Call It A Comeback
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDVM4u-53Ow[/youtube]
Let me point out that Kirk’s ‘plan’ involves giving some committee power to cut the budget and to make some small tinkerings around the edge of the federal budget while giving away $700 Billion in tax cuts to the wealthy.
A lot of outlets didn’t run with the Kirk audio for good reason–I couldn’t provide many details about the recording so they chose not to go with it. I fully understand and frankly if I hadn’t been able to confirm details I would have done the same. However, it’s a bit much to give ABC 7 credit (something ABC 7 didn’t do) for breaking the audio—looking at you Huffington Post.
ABC 7 have confirmed the tape is authentic with the Kirk Campaign.
Giannoulias’ campaign has released a list of Republican vote fraud cases over the last few years. An excerpt:
Voter intimidation in Virginia and New Mexico: In 2006, Virginia legally qualified and registered voters received calls from people claiming to be working for the Board of Elections or Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Webb’s campaign telling them that they were ineligible to vote, their polling place had changed or giving incorrect dates for the election. [CNN, 11/7/06] In 2008 the New Mexico GOP sent private investigators to the homes of Hispanic voters to determine whether they were eligible to vote. [New Mexico Independent, 10/23/08]
Republicans sent to jail for phone jamming: In 2002, Republican Congressman John Sununu won the U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire by just a few points over Governor Jeanne Shaheen after the state GOP hired a Republican firm to jam the Democrats’ GOTV phonebanking efforts on election day. The Republican culprits were ultimately caught and sent to jail, but John Sununu was still sworn in as Senator anyway. [Washington Post, 5/17/06]
Illegally purging qualified voters from the registration rolls: In 2004, in several states, most notably Ohio, the RNC orchestrated “voter caging,” the proven unreliable practice of purging voters from the rolls after attempting to send mail to their residences and having it returned. Republicans used voter caging to challenge the eligibility of tens thousands of voters in urban, heavily Democratic areas. [Washington Post, 10/29/04; Brennan Center for Justice, 6/29/07] In 2008, Colorado Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman was sued for purging 16,000 to 30,000 names off of the voter rolls for reasons including confirmation mail being undeliverable. Many of the names were removed within the 90-day period protected by the National Voting Rights Act. [Colorado Independent, 10/26/08] Also in 2008, Montana’s lieutenant governor Republican John Bohlinger lashed out at the state GOP for a scheme to purge thousands of voters from Democratic-leaning counties, and called for the removal of the policies and the people responsible. Voters targeted for the purge even included decorated veterans, members of the law enforcement and senior citizens, just because they lived in blue counties. [John Bohlinger Op-Ed, Montana Standard, 10/4/08]
As I pointed out, most of the vote fraud today isn’t double voting or such, but tied to different forms:
I’m sympathetic to saying not all election fraud is by one party, but the ongoing effort to claim large scale fraud at polling places is a joke and has no evidence to support it.
Placing poll watchers is an age old practice and legitimate, but to target black areas to the degree as Mark Kirk announced he was doing is both unproductive given that’s not were fraud happens and telling that the concern is about minority voters and precincts. Putting people in place to object to voters in areas that are heavily minority is entirely predictable and terribly depressing. If one believes in rationality of political actors, it makes no sense unless you are trying to do something else.
Freudian slips of jiggering are, of course, English, but also hysterically funny.
So the Wall Street Journal got Kirk’s people to respond to the audio from the other day:
The Kirk campaign denied any racial basis for the program.
“Congressman Kirk supports statewide efforts to combat machine politics and voter fraud that is well-known in Illinois,” read a statement Thursday issued by Kirk spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski. “Just this week, two individuals pled guilty to vote fraud in Metro East. Voter fraud dilutes votes and disenfranchises citizens.”
And how would voter integrity at the polls work for Mark Kirk to combat that vote fraud? It wouldn’t. Why not?
The four men were indicted by a grand jury in September 2009. Allegations in the charges include perjury, marking the absentee ballots of other people, soliciting others to apply for absentee ballots, falsifying applications for absentee ballots, unlawfully observing voting and mutilating election materials.
Suspicions were raised when an unusually large number of absentee ballots were cast in the election.
It’s not at the precinct level that fraud happens when it does happen. It’s in two areas. First, voter registration fraud is relatively common, though rarely leads to actual vote fraud. This is most often the result of canvassers being paid by the registration and without a quality control check. This seldom leads to actual voters voting since the names don’t match credentials or even addresses often. Second, as was in this case, absentee ballot fraud still occurs and even though it’s a problem, it’s didn’t even affect the outcome in the election mentioned. We should find better ways to watch out for absentee voter fraud, but when Mark Kirk talks about precincts, he’s not talking about that. And the only case I’m aware of in Metro East where someone voted twice was when they voted in both Missouri and Illinois.
So when Kirk’s spokesperson says:
The Kirk campaign denied any racial basis for the program.
She’s lying or stupid. Take your pick.
