It’s now the Madigans on GOP “hit” list

Let’s be honest; it was just a matter of time before the Illinois Republican Party – which is engaged in active efforts to besmirch the public reputation of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago – added his daughter, Lisa, to their list.
 

GOP adds Lisa to 'hit' list

So learning Monday that the GOP was adding the Illinois attorney general to their BossMadigan.com list of political people we should vote against was surprising only in the sense of “Why did they wait so long to do it?”

YOU’D HAVE THOUGHT that picking on the daughter of the House speaker would have been a move they would have made early on.

 

Schneider speaks out against Illinois AG

The Illinois Republican Party, which is continuing for the 2018 election cycle in its strategy of trying to get voters to believe that Madigan, as in Michael, is all that is wrong about government, and anybody who associates with him also needs to be dumped.

Replaced, of course, with a Republican official who’d be willing to vote in lock step with the ideals of Gov. Bruce Rauner – who actually is dipping into his personal fortune for several millions of dollars to pay for all this politicking.

He wants re-election next year real bad – primarily because he doesn’t want to go into the history books as “Gov. Gridlock, the guy whose own partisan political games prevented the state from ever approving an operating budget during his governing stint.

BECAUSE THAT’S THE direction we’re headed in, unless something seriously shifts on the political partisan scale.

That is part of what Illinois Republican Chairman Timothy Schneider (also a Cook County Board member) had in mind with his Monday morning conference in which he trashed the speaker’s daughter – which is something political insiders know you’d best not do.

 

How will speaker choose to retaliate?

Michael Madigan tends to take it personally when someone says something nasty about his daughter, and usually figures out a clandestine way to retaliate.

So I can’t help but wonder how far up Schneider goes on the Dem hit list for his comment, “Lisa Madigan is working for the speaker, not the people.” Or his other line about how the Madigans are, "stop(ping) reform by causing a crisis."

EVEN THOUGH IT can be argued that the attorney general, by trying to force the state’s ongoing (for nearly two years) budget stalemate to come to a head, she is acting on behalf of the people.

What we have is Rauner wanting to tie in other issues to a budget while Madigan (the speaker) wants those other issues (many of which would harm organized labor interests) dealt with separately.

 

The ultimate beneficiary?

Because he knows that separately, the Illinois General Assembly can be counted on to kill them off. Only by forcing them to be part of a budget agreement that must be approved do they have a chance to become reality.

Lisa Madigan has used her post to put political pressure on the sides of state government to force them to get around to passing a budget sooner, rather than later.

SPECIFICALLY, SHE WANTS a court to rule that the state payroll cannot continue to be met once the month ends, unless a budget is in place. Which is in accordance with the spirit of the state Constitution that says a budget must be approved by the legislature and governor for government to operate normally.

A hearing is scheduled for next week, and we could learn something before Feb. 28. Unless government officials can get their heads out of their partisan behinds and work together by month’s end, we could get the sight of government employees not getting paid.

Which would put them in the same category of those Illinois residents who rely on government programs whose funding is on hold, or the public school systems that are months late in getting the aid payments they rely on for their funding. Or those public universities that are losing students (with Chicago State U. facing possible closure) because of the uncertainty.

That’s a lot of angry people who will be prepared to blame everybody, and not just Mike Madigan, for Illinois government’s flaws. Which might make Lisa Madigan the most responsible person we have on the Illinois political scene.

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Insults without details and pleas for our cash; Chelsea's mother begins campaign

Hillary R. Clinton let it be known Sunday she’s running for president. It’s no longer speculation. She is now actively campaigning for the highest electoral post possible.

Which means the attacks are already reigning down upon her!

I WAS PARTICULARLY amused by the statement issued by Illinois Republican Chairman Tim Schneider in the way it managed to attack the one-time first lady, senator from New York and secretary of state without saying anything specifically bad about her.

Republican political operatives intend to hold Clinton accountable. Although I expect the level of intensity of the attacks will reach record-high levels.

As Schneider put it, “We look forward to seeing how Clinton answers for all the controversy, scandal and hypocrisy.” That’s a pretty loaded statement to make, particularly since GOPers aren’t offering up specific instances of controversy, scandal and hypocrisy.

Although my guess is that we’ll get many specific details during the upcoming year-and-a-half of what these allegedly improper acts are.

BY THE TIME this campaign cycle is over, Hillary’s political reputation may delve back to the levels it was at when she was first lady (and certain people thought her too pushy and bossy to be so close to the White House).

It certainly will be a long way aways from her time as secretary of state when she largely handled her duties in a responsible way and people gained a new-found respect for her.

