We won’t see “Exposing Daley” anytime soon

WBBM-TV seems to have found a new franchise – “Exposing Xxxx Xxxxxxxx.”

It was a few months ago (Nov. 29, 2007, to be exact) that the CBS-owned television station in Chicago aired “Exposing Rod Blagojevich,” a nearly 8-minute report (or about one-third of the total newscast) that detailed just how unpopular Gov. Rod Blagojevich has become.

Monday night, we viewers of WBBM got to see political reporter Mike Flannery (with help from producer Ed Marshall – a long-time Chicago broadcaster who did a brief stint as former Illinois Comptroller Loleta Didrickson’s press secretary) do another similar report. This time, it was “Exposing Todd Stroger” – a 6-minute report that told us just how unpopular Cook County President Todd Stroger has become.

There wasn’t anything terribly new – or at least nothing that those of us who pay attention to the Chicago Sun-Times or other newspapers didn’t already know. Todd has several relatives and friends in mid- to high-ranking positions on the Cook County government payroll, all of who receive salaries of at least $100,000.

About the most interesting tidbit I got out of the WBBM report was that Stroger works out of a fancy office with an incredible view of Lake Michigan – just like a lot of other people who work in downtown Chicago.

The logical next step would be “Exposing Daley.” If one is going to go after the governor and the county board president, then “getting” the mayor of Chicago would be the natural completion to the trio of political powerhouses.

Somehow, I doubt there will be any such report.

Getting people to take pot shots at Blagojevich and Stroger is ridiculously easy. In fact, the trick for a reporter-type is to figure out which critics actually know what they’re talking about – and which are just sore losers.

Taking shots at Daley is a different matter – Hizzoner Jr. has the ability to crush anybody who tries to speak out against him, which will inhibit the number of people willing to go on camera and talk political trash. WBBM would literally have to resort to putting Daley critics in the shadows and distorting their voices to even consider getting them to talk.

In short, it isn’t going to happen.

We have a better chance of seeing “Exposing Madigan” (take your pick, Mike or Lisa) or “Exposing Obama” before we see anyone go after the Man on Five.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: For those who missed it, “Exposing Stroger” will live on forever (http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/exposing.todd.stroger.2.722376.html) on the Internet.

“Exposing Blagojevich” was entertaining by television news standards, but it hardly broke much (http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/exposing.rod.blagojevich.2.598424.html) in the way of new ground.

(Originally published at http://www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com/)

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Gun bill rejection is rural Illinois' annual "forget you" to Chicago

Every year for most of the nearly 20 years that Richard M. Daley has been mayor, he has pushed his people who work at the Statehouse in Springfield to get the Illinois General Assembly to approve a statewide ban on handguns similar to what is already THE LAW in Chicago.

The measures always get through legislative committees, where Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan – in keeping with his unofficial role of keeping the Legislature in line with Chicago’s desires – uses his pull to ensure that the issue gets a hearing.

Then, the Illinois House of Representatives engages in a rare act of bipartisanship as rural and suburban lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, come to the conclusion that “the enemy” is Chicago. They gang up, and vote the measure down.

At a time when the rural portions of Illinois only account for one-third (at most) of the state’s population, this issue has become one of the annual acts of state government. They kill off Daley’s dreams of gun control to show him that he can’t run roughshod over the rest of Illinois.

The most recent political killing took place Wednesday.

This year, Daley allies weren’t so bold as to push for any outright bans on firearms. What they wanted this year was creation of a state law that would have required the sale of handguns in Illinois to occur only at federally licensed firearms dealers – who must comply with laws requiring criminal background checks.

It was a measure designed by Chicago city officials to get around laws that allow private sales of firearms by dealers at gun shows, where background checks on the gun buyers are non-existent.

City-oriented officials argue that these private dealers are the loop hole by which handguns wind up in the possession of people who otherwise would not be able to get a gun, but rural people say the Daley-desired change in law would criminalize individuals who privately sell a pistol to a friend.

The bill received a 58-58 vote, with two other legislators – Eddie Washington of Waukegan and Jim Watson of Jacksonville – not voting because of excused absences. Had those two legislators cast votes for the measure (a long-shot), it would have passed with the bare minimum of 60 votes.

Now for those who think the city is being picked on by the rest of the state, keep in mind that Daley allies knew full well they would lose again this year. A similar measure had already been rejected this spring. There was only one reason for the bill to be called for a vote, and that was because of Wednesday’s date.

April 16, 2008 is the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech University where 32 students were killed when a well-armed student went on a rampage on campus.

Every single one of the 58 state representatives who voted against the Daley plan now runs the risk of having campaign advertising used against them that tells would-be voters how their local legislator celebrated, so-to-speak, the one-year anniversary of Virginia Tech by voting against “reasonable restrictions” on firearms.

Some of the legislators who come from suburban areas (who are only voting against the measure because they are Republicans opposing Democrat Daley) could run the risk of losing votes from people in their legislative districts who are not government junkies and do not follow the nuances of every single one of the thousands of bills that come before the General Assembly every year.

For rural legislators, this is less of an issue. Many come from small communities where rifle ownership can often be a cultural tie passed down from generation to generation. They are more likely to want to believe whatever spin the Illinois State Rifle Association wants to put on the issue, rather than the Daley spin.

Wednesday’s legislative action is a case of rural Illinois exerting what little influence it still holds (as they will be the first to tell you, all of the state constitutional officers and the General Assembly’s top leaders are from Chicago) on an issue where it believes the city’s desires are too far at odds with their own.

It literally becomes an issue where Southern Illinois Democrats have no problem breaking with their Chicago counterparts to unite with central Illinois Republicans to show that they are united in their desire not to be an extension of Chicago.

One legislator, Mike Bost of Murphysboro, said he thinks this year’s measure would have made criminals of the gun dealers who operate heavily in his area, and would not have any significant impact on violence in the city.

“It’s not going to cure your problem with criminals in your city with handguns,” Bost told the Bloomington, Ill.-based Pantagraph newspaper.

“Your problem,” and “your city.” That is the sad thing.

