibility redeterminations caused by staff shortages in the departments of Human Services (DHS) and Healthcare and Family Services (HFS). Rather than hire sufficient staff, the state outsourced the work to a for-profit company. Council 31 filed a grievance, contending that outsourcing violated provisions of the collective bargaining agreement.” (Press Release, “Arbitrator’s Order Will End Wasteful Outsourcing, Return Medicaid Oversight To State Government,” AFSCME Council 31, 12/18/13)
Maximus Still Has Numerous Contracts With The State Of Illinois, And Was Paid $44,892,852.22 In FY2014. (State Contracts Database, Illinois Comptroller, Accessed 6/4/14)
*** UPDATE *** From the Rauner campaign…
POLYMER GROUP’S U.S. OPERATIONS EXPANDED SIGNIFICANTLY DURING GTCR’S INVOLVEMENT
In 1996, The Polymer Group’s U.S.-Based Manufacturing, Warehousing and Research & Development Facilities Occupied 1,781,500 Square Feet In Four States. (SEC Form S-1/A, Polymer Group, 5/7/96)
By 2003, The Polymer Group’s U.S.-Based Manufacturing, Warehousing And Research & Development Facilities Had Increased By More Than 1 Million Square Feet (To 3,051,677 Square Feet) In Ten States. (SEC Form 10-K, Polymer Group, 4/14/03)
They don’t say how many jobs were added, however. Warehousing facilities are highly automated these days.
* Reporters use different strategies to get their questions answered at press conferences. TV and radio reporters tend to have big, booming voices that they use to get attention from whoever’s speaking. Others have to try different avenues.
I cracked up yesterday when I listened to the Bruce Rauner press conference. Rauner doesn’t hold too many press conferences in Springfield, so Ray Long of the Tribune wanted to get in a couple of questions. Rauner orchestreated the event to put pressure on the Illinois Supreme Court to hear the appeal of his term limits case as soon as possible. Ray wanted to know if Rauner backed Pat Quinn’s term limits plan in 1994, but tons of other reporters were also asking questions at the same moment. Check out what Ray did…
* Later in the presser, Ray used the same repetitive strategy to try and get an answer out of Rauner about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s public demand that Rauner release his full tax returns. I told Ray last night that I may make this one into a ringtone…
The Quinn-Vallas campaign provided information showing that Rauner’s former investment firm, GTCR Golden Rauner, formed a company called H-Cube in 2005, and it acquired a majority stake in Zenta in 2005. An announcement on PR Newswire said H-Cube was formed through a partnership between Henry Hortenstine and GTCR Golden Rauner “to create a world-class business process outsourcing company.”
H-Cube later acquired Global Realty Outsourcing Inc. and Blackheath Financial Inc, all of which specialized in things including business process outsourcing. H-Cube integrated the operations of the companies in 2007 and changed its name to Zenta.
Also, she said, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana should be treated as a petty offense rather than a misdemeanor, but penalties for distribution of more than 2,500 grams, or 5.5 pounds of marijuana, should be raised to deter trafficking.
I guess I should be pleased that a major county prosecutor is saying this stuff, but it’s just so 1990s.
* Does it ever occur to these “decriminalization” proponents (and I used to be one myself) that by approaching the issue this way they are in fact continuing to enrich and empower the outlaws who grow and distribute the stuff?
The outlaws will take their risks like they always have, regardless of the new penalties the state’s attorney wants to impose. She can convict all the distributors, dealers and growers she wants every year and more will eagerly emerge from the woodwork, as history has clearly shown.
Decriminalization is the wrong way to go, unless some people feel they need it as a short term step toward legalization. As a long-term solution, it’s merely continuing the disaster that our “War on Drugs” has become.
* Besides, the police have always found ways around decriminalization laws in the past. NYC cops, for instance, simply order people to empty their pockets. Marijuana is decriminalized as long as it’s not in public view. When the person empties his pockets, the weed is now in public view. Busted.
So, pardon me if I strongly suspect that yet another decrim law won’t change current realities. The same folks who are getting busted now will continue to be busted. We’re ruining countless numbers of lives with this insanity.
* We need to take the outlaws out of the marijuana business by taking the marijuana business out of the black market economy. Tax it, regulate it and put some people to work.
Not to mention that the state could really use the cash.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wants portions of a lawsuit filed against Treasurer Dan Rutherford’s office dropped, and a court to sanction the former staff lawyer who filed it.
Madigan’s office asked a federal court on Monday to dismiss claims by Edmund Michalowski against two treasurer’s office employees and the Republican state treasurer’s office. Michalowski said the employees were involved in racketeering and retaliated against him for refusing to do political work. He also said Rutherford sexually harassed him.
Madigan calls the racketeering changes “baseless,” and said the harassment allegations involving the office weren’t “sufficiently severe or pervasive.”
Michalowski alleges that Ham told him that Rutherford required Treasurer Office employees to make ―donations to non-office government functions that would benefit the Rutherford and Romney campaigns. Michalowski says he gave the demanded cash to Ham at the Treasurer‘s Office in Chicago. Although for this motion the Court must accept this allegation as true, Michalowski notably does not identify the so-called ―non-office government functions‖ (staff holiday party) or say how much he paid ($50).
Michalowski next alleges that on July 24, 2011, Conrad sent him a text saying that the Treasurer wanted him to wear a tank top. Michalowski omits the rest of the text exchange, including his own joking comments.
Michalowski‘s Title VII claim should be dismissed because he does not allege conduct that created an objectively hostile working environment under controlling precedent. For conduct to create a hostile work environment, it must be both subjectively and objectively offensive and “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of [the victim‘s] employment and create an abusive working environment.” […]
The Seventh Circuit has repeatedly held that conduct that was more severe than what Michalowski alleges here did not rise to the level of objective harassment as a matter of law. […]
Where courts have allowed hostile work environment cases to proceed, the alleged misconduct was substantially more severe and pervasive that what Michalowski alleges here, and usually involved incidents of unwanted touching. […]
Although the April 2011 incident allegedly involved grabbing “at” Michalowski‘s “genital area,” Michalowski does not allege that the Treasurer touched him. And even if the Treasurer‘s later alleged invitations to his home and hotel room and shoulder rub were unwanted, Michalowski does not allege that the Treasurer made any explicit sexual comments or requested any sexual activity.Taken as a whole, these sporadic incidents were not sufficiently pervasive or severe to constitute objective harassment as a matter of law.
Michalowski does not come close to alleging facts needed to establish necessary elements for a RICO claim, including: (a) actual RICO predicate acts; (b) how each defendant engaged in a pattern of racketing activity; (c) how each defendant operated the Treasurer‘s Office through a pattern of racketeering; (d) an agreement by each defendant to facilitate the completion of a RICO violation; and (e) an injury to Michalowski‘s “business or property” that was proximately caused by a RICO violation.
Michalowski‘s First Amendment claim fails at the outset because, as a policymaking employee, the First Amendment does not protect his alleged lack of political support for Treasurer Rutherford. The right of public employees to associate (or not associate) politically may be legitimately constrained if the employee is in a policymaking position, has access to confidential information, or otherwise enjoys a position where political loyalty may be expected. […]
Even if Michalowski has alleged some conduct that is protected by the First Amendment, he still does not have a valid political discrimination claim against Ham or Conrad because he does not allege that Ham or Conrad took any action that was motivated to deter him from engaging in protected activity.
Michalowski‘s hit-list allegation also does not qualify as actionable retaliation. Michalowski alleges that Rutherford and Ham (not Conrad) supposedly created a hit list of employees who would be fired for their lack of political support, but he does not allege that Rutherford and Ham created this supposed list to deter any First Amendment activity, that the list hindered his job performance or deterred him from engaging in protected conduct, or that he or anyone else was actually fired because of their lack of political support.
Even assuming that there was such a list (there was not), nothing in the law prevents the Treasurer and his chief of staff from creating a list of employees who might be terminated.
Bruce Rauner issued the following statement regarding the news that former campaign manager and top White House aide for President Obama David Plouffe is joining ride-sharing company Uber:
“David Plouffe’s first order of business should be to encourage Governor Pat Quinn to veto the anti-ride sharing bill pending right here in President Obama’s home state. Ride-sharing companies like Uber are exactly the type of innovative companies Illinois should be welcoming and recruiting - I know it and the President’s top people know it. Pat Quinn should know it too.”
He said some level of background checks for ride-sharing drivers “probably does make sense.” So does a certain level of insurance, though he didn’t have any coverage minimums in mind.
You want the bill vetoed, but don’t know how you’d make it better?
If a lobbyist walked into a legislator’s office with that attitude they’d be laughed out of the Statehouse.
* Basically, this is simply an attempt by Rauner to woo the younger, wealthier tech crowd in Chicago and put Quinn on the spot with that very same group. It’s not a bad move at all. I just wish he’d flesh out his position even a little bit beyond empty platitudes and sort out his contradictions.
