Illinois Politics

Is Obama Our Punishment?

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Obama was an unusual candidate for president in 2008. I had serious questions in 2008.

One criticism of Obama is that his portfolio is mighty thin. He has no record. Well, he actually does and and here it is. Pretty interesting.

It’s a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what’s interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

Why was that ? In 2002, the Democrats took over the Illinois legislature, not because of Bush as the reporter says, but because the Republican governor got caught selling drivers’ licenses to truckers with bad driving records. A disastrous truck accident splashed the whole story across the newspapers and the Democrats took over in the next election.

The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James “Pate” Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.

Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama’s. He became Obama’s ­kingmaker.

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio ­program.

I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

“He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’”

“Oh, you are? Who might that be?”

“Barack Obama.”

Obama ended up in the US Senate because the GOP Senator, Peter Fitzgerald, did not run for re-election. Why ?

While State Senator he was a member of a group of conservative state senators elected in 1992 who often challenged the leadership of the Illinois Republican Party and were dubbed the “Fab Five”, the group also included, Steve Rauschenberger, Dave Syverson, Patrick O’Malley and Chris Lauzen.

After a hard-fought primary victory against Illinois Comptroller Loleta Didrickson, in which the latter had the support of most national and state-level Republican leaders, Fitzgerald defeated first-term Democratic incumbent U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun in 1998, and served for one term in the U.S. Senate. He was the first Republican in Illinois to win a U.S. Senate race in 20 years, and the only Republican challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent Democratic senator in the 1998 election cycle. Although Moseley Braun was dogged by negative publicity of corruption charges, Fitzgerald defeated her by only 2.9%.

Fitzgerald is a staunch conservative on such issues as opposition to abortion (except to save the life of the mother), gun control, gay marriage and taxes, but on some issues, particularly environmental issues — he opposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge throughout his tenure in the US Senate — he broke with conservative colleagues. He was one of only a handful of GOP Senators to support the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

He was a “maverick” and was not supported by “the Illinois Combine,” a term coined by columnist John Kass to describe the bipartisan corruption in Illinois politics that has brought the state to bankruptcy.

I called former U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, the Republican maverick from Illinois who tried to fight political corruption and paid for it. For this sin, he was driven out of Illinois politics by political bosses, by their spinners and media mouthpieces, who ridiculed him mercilessly.

Senator, what do you call that connection that Stuart Levine describes from the witness stand, you know that arrangement across party lines, with politically powerful men leveraging government to make money — what do you call it?

“What do you call that Illinois political class that’s not committed to any party, they simply want to make money off the taxpayers?” Fitzgerald said. “You know what to call them.”

What?

“The Illinois Combine,” Fitzgerald said. “The bipartisan Illinois political combine. And all these guys being mentioned, they’re part of it.”

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“The Courage of a Reformer”

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I recently had a guest post entitled The Courage of a Reformer at the blog of the Illinois Opportunity Project. My post was in responses to an earlier post by Matt Besler of IOP about Illinois State Rep. Jeanne Ives.

My post included this passage:

the Goal

This highlights an under-appreciated reality. You do not just need candidates with good values and good ideas. You do not just need candidates who can also win elections. You need these candidates to stay true to their commitments, which will impose a personal cost, once they are in office.

In our book, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century– —Why America ’’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come, we discuss the decline and dissolution of the economic and political institutions of industrial-era America, which we call America 2.0. We describe a different and better America 3.0 which we expect and hope will replace it. But as we make clear, this process will not be pleasant. The transition from agricultural to industrial America was hard. The change to a world dominated by emerging technology, post-industrial, networked America 3.0, will be every bit as hard, and will happen much faster.

Illinois is a specific case, and an especially difficult one, of the transition from America 2.0 to America 3.0. The Establishment here, consisting of politicians from both parties, is referred to without affection as The Combine. Despite the state’s many inherent strengths, The Combine has “governed” Illinois the verge of ruin. Illinois is the worst-run state in the nation.

America 3.0 is a long book, and we could not put everything into it.

One topic which we hope to write about more in the future is the steps that will have to be taken to make the transition. We got into some of this in the later chapters of the book, but there is a lot more that needs to researched and developed.

One area which we barely touched on, but which is critically finasteridehair important, is the personal character which will be called for from a generation which will in effect be a new “founding generation.” The old order will have many defenders, many of them with good motivations, many with not-so-good motives. There will be unrelenting efforts to prop up the world everyone is used to, and to crush any person, group or business trying to make serious innovations and necessary reforms.

As I said in my IOP post:

To really matter, to really do something, to really change the direction of our state, means that there will be hardship, rejection, unpopularity, vilification, rejection of material benefits, making people mad by refusing to do what “everybody does,” attacks by the people who benefit from the status quo, not many pats on the back, and incomprehension even from good people.
 
The committed reformer has to be willing to go up against all that.
 
What is the reformer’s motivation, then?
 
If it is not money, prestige, popularity, an easy life, what is it?
 
Faith is part of it. Patriotism is part of it. Moral principles are part of it. A sense of duty is part of it. Gratitude for what we have been given is part of it. A commitment to a better future for ourselves, our families, and our children is part of it.
 
A hopeful vision of how things could be, should be, must be, will be better if we change course in Illinois, that is also part of it.

Substitute “America” for “Illinois” and it still works.

This challenge is going to require a lot of effort, from a lot of people. We need to be realists about that. But we must not be cynical. With a hopeful and realistic picture of the future to inspire us, there will be enough people, enough talent, enough drive, enough fortitude, to build America 3.0.

