What would Burris think of Palin?

Their announcements took place about one week apart, and the end result of both political officials is that their careers doing “the people’s business” are effectively over.

I’m writing, of course, about the soon-to-be-former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the can’t-leave-soon-enough-for-some Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill.

YET IT IS with the two of them that perhaps we ought to think seriously about the concept of “lame ducks” – that breed of politician who knows he’s history, but still remains on the government rolls for a little while longer.

In the case of Palin, the reason she allegedly is leaving her political post later this month is that she doesn’t think she can accomplish much as a “lame duck” governor – she realizes that the powers-that-be are not about to do a thing for her.

Of course, she spins her reasoning to try to give herself a high-minded purpose in resigning now rather than finishing the four-year term to which the electorate of Alaska chose her back in the 2006 elections.

Lame ducks are merely people living off the government teat, enjoying the perks of a political post while being unable to do anything for the public good. In short, they’re a waste of space (and a government paycheck).

YET BURRIS SEEMS to think otherwise.

When he announced last week that he is not going to run for re-election because he does not see he has the ability to do the kind of fundraising needed to run a serious political campaign, he claimed that he will now be one of the few public officials who will be able to focus his time on “the people’s business.”

Public policy will be his goal for the 18 months remaining on the term he’s finishing up for Barack Obama (who resigned with about two years remaining so that he could be the guy who gets to throw out the first pitch at the baseball All-Star Game to be played Tuesday in St. Louis).

So who’s right? More importantly, which of these two political has-beens (whether they realize it or not, both of them have seen their best days) is more absurd in his/her logic?

NOW I REALIZE a lot of people reading this commentary are going to suddenly shift into a politically partisan mode. It is going to be what decides this question for their mentalities.

Those who are inclined to oppose Obama and the current partisan leanings of the federal government are going to claim that of course Palin is correct, while those in support are going to find ways to back Burris.

And I must admit my own partisan leanings (I’m a Democrat largely because I see that party as the one that keeps urban America’s interests in mind) impact my viewpoint.

In theory, Burris is correct, and I must admit that I am pleased with the way the situation for Illinois’ representation in the U.S. Senate has turned out (Roland, Roland, Roland gets to be the fill-in through next year, while the voters of Illinois will decide in the 2010 elections who gets the post for the long term).

THOSE OF YOU who think Roland should resign and are going to start screeching for a special election need to get a grip. Do we really want to go through the mess of an election in 2009, only to repeat the process in ’10?

It seems so wasteful of the tax dollars that would be spent to conduct such special elections, which is money we in Illinois really don’t have to spare these days. That ought to become blatantly apparent in Springfield on Tuesday when the Legislature gets one last crack at doing something to pass a balanced budget before there have to start being serious cuts – we’re that far into the fiscal year that began 13 days ago.

But back to Burris. The reason I write “in theory” is that I realize the baggage that some people are determined to attach to Roland (because they despise the memory of Rod Blagojevich that much) probably makes it difficult for Burris to be a political heavyweight in the U.S. Senate.

He may try to take on some serious issues, but he’d be better off (as would the people of Illinois) if he realized he’s just there to vote on our behalf on the bills that come before the Senate.

REPRESENTING OUR INTERESTS, rather than his own ego, could be the best thing Roland could do to overcome the absurdity that has developed around his reputation during the past six months.

He could leave with a little bit of dignity. Go for it Roland.

That is more than Sarah Palin will leave with. Admittedly, she’s younger and theoretically still has a future ahead of her.

But Palin is one who despite her youth and political inexperience has managed to make many enemies and has given herself a neophyte reputation that she will never overcome.

IN THAT SENSE, she truly is Daniella Quayle (We’ve got to credit the New York Post for coming up with that label).

I honestly believe the only chance she had to redeem herself was to suddenly get serious with the ways of Alaska government and politics. Show that she really does have some substance.

Instead, she tries to bill her departure as the substance, which is just ridiculous. She may very well wind up with some sort of conservative think tank that allows her to build up a reputation of support among the far right, but that just won’t do when it comes to a national election and where any candidate who tries to get elected despite the opposition of the masses is doomed to failure.

In short, I can’t help but look at these two officials, and think that the irony is that in Sarah Palin, we finally have found a public official who makes Roland Burris’ performance of the past six months look downright competent by comparison.

-30-

The Bee Gees, or Cheap Trick? They both want to make me wretch musically

I was not at Comiskey Park 30 years ago today, so I don’t know firsthand how out-of-control the crowd truly got in between games of a scheduled doubleheader between two ball clubs playing their way through dreadful seasons.