There are no plans for aldermen to consider Emanuel’s proposal until after the Nov. 4 election, when voters across Illinois will be asked if they back a minimum wage of $10 an hour.
Democrats hope that advisory referendum will boost turnout in a year when U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn are running for re-election and campaigning against income inequality. If Chicago raised its minimum wage to $13 an hour before the statewide election, some of the air could be taken out of the issue in the heavily Democratic city.
Conversely, if the General Assembly ends up raising Illinois’ minimum wage to $10 an hour, that could relieve some of the pressure on the City Council to take Chicago’s rate even higher. Emanuel won’t say whether he’ll keep pushing for a $13-an-hour city minimum wage in that situation.
It’s just politics, of course, and something I’ve discussed with subscribers, but man is that ever an incredibly cynical ploy to postpone the city council vote.
A planned 200,000 square foot jet-repair and maintenance center will run 24 hours a day when it opens in Rockford, a move that’ll create up to 500 jobs in the northern Illinois region that’s become a hub for aerospace-related business, officials said Monday.
Construction on the $40 million facility — a private and public partnership — will start in the next year. The hangar is expected to open in 2016 and will be located at Chicago Rockford International Airport. It’s leased to Wood Dale-based AAR Corp., the largest operator of maintenance and repair sites nationwide.
Officials said they chose Rockford because of its specially trained workforce, location and distribution network. The jobs will be created over the next five years, according to Gov. Pat Quinn’s office.
* Are we sure that’s why the company chose Rockford? Greg Hinz…
But the entire capital cost of the project will be funded by taxpayers, with Wood Dale-based AAR leasing the facility. […]
The state will provide $15 million for the facility, with $600,000 for job creation. The rest of the $40 million will come from airport and federal funds.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, other state officials and local leaders on Aug. 14 broke ground on a $7 million infrastructure project for the future Port of East St. Louis, Ill.
The project calls for building an on-site road, rail lines and utilities to create access to the inland port via train, truck and barge. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity provided $5 million for the project, while the port’s developers contributed $1.25 million. Slay Industries/Kinder Morgan will provide $2 million for the private property portion of the road.
“It’s all about location in the shipping industry, and East St. Louis is ideally situated to ship and receive goods by truck, rail or river,” said Quinn in a press release. “The Port of East St. Louis will be a major economic driver for the Metro East region.”
The 200-acre port will link the Midwest to world markets through waterway, highway and rail connections, according to state officials. The port will be located less than a mile from the Poplar Street River Bridge, and will have access to several Class Is and unit-train capabilities.
* This isn’t the first preelection Port of East St. Louis announcement. From October 14, 2010…
Governor Pat Quinn today announced $8 million to redevelop a 200-acre former industrial site on the Mississippi River to clear the way to build the Port of East St. Louis and help another local company expand. This investment will create approximately 65 jobs and is funded through the River Edge Redevelopment Zone program. When completed, the multi-modal Port of East St. Louis will create approximately 1,200 direct and indirect jobs.
“Today’s announcement will help East St. Louis create a world-class transportation facility in the heart of the Metro East area,” said Governor Quinn. “The River Edge program allows us to clean up areas that have suffered from years of neglect and turn them into economic engines, creating jobs and boosting Illinois’ continued economic recovery.”
The city of East St. Louis will receive a $5 million River Edge Development Zone grant to build a north entrance into the port, including turn lanes, ramps and a branch of the main loop. Slay Industries and Kinder Morgan together will receive $2 million to redevelop approximately 200 acres for the Port of East St. Louis. The first phase of construction is expected to cost $35 million. When completed, the port will support increased commercial traffic on the Mississippi River, boost the regional economy, and relieve traffic and rail congestion across the Midwest.
At this rate, the port will be completed in the 22nd Century.
Illinois used faulty methods for withdrawing federal Medicaid money, resulting in “a perpetual ‘treadmill effect’” of regular overdraws of dollars that the state later had trouble repaying, federal auditors said in a report released today.
The state’s withdrawals exceeded its actual Medicaid spending by an average of $60 million per quarter during the three years reviewed, according to the report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General.
The federal government may have lost as much as $792,000 in interest during fiscal 2010 through 2012 because the state repaid the money two to six months later, the report said.
Because Illinois still relies on a 30-plus-year-old Medicaid software system, it is unable to provide real-time claims information. The state, therefore, must use historical claims data to estimate the federal government’s share of the payments by quarter, Casey said.
Each day the state pays hospitals, doctors and other health care providers, it submits the federal government a bill for its projected share of the costs. At the end of each quarter, it reconciles the difference.
Between fiscal 2010 and 2012, the state’s estimates missed the mark by at least $4 million per quarter, ranging from undrawing $28.6 million from the federal government in one quarter and overdrawing $193.7 million in another, according to the audit.
Even so, Casey said, “When you look at a $60 million variance per quarter, that’s not much of a variance on average when you consider we have $3 billion in claims each quarter.”
Casey said as Illinois moves more of its Medicaid patients into managed care programs, where it will be paid a fixed fee per-patient, per-month, it will be able to better estimate and manage the amount it draws from the federal government.
Illinois won’t have new software to correct this problem until 2017.
But none of that explains why the state was depositing federal Medicaid dollars into GRF, which is why the state couldn’t pay back the money right away at the end of the quarters.
The bumpy marriage between the state and the private company that operates the Illinois Lottery is ending in a divorce.
Gov. Pat Quinn’s office confirmed to me [Friday] that it is ending its contract with Northstar Lottery Group LLC to operate the $2 billion-a-year lottery system, seven years earlier than scheduled.
It is not yet certain whether the separation will be voluntary by both parties, but a decision to end the contract has been made.
“The governor’s office has directed the lottery to end its relationship with Northstar,” gubernatorial spokesman Grant Klinzman said in an email that he later verified in a brief phone conversation. “The administration has had serious concerns with Northstar’s performance. The governor demands every state contractor be held accountable for their performance.”
What’s most likely to happen is that Northstar will cease almost immediately to have any say in how the Lottery operates. Though there will likely be a short period of de-entangling transition, the 140 staffers or so staffers believed to work for Northstar will no longer be actively — or majorly — involved in charting the Lottery’s course.
In the short term, Jone’s own Lottery staff likely will take over management. And yes, there most likely will be a new private manager, as the Illinois state law that created a Lottery private manager function is still on the books and isn’t likely to be done away with anytime soon.
Northstar’s defense is that state meddling and inaction are to blame for much of the shortfall. The company contends, for example, that state officials endlessly delayed approval of a promising new Lottery game based on the board game Monopoly. Northstar also argues that later final audits will erase much of the supposed shortfall.
We’re loath to take sides too strongly on this one, seeing plenty of blame all around. We suspect Northstar overpromised from the start what it could deliver, but we also know how maddening it can be to get a government bureaucrat to make a decision or get out of the way.
The undeniable fact remains that Northstar grew Lottery sales far faster than the state did. Northstar’s own estimate is that sales grew by 3 percent a year for five years when the Lottery was administered by the state, then grew by an average of 12 percent a year after Northstar took over.
“Imagine, if you will, a world in which Republican plutocrat Bruce Rauner is governor of Illinois and lefty teachers union President Karen Lewis is mayor of Chicago.
“Have have just entered the Twilight Zone or what?
“Doo-dee, doo-doo. Doo-dee, doo-doo.”
What might have seemed completely far-fetched a year ago is now a more than possible outcome, if you believe the latest public opinion polling from both major newspapers installing Rauner and Lewis as frontrunners in their respective races.
* The Question: Imagine, if you will, a world in which Republican plutocrat Bruce Rauner is governor of Illinois and lefty teachers union President Karen Lewis is mayor of Chicago?
Enyart says “he has helped Scott Air Force Base grow.”
The Facts Beltway Bill Doesn’t Want You To Know:
-Nearly 3,500 workers will be laid off in the next five years at Scott Air Force Base. Enyart was also absent for a crucial vote for military construction and appropriations.
-Enyart has also turned his back on Illinois Veterans after voting “NO” on a resolution that would have kept military chaplains working during the government shutdown.
-Illinois Veterans have asked Enyart to apologize. One month later, they’re still waiting. Click here to read Veteran’s letter.
Enyart says he is a “supporter of clean coal.”
The Facts Beltway Bill Doesn’t Want You To Know:
-Enyart voted against “The Preventing Government Waste and Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America Act,” (H.R. 2824) and also voted against hard-working Illinois coal miners.
-Enyart also continues his anti-energy record by voting against prohibiting the Obama Administration from conducting its anti-fossil fuel agenda.
Employment rates for 25- to 54-year-olds were lower in 29 states in fiscal year 2014 than in 2007, before the Great Recession. In 2007, 79.9 percent of people ages 25 to 54 in the United States had a job. In the 12 months ending June 2014, five years after the recession ended, only 76.2 percent of people in that age group were working.