Except for those conservative ideologues who think that everyone who isn’t a member of their own personal church congregation is condemned to Hell anyways. Although my definition of eternal damnation is being stuck in a place with those people!

Of course, all this Republican rhetoric is canned. It was likely written years ago, just waiting for the day when Hillary kicked off her campaigning for real.

IN MY OWN case, I got the official Schneider statement on Sunday just over an hour prior to the Democratic National Committee e-mail statement saying that Hillary really is running for office.

It was followed up a few minutes later by an e-mail from the House Majority PAC pointing out that they have no record of me having made a financial donation to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Which they hope means more people turning out to vote who are inclined to pick Democrats to serve in Congress AND reduce the influence of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

All of which is merely a sampling of the appeals we’re all going to get in coming months – nasty notes from the Republicans and pleas from Hillary for our money so she can repel all the GOP negativism, while daughter Chelsea tries to live as normal a life as is possible with such political parents.

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Republicans as the Klan and “evil?” It makes about as much sense as most of the Obama socialist rants we hear

It seems that Slim Coleman, the outspoken activist who now calls himself a pastor, is going about trying to stir up support for Gov. Pat Quinn by bringing up talk of the Ku Klux Klan and forces of evil within the Republican Party.

What would Harold think of one-time ally?

To listen to Slim (whose mother named him “Walter”), the reason people shouldn’t vote for Bruce Rauner is because having a Republican Party person as governor would add strength to those forces out there who use the GOP to promote ideas that do, at times, border on racist and hateful.

THE CAPITOL FAX newsletter out of Springfield seemed to find it odd that most of the reporter-types who covered the Quinn stunt that had him being endorsed by many clergymembers (including Coleman) didn’t highlight this element.

I wasn’t at the event; I heard audio off of WBEZ-FM. But I’d wonder if it is because those of us who have been around this city for any length of time know that Coleman is capable of spewing just about anything.

The activist who was allied with Harold Washington when he was mayor and was a co-hort of former Alderman Helen Shiller when the Lady from Uptown was one of the few people who would speak out against Mayor Richard M. Daley has such a record of trash talk that this moment isn’t even in the Top 10, so to speak.

It is the kind of nonsense comment best ignored by sensible people. As for the fact that Republican Party officials are now trying to claim they’re being victimized, they come across as crybabies.

PERHAPS I’D TAKE these party officials a little more seriously if they tried to do anything about all the nonsense rhetoric we’ve been subjected to throughout the years about President Barack Obama’s socialist attitudes.

OBAMA: Socialist talk just as silly?

Or all the times any dink who wants to rant about Democrats resorts to talking about Lenin, Marx and Communism. Usually, their diatribes devolve to the point where it’s obvious most of them don’t have a clue what communism or socialism really are.

So when Coleman came out this week and talked about how the Ku Klux Klan of the early 1960s evolved into militia movements and how some of them get politically active with the Tea Party types that are now taking over Republican Party organizations all across the country?

That’s kind of a long-winded attack by Coleman, and one that is way too easily deflected.

IF THERE’S ANYTHING about this that truly surprised me, it is that Coleman is now an ordained minister. And that he has ties to the Methodist church that offered sanctuary to Elvira Arellano – the Mexican woman who hid in the church for just over a year to try to avoid deportation.

RAUNER: Do some backers have nasty motives?

The point being that to try to think of Coleman as merely a pastor who spends his time reading the Bible and trying to decipher its greater truths would be misleading.

He’s an activist who throughout the years has always shown a willingness to play political hard-ball, largely because he wants the attention. Ignoring his rants would truly be the best way for Republicans to respond to him.

Because I’m sure that Coleman is enjoying the thought that he has provoked newly-named Cook County Republican Chairman Timothy Schneider to a response. Although maybe he's less impressed by the fact that Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., for whom he does some work, feels the need to dish out an unnamed punishment, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

THE ONE THING people shouldn't want to do is to lower themselves to a hostile level. Because there are people of a certain age who remember how then-Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak once went on the attack against Coleman so as to reign political blows on Washington.

VRDOLYAK: Dishing it out to Slim

Remember that Vrdolyak said Coleman was “the funeral director for the Nazis?" Because he permitted the wake of a neo-Nazi who was trying to get out of that movement to be held at the headquarters of the activist group he was heading up back some 30 years ago.

The sad part of our political people is that they all too often devolve to trash talk, and that neither political party has a monopoly on stupidity.

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Are we, the people, best off with more, or less, from our political officials?