Guns have become an issue of regionalism overcoming common sense and a desire to reduce violence, made worse by the fact that “Illinois” is, at best, a theoretical concept – rather than a distinct region with unified interests.

This different perspective is not new. I still remember the 1998 Democratic primary for governor – when eventual nominee Glenn Poshard (who takes great pride in being a Southern Illinois native with no ties to Chicago) started off the campaign as an outspoken critic of any measures to restrict firearm ownership.

Eventually, though, even Poshard moderated his talk against gun control, often telling the story of how he visited a Chicago hospital emergency room at a moment when some shootings were being treated.

He would say during the latter days of the campaign (while trying to convince Chicagoans he was not some rural ‘gun nut’) it was at that moment that he realized just why so many urban residents wanted handgun restrictions and were willing to put aside the desires of hunters and the theoretical notion of the Second Amendment to the Constitution (which guarantees the American people the right to arm themselves so they can be in a militia).

Perhaps the key is to drag every rural legislator into the Stroger Hospital emergency room to give them a sense of the chaos that can be created by firearms in the city.

Maybe then, people like Bost would start seeing that there are commonalities in Illinois’ regions, despite the roughly 300 mile difference that exists between Chicago and his hometown.

Admittedly, Bost is from the region that literally is closer to Memphis than either Chicago or St. Louis – the two cities that 95 percent of Illinoisans identify with. That could be just too large a social gap to bridge.

But there are political people who live on the fringes of the Chicago area who act as though they wish they could put space between themselves and the city. They are the ones who need to have a little arm-twisting.

Ultimately, it will have to come down to Chicago’s political muscle being used to let all Illinoisans know just how much of an economic and social stake they have in an improved Chicago – one that is safe and secure both in reality and in perception.

The scary thing is that too many legislators would see this as an excuse to extort Chicago for some sort of local project. No matter what they might want to think, rural legislators aren’t any more ethical than their urban counterparts. Just think back to how many rural lawmakers were upset that they didn’t get more for their support of a Chicago Transit Authority emergency funding measure that finally got approval early this year.

Short of an extra effort by Chicago, there doesn’t seem to be any sense that the two sides will come together any time soon. In the words of state Rep. John Bradley, a Democrat from Marion, “we’re always going to have philosophical differences about the issues involving gun ownership in the state.”

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(Originally published at http://www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com/)

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Recall measure could drag down Quinn legacy

I’m going to tick off a lot of people with this statement, but I have always considered the concept of a “recall” election to be one of the most Un-American things permitted in U.S. politics.

I always took a bit of pride in my home state of Illinois for not succumbing to the silliness of allowing people to un-do the results of a perfectly good electoral system.

Now, the people who couldn’t defeat Rod Blagojevich on Election Day in ’02 or ’06 want the possibility of ambushing the Illinois governor with special elections at their whim to try to undo the will of the majority of Illinoisans – who actually voted for this goof to be guv.

The Chicago Tribune is trying to throw the muscle of its editorial page behind the concept, which doesn’t surprise (or concern) me all that much. What really bothers me is that the lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, is giving the ridiculous recall concept his backing.

He is supportive of the measure pending in the General Assembly that would allow for people to call for new elections, if they could get significant support on petitions. It also would provide for an immediate replacement election (so no, Pat isn’t calling for a recall, just so he could move up to the gubernatorial post).

I will be the first to agree that there is a high level of discontent with the political performance of Blagojevich – more so than just the usual malcontents who want to “throw the bums out of office” regardless of whom the bums actually are.

But I honestly believe the American Way of doing things would be for these people to focus their attention on the next Illinois government elections in 2010. Get yourself organized and put up a credible candidate who can challenge Blagojevich.

If the level of discontent with Rod is truly as high as they want to believe it is, they should be able to defeat him. If they can’t, then they should quit whining like sore losers.

All too often, the people in states where recalls are permitted who screech the loudest are the sore losers who are just too miffed that a majority of the public didn’t agree with them on Election Day.

And in the cases where a government official turns out to be a political mope, I happen to believe that people tend to get the quality of public officials they deserve. Maybe the majority of us who voted for Blagojevich (including myself, both times) deserve this.

My observations are that the people pushing the hardest for a recall provision in Illinois law are those Republican followers from rural Illinois who have seen how the Land of Lincoln has turned Democrat in recent years. They want to come up with another way to get rid of a states chief executive who won’t cater to their demands over those of the bulk of Illinois.

With the condition the Illinois Republican Party is in now (virtually brain dead), I’ll be the first to admit that Blagojevich’s chances of winning re-election to a third term in office in the 2010 election cycle are excellent.

Even when they had a respectable candidate in 2006 (Judy Baar Topinka), the Republican political mechanisms have become so rusty they were unable to do anything significant to help her. A tainted Blagojevich was able to beat her easily.

Now some people are going to bring up (probably, they have been screaming all through reading this commentary) about the sleazy details that will come out of the federal corruption trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who helped Blagojevich raise funds for his political campaigns and who helped pick some of the people who got government appointments during the Blagojevich era.

There have been people who for years now have insisted that Rod will wind up facing his own criminal charges for political corruption, and could someday wind up doing time himself in a federal penitentiary.

To my mindset, that is not a good enough reason to whack the people of Illinois with the concept of a recall election. If it turns out that Blagojevich truly has done something seriously illegal, Illinois law already contains provisions for impeachment.

For those people who will argue that the standards required to impeach and convict a public official to remove him from office are too high, I say, “So what?”

It is supposed to be hard to remove a public official from a government post. The burden of proof ought to be on the accuser, not the politico. This is a Democracy we have in Illinois, where the results of an election of the people, by the people and for the people (remember the Constitution?) ought not to be cancelled out just because a few individuals in our society are sore losers.

Just think of how ridiculous the spectacle would be if all the malcontents of our society were to decide to want a recall of President Bush. It serves us right for voting for him twice (or voting for him once and allowing the Supreme Court to pick him the other time).

Actually, we don’t have to imagine how pathetic the concept of recall elections are in actual practice. We saw for ourselves a few years ago in California, when voters there got worked up by the malcontents and went along with the whim of dumping Grey Davis.