Pew weighted data from the Current Population Survey using values provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. These data were used to calculate the total number of civilian, noninstitutionalized 25- to 54-year-olds in each state and in the nation. Pew then calculated the average percentage of people who were employed in each of those populations. These calculations were done for 2007 (January through December) and fiscal 2014 (July 2013 through June 2014). Pew used these values to calculate the percentage-point change from 2007 to fiscal 2014. Significance tests were performed to determine which changes were statistically significant at a 0.05 level.
The top five states, in order were Vermont, Nebraska, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Alaska.
* Meanwhile, we already discussed this hyperbolic statement by Bruce Rauner’s campaign today…
“Tens of thousands of people are giving up looking for work because of Pat Quinn’s failed policies,” Rauner said. “More than 63,000 people have given up hope on finding a job since April and Pat Quinn is out celebrating – it’s downright offensive to struggling families around Illinois.”
* So, I went looking through various Federal Reserve Board publications to see what their explanation was. Let’s start with this chart from the San Francisco Fed…
* James Bullard, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, explained the history back in February…
If you know only one aspect of the data on labor force participation, it should be this: Labor force participation used to be relatively low, it rose during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, peaking in 2000, and it has generally been declining since 2000. […]
After about three decades of trending up, the labor force participation rate peaked in the first half of 2000 at 67.3 percent. The rate of increase was slower in the 1990s than it was in the 1970s or 1980s. The peak was more than 8 percentage points higher than the average level during 1948 - 1966. Many of the studies of labor force participation during this period focused on the increasing participation rates of women. However, whatever effects came from that source, or any other source, the labor force participation rate could not continue to increase forever. Households are making choice s about how much labor to supply given current wages and work environments, and women newly joining the labor force would find the right level of participation and stop there.
Since 2000, the labor force participation rate has generally been declining. The pace of decline was particularly sharp during the recession of 2007 - 2009, but the participation rate also declined steadily in the early 2000s and since the end of the recession in mid - 2009. […]
According to BLS projections, more than 70 percent of this decline is due to pure demographic factors; that is, changes in population shares by age groups, assuming unchanged participation rates for each group.
The primary factor behind this decline is the rising share of older workers in the population as the baby-boom generation ages and life expectancies increase. The rising share of older workers pulls down the LFPR because older workers have lower participation rates than prime-age workers. A second factor behind the gradual decline of the LFPR has been a steady reduction in labor force participation among young people over the last decade, resulting in large part from rising school enrollment
* Shigeru Fujita, of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, February 6, 2014…
Nonparticipation due to retirement did not rise until the end of the Great Recession but started to increase significantly in 2010. Since the start of 2012, it has been the most important contributor to the increase in the overall nonparticipation rate.
Americans over the age of 65 are much less likely to work than prime-age Americans. And since that subset of Americans is swelling, that drives the labor-force participation rate down. Note that this is happening even though older Americans are staying on the job for longer than they did during the 1990s.
Roughly two-thirds of the decline is due to the aging of the labor force (in particular, baby boomer retirements)
…Adding… Last year, when Illinois’ unemployment rate was really high, Bruce Rauner focused heavily on the rate. Now, of course, he’s saying the rate doesn’t matter. A few quotes sent over by Gov. Quinn’s campaign…
“Unemployment is awful. But in Danville, Decatur, and Rockford and other places, unemployment is well over 10%. These places share one common need: Jobs - and we need leaders who have experience in creating them.” -Rauner FB Post, 3/10/2013
“Under Pat Quinn we have become hostile to business and have moved up to one of the highest unemployment rates in America. We use to be leading the nation in economic growth and now we are at the bottom.” -WLDS, 8/15/14
“Rauner told the crowd he wants to bring his success in business to Springfield. In the process, his focus is to achieve results that will point to Illinois having the best schools and “the lowest unemployment in the country as opposed to the third highest” -SIOR-AIRE Meeting, 5/27/14
For instance, the share of Illinois adults in the workforce dropped a whopping 4.1 percentage points in the past six years, slipping to 64.7 percent from 66.8 percent. Not good. But in Michigan and Ohio, the slippage was a statistically indistinguishable 3.9 percent each. And their current participation rates remain well under ours, at 60.4 percent and 62.8 percent, specifically.
A federal appeals court has taken on the issue of pay-to-play corruption in Illinois under disgraced ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit by riverboat casinos in a late Friday ruling. The suit alleges that racetrack owners bribed Blagojevich to push through legislation that transferred 3 percent of casino revenue to the racetracks.
The Chicago-based court says the case required it to “once again to decide whether some shenanigans” in the Legislature “and governor’s office crossed the line from the merely unseemly to the unlawful.”
Deals are the stuff of legislating. Although logrolling may appear unseemly some of the time, it is not, by itself, illegal. Bribes are. This case requires us once again to decide whether some shenanigans in the Illinois General Assembly and governor’s office crossed the line from the merely unseemly to the unlawful. It involves a subject we have visited in the past: two industries that compete for gambling dollars. […]
In 2006 and 2008, former Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law two bills (to which we refer as the ’06 and ’08 Acts) that imposed a tax on certain in‐state casinos of 3% of their revenue and placed the funds into a trust for the benefit of the horseracing industry. Smelling a rat, the plaintiff casinos brought suit under the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C. § 1964, alleging that the defendants, all members of the horseracing industry, had bribed the governor to ensure that the bills were enacted. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs (and of course not vouching for anything), we conclude that there was enough to survive summary judgment on the claim that the governor agreed to sign the ’08 Act in exchange for a bribe. […]
Illinois legalized riverboat casino gambling in 1990. Ever since, the state’s once‐thriving horseracing industry has been in decline. In late 2005 and early 2006, the state General Assembly considered legislation to help the horseracers. One bill would have imposed a 3% tax on casinos earning more than $50 million annually and deposited the proceeds into a fund for the benefit of the horseracing industry. It was modeled on similar initiatives in three other states. Lobbying on all sides was intense. On the first few votes in the General Assembly, the bill failed to garner a majority.
The bill’s fortunes changed later in the spring of 2006. For one thing, it was modified so that the tax applied only to casinos earning more than $200 million annually, thereby limiting its effect to the large casinos in northern Illinois near Chicago. For another, Governor Blagojevich began to take an interest in the matter after his senior aide and alleged pay‐toplay facilitator, Christopher Kelly, met with a horseracing executive, John Johnston. On the floor of the General Assembly, the bill’s opponents cried foul. “Why are some of you called down to the Governor’s office, then you come back up and change your vote?” asked Representative William Black. Added Representative Brent Hassert, “The Governor has weighed in on [the ’06 bill] … heavily in the last night or so, calling people and asking people to vote on this. It is my understanding … that there’s promises have been made to support this bill.” Soon after, the ’06 Act cleared the House by a vote of 70‐32; a week later, the Senate passed it 40‐16. Governor Blagojevich signed the bill into law the next day. Johnston and other racing executives thanked the governor for his support of the bill in a personal letter. Using various subsidiaries, they then contributed $125,000 to his campaign fund.
“Smelling a rat.”
Heh.
Chief Judge Diane Wood is one heck of a story teller. She had me locked in from the opening paragraph and I just couldn’t stop reading.
The Casinos have not pointed to evidence that would allow a factfinder to conclude that the Racetracks’ alleged bribery scheme caused the legislature to pass the ’06 Act. To begin with, the Casinos make no allegation and have no evidence that the Racetracks ever bribed or attempted to bribe state legislators. Nor do the Casinos point to evidence that the governor agreed to exert improper influence over state legislators in order to win their support of the ’06 Act in exchange for a bribe. […]
The worst comment the Casinos identify is Rep. Hassert’s obviously inadmissible statement that it was his “understanding … [that] promises [were] made to support this bill.” Not only is that comment an out‐of‐court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted; the underlying sentiment is not based on personal knowledge… Worse, we have no idea what promises he was talking about. If the promise referred to support for re‐election, or a commitment to cosponsor a bill, without any taint of bribery, nothing would be wrong. […]
The record contains no admissible evidence that Governor Blagojevich unduly pressured members of the legislature to support the ’06 Act. Nor is there competent evidence that would permit an inference that any identifiable group of legislators “voted as a bloc” at the governor’s behest. No legislator was bribed. It takes more than the Casinos have shown here to support their proposed conclusion that the workings of an entire state legislature were coopted by the bribery of one official. […]
Evidence is similarly lacking to support a finding that the Racetracks bribed Governor Blagojevich to sign the ’06 Act into law. The Casinos point to a meeting between Johnston and Blagojevich’s aide Chris Kelly in 2006 while the Act was stalled in the legislature. But they provide no evidence that Johnston offered Kelly a bribe in exchange for Governor Blagojevich’s signature during that meeting. The letter from the Racetracks to Blagojevich after the ’06 Act passed merely thanked him for his support; it did not suggest that Blagojevich had agreed to sign the bill in exchange for a bribe. The fact that the Racetracks later made campaign contributions cannot, without more, support liability for acts of political corruption. To hold illegal an official’s support of legislation furthering the interests of some constituents shortly before or after campaign contributions are solicited and received “would open to prosecution not only conduct that has long been thought to be well within the law but also conduct that in a very real sense is unavoidable so long as election campaigns are financed by private contributions or expenditures, as they have been from the beginning of the Nation.”
