SmartRemarks

Here’s a man-bites-dog story for you:  on Tuesday in Springfield, capital of our fair state, over 5,000 people rallied in support of a tax increase. 

There’s good reason for this. The state income tax is flat (i.e., regressive) and one of the lowest in the country, at only three percent… and has been kept that way for years, placing political advantage over good sense, as the state has run a chronic structural deficit.

The current economic meltdown has exacerbated that situation to the point where it’s no longer possible to ignore or “fix” with accounting shell games. The state was facing an $11.5 billion deficit for FY 2010 alone. That’s nearly as large as California’s, and nearly twice as bad when measured per capita. Thus, Gov. Pat Quinn (the successor to our illustrious indicted Gov. Blagojevich), who as I have written before is a reformer and basically decent guy who therefore could never have made it to the governor’s office through conventional means, has proposed a painful but fair and prudent solution: some budget cuts (about $1.3 billion, including some layoffs and furloughs), accompanied by a modest tax increase—bumping the corporate rate from 4.8 to 7.2 percent, and the personal rate from 3.0 to 4.5 percent (with the automatic exemption increased from $2000 to $6000 per person). 

Now, you might think that with a Democratic governor, a Democratic state senate, a Democratic state assembly, an obvious emergency on their collective hands, and broad public support, it wouldn’t be too hard to get this passed, right? But this is Illinois.

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Tags: Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, Lisa Madigan, Mike Madigan, Pat Quinn, taxes, Todd Stroger

First things first:  after what we’ve suffered through in recent years, merely being able to say “Governor Pat Quinn” is almost as delightful as being able to say “President Barack Obama.” 8-) 

After a mere seven weeks in office, Illinois’ new governor has a budget proposal ready, and he gave a formal address in Springfield yesterday announcing it. I listened to the whole thing on Chicago Public Radio, unfiltered and uninterrupted, no sound bites, no spin. (Who doesn’t love public radio?) Anyone who missed it can listen here, or read the full text here (courtesy of  the Tribune’s Eric Zorn).

It was a strong speech, and it sounds like a courageous budget—tackling some issues that state government has been dodging for years. There will nevertheless be a great reactionary hue and cry (as the comment thread on the Trib’s initial article demonstrates) because it includes a small income tax increase.

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Tags: budget proposal, Chicago, economy, Illinois, Mike Madigan, Pat Quinn, taxes

It’s been far longer than I intended since my last post. Sometimes time just runs away from you. So let me just toss off a few ideas that have crossed my mind in recent days, and get caught up…

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First off:  the wrangling in Washington over the new “economic stimulus package” has been interesting to watch. Obama has gone out of his way to be as “post-partisan” as promised, extending an olive branch to Republicans the likes of which Dems never saw under eight years of Bush, wining and dining them, inviting input… and in response they basically gave him the finger. (Although, anxious not to alienate a public who likes him, they tried to shift their ire toward the Democratic leadership.) And the usual suspects in the punditocracy backed them up.

Basically, the GOP’s goal right now seems to be to shrink the stimulus bill down to something so small and weak that it won’t be effective… and then to blame their opponents for its ineffectiveness. All while the country at large continues to suffer, of course.

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Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Congress, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, economy, Final Crisis, House of Representatives, Illinois, Legion, Obama, Republicans, Senate, super-heroes, television, Tom Geoghegan, unemployment

At 4:52 p.m. yesterday, the Illinois Senate voted unanimously to remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office, following his earlier impeachment by the Illinois House. Seven minutes later they voted to ban him from ever holding any future public office in Illinois. And by 5:30, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn had been formally sworn in as our new governor.

(This neatly demonstrated just what the U.S. Congress should have done with George W. Bush years ago, when the news of his illegal wiretapping program broke… but spilt milk and all that.)

Blago himself appeared during the late morning for an excruciating-to-hear “closing statement” in the trial he had otherwise eschewed, playing to the cameras as usual with what amounted to a campaign-style speech, complaining about the Senate’s procedures but offering no evidence nor submitting himself to cross-examination. His public tone was, needless to say, markedly different from the private one captured by the FBI’s wiretaps. At one point he actually said to the assembled legislators that the charges against him were “just politics”—that “you guys all know what it’s like out there when you’re running an election.” He insisted (again contra the tapes) that his ends were to serve the public, and the means didn’t matter.

Through it all, he demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of what it means to govern in a free country. Blago (not unlike Bush) seems to think it means being a ruler. What’s really important, and what he utterly failed at, is being a leader.

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Tags: Blagojevich, economy, Illinois, Pat Quinn

The question of who will fill Obama’s Senate seat has gotten the lion’s share of media coverage, but meanwhile things are heating up around another question, the one of who will replace Obama’s Chief of Staff—Rahm Emanuel—in the seat from Illinois’ fifth Congressional district, here in Chicago.

I went to a meeting tonight of the local chapter of Democracy For America (the organization that springboarded out of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run), for a presentation and discussion of what’s happening in the 5th district. The room was packed, standing room only—I’d estimate at least 80 people there, on a cold wintry weeknight. Locally, at least, this contest is attracting some real attention.

