Judge uses Obama’s words against him
By Stephen Dinan
-
The Washington Times
In ruling against President Obama‘s health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s own position from the 2008 campaign against him, arguing that there are other ways to tackle health care short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.
“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of the 78-page ruling Monday.
Judge Vinson, a federal judge in the northern district of Florida, struck down the entire health care law as unconstitutional on Monday, though he is allowing the Obama administration to continue to implement and enforce it while the government appeals his ruling.
The footnote was attached to the most critical part of Judge Vinson‘s ruling, in which he said the “principal dispute” in the case was not whether Congress has the power to tackle health care, but whether it has the power to compel the purchase of insurance.
Judge Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s campaign words from an interview with CNN to show that there are other options that could fall within the Constitution — including then-candidate Obama‘s plan.
During the presidential campaign, one key difference between Mr. Obama and his chief opponent, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was Mrs. Clinton’s plan required all Americans to purchase insurance, and Mr. Obama‘s did not.
In the heat of the primaries in 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predicted Mr. Obama‘s opposition to an individual mandate could come back to haunt him: “If Mr. Obama gets to the White House and tries to achieve universal coverage, he’ll find that it can’t be done without mandates — but if he tries to institute mandates, the enemies of reform will use his own words against him.”
Mr. Obama has since defended the constitutionality of the individual mandate, arguing it’s the linchpin of the program to bring in more customers, which is key to expanding the availability and affordability of insurance.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jan/31/judge-uses-obamas-words-against-him/
Monday, January 31, 2011
Vindication for Bush’s Freedom Agenda- Commentary magazine
Peter Wehner - 01.28.2011 - 11:41 AM
As popular unrest sweeps the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt, it’s worth recalling the words and warning of President George W. Bush – in this case, his November 19, 2003, address at Whitehall Palace in London, where Bush said this:
"We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. …
As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.
Now we’re pursuing a different course, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. We will consistently challenge the enemies of reform and confront the allies of terror. We will expect a higher standard from our friends in the region, and we will meet our responsibilities in Afghanistan and in Iraq by finishing the work of democracy we have begun."
During the course of the Bush presidency, his “freedom agenda” was criticized from several different quarters, including foreign-policy “realists” who believed that the bargain Bush spoke about — tolerating oppression for the sake of “stability” — was worth it.
It wasn’t. The core argument Bush made, which is that America must stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity — the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance — was right. No people on earth long to live in oppression and servitude, as slaves instead of free people, to be kept in chains or experience the lash of the whip.
How this conviction should play itself out in the real world is not self-evident; the success of such a policy depends on the wisdom and prudence of statesmen. Implementing a policy is a good deal harder than proclaiming one. Still, it seems to be that events are vindicating the freedom agenda as a strategy and a moral insight, as even the Obama administration is coming to learn.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/388326
As popular unrest sweeps the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt, it’s worth recalling the words and warning of President George W. Bush – in this case, his November 19, 2003, address at Whitehall Palace in London, where Bush said this:
"We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. …
As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.
Now we’re pursuing a different course, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. We will consistently challenge the enemies of reform and confront the allies of terror. We will expect a higher standard from our friends in the region, and we will meet our responsibilities in Afghanistan and in Iraq by finishing the work of democracy we have begun."
During the course of the Bush presidency, his “freedom agenda” was criticized from several different quarters, including foreign-policy “realists” who believed that the bargain Bush spoke about — tolerating oppression for the sake of “stability” — was worth it.
It wasn’t. The core argument Bush made, which is that America must stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity — the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance — was right. No people on earth long to live in oppression and servitude, as slaves instead of free people, to be kept in chains or experience the lash of the whip.
How this conviction should play itself out in the real world is not self-evident; the success of such a policy depends on the wisdom and prudence of statesmen. Implementing a policy is a good deal harder than proclaiming one. Still, it seems to be that events are vindicating the freedom agenda as a strategy and a moral insight, as even the Obama administration is coming to learn.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/388326
Sunday, January 30, 2011
British Anglicans Preparing Mass Defection to Roman Catholic Church
LONDON -- Hundreds of disillusioned Anglicans were preparing Sunday to defect from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church in time for Lent, Sky News reported.
It follows a campaign by a former Anglican bishop in protest at its stance on the ordination of women and gay clergy.
Father Keith Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate -- a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope -- to welcome protestant defectors.
Despite the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglo Catholics have begun leaving following the conversion of three Anglican bishops in mid-January.
The Church of England said that 1,000 of its 13,000 parishes were opposed to the ordination of women.
At St. Barnabas church in Tunbridge Wells, southeastern England, the parish priest said that a majority of his parishioners want to defect -- and he is considering going too.
Father Ed Tomlinson believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.
The priest was told if he and his followers leave they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St. Barnabas.
"The whole thing stinks to high heaven," he said.
"The Archdeacon made it abundantly clear that he does not want to entertain the notion of shared worship space and that he would resist my remaining here in any capacity."
The Ordinariate talks of recruiting members in waves with the first beginning training at Lent and they hope many more will follow.
"A little acorn it may have been at the moment, it could grow into a mighty oak," one local church-goer said.
"Was this the thing that started to undo the reformation?"
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Church-Of-England-Congregations-Being-Torn-Apart-Before-Lent-Over-Roman-Catholic-Ordinariate-Offers/Article/201101415918730?lpos=UK_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15918730_Church_Of_England_Congregations_Being_Torn_Apart_Before_Lent_Over_Roman_Catholic_Ordinariate_Offers
It follows a campaign by a former Anglican bishop in protest at its stance on the ordination of women and gay clergy.
Father Keith Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate -- a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope -- to welcome protestant defectors.
Despite the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglo Catholics have begun leaving following the conversion of three Anglican bishops in mid-January.
The Church of England said that 1,000 of its 13,000 parishes were opposed to the ordination of women.
At St. Barnabas church in Tunbridge Wells, southeastern England, the parish priest said that a majority of his parishioners want to defect -- and he is considering going too.
Father Ed Tomlinson believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.
The priest was told if he and his followers leave they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St. Barnabas.
"The whole thing stinks to high heaven," he said.
"The Archdeacon made it abundantly clear that he does not want to entertain the notion of shared worship space and that he would resist my remaining here in any capacity."
The Ordinariate talks of recruiting members in waves with the first beginning training at Lent and they hope many more will follow.
"A little acorn it may have been at the moment, it could grow into a mighty oak," one local church-goer said.
"Was this the thing that started to undo the reformation?"
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Church-Of-England-Congregations-Being-Torn-Apart-Before-Lent-Over-Roman-Catholic-Ordinariate-Offers/Article/201101415918730?lpos=UK_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15918730_Church_Of_England_Congregations_Being_Torn_Apart_Before_Lent_Over_Roman_Catholic_Ordinariate_Offers
Friday, January 28, 2011
An Unserious Speech Misses the Mark
Peggy Noonan
The audience found it tiresome. Here’s why it was irksome as well.
The Wall Street Journal: January 27, 2011
It is a strange and confounding thing about this White House that the moment you finally think they have their act together—the moment they get in the groove and start to demonstrate that they do have some understanding of our country—they take the very next opportunity to prove anew that they do not have their act together, and are not in the groove. It’s almost magical.
The State of the Union speech was not centrist, as it should have been, but merely mushy, and barely relevant. It wasted a perfectly good analogy—America is in a Sputnik moment—by following it with narrow, redundant and essentially meaningless initiatives. Rhetorically the speech lay there like a lox, as if the document itself knew it was dishonest, felt embarrassed, and wanted to curl up quietly in a corner of the podium and hide. But the president insisted on reading it.
Response in the chamber was so muted as to be almost Xanax-like. Did you see how bored and unengaged they looked? The applause was merely courteous. A senator called the mood on the floor “flat.” This is the first time the press embargo on the speech was broken, by National Journal, which printed the text more than an hour before the president delivered it. Maybe members had already read it and knew what they were about to face.
The president will get a bump from the speech. Presidents always do. It will be called a success. But it will be evanescent. A real moment was missed. If the speech is remembered, it will be as the moment when the president actually slowed—or blocked—his own comeback.
The central elements of the missed opportunity:
• An inability to focus on what is important now. The speech was more than half over before the president got around to the spending crisis. He signaled no interest in making cuts, which suggested that he continues not to comprehend America’s central anxiety about government spending: that it will crush our children, constrict the economy in which they operate, make America poorer, lower its standing in the world, and do in the American dream. Americans are alarmed about this not because they’re cheap and selfish but because they care about the country they will leave behind when they are gone.
President Obama’s answer is to “freeze” a small portion of government spending at current levels for five years. This is a reasonable part of a package, but it’s not a package and it’s not a cut. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who called it “sad,” told a local radio station the savings offered “won’t even pay the interest on the debt we’re about to accumulate” in the next two years. The president was trying to “hoodwink” the American people, Mr. Coburn said: “The federal government is twice the size it was 10 years ago. It’s 27% bigger than it was two years ago.” Cuts, not a freeze, are needed—it’s a matter of “urgency.”
• Unresponsiveness to the political moment. Democrats hold the White House and Senate, Republicans the House, the crisis is real, and the next election is two years away. This is the time for the president to go on the line and demand Republicans do so, too. Instead, nothing. A freeze.
• An attitude that was small bore and off point. America is in a Sputnik moment, the world seems to be jumping ahead of us, our challenge is to make up the distance and emerge victorious. So we’ll change our tax code to make citizens feel less burdened and beset, we’ll rethink what government can and should give, can and should take, we’ll get our fiscal life in order, we’ll save our country. Right?
Nah. We’ll focus on “greater Internet access,” “renewable energy,” “one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” “wind and solar,” “information technology.” “Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail.” None of this is terrible, but none of it is an answer. The administration continues to struggle with the concept of priorities. They cannot see where the immediate emergency is. They are like people who’d say, “Martha, the house is on fire and flames are licking down the stairs—let’s discuss what color to repaint the living room after we rebuild!” A better priority might be, “Get the kids out and call the fire department.”
• Unbelievability. The president will limit the cost of government by whipping it into shape and removing redundant agencies. Really? He hasn’t shown much interest in that before. He has shown no general ideological sympathy for the idea of shrinking and streamlining government. He’s going to rationalize government? He wants to “get rid of the loopholes” in our tax code. Really? That’s good, but it was a throwaway line, not a serious argument. And he was talking to 535 representatives and senators who live in the loopholes, who live by campaign contributions from industries and interest groups that pay protection money to not get dinged in the next tax bill.
On education, the president announced we’re lagging behind in our public schools. Who knew? In this age of “Waiting for Superman” and “The Lottery,” every adult in America admits that union rules are the biggest impediment to progress. “Race to the Top” isn’t the answer. We all know this.
As for small things and grace notes, there is often about the president an air of delivering a sincere lecture in which he informs us of things that seem new to him but are old to everyone else. He has a tendency to present banalities as if they were discoveries. “American innovation” is important. As many as “a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school.” We’re falling behind in math and science: “Think about it.”
“I’ve seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories. . . . I’ve heard it in the frustrations of Americans.” But our deterioration isn’t new information, it’s a shared predicate of at least 20 years’ standing, it’s what we all know. When you talk this way, as if the audience is uninformed, they think you are uninformed. Leaders must know what’s in the national information bank.
He too often in making a case puts the focus on himself. George H.W. Bush, always afraid of sounding egotistical, took the I’s out of his speeches. We called his edits “I-ectomies.” Mr. Obama always seems to put the I in. He does “I implants.”
Humor, that leavening, subtle uniter, was insufficiently present. Humor is denigrated by serious people, but serious people often miss the obvious. The president made one humorous reference, to smoked salmon. It emerged as the biggest word in the NPR word cloud of responses. That’s because it was the most memorable thing in the speech. The president made a semi-humorous reference to TSA pat-downs, but his government is in charge of and insists on the invasive new procedures, to which the president has never been and will never be subjected. So it’s not funny coming from him. The audience sort of chuckled, but only because many are brutes who don’t understand that it is an unacceptable violation to have your genital areas patted against your will by strangers.
I actually hate writing this. I wanted to write “A Serious Man Seizes the Center.” But he was not serious and he didn’t seize the center, he went straight for the mush. Maybe at the end of the day he thinks that’s what centrism is.
http://peggynoonan.com/
The audience found it tiresome. Here’s why it was irksome as well.
The Wall Street Journal: January 27, 2011
It is a strange and confounding thing about this White House that the moment you finally think they have their act together—the moment they get in the groove and start to demonstrate that they do have some understanding of our country—they take the very next opportunity to prove anew that they do not have their act together, and are not in the groove. It’s almost magical.
The State of the Union speech was not centrist, as it should have been, but merely mushy, and barely relevant. It wasted a perfectly good analogy—America is in a Sputnik moment—by following it with narrow, redundant and essentially meaningless initiatives. Rhetorically the speech lay there like a lox, as if the document itself knew it was dishonest, felt embarrassed, and wanted to curl up quietly in a corner of the podium and hide. But the president insisted on reading it.
Response in the chamber was so muted as to be almost Xanax-like. Did you see how bored and unengaged they looked? The applause was merely courteous. A senator called the mood on the floor “flat.” This is the first time the press embargo on the speech was broken, by National Journal, which printed the text more than an hour before the president delivered it. Maybe members had already read it and knew what they were about to face.
The president will get a bump from the speech. Presidents always do. It will be called a success. But it will be evanescent. A real moment was missed. If the speech is remembered, it will be as the moment when the president actually slowed—or blocked—his own comeback.
The central elements of the missed opportunity:
• An inability to focus on what is important now. The speech was more than half over before the president got around to the spending crisis. He signaled no interest in making cuts, which suggested that he continues not to comprehend America’s central anxiety about government spending: that it will crush our children, constrict the economy in which they operate, make America poorer, lower its standing in the world, and do in the American dream. Americans are alarmed about this not because they’re cheap and selfish but because they care about the country they will leave behind when they are gone.
President Obama’s answer is to “freeze” a small portion of government spending at current levels for five years. This is a reasonable part of a package, but it’s not a package and it’s not a cut. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who called it “sad,” told a local radio station the savings offered “won’t even pay the interest on the debt we’re about to accumulate” in the next two years. The president was trying to “hoodwink” the American people, Mr. Coburn said: “The federal government is twice the size it was 10 years ago. It’s 27% bigger than it was two years ago.” Cuts, not a freeze, are needed—it’s a matter of “urgency.”
• Unresponsiveness to the political moment. Democrats hold the White House and Senate, Republicans the House, the crisis is real, and the next election is two years away. This is the time for the president to go on the line and demand Republicans do so, too. Instead, nothing. A freeze.
• An attitude that was small bore and off point. America is in a Sputnik moment, the world seems to be jumping ahead of us, our challenge is to make up the distance and emerge victorious. So we’ll change our tax code to make citizens feel less burdened and beset, we’ll rethink what government can and should give, can and should take, we’ll get our fiscal life in order, we’ll save our country. Right?
Nah. We’ll focus on “greater Internet access,” “renewable energy,” “one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” “wind and solar,” “information technology.” “Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail.” None of this is terrible, but none of it is an answer. The administration continues to struggle with the concept of priorities. They cannot see where the immediate emergency is. They are like people who’d say, “Martha, the house is on fire and flames are licking down the stairs—let’s discuss what color to repaint the living room after we rebuild!” A better priority might be, “Get the kids out and call the fire department.”
• Unbelievability. The president will limit the cost of government by whipping it into shape and removing redundant agencies. Really? He hasn’t shown much interest in that before. He has shown no general ideological sympathy for the idea of shrinking and streamlining government. He’s going to rationalize government? He wants to “get rid of the loopholes” in our tax code. Really? That’s good, but it was a throwaway line, not a serious argument. And he was talking to 535 representatives and senators who live in the loopholes, who live by campaign contributions from industries and interest groups that pay protection money to not get dinged in the next tax bill.
On education, the president announced we’re lagging behind in our public schools. Who knew? In this age of “Waiting for Superman” and “The Lottery,” every adult in America admits that union rules are the biggest impediment to progress. “Race to the Top” isn’t the answer. We all know this.
As for small things and grace notes, there is often about the president an air of delivering a sincere lecture in which he informs us of things that seem new to him but are old to everyone else. He has a tendency to present banalities as if they were discoveries. “American innovation” is important. As many as “a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school.” We’re falling behind in math and science: “Think about it.”
“I’ve seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories. . . . I’ve heard it in the frustrations of Americans.” But our deterioration isn’t new information, it’s a shared predicate of at least 20 years’ standing, it’s what we all know. When you talk this way, as if the audience is uninformed, they think you are uninformed. Leaders must know what’s in the national information bank.
He too often in making a case puts the focus on himself. George H.W. Bush, always afraid of sounding egotistical, took the I’s out of his speeches. We called his edits “I-ectomies.” Mr. Obama always seems to put the I in. He does “I implants.”
Humor, that leavening, subtle uniter, was insufficiently present. Humor is denigrated by serious people, but serious people often miss the obvious. The president made one humorous reference, to smoked salmon. It emerged as the biggest word in the NPR word cloud of responses. That’s because it was the most memorable thing in the speech. The president made a semi-humorous reference to TSA pat-downs, but his government is in charge of and insists on the invasive new procedures, to which the president has never been and will never be subjected. So it’s not funny coming from him. The audience sort of chuckled, but only because many are brutes who don’t understand that it is an unacceptable violation to have your genital areas patted against your will by strangers.
I actually hate writing this. I wanted to write “A Serious Man Seizes the Center.” But he was not serious and he didn’t seize the center, he went straight for the mush. Maybe at the end of the day he thinks that’s what centrism is.
http://peggynoonan.com/
Controversial Muslim cleric caught being smuggled into U.S. over Mexico border
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:04 PM on 28th January 2011
U.S. border guards got a surprise when they searched a Mexican BMW and found a hardline Muslim cleric - banned from France and Canada - curled up in the boot.
Said Jaziri, who called for the death of a Danish cartoonist that drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was being smuggled into California when he was arrested, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.
The 43-year-old was deported from Canada to his homeland Tunisia in 2007 after it emerged he had lied on his refugee application about having served jail time in France
His fire and brimstone sermons and rabble-rousing antics catapulted him into the public eye during his short tenure as imam at a Montreal mosque.
He branded homosexuality a disease and led protests over cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's illustrations poked fun at Islam and were published in a Danish newspaper in 2006.
He also caused anger when he campaigned for a bigger mosque to accommodate Montreal's burgeoning Muslim population
But after his deportation he complained that he had been physically and mentally tortured during the 13-hour flight repatriating him to Tunisia, a claim Canadian authorities deny.
He was being held as a material witness in the criminal case against Mr Lawler, who has been charged with immigrant smuggling.
Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling cartel $5,000 to take him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a 'safe place anywhere in the U.S.'
According to the court documents, a Mexican guide led Jaziri and a Mexican immigrant over the border fence near Tecate.
They then trekked across the rugged terrain under cover of darkness to a spot popular for drivers who pick up immigrants for smuggling runs into San Diego.
He allegedly told officials he had flown from Africa to Europe, then to Central America and Chetumal, Mexico, on the Mexico-Belize border, where he took a bus to Tijuana.
Lise Garon, a professor of communications at Laval University in Quebec City, told the Los Angeles Times: 'His nickname in Quebec was the controversial imam.
'I think he was deported because people hated his ideas.'
His case drew support from the Muslim community as well as Amnesty International after he claimed he would be tortured if sent back to Tunisia.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351385/Controversial-Muslim-cleric-caught-smuggled-U-S-Mexico-border.html#ixzz1CMAfwiMu
Last updated at 1:04 PM on 28th January 2011
U.S. border guards got a surprise when they searched a Mexican BMW and found a hardline Muslim cleric - banned from France and Canada - curled up in the boot.
Said Jaziri, who called for the death of a Danish cartoonist that drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed, was being smuggled into California when he was arrested, along with his driver Kenneth Robert Lawler.
The 43-year-old was deported from Canada to his homeland Tunisia in 2007 after it emerged he had lied on his refugee application about having served jail time in France
His fire and brimstone sermons and rabble-rousing antics catapulted him into the public eye during his short tenure as imam at a Montreal mosque.
He branded homosexuality a disease and led protests over cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's illustrations poked fun at Islam and were published in a Danish newspaper in 2006.
He also caused anger when he campaigned for a bigger mosque to accommodate Montreal's burgeoning Muslim population
But after his deportation he complained that he had been physically and mentally tortured during the 13-hour flight repatriating him to Tunisia, a claim Canadian authorities deny.
He was being held as a material witness in the criminal case against Mr Lawler, who has been charged with immigrant smuggling.
Jaziri had allegedly paid a Tijuana-based smuggling cartel $5,000 to take him across the border near Tecate, saying he wanted to be taken to a 'safe place anywhere in the U.S.'
According to the court documents, a Mexican guide led Jaziri and a Mexican immigrant over the border fence near Tecate.
They then trekked across the rugged terrain under cover of darkness to a spot popular for drivers who pick up immigrants for smuggling runs into San Diego.
He allegedly told officials he had flown from Africa to Europe, then to Central America and Chetumal, Mexico, on the Mexico-Belize border, where he took a bus to Tijuana.
Lise Garon, a professor of communications at Laval University in Quebec City, told the Los Angeles Times: 'His nickname in Quebec was the controversial imam.
'I think he was deported because people hated his ideas.'
His case drew support from the Muslim community as well as Amnesty International after he claimed he would be tortured if sent back to Tunisia.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351385/Controversial-Muslim-cleric-caught-smuggled-U-S-Mexico-border.html#ixzz1CMAfwiMu
The State of the Union Is... Leaderless
By Ruth Marcus
DAVOS, Switzerland -- The state of the union is ... leaderless.
Sounds harsh, but when it comes to digging America out from what President Obama calls its "mountain of debt," I'm becoming increasingly worried that this assessment is accurate.
The president talks the talk about fiscal responsibility. But the evidence suggests he's not willing to spend the political capital to translate that talk into action.
Judge Obama by his own standards. "We have to signal seriousness in this," he told The Washington Post just before the inauguration, "by making sure that some of the hard decisions are made under my watch and not under somebody else's."
So what hard decisions has the president made? On the plus side of the ledger, the president worked to ensure that the costly expansion of health coverage was coupled with potentially cost-saving measures to control Medicare spending. Emphasis on potentially.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he proposed a five-year freeze on discretionary spending, two years longer than his previous offer.
But as the president himself recognized, this kind of nibbling around the edges of the budget is entirely inadequate.
"To make further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending alone will be enough," he said. "It won't." Except the president then offered nothing else of substance about what else he envisioned -- and would be willing to push for.
Some serious people with unquestioned bona fides on fiscal responsibility grasped at wispy tendrils of seriousness in the president's remarks. He mentioned Social Security! He talked about tax reform! I hope they are right but fear they are deluding themselves.
Examine the president's words, and you see nothing new or specific. It hardly constitutes bravery to call for a bipartisan Social Security fix that doesn't slash benefits. At that level of generality, who would disagree?
The health care law -- if implemented as planned -- is merely a down payment on cost containment. But the president's only specific was to repeat his offer to join with Republicans on medical malpractice reform. This is attacking a mountain with a teaspoon.
Corporate tax reform is a great idea but not a solution to the fiscal problem. The president's opening bid was to fix the corporate tax code without adding to the deficit.
As to the individual income tax system, the president repeated his stale complaint that "we simply can't afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans." No mention of the affordability of the tax cuts for everyone else.
In fact, when the president discussed income taxes, he cited the need to "simplify the individual tax code" without daring to whisper that the real goal needs to be more revenue. "Members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them," Obama said. Joining up is not my definition of leadership.
Administration officials insist that proffering more in the State of the Union would have been self-defeating. Negotiating in public does not work, this argument goes. Do corporate tax reform first and the larger overhaul will come more easily.
This would be more convincing if the president's behind-the-scenes track record were more reassuring. Obama put little muscle behind the legislative effort to create a fiscal commission. Then, having established one by executive order, he did nothing to assure its success, according to sources close to the process. The commission was tantalizingly close to getting the super-majority needed for congressional action -- former Service Employees Union President Andy Stern had promised to be the 14th vote, the sources said -- but the administration did not lift a finger to help by lobbying other Democrats.
On Tuesday, the most Obama could manage to choke out about his own commission was that "I don't agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress."
Into this disturbing vacuum of leadership come Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who have assembled a bipartisan group pushing for tax reform and other deficit reduction this year.
When I spoke with them after the speech, they emphasized two points: that nothing would be accomplished without presidential involvement, and that it would be a mistake to let things slide into the election year or, inevitably, beyond.
"Every one of these painful choices gets harder every day we don't do anything," Warner said.
Wise words. If only we had heard more of that from the president himself.
(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/28/the_state_of_the_union_is_leaderless_108682.html
DAVOS, Switzerland -- The state of the union is ... leaderless.
Sounds harsh, but when it comes to digging America out from what President Obama calls its "mountain of debt," I'm becoming increasingly worried that this assessment is accurate.
The president talks the talk about fiscal responsibility. But the evidence suggests he's not willing to spend the political capital to translate that talk into action.
Judge Obama by his own standards. "We have to signal seriousness in this," he told The Washington Post just before the inauguration, "by making sure that some of the hard decisions are made under my watch and not under somebody else's."
So what hard decisions has the president made? On the plus side of the ledger, the president worked to ensure that the costly expansion of health coverage was coupled with potentially cost-saving measures to control Medicare spending. Emphasis on potentially.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, he proposed a five-year freeze on discretionary spending, two years longer than his previous offer.
But as the president himself recognized, this kind of nibbling around the edges of the budget is entirely inadequate.
"To make further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending alone will be enough," he said. "It won't." Except the president then offered nothing else of substance about what else he envisioned -- and would be willing to push for.
Some serious people with unquestioned bona fides on fiscal responsibility grasped at wispy tendrils of seriousness in the president's remarks. He mentioned Social Security! He talked about tax reform! I hope they are right but fear they are deluding themselves.
Examine the president's words, and you see nothing new or specific. It hardly constitutes bravery to call for a bipartisan Social Security fix that doesn't slash benefits. At that level of generality, who would disagree?
The health care law -- if implemented as planned -- is merely a down payment on cost containment. But the president's only specific was to repeat his offer to join with Republicans on medical malpractice reform. This is attacking a mountain with a teaspoon.
Corporate tax reform is a great idea but not a solution to the fiscal problem. The president's opening bid was to fix the corporate tax code without adding to the deficit.
As to the individual income tax system, the president repeated his stale complaint that "we simply can't afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans." No mention of the affordability of the tax cuts for everyone else.
In fact, when the president discussed income taxes, he cited the need to "simplify the individual tax code" without daring to whisper that the real goal needs to be more revenue. "Members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them," Obama said. Joining up is not my definition of leadership.
Administration officials insist that proffering more in the State of the Union would have been self-defeating. Negotiating in public does not work, this argument goes. Do corporate tax reform first and the larger overhaul will come more easily.
This would be more convincing if the president's behind-the-scenes track record were more reassuring. Obama put little muscle behind the legislative effort to create a fiscal commission. Then, having established one by executive order, he did nothing to assure its success, according to sources close to the process. The commission was tantalizingly close to getting the super-majority needed for congressional action -- former Service Employees Union President Andy Stern had promised to be the 14th vote, the sources said -- but the administration did not lift a finger to help by lobbying other Democrats.
On Tuesday, the most Obama could manage to choke out about his own commission was that "I don't agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress."
Into this disturbing vacuum of leadership come Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner and Georgia Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, who have assembled a bipartisan group pushing for tax reform and other deficit reduction this year.
When I spoke with them after the speech, they emphasized two points: that nothing would be accomplished without presidential involvement, and that it would be a mistake to let things slide into the election year or, inevitably, beyond.
"Every one of these painful choices gets harder every day we don't do anything," Warner said.
Wise words. If only we had heard more of that from the president himself.
(c) 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/28/the_state_of_the_union_is_leaderless_108682.html
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Emanuel asks Illinois Supreme Court for emergency stay
Posted by Kristen Mack, David Heinzmann, Hal Dardick and Dawn Rhodes; Tribune reporters
Attorneys for Rahm Emanuel late today asked the Illinois Supreme Court to prevent Chicago elections officials from printing ballots for the Feb. 22 mayor's election without his name.
Emanuel's legal team also said they will ask the state's highest court on Tuesday to hear their appeal of a decision by an appellate court today to knock him off the ballot on the grounds he doesn't meet residency requirements.
Chicago elections officials said today they have to begin printing the 2 million or so ballots needed for the election as well as preparing electronic voting machines for early voting that begins next Monday.
Emanuel held a news conference before the legal filings to try to reassure voters his campaign to succeed retiring Mayor Richard Daley continues.
"I have no doubt at the end we'll prevail in this effort," Emanuel said at a news conference. “We’ll now go to the next level to get clarity."
“I still own a home here, (I) look forward to moving into it one day, vote from here, pay property taxes here. I do believe the people of the city of Chicago deserve a right to make a decision about who they want to be their next mayor," Emanuel said.
In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate panel said Emanuel does not meet the residency requirement of having lived in Chicago for a year prior to the election. The judges reversed a decision by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which had unanimously agreed that Emanuel was eligible to run for mayor.
"We conclude that the candidate neither meets the Municipal Code's requirement that he have 'resided in' Chicago for the year preceding the election in which he seeks to participate nor falls within any exception to the requirement," the majority judges wrote. "Accordingly, we disagree with the Board's conclusion that he is eligible to run for the office of Mayor of the City of Chicago. We reverse the circuit court's judgment confirming the Board's decision, set aside the Board's decision and ... order that the candidate's name be excluded (or, if necessary, removed) from the ballot."
The majority opinion was written by Appellate Justice Thomas E. Hoffman and concurred with by Presiding Appellate Justice Shelvin Louise Marie Hall.
Appellate Justice Bertina E. Lampkin wrote a dissenting opinion.
"I disagree with the majority's contrary conclusion that the candidate is not eligible to be on the ballot because that conclusion is based on an analysis of two issues --- establishing residency and a statutory exemption to the residency requirement --- that are not relevant to the resolution of this case."
Emanuel said he meets requirements despite serving as President Barack Obama's White House chief of staff.
“Fundamentally, when a president asks you to serve the country as his chief of staff, that counts as part of serving your country," Emanuel said. I have no doubt that in the end we will in the prevail at this effort. As my father always used to say, nothing is ever easy in life. This is just one turn in the road.”
“The Supreme Court has an obligation, not an obligation, to hear the case, to make a decision quickly," said Emanuel, who stumbled over his talking point. "So both not only voters have a clarity they need, but there’s a clarity to the issues we are discussing in front of the voters as it relates to the challenges that we have as a city for our future."
Time is of the essence, however. Early voting starts a week from today on Jan. 31.
Langdon D. Neal, the elections board chairman, issued a statement: "We're going to press with one less candidate for mayor."
During a conference call, elections officials said they would send the ballots to the printer tonight and printing would begin Tuesday.
“We’ve basically hit the go button,” elections spokesman Jim Allen said. “We needed to do this on the 18th, we were waiting for this decision. We going to press now, we have to.”
“A candidate who is removed from the ballots by the court’s has until Feb. 15 to file as a write-in,” Allen said.
"This is all unchartered territory," Allen said.
The appellate court judges heard the case last week. To read the opinion, click here.
Emanuel is the front-running candidate in the race to succeed Mayor Richard Daley. The latest Tribune poll showed Emanuel at 44 percent, more than double his closest rival, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.
The news crashed Emanuel's campaign web site this afternoon.
Opponent Gery Chico told reporters he was very surprised by the ruling and said he has never made Emanuel's residency a campaign issue.
"I believe in ballot access," Chico said outside a fundraiser at a River North restaurant shortly after the ruling. "We will continue vigorously with our campaign, with or without Rahm Emanuel."
Chico sidestepped questions about whether he was happy for the development. "I've said from Day One of this campaign that I haven't paid much attention to who's on or who's off, who's in the race."
When asked whether Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke should recuse herself from the case because of Chico's longstanding ties with her husband, Ald. Ed Burke, Chico shook his head, and said it was not an appropriate question for him to consider. "I'm a candidate for mayor. I don't tell the Illinois Supreme Court what to do," he said.
Opponent Carol Moseley Braun, who was second in the Tribune poll, described the news as a "major milestone" for her campaign.
"Our campaign for mayor has always been about standing with all families in every neighborhood of this great city," Braun said. "Nothing about that has changed with today's appellate decision. . . Today's decision is a major milestone for our campaign, but the decision doesn't make one neighborhood safer, one senior more secure, one child better educated or give one unemployed person a job."
Braun also pitched herself as a candidate who could appeal beyond her African American base to all Chicagoans.
“I am extending a hand of friendship to all the fine Chicagoans who have been supporting Mr. Emanuel and all those who haven’t made up their minds yet,” she said. “We all love this city and want to see it move forward, and I hope that everyone will join us in that effort.”
When asked if she hoped Emanuel’s removal from the ballot would be an opportunity for her to raise more campaign cash, she responded:
“We’ve always had a poor campaign with a rich message. While we hope that it will be less poor, at the same time our message is consistent and the same — that I have the ability to deliver for all the people of Chicago to help move our city in the right direction.”
Opponent Miguel del Valle, the city clerk, issued a statement.
“Those who thought that Rahm Emanuel’s election was a foregone conclusion: Now, the voters are going to really have an opportunity to choose the next mayor of the city of Chicago,” del Valle said.
Hours after the appellate court ruling, Emanuel supporters gathered for brief a rally outside the offices of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, the folks that last month had unanimously confirmed his eligibility to run for mayor.
Donning signs which said "Keep Rahm on the ballot" and "We stand by Rahm," the group chanted that they should have the choice of who to elect as mayor.
"We need to make sure that we don't get a mayor by default," said campaign co-chair Juan Rangel, the head of the United Neighborhood Organization. "We have to make sure that the people get to decide this election."
Opponents say Emanuel doesn't meet the one-year residency requirement because he was in Washington serving as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff.
Before today, Emanuel had won rulings by the election board and in Cook County Circuit Court. Today’s ruling seems certain to be appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.
Emanuel, a former North Side congressman, had served Obama in Washington from January 2009 until October.
Posted at 12:35:28 PM in 2011 Chicago election, 2011 Chicago mayor's race
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/appellate-court-says-emanuel-should-be-removed-from-ballot.html
Attorneys for Rahm Emanuel late today asked the Illinois Supreme Court to prevent Chicago elections officials from printing ballots for the Feb. 22 mayor's election without his name.
Emanuel's legal team also said they will ask the state's highest court on Tuesday to hear their appeal of a decision by an appellate court today to knock him off the ballot on the grounds he doesn't meet residency requirements.
Chicago elections officials said today they have to begin printing the 2 million or so ballots needed for the election as well as preparing electronic voting machines for early voting that begins next Monday.
Emanuel held a news conference before the legal filings to try to reassure voters his campaign to succeed retiring Mayor Richard Daley continues.
"I have no doubt at the end we'll prevail in this effort," Emanuel said at a news conference. “We’ll now go to the next level to get clarity."
“I still own a home here, (I) look forward to moving into it one day, vote from here, pay property taxes here. I do believe the people of the city of Chicago deserve a right to make a decision about who they want to be their next mayor," Emanuel said.
In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate panel said Emanuel does not meet the residency requirement of having lived in Chicago for a year prior to the election. The judges reversed a decision by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which had unanimously agreed that Emanuel was eligible to run for mayor.
"We conclude that the candidate neither meets the Municipal Code's requirement that he have 'resided in' Chicago for the year preceding the election in which he seeks to participate nor falls within any exception to the requirement," the majority judges wrote. "Accordingly, we disagree with the Board's conclusion that he is eligible to run for the office of Mayor of the City of Chicago. We reverse the circuit court's judgment confirming the Board's decision, set aside the Board's decision and ... order that the candidate's name be excluded (or, if necessary, removed) from the ballot."
The majority opinion was written by Appellate Justice Thomas E. Hoffman and concurred with by Presiding Appellate Justice Shelvin Louise Marie Hall.
Appellate Justice Bertina E. Lampkin wrote a dissenting opinion.
"I disagree with the majority's contrary conclusion that the candidate is not eligible to be on the ballot because that conclusion is based on an analysis of two issues --- establishing residency and a statutory exemption to the residency requirement --- that are not relevant to the resolution of this case."
Emanuel said he meets requirements despite serving as President Barack Obama's White House chief of staff.
“Fundamentally, when a president asks you to serve the country as his chief of staff, that counts as part of serving your country," Emanuel said. I have no doubt that in the end we will in the prevail at this effort. As my father always used to say, nothing is ever easy in life. This is just one turn in the road.”
“The Supreme Court has an obligation, not an obligation, to hear the case, to make a decision quickly," said Emanuel, who stumbled over his talking point. "So both not only voters have a clarity they need, but there’s a clarity to the issues we are discussing in front of the voters as it relates to the challenges that we have as a city for our future."
Time is of the essence, however. Early voting starts a week from today on Jan. 31.
Langdon D. Neal, the elections board chairman, issued a statement: "We're going to press with one less candidate for mayor."