As with the ’06 Act, the record contains little evidence to show that the Governor’s influence caused the legislature to pass the ’08 Act. But that is not all that the Casinos alleged. They also asserted that the Racetracks and the governor agreed to a quid pro quo: in exchange for the governor’s signature on the ’08 Act, the Racetracks promised to give $100,000 to his campaign fund.
The summary judgment record contains considerable evidence that, if credited, would support the allegation of a quid pro quo between the Racetracks and Governor Blagojevich. When Blagojevich did not immediately sign the ’08 Act into law, Racetracks executive Johnston stated to a colleague in an email: “We are going to have to put a stronger bit in his mouth!?!” Johnston complained to Blagojevich’s chief of staff Monk that the delays in signing the bill were costing Johnston $9,000 per day. A factfinder could conclude that Blagojevich was talking about Johnston’s commitment to pay $100,000 when he informed Monk that he would “like some separation between that and signing the bill.” After the FBI recorded Monk and Blagojevich scheming about getting Johnston to pay, Monk met with Johnston and, according to Monk, delivered the message that the bill would not be signed until he paid. According to Monk, Johnston countered with an offer to pay half the money at once and half later. Monk called Blagojevich immediately after the meeting with Johnston to report his belief that Johnston would soon pay. After learning of the criminal allegation that Blagojevich threatened not to sign the ’08 Act bill unless he was paid $100,000 by someone in the horseracing industry, Johnston admitted, “I didn’t know if anybody else had given 100,000, but I knew I did.” Finally, Johnston signed an immunity agreement in which he acknowledged that he had information that “may tend to incriminate” him. From this and other evidence in the record, a reasonable juror could conclude that the Racetracks agreed to pay $100,000 to Blagojevich’s campaign fund in return for his signature on the ’08 Act.
That brings us to the heart of the matter: Was the Racetracks’ alleged agreement to bribe the governor to sign the ’08 Act sufficiently immediate to serve as a legal cause of the Casinos’ injuries for purposes of RICO? […]
We see nothing in RICO, as the Supreme Court has interpreted it, that would bar the Casinos from pursuing their claim with respect to the ’08 Act. There was no more directly injured party standing between the Casinos and the alleged wrongdoer, and thus no one else to whom they could look for relief; their injuries were not derivative. The money they paid pursuant to the ’08 Act did not compensate the State of Illinois for any losses to the state. Rather, the Casinos themselves suffered the only injury resulting from the Racetracks’ alleged conspiracy to enact the ’08 statute. […]
The ’08 Act taxed only five entities in the entire state. Other taxpayers and citizens were unaffected. Moreover, the Casinos are not challenging the tax itself in this litigation, having lost earlier efforts pursuing that theory. Rather, they seek damages from a private party for an alleged conspiracy to use the power of state government to take money from them. Their injury is easily measured, and it is directly traceable to the Racetracks’ alleged conduct (bribing the governor to sign the ’08 Act) and remediable by this court. […]
In closing, we stress that the only RICO element we are deciding is the issue of proximate cause. To sustain their section 1962(d) conspiracy claim, the Casinos must ultimately show “that (1) the defendant[s] agreed to maintain an interest in or control of an enterprise or to participate in the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, and (2) the defendant[s] further agreed that someone would commit at least two predicate acts to accomplish these goals.” … We recognize that our rejection of the Casinos’ claims based on the ’06 Act may have an impact on their ability to show that the defendants agreed to the commission of two predicate acts… or that the defendants “knowingly agreed to perform services of a kind [to] facilitate the activities of those … operating the enterprise in an illegal manner,”
The Balmoral and Maywood tracks could be in deep trouble here.
Also, this is the same court which is deciding what to do about Blagojevich’s appeal of his prison sentence.
* From an August 1st Sun-Times story on Bruce Rauner’s investments in the Cayman Islands…
Three of Rauner’s five Cayman Island holdings trace back to GTCR, the Chicago-based investment company that Rauner founded and headed until 2012 when he stepped down to ramp up his bid for governor. […]
Three of Rauner’s Cayman Islands investments are tied to his old firm: GTCR Golder Rauner II AIV Ironshore LP, GTCR Partners IX AIV Ironshore LP, and GTCR Partners X/A&C AIV LP.
Republican Bruce Rauner not only has personal investments in the Cayman Islands, but he presided over his former private equity firm as it set up other investment vehicles in the Caribbean tax haven known for its secrecy.
The Chicago Sun-Times verified through the Cayman Islands’ government-run online business registry that a total of a dozen investment funds were established there by Chicago-based GTCR between June 2009 and July 2011, when Rauner chaired the firm. […]
But a top Rauner aide Monday defended the funds’ creation and said they all relate to GTCR’s 2009 investment in Bermuda-based Ironshore, Inc., a specialty insurance company, and a 2011 GTCR acquisition of Gridlock Holdings, a provider of custom news and traffic reports for non-U.S. media outlets.
I’m not sure if there’s much new news there, but “a dozen” is certainly more than “three,” and it provides another opportunity for the Democrats to tee off on him.
* From the DGA…
Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner only recently returned from vacationing at one of his luxury residences in Montana where he dodged questions about why he stashed his cash in the Caymans, a notorious haven for tax dodgers.
Hmmm….any guesses on which estate Rauner goes to now in order dodge questions on the new revelation that he helped to steer company money to the Caymans?
A new Chicago Sun Times story includes an assessment of why Rauner would not only avoid US and Illinois taxes by stashing personal funds, but why he could maximize that profit by steering company money to the Caymans:
“‘By putting the funds in the Cayman Islands, he’s making it easy for his investors to cheat, which means he’ll have more investors than he’d otherwise have, and he’ll earn more fees from it,’ said Rebecca Wilkins, senior legal counsel for the Center for Tax Justice that estimates the federal government loses $100 billion a year in owed tax obligations because of foreign tax havens.’”
This isn’t the only way that Rauner avoids paying his fair share and profiting at the expense of others. Rauner also other exotic loopholes to dodge paying Medicare and Social Security taxes, while banking profits at the expense of middle class workers. Workers in Rauner’s companies have been subjected to massive layoffs, outsourcing and conditions that led to deadly negligence, abuse and outright fraud.
“If he was governor of the Cayman Islands it would allow him to spend more time managing his millions and spare Illinois from being led by a profiteer that puts his money before workers, seniors, families and communities,” said Rikeesha Phelon, Illinois Spokesperson for the Democratic Governors Association.
“He hasn’t been honest with the public about his tax information. And now we see he hasn’t been honest with the people about the extent of his foreign dealings.”
* When I listened to the audio of Gov. Pat Quinn’s Chicago press conference yesterday, I was a bit surprised at the number of questions he received from reporters about the situation in Ferguson, MO. He was asked what his thoughts were about the unfolding drama, he was asked whether Missouri’s governor had asked for assistance from Illinois’ National Guard and then was asked whether he would “entertain” a request from our neighboring state for National Guard deployment.
* That last question was by far the weirdest. Are reporters (or editors) really that eager to find an Illinois angle to this story? Apparently so…
Speaking at a bill-signing event on Monday, Gov. Pat Quinn weighed in on the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, that has gripped the nation, saying all of America is vested in unearthing the facts behind the police-involved shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
The Aug. 9 shooting of the unarmed black man by a white police officer has torn apart that St. Louis suburb, with Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon on Monday calling in that state’s National Guard to help calm increasingly violent nightly protests.
“I know Gov. Nixon. I have not talked to him,” Quinn said at the Wesley Place, a rehab facility at 1415 W. Foster, where he signed into law two bills addressing standards and accountability at Illinois nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
“I think it’s very, very important that the people be allowed to voice their feelings. It’s part of the First Amendment of our country. I think that law enforcement has to respect that,” Quinn said. “But we also believe in order, and in making sure that everyone has a chance to be safe. I do think it’s important that the governor there did deploy his highway patrol — what we call state police in Illinois — to help local law enforcement get a handle on the situation. It was clearly well-needed.”
When there’s an extreme emergency, Illinois National Guard units have gone to other states to help. Thousands of troops were sent to New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina, for example.
But Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has not requested help from Illinois’ troops to aide with the Ferguson situation, and he doesn’t expect him to.
Except we’re not talking about a major American city being destroyed, we’re talking about riots in a small St. Louis suburb.