As if replacing him with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t silly enough, we got to endure the spectacle of a special election with more than 100 candidates – and not a single legitimate pick in the batch. If I had been a Californian back then, I may very well have voted for Gary Coleman just as a protest of allowing electoral politics to devolve into a circus.

Yet this is the direction that Quinn would like to take our fine state. Here’s hoping that the Statehouse observers are correct in saying that the recall measure will never come up for a vote in the Illinois Senate. If true, then Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, will have performed a great service on behalf of all the people of Illinois – even though some will be too blind to realize it.

Quinn is among the blind. During an appearance earlier this week on WTTW-TV’s “Chicago Tonight” program, the lieutenant governor insisted that a recall measure is necessary to ensure good government. In reality, it is more likely to cause chaos by making it easier for a disgruntled minority to wreck havoc on the majority.

What is sad is that Quinn is the man who already has earned his place in the Illinois history books for leading the effort that slashed the Illinois House of Representatives from 177 individuals to 118.

That move benefited politics by eliminating excess politicos, particularly those who were only managing to get elected because state law required every district to have officials form each major political party (Republicans in Chicago, Democrats or Independents in rural Illinois).

The people who got dumped from the Legislature in the “cutback amendment” were those who didn’t have the support of the constituents they allegedly represented. The old way of compiling a Legislature created the illusion of bipartisanship, whereas the current way is probably more honest to the feelings of the people.

By pushing for a recall, Quinn threatens to undo the good he accomplished back in 1981. Pat needs to quit while he’s ahead, or else he threatens to reinforce the image that political observers joke about – the egomaniac who just loves to have press conferences while standing in the shadow of the Statehouse statue of Abraham Lincoln.

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Originally posted at http://www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com/

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Peraica tactic includes HDO 'demonization'

Is this going to be the tactic of those people who want to take down a Latino politico – dredge up the letters “HDO” and try to scare white ethnic Chicago into believing that those crazy Hispanics are somehow more corrupt than their Irish and Polish and Croatian counterparts at City Hall ever were?

It is the means being used by Tony Peraica, the Republican nominee for state’s attorney of Cook County, to try to trash his opponent. He has to resort to this in large part because Democratic opponent Anita Alvarez is so far better qualified for the top prosecutor’s post that he can’t argue on the merits of his record.

Specifically, Peraica is waving around copies of El Dia, a Spanish-language newspaper based out of Cicero (and not exactly a heavy-hitter in the world of Chicago’s Spanish media), which ran on its front page a photograph taken at a political fundraiser.

It is the standard shot of an aspiring politico (Alvarez) standing next to someone else and trying to smile. It is meant to give the person in the picture with the politico some sort of personal souvenir, and perhaps a bit of physical evidence that an actual relationship exists between the two.

Peraica is trying to use the photograph for the same reason – it is a picture of Alvarez posing with the son of the newspaper’s owner. It turns out that Jorge Montes de Oca, Jr. actually had a warrant issued for his arrest at the time of the March 6 fundraiser at a neighborhood restaurant.

In theory, as a high-ranking deputy in the state’s attorney’s office who aspires the top job in the Nov. 4 election, Alvarez is a law enforcement official who should have arrested Oca.

She didn’t.

I’m not going to get all bent out of shape about this. I don’t view it as a moment of corruption (as Peraica would like us to think of it). It is more a sense of reality that makes me realize I don’t expect anybody to know at all times the names of every single person who happens to have an arrest warrant issued in their name.

I particularly am willing to overlook this lapse (I believe that had it been brought to her attention, Alvarez would have acted like the life-long employee of the state’s attorney’s office that she is), especially since the warrant was not even issued in Cook County.

It was issued by a judge in neighboring Lake County, Ill., after Oca allegedly wrote bad checks to a car dealership in the far northern suburbs of Chicago. Since his photographic appearance with Alvarez, he has been picked up by police, hit with the relevant criminal charges, and is only free now because he posted the mandatory 10 percent of bond set at $30,000.

Now if someone could come up with evidence that Alvarez in some way is trying to cover up for him, or get his charges reduced, or in some way is interfering with the ability of Lake County officials to prosecute the case, that would be a sign of inappropriate behavior by a potential state’s attorney.

That would be an example of potential corrupt behavior. Heck, it would be just a good story.

Peraica doesn’t have any of that.

He just has that Alvarez was in the same room with someone whom the police were interested in, and didn’t do anything because she didn’t know anything.

I would be willing to overlook this ridiculous charge, if that were the extent to which Peraica took it. But he went further, dragging the acronym “HDO” into the mix by noting that the fundraiser was largely attended by HDO members.

For those of you who are clueless about City Hall and Chicago politics, HDO is the Hispanic Democratic Organization. It is the political action committee used by some Latinos who want to be involved in Chicago politics, which theoretically makes it no different than the organizations used by women, labor unions or any other special interest group that wants to get ahead politically.

It also is a group whose founder faces criminal charges for his alleged involvement in the city’s now-defunct “Hired Truck Program,” where private companies were hired to provide trucks and drivers to do municipal work.

Federal prosecutors say some of the companies had ties to organized crime, while others paid bribes to city officials to get contracts. In many cases, the companies hired by the city were grossly overpaid for their work, or the companies did no work whatsoever.

Peraica wants to create the impression of the Hispanic politicos dragging a city program into corrupt behavior, and then trying to show that Alvarez is merely one of their followers. “The HDO has been at the epicenter of all the corruption that has done on at the city of Chicago,” Peraica told WBBM-TV, which played the story up big during their Tuesday evening newscast.

That is just a ridiculous statement. There’s too much improper behavior that takes place at Chicago City Hall for “epicenter of all the corruption” to be true.

HDO didn’t give Chicago corruption. It merely is trying to use the means of the past by which other ethnic groups used politics to get ahead – not realizing that the ways of Michael “Hinky Dink” Kenna are long dead and buried, although their zombie corpse occasionally tries to come crawling out of the grave.

The other thing to realize about HDO is that it does not speak for all Latino political people in Chicago. It is a group whose leaders are firmly behind the policies of Mayor Richard M. Daley. It’s members routinely focus their political work on bashing the candidacies of would-be Latino politicos who appeared as though they might oppose Daley if they won elective office.

