ArchPundit

Call It A Comeback

2004

G-Rod

Governor Flowbeejevich Whines

ArchPundit 1 Comment

Why is Democracy for America Chicago doing the the Flobeejevich’s dirty work for him?

Here’s the message from the Illinois for Dean listserv:

To the people of Illinois:

When I was elected Governor, I made a promise to the working people
of Illinois that I would fight to protect those things that are most
important to them and their families ? their health, their safety,
and the future of their children.

Back in February, I presented the General Assembly with a balanced
budget for the coming fiscal year. My budget will invest $600
million more in health care for working families, seniors and
children. My budget will invest $400 million more in the education
of our children. My budget will send 8,000 at-risk children to pre-
school. My budget will give more money to state police and to
investigators to help keep the people of Illinois safe.

But now, with the state’s budget deadline looming in less than two
weeks, legislators are dragging their feet in hopes of forcing me to
accept a “no-growth” budget that will make 150,000 people lose their
healthcare and send schools across the state into a financial
quagmire.

I will not do that. I will not compromise my values, because they
are the values of the people who elected me. A no-growth budget is a
no-future budget, and I will not sign away the future of Illinois.

I am asking you to join me today as I fight for your values, your
families, and your state. Call 1-866-757-1032, and tell your state
representative that you want a state budget that is best for you and
your family. Let your representative know that you’re watching
what’s happening in Springfield, and that you expect your elected
leaders to represent your interests, do the right thing, and support
my budget.

Thank you.
Sincerely,

Rod R. Blagojevich
Governor

What the good Governor fails to mention while invoking Howard Dean is that his budget puts the pain on future generations. This is a man who wants to mortgage the future of the State of Illinois on the backs of future taxpayers. Why? Because he can claim that he held the line on taxes—which is BS too if you look at the fee increases this clown has suggested.

Governor Dean was attractive to me because he made a very coherent argument–that to have social justice you must first have fiscal responsibility. You cannot spend money now that you do not have and hope to create a sustainable budget. It will backfire eventually.

The Flowbeejevich has suggested a program of borrowing to pay for current operations. Borrowing is an important tool for government when it is making long term investments such as roads or school construction, but a horrible idea when paying for current operations. After all, what do you do when you can’t borrow anymore? You cut operations because you can’t cut debt payments.

If the good Flowbeejevich had, say, taken on a really hard issue like school finance reform for rural schools, I might give him a little slack. Instead, he has avoided hard issues and tried to demagogue on a few small ones and now he is trying to sound like a reformer. He isn’t reforming anything. He is trying to “run business as usual” TM by borrowing from taxpayers of the future to make his administration look good to taxpayers of today.

There is another example of this kind of irresponsibility and it is Schwarzenegger in California who has sold bonds to cover current state expenditures.

Of course, last year the Flowbeejevich tried to make the budget work by a series of one-time financial changes. The problem again is how do you cover the structural costs you are hiding in a current budget the next year? Maybe you can do it for three or four years, but ultimately the bills come due.

So call your State Lege Members and tell them to back a budget that doesn’t operate under smoke and mirrors. A no-growth budget isn’t perfect, but it certainly leaves us in a position to address problems in the future. Either we deal with structual problems now or later. If later, those programs he claims to be defending today will suffer tomorrow.

Illinois Senate

That’ll Hurt the Team

ArchPundit 3 Comments

Okay, so let’s just say that you decide you are going to run for high office. You may have a thousand reasons for doing so, but you want to be Senator and an opening comes along. You jump in, make a lot of noise, position yourself interestingly and have a great shot of winning your party’s primary though you would face an uphill struggle a state that is increasingly leaning the other ideological direction.

But you have some embarrassing information in your background. What do you do?

Disclose it, getting it out early in the election cycle and avoiding being sandbagged with it in an election? No. Of course, not.

You get the records sealed and assume the information is safely tucked away. This is a dumb assumption given your name has been out there as a candidate for a while and people always get ready for a strong challenger. But then the press decides they should have access and sue for release. Do you fight it? Yes. Why? Because now you are in a box. Then you say that there is nothing embarrassing in the files. A dumb answer.

Because when the judge says he’s going to release a big section of the file. You say:

“Is there anything in there that might be embarrassing to me? Maybe. But that’s not the criterion.”

So now you have lied to the media that already is annoyed with a campaign tone that was at least clumsily negative and has been rather poorly run. You have apparently lied to the Speaker of the House of Reps, the Senate Majority Leader and other party leaders in the State.