* The Rauner campaign sent out a few news stories covering the candidate’s swing through southern Illinois. Here’s video of coverage by WPSD TV…
Transcript provided by the Rauner campaign…
ANCHOR: Republican candidate for governor Bruce Rauner is on the campaign trail – today in Marion hoping to connect with the outdoorsmen in the region. He introduced his Conservationists for Rauner Coalition for those who, like himself, enjoy the great outdoors. He says as governor he would work to revamp the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
RAUNER: Our parks are not being taken care of, our national forests are deteriorating, our waterways, we need to enhance our natural resources so families can enjoy them. With hiking and camping and hunting and fishing and riding.
ANCHOR: Rauner says that working to better the department would lead to job creation and improve local national forests and tourist attractions.
Um, national forests? The state doesn’t have enough money to take care of what it has, and he wants to restore national forests? Does he even listen to himself?
Rauner was very vocal about protecting and maintaining the natural resources in Southern Illinois. He says tourist destinations like state parks and wildlife areas can be utilized to create more jobs and improve the economy.
“The outdoors can generate a lot of economic activity,” said Rauner.
He claims recent state budget cuts have hurt promotion of the state’s natural resources. If elected, he promises to team up with state conservationists to preserve parks and wildlife areas in hopes of boosting the state’s economy.
“Our gas stations can get more gas sold to tourists and travelers,” explained Rauner. “It can help our hotels and restaurants.”
I couldn’t agree more. But how are you gonna do that when you slash the income tax rate while also promising to increase school funding, etc.?
* The subject in this Rauner campaign e-mail was “Rauner Statement on Quinn Celebrating Thousands Giving Up on Work”…
Bruce Rauner: “Tens of thousands of people are giving up looking for work because of Pat Quinn’s failed policies. More than 63,000 people have given up hope on finding a job since April and Pat Quinn is out celebrating — it’s downright offensive to struggling families around Illinois.”
Bruce Rauner today issued the following statement in response to Pat Quinn’s continued celebration of thousands of Illinoisans giving up on finding work over the last few months.
“Tens of thousands of people are giving up looking for work because of Pat Quinn’s failed policies,” Rauner said. “More than 63,000 people have given up hope on finding a job since April and Pat Quinn is out celebrating – it’s downright offensive to struggling families around Illinois.”
In case you missed it, Peoria WMBD TV reported that “despite a report last week from the state showing more jobs created in Illinois and a lower unemployment rate, new data released Monday by the U S Bureau of Labor Statistics, paints a different picture.”
* Meanwhile, the Quinn campaign is sticking to the tax form issue…
Professor Kevin Stevens, director of the School of Accountancy and Management Information Systems at DePaul University, will be available to the media to discuss what we do and don’t know about Bruce Rauner’s finances and what disclosure of his full tax records could reveal.
* Oh, heck. I forgot to post a question. Let’s do this one: AP…
Smoking will be banned indoors and out on all Illinois public college and university campuses starting next summer under legislation signed yesterday by Gov. Pat Quinn.
Quinn said the measure, which takes effect July 1, 2015, applies to all state-supported schools and will protect students’ health and help nonsmokers avoid unwanted smoke “on the campuses they call home.”
Smoking still will be permitted inside privately owned vehicles and during some activities protected by the federal American Indian Religious Freedom Act.
Health officials praised the law, saying it could help reduce smoking rates.
* The Question: Do you agree or disagree with this smoking ban? Take the poll and then explain your answer in comments, please.
* The Sun-Times has some video of Bruce Rauner during which Rauner says he wanted to punch somebody for allegedly trying to keep him out of Chicago’s annual Greek Independence Day parade…
“I was the only Republican in this parade. There were hundreds and hundreds of people in line. You know what Pat Quinn said: ‘Holy cow, Rauner’s coming after my base. You know, I’m out working ‘em, I’m working ‘em. He’s running around chasing me … he’s never been to a Greek parade in his life. He came to that parade because he said, “Uh-oh, Rauner’s taking my votes.’”
“You know what, they tried to, his people tried to kick me out of the parade. You know what, it’s the closest I’ve come to punching someone in this race. I said, I said I ain’t leaving this parade, this is not a Democratic parade, this is a Greek-American parade, and I’m working for every family in this state. You know what, I pushed those guys aside, we went to the front of that parade, high-fives and selfies all up and down. You know what, they were clapping and cheering. They loved every part of the message.”
Quinn’s people say the governor has indeed marched in the Greek Independence Day Parade in the past. They say the governor did not order or attempt to kick Rauner out of any parade.
“The Governor has attended numerous Greek events in recent years and throughout his career, including the Greek Independence Day Parade in 2010 and most recently on March 30 along with his Greek-American running mate Paul Vallas,” says campaign spokeswoman Brooke Anderson. “Mr. Rauner has a history of making things up in his stump speeches and his negative attack ads, so we’re not surprised he is continuing that trend.”
I tried calling the group which runs the parade, but its phone number is disconnected.
*** UPDATE *** Blogger and frequent commenter Louis G Atsaves in comments…
For those who think Rauner was making this up, I beg to differ. I was there as a marcher. My group was marching just behind the “dignitaries” line, where Rauner and Quinn were nearly next to each other.
One of the parade marshals ordered the Rauner marchers that were between the dignitaries and my group off the street and moved them out to the curb.
My group was right behind them and I was carrying a State Flag. I waived the Rauner group back in, told the marshall something unprintable and they then marched the rest of the parade directly in front of my group.
No other “political” group was treated like that in that particular parade.
When everyone reached the parade stand, the Rauner group was announced twice, once where they should have been, and a second time when the MC (Anna Davlantis) noticed them in their new spot, which I guess was a little poetic justice.
That goes some distance toward confirming part of Rauner’s story.
Marching in that parade were nearly every single Cook County and Chicago politician of both parties, along with Rauner and Quinn. Kirk was also there (just behind my group) riding in a convertible.
So, when Rauner said, “I was the only Republican in this parade,” he wasn’t telling the truth?
Bruce Rauner today issued the following statement in response to new data showing Illinois leads the Midwest in job losses this year while thousands of Illinoisans have left the workforce.
“Illinois should be home to a vibrant workforce with a booming economy but thanks to Pat Quinn we are still leading the Midwest in job losses. With higher taxes and fewer jobs, Illinois isn’t working under Pat Quinn.”
According to the BLS data, Illinois has lost 4,200 jobs since the beginning of the year while its neighbors have made large gains: Indiana has gained more than 26,000 jobs, Wisconsin has gained nearly 11,000 jobs, Missouri has gained more than 31,000 jobs and Iowa has gained 6,000 jobs.
Additionally, the data shows more than twice as many people have left the Illinois workforce than have gained jobs over Pat Quinn’s time in office. As media noted today, while the unemployment rate has declined, “BLS numbers show much of that is due to people leaving the workforce.”
That’s certainly one way to spin it and it’s valid.
We need more. Lots and lots more. But the recent three-month trend ain’t horrible.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Quinn campaign response…
As Governor Quinn today announced 500 good-paying jobs by an Illinois company, Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner and one of his top allies - which he has personally funded the tune of $525,000 - attacked the Illinois economy and rooted for Illinois to fail even as Illinois’ unemployment rate went down to its lowest point since August 2008. It makes sense that Bruce Rauner is desperately trying to undermine any positive economic news for our state because it’s undermining the very basis for his bash-Illinois campaign. The Illinois Policy Institute, which agrees with Mr. Rauner’s position to cut the minimum wage, and Rauner are working feverishly to spread their message of doom and gloom even as the economic outlook in Illinois has significantly improved.
Below is a quick fact check on Rauner’s claims:
Rauner Falsehood: Illinois is in an economic death spiral.
Fact: Just last week, unemployment fell to 6.8%, its lowest point since August 2008 and significantly lower than when Governor Quinn took office. This is the steepest 12-month unemployment decline in the last three decades.
Rauner Falsehood: Illinois leads the Midwest in job losses this year.
Fact: The arbitrary seven-month timeframe is cherry picked by those rooting for the state to fail. A full year period tells a much more accurate and honest story. Over the past 12 months, the state has created 30,500 jobs, and the unemployment rate has fallen from 9.2 to 6.8—the largest decrease in three decades, and 127,000 more people are working. Further, Illinois saw net job creation last month, with 11,200 private sector jobs created, and a net job creation of 10,300 jobs because of government job loss. Yet left unsaid by Bruce Rauner is that he has proposed a Tax Plan that would slash the budget by EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS which would lead to mass layoffs of state employees and drive the unemployment rate sky high.
Rauner Falsehood: With higher taxes and fewer jobs, Illinois isn’t working under Pat Quinn.
Fact: Under Governor Quinn’s leadership, Illinois is making a comeback. While there’s more work to do, unemployment is significantly lower than when Quinn took office. According to a new study on businesses, Illinois’ overall tax burden ranks lower than about half the country - read about the study here.
Republican False Claim: Unemployment isn’t really going down - people are just leaving the workforce.
Fact: In fact, Illinois had a net gain of 11,200 private sector jobs last month. We have 127,000 more people working today than compared to last year.