I do remember the over-the-top coverage the event warranted that night on the late night newscasts. Every single news program at 10 p.m. told the tale of teenagers running amok due to disco. The images I remember were on Channel 7, which showed footage of fires being lit on the playing field and a shot of people climbing over the wall behind the center field scoreboard to sneak their way into the South Side stadium.

THERE’S NO DOUBT about it.

The people who showed up at Comiskey Park 30 years ago tonight as part of the White Sox’ attempt to leach off of the radio newcomer Steve Dahl’s growing popularity behaved badly. Even the hard-core of Sox fandom will agree.

Anyone who’s ever watched the video footage shot that night will have to agree that one of the most poignant sights was that of Sox fans in the stands cheering on the Chicago Police (while organist Nancy Faust played the chorus to the “Na, Na, Hey, Hey, goodbye” song recorded by Steam) when they took to the playing field to clear it of the teenage buffoons who were a part of Dahl’s war against bad music. The events of 30 years ago tonight wound up overshadowing the White Sox' on-field activity, which is good in the sense that people don't remember a ball club that went 73-87 and finished in 5th place in the American League west division.

This was only 11 years after the 1968 Democratic National Convention and its protests in Chicago that resulted in the sight of Chicago cops misbehaving in Grant Park. I have always wondered if there were any Chicago police officers who could claim to have been in Grant Park in ’68 and Comiskey Park in ’79.

SO WHAT TENDS to make White Sox fans defensive about the night is the idea that all of us ought to be tainted by the acts of a few meatheads who probably haven’t been to a ballgame since. (I’d joke that they’re too stoned to find the stadium, except that drug addiction is about as sad a situation as alcoholism – Dean Martin’s routines set aside).

Disco Demolition Night (as the Steve Dahl stunt was billed) is spewing various written debates these days about how homophobic the event was. It’s defenders are responding that the real victim are the lower classes (since only “rich” people theoretically could afford to get into the whole disco music scene that was the musical fad of 1977 and was pretty much dying out by 1979).

I have no problem thinking of the people who got all worked up over disco music as being buffoons. I remember being surrounded by many of them back in the day.

Back three decades ago, I was making the transition from junior to senior high school. I can remember a time when the standard “uniform” of the day was jeans and some sort of rock ‘n’ roll t-shirt.

REO SPEEDWAGON. LED Zeppelin. Aerosmith. Those were some of the bands whose logos on t-shirts were the most popular. But another popular shirt were those black with white letters depicting the logo of WLUP. “The Loop. FM 98” (actually, it was 97.9). I can remember being surrounded by the people who thought Steve Dahl was a genius, even before Disco Demolition.

So I know firsthand that the people who want to lambaste the whole anti-disco movement as somehow anti-gay or bigoted aren’t totally absurd. It wasn’t a tolerant crowd that used to enjoy this scene that thought bands such as Styx were somehow musically immortal.

It was one that would criticize anything it disapproved of as being “gay” (because, after all, what could be more insulting than that?).

But there also was the sense that disco became popular (instead of just something played in gay bars) when white people took it on. And in that context, it became something that was used as a way to further isolate those who weren’t a part of their clique.

IT’S TOO BAD that the “have-nots” of this issue took on raucous heavy metal music as the symbol of their cause, in part because it was the anti-disco of a musical beat.

So, if I remember much of the disco “debate” as being between differing cliques of white people, rather than Anglos versus “other” people, then so be it.

So do I remember the people who stormed the field at Comiskey Park as being a batch of lunkheads? Yes.

But they were probably no more pathetic than those people who went out to see the film “Saturday Night Fever,” and became so enamored with the image of “Tony Manero” that they went out and blew all their money on a white suit that they haven’t been able to wear in decades and probably shudder whenever they see the old pictures of themselves while wearing it.

BESIDES, THERE’S ALSO the fact that disco music was purely a dance beat. It had no other purpose. It couldn’t be listened to for pleasure, nor was it something that musicians of any true talent would devote years of their lives to perfecting their skills. And when it comes to dance music, there are many other forms that are preferable.

So when it comes to the eternal question, “Does Disco Suck?,” I’d have to say, “Yes, but no more so than Cheap Trick.”

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Thanks to YouTube, one can watch bootleg video of the Chicago newscasts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpQfCcsqQ0E) from 30 years ago tonight.