HDO’s real “sin” is that it is willing to put politics ahead of the concept of increased Latino political empowerment – it has been known to back the candidacies of white politicos in Latino neighborhoods in order to help Daley maintain his political control in Chicago.

Of course, none of this nuance came through in Peraica’s charges. He just wanted to create the image of a batch of corrupt Hispanic people, one of whom was literally a “wanted man” by the police – with Alvarez smiling for pretty pictures.

This tactic does not shock me in the least. This is, after all, the man who engaged in the ultimate “sore loser” behavior after losing his 2006 bid to be Cook County Board president to Todd Stroger. Peraica is not somebody who’s going to take the political high road.

I fully expect Peraica to keep hitting us with subtle (like a sledgehammer) reminders that Alvarez is Mexican-American, hoping that he can stir up enough people who have a problem with the concept of the first Latina to win a county-wide office to get their votes.

That is why Alvarez herself was totally justified when she responded as she did to Peraica’s charge by refusing to discuss whether or not she had her picture taken with Oca (She did, so what!) and instead denounced the whole attack as “racist.”

“To insinuate that any public official of Hispanic heritage has connections to the HDO is racist,” she said, in a prepared statement. “These allegations are completely absurd and if they were not coming from (Cook County Board) Commissioner Tony Peraica, our campaign would consider this an April Fool’s Day joke.”

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Originally posted at www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com.

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Wright not wrong on question of race

Listening to audio of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he sounds almost like Adolf Hitler – in that I mean both men have a commanding presence that forces you to listen and a gravelly voice that can reach such high decibel levels that makes everything they say sound so harsh.

But when one actually reads the words spoken on video tapes that are causing some people to say that Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has a “racist” minister, anyone of sense would have to conclude the Rev. Wright is justified in much of what he says.

We have a race problem in this country. It is a blot on what otherwise is the great existence of the United States of America. While it might not be as blatantly violent as it was decades ago, we’re not going to be able to move beyond racial issues until we honestly address how bad the problem was.

Too many of the people who are trying to turn the retired Rev. Wright into a political issue seem to be of the type who would prefer to ignore race out of some hope that the issue will go away and things can go back to the way they used to be – before all the loud-mouth civil rights types forced us to pay attention to the problem.

That’s basically what Wright is making us do when he says things like, “Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single-parent home. Barack was.”

And when he talks about the United States’ involvement in activities that are construed by some people of the world as just as harsh and violent as any of the terrorist activity we condemn, he is touching on a vein of thought with some validity.

Let’s not forget the reason former Iraq leader Saddam Hussein ever rose from the ranks of third-rate dictators to become a serious threat to world peace is because the U.S. military backed him against Iran when it served our country’s interests during the decade-long Iran-Iraq War. Then, that fully armed pit bull turned around and bit us on the tushy.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we’re indignant,” Wright said. “Because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards.”

And giving us a touch of Malcolm X beyond the version that filmmaker Spike Lee tried giving us several years ago, Wright adds, “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Now some people are going to be upset that Wright has compared the 1945 U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic weapons to the 2001 terrorist hits on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How dare he make such an “un-American” statement!

But it is not a new thought. It’s not even terribly original. I recall a professor two decades ago at Illinois Wesleyan University (then and now, a very Midwestern place) tell us during a U.S. history course that when it came to deadly use of nuclear weapons, the scorecard for mankind read, “Harry S Truman – 2, Rest of World – 0.”

Admittedly, this professor wasn’t a Truman fan, and I know the arguments that use of the bomb saved lives by ending World War II more quickly. But the statement was a valid attempt to force us to consider the consequences of actions and judge for ourselves whether a positive outcome ever justifies the use of horrific means.

Now I understand that Obama on Friday made something of a public statement intended to put some distance between himself and Wright.

He said the private conversations the two men had were for personal guidance and never delved into the type of fiery rhetoric being criticized now. He said he would have publicly criticized such talk had he ever heard it personally.

But I really don’t think Obama has anything to be apologetic about. I was glad to hear that he is not totally denouncing Wright.

In listening to the so-called controversial recordings that some people would like to think of as more offensive than the Nixon tapes, the closest I can come to a statement to criticize Wright on is his comments about race and gender.

“Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people,” Wright said, adding later, “Hillary has never had her people defined as a non-person.

“Who cares what a poor black man has to face every day in a country and in a culture controlled by rich white people?”

While he’s right about the situation of African-American people in this country, there have been eras in our country’s story when people of Hillary’s gender were considered little more than non-persons.

One could just as easily make the statement that Barack has never had his gender defined as a non-person, and it would be just as accurate. Of course, that’s what we count on Michelle to be there for – to give him that bit of an intelligent female perspective whenever the testosterone levels of Team Obama get to be a little too high.

In fact, it is this balance between the inequities suffered by women and black people that I see as being behind the whole flap earlier this week that resulted in Geraldine Ferraro having to step down from her un-paid post as a Clinton campaign adviser.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position (as front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary),” Ferraro said. “If he was a woman, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is, and the country is caught up in the concept.”

On a certain level, Ferraro (who herself was the first woman to be chosen by a major political party to run for vice president – remember 1984?) is absolutely correct.

The “country” is caught up in the “concept” of Obama-mania, which could result in the first non-white president of the United States. (I don’t want to hear about how he’s bi-racial, which makes him part white. Only half-wits who have a problem with it seriously bring that issue up).

Obama-mania is so intense that a segment of the liberal population that normally would be very receptive to the first serious campaign of a woman to be U.S. president doesn’t want to hear about her.

Clinton, who had hoped to campaign as the Democratic darling who would advance the country’s gender preferences into the 21st Century, instead is reduced to having to be the candidate of the political establishment. The progressives have turned elsewhere to the point that if she does manage to win election in November – the bulk of liberal talk is going to be about how we lost the chance to have an African-American president, not how we finally have a woman.

That fact has to be frustrating to Clinton’s hard-core fans, and all I hear in Ferraro’s comments to a California newspaper is that frustration being articulated. I don’t hear a racist, the way some people try to portray it.

