Archive for December, 2008
December 11th, 2008
The intrepid Rockford city planners unveiled another in three decades of pretty pictures about what formerly downtown Rockford will look like at some future date.
The latest plan looks nice. The last plan looked nice. The plan before that looked nice. And the plan before that looked nice, too.
They are all gathering dust on a shelf.
Downtown Rockford today looks worse than I’ve ever seen it, and I’ve been working down here, either at City Hall or here at the News Silo for about 30 years with a few years off for good behavior.
So, thanks for the latest round of pretty pictures, but I’ll reserve my enthusiasm for the day the bulldozers show up.
I, too, have read Waiting For Godot.
December 9th, 2008
The most amazing thing about Rod Blagojevich is that his quest for money was so incredibly stupid.
 You must have plausible deniability if you’re going to do corruption properly, meaning not to get charged, tried and convicted. The official never makes the “ask.” You have people do that. You don’t know what they’re doing, you don’t want to know what they’re doing.
 Someone else, far down the food chain, has made the shake down order. If they’re nabbed, you can say you are “shocked … shocked!” that such a thing happened.
Illinois may not be ready for reform, but this governor became easy pickings for the feds because he is so incredibly unsophisticated about how to be corrupt properly.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald acted quickly instead, of waiting until March or April, because Blago was going to do something else awful, perhaps name a U.S. sentor, very soon. They needed to stop that so as the senator would not be damaged goods on Capitol Hill..
I hope Blago does the right thing — I’m not holding my breath — and resigns. Illinois has huge problems. It can’t pay its bills. Its budget is unbalanced. Blagojevich has dismantled entire state departments and done horrible damage to the fabric of Illinois government. State employee morale is below low. This once-proud state has been cut low by the most corrupt governor in state history, and that’s saying a lot.Â
What was a proud day for Illinois on Nov. 4, when Barack Obama was elected president, has turned into a nightmare day on Dec. 9, when our governor was nabbed in a dawn raid at his Northside bungalow, handcuffed and taken to the Dirksen Federal Building.
Disgusting stuff. And more is coming.
December 8th, 2008
Monday’s filings for the Feb. 24 GOP and Democratic primaries have brought us two candidates for Rockford mayor: John Harmon, a Republican, and Gerald Albert, a Democrat.
Who? Exactly. Which is why independent Mayor Larry Morrissey remains the odds-on favorite to win a second term. However, there’s still time for more people to file to run, either as Republicans or Democrats, or, in January, as independents.
Harmon was a one term Winnebago County Board member who was defeated for re-election in the Republican primary. He is also one of the Group of 16 precinct committeemen who junked the traditional Rockford Township GOP primary and replaced it with a costly caucus on Jan. 13. The move is unpopular among many local Republicans.
Albert is employed by county Circuit Clerk Tom Klein, a Republican. He’s running as a Democrat.
Neither of these men can count on the backing of their party organizations. John Nelson, Democratic state central committeeman in the 16th Congressional District, has told me he intends to put his name on the mayoral ballot.
Morrissey is an independent, albeit one with two, conservative Republicans, Jim Thacker and Ryan Brauns as his key advisers.
December 8th, 2008
Among the more interesting people running for alderman in the February 2009 primaries are veteran schools activist Venita Hervey, a Democrat who is running for the 5th ward seat being vacated by Victory Bell, and Mark Bonne, a Republican who is running for the 14th ward seat held by Dan Conness.
Conness, a Democrat, filed petitions to run for Rockford Township highway commissioner. However, he has also circulated petitions to run again for alderman. Conness hasn’t decided which job to run for, but he told me he would only run for one position.
Hervey, 53, is a lawyer. She said wouldn’t have challenged Bell had he chose to run for re-election. Bell, 74, is the city’s first black elected official; he’s held his post for 37 years.
“I’ve lived here in the 5th ward for a long time, I’ve put my stakes down here. I’m familiar with the area and the challenges, Morgan Street Bridge, South Main Street, and I want to see the area become viable again,” Hervey told me. “I wouldn’t have run if Vic were still running, but he’s retiring and I think I would be pretty good at the job.”
