Non-citizen driver’s licenses: One more step, but not a baby step, before passage

There’s just one barrier remaining before Gov. Pat Quinn can give his approval to a new law permitting non-citizens to get valid driver’s licenses in Illinois – yet it could be a big barrier.

The same bill that managed to make it through the full Illinois Senate during the fall veto session came before an Illinois House committee – where it got the desired recommendation.

SEEING THAT QUINN has said in the past that he wants to be able to put his signature on this bill. He wants to be able to treat the immigrant population with a certain amount of respect – and probably figures that the kind of people who view this issue as somehow subversive are the kinds who were never going to vote for him anyway.

So what is stopping him?

This measure still needs the backing of the full Illinois House of Representatives. And that might not be a sure thing – particularly on account of the time factors at work here.

For Tuesday is the final day of the current General Assembly. All the officials who managed to win election in November will be sworn-in on Wednesday.

IF ANYTHING IS to happen, it will have to come about Tuesday. There’s no time for any political do-overs. It would have to come now.

And even state Rep. Edward Acevedo, D-Chicago, went so far as to admit to the Chicago newspapers that any vote on this issue will be close. This isn’t a shoo-in to pass.

Because there is so little time, the reality is that if it does not pass on Tuesday, the session ends with no action on this issue.

Which means that someone would have to reintroduce the issue as a brand-new bill that would have to go through the entire legislative process all over again.

PERHAPS IT COULD be said that the previous legislative activity is building momentum and that it might be all the easier to just start over and get the bill worked through the process during the spring of 2013.

And maybe in the long run it doesn’t matter much if the bill is signed into law some time in January or some time in July.

But it would be incredibly frustrating for those people with a personal interest in this issue to have to wait a little longer – after coming so close to working their way through the legislative process this time around.

So we’re going to have to wait and see what happens on Tuesday with regards to driver’s licenses – even though I suspect many people are going to be more attuned to whether or not the Legislature makes a last-ditch effort to try to pass something impacting the shortfall we now have when it comes to funding pension programs.

IN FACT, I’M curious to see if some of the biggest ideological critics of driver’s licenses for the non-citizens are going to suddenly become proponents of pension funding reform – just so that attention will be diverted from the other issue.

For the record, I’m restating my support for this issue – because I like the idea that it would encourage people now living in the shadows of our society to come out into the open.

That would provide so many benefits for all of us that I have a hard time accepting the fact that anybody can’t comprehend that fact. But some do.

Although most of those who oppose this issue do so because they see that allowing these people to get a driver’s license is a form of recognition and respect that they’d rather not have to give out.

EVEN THOUGH THIS particular bill would create a special class of driver’s licenses for these people that could not be used as identification in the way that the bulk of us rely on a driver’s license or state ID card.

These critics want for our state government to issue a level of disrespect that goes along with their own ideological hang-ups.

Which is why I’d like to think that a slim majority of our Illinois House of Representatives will have the sense to disregard such nonsense. Although counting on lawmakers to do the “proper” thing is always a long-shot – in and of itself.

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The nada session?

Unless we get some mystical, magical and excessively speedy political maneuver, the Illinois General Assembly isn’t going to consider the legalization of marriage for gay people any time before the new Legislature takes over on Wednesday.

There’s also no chance that the Legislature will react to the shooting deaths of two dozen people at a Connecticut school by passing a series of strict limits of firearms possession – particularly on automatic weapons.

A PART OF me wants to believe that it is because the concept of pension funding reform is so significant that the General Assembly’s leadership wants to spend these final days of activity focusing on it.

Yet such a thought would be ridiculously naïve. Chicago Cubs fans would have a better grip on reality if they dreamed about a National League pennant in 2013.

This lame duck portion of the legislative session (the final few days in which legislators try to rush through certain bills before newly-elected officials can have their say) is truly going to be what it is meant to be – just a few final days of activity to wrap up old business.

It seems that none of the big social goals that some legislators hoped to get rushed through the process (so as to keep the ideological critics from being able to gear up their opposition) are going to make it.

