Friday quiz: Answer this and win absolutely NOTHING

7 comments July 11th, 2008

A Friday quiz for all you media aficionados, desperadoes and Olds Toronadoes:

What was the first audio (sound) trademark registered by the U.S. Patent Office? Hint: It dates from 1931, and you can still hear it today.

Attention Bob Pritchard: You missed your bus

Add comment July 11th, 2008

The gambling expansion bill failed Wednesday, 47-55, fewer votes than it got in May, notes Steve Brown, House Speaker Mike Madigan’s press guy. (The bill needed 71 to pass, a supermajority.)

Gov. Blago wanted the gambling bill to fund his $34 billion capital plan. Brown also wanted to let me know that Rep. Bob Pritchard, a Hinckley Republican who was among lawmakers who called for passage of the capital bill at a raucous Rockford news conference and Bash Madigan affair a few weeks ago, voted against the gambling expansion needed to fund the capital plan.

“Bus Ride Bob was a no vote,” said Brown. The bus reference refers to a Pritchard pronouncement at the Rockford presser. Pritchard suggested that advocates of the capital bill get on buses and campaign for the plan in Madigan’s Chicago district in an effort to pressure the Speaker.

Madigan does not support the gambling plan advanced by Blagojevich, noting that Chicago, where a new casino was slated to go, did not support the gov’s plan.

Ever since that Rockford event, Brown has labeled Pritchard “Bus Ride Bob.”

Congratulations, Illinois, we have the nation’s least popular governor

Add comment July 11th, 2008

Capitol Fax reports the latest Rasmussen Poll, which says Gov. Rod Baloneyvich is the nation’s least popular governor, with a dismal 13 percent OK rating.

The poll also shows Sen. Dick Durbin crusing far ahead of Republican opponent, Dr. Steve whatzishame, and Barack Obama is well ahead of John McCain.

Read all about it here:

Syverson says: Senate isn’t coming back; budget’s still unbalanced

Add comment July 10th, 2008

The Illinois House may be coming back to work next week to consider overriding Gov. Blagojevich’s $1.4 billion in “cuts” to the state budget, but whatever they do, their action will be futile, says Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford.

Senate President Emil Jones “Made it clear, the Senate is not coming back until after the election,” Syverson said Thursday afternoon. So, any House action can’t be acted on by the Senate.

So, Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s $1.4 million in “cuts” stands for now.

But are they really cuts, and is the $59 billion budget really balanced?

Syverson says no.

Some $580 million worth of the “cuts” aren’t really cuts at all, just further delays in payments to Medicaid providers, he says.

“To call that cuts, when it’s just delaying payments to doctors and hospitals, is irresponsible. What he’s doing is extending the payment cycle another 60 days, meaning it will take 7 to 8 months for providers to get paid.”" All the governor is doing is creating a bigger problem in the 2010 fiscal year, Syverson warned.

Also, some 70 percent of the “cuts” are actually reductions in increases, he said.

Some of the cuts made to constitutional office budgets were in pension line items, Syverson said.

“You can’t cut payments to a pension fund, all you can do is defer them. So if he cuts money out of the secretary of state’s pension contribution, that problem doesn’t go away, it just delays the payment.”

The real problem, Syverson said, is that “in the last 6 years the governor has increased spending by $7 billion. We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.”

“They left in a lot of the governor’s programs, union pay increases for state employees, but they cut the cost of living increase to nonprofit and private sector human service providers. The private sector agencies got hurt; obviously government employee run programs didn’t feel it as much, Syverson says.

Even with the gov’s “cuts,” the budget is still unbalanced, Syverson notes.

“The hole is just as big and getting bigger. People ought to plan on a tax increase coming in November to fill this hole,” the Rockford Republican warns.

Mayor Morrissey to JT’s: To the showers

Add comment July 10th, 2008

Mayor Morrissey has acted in the JT’s Bourbon Street case: He’s yanked their license. Should send powerful message to bar owners: Rockford won’t tolerate violence spilling out of nightspots.

Here’s the news release:

ROCKFORD - City of Rockford Mayor Lawrence J. Morrissey has issued an Order revoking the liquor license issued to JT’S Bourbon Street & Grille, effective immediately. Pursuant to Illinois law, the Mayor, as Local Liquor Commissioner, is provided five days following a hearing to issue a full opinion, and Mayor Morrissey will issue a full opinion within this time frame. City of Rockford staff will refrain from further comment on the case until such time as a full opinion is issued.
###

Snatching USAF tanker contract from EADS and giving it to Boeing could launch trade war

2 comments July 10th, 2008

The government’s decision — under pressure from politicians friendly to Boeing — to rebid the Air Force’s tanker contract is sure to have unintended political and economic repercussions. It also could start an old-fashioned trade war if the contract, which was awarded to a consortium of Northrup-Grumman and EADS, the European airplane builder, is given instead to Chicago-based Boeing.

This commentary, from today’s Guardian, is perceptive and thought-provoking. I tend to agree with the author. Read it and let me know what you think.

Did the 58,000 die to protect your ability to buy cheap stuff at Buy N Large?

16 comments July 9th, 2008

Why were we in Vietnam?  It was to stop communism’s spread, right?  That’s what we all believed,  at least those of us who supported the war. But this thought-provoking column by Harold Myerson in The Washington Post, about the out-sourcing of factory jobs from China to much-cheaper and more ironclad communistic Vietnam,  suggests that  the 58,000 Americans who died in that war — really died so that you could buy cheap stuff at the Buy N Large. What do you think?

Blago afraid of the truth? It’s what the man said.

2 comments July 8th, 2008

“I have nothing to fear but the truth.” Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, to reporters last week at a Chicago gas station.

See the complete video of the news conference/shouting match as captured by WLS-TV, Channel 7

91 percent of Canadians like their health care system

8 comments July 1st, 2008

U.S. politicians — Republican variety — love to disparage Canada’s national health care system with the fact-free observation that Canadians come here to get vital operations so they don’t have to wait in line in Canada.

Because I’m a frequent visitor to Canada, and I actually talk to real people there, I’ve replied to these Republicans that Canadians I’ve talked to say they wouldn’t trade their health care for anything else, especially America’s roll-of-the-dice nonsystem of private insurance — “maybe we’ll cover you for that, maybe we won’t.”

Now I have data to back up these informal conversations: In a new, bi-national opinion poll done by Canada’s CTV television network and the national newspaper Globe & Mail, 91 percent of Canadians said they prefered their national health care system over America’s pseudo-private system.

Ninety-One percent. In the world of scientific opinion polling, that’s about as unanimous as you ever get.

Also, 45 percent of Americans surveyed prefered Canada’s system, and 42 percent prefered to stick with what we’ve got.

The poll also showed that more Canadians, 26 percent, like Barack Obama better than their own leader. Prime Minister Stephen Harper got 21 percent. Harper, a Conservative, is running a minority government in a country that is decidedly more liberal than the U.S.

It’s July 1. Happy Canada Day.