*** UPDATE 2 *** The Rauner campaign responds…
17,157 Illinoisans Exited The Workforce In July, The Third-Largest Drop In Labor Force Participation Since At Least 2004. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Accessed 8/18/14)
21,637 Illinoisans Exited The Workforce In June, The Largest Drop In Labor Force Participation Since At Least 2004. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Accessed 8/18/14)
Illinois’ Labor Force Has Been Dropping Every Month Since April, For A Cumulative Total Of 63,083 People Who Stopped Looking For Work. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Accessed 8/18/14)
Some readers will be offended by the idea of video recording cops and teachers. You might even invoke the specter of mass surveillance. I see things differently. Privacy is a wonderful thing, but on-duty police officers and teachers in classrooms are not private citizens living their lives as they choose. They are public servants charged with, well, serving the public.
* That’s almost guaranteed to honk off the Illinois Federation of Teachers. We’ve discussed the IFT and IEA attacks on the Trib earlier. The IFT’s MoveOn petition demanding that the Tribune “stop manufacturing scandals that target teachers and start telling the whole story” now has more than 4,000 signatures.
Teachers, parents, and students across the world demanded that the Chicago Tribune tell the whole story about our schools. They took to Twitter using the hashtag #TheWholeStory. The hashtag garnered more than 5 million impressions and was the #1 trending topic in the Chicago area.
* There’s something missing from this Quinn campaign press release…
Quinn for Illinois is continuing to take a closer look at Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner’s business record, including his strategy of outsourcing jobs overseas to drive GTCRauner’s profits. The Polymer Group, a multinational corporation formed with Bruce Rauner that produced non-woven fabrics, including feminine hygiene products and wipes, is the latest Rauner business to be profiled.
KEY QUOTE: “Their strategic story is very compelling.” -Bruce Rauner in 1998 on PolymerGroup’s use of foreign labor.
THE STORY: Bruce Rauner served as a director of the Polymer Group, operating factories around the globe that produced feminine hygiene products and wipes. Controlled by GTCRauner, the group was heavily invested in low-wage labor markets opened up by “free trade” agreements such as China and Mexico, reaping millions in profits. Rauner exited the firm around the time they declared bankruptcy, leaving investors on the hook for $600 million in debt obligations.
THE TIMELINE:
1994: GTCR Acquires Majority Stake in the Polymer Group and Rauner takes a seat on the board of directors. [Polymer Group, SEC S-1/A, 05/07/96]
1995: Polymer Expanded and Increased Manufacturing in Mexico Shortly After NAFTA Went into Effect in 1994. According to a Polymer SEC S-1/A Filing in May 1996: “The Company recently completed an expansion in Mexico with the installation of a new 4.2 meter SMS line with unique and proprietary capabilities…. The Company continuously evaluates opportunities to expand its existing production capacity or enhance production technologies. The Company has invested approximately $50.0 million in capital improvements since 1992 to either debottleneck existing assets or to add new capabilities and capacity. The largest of these projects is a state-of-the-art SMS line at the San Luis Potosi, Mexico facility, which line began commercial production in the third quarter of 1995.”[Polymer Group, SEC Filing S-1/A, 5/7/96]
1995: Nearly Half of the Company’s Sales Were Derived from Operations Conducted Outside the United States. “The Company manufactures certain of its products in Germany, Canada, Mexico and the Netherlands. In 1995, approximately 42% of the Company’s net sales ($182.3 million) were derived from operations conducted outside the United States.” [Polymer Group, SEC Filing S-1/A, 5/7/96]
By 1999, Polymer Operated 23 Manufacturing Facilities “Strategically Located” in Eight Countries on Three Continents, Including Mexico and Argentina. Polymer reported in its 1998 Annual Report that, “PGI is currently in the final stages of building/acquiring new facilities in Colombia, Turkey, and China. With these new facilities, PGI will operate plants in 11 countries on four continents.” [Polymer Group, 1998 Annual Report]
Between 1993 and 2002, Sales From Polymer’s Foreign Manufacturing Facilities Increased From $28 Million to $404.6 Million. [Polymer Group, SEC Filing 10-K, 04/14/03]
December 2001: Rauner and another GTCRauner Principal Remain on the Board of Directors. [Polymer Group, SEC Filing 10-K, 04/12/02]
May 2002: Polymer Group Files for Bankruptcy. [Associated Press, 05/13/02]
Subsequent filings show Rauner no longer listed as director after May 2002. [Polymer Group, SEC Filing 10-K , 05/1/02 (Amendment) , 04/14/03]
I get that “jobs outsourcing” is usually a bad thing for businessman candidates like Bruce Rauner, particularly when the story ends in bankruptcy.
But usually those stories include emotional tales of laid-off American workers. I don’t see any references to Americans losing their jobs here. Sure, he can be criticized for not opening American plants and hiring American workers, but this isn’t the best “hit” I’ve ever seen.
A Cook County judge will decide whether Bruce Rauner, the Republican candidate for governor, and his business partners must pay fines for illegally erecting a digital billboard on a building in West Rogers Park.
The company has signs across Chicago and in some suburbs. It ran into trouble with City Hall over a 10-foot-by-10-foot sign it put up about a year ago above the corner doorway at 6958 N. Western Ave.
It got a permit from City Hall on Dec. 14, 2012, for an electric sign but didn’t also obtain a required public-use permit from the City Council, which has to sign off whenever a sign extends onto public property.
“The sign was hanging over the public way, and they didn’t have a permit,” said Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th). “It was quite a large sign, and the neighbors were complaining about it.”
As we’ve discussed before, Chicago is crazy about its regulations of business signs, awnings and the like. It’s ridiculous and unjustifiable. I mean, according to the article, the company is facing fines of as much as $15,000 a day, dating back to Feb. 25.
Sheesh.
* Back to the story, which notes that Rauner is a “passive investor” in the company…
The Rauner campaign has received $188,000 in free advertising from the sign company in the past five months, according to financial disclosure reports that it’s filed with the Illinois State Board of Election.
* These photos aren’t in the article, but perhaps the subject matter of the above 50th Ward sign is what got Ald. Silverstein so fired up…
Yeah, I’m sure that had nothing whatsoever to do with the alderman’s hissy fit.
#amiright?
…Adding… Apparently, this fight has raged for awhile, even before the signs started flashing pro-Rauner messages…
The approximately 100-square-foot sign went up in early June [of 2013], facing north on the busy intersection.
Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th) also has heard criticism from her constituents about the sign erected by Digital Greensigns above the corner store at 6958 N. Western Ave., she said.
Joseph Mancino, CEO of the digital billboard company, wouldn’t comment on other signs, but said the sign in West Rogers Park was erected lawfully and in compliance with a building permit.
The city confirmed that the company obtained the proper building permit and that it was located snuggly enough up against the single-story commercial building not to need a public-use permit.
* Bernie took another look yesterday at the allegations that Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka had asked the governor to get her son a job at SIU…
“I did not do that,” she said. “I just asked if he would consider him. … I’d like to reverse the trend of people leaving Illinois. I can actually bring a family back.”
“I’ve put it out there for anybody,” she said of her son’s resume, “in the private sector as well. … You get jobs and you work by virtue of relationships; I mean, it’s not just putting a blind ad in the paper.” […]
Dave Mellet, campaign manager for Democratic Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, who is running against Republican Topinka for comptroller, said: “What Judy Baar Topinka has admitted to is attempting to use patronage to obtain a job for her son, which is wrong and possibly illegal. In Judy Baar Topinka’s world, a resume is something you submit to the governor. For everyone else in Illinois, a resume is submitted to human resources.”
Topinka spokesman Brad Hahn said that, with Simon down in the polls and with 11 weeks go to the election, “we expect her to get more desperate and pathetic with each passing day.”
* So, considering the growing hostility between Sheila Simon and Gov. Quinn, and the placement of this Quinn campaign sticker, I’m not sure that Lt. Gov. Simon stuck it on herself during Governor’s Day. A prank, perhaps?…
Mr. Rauner has put a ton of money into trying to revive the GOP field organization. He isn’t about to talk about things such as his relatively liberal beliefs on social issues or his support for some tax hikes. Too dangerous.
Mr. Quinn is hiring lots of Obama campaign vets and stretching to motivate Chicago voters, especially African-Americans. That’s almost certainly why you’ll see Mr. Obama here sometime in the fall campaigning for Mr. Quinn.
One interesting aspect is voter registration. While I’m sure that adding voters in, say, Lincoln Park would meet with the approval of both the governor and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, that’s not the case on the South Side, where Mr. Emanuel would like to hold down the turnout in February for potential foes such as Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis. Man, I’d just love to be in the room when the mayor and governor talk about registration.
One other thing I’d follow between now and Election Day is whether Team Rauner, which by most polls is 7 or 8 points up, gets overconfident. That would be a big, big mistake in a blue state like Illinois…
After that unexpectedly narrow primary win, I don’t think they’ll get too overconfident.