LEGISLATORS IN THE Illinois House of Representatives’ judiciary committee that was considering assault weapons-related legislation admitted Sunday they can’t get their act together in time to get something sent to Gov. Pat Quinn for final approval before Tuesday night.

Gay marriage is also a long-shot, largely because the state Senate failed to advance the idea.

I suppose there is the chance that the Illinois House on Monday could suddenly create a bill and approve it; thereby allowing the state Senate to come back on Tuesday and give their support to the House measure.

But that seems like a stretch.

SO WE’RE NOT getting either of those ideals enacted into law anytime soon. And I’m also skeptical that anything is going to happen on pension funding reform.

It may be a step forward that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, is now saying he’d no longer require suburban and rural Illinois school districts to pick up the costs of pension programs for their retired teachers – just as Chicago already does for retired Chicago Public Schools teachers.

But there’s still way too much confusion amongst the legislators about who will cover what and what kinds of cuts might have to be made to the benefits received by retirees.

Nobody wants to have to tell the people who worked their butts off all those years and who were counting on the pension program to provide them with something of an income in their final years that they have to take a cut.

THE OCCASIONAL STORIES we read about political people who manage to qualify for multiple pensions that add up to a significant income are truly the exception.

I honestly believe the activity that will occur on Monday and Tuesday toward this issue will be more about political people posturing themselves so as to try to shift blame to someone else.

“It’s his fault nothing happened!” is what we’re going to hear a lot of by week’s end.

The sad thing is that this is a problem that has grown so large because it has been postponed for so long.

IT REALLY WASN’T an exaggeration when officials said at the end of the spring 2012 legislative session that action was needed by then to avert financial catastrophe.

The fact that the deadline came and went has made many political people think that all the talk of deadlines is a lot of hot air. When the governor says he wants a solution to the problem approved by Tuesday, nobody takes him seriously.

So too many people seem to think this can be pushed off to the spring of ’13, then perhaps the fall and maybe even into 2014!

Gay marriage. Assault weapons. Pension funding. Add in expanded gambling and a Chicago casino, and these same arguments are going to keep cropping up for some time to come.

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Dick Mell: Is he in or out?

Long-time Alderman Dick Mell is on the verge of retirement. He wants his daughter, Patricia, to succeed him in the City Council.

Since Patricia is currently in the Illinois House of Representatives, that would create a vacancy there. And the one-time attorney for Mell’s son-in-law (a.k.a., Rod Blagojevich) says he’d like to get into electoral politics at that level.

A LOT OF movement? Or maybe it’s a whole lot of nothing!

Who’s to say what is going on – other than to express the thought that the idea of Deborah Mell someday moving up to a higher-ranking post than a legislative seat is a realistic one.

It’s just a matter of when.

For we got to see the old-school of Chicago journalism and the sense of competition at work on Friday.

THOSE OF US who woke up and checked out the news saw either on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times the headline END OF AN ERA AT CITY HALL: Ald. Dick Mell Calls It Quits, or saw the story on the newspaper’s website.

But by the time 10:30 a.m. rolled around, the Chicago Tribune had come up with their response story – put on their own website under the headline Ald. Mell indicates he’s not retiring. I’m curious to see how this gets hyped up in the Saturday newspapers that supposedly nobody buys – and if the Sun-Times feels compelled to “pull back” their story.

So which is it?

Is he in, or is he out?

I DON’T KNOW for a fact. But I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that he actually said he was on the verge of leaving – only to change his mind. The Sun-Times itself refers to “associates” who told the newspaper that Mell has told them he wants to leave following 38 years as an alderman from the Northwest Side.

I also got my kick from the response that Mayor Rahm Emanuel is giving to reporter-types, mainly that he has heard Mell retirement rumors for years and added, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

But the newspaper reaction is what intrigues me the most. It is so old-school – as though someone spent a bit too much time watching The Front Page recently and had the spirit of those days nearly 90 years ago rub off on them.