So assume the best at this point and say you have some minor embarrassments in the file–who has your back? No one. You have to fight it off and have character whispered about for months. And you are still off message talking about things that only highlight one of the strengths of your opponent–a remarkably charming family.

Say it is more than just a little embarrassing? Be expecting a call from the Illinois GOP Leadership to step down from the ticket and essentially asking for your head. Of course with no direct law to replace you, they have to rely on the Courts to let them to replace you, further angering them and further making this campaign season a long one for them. Jack Ryan will be a curse word in the IL GOP under this scenario.

In bizarro world, a few court decisions could easily land the GOP without a Senate Candidate or a Presidential Candidate for the fall election–something that would devestate down ballot races–which is what they care about, because Jack, they’ve already written you off.

Uncategorized

Just Buy A Gun and Use It?

ArchPundit 5 Comments

I’m going to prioritize the next few days in writing to responses to e-mails and the sort. Jeff Berkowitz responds to the my defense of 24/72 hour waiting periods by bringing up a woman who is being threatened under an order of protection:

Well, imagine it. Imagine a battered woman who called the police in Chicago to enforce a protective order and to protect herself form her battering husband, but police arrived a gunshot too late. So much for the efficacy of Protective Orders. A Women’s issue, perhaps?

Or perhaps a basic issue of gun safety. If someone is buying a firearm and planning on effectively using it in 72 hours they are setting themselves up for either hurting themselves or a bystander. While the common myth of how effective handguns are for personal safety suggest you point and shoot, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Add on top of that the great fear in such a situation and someone who is planning to use the firearm without practice or training is buying into a false sense of security. A false sense of security promoted by ‘gun rights’ advocates. Far more effective means of personal security are available for someone not trained to use a firearm in the short run.

Of course, if someone is first interested in buying a firearm, the waiting period in Illinois is much longer because Illinois prudently requires a Firearm Owner Identication Card that takes a couple weeks to receive.

Ultimately, the 2nd Amendment has never been ruled an individual right. One can argue with that all they want, but it doesn’t change it. That doesn’t address whether something is reasonable policy, but in this case, one has to ask why cooling down periods are a bad thing. If someone is a responsible owner, what is the rush to use the firearm in under 24 or 72 hours?

Beyond background checks there is a good reason for the waiting period and that is it reduces easy access to guns from people in excited states. No one legally entitled to own a gun is limited, but people who make decisions out of fear or anger are given a cooling off period. From personal experience, the scared woman on the other end of the line doesn’t know about FOID cards let alone how to clear a chamber.

Most importantly, the argument that quick access to firearms is a safety issue backfires on those trying to make it.

Uncategorized

Go Read about Davis

ArchPundit 1 Comment

Long Story short, my e-mail is funky, I didn’t get on the ball for guest posters and my internet connection is funky too. So ArchPundit will be slow for a couple more days–if I owe you an e-mail, it’ll have to wait until I get back.

But go check out the Capitol Fax–Rich Miller interviewed Danny Davis on his participation in Rev Moon declaring himself the Messiah.

Davis wouldn’t budge, comparing the elaborate ceremony to a “fraternity or sorority meeting,” or rituals performed by the local Elks lodge. “That’s kind of the way I regard these ceremonies.”

I seem to remember the rope and a brick, not declaring oneself the Messiah in my day.

Illinois Senate

New Senate Poll

ArchPundit 4 Comments

Obama (D) 50%
Ryan (R) 39%
Other/Undecided 10%

Data Collected 6/7/04 – 6/9/04
Geography State of Illinois
Sample Population 736 Likely Voters
Margin of Error 3.7%
Client WBBM-TV Chicago
KSDK-TV St. Louis

The significant differences are on Jack’s numbers which are changing between polls. My guess on this is the method to determine likely voters or how hard they push people to make a choice is the key difference–IOW light leaners probably account for his better numbers. This early I tend to think such voters aren’t good to include, but it’s impossible to tell without further information. While Jack!’s e-mail is crowing about this, they are facing a non-incumbent at 50% or better. Behind the press releases that has to have them worried.

Survey USA are automated polls.

Uncategorized

My Reaction To Reagan

ArchPundit 1 Comment

First, RIP. I wish no one’s family to go through such a disease and certainly hope he was at peace as the disease progressed.