I used to live in the 5th… back in the ’90s when it was represented by Dan Rostenkowski, then (for one term) Republican Michael Flanagan, then Rod Blagojevich… although I’d moved on to a new neighborhood by the time Rahm was elected in 2002. Not exactly a list covered with glory, but still, as those names might suggest (except for Flanagan, the only successful GOP challenger for the seat in 50 years), it’s a district that carries a bit more weight than the average Congressional seat, in terms of influence and career prospects.

And unlike the Senate seat, a vacancy has to be filled by special election. The primary for this one will be held on March 3, only eight weeks away. Chicago being a Democratic city, whoever wins the primary will win the general… and whoever wins the general can quite likely stay in Congress for as long as he pleases after that. And given that genuinely open Congressional seats in Chicago are not exactly everyday occurrences, it’s a free-for-all.

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Tags: Chicago, House of Representatives, Illinois, media, Rahm Emanuel, Tom Geoghegan, voting

Sorry I haven’t posted for a few days. But the holiday interregnum is now well and truly over, and the ordinary part of winter has commenced. Kids are back in school, the full staff is back in the office, and as of today the new Congress has been sworn in.

(Of course, that last part took place absent the junior Senators from Minnesota—although Franken’s win in the long, long recount, finally certified yesterday, is heartening, Norm Coleman’s legal challenge will delay things further despite being almost certainly doomed to fail—or Illinois—one can’t help but feel a little bit sympathetic to Roland Burris, but rejecting him as a symbol of Blago’s hubris is the sensible thing to do, and Burris certainly knew what a minefield he was stepping into. From Delaware Joe Biden is actually still there, until his successor is formally appointed on January 20; and likewise New York and Colorado will need new appointees Very Soon Now too, when Hillary Clinton and Ken Salazar move on to the cabinet.)

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Tags: Al Franken, Apple, blogging, Congress, economy, Gaza, Illinois, Israel, Obama, resolutions, Senate, transition, unemployment

A completely subjective list, of course. But what the hell… aren’t they all?

Going in to 2008, one could hardly open a magazine or flip a channel without hitting a media comparison to 1968. It was 40 years ago (a nice, round number), and it was a paradigm-shifting political year that looked familiar, with an open competition for the presidential nomination in both parties, all while a war was on overseas.

As it turned out, 2008 was a momentous year in its own right, arguably the most significant year in decades, and without question one we will all remember vividly. But it was not assassinations and riots that made its mark in the history books, unlike in 1968; it brought distinctive events all its own.

There’s not really a lot of room for debate over the two most significant news events of the year, and the annual AP survey of news editors corresponds with what almost all of us would surely conclude on our own, a point-counterpoint of encouraging and discouraging developments:

1) The presidential election of Barack Obama

I’ve already written quite a bit about this one, of course… but suffice it to say that it’s historic for the fact that he’ll be the first African-American president; it’s historic for the fact that he won with a (generally) upbeat, honorable, serious campaign; and it’s historic in that it marks a realignment back toward progressive politics after a generation of destructive radical conservatism, and after eight years of arguably the single worst president in American history. How Obama really performs in office of course remains to be seen, but what he’s accomplished so far this year stands on its own.

2) The worst economic meltdown in our lifetimes

Written more than a little about this, too, of course. It seems almost quaint now to recall that when I started this blog, back in mid-September—although we now know that we were already nine months into a recession—it was still possible to ask “how bad is the economy?” and wonder if it would still get worse. Within days, everything started to go to hell in a handbasket… in a way that seems to have created a destructive feedback loop, where every new development just exacerbates what came before. Homes foreclosing, jobs disappearing, businesses (and entire industries) collapsing, credit freezing, investments evaporating… we’ll remember this for a long time, no matter how much we might prefer to forget it.

After that, the choices grow more arguable. My assessment:

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Tags: Blagojevich, Chicago, climate, Congress, economy, Election 2008, financial crisis, FISA, history, Illinois, international, iPhone, journalism, Madoff, media, Obama, Top 10 lists

We all knew Gov. Rod Blagojevich was under a federal investigation, but nobody expected developments as dramatic as what happened today. FBI agents arrested Democratic Gov. Blagojevich at his home this morning, at the direction of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald—the same man who brought down his predecessor, Republican Gov. George Ryan.

(Chicago is famous for its political corruption, but the state of Illinois as a whole is really no better, and it has always been bipartisan. In fact, this was our fourth governor out of five to be indicted, and if he’s convicted—not something to bet against—he’ll be the third out of five.)

Fitzgerald is emerging as the incorruptible prosecutor of the century, “a modern-day Elliot Ness“:  alongside his gubernatorial investigations he’s made time to convict Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame case, not to mention former Sun-Times owner Conrad Black, and he’s also looked into the Daley administration. In fact, Blago’s Chief of Staff John Harris (also arrested today) spent nine years working for Daley, and his nose was none too clean then either; Daley and the rest of City Hall’s fifth floor must be feeling a little nervous themselves at this point.

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Tags: Blagojevich, Chicago, Illinois, Obama, Patrick Fitzgerald, Rahm Emanuel

Tomorrow night, we’re going to have a president-elect. That means, of course, that he will vacate his seat in the U.S. Senate. There’s been remarkably little mainstream media coverage of this—everyone’s attention has been focused on more immediate matters—but Obama has no heir apparent for that seat, and it’s an open question who’s going to replace him.

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Tags: Biden, Blagojevich, Illinois, Obama, Senate