I also don’t hear a racist when I read the words of Wright. When I listen to the words of Wright, I might think that someone has gone off their medication, but then second thoughts make me realize his reasoning, and that he might actually have a legitimate point.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I realize Wright used the word “n----r” during one of his sermons. The UPI Stylebook (which I use as a guide in editing this site) says, “Do not use racially derogatory terms unless they are part of a quotation that is essential to the story.” I honestly believe that particular quote was NOT essential to understanding what Wright is about, and that the only reason you have heard it on television newscasts is because some half-wit TV producer is infatuated with so-called “dirty” words.

Originally posted at www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com.

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U.S. Rep. James Oberweis, R-Ill.

There. I wrote it. But he’d better not get too used to the title, because he’s going to have one heck of a fight immediately ahead of him in order to keep it.

It would appear that after four campaigns costing the Chicago-area investment manager turned dairy owner and ice cream parlor entrepreneur more than $10 million of his own money, James Oberweis will finally get a political office to call his own.

My gut feeling says that Illinois’ 14th congressional district is so in-bred Republican (particularly in the rural parts that comprise its far west end) that Oberweis will win Saturday’s special election to complete the remainder of the term to which retiring Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., (formerly U.S. House speaker) was elected in 2006.

However, that term only runs through the rest of this year. All Oberweis is going to get is the right to be in the minority party of Congress at a time when the mood of the country as a whole is swinging against them.

So it shouldn’t be considered a major victory for Oberweis (or a defeat for Democratic party challenger Bill Foster) as much as just another step in their desire to have real political influence.

No matter what happens Saturday, Foster and Oberweis remain the Democrat and Republican nominees in the Nov. 4 election to win a two-year term of their own, beginning in January 2009.

Some political observers believe Foster has a chance to actually win the seat, saying they think that social and political trends that will favor Democratic candidates across the United States in general will also apply to this district.

They think the lack of Denny Hastert (an extremely popular local figure who was perceived as never having forgotten where he came from, no matter how high up the political ladder he climbed) will cause people to look at the actual personalities on the ballot, rather than focus attention on the political parties to which they are affiliated.

I’m skeptical that will happen for Saturday’s special election, although it could very well happen come November.

Foster could easily lose on Saturday, but then win big in the General Election – thereby getting himself a full two-year term of his own, while Oberweis will merely get to finish off the crumbs left over from Hastert’s term and will gain a “political loser” reputation – as if losses for the U.S. Senate and Illinois governor hadn’t already given him that rep.

If there had been more than one month of time passing between when Oberweis and Foster won their nominations and the actual special election, then maybe Foster would have had more of a chance to exploit the “national mood,” so-to-speak.

But the lack of time, combined with the fact that many people who live in that district are Republicans because they perceive the political party as the mechanism that allows them to prevent Democratic Chicago from overwhelming their interests, means many local voters will merely vote for the GOP, just like they always have.

Foster, if he really wants to win, should focus his attention on keeping the momentum of his campaign from being lost. Even with Oberweis spending the spring and summer months in Washington, there won’t be much time for him to accomplish anything of significance. He is not going to be the standard issue incumbent in the November election.

Oberweis could easily get tied into the Republican caucus and be hit with all the mistakes they inevitably will make this year. He could be weakened just enough that Foster could beat up on him for issues we don’t even know about yet.

So the political junkie in me is focusing my attention on that election, in large part because it is the only one going Saturday in Illinois (Sorry, I just can’t get excited about the Wyoming presidential primary).

It really wouldn’t be much of a loss for Foster not to win on Saturday. Even if I turn out to be wrong and the headline on this commentary makes me look foolish by day’s end, all Foster would really get to be is the member of the majority party with the least amount of seniority.

In one respect, it will be good to see this special election cycle come and go. I am tired of all the nasty broadcast ad campaigning that has been taking place. Both of these candidates are exaggerating their opponents’ resumes in an attempt to unfairly demonize them.

Perhaps it is because neither one of them really has anything worth bragging about. I know for a fact that I would have a hard time choosing whom to vote for, if I lived in that district (ironically enough, my step-brother recently moved into the far east end of the Illinois 14th congressional, but not in time to register to be able to vote Saturday).

Oberweis is going to have no problem falling in line with the segment of Congress that is more than willing to pander to social conservative elements that want to blast the immigration issue out of context – twisting it into something that can be used to demonize people so as to get votes.

Oberweis is the candidate who in past bids for the U.S. Senate tried to plant the image in the heads of Illinois voters of massive sports stadiums filled with illegal immigrants. Even in his current campaign for the U.S. House, he has kept up the partisan rhetoric.

I lost count of how many times he tried to imply (both in television campaign ads and during personal appearances) that Foster is a liberal freak who wants to raise peoples’ taxes so that there will be more money to pay for social services for people that Oberweis would prefer to think do not belong in this country at all.

What is sad is that Foster really is a guy who is more than willing to throw his own digs at Oberweis on the immigration issue.

We got to re-hear the charge from past campaigns that Oberweis hired people without proper immigration papers to work at his ice cream parlors (he actually hired companies to staff one of his parlors, and they hired the people without “green cards.”) We also got to hear that Oberweis agrees with President Bush “on almost everything,” even though the one major area they do disagree on is immigration.

Bush actually had the reasonable approach, while Oberweis wants to play politics with people, particularly those who have come to the United States from various Latin American countries.

Foster doesn’t want to clarify it because it might imply he sides with the people affected by immigration cases – a viewpoint he thinks would cost him votes.

As much as Oberweis’ campaign activity in elections past and present offends me, it is not like there is really anything about Foster that makes him a viable alternative. While the Chicago Sun-Times used that as an excuse to begrudgingly give Oberweis their endorsement, I don’t know if I could have followed suit.

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Originally posted at http://www.chicagoargus.blogspot.com/

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Rezko trial a civics lesson, not the Crime of the Century

Political junkies with a special interest in Chicago and Illinois are hyperventilating these days over the prospect of a criminal trial that they say will expose the underbelly of our government officials in a way that has never been done before.

