May 2006

The Not So Meek Inherit a lot

Meeks isn’t running as everyone knows and now we await for tomorrow to hear about how the Governor plans to increase school funding.

Pearson et al. discuss a possible sale of the lottery or other state assets. The concern to me is whether it is a short term revenue source that is created or if it is an ongoing revenue source to draw upon. All too often this administration has tried to keep taxes low by selling off assetts or other short terms solution without fixing the long term revenue problem.

That said, Meeks not running is most helpful in giving the Governor another plank to run upon. It boxes Judy in by essentially forcing her to promise not to raise sales or income taxex yet come up with a way to pay for what the Governor is proposing that regardless of the details, sounds good to many voters.

The Horrors–District 214 wishes to purchase Freakonomics

On those days when one isn’t sure where to start blogging, a visit to IFI’s web site helps.

Books Too Obscene to Describe in Newspaper, but OK for D214 Students?

What are these works? Many of the books in question are pornographic, obscene and vulgar. Make no mistake, if these books were movies, they would receive ratings of R, NC-17 and some would be rated X. The following list is just some of the titles administrators want to purchase:

Fallen Angels
The Things They Carried
Freakonomics
The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World

Freakonomics and The Botany of Desire are both non-fiction science based books. I can’t believe how fucking bizarre these freaks are. It only gets worse if you bother to read down the entire story:

3. Is some of the material really pornography or at the very least obscene and doesn’t this violate laws?

Good question. Here is the dictionary.com definition:
por-nog-ra-phy Sexually explicit pictures, writing, or other material whose primary purpose is to cause sexual arousal.
Three books certainly could be close, if not actually qualify for this classification: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Beloved, and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent.

Beloved is pornography? The Pulitzer Prize winning novel of a Nobel Prize winner in literature is pornography?

That is what IFI and it’s lunatic following want to ban. Nobel Prize winning authors are simply too much for teenagers.

bowl haircut fundamentalists

Steinberg is on fire, but not as much as some other people,

But here come the conservatives, toting their boxes of signed petitions, so we can have the question on our ballots next November. Let’s keep out the gays!

Can’t these religious types fixate on something else? Doesn’t their faith have rituals beyond loathing and fearing gays that they could occupy themselves with? Or is mesmerized fixation with man-on-man sex their entire liturgy and holy writ? Because it sure seems that way. No Halsted Street twink, tumbling to the bars with his pals on a Friday night, is obsessed with gay sex to the degree that these bowl haircut fundamentalists pushing their protect marriage act seem to be.

IFI takes issue with this

Petey, of course, has well coifed, if receding hair. But they are upset that someone might suggest IFI has an obsession with man on man sex. Who would ever get that impression from Peter “the undercover homosexual lifestyle investigator” LaBarbera?

Don’t we all go to Mr. Leather and Gay Bathhouses to be disgusted by what is going on there…over and over again…

And statements like this don’t help:

“I have monitored the homosexual movement for 15 years, with special focus on its campaign to penetrate schools…Most parents, especially those living near big cities, simply have no clue as to the many ways that the ‘sexual orientation’ agenda works its way into their children’s education.”
(backing the Southern Baptist’s call to investigate the influence of the homo agenda in public schools)

— Peter LaBarbera

Keep protesting IFI. How could Steinberg ever suggest such a thing…

How Serious is Meeks?

Pretty damn serious.

The problem with getting true believers involved in the politics, they are actually true believers. Meeks believes the current system of public school finance is wrong and he’s going to try and do something about it.

What’s fascinating is the impact of him if he enters the race.

The Meeks poll has some more bad news for Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but also a rare spot of good news. The survey was taken April 25-30 by Washington, D.C.-based pollster Lester & Associates and has a margin of error of 3.9 percent.

According to the survey, Gov. Blagojevich’s “generic” re-election numbers are not that great. When asked whether he deserves re-election, just 36 percent agree, compared to 55 percent who want someone else. Nine percent didn’t know. Blagojevich’s job approval is 35 percent, with 45 percent disapproving and 20 percent not knowing. But even with those lousy numbers, for the first time since the primary Blagojevich is leading Judy Baar Topinka, 47-40.

When Meeks is tossed into the equation, Blagojevich leads with 41, Topinka has 34, Meeks has 12, and 13 percent are undecided. After several “push questions,” which were designed to test Meeks’ message of his religious affiliation, his opposition to gay marriage and abortion and his support of billions more in school funding, Blagojevich drops to 37 percent while Meeks and Topinka are tied at 25 percent each. Undecideds remain at 13 percent.

Wow.

More from Rich:

Meanwhile, Topinka’s own polling shows that Gov. Blagojevich has moved ahead of her. After four straight independent polls with Topinka leading, her latest poll reportedly shows Blagojevich with a 5-point advantage. The governor’s polling also reportedly shows him ahead.

The Blagojevich surge is undoubtedly the result of the governor’s television advertising campaign. The gov is spending over $500,000 a week, mostly on negative ads that attack Topinka for everything from not showing up for state investment board meetings to tying her to George Ryan’s budget deficits.

Many have questioned the spending, but I’ll defend it. Incumbents spend at different rates than challengers–especially in open seats. Both candidates are practically incumbents.

But why not now? Spending money in May makes a lot of sense. People actually watch television in May versus when previous early commercials appeared in June. By June most people are doing their summer routine and reaching them with political advertising is very hard.

