He Should Have Gone Nuclear
ArchPundit
It would have been more fun and all any of this is good for at this point is entertainment value.
2009
And Then a Little Black Kid Thought I Was Mayor Daley
All the anecdotes are pretty much the same anymore. But he didn’t raise their taxes.
His Defense is the Animal House Defense
Otter: Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests – we did.
[winks at Dean Wormer]
Otter: But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg – isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen!
[Leads the Deltas out of the hearing, all humming the Star-Spangled Banner]
Add this to his Pearl Harbor claims and we now know he is either Otter or Bluto:
D-Day: War’s over, man. Wormer dropped the big one.
Bluto: Over? Did you say “over”? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
Otter: Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he’s rolling.
Bluto: And it ain’t over now. ‘Cause when the goin’ gets tough…
[thinks hard]
Bluto: the tough get goin’! Who’s with me? Let’s go!
[runs out, alone; then returns]
Bluto: What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you’re gonna let it be the worst. “Ooh, we’re afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble.” Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I’m not gonna take this. Wormer, he’s a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer…
Otter: Dead! Bluto’s right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.
Bluto: We’re just the guys to do it.
D-Day: Let’s do it.
Bluto: *Let’s do it*!
More JCAR
It’s absolutely irrelevant what 9 other states did. This is the Illinois Constitution.
How is it impeachable?
Well you are spending money that has not been authorized by the Legislature. That’s an impeachable offense. It doesn’t matter if it is a ‘good cause’–it’s a matter of whether the Constitution is followed.
Moving on to Save RX, the Governor isn’t even addressing that the primary problems are related to the Governor not following the law on inspecting the foreign pharmacies as Illinois law required.
Now picking a fight with Holland over CMS Audit. He claims to have stopped doing what Holland said to stop–the problem is that what he was doing was illegal and Blagojevich should have known that.
The basic point of the CMS audit was twofold. First, no one could document savings. Second, money was appropriated for the effort by the Executive Branch, not the Legislative Branch. Again, the Governor needs to read the Illinois Constitution if this isn’t clear to him.
JCAR is Advisory?
So why did you strengthen it?
And, ummm…this is about rulemaking, not lawmaking.
Let Me Guess
He’s late.
It is sort of like a funeral so it is only fitting if he is late.
One Interpretation the Madigans Today
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJzZT0OQ8PY[/youtube]
And yes, I do think Lisa is incredibly talented and effective Attorney General, but it was pretty funny anyway. That said, it’ll be nice to have more than Rod is bad to discuss in Illinois politics.
A Preview of Today’s Proceedings
From the inbox:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGuZQ54-dZk[/youtube]
What’s Next?
That’s a good question. By the weekend, Illinois will have a new Governor and the sideshow will largely end as Rod goes on to try and create a criminal defense that is likely to be as successful as his media trip.
Illinois is facing a far greater challenge though in a very uncertain situation. The budget is a nightmare, the entire executive branch is a disaster, and we have a chief executive coming in not known for management.
In one respect, even those who have been detractors of Pat Quinn are hoping and praying he can pull this off and lead the state through an incredibly turbulent time. Quinn has long been known for publicity seeking with events he even acknowledges were often stunts. He comes in with an incredible sense of needing to make his administration work. The state faces a crisis of confidence from it’s people and an economic crisis that is exacerbating a state budget that has been held together by gimmicks for years.
There is very little in Quinn’s background that suggests he is up to the task, but few would be up for this task and it comes down to can an individual rise to the occasion.
The last thing the state needs is governance by press conference and I think it’s safe to say Quinn even understands that. He’s been meeting with Speaker Madigan for about a year which is hard to believe in the first place, but a very encouraging sign. Also encouraging is his intention to live in the Governor’s Mansion. While not a substantive move, it certainly is a comforting notion after the last six years.
On the other hand, when discussing the Tollway signs and his intention to take them down, he talked about having an event with toll payers helping to take them down. That’s the kind of silly showmanship no one needs.
My fear is that Quinn will go for flash and press conferences with gimmicks to get attention and call out bad government. But the problem is that Illinois doesn’t need flash and press conferences. What Illinois needs is transparancy and the way to look for that is, for once, to look to DC where Obama is pushing for a series of tools to open up governmental information to citizens.
The first step is simple–ensure state level FOIA requests are honored. Blagojevich’s attempts to stiffle information were perhaps one of the worst features of his administration. It made it all the harder to track down corruption which is by design of the Blagojevich administration.
More than that though is to look to adopt informational technology tools to open up government and allow people to find the information that tells them how their tax dollars are spent. That means tools like the Comptroller’s database of vendors and camapign contributions is a good start.
The problem is that even in this area, Quinn and his recent hire of Jay Stewart suggest a strategy set for the 1970s and 1980s more than 2008. For example, most of the concern is over payroll and procurement. Important issues, but frankly the easy issues and issues that have limited impact on the average citizen. What’s hard? How do you find out the number of violations for a water pollution permit (NPDES)? There is federal data available, but the entire database is being reconstructed by the EPA and data is relatively slow to get there.
Why not have the IEPA simply put the information into a database and then have it available to the public in an online GIS set-up so people can search the information effectively. We have done this sort of thing with sex crime offenders, but finding the information from state government when it comes to pollution or nearly anything else, requires an FOIA.
That shouldn’t be the point. The point is to make the information available without having to go through some complicated process.
Or how do we improve payment to health care providers for state payments? Why not set up a secure web based application for claims submission with online tracking. While that won’t address the budget issues, it will shorten the bureaucratic delays.
Or even when the state has databases open to the public, why not integrate them as states have using Google’s technology. The problem with only focusing on the corruption issues trying to make government transparent is that it sells the technology short and doesn’t meet the needs of the average citizen on a daily basis.
The old line fight the machine types focus on corruption and that’s obviously a problem, but more to the point, the State of Illinois needs to make government work for its citizens to regain the trust of the people. That’ more than providing information about salaries or procurement, it’s about making informatino easily accessible across all state services to those who want access.
Pat Quinn is a big step up from Rod Blagojevich, but I am not seeing many signs that there will be systematic reformation of the way Illinois government interacts with its citizens and that is what is ultimately needed to repair Illinois politics.
The Prediction Thread
59-0
For all of the kvetching, if you listen to even Hendon, there is no support out there and no one wants him around. When we saw all but family vote against him in the House, this was over. I know the over/under is between 2-4, but I don’t even see that happening.