During a conference call, elections officials said they would send the ballots to the printer tonight and printing would begin Tuesday.
“We’ve basically hit the go button,” elections spokesman Jim Allen said. “We needed to do this on the 18th, we were waiting for this decision. We going to press now, we have to.”
“A candidate who is removed from the ballots by the court’s has until Feb. 15 to file as a write-in,” Allen said.
"This is all unchartered territory," Allen said.
The appellate court judges heard the case last week. To read the opinion, click here.
Emanuel is the front-running candidate in the race to succeed Mayor Richard Daley. The latest Tribune poll showed Emanuel at 44 percent, more than double his closest rival, former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.
The news crashed Emanuel's campaign web site this afternoon.
Opponent Gery Chico told reporters he was very surprised by the ruling and said he has never made Emanuel's residency a campaign issue.
"I believe in ballot access," Chico said outside a fundraiser at a River North restaurant shortly after the ruling. "We will continue vigorously with our campaign, with or without Rahm Emanuel."
Chico sidestepped questions about whether he was happy for the development. "I've said from Day One of this campaign that I haven't paid much attention to who's on or who's off, who's in the race."
When asked whether Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke should recuse herself from the case because of Chico's longstanding ties with her husband, Ald. Ed Burke, Chico shook his head, and said it was not an appropriate question for him to consider. "I'm a candidate for mayor. I don't tell the Illinois Supreme Court what to do," he said.
Opponent Carol Moseley Braun, who was second in the Tribune poll, described the news as a "major milestone" for her campaign.
"Our campaign for mayor has always been about standing with all families in every neighborhood of this great city," Braun said. "Nothing about that has changed with today's appellate decision. . . Today's decision is a major milestone for our campaign, but the decision doesn't make one neighborhood safer, one senior more secure, one child better educated or give one unemployed person a job."
Braun also pitched herself as a candidate who could appeal beyond her African American base to all Chicagoans.
“I am extending a hand of friendship to all the fine Chicagoans who have been supporting Mr. Emanuel and all those who haven’t made up their minds yet,” she said. “We all love this city and want to see it move forward, and I hope that everyone will join us in that effort.”
When asked if she hoped Emanuel’s removal from the ballot would be an opportunity for her to raise more campaign cash, she responded:
“We’ve always had a poor campaign with a rich message. While we hope that it will be less poor, at the same time our message is consistent and the same — that I have the ability to deliver for all the people of Chicago to help move our city in the right direction.”
Opponent Miguel del Valle, the city clerk, issued a statement.
“Those who thought that Rahm Emanuel’s election was a foregone conclusion: Now, the voters are going to really have an opportunity to choose the next mayor of the city of Chicago,” del Valle said.
Hours after the appellate court ruling, Emanuel supporters gathered for brief a rally outside the offices of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, the folks that last month had unanimously confirmed his eligibility to run for mayor.
Donning signs which said "Keep Rahm on the ballot" and "We stand by Rahm," the group chanted that they should have the choice of who to elect as mayor.
"We need to make sure that we don't get a mayor by default," said campaign co-chair Juan Rangel, the head of the United Neighborhood Organization. "We have to make sure that the people get to decide this election."
Opponents say Emanuel doesn't meet the one-year residency requirement because he was in Washington serving as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff.
Before today, Emanuel had won rulings by the election board and in Cook County Circuit Court. Today’s ruling seems certain to be appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.
Emanuel, a former North Side congressman, had served Obama in Washington from January 2009 until October.
Posted at 12:35:28 PM in 2011 Chicago election, 2011 Chicago mayor's race
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/appellate-court-says-emanuel-should-be-removed-from-ballot.html
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Rahm Emanuel Puts A Smile on the Face of “The Chicago Squid”
Thomas F. Roeser
Last week the white-run Squid…the peculiar living organism formed to elect Democrats (misnamed an inanimate “machine”) which has multi-quivering tentacles into business, labor, academe, media and the Roman Catholic chancery, a thousand eyes, sucks up nutrients, nurtures wastrels and discharges idealists as effluent…found three great reasons to celebrate the undeniable highest point of its 80-year existence.
I’ll start the way late-night comic David Letterman does—with the third reason and lead up to the first.
Three Big Reasons The Squid is Overjoyed.
3rd Biggest Reason: A Returned (Slightly) White Chicago Majority.
Despite its exploitation of blacks and Hispanics for massive vote turnout since the 1930s and giving them little in return, the Caucasian-led Squid has been worrying for decades about the day when blacks take over city control in perpetuity. What the media don’t report is: The Squid isn’t an equal opportunity outfit. Never has been.
The second lowest point for it was in 1983 when Harold Washington, the city’s first African American mayor, won election…although it was stalled from running things due to the Vrdolyak 29. The absolute lowest was when Washington won reelection in 1987 picking up enough council allies to turn back the Vrdolyak 29. A sub-highpoint for it was shortly after reelection at the point where he was supreme, when Washington slumped over his desk, dead of a massive heart attack. The white-dominated inter-regnum lasting two years paved the way for the coronation of Richard M. Daley aka Richard II.
Richard M. Daley gave the city bread and circuses, higher taxes, a massive park in its front yard and flower pots lining the boulevards and privatized parking meters that hit hard at the middle class. He spent the moon. With no interference from his Squid council he plunged the city into a financial abyss with its nearly $15 billion IOU to its pension fund dwarfing its $6 billion annual budget. From 2005-09 city expenses grew at a clip more than double the rate of inflation—with the gap bridged by one-time revenue sources such as the privatization of the Chicago Skyway (17% of day-to-day operations will be paid that way in 2011).
Property taxes are sky-high; yet not a penny of its nearly $800 million revenue the city will reap this year is earmarked for police, fire and other cash-starved day-to-day operations.
High taxes caused many blacks to flee the city. Daley II also demolished much of public housing which his father, Richard I had created, causing the Old Man’s enemies to charge they were nothing less than filing cabinets for the black poor. Under Daley II, Chicago’s phenomenally high property taxes coupled with housing vouchers induced the poor to move to blue-collar suburbs where costs are much lower. Result: The black population fell 11% since 2000; number of whites tripled; whites slightly edge blacks for the first time since 1980 (a smidgen over a third white, a smidgen under a third black and the balance Latinos most of whom either can’t or don’t vote…which The
Squid hopes will stay that dormant, Asians etc)..
Other middle class blacks moved back to their ancestral South which has a much more hospitable climate for diversity, an improved tax climate and job opportunities. This produced census figures showing that for the first time since 1980 the city has a white majority—richer, yuppies, affluent singles, gays. Hispanics mark a 7% growth but not much to worry about, . Asians making up the total. Thus the outlook is good for The Squid to keep white leadership with the Irish dominant…while still relying, plantation-style, on the remaining black poor to do the political grunt work and get absolutely no power in reward.
2nd Biggest Reason: No Serious Alternative to Rahm Emanuel. .
This would have been a golden chance for the black community to loft up some extraordinary qualified candidates, such as John Clark, president of ComEd and the brilliant Terry Peterson, senior veep of Rush Medical Center who was an outstanding boss of mass transit. But these talented African American managers and others like them aren’t interested in running because the city’s financials are a can of worms. Nor are they close to the city’s oracular, media-celebrated real black messiah, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson, whose own kids even call him “Reverend Jackson,” not Dad or Pop, sought to challenge The Squid with a creature of his own.
After a well-publicized caucus he and his surrogates came out with endorsement for Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman U. S. Senator. Most serious observers—not in the major media here, however said “you can’t be serious!” On the surface okay but when she grudgingly complied with the rule to reveal past income tax forms, it was clear she is in dreadful personal financial shape, owing $250,000 to a backer and the possessor of a Hyde Park house that is barely afloat with four mortgages. When the Teamsters union ran a poll last week, Rahm Emanuel, was far ahead of Moseley Braun—so far ahead that it looks like he’ll win going away on Feb. 22 with no need of a runoff.
The Gray Wolves, the resurrected 1920s-style venal white Squid aldermen who don’t mind seeing the city go to rack-and-ruin if they can make money out of it—and who have subtly opposed Emanuel….largely funding the residency suits against him… now are cautiously coming to his. Because Emanuel has no moral core he is ideal for the mayoralty and co-leadership of The Squid (with Speaker Michael Madigan) and neither can he be rolled by the Gray Wolves for the pure and simple reason his reputation for the future (he wants to ride a tough-bitten mayoralty ala Andrew Cuomo as NY governor to become the first Jewish president)… would be irreparably damaged—so he is the best in a lousy selection.
1st Reason: At Last—A Daley in the White House!
The Squid doesn’t really doesn’t give a rat’s eyelash about Barack Obama believing (rightly) he’s an amateur who couldn’t even beat the lazy mumbling, inept Bobby Rush for Congress, an inexperienced, Harvard-University of Chicago radical dreamer, flaky and undependable without the street-sense of a ward committeeman (his ability to wreak harm on the country being of no consequence to it since The Squid regards patriotism as irrelevant to its existence). But it’s ecstatic about the ascension of Richie Daley’s kid brother to become chief of staff. Why?
Remember The Squid has no ideology. And Bill Daley has none either…but he has the swashbuckling buccaneer qualities on money-raising and strategy it loves. He was (1) born in Bridgeport, ancestral home of the Daleys; (2) has been a bank president; (3) at the highest point earned $5 million a year; (4) came to the White House fresh from supervising the Washington lobbying efforts of the nation’s second largest bank, JPMorgan/Chase. The Squid adores lobbyists except the goo-goo kind and Bill Daley’s certainly not one of those.
He’s been (5) a director of Chicago-based Boeing the giant military contractor which can only do well if we’re either waging war or preparing to wage one…(6) a director of Abbott Laboratories, the huge global drug outfit that has a massive stake in cutting a deal with ObamaCare which has used Billy Daley up until the minute of his White House appointment to kill the tax on medical devices that would save it $20 billion.
Up until last week Daley (7) tried to weaken the structure of the newly-passed Consumer Financial Protection program and jiggle around with suggestions of a more malleable agency head…which earns The Squid’s admiration. He’s been (8) a lobbyist for foreign corporations (Nestle and a Canadian oil company)…the one who (9) until last week was seeking to influence the payback terms of TARP, making it easier for his bank to pay back the money, a prodigious political fund-raiser. And last if not least, (10) his appointment has been lavishly praised by Obama’s most skilled enemies—the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal!
But the icing on the cake is (11) he’s a bona fide Squid operator conscience-exempt from queasiness which by itself…without any birthright at all…puts him at the table with Eddie Burke, Dick Mell. In his spare time he had the idea some years ago in creating the HDO, the Hispanic Democratic Organization as a brilliant vehicle to enlist Latinos. Chicago Streets and San commissioner, Al Sanchez, its leader just got 20 years for rigging personnel records to reward loyal Hispanics while Billy’s big brother the mayor said “everybody who knows me knows I had nothin’ to do with it.” Of course he didn’t. It was Billy.
That’s all that’s needed: The Squid is in love.
**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/rahm-emanuel-put-a-smile-on-the-face-of-the-chicago-squid/
Last week the white-run Squid…the peculiar living organism formed to elect Democrats (misnamed an inanimate “machine”) which has multi-quivering tentacles into business, labor, academe, media and the Roman Catholic chancery, a thousand eyes, sucks up nutrients, nurtures wastrels and discharges idealists as effluent…found three great reasons to celebrate the undeniable highest point of its 80-year existence.
I’ll start the way late-night comic David Letterman does—with the third reason and lead up to the first.
Three Big Reasons The Squid is Overjoyed.
3rd Biggest Reason: A Returned (Slightly) White Chicago Majority.
Despite its exploitation of blacks and Hispanics for massive vote turnout since the 1930s and giving them little in return, the Caucasian-led Squid has been worrying for decades about the day when blacks take over city control in perpetuity. What the media don’t report is: The Squid isn’t an equal opportunity outfit. Never has been.
The second lowest point for it was in 1983 when Harold Washington, the city’s first African American mayor, won election…although it was stalled from running things due to the Vrdolyak 29. The absolute lowest was when Washington won reelection in 1987 picking up enough council allies to turn back the Vrdolyak 29. A sub-highpoint for it was shortly after reelection at the point where he was supreme, when Washington slumped over his desk, dead of a massive heart attack. The white-dominated inter-regnum lasting two years paved the way for the coronation of Richard M. Daley aka Richard II.
Richard M. Daley gave the city bread and circuses, higher taxes, a massive park in its front yard and flower pots lining the boulevards and privatized parking meters that hit hard at the middle class. He spent the moon. With no interference from his Squid council he plunged the city into a financial abyss with its nearly $15 billion IOU to its pension fund dwarfing its $6 billion annual budget. From 2005-09 city expenses grew at a clip more than double the rate of inflation—with the gap bridged by one-time revenue sources such as the privatization of the Chicago Skyway (17% of day-to-day operations will be paid that way in 2011).
Property taxes are sky-high; yet not a penny of its nearly $800 million revenue the city will reap this year is earmarked for police, fire and other cash-starved day-to-day operations.
High taxes caused many blacks to flee the city. Daley II also demolished much of public housing which his father, Richard I had created, causing the Old Man’s enemies to charge they were nothing less than filing cabinets for the black poor. Under Daley II, Chicago’s phenomenally high property taxes coupled with housing vouchers induced the poor to move to blue-collar suburbs where costs are much lower. Result: The black population fell 11% since 2000; number of whites tripled; whites slightly edge blacks for the first time since 1980 (a smidgen over a third white, a smidgen under a third black and the balance Latinos most of whom either can’t or don’t vote…which The
Squid hopes will stay that dormant, Asians etc)..
Other middle class blacks moved back to their ancestral South which has a much more hospitable climate for diversity, an improved tax climate and job opportunities. This produced census figures showing that for the first time since 1980 the city has a white majority—richer, yuppies, affluent singles, gays. Hispanics mark a 7% growth but not much to worry about, . Asians making up the total. Thus the outlook is good for The Squid to keep white leadership with the Irish dominant…while still relying, plantation-style, on the remaining black poor to do the political grunt work and get absolutely no power in reward.
2nd Biggest Reason: No Serious Alternative to Rahm Emanuel. .
This would have been a golden chance for the black community to loft up some extraordinary qualified candidates, such as John Clark, president of ComEd and the brilliant Terry Peterson, senior veep of Rush Medical Center who was an outstanding boss of mass transit. But these talented African American managers and others like them aren’t interested in running because the city’s financials are a can of worms. Nor are they close to the city’s oracular, media-celebrated real black messiah, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson, whose own kids even call him “Reverend Jackson,” not Dad or Pop, sought to challenge The Squid with a creature of his own.
After a well-publicized caucus he and his surrogates came out with endorsement for Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman U. S. Senator. Most serious observers—not in the major media here, however said “you can’t be serious!” On the surface okay but when she grudgingly complied with the rule to reveal past income tax forms, it was clear she is in dreadful personal financial shape, owing $250,000 to a backer and the possessor of a Hyde Park house that is barely afloat with four mortgages. When the Teamsters union ran a poll last week, Rahm Emanuel, was far ahead of Moseley Braun—so far ahead that it looks like he’ll win going away on Feb. 22 with no need of a runoff.
The Gray Wolves, the resurrected 1920s-style venal white Squid aldermen who don’t mind seeing the city go to rack-and-ruin if they can make money out of it—and who have subtly opposed Emanuel….largely funding the residency suits against him… now are cautiously coming to his. Because Emanuel has no moral core he is ideal for the mayoralty and co-leadership of The Squid (with Speaker Michael Madigan) and neither can he be rolled by the Gray Wolves for the pure and simple reason his reputation for the future (he wants to ride a tough-bitten mayoralty ala Andrew Cuomo as NY governor to become the first Jewish president)… would be irreparably damaged—so he is the best in a lousy selection.
1st Reason: At Last—A Daley in the White House!
The Squid doesn’t really doesn’t give a rat’s eyelash about Barack Obama believing (rightly) he’s an amateur who couldn’t even beat the lazy mumbling, inept Bobby Rush for Congress, an inexperienced, Harvard-University of Chicago radical dreamer, flaky and undependable without the street-sense of a ward committeeman (his ability to wreak harm on the country being of no consequence to it since The Squid regards patriotism as irrelevant to its existence). But it’s ecstatic about the ascension of Richie Daley’s kid brother to become chief of staff. Why?
Remember The Squid has no ideology. And Bill Daley has none either…but he has the swashbuckling buccaneer qualities on money-raising and strategy it loves. He was (1) born in Bridgeport, ancestral home of the Daleys; (2) has been a bank president; (3) at the highest point earned $5 million a year; (4) came to the White House fresh from supervising the Washington lobbying efforts of the nation’s second largest bank, JPMorgan/Chase. The Squid adores lobbyists except the goo-goo kind and Bill Daley’s certainly not one of those.
He’s been (5) a director of Chicago-based Boeing the giant military contractor which can only do well if we’re either waging war or preparing to wage one…(6) a director of Abbott Laboratories, the huge global drug outfit that has a massive stake in cutting a deal with ObamaCare which has used Billy Daley up until the minute of his White House appointment to kill the tax on medical devices that would save it $20 billion.
Up until last week Daley (7) tried to weaken the structure of the newly-passed Consumer Financial Protection program and jiggle around with suggestions of a more malleable agency head…which earns The Squid’s admiration. He’s been (8) a lobbyist for foreign corporations (Nestle and a Canadian oil company)…the one who (9) until last week was seeking to influence the payback terms of TARP, making it easier for his bank to pay back the money, a prodigious political fund-raiser. And last if not least, (10) his appointment has been lavishly praised by Obama’s most skilled enemies—the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal!
But the icing on the cake is (11) he’s a bona fide Squid operator conscience-exempt from queasiness which by itself…without any birthright at all…puts him at the table with Eddie Burke, Dick Mell. In his spare time he had the idea some years ago in creating the HDO, the Hispanic Democratic Organization as a brilliant vehicle to enlist Latinos. Chicago Streets and San commissioner, Al Sanchez, its leader just got 20 years for rigging personnel records to reward loyal Hispanics while Billy’s big brother the mayor said “everybody who knows me knows I had nothin’ to do with it.” Of course he didn’t. It was Billy.
That’s all that’s needed: The Squid is in love.
**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/rahm-emanuel-put-a-smile-on-the-face-of-the-chicago-squid/
Illinois schools revive 'moment of silence'
Students take part for the first time since law was suspended
Just before 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, students at Lakes Community High School rose to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, then, before falling back into their seats, paused for eight seconds of silence.
Senior Prince Miles mused about the day's assignments.
Sara Quinn, a freshman, thought about the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.
And senior Tomas Brandt didn't have a chance to reflect on much at all.
"It's so quick, I sort of missed it," he said.