Hitting Judy now makes sense as well. If she can be tied to the Georges (Ryan and Bush) the earlier the better. Voters aren’t paying close attention, but tying a candidate in a Blue State to a President who is floundering everywhere and a recently convicted former Governor gives voters a way to update their beliefs about the candidates without thinking hard. If, as many mass political psychylogy work suggests, people tend to add a mental tick to their mind as they gain new information, tying Judy to them right now can be done to get a head start of the fall campaign–and with enough money, it’s easy to do and still maintain a money advantage.

If the ads hadn’t worked now, they wouldn’t have worked in the fall either, but most evidence looks like it worked.

I’m still not sure what to make of Meeks taking as much if not more from Topinka, but it seems to suggest from the numbers, Blagojevich has a hard floor of around 37 with Topinka’s floor being far lower–a surprise to me.

If Topinka is losing a significant portion of her base in the form of religious conservatives and Meeks does get in, then running against Bush is not out of the question and the hard fight for suburban women will only intensify between her and Blagojevich.

For those who wonder why I think Blagojevich is so likely to be reelected in a two-way race (a three way is too complicated to sort out with the above information)–think Gray Davis. Davis makes Blagojevich look endearing and yet he won reelection. The Grand Jury’s are a big deal and I don’t dismiss them, but a high level indictment would have to come down by election day. The state grand jury could produce it, but the federal investigations are slow and will take time.

For all of the complaints about pay for play, if you are a statewide officeholder in Illinois, you’ve been involved in at least instances that look like it and to a cyncical public, that comes out as a wash.

Too Beautiful

Abraham Lincoln has some fun over at Illinoize:

If this doesn’t show what a joke the protect marriage amendment is, then I don’t know what does.

From Bernie’s column in the State Journal Register:

A spokeswoman who discussed the merits of the “protect marriage amendment” with reporters at the State Board of Elections this week has an interesting status for somebody pushing an issue identified with family values.

CATHY SANTOS lives with, but is not married to, DOUG IBENDAHL, a former lawyer for the state GOP who also represents the Family Taxpayers Network, a group led by conservative activist JACK ROESER. The FTN helped spearhead the petition drive to get the anti-gay marriage advisory referendum on the state ballot.

Santos, a former contract worker for the state treasurer, is a volunteer spokeswoman for the FTN. She said she and Ibendahl have been a couple for 10 years and have lived together for five years.

However, she said she does not think that conflicts with their advocacy of a constitutional amendment to declare that the only legal marriage in Illinois should be between a man and a woman.

Pro-family groups can take heart in this though:

Santos said she’s been writing and illustrating children’s books.

More CMS

CMS is either the root of corruption, or it is the root of incompetence.

The state alleges that DeFraties, a former deputy director in the state’s personnel bureau, and Casey, her assistant, allowed “special applications” of people with political sponsors to have “an advantage over other applicants for state jobs.” The special applicants could fax — rather than mail — job documents, thereby putting them ahead in line, the state’s complaint alleges.

“Further, ‘special applications’ that received a grade of less than ‘A’ were not entered into the database like other applicants’ grades, but were returned to the sponsor of the applicant with an explanation of the reasons why the applicant did not receive an ‘A,'” the complaint states. “The applicant was then permitted to ‘fix’ or ‘correct’ the deficiencies in the application, bring it into conformity with standards sufficient to receive an ‘A’ grade and resubmit it for grading.”

The alleged wrongdoing came to light when Donna Simmons, a consultant paid $107,450 by the administration, noticed it and reported it to DeFraties’ boss, former Central Management Services Department General Counsel Ed Wynn

Neither choice is very complimentary to the Administration.

Rich has much more with context.

If the administration is serious about cleaning up government, then Mr. Cini would be under a bus right now. The administration is kidding itself here or hiding something or perhaps both.

Making Nixon Look Like a Piker

Oh my….

senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

And more:

NSA whistleblower Russ Tice says he will tell Congress Wednesday of “probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts” involving the agency’s former director, Gen. Michael Hayden, President Bush’s nominee to run the CIA.

Tice, a former technical intelligence specialist at NSA who first went public on ABC News, says he has been asked to testify Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In a letter to the committee, Tice says the alleged illegal acts involved “very highly sensitive intelligence programs and operations known as Special Access Programs (SAPs).”

I’m sure it’s all legal because the Preznit says so. This is stuff I would have dismissed as crazy conspiracy talk one year ago. Now, I’m not even surprised.

Forecasting Midterm Losses

Charles Franklin takes his first stab and lays out some very detailed issues regarding the problems of estimating seat losses.

So what conclusion should we reach from presidential approval in the months leading to a midterm election? We have a very good basis for concluding that less approval means more seats lost. But the best estimates we can manage, given that we only have 14 elections with approval data, are so imprecise that their political implications are basically worthless. I’d bet a lot (ok, I don’t bet so that’s a cheap line) that the Republican party will lose seats in the House. And that the lower the President’s approval rating, the worse they will do. But to put any meaningful confidence around a single point prediction (say, -15 seats or more) requires much more work and a good deal more calculation than just looking at the history of approval and seat change.

A number of political scientists and a few economists have developed models to forecast election results. Those use more than just approval, and achieve forecasts somewhat more precise than what is possible with approval alone. I’ll be writing about those models, and estimating some of my own in the next few weeks. But keep your eye on the confidence interval. The uncertainty is larger than Democrats would like right now, and that’s the good news for Republicans.