If Mark Kirk wanted to fight vote fraud he’d be worried about absentee vote fraud–something that happens most often in local elections and is more evenly distributed across the state.
Lectures about party loyalty are especially hypocritical coming from a guy like Berrios who twice jumped party lines, crossing over to the Republican side to support former Govs. Jim Edgar and George Ryan. Was it principle that made him abandon his party’s nominees, as it is in the case of those supporting Claypool? Sorry, no principles involved. He got some patronage jobs — and he was not the only Democratic committeeman to cut similar deals.
Compare this to when David Hoffman attacked SEIU. SEIU wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing, yet Hoffman decided to attack a reliable progressive ally as corrupt when there was no evidence of such. Hoffman was attacking SEIU on a false premise.
Rose sums up the underlying problem with Berrios:
This year’s assessor’s race is comparable to that dramatic year — a battle for the soul of the local Democratic Party, if it can be said to have one. If those who cross over for Claypool help him win, the Democratic Party will ultimately be better off without Berrios, whose venal conflicts of interest reflect the very worst aspects of the machine.
That would be real party loyalty.
The Legendary Fiscal Prudence the Chicago Tribune Ed Board lectures everyone about
Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs.
After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat down and said, “watch this,” and offered the waitress $100 to show him her breasts. The group sat dumbfounded.
“Here was this guy, who was responsible for all these people, getting drunk in front of senior people and saying this to a waitress who many of us knew,” said one of the Tribune executives present, who declined to be identified because he had left the company and did not want to be quoted criticizing a former employer. “I have never seen anything like it.”
Mr. Michaels, who otherwise declined to be interviewed, said through a spokesman, “I never made the comment allegedly attributed to me in January 2008 to a waitress at the InterContinental Hotel, and anyone who said I did so is either lying or mistaken.”
On our dime:
Mr. Zell’s first innovation was the deal itself. He used debt in combination with an employee stock ownership plan, called an ESOP, to buy the company, while contributing only $315 million of his own money. Under the plan, the company’s discretionary matching contributions to the 401(k) retirement plan for nonunionized Tribune employees were diverted into an ownership stake. The structure of the deal allowed the Tribune to become an S corporation, which pays no federal taxes, making taxpayers essentially silent partners in the deal.
The $8 billion in new loans used to finance the deal left the company with $13.8 billion in debt. But Mr. Zell was convinced that by quickly selling the Chicago Cubs and other assets while improving operating margins, the company could emerge as a valuable property. It was typical Zell: a risky approach to gain control over a large, distressed asset while minimizing his own exposure, something he acknowledged in a company newsletter:
And the trial lawyers are rightfully lining up after reading this:
The new permissive ethos was quickly on display. When Kim Johnson, who had worked with Mr. Michaels as an executive at Clear Channel, was hired as senior vice president of local sales on June 16, 2008, the news release said she was “a former waitress at Knockers — the Place for Hot Racks and Cold Brews,” a jocular reference to a fictitious restaurant chain.
A woman who used to work at the Tribune Company in a senior position, but did not want to be identified because she now worked at another media company in Chicago, said that Mr. Michaels and Marc Chase, who was brought in to run Tribune Interactive, had a loud conversation on an open balcony above a work area about the sexual suitability of various employees.
“The conversation just wafted down on all of the people who were sitting there.” She also said that she was present at a meeting where a female executive jovially offered to bring in her assistant to perform a sexual act on someone in a meeting who seemed to be in a bad mood.
Southwest Side of Chicago South and West Side of Chicago (Update)
Rockford
Metro East
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-PMQm_mB1M[/youtube]
You see, only black people try and cheat.
Repeatedly it has been demonstrated that there is no appreciable vote fraud in terms of people voting twice or for someone else so there is one purpose to such an effort–trying to suppress black voters. That he is only concentrating on areas with significant African-American voting population is pretty telling and disturbing. There’s your moderate Mark Kirk playing the same old doq whistle politics.
Brady sticking with Heartland Community College being his only accomplishment in office. It opened two years prior to him taking state office.
Seriously.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says that even though “no one” came to his defense in 2004 after he said that gay people and unwed mothers should be banned from teaching, “everyone” quietly told him that he shouldn’t back down from his position.
He also implied that not banning gay people and women who have sex before marriage from teaching would be an attack on Christians, and defended his position on banning gay teachers because he holds the same position on women who have sex outside of marriage.
“[When I said those things,] no one came to my defense,” he said, the Spartanberg Herald-Journal reported. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”
So what about single guys who get women pregnant? Funny how he didn’t cover that one.
Two years before Bill Brady went to Springfield.
Gov.Pat Quinn has repeatedly taunted state Sen. Bill Brady for his lack of accomplishments in 17 years in the General Assembly. When asked about this Thursday, Brady said not so! He said he played a key role in the creation of Heartland Community College, based in downstate Normal.
The school opened in 1991. Brady entered the legislature in 1993.
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