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Call It A Comeback

April 2006

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Protests In Bloomington?

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Damn….as I so often like to report the most violent protests in Bloomington/Normal to my memory are the 1984 Cubs winning the Division “celebration” and the fights after new rules on college parties were put into place. But who wants to be that a bunch of people will get their panties in a bunch over peaceful demonstrations that simply call for sanity in our immigration policy?

The reality is that Americans live off the cheap labor of undocumented workers. If you want to put a quick stop to that, punish the people paying them. No? I thought so. Think about it while standing in line after a night of drinking at La Bamba (the only place I’m aware of in Bloomington to ever be cited for hiring undocumented workers)

Then it’s time to think about how to allow them to earn citizenship and attempt to move more of the underground workers above ground and legitimate for their protection and ours. The debate is horribly skewed ignoring basic issues such as how to allow families to stay together when some are working in the United States and dealing with very basic human issues and instead concentrating upon the paranoid fantasies about the brown hordes over at the Eagle Forum.

Making it a felony to be in the country without the proper documents raises all sorts of issues related to the gross incompetence of the immigration services–which many a student and professor have been technically undocumented for a time. Are we ready to make admissions and foreign student office employees felons as well? Are we ready to make Catholic Charities employees felons because they help a family in need?

This is what we are seriously talking about doing. We need labor and they need jobs, let’s create a system that matches the two together and increases our security.

Of course, driving through the Hill here in St. Louis I thought I’d driven into a protest by Latinos the other day, then I realized I just had my colors switched. Those bastards were flying Italian flags. How dare they? Why won’t they just assimilate?

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The Plot Against Wilson

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Why did it take the Trib two years to write this:

Last week, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald filed a brief that says Libby also leaked secret information from a CIA report on Iraq. According to this account, Libby says the vice president instructed him to tell a reporter that a key finding of a 2002 intelligence assessment was that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium from Africa. The brief also says Libby was told by Cheney that President Bush had personally authorized the disclosure of this classified material.

The White House has not denied that allegation. In fact, it turns out that the president had ordered the intelligence estimate to be declassified. But whether the facts support what Libby reportedly says–or what Cheney purportedly told him–is yet to be established. A senior administration official told The New York Times that though Bush declassified the report, he did not tell anyone to discuss it with journalists.

So someone is lying. It could be that Libby acted on his own in leaking the information. It could be that Cheney told him to do so without the president’s approval. Or it could be that Bush was behind the leak. Those are questions that the Cheney ought to step forward and answer, along with questions about the unmasking of Plame.

One of the Appeals Court Judges pointed out this plot in his opinion in 2004. Some are applauding the Trib’s editorial today, but in Bob Dole vernacular, where was the outrage during the election?

True, the high comedy of the piece in suggesting Dick Cheney submit himself to the press corps does indicate some cheekiness, but why is Lawrence O’Donnel the guy who keeps getting these stories right while the regular press minus Murray Waas keeps taking the hand fed crap from this administration? Perhaps I’m biting the Editorial Boards’ hands as it finally gets it right, but the utter lack of pressure on this administration to come clean on these issues is astounding.

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Governor’s Outstate Numbers

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Let’s start off with the full and clear admission that behind held to 41% below a challenger is a very bad position to start from in a general election. Yet, despite this, there isn’t the smell of death you’d often anticipate for such a situation.

A couple breakdowns really stood out at me. Democrats don’t have to win outstate, but the certainly need to keep their margins ups. In Southern Illinois, a relatively small percentage of the population, Blagojevich is up significantly with 48% of voters compared to Judy’s 34%. That’s surprising. West/Northwest is nearly tied with 35/36–and that is odd given two statewide electeds are producing this many undecideds.

The Governor is getting killed in Central Illinois which fits the primary results, but given the screaming about downstate and how much he’s disliked, the effect seems largely contained with Central Illinois.

Cook County is also strange in that he’s losing it 48 to 31 which is surprising given the increasing Dem tilt, but then again Judy is from the southland area where Dems have made the biggest inroads. The collar counties produce a negative 10 right now which isn’t very surprising. Blagojevich’s Chicago numbers are holding up–he’s at 63% and I’d bet he’ll solidify that as long as Meeks doesn’t get in.