The scene in Lake Villa was replayed in dozens of classrooms Tuesday as students paused for a quiet moment for the first time since a law that mandates a period of "silent prayer or silent reflection" in Illinois public schools was suspended more than two years ago.
Contending that the 2007 law overstepped the bounds of church and state separation, a suburban teenager and her atheist-activist father sued the state two weeks after the law took effect. The law was ruled unconstitutional but later was upheld. A federal district judge lifted the injunction banning the practice last week.
The on-and-off history of the law confounded many school officials, who wondered how to heed state law without running afoul of the First Amendment.
Several districts plan to follow the example cited by the federal appeals court in its ruling last October. The judges highlighted Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214's practice of pausing for 15 seconds of silence before reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The northwest suburban district — where the teenage plaintiff, Dawn Sherman, attends classes — intends to reinstate the observance Monday after students finish their finals.
But from Elgin to Lemont, dozens of schools revived the practice Tuesday.
In Lincolnshire, Stevenson High School's moment of silence began during the video announcements that start each morning with the Pledge of Allegiance, a spokesman said. The screen read: "Good morning. And now, a moment of reflection." It faded to black for 10 seconds and returned to the school's news of the day.
Students in Round Lake Beach's Avon Center School began the day with 15 seconds of "silent reflection."
Third-grade teacher Lisa Henricksen related the law to lessons about government and history, drawing on themes that resonated with the young students.
"Do you know what they're asking us to do? To kind of reflect on our day," Henricksen said. "What kind of choices are we going to make? What kind of people do we want to be? What can we do to have a good day?"
The flurry of discussion and debate mystified many students.
"I think it's a good idea in theory, but if it starts this much controversy, it's just not worth it," said Lakes High School senior Rachel Ferguson during an advanced government class discussion devoted to the topic. "At this point, it's just a distraction."
Tribune reporters Megan Craig and Carolyn Rusin contributed to this report.
tmalone@tribune.com
Copyright © 2011, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/news/local/ct-met-moment-of-silence-0119-20110118,0,4321821.story
Just before 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, students at Lakes Community High School rose to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, then, before falling back into their seats, paused for eight seconds of silence.
Senior Prince Miles mused about the day's assignments.
Sara Quinn, a freshman, thought about the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001.
And senior Tomas Brandt didn't have a chance to reflect on much at all.
"It's so quick, I sort of missed it," he said.
The scene in Lake Villa was replayed in dozens of classrooms Tuesday as students paused for a quiet moment for the first time since a law that mandates a period of "silent prayer or silent reflection" in Illinois public schools was suspended more than two years ago.
Contending that the 2007 law overstepped the bounds of church and state separation, a suburban teenager and her atheist-activist father sued the state two weeks after the law took effect. The law was ruled unconstitutional but later was upheld. A federal district judge lifted the injunction banning the practice last week.
The on-and-off history of the law confounded many school officials, who wondered how to heed state law without running afoul of the First Amendment.
Several districts plan to follow the example cited by the federal appeals court in its ruling last October. The judges highlighted Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214's practice of pausing for 15 seconds of silence before reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
The northwest suburban district — where the teenage plaintiff, Dawn Sherman, attends classes — intends to reinstate the observance Monday after students finish their finals.
But from Elgin to Lemont, dozens of schools revived the practice Tuesday.
In Lincolnshire, Stevenson High School's moment of silence began during the video announcements that start each morning with the Pledge of Allegiance, a spokesman said. The screen read: "Good morning. And now, a moment of reflection." It faded to black for 10 seconds and returned to the school's news of the day.
Students in Round Lake Beach's Avon Center School began the day with 15 seconds of "silent reflection."
Third-grade teacher Lisa Henricksen related the law to lessons about government and history, drawing on themes that resonated with the young students.
"Do you know what they're asking us to do? To kind of reflect on our day," Henricksen said. "What kind of choices are we going to make? What kind of people do we want to be? What can we do to have a good day?"
The flurry of discussion and debate mystified many students.
"I think it's a good idea in theory, but if it starts this much controversy, it's just not worth it," said Lakes High School senior Rachel Ferguson during an advanced government class discussion devoted to the topic. "At this point, it's just a distraction."
Tribune reporters Megan Craig and Carolyn Rusin contributed to this report.
tmalone@tribune.com
Copyright © 2011, Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/news/local/ct-met-moment-of-silence-0119-20110118,0,4321821.story
Border wars
Despite the tax increase, Illinois remains the go-to state for employment
While I appreciate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's zeal to debate economic development in the Midwest, no amount of rhetoric changes the fundamental facts: Illinois is the economic engine of the Midwest, and our efforts to stabilize and reform our budget only strengthen our competitiveness in the global economy.
As The New York Times editorialized last weekend, criticism of Illinois' recent tax and budget reforms "… makes great political theater. But businesses and voters in Illinois, and around the country, should take a closer look at the facts and figures, including their own."
Facts are stubborn things, and it's time to set the record straight.
Even with the temporary increase, Illinois' personal and corporate taxrates are lower than Wisconsin's and comparable to other nearby states. For years, we have collected revenues at rates far below those of our neighbors — one of the contributing factors to our current financial instability. Last week's reforms actually bring us in line with our neighbors.
In addition to Illinois' lower or comparable rates, our corporate tax structure is based on the location of a business' customers — not where the business itself is located. At the behest of the business community, Illinois changed the way it collects corporate taxes in recent years; as a result, a company's taxes due to Illinois won't change if it relocates.
The corporate tax rate is not an obstacle for companies to locate and invest in Illinois. Frankly, our state's unstable finances have stood in the way of business investment. Businesses crave stable economic environments, which is why I supported and signed into law unprecedented limits on state spending, real budget reforms and the revenues we need to meet our obligations. We are putting our financial house in order, which will only make Illinois a stronger competitor.
With these reforms, we will be able to take greater advantage of our state's existing advantages: a strategic location that has made us the hub of the nation's rail network and the aviation gateway to the world; an unmatched transportation infrastructure that makes us the distribution center of North America; unparalleled intellectual resources through our world-class universities and research institutions; and a long-standing place as one of the world's top financial centers. And Illinois' commitment to green energy and high-speed rail is making us a world leader in the 21st century economy.
Our efforts to forge strong business partnerships have paid off, as companies continue to locate, grow and create jobs in Illinois. Boeing is manufacturing in Metro East; Nippon Sharyo recently left Wisconsin to expand its rail-car manufacturing in Illinois; and online innovator Groupon is staying in its hometown of Chicago, even as it catapults onto the global stage.
Illinois has 78 consulates, 44 foreign trade commissions, 26 foreign chambers of commerce and more than 1,500 subsidiaries of foreign companies. We are the nation's sixth largest exporter, and the Midwest's gateway to the world. Illinois is competing globally.
Make no mistake, Gov. Walker, there's no room for short-sighted vision and political gamesmanship in the international competition for jobs.
It is time for the Midwest to come together to better compete in the global marketplace. Illinois can help the entire region meet the demands and opportunities of global business. A key factor in our position in the global marketplace will hinge on whether states make the hard decisions — as Illinois has done — to address the impact of the recession on their budgets and take the difficult steps necessary to achieve fiscal stability.
Rather than political rhetoric and scare tactics, we should focus on finding ways to collaborate and bring more jobs to the region.
We have a lot of work to do, and I look forward to facing these challenges together.
One more stubborn fact — the Chicago Bears, the pride and joy of Illinois, are going to bear down and win on Sunday.
Pat Quinn is the governor of Illinois. He is a Democrat.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0119-illinois-20110119,0,3624016.story
While I appreciate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's zeal to debate economic development in the Midwest, no amount of rhetoric changes the fundamental facts: Illinois is the economic engine of the Midwest, and our efforts to stabilize and reform our budget only strengthen our competitiveness in the global economy.
As The New York Times editorialized last weekend, criticism of Illinois' recent tax and budget reforms "… makes great political theater. But businesses and voters in Illinois, and around the country, should take a closer look at the facts and figures, including their own."
Facts are stubborn things, and it's time to set the record straight.
Even with the temporary increase, Illinois' personal and corporate taxrates are lower than Wisconsin's and comparable to other nearby states. For years, we have collected revenues at rates far below those of our neighbors — one of the contributing factors to our current financial instability. Last week's reforms actually bring us in line with our neighbors.
In addition to Illinois' lower or comparable rates, our corporate tax structure is based on the location of a business' customers — not where the business itself is located. At the behest of the business community, Illinois changed the way it collects corporate taxes in recent years; as a result, a company's taxes due to Illinois won't change if it relocates.
The corporate tax rate is not an obstacle for companies to locate and invest in Illinois. Frankly, our state's unstable finances have stood in the way of business investment. Businesses crave stable economic environments, which is why I supported and signed into law unprecedented limits on state spending, real budget reforms and the revenues we need to meet our obligations. We are putting our financial house in order, which will only make Illinois a stronger competitor.
With these reforms, we will be able to take greater advantage of our state's existing advantages: a strategic location that has made us the hub of the nation's rail network and the aviation gateway to the world; an unmatched transportation infrastructure that makes us the distribution center of North America; unparalleled intellectual resources through our world-class universities and research institutions; and a long-standing place as one of the world's top financial centers. And Illinois' commitment to green energy and high-speed rail is making us a world leader in the 21st century economy.
Our efforts to forge strong business partnerships have paid off, as companies continue to locate, grow and create jobs in Illinois. Boeing is manufacturing in Metro East; Nippon Sharyo recently left Wisconsin to expand its rail-car manufacturing in Illinois; and online innovator Groupon is staying in its hometown of Chicago, even as it catapults onto the global stage.
Illinois has 78 consulates, 44 foreign trade commissions, 26 foreign chambers of commerce and more than 1,500 subsidiaries of foreign companies. We are the nation's sixth largest exporter, and the Midwest's gateway to the world. Illinois is competing globally.
Make no mistake, Gov. Walker, there's no room for short-sighted vision and political gamesmanship in the international competition for jobs.
It is time for the Midwest to come together to better compete in the global marketplace. Illinois can help the entire region meet the demands and opportunities of global business. A key factor in our position in the global marketplace will hinge on whether states make the hard decisions — as Illinois has done — to address the impact of the recession on their budgets and take the difficult steps necessary to achieve fiscal stability.
Rather than political rhetoric and scare tactics, we should focus on finding ways to collaborate and bring more jobs to the region.
We have a lot of work to do, and I look forward to facing these challenges together.
One more stubborn fact — the Chicago Bears, the pride and joy of Illinois, are going to bear down and win on Sunday.
Pat Quinn is the governor of Illinois. He is a Democrat.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0119-illinois-20110119,0,3624016.story
Border war
To the Land of Lincoln: Wisconsin is 'Open for Business'
By Scott Walker, Jeff Fitzgerald
January 19, 2011
Wisconsin and Illinois are two very different states (and we are not just talking about Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears fans).
In Springfield, Gov. Pat Quinn and lawmakers approved massive tax increases on individuals and employers. They put off difficult decisions, like reining in public-sector benefits and reducing the growth of government, for another day.
While Illinois legislators may call those tax increases temporary, the reality is that by avoiding the hard decisions now, they are creating larger budget problems for the future. Illinois leaders have made it clear that they do not have the will to solve the state's budget problems except through greater tax increases.
In contrast to the mess in Illinois, we convened a special session of the Wisconsin Legislature to focus on jobs. Our message is simple: "Wisconsin is Open for Business."
We are reducing taxes on our businesses and health savings accounts, reforming our state's regulatory and litigation environment and transforming our Department of Commerce into a public-private partnership that focuses on economic growth. Of special note to companies south of our border, we are passing legislation that will exempt companies that come to Wisconsin from corporate taxes for two years.
During that time, we'll be continuing to lower taxes, curb spending and transform Wisconsin's business environment. Our hard work begins with this year's budget, where we will reduce spending by making the long-term reforms necessary for a sustainable balanced budget, all without raising taxes.
Tuesday, on the road signs along our state borders, we unveiled a different message aimed squarely at our neighbors. In place of the name of our state's governor, the signs announce that Wisconsin is "Open for Business."
Looking at the big picture, it's clear that Wisconsin is a better deal for business. Wisconsin's corporate tax rate is too high at 7.9 percent, but we will work to lower it by making the difficult decisions in our budget. Illinois' corporate rate is 7 percent, but the state also charges a personal property replacement tax — on top of the corporate rate — of 2.5 percent. The two taxes combined make Illinois' effective rate 9.5 percent for corporations. Illinois also has a much higher sales tax rate, which reaches as high as 9.75 percent, more than 4 points higher than Wisconsin's.
Businesses make decisions based on trends, and the contrast between Wisconsin and Illinois could not be greater. Wisconsin is heading in a pro-growth direction. Illinois is not. Add in Wisconsin's high quality of life — there's a reason Illinois residents enjoy so many weekends and vacations up here — and suddenly moving to Wisconsin is a smart business move.
To those of you who are frustrated with the high cost of doing business in Illinois, our message is clear: "Escape to Wisconsin!"
Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin, Jeff Fitzgerald is speaker of the House and Scott Fitzgerald is the Senate's majority leader. All are Republicans.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0119-wisconsin-20110119,0,5851127.story
By Scott Walker, Jeff Fitzgerald
January 19, 2011
Wisconsin and Illinois are two very different states (and we are not just talking about Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears fans).
In Springfield, Gov. Pat Quinn and lawmakers approved massive tax increases on individuals and employers. They put off difficult decisions, like reining in public-sector benefits and reducing the growth of government, for another day.
While Illinois legislators may call those tax increases temporary, the reality is that by avoiding the hard decisions now, they are creating larger budget problems for the future. Illinois leaders have made it clear that they do not have the will to solve the state's budget problems except through greater tax increases.
In contrast to the mess in Illinois, we convened a special session of the Wisconsin Legislature to focus on jobs. Our message is simple: "Wisconsin is Open for Business."
We are reducing taxes on our businesses and health savings accounts, reforming our state's regulatory and litigation environment and transforming our Department of Commerce into a public-private partnership that focuses on economic growth. Of special note to companies south of our border, we are passing legislation that will exempt companies that come to Wisconsin from corporate taxes for two years.
During that time, we'll be continuing to lower taxes, curb spending and transform Wisconsin's business environment. Our hard work begins with this year's budget, where we will reduce spending by making the long-term reforms necessary for a sustainable balanced budget, all without raising taxes.
Tuesday, on the road signs along our state borders, we unveiled a different message aimed squarely at our neighbors. In place of the name of our state's governor, the signs announce that Wisconsin is "Open for Business."
Looking at the big picture, it's clear that Wisconsin is a better deal for business. Wisconsin's corporate tax rate is too high at 7.9 percent, but we will work to lower it by making the difficult decisions in our budget. Illinois' corporate rate is 7 percent, but the state also charges a personal property replacement tax — on top of the corporate rate — of 2.5 percent. The two taxes combined make Illinois' effective rate 9.5 percent for corporations. Illinois also has a much higher sales tax rate, which reaches as high as 9.75 percent, more than 4 points higher than Wisconsin's.
Businesses make decisions based on trends, and the contrast between Wisconsin and Illinois could not be greater. Wisconsin is heading in a pro-growth direction. Illinois is not. Add in Wisconsin's high quality of life — there's a reason Illinois residents enjoy so many weekends and vacations up here — and suddenly moving to Wisconsin is a smart business move.
To those of you who are frustrated with the high cost of doing business in Illinois, our message is clear: "Escape to Wisconsin!"
Scott Walker is the governor of Wisconsin, Jeff Fitzgerald is speaker of the House and Scott Fitzgerald is the Senate's majority leader. All are Republicans.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0119-wisconsin-20110119,0,5851127.story
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Quinn, former state rep. say job not traded for tax-hike vote
by mark konkol Staff Reporter
During her final days in office, former state Rep. Careen Gordon scored a lucrative state job after casting an important vote that helped pass Gov. Quinn’s controversial 67 percent income tax increase.
Gordon (D-Morris) and a spokeswoman for the governor said there wasn’t any deal to trade Gordon’s vote for the $85,886-a-year seat on the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.
“There was no quid pro quo,” Quinn spokeswoman Annie Thompson said Saturday. “Bottom line, she was appointed because of her extensive background in criminal justice. . . . She was just the ideal candidate.”
Gordon, who recently moved to Chicago, was an assistant state’s attorney in Will and Kankakee counties. In 2000, she also worked as an assistant attorney general under former Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan.
Gordon refused to answer questions about how she became a candidate for the board seat. But she denied using her vote on the tax crease bill as leverage for the job.
“There was no deal. That’s untrue,” she said. “My background is a perfect match for someone on the Prisoner Review Board. I’m done talking about it. I’m done being called a liar.”
The tax increase, which Quinn signed into law last week, passed the House with 60 votes, the minimum needed for approval.
Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady said in a statement that he’s not buying Quinn’s claim that Gordon’s appointment came after the vote. “That’s like saying it was simply a coincidence that the governor vetoed McCormick Place reforms last year after getting a $75,000 donation from the Teamsters Union,” Brady said in the statement.
http://www.suntimes.com/3329780-417/gordon-quinn-tax-vote-state.html
During her final days in office, former state Rep. Careen Gordon scored a lucrative state job after casting an important vote that helped pass Gov. Quinn’s controversial 67 percent income tax increase.
Gordon (D-Morris) and a spokeswoman for the governor said there wasn’t any deal to trade Gordon’s vote for the $85,886-a-year seat on the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.
“There was no quid pro quo,” Quinn spokeswoman Annie Thompson said Saturday. “Bottom line, she was appointed because of her extensive background in criminal justice. . . . She was just the ideal candidate.”
Gordon, who recently moved to Chicago, was an assistant state’s attorney in Will and Kankakee counties. In 2000, she also worked as an assistant attorney general under former Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan.
Gordon refused to answer questions about how she became a candidate for the board seat. But she denied using her vote on the tax crease bill as leverage for the job.
“There was no deal. That’s untrue,” she said. “My background is a perfect match for someone on the Prisoner Review Board. I’m done talking about it. I’m done being called a liar.”
The tax increase, which Quinn signed into law last week, passed the House with 60 votes, the minimum needed for approval.
Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady said in a statement that he’s not buying Quinn’s claim that Gordon’s appointment came after the vote. “That’s like saying it was simply a coincidence that the governor vetoed McCormick Place reforms last year after getting a $75,000 donation from the Teamsters Union,” Brady said in the statement.
http://www.suntimes.com/3329780-417/gordon-quinn-tax-vote-state.html
Friday, January 14, 2011
Billion-Dollar Baby: A Cautionary Tale
She is somebody somebody sent.
In the best—or maybe it’s the worst—tradition of local politics. And she was pressured into voting for a multi-billion dollar hike in the state income tax in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. By her Democratic Party allies in Springfield.