Watching the Cook County Board at work on Wednesday made me wonder if we’re better off with more, or less, of their presence.


County wishes us 'happy holiday.' Do we like their present?

The issue at stake was the county board approving a schedule for their meetings for 2014. Under the measure that finally got approval, the county board next year will hold one meeting per month – with the exception of August.

THAT’S THEIR SUMMER break. No one is going to take that break away from them. It’s sacred!

But that is a change from past years. Until recently, the county board made a point of meeting twice per month (with the exception of August). This year, they made a point of meeting every three weeks. Which meant some months had two meetings and others had only one.

They’re now going to be down to one session per month for them to quibble over issues, while also spending endless hours pontificating over symbolic resolutions in which they praise each other’s friends.

It can get so mind-numbing that I have to confess, a sheriff’s deputy had to nudge me at one point Wednesday because I had fallen asleep.

SO THE FACT that there will be fewer such meetings? That could be interpreted as a good thing, or a bad thing.

Believe it or not, that was the issue at stake as county board members argued amongst themselves Wednesday (the final vote was 10-6, in favor of having fewer meetings).

County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, D-Chicago, may well have hit what many non-political people will consider the key question – she said that the county board members will continue to get the same salaries, even though they’re now expected to show up for fewer meetings.

Agreeing was county Commissioner Timothy Schneider, R- , who said, “The perception will be that we’re doing less work.”

A LOT OF people won’t want to have to take into account that an elective office is not some job where one punches a time card and gets paid by the hour, AND that it’s a post where one is basically on call at all times. Attending the meetings alone aren’t what the job consists of.

Take commissioners John Daley and Deborah Sims, both D-Chicago, along with Joan Patricia Murphy, D-Crestwood, who all used the word “efficiencies” over and over – as in the county board now works more “efficiently” and therefore does not have to meet as often.

Murphy literally went so far as to argue that she could better use time in her suburban office so as to deal with all the people who call her, claiming to have problems with government.

She also argued that the county board will be meeting about as often as the City Council – a fact that county board President Toni Preckwinkle (the former 5^th Ward alderman) confirmed.

“I DON’T KNOW why we have to put in more time downtown than the city does,” she said.

As for government meetings, they often are scripted to a heavy degree. Often, the times when officials spout off and criticize each other are the only impromptu moments So the idea that government officials get paid for their work at meetings?

Nonsense!

If that were it, then we ought to demand a repayment of their salaries. What they do there isn’t worth it.

WATCHING THIS DISPUTE on Wednesday actually brought an odd image to my mind – that of one-time Illinois Senate President James “Pate” Philip.

PHILIP: Was he right?

Some people remember the DuPage politico for his blunt-spoken ways. But I remember him for the fact that he was the motivation behind the General Assembly cutting the month of June off its schedule – ending its spring session business around Memorial Day instead of the old traditional June 30.

Philip often gave the impression that he viewed excess government meetings as merely an excuse for government officials to do something stupid or otherwise harmful to the public interest.

Watching the county board at work on Wednesday made me wonder if perhaps he was right!

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“Stealth” Daley? An “advisor?” Or just a guy who likes to sleep in his own bed

You ask the typical person about the name “Daley,” and you’re probably going to get a lot of cheap rhetoric about Richard.

Cook County Commissioner John Daley at "work" with his South Side county board colleagues. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

The real old among us will go back to “J.” While the bulk of us will be more likely to think of “M.,” as in the son who actually wound up surpassing his father’s stint as longest-serving mayor by just over a year.

FOR THOSE OF us who like to think we’re a little more politically astute, we’ll probably bring up William – the Daley son (and brother) who has been a presidential cabinet member (under Bill Clinton) and chief of staff (under Barack Obama).

He even likes to talk periodically about how he’d like to run for governor – even though he never seems to have the will to actually put together a campaign and run for the post on Election Day.

It’s only the most hard-core of parochial political geeks who will bring up John.

Yet he was the one who was celebrated on Tuesday.

FOR JOHN DALEY is the political person who serves on the Cook County Board – representing the Southwest Side and some surrounding suburban portions. And now, he’s been in that position for 20 years.

The county board on Tuesday gave Daley the political equivalent of a “surprise party.” They put together a resolution praising him, and arranged for his family to be present – all without him knowing (although he admits he should have suspected something when he saw his wife and daughter leave the house early on Tuesday).

Which led them to give him an emotional shock, then partake in an endless round of “debate” that seemed to be a competition amongst county board members to see who could plant the biggest rhetorical smooch on the Daley cheek.

Personally, I got a kick out of Commissioner Larry Suffredin, of suburban Evanston, calling him the “stealth Daley.”