When Antoin Rezko goes on trial in U.S. District Court in Chicago (barring any unforeseen last-minute complications, jury selection will begin Monday), we’re going to see how dirty our political culture really is, and we’re going to be so outraged that we’ll throw the bums out of office.

We're even going to see how the “golden child” of Democratic politics, presidential hopeful Barack Obama, is tainted his ties to “the Chicago Machine,” and his aspirations of living in the White House are going to be flushed down the toilet by the time this trial is over.

What we all need to do is stop and catch our breath, so that we can think about this situation a bit more rationally.

It is true that this trial will provide a good technical grasp of how politics is done in Chicago, since the bulk of Rezko’s defense is that he was merely engaging in the same activities other lobbyists perform. Prosecutors say he stepped way over the legal line between legitimate influence peddling and criminal behavior, particularly when he arranged for the appointment of certain people to government posts allegedly knowing of their intent to commit extortion.

But I can easily envision a trial that delves into such technical material that it loses the interest of the general public, even though it is bound to get big play in the newspapers and on television newscasts (where time constraints will result in stories so short and lacking in detail that no one will really understand what is going on).

Detail. That is what a trial like this is really about.

We get to pick up on some details that may smudge the reputations of some political people. But their careers will survive, no matter how much federal prosecutors are determined to push for criminal convictions.

Any testimony related to Obama is going to be minor – of less importance to people interested in good government but of major significance to people searching for something that can be exaggerated into political scandal.

My view of this upcoming trial (which will probably last about two months and I wish I could spare the time in my life to cover it) is tainted by the fact that I still remember the last major political corruption trial that gave us a view of the way people influenced government officials.

It was MSI.

That’s Management Services of Illinois, a long-defunct Springfield, Ill.-based consultant to state government agencies. Specifically, they received a contract to do work for the Illinois Department of Public Aid by which they would go through records and search for instances where a Medicaid recipient might have some sort of medical insurance – which would then allow the state to play the role of collections officer and seek reimbursement.

What was seen as criminal was the amount of money the company got for their work, much of which later turned out to be worthless as the so-called insurance policies were usually long expired.

Prosecutors contended the reason MSI was over-paid by $7 million for their work was because of all the campaign contributions and other favors the company’s officials provided to the then-Republican majority that ran Illinois government.

I still remember the testimony how the company’s CEO devoted a Saturday afternoon to visiting Gov. Jim Edgar’s “log house” in the Springfield suburbs to help our low-tech governor set up his new computer, which the CEO helped him to purchase at a discount.

I still remember the day Edgar himself had to take the witness stand in U.S. District Court in Springfield and testify that he knew nothing of the personal motivations for why MSI officials wanted to help him.

Not even when he had a personal dinner with the executives, and each of them pledged a $10,000 contribution to his re-election campaign in 1994. He claimed to be unable to recall specifics, and said the dinner meeting was just giving “some face time” to potential supporters.

The trial also brought out stories of executives providing mid-level state agency officials with fine cuts of steak and lobster, trips to the Super Bowl and to Mexico, and even to an Arkansas strip joint where the defendants gave the state employees a few hundred dollars in cash each so they wouldn’t have to spend their own money while ogling the girls.

Some of these details have stuck in my mind, while others I had to go look up. The point is that much of the trial also delved in the technical workings of the Illinois Public Aid Department to such a degree that defense attorneys and prosecutors literally had to put together a glossary for jurors so they would understand all the legalese being spewed about.

There was a very strong sense that the jury in that case was overwhelmed with testimony and ultimately found two corporate executives and two mid-level state officials guilty without really understanding what they were guilty of.

I can easily see the same thing happening during the next few months with the Rezko case.

Prosecutors say Rezko was a man who used his personal ties to political people – including Gov. Rod Blagojevich – to persuade companies to pay him significant amounts of money in order to get their desires approved by the government.

That, in and of itself, is NOT illegal, unless you have such a narrow view of what government should be doing that you want to find it all improper.

Prosecutors say the amounts of money involved and the degree to which he would lean on government officials to get his clients’ desires accomplished goes far beyond any legitimate activity by a government lobbyist (a.k.a., legislative affairs consultant, in government geek-speak).

Court documents related to the case make mention of Rezko’s ties to a “Public Official A,” and tell stories that would appear to indicate that this official knew full well, and approved, of the scale to which Rezko’s lobbyist activities reached.

Some officials say “Public Official A” is the legal pseudonym used to refer to Blagojevich, who is not as of yet facing any criminal charges in connection with the matter.

But the “Blagojevich Bashers” of the world (they are a large breed of rural politicos who resent a Chicago governor, supplemented by the many Dems offended by Blagojevich’s arrogant style of governing) want to believe this is just the first step toward the eventual indictment of Gov. Rod.

Rational people ought to wait to hear what comes out of the trial before they start accusing Blagojevich of anything resembling illegal activity.

Back during the summer of ’97, there was a feeling among some political junkies that Edgar’s reputation would be forever sullied because of the embarrassing stories of his ties to government people, and that some people on his own personal staff would wind up doing jail time as well.

That never happened.

When federal prosecutors in Springfield tried to ratchet up their case and go after high-ranking Illinois Public Aid Department officials, including the director, they were unable to prove anything resembling criminal behavior.

Then-Public Aid Director Robert Wright did wind up having to resign a couple of months later (to pursue “personal opportunities,” in government geek-speak), but no one on the governor’s staff ever got indicted. No one on then-Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip’s staff was prosecuted either, even though stories came out that his chief of staff knowingly deceived Illinois State Police investigators when they asked for details about computer equipment provided by MSI executives.

It could wind up being more of the same with Rezko.

Political junkies will get a few hard details that provide for stories to be used to ridicule the governor’s judgment. Trial spectators would do well to pay close attention to any details about gifts Blagojevich ever received.

Whenever political people reminisce about MSI (most of the general public has long forgotten the case), they still bring up the testimony about the $5,600 worth of steak and lobsters given to Philip, his chief of staff and an aide, and to longtime Republican powerbroker William Cellini.