Some of her friends and neighbors may be unhappy with the tax vote but she won’t be facing any political consequences or voter backlash. And here’s why: She stepped down as an Illinois State Representative at noon on Wednesday. After one week on the job. That’s right—one week. She was, in simple terms, the lamest lame duck in a feckless Springfield flock. A billion-dollar baby.
“She” is Kathy Moore, a Lincoln Park friend and former public school teacher who was put in that unenviable position by the stark reality of political hide-and-seek. Or, in this case, seek-and-hide. Her reliably Democratic 11th District, which includes Lincoln Park and Lakeview, elected a brand new state representative, Ann Williams, in November, to replace John Fritchey, a popular long-time rep who won election to a seat on the Cook County Board. Fritchey began his new job in December, so Williams could have been sworn in as a state rep a month ago to represent the district in the lame-duck session going on in Springfield this past week. That was her initial plan.
But there were questions about how she would vote if a tax plan was on the lame-duck agenda. Williams claims that local Democratic leaders, including Fritchey and Senate President John Cullerton, wanted her commitment to support the tax hike before arranging for her to be sworn in. They say she got cold feet and decided not to start early—choosing instead to wait until Wednesday, when the rest of the freshman legislative class was sworn in.
(That, parenthetically, will save the taxpayers a few bucks because Williams won’t qualify for a more generous legislative pension than the one awaiting the new class in Springfield, thanks to a modest pension reform bill that took effect on Jan. 1. But her decision will cost the 11th District politically because, instead of moving to the top of the seniority list of new legislators by starting in December, she will be near the bottom since she’s entering with all of the other newbies, and her last name begins with “W,” a letter near the end of the alphabet. Oh well.)
Meanwhile, back at the raunch—yes, I said raunch and not ranch—Williams’s decision not to be seated early meant the political bosses in the district—Fritchey, Cullerton and the other ward committeemen—had to find someone else to fill the seat for the one-week lame-duck session. So they recruited Kathy Moore, the wife of Tom Moore, a well-known Lincoln Park zoning lawyer—because Kathy had the time and the willingness to “serve.” And down I-55 she went. Admitting sheepishly at a party last week that “they tell me what (voting) button to push and I push it.” Democracy in action.
So when the tax bill passed, without a single vote to spare, our lawmaker-for-a-week was a major reason. She says she’s not happy about voting for a gargantuan tax increase but she doesn’t think that she, or the state, had any other choice. Even though, as of Sunday, she hadn’t seen a bill. Or a press release. Or a fact sheet. Or a list of cuts, accountability measures and streamlining to go along with the increase.
“I hope it works,” she said wistfully in a text message on Wednesday morning. Williams says, for the record, that she would’ve had a hard time supporting the tax bill in its present form.
In any event, Kathy Moore was back home in Chicago by Wednesday night after morphing into a regular resident following her week as a political pumpkin. Kind of like “Cinderella” in reverse. And she may not be the life of the cocktail parties in the neighborhood for awhile, at least among the well-healed wine-and-cheese folks who will have several-thousand fewer dollars in their pockets for each of the next four years.
As for Ann Williams, the newly elected House member, she assumed her duties as the new representative of the 11th district at noon on Wednesday. And my spies at her Springfield welcoming parties report there was no evidence of any dust, dirt or snow from the rock she’s been hiding under.
Don’t you just love the Illinois Way? And can’t you see why we love being civic watchdogs?
In the best—or maybe it’s the worst—tradition of local politics. And she was pressured into voting for a multi-billion dollar hike in the state income tax in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. By her Democratic Party allies in Springfield.
Some of her friends and neighbors may be unhappy with the tax vote but she won’t be facing any political consequences or voter backlash. And here’s why: She stepped down as an Illinois State Representative at noon on Wednesday. After one week on the job. That’s right—one week. She was, in simple terms, the lamest lame duck in a feckless Springfield flock. A billion-dollar baby.
“She” is Kathy Moore, a Lincoln Park friend and former public school teacher who was put in that unenviable position by the stark reality of political hide-and-seek. Or, in this case, seek-and-hide. Her reliably Democratic 11th District, which includes Lincoln Park and Lakeview, elected a brand new state representative, Ann Williams, in November, to replace John Fritchey, a popular long-time rep who won election to a seat on the Cook County Board. Fritchey began his new job in December, so Williams could have been sworn in as a state rep a month ago to represent the district in the lame-duck session going on in Springfield this past week. That was her initial plan.
But there were questions about how she would vote if a tax plan was on the lame-duck agenda. Williams claims that local Democratic leaders, including Fritchey and Senate President John Cullerton, wanted her commitment to support the tax hike before arranging for her to be sworn in. They say she got cold feet and decided not to start early—choosing instead to wait until Wednesday, when the rest of the freshman legislative class was sworn in.
(That, parenthetically, will save the taxpayers a few bucks because Williams won’t qualify for a more generous legislative pension than the one awaiting the new class in Springfield, thanks to a modest pension reform bill that took effect on Jan. 1. But her decision will cost the 11th District politically because, instead of moving to the top of the seniority list of new legislators by starting in December, she will be near the bottom since she’s entering with all of the other newbies, and her last name begins with “W,” a letter near the end of the alphabet. Oh well.)
Meanwhile, back at the raunch—yes, I said raunch and not ranch—Williams’s decision not to be seated early meant the political bosses in the district—Fritchey, Cullerton and the other ward committeemen—had to find someone else to fill the seat for the one-week lame-duck session. So they recruited Kathy Moore, the wife of Tom Moore, a well-known Lincoln Park zoning lawyer—because Kathy had the time and the willingness to “serve.” And down I-55 she went. Admitting sheepishly at a party last week that “they tell me what (voting) button to push and I push it.” Democracy in action.
So when the tax bill passed, without a single vote to spare, our lawmaker-for-a-week was a major reason. She says she’s not happy about voting for a gargantuan tax increase but she doesn’t think that she, or the state, had any other choice. Even though, as of Sunday, she hadn’t seen a bill. Or a press release. Or a fact sheet. Or a list of cuts, accountability measures and streamlining to go along with the increase.
“I hope it works,” she said wistfully in a text message on Wednesday morning. Williams says, for the record, that she would’ve had a hard time supporting the tax bill in its present form.
In any event, Kathy Moore was back home in Chicago by Wednesday night after morphing into a regular resident following her week as a political pumpkin. Kind of like “Cinderella” in reverse. And she may not be the life of the cocktail parties in the neighborhood for awhile, at least among the well-healed wine-and-cheese folks who will have several-thousand fewer dollars in their pockets for each of the next four years.
As for Ann Williams, the newly elected House member, she assumed her duties as the new representative of the 11th district at noon on Wednesday. And my spies at her Springfield welcoming parties report there was no evidence of any dust, dirt or snow from the rock she’s been hiding under.
Don’t you just love the Illinois Way? And can’t you see why we love being civic watchdogs?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Quinn-Says not dishonest with taxpayers for campaigning during the 2010 election on a 1 percentage point increase
Posted by Ray Long at 12:01 p.m.
Gov. Pat Quinn said today he will sign a major income tax increase as soon as it hits his desk and rejected criticism that he had misled taxpayers by saying during his campaign that he would only sign a smaller increase.
With no votes to spare and no Republican support in either the House or Senate, the Democratic-controlled General Assembly sent the measure to the Democratic governor early this morning after hours of bombastic debate. The action came in the waning moments of the lame-duck session just before a new General Assembly is sworn in.
The measure would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
"We had an emergency, a fiscal emergency," Quinn said during a statehouse news conference this morning, just hours after the state Senate voted to send him the tax legislation.
Quinn said "no" when asked if he had been dishonest with taxpayers for campaigning during the 2010 election on a 1 percentage point increase in the income tax rate but now agreeing to sign the 2 percentage point hike.
The governor sought to justify the larger increase in part by saying fiscal experts had told leaders the state's financial problems were escalating in the last two months.
"Our house was burning," Quinn said. "Our fiscal house was burning."
Quinn negotiated the tax plan with fellow Democrats who control the legislature and had to wade into the details just before midnight Tuesday to get the measure over a final hurdle when African-American senators balked at revisions to the deal.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think you're stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
Posted at 12:03:10 PM in Governor, Legislature
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-on-tax-hike-our-fiscal-house-was-burning.html
Gov. Pat Quinn said today he will sign a major income tax increase as soon as it hits his desk and rejected criticism that he had misled taxpayers by saying during his campaign that he would only sign a smaller increase.
With no votes to spare and no Republican support in either the House or Senate, the Democratic-controlled General Assembly sent the measure to the Democratic governor early this morning after hours of bombastic debate. The action came in the waning moments of the lame-duck session just before a new General Assembly is sworn in.
The measure would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
"We had an emergency, a fiscal emergency," Quinn said during a statehouse news conference this morning, just hours after the state Senate voted to send him the tax legislation.
Quinn said "no" when asked if he had been dishonest with taxpayers for campaigning during the 2010 election on a 1 percentage point increase in the income tax rate but now agreeing to sign the 2 percentage point hike.
The governor sought to justify the larger increase in part by saying fiscal experts had told leaders the state's financial problems were escalating in the last two months.
"Our house was burning," Quinn said. "Our fiscal house was burning."
Quinn negotiated the tax plan with fellow Democrats who control the legislature and had to wade into the details just before midnight Tuesday to get the measure over a final hurdle when African-American senators balked at revisions to the deal.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think you're stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
Posted at 12:03:10 PM in Governor, Legislature
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-on-tax-hike-our-fiscal-house-was-burning.html
But Do Please, Brer Madigan, Don’t Fling Me in Dat Springfield Brier-Patch
Jim Leahy 11 January 2011
You have to hand it to Speaker Madigan, knowing the political landscape and the way the last election went he is going to pass a tax increase and still let some Democrats look like fiscal conservatives. Yes he and the Governor float a huge 75% and of course the voters hit the roof. But for the last few days Madigan has allowed some of suburban and downstate members come out aggressively against big spending and government expansion.
So now when the tax increase comes out as a paltry 40% or so every one of these Democrats in the next election can use the footage of them demanding that the “Needed increase” be reduced and spending caps be put into place. How much better can things get for a Democrat? They get more money to pay for their huge spending over the last decade with huge tax increases and still will be able to claim fiscal conservatism! Wow! And the media is doing it’s job by providing the camera time for the members from red areas. Providing cover for past spending with questions like “is this something like a trigger being put into place that if you over spend the tax increase is nullified?” Or “Does this mean you can stomach a tax increase if they put a hold on spending?”
My own Representative Karen May (D-58) has been every where in the media going so far as to put out an email with the following paragraph:
“.Thanks for the encouragement many of you gave to me for the media coverage of my leadership in the House for fiscal sanity as we contemplate revenues to return to us to strong financial health. I will fight down to the final minutes of the 96th General Assembly on Wednesday.” She went on to claim “I also want you to know that on Thursday, the House passed HB 5420, which I co-sponsored, which will implement significant reforms to our Medicaid system, in order to both rein in costs and improve care. The bill will tighten eligibility standards for the Medicaid program, increase the use of managed care, provide payment for performance and increase the use of electronic records. The bill will also increase penalties for Medicaid fraud, and provide for greater responsibility in the payment of claims. The bill is estimated to save the state $774 million over five years, money which can help us pay down our deficit.”
Imagine that, a member of the party that has been in control for over 8 years, and has spent the state into oblivion with huge expansions of government, can say with a straight face she is providing leadership for fiscal sanity! By the time this is over, these Democratic legislators will get awards from tax payer groups for being so fiscally conservative. They saved us from a 75% increase and a increase in the corporate tax rate that would make it the highest in the industrialized world.
The Republican leadership had better get in front of this now by reminding the voters how we got into this mess. Remind voters that the Democrats “significant reforms” were requiring people to prove they lived in Illinois!. My God how fiscally conservative can you get? Maybe next, Republicans and these newly conservative Democrats could demand a list of people enrolled in All Kids or even to get a list of all of the services the state provides? No that’s asking to much don’t you think? One step at a time.
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/but-do-please-brer-madigan-dont-fling-me-in-dat-springfield-brier-patch/
You have to hand it to Speaker Madigan, knowing the political landscape and the way the last election went he is going to pass a tax increase and still let some Democrats look like fiscal conservatives. Yes he and the Governor float a huge 75% and of course the voters hit the roof. But for the last few days Madigan has allowed some of suburban and downstate members come out aggressively against big spending and government expansion.
So now when the tax increase comes out as a paltry 40% or so every one of these Democrats in the next election can use the footage of them demanding that the “Needed increase” be reduced and spending caps be put into place. How much better can things get for a Democrat? They get more money to pay for their huge spending over the last decade with huge tax increases and still will be able to claim fiscal conservatism! Wow! And the media is doing it’s job by providing the camera time for the members from red areas. Providing cover for past spending with questions like “is this something like a trigger being put into place that if you over spend the tax increase is nullified?” Or “Does this mean you can stomach a tax increase if they put a hold on spending?”
My own Representative Karen May (D-58) has been every where in the media going so far as to put out an email with the following paragraph:
“.Thanks for the encouragement many of you gave to me for the media coverage of my leadership in the House for fiscal sanity as we contemplate revenues to return to us to strong financial health. I will fight down to the final minutes of the 96th General Assembly on Wednesday.” She went on to claim “I also want you to know that on Thursday, the House passed HB 5420, which I co-sponsored, which will implement significant reforms to our Medicaid system, in order to both rein in costs and improve care. The bill will tighten eligibility standards for the Medicaid program, increase the use of managed care, provide payment for performance and increase the use of electronic records. The bill will also increase penalties for Medicaid fraud, and provide for greater responsibility in the payment of claims. The bill is estimated to save the state $774 million over five years, money which can help us pay down our deficit.”
Imagine that, a member of the party that has been in control for over 8 years, and has spent the state into oblivion with huge expansions of government, can say with a straight face she is providing leadership for fiscal sanity! By the time this is over, these Democratic legislators will get awards from tax payer groups for being so fiscally conservative. They saved us from a 75% increase and a increase in the corporate tax rate that would make it the highest in the industrialized world.
The Republican leadership had better get in front of this now by reminding the voters how we got into this mess. Remind voters that the Democrats “significant reforms” were requiring people to prove they lived in Illinois!. My God how fiscally conservative can you get? Maybe next, Republicans and these newly conservative Democrats could demand a list of people enrolled in All Kids or even to get a list of all of the services the state provides? No that’s asking to much don’t you think? One step at a time.
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/but-do-please-brer-madigan-dont-fling-me-in-dat-springfield-brier-patch/
Quinn congratulates Democrats on income tax increase
Posted by Ray Long and Monique Garcia at 2:15 a.m.
A triumphant Gov. Pat Quinn congratulated fellow Democrats early today after the Illinois Senate and House sent him a major income tax increase without a single Republican vote in favor.
Quinn smiled and shook hands on the floor of the Senate around 1:30 a.m. after the Senate voted 30-29 for the bill, which would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think your stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-congratulates-democrats-on-income-tax-increase.html
A triumphant Gov. Pat Quinn congratulated fellow Democrats early today after the Illinois Senate and House sent him a major income tax increase without a single Republican vote in favor.
Quinn smiled and shook hands on the floor of the Senate around 1:30 a.m. after the Senate voted 30-29 for the bill, which would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.
The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night -- likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
The plan nearly faltered in the Senate when black lawmakers balked at the House’s decision to remove a property-tax relief component from the plan and failure to approve a cigarette tax hike for schools. But Quinn met privately with members of the Senate black caucus, who said he pledged to pump $250 million from the income tax increase into schools for each of the next four years.
"A lot of them are my friends and we worked together in campaigns and we believe in working together in important things that help children," Quinn said when reporters caught up to him after the Senate vote.
Asked if there was a lot of horse trading to win support, Quinn said "not really. Everybody voted their conscience."
Quinn deferred most questions until a news conference scheduled for 10:30 a.m., just hours before lawmakers elected in November were to be sworn in as the General Assembly starts a new session. Democrats relied on the votes of some lame-duck lawmakers to push through the tax increase.
"We were happy that the Senate voted that way and the House did too, and we'll talk about it tomorrow," Quinn said, forgetting that he meant a little later today.
Democrats argued the tax increase was needed to rehabilitate the state’s deadbeat image, but Republicans predicted it would drive businesses out of state.
“We have just come through the worst economic crisis in our lifetime…and we have not paid our bills,” Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, told lawmakers shortly before the vote. “We are going to have to cut…even with this tax. We’re going to have to spend less money then we have in the last two years. And it’s going to be tough. But we are going to have our bills paid.”
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.
“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”
“You may think your stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”
The Senate debate was interrupted shortly before 1 a.m. when a state lawmaker collapsed on the floor of the chamber. State Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, was watching the debate near state Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, when he collapsed as Republican leader Christine Radogno was making what was expected to be one of the final speeches of the night.
Medical personnel and concerned lawmakers clustered around Miller and then took him out on a stretcher. He appeared to be conscious when he was wheeled out to a waiting ambulance, and the debate resumed. Earlier in the night Miller had voted in favor of the tax plan--because of his unsuccessful bid for state comptroller, Tuesday was his last day in the Legislature.
"I’m a little bit off my game here," said Sen. Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, the Republican leader. "We certainly all hope Rep. Miller is ok."
Radogno went on to say she was glad Democrats were "owning" the blame for the state's dismal budget situation, but she said the spending restrictions in the bill were not good enough.
Earlier in the night the House, expected to be the more difficult place to gain traction, approved the tax measure 60-57.
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan chided Republicans for their refusal to support the proposal, after he and Democratic leaders who control the Senate spent days negotiating the size and scope of the tax plans behind closed doors with Quinn.
“They're on the sidelines,” Madigan said of Republicans. “They don't want to get on the field of play.”
The Senate, which approved a similar-size tax hike in May 2009 with more of the proceeds going to education, was temporarily hung up over the concerns of the black caucus. But after a meeting with Quinn, Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, said education funding had been “worked on” with Quinn.
Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, said black senators received a promise from Quinn that he would designate $250 million more to education over each of the next four years. The money would be generated by the increased income tax and had originally been designated for property tax relief. The final bill eliminated the property tax relief, freeing up those funds, Jones said.
Senators also gave final approval to a House passed plan that would allow the state to borrow nearly $4 billion to make its annual payment for public employee pensions. The House approved the plan last year.
The tax votes were the latest demonstration of a Legislature that has turned increasingly liberal since the November election, coming in the wake of a death penalty ban approved Tuesday and civil unions for gay and straight couples approved last month.
Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders raced to move the tax plan, which would raise the personal tax rate from 3 percent to 5 percent, before a new Legislature with fewer Democrats is seated. At least seven lame-duck Democrats, who will be out of office Wednesday, voted for it.