WHICH IS TRUE enough. His political brothers are the ones who tend to make it onto the front pages. Plus the fact that Cook County government often gets ignored when it comes to the public perception. Everybody seems more interested in what happens on the west side of the block-sized building that houses City Hall AND the county government.

But hanging on to a county board post for two decades (and presiding over the board’s finance committee for 18 of them) is a way to get familiar with the gritty details of how government works.

Where the bodies are buried, so to speak. Although I’m not implying that Daley has buried any of them.

Some got amusement from the irony of listening to Commissioner William Beavers (from the far Southeast Side and suburbs such as Calumet City), who faces criminal indictment these days on federal tax charges.

BEAVERS IS THE one who claims the only reason he’s being prosecuted is because he refused to wear a wiretap for federal investigators to gain evidence against John Daley himself.

On Tuesday, Beavers offered up a brief “congratulations” for enduring the “back and forth” of 20 years at the county building, to which Daley quipped back, “You always try to advise me.”

Personally when I regard the Daley political people, I realize that they’re hard-core Democratic Party types. But I have also realized that these aren’t flaming liberals – no matter what trash-talk the ideologues try to spew.

Which is why I thought it accurate of Commissioner Timothy Schneider of suburban Elk Grove Village to say, “Your left toe leans a little bit right. You always try to reach a compromise on issues.”

PERSONALLY, I FIRST dealt with Daley back at the beginning of my stint as a Statehouse reporter in Springfield – he was still in the Illinois state Senate representing the Bridgeport neighborhood and surrounding communities.

He admits his wife has enjoyed having him back in Chicago, rather than having to live part-time each year in the Illinois capital city.

Although that desire to be “back home” seems to be why John Daley has never sought the higher political offices that his brothers aspired to.

As Daley put it himself on Tuesday why he didn’t run for higher office, “I enjoy sleeping in my own bed.”

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EXTRA: When “present” means “yes”

I once had an editor-type person whose hard-and-fast rule was to tell us reporter-types that a “present” vote is the same as a “no” vote.

FRITCHEY: Opposes political "plums"



After all, the number of “yes” votes it takes to approve something doesn’t change. A “present” vote does not add to the “yes” column. So it is just a weasel-ish way for political people to avoid taking a hard stand on an issue.

WHILE I AGREE with that particular editor’s concept that political people are capable of behaving in a weasel-ly manner, it seems that “present” doesn’t always mean “no.”

For the Cook County Board on Wednesday literally gave us an instance where “present” meant “yes” without actually having to take the embarrassment that a “yes” vote would have caused in this particular circumstance.

The specific instance was a measure meant to cut the compensation provided to the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals – which oversees zoning matters in unincorporated parts of Cook County.

The measure passed, but there was one part of it that failed – the idea that individual zoning board members should be limited to $20,000 per year for their work rather than the $12,000 limit that other such boards get.

THE IDEA WAS that the zoning board usually has more meetings in a given year, and should get more overall (even though the base of $500 per member per meeting would be applied to all appointees – regardless of board).

SCHNEIDER: Changing a "Y" to a "P"



In the end, the county rejected the $20,000 limit and went with the $12,000 limit – even though some said that might mean the zoning board would hold fewer hearings; which would require some people to travel farther to have their issues dealt with.

That $20,000 limit had five supporters and nine critics, with one county commissioner (Joan Patricia Murphy of suburban Crestwood) voting “present.”

Yet once the clerk announced the 5-9 vote, two of the commissioners who spoke out in favor of a $20,000 limit suddenly said they wanted their votes changed to “present.”

IT SEEMS THEY don’t want to be on the losing side of an issue. They probably didn’t want some future opponent concocting some nonsense campaign ad saying they voted to pay more money for positions that, by their own admission, were “political plums” used to reward friends.

BUTLER: The Iceman becomes Mr. Pro-bono?



So the vote went into the books as a 3-9 vote, with three others present. John Fritchey, D-Chicago, and Timothy Schneider, R-Elk Grove Village, were the two last-minute changers whose “present” vote shouldn’t be taken as opposition to the idea that these political appointees probably don’t need to be relying on the county for their health insurance or any additional credits towards their eventual pension.

Although I’m convinced the most honorable individual on the county board on Wednesday might well have been Commissioner Jerry “the Iceman” Butler. For he was the one who voted against everything on the grounds that none of these positions should be salaried, or per diemed, or compensated in any way!

“Pro bono. Nada,” said the man who gave us, “For Your Precious Love,” before adding, “They should all be pro bono.”

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