The numbers on women are close, which isn’t what I’d expect given a moderate woman for the GOP side.

In other races, while I think Rutherford is a good guy, I’ll support Jesse any day and 59% of respondents agree. Pretty much everwhere, but Central Illinois Jesse is ahead and over 50% everywhere but Central Illinois and Collar Counties.

Jesse won’t win 102 counties this time, but I bet he wins by as much as 20%.

The Radogno numbers are interesting in that a newcomer is beating her–it’s still very early, but those results are not good for the Republicans. Worse, it doesn’t appear G-Rod really has any negative coattails.

ICFST

Circle Em Up! ICFST Goes National!

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Judy has raised the ire of the Conservative Blogosphere for daring to criticize Dear Leader. I find it rather endearing when she makes a gaffe as defined my Michael Kinsley as accidentally telling the truth.

Hugh Hewett, competing with Powerline to be the biggest shill for the Administration, takes Judy to task for not rebuking her aide

Does the candidate and staff imagine that no one reads Will’s columns in the White House? Or are they counting on the president’s very thick skin to absorb the slight, and Laura as well to put it down to inexperience with the national press?

When I see candidates wanting to have the president’s friends and their money but not without an obligatory shot to satisfy critics, I know that I am observing a real rookie.

Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell are also running for governor in crucial swing states. They have managed to do so thus far without playing to the anti-Bush MSM. What pro-Bush donor is going to skip over them to dig deep for Topinka?

Illinois hasn’t done much for the GOP in recent years, and if it joins California and New York as a deep blue safety zone for Democrats in presidential years, the answer is not to prop up occasional governors, but to match up a third big state to go with Florida and Texas in the deep red category. I know that Illinois isn’t going to go from blue to even light red with a governor who starts her campaign by blasting Bush.

Apparently Judy wasn’t assimilated into the Collective and so must be cast out for even mild criticism. On one hand I want to see a good competitive race that holds everyone’s feet to the fire–on the other, I love watching the Illinois GOP meltdown over arguments about ideological purity.

It gets better at a lessor blog that sounds like the GOP has turned into Office Space: Ill. GOP Gov. Candidate–NOT a Team Player?

What in the heck is this woman doing? She has told all Bush voters that she doesn’t want their support as WELL as telling the president — a president whose own political director urged her to run — that she doesn’t want his help, just his cash! So, even if Rove was willing to help her, why would he do so now that she has basically told him she doesn’t want the president’s help?

I’m imagining Ron Livingston sitting at the table with Mehlman and Racicot talking about how he doesn’t actually do anything…

Calling Gary Cole.

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Travel From Tax-Exempt Charities

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Normally, I’m not on the crusade many bloggers are when it comes to criticizing the traditional media, but the details being left out of the corruption stories are really problematic.

The other day I criticized coverage of Peter Roskam, but let’s look at coverage of Durbin and Schakowksy from last month.

In January, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a leading spokesman for Democrats on ethics reform, adopted an office policy banning any privately paid travel. The same month, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) adopted the Democratic Party’s proposal as an office policy, limiting trips to those paid for by tax-exempt charities.

Democrats need to do better and the reason should be obvious. I’m assuming 501 (c) 3’s are the charities that can pay for travel under the proposal, but the problem with this is that at the center of the DeLay scandal. DeLay’s trip to Scotland to go golfing was paid for by a tax-exempt 501 (c) 3, The National Center for Public Policy Research. Scroll down to the bottom where you find

The National Center, which officially opened on February 2, 1982, is a 501(c)(3) organization under the Internal Revenue Code. Its tax ID number is 52-1226614. Donations to The National Center and its projects are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.

Now, I’m the first to say that the Aspen Institute is a great organization that does interesting events, but by allowing such organizations to continue to sponsor lawmaker trips, we leave the problem in place. Unfortunately the story doesn’t explain why this is so problematic so the exemption seems exceptionally reasonable even though using such an organization is exactly how Abramoff, DeLay and Ney exploited the system.

Democrats need to play cleaner (and yes the Creamer sentencing highlights this as well–same excuse as DeLay–no one personally gained….) for both the ethical reasons and the political strategy.

