Archive for January, 2009
January 29th, 2009
Incredibly, although I don’t know why it surprises me, Rod Blagojevich allowed a New York Times crew to be with him during his last day as governor. He left office still blaming his troubles on everyone else and justifying everything he did. He even said he wasn’t greedy enough! This is from the Times piece:
“We should have been more selfish, not selfless,” he said. “It sounds probably perverse for me to say that based on what some people are saying about me. But it’s true. My family, we didn’t take advantage of all these things that people do. My successor has done a whole bunch as the lieutenant governor — taken all kinds of trips all over the world and trade missions — like he’s got anything to do with anything as lieutenant governor.”
Here’s the whole story on nytimes.com
January 29th, 2009
Scott Richert of Chronicles Magazine informs me that Pat Quinn wrote an op-ed piece for the magazine back in 1994 in which he advocated term limits. I did not remember that, but it would be interesting to know whether Quinn still backs term limits.
Quinn, while in law school in 1980, was the author of the legislative cutback amendment which reduced the size of the state House. He has also been a longtime proponent of giving voters the power to recall their elected officials, from alderman up to governor.
He did reiterate that recall position Thursday night, when asked about it at his first presser.
One thing that will change: The governor will meet regularly with the other four, statewide elected officials. Indeed, he said he’s already been doing that. Blago was famous for not talking to his fellow officials.
Quinn also said that while he supports a capital projects plan, he doesn’t want a traditional “1956″ plan. Rather, he wants to use infrastructure money to build “green” projects, including eco and tech -friendly roads that feature greenways on the margins where fibre optic cables can be buried.
January 29th, 2009
Wikipedia entry on Rod R Blagojvech reflects his removal from office. See it here:
January 29th, 2009
The state of Illinois’ website is now scrubbed of Blagojevich! See it here
January 29th, 2009
What a circus! I came into the Capitol Building Thursday morning at 8:30 and Rod Blagojevich was governor. I left around 6:30 p.m. and Pat Quinn was governor. What a state!
Seriously, Thursday’s wrap-up of the impeachment trial was an exercise in good government. As State Sen. James MEeks of Chicago pointed out, in this country we don’t form armed militias and throw bombs to remove rotten leaders, we use the constitutional process. Or, as he more colorfully put it, “We’ve got this thing, impeachment, and it’s worth bleeping gold.”
Senators looked at the evidence carefully, and they were frustrated that Blagojevich ignored the process until the last day, when he waltzed into the building via a side door, then gave an in-your-face lecture to senators, telling them they wouldn’t let him present witnesses, like Harry Reid, Rahm Emmanuel, Dick Durbin. He clearly could have brought witnesses while complying with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s restrictions. As one senator pointed out later, if he didn’t do anything wrong, as he contended, why not bring his brother Robert into the chamber, where he could rebut his own words and those of the ex-gov, captured on FBI tape?
Clearly, the 59-0 vote sent a strong message that Illinois is fed up with Rod Blagjojevich.
“I wish him well in his criminal trial,” said Senate President John Cullerton.
January 27th, 2009
Some folks think it rather odd that Rod Blago is ignoring his own impeachment trial in Springfield and is instead making the talk show rounds in NYC. — I have a hunch he might round out the week by saying “Live from New York it’s Saturday Night.”
It’s not strange at all. This is vintage Blago. Back in 2007 when he was trying to sell that outrageous gross receipts tax to finance a capital spending plan, he did nothing to lobby legislators to pass it, even though they were in session and he could have camped out in Springfield, button-holing lawmakers, as other governors do routinely to get their plans enacted. Instead, Blago went on a bus trip, not talking to a single legislator. Instead, he spoke to his fans at an Elgin restaurant, went to a small factory in Rockford and from there to some other obscure places downstate — I got off the bus after the Rockford stop.
He thought then that he could go around the legislature and convince the people of Illinois to call their reps and senators and tell them to pass his capital plan. The result was a House vote against his gross receipts tax, 107 to 0.
So, when the going gets tough, Rod goes away. He’s told everybody from Rachel to Greta that he knows he’ll be out of a job soon. But to those who say he’s playing to the jury pool in Cook County, looking for one, sympathetic juror when he goes to federal court in his corruption trial, I say no, that’s not it.