Oddly enough, Edgar didn’t get any steaks or lobsters. He had to settle for the new computer and some special software providing information about horse breeding – a topic that Edgar and first lady Brenda had a special interest in.

What will really hurt Blagojevich is that any details about his political ties will dump all over his campaign talk from the past about how he was going to be a serious government reformer.

In both 2002 and 2006, he used his GOP opponents’ ties to former Gov. George Ryan (who now is an inmate at the minimum-security work camp located adjacent to the federal maximum-security prison in Terre Haute, Ind.) as a way of tarnishing them.

He claimed he was the solution for clean government, even though people who really understand politics always knew it was ridiculous to think of Blagojevich as a reformer. No son-in-law of a Chicago alderman is going to want to reform things – his priority is going to ensure that the pieces of the government pie are distributed to different interests.

But to those naïve sorts who actually held out hope that Blagojevich was a good-government type, their delusions will be trashed. That’s probably for the best. We’re better off understanding that Blagojevich is not, “St. Rod.” He’s just a politico, no better or worse than any other.

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Originally posted at www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com

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Blagojevich a control freak with state budget

When Gov. Rod Blagojevich gives his budget address Wednesday, he’s going to elicit a combination of emotions – boredom and anger.

Legislators, lobbyists and other Statehouse Scene observers are going to struggle to stay awake due to the governor’s whiny voice and less-than-exciting public speaking skills. But those same people are going to enter the Illinois House chambers for the speech totally upset.

Blagojevich, in his desire to exert complete oversight of the process of presenting a budget proposal for the upcoming Illinois government fiscal year, is showing himself to be a control freak.

That kind of attitude is going to mess with the attitudes of the people the governor will ultimately need to approve a state budget. So we can forget about any notion that lawmakers will “play nice” this year and not do anything as embarrassing as last year’s behavior – where a funding resolution for Chicago mass transit dragged into the early weeks of this year.

What has Statehouse people upset is the idea that Blagojevich is being extra secretive about the details of the government spending plan he will present Wednesday at noon.

Gubernatorial aides, particularly those who work with the Bureau of the Budget, have spent the past few months putting together a spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year that would in theory allow Illinois government to not be deeper in debt on June 30, 2009.

Their work culminates with the governor’s budget address, which is one of the ceremonial rituals that defines the Statehouse Scene. After Wednesday, the budget process gets handed off to the General Assembly, which will spend the next few months reviewing and amending a budget plan until taking a final vote before adjourning for the summer.

The governor’s budget address is one of the ceremonial moments of the state government academic year. It’s almost like Homecoming at a college campus, where a lot of people come out of the woodwork to see what the old place looks like. Wednesday in Springfield will be a madhouse with politicos and their observers all making sure to be at the Statehouse so they can see for themselves just what Blagojevich has in mind.

To accommodate those people with differing interests, the governor’s staff usually conducts briefings the day before the budget address to provide a summary of what is in the spending plan.

The General Assembly’s leaders and the state constitutional officers (attorney general, secretary of state, etc.) all are given a presentation, and they in turn provide a review for their key aides.

In the case of the state Legislature’s members, they receive briefings from their respective partisan leaders, which means Republican senators and representatives are told of all the budget’s shortcomings, and the Democrats in theory are told of its strengths.

Even reporters who work regularly at the Statehouse are given a pair of briefings. From my experience covering state government under governors James R. Thompson, Jim Edgar and George H. Ryan, one briefing would occur in the afternoon – with the state budget director prepared to take detailed questions about the governor’s spending priorities.

The second briefing would come in the evening, and would be held by the governor himself to allow him the chance to influence the way reporters perceived the budget.

Under the agreement, reporters would not actually write or broadcast anything about the budget proposal until the governor’s budget address began. The advantage to reporters is they had something of a clue as to what was in the several-hundreds-of-pages budget book and could write a more intelligent story or two after the afternoon budget speech.

It also meant that an enterprising reporter could have the bulk of the story written, and could spend their after-speech time gaining intelligent reaction to the spending plan.

What made reactions somewhat intelligent was that lawmakers who were commenting on the proposal actually had an idea what was in the budget even before the speech began. They actually knew what they were talking about.

Not this year. The budgetary briefings are being held in the final hours of Wednesday morning just prior to the speech. Blagojevich himself is not participating. With that little lead time, the concept of briefings that are worth anything is a joke.

Blagojevich, as I said before, is being a control freak.

He's not allowing anyone outside of his immediate circle to know what is in the Illinois government spending proposal until the absolute last possible minute. I would imagine any of his staff who actually talked to a legislator, lobbyist or reporter would wind up losing his or her job.

It also means Blagojevich is needlessly ticking off the Legislature, which in theory is controlled by his politically partisan allies. A Democrat-run Illinois House and state Senate ought to be prepared to give Chicago Democrat Blagojevich whatever he wants.

Fat chance. The Chicago White Sox have a better chance this year of winning the World Series than Blagojevich has of achieving détente with the General Assembly.

I can’t understand why Blagojevich, who has threatened to pull similar tactics in the past, is so willing to antagonize the pols, unless he seriously believes the Illinois electorate is so stupid that they will automatically believe “it’s the Legislature’s fault” for whatever problems arise in state government this spring.

It is because of moments like this that I find it ridiculous when people complain Chicago Democrats are taking over Illinois politics and will run everything with strong-arm tactics.

“The Three Stooges” is a more appropriate image. The constant tensions and backstabbing are going to prevent any politically partisan agenda from being imposed on the people of Illinois.

In fact, the only reason Blagojevich may get away with this is because the current status of the Republican Party in Illinois is brain-dead. There are no signs the GOP in Illinois will be able to put together a credible candidate to challenge the second-term governor who has made it clear he expects to be elected to Term Number Three come the 2010 elections.

So if you are one of those people who feel a need to watch the broadcasts of the budget address that likely will air on public television stations across Illinois, keep in mind that the governor is not just a bumbling speaker who historically takes up to two hours to deliver the same type of speech that his predecessors could give in 40 minutes.

He's a conniving politico who is facing a potentially angry mob.

Because he’s governor, he thinks he can get away with it. There’s just one lesson Blagojevich should heed, and it comes from Illinois political history.