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Little Slow This Week

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There was a Municipal election here in Saint Louis and I was on the Citizen Audit Panel for the new machines and process–still catching up on sleep and getting things done.

On the negative side, the school board majority in Saint Louis lost probably meaning Creg Williams will soon be a free agent again. Those looking for a dynamic superintendent should get in line. After working on Saint Louis Public School issues for 8 years, it’s more than a bit depressing to see the keys turned over to people who pretty much want to return to policies that nearly bankrupted the damn district.

If you have some sense of my attitude to get over it in tough election losses, it’s because I’ve seen them all too often.

G-Rod

One Way or Another, It’s a Problem

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This follows up on the comments below though I hadn’t read the article yet. The Pantagraph blasts the Senate Democrats for confirming Tim Martin for the second half as head of IDOT. They are right–perhaps confirming him might be reasonable, but grilling him harder and getting firm committments to improve performance is what an independent Legislative Branch is supposed to do.

The hyperpartisanship of the last few years can probably be argued back to Isaac and Ishmail, but the problem is that few are willing to point out problems on their own side. The series of Holland Audits have put this to the test for many Democrats. Holland has issued a series of blistering reports on the Blagojevich administration, some of which have been referred for criminal prosecution.

The problem is a basic accounting problem that is simply unacceptable:

All the auditor said was that Martin’s office had not documented $700,000 in spending and didn’t dispute his findings when given the opportunity. Holland thought it serious enough to turn the matter over to state and federal investigators.

In a meeting with some senators before his confirmation, Martin said the questionable expenses were closer to $100,000.

Whether its $100,000 or $700,000, there are still questionable expenses. And senators didn’t bother clearing up the matter before taking an ill-advised vote.

Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, called for the vote. He said it was inappropriate to raise the audit issue during a confirmation vote. How ridiculous. What was inappropriate was for senators to confirm Martin before they know what is going on.

If the $700,000 in undocumented spending wasn’t enough, senators also had to be aware of the March audit from Holland’s office criticizing management within IDOT’s Division of Traffic Safety.

You can also take a look at Rich’s post on standardized tests not being delivered on time.

These are issues of basic competence and the breadth of them tell me more that it’s about incompetence and less about corruption–though I’m open to clear evidence. For those of us who want to support a Democratic Governor and more importantly, All Kids and universal access to quality early childhood education, we need to see some adult supervision. The Governor is good at the politics in general, but his inability to manage effectively is a huge problem. If it isn’t corrected, why should someone believe he can institute an effective statewide early childhood education plan?

Madigan insisted on Memorandums of Understanding. That’s unheard of from the same party. While Jones and the Governor has had a generally better relationship, everyone understands the Governor’s attention span isn’t so good when it comes to managing. That’s not always a horrible thing–if one hires a staff that can compensate for his particular strengths and weaknesses. Early on, that clearly wasn’t the case, whether the administration is taking the problems to heart or not and making improvements is a something it has to sell to the voters and the best way to do that would be to demonstrate some seriousness to actual management.

For an incumbent, his numbers are bad, but not unsurvivable. I expect much of the election to turn on wedge issues and it’ll probably be incredibly negative. There are some interesting stats from recent poll Rich posted that I’ll go into.

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Look at Where Roskam’s Money Does Come From

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The thing about the DeLay scandals isn’t just DeLay, but how the entire K Street project has corrupted much of campaign finance. DeLay isn’t just one person, but the hub the spokes emenate from and if one follows them, most movement conservatives are caught.

With Roskam, the first obvious connection is to Grover Norquist who along with Abramoff started the scheme to defraud American Indian Triibes. Americans for Tax Reform is a front for lobbying hid as a non-profit

He’s taken $10,000 from the Rely on Your Belief Fund (ROYB)–Roy Blunt’s PAC that not only looks like it was used to funnel money between funds with DeLay’s TRMPAC and ARMPAC, but also had Jim Ellis running both ROYB and ARMPAC. Ellis is under indictment in Texas.

ROYB also is strongly linked to Alexander Strategy Group of which principals include Tony Rudy and Earl Buckham

He’s taken $10,000 from Boehner’s PAC. Boehner is fighting to preserve privately paid travel for Members of Congress.