For when the Sun-Times came up with an “exclusive,” the Tribune reaction was to wreck it!

WHICH IS SOMETHING I used to enjoy doing when I used to write for the old United Press International and the Associated Press would come up with some story that they would claim was of some significance. Sometimes, it works out. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

The public probably doesn’t know what to think, because nobody is going to know quite how to follow up on this. Although a search of Google News shows me that the ABC-owned television station in Chicago initially said Mell would resign, followed up by his denial.

But the Huffington Post that everybody seems to think is the future of journalism is sticking by the notion of Mell retiring “within the next few months,” although they did acknowledge the Tribune’s attempt to dunk a red-hot story in a bucket of cold water.

Not that I’m worrying too much about Deborah Mell these days. I’m sure her father will clue her in eventually when he does make up his mind what he wants to do. She is a competent public official, even if some will forevermore hold it against her that she wouldn't vote "aye" in favor of impeachment of her former governor/brother-in-law. (Although if you really want to know more about Deborah as a legislator, the Welles Park Bulldog lays it all out nicely).

ALTHOUGH A PART of me suspects that Dick Mell really is of that old-school just like Richard J. Daley – who couldn’t envision anybody but himself in his political post. He probably wishes he could have been like Harold Washington and died at his desk at City Hall.

Just like when Mell gave us what will be his lasting photographic image – that night in November 1987 when he stood atop his desk in the City Council chambers while trying to get attention for himself during the process of picking Washington’s mayoral replacement.

Why do I suspect a part of Mell would thoroughly enjoy going down fighting in that very pose?

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Illinois’ absentee boys on verge of filling their vacancies in Congress

One of the big stories of 2012 was the fact that two members of our state’s Congressional delegation missed significant amounts of time.

For Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., it was a stroke that took him out of action for a year, while it was a bipolar disorder that caused Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., to have to take a leave of absence that stretched from June until the week in November when he decided to just chuck it all and resign.

WHICH IS WHY I found it intriguing Thursday that both vacancies were on the verge of being filled.

In the case of Kirk, the man himself was able to return to the U.S. Senate. He had the television cameras on hand to record the moment that he walked up the 45 steps of the Capitol – with his congressional colleagues cheering him on.

He even had fellow Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., helping him up the steps, and Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., ready to shake his hand when he got to the top.

Kirk isn’t fully recovered from the stroke he suffered early last year. But he seems ready to go back to work and take on a limited schedule, while representing (along with Durbin) the interests of the people of Illinois when they come before the U.S. Senate.

NOW JACKSON WILL not get anything close to a welcome like that. In fact, I haven’t the slightest clue where he was on Thursday. And I doubt that anybody except the U.S. attorney staffers who are trying to bolster their careers with his criminal prosecution cared what he was doing.

But that vacancy in the House of Representatives took a significant step toward being filled on Thursday when the Illinois State Board of Elections began accepting nominating petitions from people wishing to get on the ballots for the Feb. 26 primary elections.

There are more than two dozen people who have said they’d like the Democratic Party nomination for the Illinois Second Congressional district seat, while a few Republicans and a couple of political independents also have said they may run.

But any clown can put out a statement expressing interest in running for any electoral office they can dream about.

IT IS THE people who go through the process of putting together nominating petitions who ought to be taken seriously.

Petitions will be accepted through Monday night, so there is still room for more people to come forth. In fact, some of the names of people who supposedly have a serious chance of winning have yet to file petitions.

Yet let’s look at the five candidates who were actually at the Elections Board offices when they opened at 8 a.m. – all in hopes of getting their names printed atop the ballot when it is finally compiled.

I know one political observer-type person who seriously believes only those candidates deserve to be taken seriously, because their ability to get their petitions filed so early shows a special dedication to the office.

IF THAT IS the case, then 9^th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale, state Sen.-elect Napoleon Harris, D-Flossmoor, state Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields (who on Thursday boasted of the $130,000 she raised for her campaign just in the past month) and former state Rep. Robin Kelly of Matteson are the ones who should be at the head of the pack.