* In fact, one thing I heard a lot from the Rauner folks last week was “1998.” That’s the year Republican George Ryan faced Democrat Glenn Poshard in the governor’s race.
I’m not sure why, but the surprise appearance by former Gov. Jim Edgar at the Illinois State Fair’s Republican Day last week didn’t generate much media coverage.
Despite the fact that Edgar is a Republican, this was not an easy “get” for Republican gubernatorial nominee Bruce Rauner. I’m told it took weeks of careful wooing and negotiations through one of Edgar’s old cronies. Edgar backed state Sen. Kirk Dillard in the GOP primary against Rauner, but he has also expressed public and private concerns about how Rauner is portraying himself on the stump and about how that confrontational attitude could manifest itself if he’s elected governor.
Another reason why I’m perplexed by the lack of coverage is that Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn has repeatedly gone out of his way to praise Edgar since Dillard’s Republican primary loss. Quinn consulted with Edgar before his post-primary budget address, seeking his advice on keeping the income tax at current levels and providing some property tax relief. Quinn then mentioned Edgar by name during his actual address, saying the former governor was right to keep a tax hike in place.
If Quinn was hoping to somehow neutralize the still popular Edgar, he failed miserably. Edgar said at the State Fair last week that not only did Rauner have an opportunity to finally end one-party rule, but “The Blagojevich-Quinn governorship has been a disaster for Illinois.”
Oh, man, that’s gonna leave a mark.
“Outsiders” can make some Illinoisans uncomfortable. Despite the blathering of editorial boards and pundits, quite a few voters here subconsciously or otherwise still “don’t want nobody what nobody sent.” The Edgar endorsement could go a very long way toward soothing fears by moderate to liberal independents about how Rauner may be just too new, too unknown and too risky to be trusted with the office.
Meanwhile, four years ago I wrote that Gov. Quinn wouldn’t know a campaign theme if it was bleeding to death in his front yard. His 2010 State Fair Governor’s Day speech was rambling, disjointed and unfocused. Not this year. Quinn’s theme so far is pretty darned clear: Bruce Rauner is an out of touch billionaire whose policies would harm working people.
But can it work? So far, the attacks seem almost juvenile, catty and not well produced. “Look! Over there! Rauner is rich! He’s rich, I tells ya!”
The Quinn campaign appears to be following the Obama 2012 script very closely (and that script was based in part on Quinn’s 2010 campaign against Bill Brady). The first thing they have to do is establish in voters’ minds that Rauner is a plutocrat. Once that message is baked in, the big hits connecting him to nursing home and hospital deaths and whatever else the Quinnsters have in their opposition research files can be dumped on Rauner’s head.
The political professionals who attended Governor’s Day this year weren’t confident at all that Quinn could pull this off. Then again, they had zero confidence in Quinn four years ago and he managed to edge out Brady. But, of course, there’s no third party candidate willing to spend close to $4 million and split the anti-Quinn vote with Rauner this year, as there was in 2010.
In contrast, the GOP operatives who attended Republican Day four years ago were upbeat and hopeful, but quite concerned about the physical mechanics of GOP nominee state Sen. Bill Brady’s campaign. Those fears turned out to be justified. This time around, there were few if any fears expressed about the way their guy is running his show.
And probably for good reason. The Rauner folks say that the Republican Governors Association has been tracking the number of contacts made at the doors by GOP gubernatorial campaigns. Rauner’s door-to-door contact effort so far ranks number one in the nation - even ahead of Texas, which has a far larger population than Illinois.
Rauner, by the way, left after his State Fair appearance for a 38-county bus trip blitz through Downstate Illinois. The schedule looks brutal.
The idea is to pack as many Downstate appearances in before Labor Day and then focus mainly on the Chicago media market until November. It’s the smart move because Downstate is so huge that it can’t be easily and quickly traversed.
The governor, on the other hand, has focused much of his summertime attention on the Chicago area, perhaps because polls show he has real trouble with his Democratic “base.”
* Related…
* Erickson: State Fair offers glimpse of fall campaign season
* Finke: GOP seemed energized at the fair, for once - In the past few years, Republicans often sounded like they were just going through the motions during their state fair rally. This year, not the case.
* My Crain’s editor said he’d read a Chicago newspaper article about Governor’s Day at the Illinois State Fair and complained that it lacked “color.” So, I was asked to use lots of color in my column…
The Illinois State Fair’s “Director’s Lawn” is a tree-lined venue far from the corn dogs, grandstand concerts and beer tents.
The lawn spreads out in front of a rather dingy house used by the state’s director of agriculture, off a road marred by potholes and best accessed via a special gate that often is closed during the fair because there’s so little public parking. A million or so people attend the fair each year.
The grass on the lawn is trampled flat. But no events ever are as crowded as the annual Governor’s Day and the accompanying rally for the party out of power.
Even in this era of high-tech campaigns, the twin events unofficially kick off the governor’s race… Politicians high and low attend. The more important ones give speeches, the less important mill about and try to interest others in shaking their hands. Every major media outlet sends reporters.
* I’ve had one of the best State Fair experiences ever. And let’s hope (probably beyond hope) it doesn’t rain tonight because I really want to see these guys…
While political reporters, analysts and party strategists argue over whether there is or is not a wave approaching, one thing is clear: it’s an extremely difficult landscape for Democratic candidates.
Candidates, party committees, and outside groups are polling dozens of House races as they formalize their fall ad strategies. And increasingly the news ranges from good to great for Republicans, and very few competitive races trending toward Democrats. […]
Illinois’s 13th District. Former Madison County Judge Ann Callis started the cycle as one of Democrats’ top recruits. But her challenge to Rep. Rodney Davis (R) just isn’t materializing. The congressman is in a very strong position and Gov. Pat Quinn is proving to be an anvil around the neck of Downstate Democratic candidates. We’re moving the race from Toss-Up/Tilt Republican to Lean Republican.
State and local police departments obtain some of their military-style equipment through a free Defense Department program created in the early 1990s. While the portion of their gear coming from the program is relatively small (most of it is paid for through department budgets and federal grants), detailed data from the Pentagon illustrates how ubiquitous such equipment has become.
Highlighted counties have received guns, grenade launchers, vehicles, night vision or body armor through the program since 2006.
* Keep in mind that “recipients” can include state and local governments based within the counties. The national map…
* A few random Illinois counties. Check out all the armored vehicles…
* The Illinois Department of Central Management Services was mandated by statute way back in 2012 to expand a state employee database to include municipal employees. CMS claims it was never appropriated any money and so never expanded the database.
One of the co-sponsors of that legislation, Rep. Jack Franks, is not happy…
“There was no appropriation necessary,” Franks said. Local governments “already have this information and all they have to do is transmit it to the state electronically. There’s absolutely no cost and anybody who hides behind that ought to be tarred and feathered.”
State law requires local government agencies to post salary information on their own websites about employees whose annual total compensation exceeds $75,000. Many post the information for all employees.
West Chicago Republican state Rep. Mike Fortner was the chief sponsor of the bill to add library district employees to the database. He had no idea when his bill passed last August that Central Management Services officials hadn’t implemented the database for other local government employees. He also said he was never informed of appropriation issues.
“I would naively suspect that if you’ve got the person on staff doing the website for the state agency, it’s at most an incremental increase in responsibility,” he said. “I get that the first time (reporting) may take more work, but maintaining it would not be near as much.”
Because none of the laws include an enforcement component, there’s little recourse to compel the state agency to create the databases, according to legal experts.
The governor ought to step in and order CMS to do its job.
Illinois Lt. Gov. and Democratic candidate for state comptroller Sheila Simon performed a same-sex marriage ceremony Thursday afternoon in Springfield. […]
“The party that fought tooth and nail against same-sex marriage is at the state fair celebrating their intolerance,” said Simon’s campaign manager Dave Mellet in a press release. “Meanwhile, Sheila Simon is on the capitol steps, helping two men celebrate a wedding that Republicans forced them to wait on for two decades.”
Simon’s campaign is calling out Republican incumbent Judy Baar Topinka for appearing at LGBT rallies, but failing to support her LGBT employees while serving as state Treasurer, when she “chose to be the only constitutional officer in Illinois to prohibit same-sex domestic partners from receiving health care coverage,” according to Simon’s campaign.
“It’s hypocritical for Judy Baar Topinka to stand up at GLBT rallies, and then raise money and rally with a man who has pledged to veto same-sex marriage,” Mellet added.
Tying her to Rauner is a good move. The treasurer’s office stuff is accurate, but a whole lot of people, including President Obama, have “evolved” on this topic since 2008. So, I’m not sure if it can get any traction, particularly since JBT worked so aggressively to pass gay marriage.
Wearing a Bruce Rauner T-shirt and a pair of Prada shoes, U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock walked onto the State Fairgrounds putting the political divisiveness between himself and the gubernatorial candidate behind him.
Topinka called for everyone to get people to vote GOP: “It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican, Democrat, independent, vegetarian, whatever. This is where it’s at.”