It has been five years (http://www.discodemolition.com/) since the release of a documentary that tried to put Disco Demolition into its proper perspective.

Burris sought friendly surroundings to announce his political retirement

When I learned about the surroundings for the announcement Friday that Roland Burris will finally retire from political life, I couldn’t help but be reminded a bit of the Rev. Paul Hall.

The reverend was a South Side pastor who had developed a reputation for running a church that did many good works in impoverished neighborhoods, and also had become a foster father for many troubled youths.

BUT HALL ULTIMATELY committed acts considered improper with some of those youths entrusted to his care, which led to his trial, conviction and eventual sentence to a four-year term in a state prison.

I was at the courthouse in suburban Markham the day some two decades ago that Judge Paul T. Foxgrover (who himself later was convicted and imprisoned on corruption charges) sent the Rev. Hall to prison. I remember it because the courtroom was packed with a lot of young boys who were determined to believe that “the system” was penalizing the reverend unjustly.

One of those boys literally tried to snatch my notebook out of my hands, while screaming at me that he’d write my story for me and that his account of a railroaded reverend would be more honest than any copy I’d produce. Some two decades ago, Roland Burris was a politico with a bright future. Who'd have dreamed it would end like this?

I couldn’t help but remember those boys, whose presence in the courtroom was meant to create the impression that the world loved the Rev. Hall, when I heard about the scene at the Chicago South Loop Hotel.

26th AND STATE streets is far from any site that a political person would use if he were truly trying to encourage the world to watch him make his announcement. But it was a site within the world that Burris would have been forced to rely upon had he stubbornly insisted on proceeding with a campaign for the U.S. Senate.

As Burris himself said, he picked a site on the South Side, since that is where his political aspirations began. He literally used a youth gathering at the hotel as the setting for his announcement that he wouldn’t seek his own full term in the U.S. Senate.

Anywhere else, Burris would have received a reaction of cheers and taunts.

But at the South Loop Hotel (which is on the site of what was once the South Parkway Inn and the Michigan Plaza Motel), Burris got to hear cries of “don’t do it,” and chants of “run Roland, run.”

IN SHORT, HE got an audience that felt like they were supposed to be sad about the announcement. One final shot to bloat the famed Burris ego before he goes off and finishes the final 18 months of what was once Barack Obama’s term representing Illinois in the U.S. Senate.

Then, he gets to return to retirement to the Chatham neighborhood home that literally was once the abode of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

Now as anyone who has read my past commentary published here about Burris is aware, I have never been as critical of his presence in the U.S. Senate as some people out there are.

I always thought it appropriate that a caretaker of sorts receive the post to finish out the final two years of the Obama term. Come 2010, we can have a free-for-all in the primary and general elections to pick our long-term replacement.

SO IN A sense, I’m pleased that Burris has come about to seeing himself as that caretaker. He finishes out the remaining time on the term, and will be able to claim it on his political resume (and the more sarcastic among us will note how quickly he has it added to the marble inscription on his already-erected tomb at Oak Woods Cemetery).

The bottom line is that Burris, the man who has always thought so much of himself, came to realize he literally was nothing more than “The $845 Man.”

That is the dollar figure that will always be remembered – it was the amount of money that Burris was able to produce in campaign contributions for the first few months of this year.

It is a pitiful figure.

EVEN WEAK CANDIDATES would be expected to have $100,000 or so from that time period, and the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday that Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias has managed to raise $1.8 million thus far for a political fund that could be used to pay for a campaign for U.S. Senate.

About $670,000 of that came during the past three months. In short, Giannoulias is threatening to become the frontrunner in this race – regardless of whom the GOP thinks about putting forward and how many times they scream the name “Blagojevich” from the top of their lungs.

In short, a Burris campaign had the potential to be grossly outspent by a kid who’s only in his first term as a state government official (and whom some think only gets paid attention to because he’s a one-time basketball-playing buddy of Barack Obama from the University of Chicago).

So Burris’ announcement was all about saving face for the political future – although some pundits will be determined to trash Roland forevermore because he was willing to take a political appointment from Rod Blagojevich. And some of us will think that Roland chose to leave this political world by hiding behind children.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Just weeks after Roland Burris’ Senate staff finally got their official website (http://burris.senate.gov/) up and running, Roland, Roland, Roland lets us know he’s now looking to leave the District of Columbia.

How secure is a cemetery, really?

From a purely legal standpoint, I can appreciate (and share in) the outrage felt by people who have family members whom they laid to rest at Burr Oak Cemetery in southwest suburban Alsip.