In their book “The Glory and the Tragedy,” former Statehouse reporters Taylor Pensoneau and Bob Ellis wrote that former Gov. Dan Walker pulled the exact same stunt – nobody was allowed to see his first budget proposal until he literally started speaking for his first budget address in 1973.

Walker, who had gone through a tenuous campaign against the Democratic organization in Chicago to become Illinois governor, cemented a reputation among his alleged political allies as a political pain in the derriere.

His budget stunt was just one of several reasons that built up into the Democratic Party challenging his desire for re-election in 1976. Even though the challenge ultimately resulted in a Republican winning that election cycle and starting a streak of 26 years with GOP governors, many Democrats of that era thought that dumping Dan Walker made the elections that year a complete success.

If he’s not careful, Rod Blagojevich could find himself in the same position two years from now.

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Originally posted at http://www.chicagoargus.blogspot.com/.

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(Democratic) Party crasher wants to be a judge

T.J. Somer is an attorney with dreams of being a Cook County judge.

The resident of Chicago Heights who is corporation counsel of his hometown has never won an election – even though he has tried repeatedly.

The closest he has come to success thus far is when he ran for mayor of Chicago Heights. He gained public attention by losing, challenging the results in court and taking 19 months before conceding defeat.

Somer's dreams of running for office began in the 1990s when he was the former Chicago Heights police officer who was the sacrificial lamb to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., when the Republican Party needed someone to challenge the son of the civil rights leader in a congressional district that was rapidly developing a significant African-American population.

So what is different about Thomas J. Somer now that makes him think he has a chance of winning the election Tuesday?

He has changed political parties. Somer is running as a Democrat for a judicial post within a suburban subcircuit.

Somer is the latest example of someone changing his politically partisan label in hopes that “joining the other team” will give him a better chance at winning. After all, it is not that Somer has anything significantly new in his background.

His hometown used to be a Republican bastion in the south suburbs. Officials who controlled Chicago Heights politics were white ethnics (largely Italian) who leaned toward the GOP because they saw the party as their political instrument that kept them from being bowled over by Chicago city government.

Shifting parties is just a sign Somer can “smell the coffee,” so to speak, of his changing community. Growing African-American and Hispanic populations in Chicago Heights (along with a federal investigation of the Chicago mob during the 1990s that sent former Chicago Heights Mayor Charles Panici to prison) have changed the town’s politics.

Somer (who was not caught up in the Chicago Heights political corruption) is basically the same “white ethnic” guy whose focus is fellow working-class people.

There really is little difference between people of Democratic and Republican persuasions, particularly if they come from the same region. Similar life experiences will produce similar views on issues that triumph over political party ties. I’m convinced the only reason some “hard-core” Democrats in Chicago support the party is because it is the establishment and they do not want to be mavericks.

Force those same people to live in a downstate Illinois community where the GOP is dominant, and they likely would convert within weeks. I also know that while I am a Chicagoan who leans Democrat, I find I have more in common with those rare Chicagoans who identify as Republican, than with those rural Illinois residents who vote for Democrats.

Somer’s political conversion is not unique.

The most prominent flip in recent Chicago political history was when Edward R. Vrdolyak, then an alderman and head of the Cook County Democratic Party, decided he wanted to be a part of the political party of Ronald Reagan.

After losing a 1987 mayoral primary to incumbent Harold Washington, he flipped to the GOP, where he campaigned for Cook County circuit court clerk in 1988 and later another mayoral bid as a Republican write-in in the 1989 special election.

His GOP bids were never traditional campaigns, as they were caught up in the mid-1980s spirit of “Council Wars” that poisoned our local politics. He was never appealing to hard-core Republican voters as much as to racially motivated ones.

I also remember when Ald. Bernie Stone of the far North Side’s 50th Ward declared himself to be a Republican on the grounds that Democrats were too preoccupied with racial disputes. He resumed use of the “Democrat” label when it became apparent no one believed the GOP conversion.

Digging back into Chicago political history, one of the biggest flips was that of Richard J. Daley, who won his first campaign for electoral office as a Republican representing the Bridgeport neighborhood in the Illinois House of Representatives.

The GOP label was a technicality that Democrats used when organizing a write-in campaign for Daley after the Republican incumbent died just before Election Day. Back then, Illinois House districts were required to have representatives of both political parties, and Daley as a GOPer was really a trick to steal a seat.

Daley became a Democrat officially in his second election, when he moved up to an Illinois Senate seat.

So what are the chances that the public (or at least those living in the 15th subcircuit of Cook County) will take to Democrat Somer any more than they did to the Republican version?

He could win this time around, but not because of any ideological flip.

The difference is that he has some money for a campaign (the Illinois State Board of Elections showed him spending $13,994.48 during the latter half of 2007, and starting this year off with $20,330.52), and he has put money into advertising billboards and public benches.

I have sat on Somer’s name in recent weeks, and it may help him get enough public recognition that some clueless voter will recognize the name when running through what seems like an endless list of people on the judicial portion of the ballot.

But then, I have yet to see an “idiot” card that lists him. None of the public officials who are organizing voter turnout are bothering to urge people to cast ballots for Somer, although the Chicago Bar Association and the Chicago Council of Lawyers both say he is “qualified” to be a judge.

The Illinois State Bar Association, the Hellenic Bar Association and the Lesbian and Gay Bar Association of Chicago, however, all say he is “not qualified.”

At the less public levels of politics, the bulk of a candidate’s votes usually come from having the support of someone with an organization who can turn out voters on one’s behalf. The various bar association rankings are interesting, but many voters don’t pay them much attention.

Insofar as eye-catching political mailings are concerned, he’s running against Anna Helen Demacopoulos, an assistant state’s attorney who also wants to become a judge. (Take a guess who the Hellenic Bar Association would like to see win.)

Her mailings emphasize the notion that government could be spying on us, and that we ought to elect judges who will protect our personal privacy rights.

So who will wind up winning Tuesday; the Republican convert or the prosecutor appealing to our outrage over potential abuses of the Patriot Act?

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Originally posted at www.ChicagoArgus.blogspot.com

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