Hervey was a lawyer for People Who Care during the discrimination/desegregation lawsuit against the Rockford Public Schools.
Bonne, 46, is a former colleague of mine here at the Register Star, is the community development coordinator for the Rockford Public Schools.
“The biggest single reason I’m running is because I’m tired of hearing young people say they can’t wait to leave Rockford once they’ve graduated from high school. I want to do what I can to make Rockford a place young people want to return to after college, and I think being on the City Council would be a way to do that,” Bonne told me.
December 6th, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday he’ll launch a massive infrastructure program — one that will rival Ike’s Interstate Highway program of the 1950s, as soon as he becomes president and can get a plan through Congress. It’s in Politico
As I said in a column last week, it’s imperative for local communities in the Rock River Valley to get their ready-to-go-projects in to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, right now. I mean NOW.
There’s no time to wait for the pondering planners to have 16 meetings, we have to get these projects to Durbin pronto! And they have to be projects that can get underway in fewer than 180 days, preferably 90 days.
Obama warned in his radio address that states who don’t use the money quickly will lose it, because this is all about creating millions of jobs in a hurry, so that we don’t sink into another Great Depression courtesy of the wondrous “no-rules, just right” pirate capitalism policies of the nealy departed Republican administration..
December 5th, 2008
Scott Richert, editor of Chronicles Magazine, published by the Rockford Institute, has an insightful post today on the mag’s website. Comparing this recession to 1982 may not be valid, he says, because back then our manufacturing sector was able to bring us out of the depths of despair. Not so today, when manufacturing is down to 10 percent of the economy. Richert says what I also say: We create real wealth by manufacturing products, not by moving phony pieces of paper around.
December 4th, 2008
Have you thought about this? When the Wall Steet banks and investment houses were cratering, their leaders went to Washington and Congress authorized $700 billion to bail them out, few questions asked. They were not asked to come in with a plan, they were just showered with money. Some firms were bailed out without Congressional action, and treasury secretary Hank Paulson became, briefly, the most powerful man in America.
There were no stories about how the bankers traveled to Washington. Corporate jets? We don’t know.
But when Detroit’s big 3 automakers came begging for cash and loan guarantees, whoa! Not only were they humiliated for doing a dumb thing — taking those multi - -million dollar jets to the capital city — but they were admonished for not having a more detailed plan for what to do with the $25 billion they wanted. At this date, we still don’t know whether Congress will help them, or tell them to go fishing.
Michael Moore was talking about this on Keith Olberman tonight. He echoed something I’ve long thought — the D.C. crowd cares little or nothing about U.S. manufacturing. They’d prefer to shower their attention and cash on people who say they can make more money out of money.
But folks, that’s how we got into this mess. Manufacturing is the source of our wealth, not banks.
Admittedly, we can’t just give the Big 3 money without demanding they do a much, much better job managing their companies. That said, the U.S. would invite disaster by just allowing the companies to bite the dust. Millions of support jobs depend on the industry, indeed, because like it or not, we have built our modern economy based on the automobile.
the only way we can truly save American manufacturing is to provide universal health care and drive down the so called legacy costs. The reason there are nearly a dozen auto assembly plants in Ontario, Canada is because the companies don’t have to provide health insurance, saving them considerable money on the cost of building a car.
December 2nd, 2008
There’s been some griping on the left and in the press about Barack Obama’s “change” message and how that comports with his pick of a team of Washington insiders to run the executive branch.
I think Obama himself is the change, and he will carry out the things he wants to do. But to do them, you need people who know the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., otherwise a team of newcomers would be sandbagged by the long-timers of the permanent government.
So, Obama has gone for the best and brightest, and his picks, with the possible exception of Eric Holder for attorney general, are stellar. (Holder was instrumental in pardoning Marc Rich as well as FALN terrorists in the last hours of the Clinton administration.)
These are good, and reassuring choices to those who believed the Rushstream Media hype, that Obama is a militant left-wing extremist. I always thought he is a moderate liberal who would govern from the center so as to build as big a coalition as possible.
With the dual challenges of a double wars and a tanking economy, Obama needs all the experienced smart people he can find, and so far he’s showing he can get them on board.
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