Those families paid good money (and let’s be honest, in many cases it may have been money they really didn’t have to spare, but paid out anyway to provide for a dignified burial) for a cemetery plot, with the legal understanding that it was theirs.

THAT PLOT OF land would provide the final resting place, so to speak, for their deceased love one, and now they could quit worrying and get on with their lives.

So imagine how outraged they must be to learn that some workers at the cemetery were emptying out some grave sites so that the land could be resold to other people in need of a “final resting place” for their loved one.

That is just outrageous. It is a scam, and it is one that the courts and prosecutors will address in coming months, now that four people face criminal charges for their actions at the cemetery.

But that is purely a business issue. Somebody sold something to someone that they had already sold to someone else. Technically, it wasn’t theirs to sell.

THAT LEGALISTIC CONCEPT isn’t the reason so many people are finding this story morbidly intriguing.

It has to do with the way in which the bodies that were removed from their graves were then dealt with. Bones and other remains from about 100 different individuals were found piled up above ground in a portion of the cemetery that was fenced off from the public.

I suppose the cemetery officials would claim they were being somewhat dignified by putting the remains in a place where they weren’t exposed to the public. But why they didn’t think to create some sort of mass grave, instead of leaving the body parts out in the open air, is something I don’t understand.

Not that such a mass grave would be acceptable to anyone. After all, people paid money for those gravesites, only to find they were being resold.

NOW I KNOW this next statement is going to tick off some individuals. But I am having a hard time sharing some of the revulsion that people feel about this particular story (which was the dominant one on Chicago-area news reports and broadcasts on Thursday).

I suppose it has to do with the idea that I have always thought it incredibly unrealistic that a gravesite was somehow “safe” for all eternity.

With modern-day embalming techniques and other preservation methods, it is very possible to create human remains that won’t turn to soil once they are buried. Cemeteries literally provide limited spaces in which to bury people.

What does happen when space “runs out?”

TO ME, THE idea that a body was moved isn’t all that offensive, provided that people understand such an act can take place.

After all, take the concept of Lincoln Park. That so-called jewel on the north lakefront of Chicago that is the focal point of one of the city’s most elite neighborhoods was once the city’s cemetery.

But back in the 19th Century, officials saw the potential for development and didn’t let a little thing like human remains and eternal rest stand in their way.

Admittedly, that case differs in that those bodies were removed with permission of the surviving families, and there actually remain a few bodies buried in Lincoln Park in cases where people refused to allow the remains to be removed.

BUT NOW, CHICAGOANS with a sense of the quirky about our home city will cite that fact as an off-the-wall bit of trivia, rather than as some grotesque fact.

As far as the fact that bodies at Burr Oak were found dismembered, that is a different story (although I find it interesting that the criminal charge for such an act is classified as a Class X felony – the only thing worse is the crime of murder itself). We’re talking about cemetery workers who, if found guilty, have the potential to spend a couple of decades in a state prison.

Now I don’t know if I want to go as far as a friend of mine, who once argued that cemeteries were a waste of land and that all bodies ought to be cremated. I appreciate that some people have religious beliefs that demand a burial in order to be accommodated, and I’m not looking to pick a fight with them.

But while I’ll be the first to admit that the situation at Burr Oak is an extreme, is it really all that gruesome to have to accept the thought that perhaps a gravesite is just a temporary resting place, and that expecting that tiny plot of land to be yours for all eternity was probably about as realistic as believing that the WMAQ was ever gonna make you rich.

-30-

EXTRA: Has Roland, Roland, Roland really come to his senses about his fate?

It will be interesting to see what spin Roland Burris puts on what is believed to be his decision not to seek election to a full term in the U.S. Senate.

It would seem that “The $845 Man” took a look in the bankbook, saw that figure, and realized the hassle he’d have to go through to keep the Senate seat just wasn’t worth it.

SO NOW, ROLAND gets to finish out the next year-and-a-half as a departing member of the U.S. Senate. It’s not a bad way to finish out a political career that had its moments of significance.

Then Burris gets to return to his Chatham neighborhood home, and perhaps he’ll be able to work out some sort of punditry gig on the local scene to supplement his ample pension from his days as a state official.

Hey, if Dan Rostenkowski can overcome his circumstances and be regarded as a voice of political expertise on local television newscasts, I don’t see why Burris can’t do the same.