We plan to say much more about this.

Stand by … .

Make Them Own It

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Today we see that the latest bond offering from the Chicago Board of Education will be priced at over twice what a BBB offering demands. That is brutal. I still won’t touch that with a ten foot pole.

It is inevitable that the State of Illinois and City of Chicago and their organs will be having major financial issues, to say the least, within a year or two. It could be Detroit on an inter-galactic scale.

My question is this – why don’t the Republicans make the Democrats own these massive boondoggles? I understand that in Illinois, many of them are in on the fun – however, the State of Illinois, City of Chicago and Detroit have all been essentially run by Democrats for literally generations – and it is all blowing up.

Is the issue too complex for Joe Six Pack to understand or care about? Are the Republicans afraid to be held to a higher standard? I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t shout from the mountain tops at how much graft, corruption and incompetence it takes to completely tank a city with as much potential as Chicago and a State with so many potential positives as Illinois.

Rauner’s budget-Is any of this going to happen ?

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An interesting take on the new Illinois governor’s shot across the bow.

The Sun-Times doesn’t like it.

If we thought Gov. Bruce Rauner’s first proposed state budget stood a chance of becoming reality, we would be appalled.

Talk about cold. Rauner wants to eviscerate dozens of programs that serve the poorest and most defenseless among us.

C’mon, cutting tuition aid to orphans?

If the Sun-Times is anything like it was the last time I lived in Chicago, a long time ago, this is no surprise. It defined limousine liberal then with Marshall Field the owner.

Marshall Field III (September 28, 1893 November 8, 1956) was an American investment banker, publisher, racehorse owner/breeder, philanthropist, heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune and a leading financial supporter and founding board member of Saul Alinsky’s community organizing network Industrial Areas Foundation.

I don’t know if things have changed the last 50 years.

But the governor’s fiscal year 2016 budget has zero chance of being passed into law by the Illinois General Assembly, as he well knows. Its real value then, which we’d like to believe is by design, is to sound the alarm like never before that Illinois is sliding fast toward becoming an economic backwater, a failed state among the 50 states. Time is running out. Hard and painful measures must be taken now.

If Rauner’s draconian plan has achieved that much, we’d say it’s about time.

That sounds promising. Maybe 50 years of economic stagnation has made a difference. Chicago is doing fine as far as the “Near North” part of it although a woman was raped in broad daylight across the street from my niece’s apartment two weeks ago. She is a nurse on the transplant team at Rush Medical Center and should carry a gun but we all know about Chicago and guns. Only gangsters are allowed guns.

Following that, we would expect to see a hard but healthy give-and-take, like nothing we have seen in decades, between the executive and legislative branches. And, in the end, Illinois might finally settle on a long-term spending and revenue plan that puts the state on a path toward solvency and growth for decades to come.

Hey, we can hope.

This sounds more realistic than I have ever heard from the Sun-Times. Is this progress? The little I know about the Tribune these days is not any more promising.

And Wisconsin lefties thought Walker was bad !

I’m sitting out here in La La land with Jerry Brown and 1/3 of the illegal immigrants in the US watching Los Angeles implode.

My wife needed to renew her drivers’ license on her birthday, January 13. Unfortunately, January 1, was the day that illegal aliens were eligible for drivers’ licenses. As a result, the first day she could get an appointment, as opposed to waiting all day in line, was today more than a month later. Unfortunately, she had pneumonia last week and came home Sunday. Today she felt too weak to go to her DMV office and called to reschedule. The next date she could get an appointment was in April.

I’m not sure Illinois is any better but at least somebody is trying to do something about it.

Liberty Rising — In Illinois

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Matt Besler

Great post entitled Liberty Rising by Matt Besler of the Illinois Opportunity Project.

Matt is talking about the newly elected reform-minded Republicans in Springfield, Illinois.

They are currently a minority within a minority. That is a start. It’s a beachhead.

It took decades to wreck Illinois. It will take a long time to turn it around. There is no quick fix.

There is a danger that people elected with great aspirations will get coopted, lose their way, forget what they wanted to do when they got involved in politics.

So, to our political leaders: Ask yourself why you ran for office. Know your own values and principles. State them. Lead with them. Apply your principles at every decision point. Knowing exactly who you are and who you represent will allow you to lead with a clear vision and strong voice on any issue.

Yes.

As I recently said to my pal C. Steven Tucker (literally the world’s foremost expert on Obamacare and real health care reform), some politicians who are supposedly on our side are like the guy in the Matrix who ratted out the revolution because he wanted to eat the steak again.

They can’t — we can’t — let that happen.

To be elected as a reform politician at this critical time cannot be about a cozy job, or even an assuredly steady job.

It is — it must be — about changing our state and our country for the better.

It is about confronting serious opposition to make that happen. That opposition offers the allure of various “carrots”, and wields the threat of various “sticks”, to try to compel assent to the current, supposedly “normal” state of affairs. We need leaders who disdain the carrots, don’t flinch from the sticks, and who do not forget why they sought and won office.

Our politicians need an internal compass, as Matt calls for here.

And they need external accountability, as Matt also calls for in this article.

Also, when they do the right thing, they need approbation and encouragement.

We can all help, especially with the latter.

This is a protracted struggle. Be prepared for the long slog.

But the future for Illinois can be — will be — great.

And the future for America will be very great indeed.