While I often describe myself as a fairly partisan Democrat who nonetheless argues for non-traditional solutions to problems (i.e. market incentives in environmental regulation and school choice with accountability in education) there is one area where I absolutely am at the left end of the U.S. political spectrum: Latin American policy. Having visited Nicaragua in 1991 and originally planning a career studying it, that then, probably inevitably, turned toward my long obsession with American politics, few places have the same draw on me.

My view on Latin America, and Central America in particular, is that we have never lived up to the Declaration of Independence there. We claimed to be supporting those who were freedom fighters, but were really thugs and rapists. In Nicaragua we met with Alfredo Cesar. He had originarlly been the spokesperson for the interim government after Somoza was thrown out and would become a leading opposition figure to the Sandanistas.

Cesar was interesting to me because he was highly critical of the Contras–far more than when he spoke to the American press. This comes up because a wonderful blog, Beautiful Horizons, that often concentrates on Latin America mentions Violetta Chamorro’s son who says this:

In Nicaragua, Reagan’s financial and military support for anti-government rebels “caused a lot of damage in our country, a lot of suffering, a lot of death and destruction,” said Carlos Chamorro, a journalist and political analyst, whose mother, Violeta Chamorro, became president in elections in 1990 that ended the rule of the Marxist-led Sandinistas.

“There might be a group that was supported by Reagan that may have a different memory of him. But I have the impression that a majority of the people will associate him with the war and with the destruction,” Chamorro said. The U.S.-backed war killed at least 20,000 people.

The Washington Post and Beautiful Horizons miss an important part of the story. Chamorro’s father, Violetta’s husband, was murdered, most likely by Somoza’s son–a kid who can be fairly compared to Saddam’s offspring. And he and his father were tools of the U.S. Government.

The Sandinistas were problematic. They were authoritarian and they did not accept free speech as they should. But the effort to destroy them that resulted in the raping of literacy workers and other wide ranging human rights abuses were not worth the effort. It was wrong.

Randy quotes Oscar Arias who is far more eloquent than I ever could be on the issue:

I know well you share what we say to all members of the international community, and particularly to those in the East and the West, with far greater power and resources than my small nation could never hope to possess, I say to them, with the utmost urgency: let Central Americans decide the future of Central America. Leave the interpretation and implementation of our peace plan to us. Support the efforts for peace instead of the forces of war in our region. Send our people ploughshares instead of swords, pruning hooks instead of spears. If they, for their own purposes, cannot refrain from amassing the weapons of war, then, in the name of God, at least they should leave us in peace.

Illinois Congressional Races

Crane’s In the Leader

ArchPundit 1 Comment

How do all the conservative Christians at the Leader feel about his ties to a cult leader who declared himself the Messiah? I know I’d be voting for whatever gadfly is running against Danny Davis if I was in his District.

Quote of the article

Oh, yes. . . I have always viewed Democrats as potentially salvageable

No comment.

Phil does take a stab at whole language instruction, but unfortunately for him, his ideas are about 40 years out of date–most research today suggests whole language and phonics are both successful depending on the student. (education policy snark).

Maybe tomorrow’s edition will tell us of something he’s actually done!

Illinois Congressional Races

Can Dems Take A House Seat in Illinois?

ArchPundit 11 Comments

I’m guessing there is a good shot at two with a third running as an outside shot. The first of four posts takes a look at two seats I think are hot for takeover, one that is coming up, and the others seats with challengers. The series is motivated by Dan Johnson-Weinbergers challenge that none of these seats are winnable and so we should redistrict mid-decade–an idea I hate, but that is for another day.

First, is Melissa Bean, the hottest race in Illinois.

Bean took on Crane in what seemed like a hopeless race two years ago with a limited budget and a lot of hard work. She came in at 43% to his 57% while spending $500,000 less on the campaign. That was his lowest percentage since 1992.

The District leans Republican with Bush getting 56% of the vote in 2000–that is in the new District’s boundaries for 2002–National Journal reports all districts as such. Gore/Other got 44%.

Off-hand this doesn’t seem to be the easiest target, but for several reasons the District is considered a high profile race by pundits and the party. As mentioned below, Hastert has called on other Republicans to help Crane.

An important thing to understand about the power of incumbency is the impact of name recognition and years of getting that name out there as well as opportunities through constituent service to make contact.