For the record, Burris will state his intentions when he speaks to a gathering at the Chicago South Loop Hotel, 2600 S. State St., on Friday at 2 p.m. I understand the gathering will be mostly children, which I figure means he wants as sympathetic (and clueless) an audience as possible.

-30-

Surprise! She’s an attorney general

Perhaps it’s not as big a surprise to Illinois political watchers as the day in 1997 when Jim Edgar announced he was retiring – rather than running for term number three as governor or for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

But there were people so convinced that now was the time for Lisa Madigan to try to move up the political ladder that her decision to seek a third term as Illinois attorney general will seem like a bit of a letdown.

FOR THAT IS what Madigan decided to do with her political future, and now the path is clear for a whole lot of people to run for governor (the job it is believed Madigan would like to have) and U.S. Senate (the job many Democratic operatives wanted Madigan to seek). Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., of the North Shore couldn't wait for Madigan to make her decision official before he announced he would now seek the Senate seat now that she was out of the running.

Of course, there were those lower-ranking officials who had hoped to move up on the Illinois political pecking order by becoming the state attorney general. They will have to find some other way of advancing themselves professionally.

This could literally be a situation where Madigan listened to her father – Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, who has long said that the lesson he learned in 1976 was to always try to avoid having a contested primary whenever possible.

That was the year that Dan Walker ran for re-election as governor, despite the fact that the Democratic establishment led by then-Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley detested him.

THEY USED THEIR strength to back Michael J. Howlett as the Democratic nominee for governor, and they succeeded in that Walker lost the primary. But Howlett was so weakened by the primary fight that he lost to Republican James R. Thompson in the general election – and it took another 26 years before a Democrat was elected governor of Illinois.

I’m sure the last thing that the Madigans wanted to have was a situation where Lisa had to go to war with Gov. Pat Quinn, and where she would lose even if she won in the primary.

So I can’t help but see this as a situation where Lisa Madigan decided to avoid the job she wants to hold. After all, she’s still young enough (only 44) that she could easily run for that office in 2014 or 2018.

Heck, even 2022 is feasible (she’d be in her late 50s, which is an age when many of these top executives decide they have enough experience to run for the highest-ranking post).

SHE COULD BE the person who succeeds Quinn when he decides he has had enough of trying to cope with the Legislature and get them to bend to his political will.

So in that sense, running for attorney general of Illinois is playing it safe, holding out for the day when she can seek the job she truly wants.

What she apparently doesn’t want is to be a part of the Capitol Hill scene.

Madigan has young children and has cited them in the past as a factor against wanting to have a political post that would require her to maintain residences both in Illinois and in the District of Columbia.

AND IT ALSO didn’t help that most of the people who dreamed of Madigan as a United States senator seemed to want that goal because of their concerns about the political party’s viability – rather than her interests, skills or ability to do the job.

So Lisa Madigan did not succumb to the charm of President Barack Obama, who recently had her at the White House for a conversation about how she would benefit Illinois by running for the federal post.

Nor is she giving in to the party hacks. She’s making a decision based upon what she thinks will benefit what she wants to do.

And the end result is that we, the electorate of Illinois, will have the potential to endure a sequel in 2010 of the 2002 general election.

FOR JOE BIRKETT, the state’s attorney of DuPage County, made it known recently that he wants the Republican nomination for attorney general.

Madigan beat Birkett back then, despite his attempts to portray her as some sort of political “daddy’s girl” who would do whatever her House speaker father commanded of her.

The people of Illinois didn’t quite buy the logic back then, nor did they accept his rhetoric that she wasn’t an experienced enough attorney to be worthy of the state attorney general’s position.

But thus far, Birkett is giving signs that he will try to resurrect as much of the old rhetoric as possible. For he has said he thinks his criminal prosecution experience will make him a qualified attorney general – even though the bulk of the state position consists of addressing issues related to civil law.

PERHAPS BIRKETT IS hopeful that he can scream out the name “Blagojevich” and have Madigan shrivel up. But Lisa Madigan with her financial advantages and experience was always the one Democrat who seemed immune to being tagged with the “Blagojevich” label.

It’s not like she’s Roland Burris, who owes his current political life to Blagojevich’s desire to tell the General Assembly that impeached and removed him from office where they could shove it.

So if it really does become Madigan vs. Birkett in 2010, it will be interesting to see what new tactics the Gentleman from DuPage comes up with.

Because a literal repeat of ’02 will result in the same end result.

-30-

Quinn trying to turn legislators against Illinois House and Senate leadership

It might not sound like a revolutionary concept, and it certainly has the potential to backfire.