Former Marine Paul Schimpf, who is seeking to unseat Attorney General Lisa Madigan, said her 12 years in office have seen two governors go to prison for corruption.
“Her record speaks for itself,” Schimpf said. “Trust a retired Marine, not the Madigan machine.”
“That house is the people’s house,” Rauner said [of the governor’s mansion]. “We should treat it with reverence; we should treat it with respect. Some of you guys who know contractors may have to help me. We have to repair the roof and pump out the basement.”
It was a reference to reports earlier this year that the mansion roof was leaking so badly it damaged rooms on the third floor and led to flooding in the basement. Mansion officials have estimated the roof is at least 40 years old.
“The current governor takes care of the governor’s residence the way he takes care of the economy,” Rauner told the fair crowd.
Sanguinetti was a no-show at a Republican unity breakfast in Springfield Thursday and seemed to tiptoe around the controversy while expressing her adoration for the State Fair during a brief speaking role at the Republican fair event
“Over the last six years, and I apologize to my kids already, this is a family tradition coming to this place,” Sanguinetti told the party faithful at the fairground rally.
“I think she should apologize for those disrespectful remarks,” Quinn told reporters in Chicago. “That isn’t the right way to talk about anybody or any cow in Illinois. We’re proud of our cows. They’re the best that ever was.
“She ought to say she’s sorry to a bunch of cows,” Quinn said.
He was making a joke, but that didn’t translate well to the printed page.
“You know what? I bet Pat Quinn and his Chicago machine political allies don’t even know what a steer is,” Rauner said. “You know what? A steer is a castrated bull. You know what?
“I tell ya,” Rauner continued, “Pat Quinn and his cronies, and these corrupt patronage workers, they know — they do know bull. You hear Pat Quinn generate a lot of bull when he’s talking about his failed record, failed record on jobs, on taxes, on schools.”
No, I don’t “know what.” How about asking us again?
Bruce Rauner remained defiant in insisting he’s released enough on his taxes and wouldn’t commit to making public his full tax schedules for inspection before the Nov. 4 election.
“We will release our tax returns when they’re prepared and filed on Oct. 15 and at that point we will have released four years of our tax returns. We outlined and detailed our tax rate. My tax rate is the same as Pat Quinn’s,” Rauner said to a packed scrum of reporters after riding into the fairgrounds on his Harley.
Rauner ducked when asked if he would release his full schedules, talking over reporters and repeating that he’d release his 2013 tax documents in October. Rauner has asked for an extension and that is the due date. Gov. Pat Quinn and other Democrats on Wednesday repeatedly called on Rauner, a multi-millionaire with hundreds of investments, to release the full details of his finances for public inspection. While candidates are not required to do so, it has become the new norm to release full tax schedules and it was something that Mitt Romney eventually did in the 2012 presidential election. His tax documents were some 700 pages.
* But not every Republican agreed with Rauner. Charles Thomas…
Earlier at the state county chairman’s meeting, other Republicans differed on how much Rauner or any candidate should reveal of his or her personal finances.
“I think that basically candidates need to be a transparent as possible,” said Paul Schimpf, R-Attorney General candidate.
“I think you have to see where your money is and I think people need to be upfront about that,” said Judy Baar Topinka, R- Illinois comptroller.
* From the DGA…
“If Bruce Rauner doesn’t want to trust the people of Illinois with information about his finances, the people of Illinois shouldn’t trust Bruce Rauner. He has hidden his policies from them. He has hidden his foreign investments from them. He has hidden the details of how he built his corporate empire at the expense of workers, seniors and communities.
“Releasing tax information is a low bar of disclosure for a public official, not a ‘diversion’ as Rauner says it is. It’s an easy test of whether he is worthy of the public’s trust. Bruce Rauner has failed that most basic test and he shouldn’t be trusted.”
* And the Quinn campaign released a photo comparing Romney’s disclosed tax returns to Rauner’s…
On a day when Republicans were otherwise well-choreographed, U.S. Senate candidate Jim Oberweis attempted to respond to the Democrats’ painting them as the detached party of the rich. Oberweis, a millionaire who has so far donated $1 million to his run for Senate, worked to cast Durbin as a millionaire. The attempt landed with an awkward thud.
“Please repeat after me,” Oberweis asked the crowd. “Millionaire! Career politician! Dick Durbin! Must go!”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday blamed the economic squeeze on the middle class for his 35 percent showing in a Chicago Tribune poll that also shows him trailing Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis. […]
“There’s tremendous economic stress in people’s lives, which is why I’ve pushed for the minimum wage, which is why I’ve pushed for policies to make sure our small businesses have a fair chance and an equal chance with big companies,” the mayor said.
“You have to have a set of policies in place — from pre-K to community colleges to playgrounds to parks to after-school activities — to give everybody a chance to not just look at the gains, but know that they have a future in those gains. We’re not where we need to be. We’re not repeating the mistakes that got us into the problems. But we’re not at the pace or place we need to be where everybody’s feeling an opportunity that they have a chance at a middle-class job.”
Yikes. When the overwhelming majority is siding with the CTU against you, that’s trouble with a capital T. That sound you hear is Karen Lewis’ cackling.
Among parents of children in Chicago Public Schools — about one-fifth of those taking part in the survey — nearly 4 out of 5 disapproved of the mayor’s handling of public education while only 19 percent approved. But even those without children in the public schools disapproved at a 62 percent rate, while only 27 percent approved. […]
While dissatisfaction with the mayor on education crossed racial lines, it was more intense among African-American voters. Critics contend black neighborhoods were disproportionately targeted for school closings. Fully 77 percent of black voters disapproved of Emanuel’s handling of the city’s schools while only 14 percent approved. […]
Among white voters, 52 percent disapproved while 38 percent approved. Those numbers slipped from May 2013, when 46 percent of white voters approved of Emanuel’s handling of the schools and 44 percent disapproved. The poll found a similar dynamic among Hispanic voters. […]
Emanuel’s approach on charters versus neighborhood schools was roundly criticized by voters: 72 percent disagreed with that approach, compared with 18 percent who agreed. African-American voters most severely opposed the policy — at 83 percent — while only 10 percent agreed with Emanuel. Nearly 8 in 10 parents of CPS children also were opposed, as well as 75 percent of female voters, 69 percent of men and 63 percent of whites.
Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar says he’s all in for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner.
Edgar says the Democratic agenda offers more of the same policies voters have seen for the past decade. He even equated Gov. Pat Quinn’s tenure to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is now serving a 14-year term in federal prison.
“The Blagojevich-Quinn governorship has been a disaster for Illinois,” he said.
* Gov. Pat Quinn announced some positive economic news yesterday during the State Fair’s Republican Day…
The state Department of Employment Security says Illinois unemployment fell in July to 6.8 percent. It was the fifth straight monthly decrease in the state’s jobless rate.
The new employment numbers included, finally, a gain in manufacturing — though total jobs there remain lower than a year ago.
It prompted Governor Pat Quinn to try to rewrite what has been the established narrative about the State’s troubled economy as he seeks another 4-year lease in the Executive Mansion.
“Unemployment’s fallen from 9.2% last year to 6.8%. It’s the steepest decline since the 1980s. Last month employers created 11,200 jobs,” Quinn said.
And even better, the decline now is being propelled not by people leaving the job force but by the creation of new jobs, with 11,200 positions added just in July. […]
The preliminary seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped from 7.1 percent in June to 6.8 percent in July, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security. The state rate is still somewhat above the national figure of 6.2 percent, but the 0.6 difference is just a fraction of what it was a year ago.
Since July 2013, the Illinois rate has dropped an enormous 2.4 percentage points, from 9.2 percent to 6.7 percent, according to the federal data released by the state. That’s the biggest year-over-year decline since 1984, putting the unemployment rate just above the 6.8 percent level of August 2008. […]
According to the figures, derived from a different survey than the unemployment data, the state added 11,200 private sector jobs in the past month, and 35,600 over the past 12 months.
The July gains were widespread across various sectors, with professional and business services up 5,900, manufacturers adding 3,900 positions and construction 1,900 slots. Leisure and hospitality dropped 3,800 in the month.
According to the governor’s office, this is the lowest unemployment rate in six years. And you’d have to go back to 1984 to see such a sharp drop in the rate.
“Celebrating today’s job numbers is like cheering a touchdown when you’re down 35 points with two minutes left,” said Mike Schrimpf, a campaign spokesman.
“Our state is still down thousands of jobs since the beginning of the year, we still have one of the worst unemployment rates in the entire country and thousands of Illinoisans have given up looking for work. On top of higher taxes, this means too many families continue to suffer under Pat Quinn. Thankfully, Pat Quinn’s time is almost up and his term in office can’t end soon enough for the working people of Illinois.”
* Related…
* VIDEO: Quinn announces state unemployment rate drops
* Illinois’ tax burden? Not so bad, according to new report
