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January 16th, 2010
For Illinois Republicans, the annual Lincoln Day banquets are the signature events of the year. Winnebago County Republicans gathered Friday night at Clock Tower Resort to commemorate the 16th president and hear from nearly all the GOP governor candidates in the Feb. 2 primary. Andy McKenna, Dan Proft, Adam Andrejewski, and Kirk Dillard spoke, as did candidates for other offices. U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, R-Egan, gave the invocation.
Folks, the Republicans are motivated this year. Really motivated. They see a chance to take back the U.S. House and Senate, as well as — an outside chance, I know — to take over the General Assembly.
I’ve been following politics for a long time, and I think I’m pretty good at sensing trends. I remember the positive buzz in the air at Zeke Giorgi’s fund raiser in 1974, shortly before Democrats picked a whole lot of seats in the election following the resignation of Richard Nixon.
In 1994, I remember the same positive buzz among Republicans at their events, and the party picked up 52 seats and took over the Sente and House in Washington, D.C.
In 2008 the Democrats had the momentum again, and Barack Obama won the presidency. Meanwhile, Democrats picked up seats in the Congress.
This year, I’m seeing the momentum shift to the Republican side. The banquet hall at Clock Tower was packed with upbeat Republicans, and the ones at the Lincoln Day events are those who get out the vote.
Democrats are demoralized this year. Many Americans believe Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership tacked too far left, and that the midterm elections will provide corrective steering to the ship of state.
January 14th, 2010
The earthquake in Haiti is an epic disaster and the people there need our support. There are many ways you can help, I suggest The Salvation Army and the Red Cross, but there are many other reputable international organizations you can trust.
What utterly disgusts me about this is that the Haitian catastrophe has been reduced by our political chattering class into an insane analysis of how this may help or hurt Obama, and how this is like Katrina and not like Katrina, and whether Obama will “win” the public relations war when judged against Bush’s handling of Katrina, which, by the way, happened in the United States. Haiti is a foreign country. Pundits of the left and right are guilty of this travesty, and I have this to say to them:
Just SHUT UP.
January 4th, 2010
Note: This is the complete version of my Tuesday column:
As manufacturing goes, so goes America. Will 2010 be the year that turns the vital economic sector around? I asked some people Monday and got a mixed bag of answers. Mainly, I heard that things have stopped getting worse and might get a little better.
Jim Benkovich, an industry consultant from Roscoe, says he’s optimistic that the manufacturing economy will improve this year. Benkovich isn’t an armchair observer. His business, Benkovich & Associates, provides marketing services for industries involved in water pollution control, food processing, electric power, machine tools and aerospace.
“Our business is improving from last year slowly but surely, and we look forward to 2010 as a rebuilding year for our business clients,” Benkovich said. Shortly after the near-collapse of the banking system in September 2008, “business just about ground to a halt. Most of our clients continued to operate, but only by reducing employment by 30 to 40 percent. Businesses put projects on hold or canceled projects. Those of us in the support businesses saw a commensurate decline,” Benkovich said.
Late in 2009, “We started to see an uptick … the aerospace industry one of our clients supplies machines to the aerospace industry is seeing good growth. I look forward to business coming back maybe 10, 15 to 20 percent from the bottom last year.”
There’s an “if” attached to Benkovich’s optimism, though. “We’ll see a solid recovery if cap and trade doesn’t pass. Cap and trade would be a gut-punch as far as our clients are concerned. It would either slow or stop growth, because it would be a tax on everybody.”
Cap and trade refers to a complicated system of taxes and credits designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. A cap and trade bill passed the U.S. House last year but has yet to be taken up in the Senate.
Bob Trojan, president and CEO of Rockford Linear Actuation, said he’s also seeing an improvement in orders. But mainly, he said, it’s because his firm has been aggressive in courting new customers.
“We saw an upturn in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the first three quarters of the year,” Trojan said. “We are hopeful of seeing a gradual improvement, We worked hard on getting new customers and exporting, and that is improving our incoming business. Trojan, whose firm makes hydraulic actuators, says manufacturers are concerned about the impact of potentially costly legislation on business.
“I’m sure there’s a wait-and-see attitude on what the impact of health care bill might be, what cap and trade impact might be, and what the taxes might be to pay for these things,” said Trojan, who also is a community member of our Editorial Board.
At Dial Machine, President Jeff Anderberg said he’s talked to some foundries that are pouring iron, “and they’ve seen somewhat of an uptick in business.”
Mostly, though, Anderberg says a lot of companies are “sitting on their hands. Most of what I hear from customers is that they don’t look for anything (positive) until the third or fourth quarter. A lot of it may be timed to the elections,” Anderberg said.