Yet Gov. Pat Quinn may very well be on to something with his latest tactic in trying to sway the General Assembly to support something resembling the significant income tax hike he wants to close what he says is a $9 billion gap in the state budget.

WHAT IS IT that Illinois’ governor is on to? He’s actually taking the individual legislators seriously.

He spent part of his day earlier this week meeting with about three dozen legislators from the Chicago suburbs, and the Associated Press reports that he is scheduled to meet with another group of senators and representatives – only this time it will be a gathering of lawmakers from rural Illinois.

This comes after he had a similar meeting with legislators whose common characteristic is that they are female. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he will eventually have gatherings with the Legislature’s black and Latino caucuses, and perhaps he’ll even have a sit-down with the legislators who emanate from Chicago proper.

I’m sure that to people who don’t pay much attention to the mechanizations of state government (and who may even resent the idea that such practices are involved in the making of state laws), it sounds stupid to think that there is anything special about a governor talking to legislators.

AFTER ALL, HE wants these people to vote for his proposed tax hike to close the budget gap. Why shouldn’t he be talking with them?

It’s just that I know from the seven years I was a reporter-type on the Statehouse scene (and in the two decades that I have watched it), I know that it is rare the governor bothers to get gritty, so to speak, with the regular legislators.

Yet Quinn is not only talking with the legislators, he’s recognizing them by the same sub-groups that they recognize themselves by.

Usually, it is the governor with the four legislative leaders (the ranking Democrat and Republican each from the House and Senate).

EVEN WITHIN THAT group, there is the tendency for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, to overshadow the group, and turn government negotiations into a political battle between himself and the governor.

That is part of the advantage of having been around the Springpatch Scene since the early 1970s and having held the top leadership position among Democrats since 1982.

I remember one time asking a legislator from Chicago’s South Side about the last time he had direct contact with the governor about a particular issue. The look on his face made it clear to me that the very concept of direct contact was an alien one.

But then again, we’re talking about an official in Quinn who apparently had no direct contact with Rod Blagojevich for about a year-and-a-half – even though Quinn was the lieutenant governor and theoretical second-in-command of state government.

SO PERHAPS QUINN remembers what it feels like to be isolated, and wants to include the legislators who will have to actually cast the votes in support of whatever proposal he and the four legislative leaders wind up concocting to eventually approve a balanced budget for the state fiscal year that began last week.

Or perhaps he’s just so disgusted with running into stone walls against Madigan and John Cullerton in the Senate, with Republican leaders Christine Radogno and Tom Cross showing they can be just as stubborn and politically partisan as their Democratic Party counterparts.

So doing the end run may create an audience of people so desperate to be paid attention to that they will consider doing something along the lines of what Quinn wants.

Then again, maybe they won’t.

THE SIMPLE FACT is that many of these people get elected because of the legislative leaders’ support financially. I remember a representative once telling me that Mike Madigan never tells her how to vote on issues, and that the only thing she had to promise him in exchange for campaign cash was that she would support him for House Speaker.

I’m sure some of those legislators will use the opportunity for face time with the governor to try to convince him how wrong he is to even think the words “income tax hike” when it comes to trying to fix the fiscal mess.

The fact is that I have always had the perception of the Illinois General Assembly as being a body of people whose purpose is to band together as a group. Individually, they are worth little.

There are times when it seems like out of the 177 members of the Legislature (59 in the Senate, 118 in the House), there are about 20 who are significant – either because of seniority or some special knowledge on a particular issue or because they are Bill Black, the longtime Republican from Danville who has a fiery temper and can easily be aroused to a tantrum on virtually any issue before the Legislature.

OTHERWISE, WE’RE TALKING about people who deserve the title of “mushrooms” (Springfield-speak for a legislator who is kept in the dark on things until absolutely necessary to enlighten him).

So in a sense, Pat Quinn is picking through the mushrooms.

Will it help him gain strength to pass his proposal into law? Or will it poison him by stirring up future resentment among the Legislature’s four leaders that he would dare to talk to their minions?

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’d thoroughly enjoy the sight of Pat Quinn meeting with the Illinois Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus (http://nwi.com/articles/2009/07/07/news/illinois/doca6355b23256c2764862575ec000b4006.txt), which is how a subgroup of rural legislators prefers to identify themselves based on their opposition to every gun-related piece of legislation that Mayor Daley has wanted the General Assembly to pass in recent years.