Call It A Comeback
He applauds the naming of Glenn Poshard to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. Ditto here. If there is one person in Illinois I trust on issues like this (who is alive since Paul Simon passed), it’s Poshard. I have many disagreements with him on social policy, but he is an honest and good man.
Schoenburg points out the issue:
Why is there a need for an education department under the governor when he’s running the place anyway?
That could be the question after the first moves of the new State Board of Education. Gov. ROD BLAGOJEVICH has said he wants to be held responsible for education in Illinois, and the way things are going, he’s going to be in a position to get the kudos – or the blame – for whatever happens to schools in Illinois.
Let me add, if you don’t fix the financing, nothing else will matter.
Mike Lawrence points out the remedy:
The Illinois GOP will rebound only if it is less dogmatic than Alan Keyes on social issues and absolutely intolerant of Fawell-like public betrayal and any shenanigans even approaching it.
Blagojevich is ridind decently, but not as high as previously with an 8 % Excellent rating and 45% Good rating for overall approval of 53%. 36% Fair, 6% Poor and 7% don’t know. Over all pretty good, though not as strong as he once was.
Finally, in probably the most surprising bit:
Would you favor or oppose placing limits on the amount of money a person can be awarded in medical malpractice lawsuits for pain and suffering in Illinois?
FAVOR 36%
OPPOSE 55%
NOT SURE 9%
I’m wondering if the issue is framed the way most people think about it and if the wording might have confused people, or it could be that people don’t see pain and suffering damages as the cause of the problem.
The Good Governor Blagorgeous weighs in on Alan’s unfortunate comments:
“I think his position on homosexuality and the lives of homosexuals is ridiculous and archaic and mean-spirited,” Blagojevich said after addressing the Illinois AFL-CIO Convention. “He’s got his feet in the 13th century.”
You know, one way to address and highlight the issue might be to, you know, make SB 101 a priority? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Normal can pass such a bill, but State of Illinois can’t.
Chillinois passes along Sunday’s story that Vallas isn’t leaving Philly. Normally, I’d ignore that as a sort of denial, but keeping options open, but the DJWinfo has more.
On the Republicans I think it is interesting that we have two of the fab 5 Conservative Senators seemingly being mentioned for the run with Patrick O’Malley pretty much announced and Steve Rauschenberger also having noises made. The question is if they’d run against each other and that seems unlikely that Rauschenberger might challenge him unless he has some sort of significant conservative support. And of course, some still insist that Peter Fitzgerald might run.
If Rauschenberger run and O’Malley is in, then we probably see Judy in as well as potentially Bob Schillerstrom bring a four way primary that has all sorts of cross-cutting cleavages and The Blagorgeous looking like he’ll get a free ride in the primary.
Is his defense of the Arts Council not being cut.
Pressed on what the “vital function” is, Madigan said, “What the arts do is to especially help young people and children in terms of their verbalization, their appreciation for their culture around them. It really helps toward tolerance and understanding in a society.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the Arts Council, but in such a year it should probably bear the burden other agencies do. In fairness, given his wife’s role, the vital function may have to do with a happy home life .
Umm…well, as Bernard Schoenburg points out, not really
Blagojevich said he would close the state prison at Vandalia and the youth prison at St. Charles. At the end of May, in a surprise proposal, Blagojevich also backed closure of the Pontiac Correctional Center. None of those ideas were in the final compromise.
He pushed a “Balanced Budget Act” designed to require every spending bill to include a source of the funds. That constitutionally questionable idea sounded good, but went nowhere.
He said he would pass a “Responsible Spending Act” to require that, for every billion-dollar increase in the budget, $50 million would be put in a rainy day fund. Fancy name. Not done.
Ditto the “On Time Bill Payment Act,” under which the state would have to pay its bills within 60 days or draw on a line of credit to do so. Sounds like more of that “borrow and spend” that House Speaker MICHAEL MADIGAN, D-Chicago, accused the governor of doing too much of. It didn’t pass.
He wanted $400 million in new money for education. He actually got $389 million in the final compromise. Blagojevich also has said he wants to raise per-pupil support for each student in the state by $1,000 during his four-year term. He needed $250 per student to stay on pace this year, but the actual figure was $154 per student.
The governor touted his “Opportunity Returns” program as “regionally focused ideas, ideas that play to the strengths and address the weaknesses of each part of our state.” His administration sought $50 million in new general fund money for the program, but it wasn’t part of the final budget compromise.
That jeopardizes some already-announced initiatives – though no program has yet been announced in four of the 10 areas into which the state has been divided by this program. Springfield is in one of the areas where opportunity has not yet returned.The governor did tout a memorandum of understanding he signed with legislative leaders to advance the program, but Madigan said the agreement is merely to study the program. And the governor has yet to get a state-sponsored venture capital program going, despite pushing the idea heavily during his campaign.
He wanted to move the Department of Agriculture’s land division into the Department of Natural Resources.
“The savings from this move will help us pay the damages we now owe Mongo,” the governor joked about last year’s disqualified junior steer champion. The move didn’t happen, and the joke has turned into a lawsuit against the state by the family of the teenage girl who showed the steer at last year’s state fair.Besides the speech itself, the governor’s office put out supporting documents with other proposals. Among them:
His administration wanted a long-standing tax exemption on farm chemicals eliminated for farms with revenue (not necessarily profit) of more than $1 million a year. Only later did it come out that the term “farm chemicals” covered, among other things, seed for crops and feed for animals. The legislature turned thumbs down on the idea, and a compromise reached with farm groups wasn’t enacted either.
The administration also wanted to eliminate the motor fuel tax exemption for non-farm non-highway vehicles, such as railroad locomotives. Blagojevich said it would save $74 million. It didn’t happen.
A proposed 75-cent-per-ride fee on taxi rides to and from major Chicago airports was to raise $6 million. No go.
Blagojevich wanted to take a “holiday” from two state programs totaling more than $30 million a year: the Open Space Land Acquisition and Development Fund, and the Natural Areas Acquisition Fund. Conservationists were up in arms, and the funding stayed.
Twit.
The Governor is going to have to address this and do it in a more productive way than the Speaker has tried to do in the past. There are two ways this can work. One is a bill that protects insurance companies and bad doctors. The other is one that puts in reasonable caps in circumstances and stops any venue shopping. Missouri is fighting over the first option, Tom Cross has chosen the second. The Democrats need to find a compromise with Cross and get something passed. The Capitol Fax has a new report on the loss of doctors in Metro East:
DOC LOSS MAY BE INCREASING The president of a Belleville hospital claimed this week that Metro-East hospitals could lose as many as 161 physicians by the end of the year. If true, and the president did not disclose the names of the departed and departing physicians, that would be double what had been predicted. The Metro-East has very high medical malpractice insurance rates, which the docs claim are driving them out of the region and the state.
ArchPundit