“Illinois is in crisis, absolute financial crisis, and there is no way we can dig ourselves out of the crisis without increased revenues,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. “There is no way, no way, we can cut our way out of the deficit we face.”
But Republicans argued that Democrats who have controlled state government since 2003 should make stringent budget cuts before seeking a massive income tax hike during a struggling economy.
“I can’t figure out how this plan does anything for our real problems. Our real problem is spending, the increased spending, the mentality that we have,” said Rep. Roger Eddy, R-Hutsonville. “We’ll continue to throw money into a hole that has no bottom.”
House Democrats twice failed to get the required support from Republicans to approve a massive $8.75 billion borrowing plan aimed at using a portion of new income tax revenue to pay billions of dollars in overdue bills. The measure needed 71 votes because it added to the state’s debt, but it got only 65 votes on a first ballot and 68 on a second.
Sponsoring Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, said failure to pass the borrowing plan would mean it would take up to eight years to pay off providers of state services who have waited months for their money.
Prospects for the tax hike had been questionable throughout the Legislature’s final day as Quinn held a number of one-on-one meetings with rank-and-file lawmakers, seeking votes needed to pass the tax package. Quinn entered the House chamber shortly after the vote to thank representatives who voted for the plan.
House passage of the income tax hike came after representatives voted 66-51 against a plan to boost the state’s 98-cent-per-pack cigarette tax by $1.01. The cigarette tax hike would have been earmarked to provide more than $300 million in new spending for schools, a provision sought by African-American lawmakers in exchange for their backing of a higher income tax.
In trying to sell the tax package, supporters sought to portray a sense of urgency, saying the failure to act to fill a $15 billion budget deficit, including a looming $8 billion in overdue bills, would lead to the state teetering into insolvency, its bond rating reduced to junk status.
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” said Miller, D-Lynwood, just hours before his collapse.
Under the bill that went to Quinn, the current 3 percent personal income tax rate would go to 5 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 3.75 percent. To gain more support among lawmakers, the plan would further lower the tax rate in 2025 to 3.25 percent.
For businesses, the current 4.8 percent corporate rate would go to 7 percent until 2015, when it would drop to 5.25 percent.
The plan calls for the corporate rate to fall in 2025 to the current 4.8 percent.
The tax increases, which would take effect retroactively to Jan. 1, would raise an estimated $6.5 billion over a full-year period.
In addition, the measure would attempt to limit spending in each of the next four budget years — $36.8 billion in the 2012 budget year, $37.5 billion in 2013, $38.3 billion in 2014 and $39 billion in 2015. The state’s auditor general would determine if lawmakers and the governor exceed those spending limits. If the limits are exceeded, the higher income tax rates would revert to current levels.
“This is not a game, not a trick. It’s a real spending cap,” Cullerton said. “We’re really trying to handcuff ourselves and the governor in our spending.”
But Republicans contended the limits would still allow growth in spending at a rate of 2 percent a year over the next four years, rather than require specific cuts to programs in the state budget.
Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, said voters across the country spoke in November, voting for lower taxes and less government. Reis held up a map of Illinois that he said represents how many counties Quinn won in November to show that most of Illinois is against a tax hike, except the three counties Quinn won. "Three-county Quinn," Reis called the governor.
Quinn, who campaigned on a smaller income-tax increase, won Cook County, the state's most populous region, and that propelled him to 47 percent of the vote and victory over Republican Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. State Board of Elections totals show Quinn winning four counties: Cook, Alexander, Jackson and St. Clair.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2011/01/quinn-congratulates-democrats-on-income-tax-increase.html
Tribune Editorial-Goodbye, jobs
At least 1/11/11 will be easy to remember. On that day, with the state of Illinois mired at 48th place nationwide in job creation, Democratic leaders dragged through the lame-duck House a tax plan sure to make many employers do their hiring somewhere else.
We'll leave to the Tax Foundation and other data outfits the task of calibrating precisely how much more uncompetitive Illinois becomes if the Senate passes and Gov. Pat Quinn signs this fiasco into law. Quinn and the rank-and-file Democrats who launched the enormous tax grab will own what happens next. So will House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton. Governors such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, their treasuries already enriched by refugee employers who've fled Illinois, should send the Springfield Democrats orchids and champagne.
Those Illinois Democrats have, for two do-little years, dodged a choice: Reduce spending, raise taxes, or enact some mix of the two. Cutting overhead would offend their friends in the public employee unions and other pet constituencies. Ask retired state workers to pay something for their health care? Cap employee pensions? Perish the thought.
So — get this — not only are they raising taxes to avoid budget cuts, they're including a provision to let their spending continue to rise — year after year.
We hoped for smarter legislating Tuesday night as we watched debate unfold in the House. One after another, representatives rose to expose that central flaw — among many strong contenders — in the Democratic tax plan. The bill, falsely advertised as fiscal discipline, is "designed to increase spending," thundered Rep. Jack Franks of Woodstock, one of a few outlier Democrats to vote against the bill. "This legislation will merely continue to feed the beast."
Find us an employer, or a potential employer, who doesn't awaken Wednesday thinking, "They spent and borrowed Illinois into penury, they refused to cut spending as I have, and now my workers and I are supposed to pay for all that?"
Some will, of course. Not every company can leave. But many big employers can see where they're welcome and where they're tax fodder for arrogant pols.
Remember that Illinois needs 600,000 more people working to restore employment to the level it was a decade ago. Then burn 1/11/11 into your brain — along with the phrase "Goodbye, jobs."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-legislature-0112-bd-20110111,0,4534433.story
We'll leave to the Tax Foundation and other data outfits the task of calibrating precisely how much more uncompetitive Illinois becomes if the Senate passes and Gov. Pat Quinn signs this fiasco into law. Quinn and the rank-and-file Democrats who launched the enormous tax grab will own what happens next. So will House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton. Governors such as Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, their treasuries already enriched by refugee employers who've fled Illinois, should send the Springfield Democrats orchids and champagne.
Those Illinois Democrats have, for two do-little years, dodged a choice: Reduce spending, raise taxes, or enact some mix of the two. Cutting overhead would offend their friends in the public employee unions and other pet constituencies. Ask retired state workers to pay something for their health care? Cap employee pensions? Perish the thought.
So — get this — not only are they raising taxes to avoid budget cuts, they're including a provision to let their spending continue to rise — year after year.
We hoped for smarter legislating Tuesday night as we watched debate unfold in the House. One after another, representatives rose to expose that central flaw — among many strong contenders — in the Democratic tax plan. The bill, falsely advertised as fiscal discipline, is "designed to increase spending," thundered Rep. Jack Franks of Woodstock, one of a few outlier Democrats to vote against the bill. "This legislation will merely continue to feed the beast."
Find us an employer, or a potential employer, who doesn't awaken Wednesday thinking, "They spent and borrowed Illinois into penury, they refused to cut spending as I have, and now my workers and I are supposed to pay for all that?"
Some will, of course. Not every company can leave. But many big employers can see where they're welcome and where they're tax fodder for arrogant pols.
Remember that Illinois needs 600,000 more people working to restore employment to the level it was a decade ago. Then burn 1/11/11 into your brain — along with the phrase "Goodbye, jobs."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-legislature-0112-bd-20110111,0,4534433.story
Monday, January 10, 2011
Daniels: Illinois tax hikes good for Indiana
By Dan Carden
INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mitch Daniels thinks Illinois' proposed 75 percent hike in its corporate and personal income tax rates will be great -- for Indiana.
In an exclusive interview Friday with The Times, the Republican governor said he looks forward to welcoming to the Hoosier State any Illinois business or resident that wants to pay less in taxes.
"We already had an edge on Illinois in terms of the cost of doing business, and this is going to make it significantly wider," Daniels said.
Illinois lawmakers are poised to vote next week on a plan that will raise the state's personal income tax rate to 5.25 percent from 3 percent, hike the corporate income and personal property replacement tax rates to a combined 10.9 percent and add an extra tax of $1 per pack of cigarettes. The income tax hikes would be retroactive to Jan. 1 and be reduced after four years.
Hoosiers pay a 3.4 personal income tax rate, while Indiana's corporate income tax rate is 8.5 percent.
The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, noted if the proposed corporate tax hike becomes law, Illinois businesses will pay the highest combined national-local corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.
That is the wrong course for Illinois to take, Daniels said.
"Folks in Illinois will eventually have to decide: Is this working well enough for us or do we want something different?" he said. "Point one of our anti-recession strategy here is to avoid doing what they've now decided to do."
Daniels has enacted deep budget cuts and eliminated many government programs to keep Indiana's budget balanced without a tax hike during his six years in office.
The money raised by the Illinois tax increases will help the state pay some $8.5 billion in overdue bills and make a $3.7 billion payment owed to government worker pension funds. Schools also would receive additional funding while property taxpayers would get a small annual rebate.
Despite the tax increase, Daniels said he's pleased to see Illinois finally may start paying its bills.
"That's just borrowing by a different name. They've been borrowing from the poor businesses that are suckers enough to do business with the state," he said.
Daniels also said he's surprised that two states as geographically and historically similar as Indiana and Illinois could be in such dissimilar financial shape.
"It does show that you can make very different choices, and the contrast between the choice we've made and the one they have is stark," he said. "Obviously I think ours is wiser, but self-governance means people get what they vote for."
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/illinois/article_27130bf0-6ebf-529f-9e40-4b8c9f205f93.html#
INDIANAPOLIS | Gov. Mitch Daniels thinks Illinois' proposed 75 percent hike in its corporate and personal income tax rates will be great -- for Indiana.
In an exclusive interview Friday with The Times, the Republican governor said he looks forward to welcoming to the Hoosier State any Illinois business or resident that wants to pay less in taxes.
"We already had an edge on Illinois in terms of the cost of doing business, and this is going to make it significantly wider," Daniels said.
Illinois lawmakers are poised to vote next week on a plan that will raise the state's personal income tax rate to 5.25 percent from 3 percent, hike the corporate income and personal property replacement tax rates to a combined 10.9 percent and add an extra tax of $1 per pack of cigarettes. The income tax hikes would be retroactive to Jan. 1 and be reduced after four years.
Hoosiers pay a 3.4 personal income tax rate, while Indiana's corporate income tax rate is 8.5 percent.
The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group in Washington, noted if the proposed corporate tax hike becomes law, Illinois businesses will pay the highest combined national-local corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.
That is the wrong course for Illinois to take, Daniels said.
"Folks in Illinois will eventually have to decide: Is this working well enough for us or do we want something different?" he said. "Point one of our anti-recession strategy here is to avoid doing what they've now decided to do."
Daniels has enacted deep budget cuts and eliminated many government programs to keep Indiana's budget balanced without a tax hike during his six years in office.
The money raised by the Illinois tax increases will help the state pay some $8.5 billion in overdue bills and make a $3.7 billion payment owed to government worker pension funds. Schools also would receive additional funding while property taxpayers would get a small annual rebate.
Despite the tax increase, Daniels said he's pleased to see Illinois finally may start paying its bills.
"That's just borrowing by a different name. They've been borrowing from the poor businesses that are suckers enough to do business with the state," he said.
Daniels also said he's surprised that two states as geographically and historically similar as Indiana and Illinois could be in such dissimilar financial shape.
"It does show that you can make very different choices, and the contrast between the choice we've made and the one they have is stark," he said. "Obviously I think ours is wiser, but self-governance means people get what they vote for."
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/illinois/article_27130bf0-6ebf-529f-9e40-4b8c9f205f93.html#
The progressive “climate of hate:” An illustrated primer, 2000-2010
By Michelle Malkin • January 10, 2011 03:19 AM
The Tuscon massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.
They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.
Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.
And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.
They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.
***
The progressive climate of hate: A comprehensive illustrated primer in 8 parts:
I. PALIN HATE
II. BUSH HATE
III. MISC. TEA PARTY/GOP/ANTI-TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE HATE
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists, & unions
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
VIII. HATE: CRIMES — the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
***
I. PALIN HATE
Flashback — pointing a fake gun at the head of a Sarah Palin likeness sitting next to a cardboard cutout of her daughter in a museum display
Getty has since yanked the photo, but as one commenter who saw the photo at Getty’s site before it was yanked noted: “To see that image presented as if it were completely normal and purchasable was shocking.”
Flashback — trendy “ABORT Sarah Palin” stickers:
Flashback — Palin-hating artwork designating her an “M.I.L.P.” (Mother I’d Like to Punch). Hat tip: Edge of Forever:
Flashback — Palin Derangement Syndrome mobsters in Philly: “Let’s stone her, old school”
Flashback — Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”
Flashback — Sandra Bernhard bashing Sarah Palin and cursing her head off with hate warping her crazed face:
Flashback — Why Sarah Palin Incites Near-Violent Rage In Normally Reasonable Women.
Flashback — the Democratic Underground indulging in name-calling the MSM ignores:
Reader Monica M. sent me a link to the Democratic Underground’s latest thread for commenters to come up with nicknames and posters to slime GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and then to “spread [them] all over the ‘net.” There are now nearly 100 filthy, hate-filled responses and counting. Among the “nicer” entries: “Cruella,” “Gidget,” “Governor Jesus Camp,” “VPILF,” “Fertilla the Huntress,” “Iditabroad,” and “KILLER PYSCHO FUNDIE BITCH FROM HELL!!”
…Peer with me further into the liberal sinkhole again and behold P.D.S. in full bloom. Note that this site is raising money for Barack Obama and that an ad for their fundraiser appears at the top of the thread. Is Obama going to accept their cash? Know your enemy:
…The Photoshop entries getting thumbs up from DU commenters:
Flashback — “F**k the rich:” Class-war arsonist on the loose
Flashback — Anti-war, anti-Bush loons attack girl in wheelchair
Flashback — Gems from Journolist…“F—ing Nascar retards…”; “Sarah Spitz, producer of the KCRW public radio program ‘Left, Right and Center,’ which is heard on a number of NPR stations across the country, wrote on JournoList that if she witnessed Limbaugh dying of a heart attack, she would ‘laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out.’”
Flashback — “I hope Glenn Beck kills himself”
Flashback — The Democrat Rep. Pete Stark Raving Mad archive
Flashback — Malik Zulu Shabazz, “Prepare for war”
Flashback — 2007 New Black Panther Party block party rap: “bang for freedom,” “put the bang right into a cracker’s face,” and if you’re going to bang, bang for black power… hang a cracker [unintelligible] . . .if you’re going to bang, bang on the white devil. . . . burying him near the river bank with the right shovel. . . . community revolution in progress…. banging for crackers to go to hell, we don’t need em:”
Flashback — The insane rage of the same-sex marriage mob
Before election day, national media hand-wringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The Right was, in the words of New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by “insane rage.” Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook in fear.
But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued. No nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis, and self-autopsy. In fact, there’s only one angry mob gripped by “insane rage” in the wake of campaign 2008: The mob of left-wing, same-sex marriage activists incensed at their defeat in California. Voters there approved a traditional marriage initiative, Proposition 8, by 52-48.
Instead of introspection and self-criticism, however, the sore losers who opposed Prop. 8 have responded with threats, fists, and blacklists.
That’s right. Activists have published an “Anti-Gay Black List” of Prop. 8 donors on the Internet. If the tables had been turned and Prop. 8 proponents created such an enemies’ list, everyone in Hollywood would be screaming “McCarthyism” faster than you can count to eight. A Los Angeles restaurant whose manager made a small donation to the Prop. 8 campaign has been besieged nightly by hordes of protesters who have disrupted the business, intimidated patrons, and brought employees there to tears. In fear for their jobs and their lives, workers at El Coyote Mexican Café pooled together $500 to pay off the bullies.
Scott Eckern, a beleaguered artistic director at the California Musical Theatre, was forced to resign over his $1,000 donation to the Prop. 8 campaign. The director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Rich Raddon, is next on the chopping block after the anti-Prop. 8 mob discovered that he had also contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign. Calls have been pouring in for his firing.
Over the past two weeks, anti-Prop. 8 organizers have targeted Mormon, Catholic, and evangelical churches. Sentiments like this one, found on the anti-Prop.8 website “JoeMyGod,” are common across the left-wing blogosphere: “Burn their f—ing churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers.” Thousands of gay-rights demonstrators stood in front of the Mormon temple in Los Angeles shouting “Mormon scum.” The Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City received threatening letters containing an unidentified powder. Religious-bashing protesters filled with hate decried the “hate” at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. Vandals defaced the Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, Calif., because church members had collected Prop. 8 petitions. One worshiper’s car was keyed with the slogans “Gay sex is love” and “SEX;” another car’s antenna and windshield wipers were broken.
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals chase Christian evangelists out of San Francisco’s Castro district:
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals stomp on elderly Prop. 8 supporter’s cross:
Flashback — Anti-Prop. 8 mob rings in 2009 with more church vandalism
Flashback — Climate of hate: More threats from the gay marriage mob
Flashback — NYTimes finally acknowledges that anti-Prop. 8 mob is harassing traditional marriage supporters
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
Flashback — The Playboy hatef**k list (screencapped in full here – NSFW)
Flashback — Sex, Violence and Hate: the Top 10 Most Disgusting Attacks on Conservative Women
Flashback — Montel Williams to GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann:
WILLIAMS (1:30:32): Michele, slit your wrist.
Go ahead… or, do us all a better thing [sic].
Move that knife up about two feet.
Start right at the collarbone.
Flashback — The four stages of conservative female abuse
Flashback — The Ladies of the Spew “bitch” and moan
Flashback — Laura Bush hatred at the SFChronicle
Flashback — Another day, another hate wish
Flashback — “The bitch is dead meat.”
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists & unions
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at Columbia University…
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at UNC-Chapel Hill…
Left-wing mob blocks military shipments in Olympia, WA…
Left-wing mob illegally trespasses and breaks into a home in Baltimore in the name of “social justice”…
Left-wing SEIU/NPA mob descends on D.C. bank exec’s home, harasses son
Flashback — March 2009 – The rule of the mob:
Animal rights’ terrorists have firebombed researchers’ homes and Molotov cocktail-bombed their cars and been convicted of inciting threats, harassment, and vandalism against employees of a private company engaged in animal research.
Environmental terrorists have set developments on fire.
Self-proclaimed “bank terrorist” Bruce Marks, who I reported on last March, has been threatening bank employees in their homes and harassing their children for years:
IT MAY SEEM LIKE AN UNUSUAL CHOICE, given that Marks is a controversial character who once infamously called himself a “bank terrorist.” But this is no ordinary time, and it seems uniquely suited to Marks’s curious blend of in-your-face activism, customer-focused service, Machiavellian angling, and social-justice passion.