Like Benkovich and Trojan, Anderberg, whose firm machines large parts for a variety of industrial uses, believes that “cap and trade could be a coffin nail on business in this country. A lot of people are waiting to see if we have a more business friendly environment in the next Congress.”
January 3rd, 2010
Finally, FINALLY the government is starting to make some sense in its airport/airline security policy. New rules have gone into effect that puts a higher level of scrutiny on passengers from 14 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Nigeria. For too long, our focus was on keeping dangerous THINGS off airplanes, instead of dangerous PEOPLE. The New York Times has the story.
January 3rd, 2010
To borrow a phrase from another local blogger, Pat Buchanan nails it in this column, as he sums up just how deep a self-delusional hole this country has dug for itself.
January 3rd, 2010
I chided Mayor Larry Morrissey on Tuesday for waiting a year to appoint a successor to Gwyn Gulley on the Greater Rockford Airport Board of Commissioners.
Today I can report happily that the mayor has acted, and I think he’s making a good choice. Morrissey is appointing K. Edward Copeland, a Rockford minister, to the post. Aldermen have to ratify the choice, and I expect they will.
Copeland, 47, has been pastor for eight years of New Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 604 Salter Ave. Before that, he practiced law and was partner in a law firm in Kankakee County.
Copeland is a native of Kansas City, Mo., but his family moved to Kankakee when he was 10. He graduated from the University of Illinois and earned a law degree at the University of California-Berkeley and a Doctor of Divinity degree from Golden Gate Baptist Seminary in Mill Valley, Calif.
“I don’t anticipate sitting on the board to pad my resume. I don’t see myself leaving this community anytime soon,” Copeland said when we talked Wednesday.
“I try to bring to the table the ability to understand things from a lawyer’s perspective and from a nonprofit background in terms of managing finances on a tight budget, raising funds, networking with people. … I have skin in the game. I live here, my children go to public schools here. I’m interested in Rockford’s vitality.”
Copeland cautioned that his initial evaluation of Chicago Rockford International Airport comes from the perspective of someone on the outside looking in, “but I think that in the past few years the board has done a tremendous job in trying to put Rockford back on the map, being assertive in trying new things to build up ridership and bring major players to the table here. I’m looking forward to continuing to push in the trajectory things are already going.”
Copeland sees the airport’s growth as especially important to southwest Rockford, where New Zion has been for 85 years. “Our church is right there, off South Main, and we’re vitally interested in improving the corridor from the airport into the central city.”
December 30th, 2009
The Telegraph, one of Britain’s quality broadsheets (as opposed to racy tabs such as The Sun) has an extensive column on the complete breakdown in security that led to a Muslim extremist and would-be terrorist from Nigeria almost blowing up an airliner in Detroit on Christmas Day. Only the quick work of a Dutch film-maker fellow passenger, not the Department of Homeland Security, not the State Department, and definitely not the CIA, stopped him. This is Obama’s problem and it may further hurt the Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections.
We need to totally re-orient our security policy with regards to air transit, and yes, that means we’re going to have actually PAY ATTENTION TO THE INFORMATION WE ALREADY HAVE ABOUT POTENTIALLY BAD PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!
December 25th, 2009
Merry Christmas, and may the peace of Christ be with you all of your days.
Happy New Year, too!
December 24th, 2009
The phony war over the Christmas holiday is in full swing again. I’m bored by the whole thing, actually. I wish people a Merry Christmas because that’s what I hope they’ll have. They can wish me Happy Holidays, and that’s OK, too; I’ll be sure to have happy holidays, from the 4th of July to Labor Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving and even Roman Pucinski Day, or whatever they call it.
Sometimes I refer to Dec. 25 as “The Day That Walmart Closes,” because it’s the only one.
However, the ACLU will never ban Christmas, not that they really want to — what would they have to do afterwards?
No, the most famous banning of Christmas was done by Christians. T’was back in the 1600s when the Puritans — fundamentalist fanatics – took over England, abolished the monarchy, chopped off the heads of the statues in Westminster Abbey and established a theocracy.. The leader of this parliamentary dictatorship was Oliver Cromwell, who dubbed himself “Lord Protector.”
They actually banned Christmas! No celebrations, no pageants, no singing, no nothing. They made it a law that Parliament had to be in session on Dec. 25 and they banned shops from closing.
For more, see this story.
December 23rd, 2009
Rockford police officers Stan North and Oda Poole were justified in using deadly force when they killed Mark Anthony Barmore on Aug. 24 in the House of Grace Daycare, Winnebago County State’s Attorney Joe Bruscato said at a 10 p.m. news conference in the county’s Justice Center.
Wednesday, the county grand jury reviewed the results of a state police investigation of the shooting, and late Wednesday decided that the officers acted correctly when they pursued and then shot Barmore to death, Bruscato said.
Watch rrstar.com for much more on this case.
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