Norm Ornstein of AEI keeps pointing out that this scandal will probably rival that of the Tea Pot Dome Scandal. That the press is letting candidates get by with taking money from the nexus of this scandal is pretty much par for the course, but also avoids dealing with really tough issues and some actual investigative reporting. I just did the above on the internets–imagine what someone could do who has a job that pays for them to do the research.

How extreme is this case? Tom DeLay is threatening the prosecutor’s independence in Texas.

The entire K-Street project was designed to tie lobbyists and the Republican leadership into a situation where their interests were the same and then to promulgate their power and influence. The wheels are now coming off and Peter Roskam appears to have lots of friends right in the middle of it, yet claims he’s all for ethics reform.

I don’t doubt that Roskam is a true blue movement conservative, it’s just odd that he doesn’t seem to want to be connected to the movement that he’s been involved in.

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Hand Feeding the Press

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It isn’t a spokespersons fault when a reporter skips figuring out the facts of a story, but you’d think that a quick Lexis search to figure out the whole story might be reasonable.

Roskam is attempting to claim that he really isn’t very close to Tom DeLay because he only worked for him 20 years ago and for about 8 months. That’s a reasonable claim if that were all there was to the relationship.

Unfortunately Marni Pyke at Daily Herald does a piss poor he said she said story.

The reality behind Roskam and DeLay is that they’ve had an ongoing relationship over the years. In the 1998 race for IL-13 there was this little tidbit from the Trib:

Word on Capitol Hill is that ideological conservative state Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Naperville) is getting behind-the-scenes help in his six-way Republican congressional primary battle from GOP House Whip Tom DeLay of Texas.

DeLay is the arch-conservative former pest-control service operator whose former profession and aggressive attacks on federal regulation of almost any type, including environmental laws, has earned him the nickname “The Exterminator.”

A top aide to DeLay has been calling around to some big conservative backers suggesting they “take a look at” (i.e., send money to) Roskam, said a congressional source.

Even better, in an April Sun-Times piece, Roskam said the following about DeLay

But state Sen. Peter Roskam, who worked for DeLay 20 years ago, voiced support.

“Trotting out some of … these old accusations that are two and three and four years old is a little bit tiresome,” Roskam said. “I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.”

…..

Roskam, 43, is a lawyer who lives in Wheaton. He worked as an aide to DeLay in 1985 and part of 1986, but said he has “not had any contact with him essentially for 20 years.”

“I think everybody agrees that he’s one of the most effective legislators in Washington, D.C.,” Roskam said. “Knowing what I know now about what Tom DeLay’s been accused of, my attitude would be to support him.”

The obvious question given Tom DeLay is under indictment and clearly under investigation for his ties to Abramoff, does Roskam still support him? He clearly did 10 days before DeLay was indicted when DeLay hosted a fundraiser for a guy he hadn’t had any contact with essentially for 20 years. On top of that, Roskam received a $1,000 donation from ARMPAC (DeLay’s federal PAC) in 1998. I tend to think that’s more than no contact. Not many folks just hand me $1000 to run for office in a primary.

Secondly, why not donate that $1000 to charity? Obviously it was in 1998, but why not make the symbolic gesture if Roskam is pushing for ethics reform.

Better yet, why hasn’t the press got him on record concerning the DeLay rule change in the Republican caucus that would have allowed DeLay to continue serving under state indictment? Out of 10 Illinois Members of Congress at the time, only two supported it–Weller and Hastert. How would Roskam have voted?

Roskam’s ties to the finance scandals aren’t just to DeLay.

In the Sun-Times today:

“I think the Duckworth campaign is really stretched and desperate in trying to make this a close association,” Roskam said.

If you want to quibble over the word mentor, fine. However, Roskam has a long history of support from DeLay and has tried to hide that history.

Oh, and let’s not bring up the residency issue. From the 1998 race:

Sixty percent of the 13th Congressional District is in southern DuPage County. Part of southwestern Cook County and northern Will County are in the district. Roskam, whose state legislative district is mostly in Hyde’s congressional district but includes some of Fawell’s, lives outside the district but would move if nominated for the congressional seat.

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