Over the years, as part of his permanent campaign to browbeat banks into giving fair loans to low- and moderate-income people, Marks and his yellow-T-shirted followers have swarmed shareholders’ meetings with enough force to shut them down. They have picketed outside the schools attended by the children of bank CEOs, pressing the youngsters in signs and chants to answer for the actions of their daddies. And they even once distributed scandal sheets to every house in one CEO’s neighborhood, detailing the affair he was allegedly having with a subordinate. In time, that CEO, like most of the others that NACA targeted, sat down with Marks and signed a deal.
To those who found his tactics an outrageous invasion of bank executives’ personal lives, Marks refused to acknowledge any line between home and work. “What you do is who you are,” he says. “It’s all personal.”
And last weekend, of course, the ACORN mob chartered a bus — with twice as many outrage-stoking MSM photographers in tow — to menace AIG executives in their homes.
Flashback — The Green War on Children
Flashback — Torch-wielding leftists at UC Berkeley attack chancellor’s home
Flashback — Campus chaos: Social justice mobsters attack police, smash windows over tuition hikes; Update: “Who’s (sic) schools?”
Flashback — The left-wing bullies in Robert Reich’s backyard
Flashback — Big Labor’s legacy of violence
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
Flashback — August 2010…An open-borders activist smacks a man with a camera covering the Arizona state capitol protest over SB 1070…
Flashback — November 2009…Far Left’s ANSWER goons attack foes of illegal immigration
The slogan on the back of a protesting Puerto Rican singer from the band Calle 13 says “Luz verde para invadir Arizona.” Translation: “Green light to invade Arizona:”
“Smash the state”…
Flashback — The May Day angry mob you won’t see…
Escalating violence in the name of mass illegal alien amnesty…
They came, they saw, they threatened or committed violence in the name of open borders and workers’ rights. But alas, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman’s columns decrying the insane rage and hate of the May Day angry mob got lost in the mail.
In Santa Cruz, they carried torches and vandalized at least 18 businesses:
Downtown business owners spent Sunday repairing shattered windows and doors after a May Day rally Saturday night turned into a riot with approximately 250 people marching along Pacific Avenue, some carrying makeshift torches, throwing large rocks and paint bombs, and spray-painting walls with graffiti.
At least 18 businesses suffered damage during the rally in honor of international workers that began at 9 p.m. and escalated into mayhem around 10:30 p.m., police said. Investigators estimated damage at $100,000, though some business owners said it could be more. No injuries were reported.
On Sunday, sea green-colored glass littered sidewalks where windows and glass doors had been smashed. Maintenance workers, many getting called in the middle of the night, boarded up windows with plywood until new sheets of glass could be installed.
The vandalized businesses included Urban Outfitters, Peet’s Coffee, Noah’s Bagels, Jamba Juice, Velvet Underground and Dell Williams Jewelers. The unoccupied Rittenhouse building also was damaged. A police car was vandalized with rocks and paint, department spokesman Zach Friend said.
In San Francisco, anti-illegal immigration activists were attacked by the May Day marchers:
LISA AMIN GULEZIAN, REPORTER: Allan, for the most part the event was peaceful, but just about an hour ago, three people were attacked and two others were arrested. The people who were assaulted were part of the Minutemen demonstration in favor of Arizona’s new immigration law.
They said a large group of immigrants’ rights supporters followed them to the BART station on Market Street and started punching and kicking them, and calling them names.
PARKER WILSON, BAY AREA ANARCHIST: They said we were racists, and that we were against them, and against their town, and against San Francisco, and what they were saying. They said we needed to get out and they called us racists, and that we need to go home. And then they just attacked my friends and me.
Flashback — The American flag comes second…
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
January 20, 2005. At Seattle Central Community College, Army recruiter Sgt. Jeff Due and his colleague, Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were surrounded by an angry mob of 500 anti-war students. The recruiters’ table was destroyed; their handouts torn apart. The protesters threw water bottles and newspapers at the soldiers, shouted profanities, and wielded their fists. The far Left Students Against War had been agitating to kick the recruiters off campus. The college administration refused to punish the mobsters.
Jan. 31, 2005. A little more than a week after the Seattle ambush, a shockingly fair and rare report from the NYT disclosed that recruiters in Manhattan reported that a door to their office had been beaten in. Anarchist symbols were scrawled in red paint on the building. On the same day, NY police collared a young Manhattan College junior and charged him with throwing a burning rag into an Army recruiting station and ruining the door locks with super glue. The radical student “was caught carrying a handwritten note declaring that a ‘wave of violence’ would occur throughout the Northeast on January 31, aimed at the ‘military industrial complex’ in response to American military actions.’”
Feb. 1, 2005. At a South Toledo, Ohio recruitment center, unhinged protesters hurled manure all over the building. They broke windows and sprayed vulgar grafitti — “War is Shit” — on office property. An e-mail sent to local TV station WTOL-TV by a group calling itself, yes, “War is Shit,” claimed responsibility for the property destruction. The crapweasels were never caught. WTOL reported:
“If they don’t like this country that much they should do it the right way by changing with votes. Shouldn’t do it with actions like that,” said Steve Klostermeier, a bystander. Mike Gibson agreed, saying, “I think it’s terrible. I think they’re blaming the people who fought to give them the right to do stuff like that. They should have the courage to stand up and say it rather than doing stuff like that.”
Mid-Feb. 2005. 20-year-old anti-war goon Brendan Walsh is sentenced to five years in federal prison for hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window of a Vestal, NY military recruitment office in 2003. Celebrated as a hero to the anti-war/anarchist movement, he pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to damage or destroy a building by arson and was expected to be released to a halfway house last month.
…April 2006. The infamous UC Santa Cruz ambush on military recruiters takes place. The thugs gloated about throwing a rock at the recruiters’ SUV. Recruiters, who had been similarly driven off campus the previous year, reported slashed tires. One employee at the career center was injured in the melee. Photos here. The capitulationist campus administration had known in advance about the ambush plans and did nothing. Instead of condemning the speech-stifling lawlessness of the anti-war mob, unhinged sympathizers attacked me for publishing the public contact information of the thugs’ propaganda officers and also outrageoulsy blamed me for the subsequent suicide of the troubled UC Santa Cruz president, Denice Denton. They continue to lie about what happened.
Just a few weeks later, more anti-recruitment attacks break out. A reader alerted me to this vandalism at UNC Chapel-Hill and sent photos taken by her son, an ROTC cadet on campus:
Then, in Minnesota, via the Minneapolis Star Tribune
S-T caption: Three people were apprehended this afternoon by police after pouring paint on an Army recruiting station near the University of Minnesota during an antiwar demonstration.
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
In an attempt to discover how a bunch of murdering cowards like the US Air Force enjoy finding themselves on the other end of some flying projectiles for a change, at around 3:00 AM this morning an autonomous cell of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN) used bricks and other common household items to smash the shit out of the Air Force recruiting center in Rockville, Maryland. Do we even need to explain the motivation for our actions? A shout out to our comrades from the Borf: Revolution or Bust Faction (BORFROBF), who late last year gave a similar treatment to the military recruitment center in Silver Spring. Consider this a modest response to your “dare to those here in the heart of the imperial beast to step it up”. In suburbs so hollow, may the echo of our actions be long and loud! Big ups to all those out there who claim RAAN. Fuck them haters who don’t realize we are but a few of the millions of ant’s bites which can topple this elephant once and for all. No war but class war, communism or bust! IT’S A DO OR DIE SITUATION – WE WILL BE INVINCIBLE!
And in Lufkin, TX, , Army and Navy recruiters were the targets of vandals who keyed their cars, smashed their windows, and shot at their vehicles with “with what appeared to be a high-powered pellet gun.”
Jan. 2007. Anti-war radicals lay siege to the US Capitol and smash windows at the recruitment center on 14th and L.
Pittsburgh anti-recruiter organizers shut down a military recruitment station for a whole day. They brandish hateful signs like this:
August 2007. In New England: Suspect charged with leaving fake bomb at recruitment office.
A city man was arrested Tuesday on charges that he twice left a fake bomb package at a military recruitment office, police said. Francis Monaghan, 68, was charged with two counts of first-degree breach of peace, a felony, and two counts of reckless endangerment, said Lt. Sean Cooney. “He made certain incriminating statements,” Cooney said. “He did express some anti-war feelings. We think that was at least partially his motivation.” Monaghan was being held on $100,000 bond. An envelope slipped into the recruiting station mailbox on Bedford Street Monday morning contained batteries and other “bomb-making components,” Cooney said. The package was nearly identical to an envelope left at the same U.S. Army/U.S. Air Force station last months, police said. Both bore “unusual writing” and were placed in the station’s mailbox, Cooney said.
September 2007. The far Left group, Iraq Veterans Against the War calls on followers to commit fraud to interfere with military recruiters. The sabotage action was part of a larger, coordinated campaign with the International ANSWER racket to obstruct military recruitment centers in Washington and across the country. Other socialist partners in crime:
http://www.notyoursoldier.org/
http://www.warresisters.org/
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil
Anti-war punks shut down the Times Square recruitment station:
The New York chapter of the War Resisters League kicked off a week of actions against military recruitment in New York by shutting down the Times Square Recruiting Station Saturday morning. Three members of the WRL were arrested, but the recruiting station remained closed for the rest of the day as the WRL maintained its presence there, joined in the afternoon by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. The three arrestees were charged with disorderly conduct and released four hours later.
October 2007. Code Pink defaces the Berkeley recruitment center, branding our troops as assassins:
June 2009: And now this: Shooting at military recruiting center; 1 dead, 1 wounded; suspect is anti-military Muslim convert
VIII. And finally, the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
Gainsville, Fla., Democrat David P. McCally was charged with battery after he allegedly barged into a local GOP office, assaulted a cardboard cutout of President Bush, and punched a local Republican chairman in September 2004. (Credit: Alachua County Jail.)
In March 2004, Carol Lang, a campus secretary at City College in New York, reportedly assaulted a police officer trying to arrest unruly anti-war protesters. Police arrested Lang and charged her with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct, and obstructing governmental administration. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
At the same protest at which Carol Lang was arrested, police arrested students Justin Rodriguez, left, and Nicholas Bergreen. They charged Rodriguez with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. They charged Bergreen with assaulting a police officer. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
Police arrested Corey Robert Cooke of Ellicott City, Md., in September 2004 and charged him with malicious destruction of property after he allegedly used a power tool to cut down a Bush-Cheney sign. (Credit: Howard County Police Department.)
Howard County, Md., police arrested Peter Lizon, left, and Stephanie Louise Lizon in October 2004 and charged them with malicious destruction of property. Mr. Lizon allegedly destroyed Bush-Cheney signs with a bayonet. His wife allegedly acted as the lookout. (Credit: Howard County Police.)
Nashville police arrested Andrew Thurman, left, and Frederick Stevenson in Septmeber 2004 and charged them with theft and unlawful weapons possession after they found guns and 71 Bush-Cheney signs in Thurman’s car. Policy say they stole the signs from Nashville, Tenn., yards because Thurman was angry at President Bush for sending his brother to Iraq. (Credit: Nashville Police Department.)
Nathan Winkler of Tampa, Fla., was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking in March 2005 for allegedly terrorizing a mother who had a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on her car. Click on the video here to listen to an excerpt of the mother’s frantic call to 911. Winkler reportedly had a handmade sign in his window that read, “Never forget Bush’s illegal oil war murdered thousands in Iraq.” (Credit: Tampa Police Department.)
Florida Democrat Barry Seltzer allegedly tried to run down congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac as she was campaigning in Sarasota, Fla., in October 2004. See the arrest report here. (Credit: Sarasota Police Department via The Smoking Gun.)
In April 2005, Earlham College suspended Josh Medlin after he threw an ice cream pie at Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Medlin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge two weeks ago. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In March 2005, Western Michigan University police arrested Samuel Mesick and charged him with a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace after Mesick threw a cup of salad dressing on Pat Buchanan. Buchanan chose not to press felony assault charges. Click here to see video footage of the attack. (Credit: Kalamazoo Police Department.)
Police cited Bruce Charles of Portland for disorderly conduct after Charles threw a shoe at former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle in February 2005. (Credit: Portland Police Department.)
In April 2005, Indianapolis police arrested Joshua Miner of Danville, Ind., on charges of criminal mischief, a felony. Miner allegedly smashed glass panels at a monument to Medal of Honor recipients. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In May 2005, police arrested Ajai Raj and charged him with disorderly conduct after he asked a vulgar question and made lewd hand gestures after a speech by conservative author Ann Coulter at the University of Texas at Austin. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: The Smoking Gun.)
Sowande Ajumoke Omokunde son of congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee), was one of five paid Kerry campaign workers in Milwaukee who allegedly slashed the tires of 20 vans that had been rented by Wisconsin Republicans as part of their Election Day 2004 get-out-the-vote effort. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Michael Pratt, son of former Milwaukee mayor Marvin Pratt, is another alleged tire-slasher. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Three other alleged tire-slashers: Lewis Caldwell (top-left), Justin Howell (top-right), and Lavelle Mohammed (bottom). (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
In March 2004, Claremont McKenna College visiting professor of psychology Kerri Dunn falsely claimed she discovered anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-woman graffiti spray-painted on her 1992 Honda Civic. Dunn was convicted of two felony counts of attemped insurance fraud and one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report. (Credit: Claremont Police Department.)
Phillip Edgar Smith, left, and William Zachary Wolff were arrested after they threw custard cream pies at conservative author Ann Coulter during her speech at the University of Arizona in October 2004. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: Pima County Jail via The Smoking Gun.)
December 2009 – Palin-hater Jeremy Olson arrested for attempted assault and disorderly conduct after hurling two tomatoes at the Alaska governor from a second-floor mall balcony in Minnesota. He missed and hit a cop. Olson was cheered as a “hero” by Palin-haters.
March 2009 — Document drop: FBI charges anti-Semitic nutball with threats against GOP Rep. Cantor & family; “…you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads.”
August 2010 — Michael Enright, liberal interfaith film company volunteer, stabbed a Muslim NYC cabbie and faces trial this year. Liberals rushed to hang the entire Right for the crime.
As I said last summer: “They cannot help themselves. Wasn’t it just a few hours ago that I blogged about another act of Democrat vandalism falsely blamed on the the Tea Party? Why yes, yes it was. From GOP fake hate crime hoaxer Ashley Todd to suicide census worker Bill Sparkman, there remains an unrestrained impulse among too many to falsely scream political violence when it doesn’t exist — and to ignore it where it does exist…But like I said just a few hours ago and like I’ll certainly have to say again and again and again in the future: Being a Tea Party-bashing liberal means never having to say you’re sorry for smearing conservative dissent.”
Over to you, Krugman and Company.
To see the pictures go to link:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3078437581805316374
The Tuscon massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.
They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.
Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.
And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.
They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.
***
The progressive climate of hate: A comprehensive illustrated primer in 8 parts:
I. PALIN HATE
II. BUSH HATE
III. MISC. TEA PARTY/GOP/ANTI-TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE HATE
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists, & unions
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
VIII. HATE: CRIMES — the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
***
I. PALIN HATE
Flashback — pointing a fake gun at the head of a Sarah Palin likeness sitting next to a cardboard cutout of her daughter in a museum display
Getty has since yanked the photo, but as one commenter who saw the photo at Getty’s site before it was yanked noted: “To see that image presented as if it were completely normal and purchasable was shocking.”
Flashback — trendy “ABORT Sarah Palin” stickers:
Flashback — Palin-hating artwork designating her an “M.I.L.P.” (Mother I’d Like to Punch). Hat tip: Edge of Forever:
Flashback — Palin Derangement Syndrome mobsters in Philly: “Let’s stone her, old school”
Flashback — Madonna bashing Sarah Palin and shrieking “I will kick her ass:”
Flashback — Sandra Bernhard bashing Sarah Palin and cursing her head off with hate warping her crazed face:
Flashback — Why Sarah Palin Incites Near-Violent Rage In Normally Reasonable Women.
Flashback — the Democratic Underground indulging in name-calling the MSM ignores:
Reader Monica M. sent me a link to the Democratic Underground’s latest thread for commenters to come up with nicknames and posters to slime GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and then to “spread [them] all over the ‘net.” There are now nearly 100 filthy, hate-filled responses and counting. Among the “nicer” entries: “Cruella,” “Gidget,” “Governor Jesus Camp,” “VPILF,” “Fertilla the Huntress,” “Iditabroad,” and “KILLER PYSCHO FUNDIE BITCH FROM HELL!!”
…Peer with me further into the liberal sinkhole again and behold P.D.S. in full bloom. Note that this site is raising money for Barack Obama and that an ad for their fundraiser appears at the top of the thread. Is Obama going to accept their cash? Know your enemy:
…The Photoshop entries getting thumbs up from DU commenters:
Flashback — “F**k the rich:” Class-war arsonist on the loose
Flashback — Anti-war, anti-Bush loons attack girl in wheelchair
Flashback — Gems from Journolist…“F—ing Nascar retards…”; “Sarah Spitz, producer of the KCRW public radio program ‘Left, Right and Center,’ which is heard on a number of NPR stations across the country, wrote on JournoList that if she witnessed Limbaugh dying of a heart attack, she would ‘laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out.’”
Flashback — “I hope Glenn Beck kills himself”
Flashback — The Democrat Rep. Pete Stark Raving Mad archive
Flashback — Malik Zulu Shabazz, “Prepare for war”
Flashback — 2007 New Black Panther Party block party rap: “bang for freedom,” “put the bang right into a cracker’s face,” and if you’re going to bang, bang for black power… hang a cracker [unintelligible] . . .if you’re going to bang, bang on the white devil. . . . burying him near the river bank with the right shovel. . . . community revolution in progress…. banging for crackers to go to hell, we don’t need em:”
Flashback — The insane rage of the same-sex marriage mob
Before election day, national media hand-wringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The Right was, in the words of New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by “insane rage.” Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook in fear.
But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued. No nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis, and self-autopsy. In fact, there’s only one angry mob gripped by “insane rage” in the wake of campaign 2008: The mob of left-wing, same-sex marriage activists incensed at their defeat in California. Voters there approved a traditional marriage initiative, Proposition 8, by 52-48.
Instead of introspection and self-criticism, however, the sore losers who opposed Prop. 8 have responded with threats, fists, and blacklists.
That’s right. Activists have published an “Anti-Gay Black List” of Prop. 8 donors on the Internet. If the tables had been turned and Prop. 8 proponents created such an enemies’ list, everyone in Hollywood would be screaming “McCarthyism” faster than you can count to eight. A Los Angeles restaurant whose manager made a small donation to the Prop. 8 campaign has been besieged nightly by hordes of protesters who have disrupted the business, intimidated patrons, and brought employees there to tears. In fear for their jobs and their lives, workers at El Coyote Mexican Café pooled together $500 to pay off the bullies.