I think Rod Blagojevich lives for the moment. I think he is just a publicity hound. He has reconciled himself to the fact that he won’t be governor anymore, and he is moving on from all that, and probably away from Illinois, to become a celebrity with his own talk show. I believe Rod is immensely enjoying his 15 minutes of fame.
January 23rd, 2009
U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minnesota, is chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, and he isn’t happy that President Obama’s stimulus plan — the one that was supposed to have all the roads, bridges and mass transit money. Well, it has hardly any of that money. Says Oberstar, as quoted on the TPM website, these kinds of projects provide jobs and needed infrastructure at the same time:
“That is why we set forth this $85-billion initiative from our committee. It’s been reduced in the final going. We expect that it’ll come out somewhere around $63 billion, but $30 billion for highways.
“The reason for the reduction in overall funding — we took money out of Amtrak and out of aviation; we took money out of the Corps of Engineers, reduced the water infrastructure program, the drinking water and the wastewater treatment facilities and sewer lines, reduced that from $14 billion to roughly $9 billion — was the tax cut initiative that had to be paid for in some way by keeping the entire package in the range of $850 billion.
“But I’ll say that our portion is the one that really creates the jobs. Our portion of it is the one that’s going to put people to work because unlike anything else, these jobs can’t be outsourced to Bangalore, India.”
In truth, Obama’s plan is a sop to all the traditional Democratic special intrests, and a capitulation to minority Republicans who wanted more tax cuts.
His bill won’t create jobs, just ill will. He needs to revise it. But he won’t.
Pardon me, the era of change is over. It’s back to same-old, same-old.
January 20th, 2009
This was the fifth inaugural ceremony that U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, R-Egan has attended. Tuesday, he was only about 50 feet from President Obama, so he witnessed the swearing in up close.
It doesn’ t matter what party the president is from, Manzullo said, the thing that always moves him to tears is the symbolism of the day.
‘Looking down the National Mall, 2.5 miles long, and seeing a mass of people, and you think that in some countries the only way they change power is people massing together for riots. In this country, we have an election and people have the opportunity to change leaders, and the guy who loses the election calls the guy who won and says congratulations, how can I be of help, and that is the genius of America,” Manzullo said.
“I started thinking back, what was it like when Lincoln did this, or FDR, and Ike, the supreme allied commander who became president,” Manzullo mused.
“That started flashing through my mind, and then you see somebody like Obama, and I turned to (Iowa congressman) Steve King and said that never in my lifetime did I think an African American could become president. Even if you don’t agree with his agenda, it’s significant because America has moved into a new era,” Manzullo said.
January 20th, 2009
I was talking with Dave Lemke of Canterbury Books the other day. He’s the guy who also does the bus tours. Lemke dreamed up the idea of a “Tour of Obamaland.”
That’s right, he’s taking reservations for a busload of folks to tour Hyde Park, Chicago, home of our 44th president.
“Locations included will be the Grant Park location, where Obama celebrated his election day victory. Other locations to be visited (or at least viewed) include his bookstore, barber shop, favorite restaurant, Hyde Park home and many other significant locations of interest,” Lemke writes.
The tour is scheduled for Thursday, April 16th - Cost including lunch in the Hyde Park-University of Chicago area, will be $65 each.
Call Canterbury Tours at 815.398.1454 for reservations,” says Lemke.
January 20th, 2009
The mood on around the nation’s Capitol building was electric, exciting and every other kind of superlative, said Rockford attorney John Nelson, who was lucky enough to have one of the “orange” tickets to the Inaugural ceremony where Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s 44th president. “It’s a pretty good view, actually,” said Nelson.
“You talk about a mass of humanity, well this is it,” Nelson said as he found his seat. He’s kind of a VIP because he’s the 16th Congressional District’s Democratic central committeeman, and an elector who cast one of Illinois’ electoral votes for Obama in December.
“This is unbelievable, there’s a light-hearted mood and I’m meeting people from all over the country,” Nelson said.
Rich Carter, U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo’s press secretary, didn’t have as good luck getting to the big show. “We were stuck in a security line so long that when it got to be 30 minutes before the ceremony was to start, we realized that we weren’t going to get in.”
So , Carter retreated to an indoor location to watch. The Republican congressman had better luck — as a House member he had a VIP ticket.
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