The problem is that in a District that straddles Lake and McHenry and is experiencing rapid population growth and many of those people don’t know Crane. In addition, he gets a part of Northwestern Cook he didn’t have before including Hoffman Estates, Schaumburg and the Cook portion of Elgin. That area is part of Steve Rauschenbergers State Senate District with that specific area being the area he had the toughest job with in 2002. He did well in the Kane are of Elgin, but the Hoffman Estates area was more Democratic. Crane only got the more Democratic area.

On a personal note, my sister, the conservative Republican Willow-Creek going, small business owner was impressed with Melissa Bean when they met. Of course, she doesn’t often vote.

So while the District is Republican, it is relatively new to Crane and the many residents are new to the area period in the Lake and McHenry areas.

But to make it more attractive, Lake County is one of the Counties highlighted in The Emerging Democratic Majority by John Judis and Ruy Teixiera. Lake in 1988: Bush 64 Dukakis 36
Lake in 2000: Bush 50 Gore 48

To now, we know that Bean ran a credible challenge 2 years ago with far less money, the traditional name recognition advantage is largely neutralized in a new district that is rapidly growing, and the overall composition is becoming close to a toss up.

Demographically, the District is not a slam dunk. Certainly, a liberal Democrat isn’t going to take that District. One thing to note is that the District is nearly as safe as they could make it, but it still isn’t that safe.

But a moderate Democrat against a wingnut fossil is a different story. Crane isn’t just your run of the mill Republican, he is first generation wingnut who cut his teeth on the Goldwater campaign and never looked back.

Rankings 2002
American Conservative Union 100
National Tax Limitation Committee 100
Christian Coalition 100
Chamber of Commerce 94

And you can look down a few posts for the high esteem he is held by the Gun Owners of America which is to the right of the NRA.

He did pull of 13 % rating from the LCV, but I’m sure he regrets it.

Does he fit his District? No, No, and No. A moderate to a moderate conservative Republican would probably tough to take out in the District. Mark Kirk would probably be perfect in fact, if he wouldn’t be knocked out in the primary.

To give some examples of his extremism, he doesn’t believe in instant background checks on gun sales. He doesn’t seem to think that felons should be prohibited from owning firearms.

And in one of the oddest rulings, he supported drilling in Lake Michigan where much of the District gets its water. On Superfund, he has voted against the principle of polluter pays–while Superfund needs reform, that isn’t the kind of reform it needs.

Those are saleable issues in a moderately Republican District.

Making matters worse, Crane has been AWOL in the District. I pointed out some recent examples–especially LaHood’s comments. A key reason for incumbent strength is constituent service and Crane hasn’t done much of it. So bad, that a more moderate Republican challenger got 31% of the vote–most challenges to incumbents come from the extreme of a party, not from the center. Something about moderation being, well, moderate.

And the final weakness comes in a set of symbolic issues he has positioned himself on.

First, he gets most of his money from PACs. While PACs have been off the radar recently, they still are an effective target for a challenger.

Second, he has been there for years. Everyone hates the Congressman who has been there, but hasn’t made contact personally.

Third, Medicare rantings. Never make the old people who vote mad, even if you are one. Ask Rosty.

Fourth, 5 FEC disavowel notices. Five. Did I say five. With 18 terms don’t you think someone could get the paperwork right?

Fifth, he misrepresented several newspaper endorsements.

The amateur campaign guy in me already has the commercials running in my mind to run against the guy–and the direct mail…..oooooooohhhhh.

On the other side of the equation, Bean has several things going for her. A compelling story that fits her District–a successful professional woman with a family who is bright and has done something in the private sector in the last 30 years. She has name recognition from her first race. She is moderate being fiscally responsible and socially moderate–a good mix for the professional class moving into the district. And she has party support. Just today she was a featured race in the DTripC e-mail (okay, so they extensively quoted me and stroked my ego, but she was going to be featured anyway).

So yeah, this is a winnable District. The incumbent has an advantage, but they always do. Bean has already outraised what she spent last time–actually she did that by the primary. Crane is in fundraising trouble. As it is clear that he is on the downward end of his career and he will never be Ways and Means Chair–a slight that is telling of his low esteem amongst his colleagues, he isn’t getting as much from PACs and he has no small donor base. He doesn’t have the extensive nationwide mailing campaign set to go for him and an entire younger generation of wingnuts are the big names in mailing.

Bean is perfectly suited to challenge Phil Crane (R-Fossil). And she just might beat the guy with energy, moderation and ideas. So go help her out with either money or time (hint upper left).

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