Scott Eckern, a beleaguered artistic director at the California Musical Theatre, was forced to resign over his $1,000 donation to the Prop. 8 campaign. The director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, Rich Raddon, is next on the chopping block after the anti-Prop. 8 mob discovered that he had also contributed to the Yes on 8 campaign. Calls have been pouring in for his firing.
Over the past two weeks, anti-Prop. 8 organizers have targeted Mormon, Catholic, and evangelical churches. Sentiments like this one, found on the anti-Prop.8 website “JoeMyGod,” are common across the left-wing blogosphere: “Burn their f—ing churches to the ground, and then tax the charred timbers.” Thousands of gay-rights demonstrators stood in front of the Mormon temple in Los Angeles shouting “Mormon scum.” The Mormon headquarters in Salt Lake City received threatening letters containing an unidentified powder. Religious-bashing protesters filled with hate decried the “hate” at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. Vandals defaced the Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, Calif., because church members had collected Prop. 8 petitions. One worshiper’s car was keyed with the slogans “Gay sex is love” and “SEX;” another car’s antenna and windshield wipers were broken.
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals chase Christian evangelists out of San Francisco’s Castro district:
Anti-Prop. 8 radicals stomp on elderly Prop. 8 supporter’s cross:
Flashback — Anti-Prop. 8 mob rings in 2009 with more church vandalism
Flashback — Climate of hate: More threats from the gay marriage mob
Flashback — NYTimes finally acknowledges that anti-Prop. 8 mob is harassing traditional marriage supporters
IV. ANTI-CONSERVATIVE FEMALE HATE
Flashback — The Playboy hatef**k list (screencapped in full here – NSFW)
Flashback — Sex, Violence and Hate: the Top 10 Most Disgusting Attacks on Conservative Women
Flashback — Montel Williams to GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann:
WILLIAMS (1:30:32): Michele, slit your wrist.
Go ahead… or, do us all a better thing [sic].
Move that knife up about two feet.
Start right at the collarbone.
Flashback — The four stages of conservative female abuse
Flashback — The Ladies of the Spew “bitch” and moan
Flashback — Laura Bush hatred at the SFChronicle
Flashback — Another day, another hate wish
Flashback — “The bitch is dead meat.”
V. LEFT-WING MOB HATE — campus, anti-war radicals, ACORN, eco-extremists & unions
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at Columbia University…
Left-wing mob shuts down speech at UNC-Chapel Hill…
Left-wing mob blocks military shipments in Olympia, WA…
Left-wing mob illegally trespasses and breaks into a home in Baltimore in the name of “social justice”…
Left-wing SEIU/NPA mob descends on D.C. bank exec’s home, harasses son
Flashback — March 2009 – The rule of the mob:
Animal rights’ terrorists have firebombed researchers’ homes and Molotov cocktail-bombed their cars and been convicted of inciting threats, harassment, and vandalism against employees of a private company engaged in animal research.
Environmental terrorists have set developments on fire.
Self-proclaimed “bank terrorist” Bruce Marks, who I reported on last March, has been threatening bank employees in their homes and harassing their children for years:
IT MAY SEEM LIKE AN UNUSUAL CHOICE, given that Marks is a controversial character who once infamously called himself a “bank terrorist.” But this is no ordinary time, and it seems uniquely suited to Marks’s curious blend of in-your-face activism, customer-focused service, Machiavellian angling, and social-justice passion.
Over the years, as part of his permanent campaign to browbeat banks into giving fair loans to low- and moderate-income people, Marks and his yellow-T-shirted followers have swarmed shareholders’ meetings with enough force to shut them down. They have picketed outside the schools attended by the children of bank CEOs, pressing the youngsters in signs and chants to answer for the actions of their daddies. And they even once distributed scandal sheets to every house in one CEO’s neighborhood, detailing the affair he was allegedly having with a subordinate. In time, that CEO, like most of the others that NACA targeted, sat down with Marks and signed a deal.
To those who found his tactics an outrageous invasion of bank executives’ personal lives, Marks refused to acknowledge any line between home and work. “What you do is who you are,” he says. “It’s all personal.”
And last weekend, of course, the ACORN mob chartered a bus — with twice as many outrage-stoking MSM photographers in tow — to menace AIG executives in their homes.
Flashback — The Green War on Children
Flashback — Torch-wielding leftists at UC Berkeley attack chancellor’s home
Flashback — Campus chaos: Social justice mobsters attack police, smash windows over tuition hikes; Update: “Who’s (sic) schools?”
Flashback — The left-wing bullies in Robert Reich’s backyard
Flashback — Big Labor’s legacy of violence
VI. OPEN-BORDERS HATE
Flashback — August 2010…An open-borders activist smacks a man with a camera covering the Arizona state capitol protest over SB 1070…
Flashback — November 2009…Far Left’s ANSWER goons attack foes of illegal immigration
The slogan on the back of a protesting Puerto Rican singer from the band Calle 13 says “Luz verde para invadir Arizona.” Translation: “Green light to invade Arizona:”
“Smash the state”…
Flashback — The May Day angry mob you won’t see…
Escalating violence in the name of mass illegal alien amnesty…
They came, they saw, they threatened or committed violence in the name of open borders and workers’ rights. But alas, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman’s columns decrying the insane rage and hate of the May Day angry mob got lost in the mail.
In Santa Cruz, they carried torches and vandalized at least 18 businesses:
Downtown business owners spent Sunday repairing shattered windows and doors after a May Day rally Saturday night turned into a riot with approximately 250 people marching along Pacific Avenue, some carrying makeshift torches, throwing large rocks and paint bombs, and spray-painting walls with graffiti.
At least 18 businesses suffered damage during the rally in honor of international workers that began at 9 p.m. and escalated into mayhem around 10:30 p.m., police said. Investigators estimated damage at $100,000, though some business owners said it could be more. No injuries were reported.
On Sunday, sea green-colored glass littered sidewalks where windows and glass doors had been smashed. Maintenance workers, many getting called in the middle of the night, boarded up windows with plywood until new sheets of glass could be installed.
The vandalized businesses included Urban Outfitters, Peet’s Coffee, Noah’s Bagels, Jamba Juice, Velvet Underground and Dell Williams Jewelers. The unoccupied Rittenhouse building also was damaged. A police car was vandalized with rocks and paint, department spokesman Zach Friend said.
In San Francisco, anti-illegal immigration activists were attacked by the May Day marchers:
LISA AMIN GULEZIAN, REPORTER: Allan, for the most part the event was peaceful, but just about an hour ago, three people were attacked and two others were arrested. The people who were assaulted were part of the Minutemen demonstration in favor of Arizona’s new immigration law.
They said a large group of immigrants’ rights supporters followed them to the BART station on Market Street and started punching and kicking them, and calling them names.
PARKER WILSON, BAY AREA ANARCHIST: They said we were racists, and that we were against them, and against their town, and against San Francisco, and what they were saying. They said we needed to get out and they called us racists, and that we need to go home. And then they just attacked my friends and me.
Flashback — The American flag comes second…
VII. ANTI-MILITARY HATE
January 20, 2005. At Seattle Central Community College, Army recruiter Sgt. Jeff Due and his colleague, Sgt. 1st Class Douglas Washington were surrounded by an angry mob of 500 anti-war students. The recruiters’ table was destroyed; their handouts torn apart. The protesters threw water bottles and newspapers at the soldiers, shouted profanities, and wielded their fists. The far Left Students Against War had been agitating to kick the recruiters off campus. The college administration refused to punish the mobsters.
Jan. 31, 2005. A little more than a week after the Seattle ambush, a shockingly fair and rare report from the NYT disclosed that recruiters in Manhattan reported that a door to their office had been beaten in. Anarchist symbols were scrawled in red paint on the building. On the same day, NY police collared a young Manhattan College junior and charged him with throwing a burning rag into an Army recruiting station and ruining the door locks with super glue. The radical student “was caught carrying a handwritten note declaring that a ‘wave of violence’ would occur throughout the Northeast on January 31, aimed at the ‘military industrial complex’ in response to American military actions.’”
Feb. 1, 2005. At a South Toledo, Ohio recruitment center, unhinged protesters hurled manure all over the building. They broke windows and sprayed vulgar grafitti — “War is Shit” — on office property. An e-mail sent to local TV station WTOL-TV by a group calling itself, yes, “War is Shit,” claimed responsibility for the property destruction. The crapweasels were never caught. WTOL reported:
“If they don’t like this country that much they should do it the right way by changing with votes. Shouldn’t do it with actions like that,” said Steve Klostermeier, a bystander. Mike Gibson agreed, saying, “I think it’s terrible. I think they’re blaming the people who fought to give them the right to do stuff like that. They should have the courage to stand up and say it rather than doing stuff like that.”
Mid-Feb. 2005. 20-year-old anti-war goon Brendan Walsh is sentenced to five years in federal prison for hurling a Molotov cocktail through the window of a Vestal, NY military recruitment office in 2003. Celebrated as a hero to the anti-war/anarchist movement, he pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to damage or destroy a building by arson and was expected to be released to a halfway house last month.
…April 2006. The infamous UC Santa Cruz ambush on military recruiters takes place. The thugs gloated about throwing a rock at the recruiters’ SUV. Recruiters, who had been similarly driven off campus the previous year, reported slashed tires. One employee at the career center was injured in the melee. Photos here. The capitulationist campus administration had known in advance about the ambush plans and did nothing. Instead of condemning the speech-stifling lawlessness of the anti-war mob, unhinged sympathizers attacked me for publishing the public contact information of the thugs’ propaganda officers and also outrageoulsy blamed me for the subsequent suicide of the troubled UC Santa Cruz president, Denice Denton. They continue to lie about what happened.
Just a few weeks later, more anti-recruitment attacks break out. A reader alerted me to this vandalism at UNC Chapel-Hill and sent photos taken by her son, an ROTC cadet on campus:
Then, in Minnesota, via the Minneapolis Star Tribune
S-T caption: Three people were apprehended this afternoon by police after pouring paint on an Army recruiting station near the University of Minnesota during an antiwar demonstration.
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
…In Maryland, anti-recruiter vandals smashed a Rockville Air Force recruitment center:
In an attempt to discover how a bunch of murdering cowards like the US Air Force enjoy finding themselves on the other end of some flying projectiles for a change, at around 3:00 AM this morning an autonomous cell of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN) used bricks and other common household items to smash the shit out of the Air Force recruiting center in Rockville, Maryland. Do we even need to explain the motivation for our actions? A shout out to our comrades from the Borf: Revolution or Bust Faction (BORFROBF), who late last year gave a similar treatment to the military recruitment center in Silver Spring. Consider this a modest response to your “dare to those here in the heart of the imperial beast to step it up”. In suburbs so hollow, may the echo of our actions be long and loud! Big ups to all those out there who claim RAAN. Fuck them haters who don’t realize we are but a few of the millions of ant’s bites which can topple this elephant once and for all. No war but class war, communism or bust! IT’S A DO OR DIE SITUATION – WE WILL BE INVINCIBLE!
And in Lufkin, TX, , Army and Navy recruiters were the targets of vandals who keyed their cars, smashed their windows, and shot at their vehicles with “with what appeared to be a high-powered pellet gun.”
Jan. 2007. Anti-war radicals lay siege to the US Capitol and smash windows at the recruitment center on 14th and L.
Pittsburgh anti-recruiter organizers shut down a military recruitment station for a whole day. They brandish hateful signs like this:
August 2007. In New England: Suspect charged with leaving fake bomb at recruitment office.
A city man was arrested Tuesday on charges that he twice left a fake bomb package at a military recruitment office, police said. Francis Monaghan, 68, was charged with two counts of first-degree breach of peace, a felony, and two counts of reckless endangerment, said Lt. Sean Cooney. “He made certain incriminating statements,” Cooney said. “He did express some anti-war feelings. We think that was at least partially his motivation.” Monaghan was being held on $100,000 bond. An envelope slipped into the recruiting station mailbox on Bedford Street Monday morning contained batteries and other “bomb-making components,” Cooney said. The package was nearly identical to an envelope left at the same U.S. Army/U.S. Air Force station last months, police said. Both bore “unusual writing” and were placed in the station’s mailbox, Cooney said.
September 2007. The far Left group, Iraq Veterans Against the War calls on followers to commit fraud to interfere with military recruiters. The sabotage action was part of a larger, coordinated campaign with the International ANSWER racket to obstruct military recruitment centers in Washington and across the country. Other socialist partners in crime:
http://www.notyoursoldier.org/
http://www.warresisters.org/
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil
Anti-war punks shut down the Times Square recruitment station:
The New York chapter of the War Resisters League kicked off a week of actions against military recruitment in New York by shutting down the Times Square Recruiting Station Saturday morning. Three members of the WRL were arrested, but the recruiting station remained closed for the rest of the day as the WRL maintained its presence there, joined in the afternoon by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. The three arrestees were charged with disorderly conduct and released four hours later.
October 2007. Code Pink defaces the Berkeley recruitment center, branding our troops as assassins:
June 2009: And now this: Shooting at military recruiting center; 1 dead, 1 wounded; suspect is anti-military Muslim convert
VIII. And finally, the ever-growing Unhinged Mugshot Collection
Gainsville, Fla., Democrat David P. McCally was charged with battery after he allegedly barged into a local GOP office, assaulted a cardboard cutout of President Bush, and punched a local Republican chairman in September 2004. (Credit: Alachua County Jail.)
In March 2004, Carol Lang, a campus secretary at City College in New York, reportedly assaulted a police officer trying to arrest unruly anti-war protesters. Police arrested Lang and charged her with second-degree assault, disorderly conduct, and obstructing governmental administration. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
At the same protest at which Carol Lang was arrested, police arrested students Justin Rodriguez, left, and Nicholas Bergreen. They charged Rodriguez with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. They charged Bergreen with assaulting a police officer. (Credit: New York Police Department.)
Police arrested Corey Robert Cooke of Ellicott City, Md., in September 2004 and charged him with malicious destruction of property after he allegedly used a power tool to cut down a Bush-Cheney sign. (Credit: Howard County Police Department.)
Howard County, Md., police arrested Peter Lizon, left, and Stephanie Louise Lizon in October 2004 and charged them with malicious destruction of property. Mr. Lizon allegedly destroyed Bush-Cheney signs with a bayonet. His wife allegedly acted as the lookout. (Credit: Howard County Police.)
Nashville police arrested Andrew Thurman, left, and Frederick Stevenson in Septmeber 2004 and charged them with theft and unlawful weapons possession after they found guns and 71 Bush-Cheney signs in Thurman’s car. Policy say they stole the signs from Nashville, Tenn., yards because Thurman was angry at President Bush for sending his brother to Iraq. (Credit: Nashville Police Department.)
Nathan Winkler of Tampa, Fla., was arrested and charged with aggravated stalking in March 2005 for allegedly terrorizing a mother who had a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on her car. Click on the video here to listen to an excerpt of the mother’s frantic call to 911. Winkler reportedly had a handmade sign in his window that read, “Never forget Bush’s illegal oil war murdered thousands in Iraq.” (Credit: Tampa Police Department.)
Florida Democrat Barry Seltzer allegedly tried to run down congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac as she was campaigning in Sarasota, Fla., in October 2004. See the arrest report here. (Credit: Sarasota Police Department via The Smoking Gun.)
In April 2005, Earlham College suspended Josh Medlin after he threw an ice cream pie at Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Medlin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge two weeks ago. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In March 2005, Western Michigan University police arrested Samuel Mesick and charged him with a misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace after Mesick threw a cup of salad dressing on Pat Buchanan. Buchanan chose not to press felony assault charges. Click here to see video footage of the attack. (Credit: Kalamazoo Police Department.)
Police cited Bruce Charles of Portland for disorderly conduct after Charles threw a shoe at former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle in February 2005. (Credit: Portland Police Department.)
In April 2005, Indianapolis police arrested Joshua Miner of Danville, Ind., on charges of criminal mischief, a felony. Miner allegedly smashed glass panels at a monument to Medal of Honor recipients. (Credit: Indianapolis Police Department.)
In May 2005, police arrested Ajai Raj and charged him with disorderly conduct after he asked a vulgar question and made lewd hand gestures after a speech by conservative author Ann Coulter at the University of Texas at Austin. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: The Smoking Gun.)
Sowande Ajumoke Omokunde son of congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee), was one of five paid Kerry campaign workers in Milwaukee who allegedly slashed the tires of 20 vans that had been rented by Wisconsin Republicans as part of their Election Day 2004 get-out-the-vote effort. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Michael Pratt, son of former Milwaukee mayor Marvin Pratt, is another alleged tire-slasher. (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
Three other alleged tire-slashers: Lewis Caldwell (top-left), Justin Howell (top-right), and Lavelle Mohammed (bottom). (Credit: Milwaukee County Police.)
In March 2004, Claremont McKenna College visiting professor of psychology Kerri Dunn falsely claimed she discovered anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-woman graffiti spray-painted on her 1992 Honda Civic. Dunn was convicted of two felony counts of attemped insurance fraud and one misdemeanor count of filing a false police report. (Credit: Claremont Police Department.)
Phillip Edgar Smith, left, and William Zachary Wolff were arrested after they threw custard cream pies at conservative author Ann Coulter during her speech at the University of Arizona in October 2004. Read the arrest report here. (Credit: Pima County Jail via The Smoking Gun.)
December 2009 – Palin-hater Jeremy Olson arrested for attempted assault and disorderly conduct after hurling two tomatoes at the Alaska governor from a second-floor mall balcony in Minnesota. He missed and hit a cop. Olson was cheered as a “hero” by Palin-haters.
March 2009 — Document drop: FBI charges anti-Semitic nutball with threats against GOP Rep. Cantor & family; “…you receive my bullets in your office, remember they will be placed in your heads.”
August 2010 — Michael Enright, liberal interfaith film company volunteer, stabbed a Muslim NYC cabbie and faces trial this year. Liberals rushed to hang the entire Right for the crime.
As I said last summer: “They cannot help themselves. Wasn’t it just a few hours ago that I blogged about another act of Democrat vandalism falsely blamed on the the Tea Party? Why yes, yes it was. From GOP fake hate crime hoaxer Ashley Todd to suicide census worker Bill Sparkman, there remains an unrestrained impulse among too many to falsely scream political violence when it doesn’t exist — and to ignore it where it does exist…But like I said just a few hours ago and like I’ll certainly have to say again and again and again in the future: Being a Tea Party-bashing liberal means never having to say you’re sorry for smearing conservative dissent.”
Over to you, Krugman and Company.
To see the pictures go to link:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3078437581805316374
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