Oh yeah, Clifford Eagleton of Harvey also was among the early filers. Although I doubt that even this will gain him any significant attention.

We’ll have to wait until 5 p.m. Monday to see how the ballot shapes up. Although I got my kick out of seeing one of the later filers on Thursday – former Rep. Mel Reynolds, who filed his petitions for a political comeback and indicated that he wants to be identified as Mel “MR” Reynolds.

Does he seriously go about calling himself “MR” (as in his initials)? Or is he going to demand that we all call him “Mr. Reynolds” (instead of all those thoughts we have about him based on his past criminal convictions)?

ONE OF THESE people (or maybe one of the other people such as former state Rep. David Miller of Lynwood or former Rep. Debbie Halvorson of Crete) is going to get to fill the vacancy we have had in our state’s delegation for seven month-and-counting.

Somehow, I doubt any of them will make as much of an impression upon their arrival in Washington as Kirk did on Thursday. Who else will be able to tell us (as Kirk did) that he had a near-death experience so close that he heard angels speaking to him – in Noo Yawk-type accents.

It reminds me of that episode of “The Sopranos” where actor Michael Imperioli’s “Christopher Moltisanti” character told of his brush with Hell (or was it Purgatory?) – where every day is St. Patrick’s Day, and the Irish get to rule over the Italians.

Which makes me wonder what a politician’s version of “Hell” would be – probably a place where the “goo goos” get taken seriously, and public policy is meant to benefit public – rather than political – interests.

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Obama backs it, yet Cardinal opposed. Will gay marriage come up for vote?

There used to be a time when religious people stayed out of partisan politics. The whole idea was that politics was part of what made this earthly existence wicked and sinful.

So trying to stay above it was the act of choice for people who wanted to live a religious existence in this life.

WE’RE DEFINITELY BEYOND that point these days.

Take the situation right here, where Cardinal Francis George wrote a letter this week that he’d like to think will be read by priests across the Chicago Archdiocese so as to motivate all the Catholics to take up the “cause.”

That “cause” being gay marriage. George wants Catholics to remind politicians how much they vote, and how they as a group do not want anything resembling marriage being permitted for gay people.

Personally, I’m still skeptical that anything will happen on the issue during the upcoming six days (the amount of time remaining until the Legislature elected in November gets sworn into office) on this issue -- even though I know that a state Senate committee was set to consider the issue Wednesday night!

I EXPECT IT more likely that things will be considered during the spring legislative session – which means they’d have until the end of May to consider things.

Then again, the people who are eager to make this change in state law might well want a quickie vote to give the opposition less time to do battle against them.

Which might well be the reason why Cardinal George feels compelled to say something – he doesn’t want this slipped through the gears of government without him having a chance to say something hostile.

Because that is how his letter is being interpreted in some quarters.

GEORGE DOES GO so far as to say that he doesn’t consider the Catholic church to be “anti-gay.” He also makes a statement that Catholics who have gay people in their families ought to reach out and continue to show them love and compassion.

Disowning a cousin is an anti-Catholic sentiment. Actually, it’s an anti-civilized human being sentiment as well.

But let’s be honest. There are some Catholics who have their hang-ups, and try to use the church as a means of justifying them. Let’s not forget that there used to be people who justified racial segregation on religious grounds.

Only the biggest of nitwits still tries to use that argument these days. It makes me wonder if the sentiments expressed by George this week (“The state has no power to create something that nature itself tells us is impossible,” the letter reads) are someday going to be regarded with equal laughter.

PERSONALLY, I HAVE always regarded issues related to homosexuality as being one’s own personal business because I find some of the public expressions of sexual orientation to be tacky. Although I accept that our “freedom of expression” gives us all the right to be as tacky as we wish.

Too much of the Catholic opposition strikes me as people using the church to try to cover up their own tacky hostility to people who aren’t exactly like themselves.

Which is why I am somewhat offended by the idea of a letter that will be read to parishioners as though it were an order from God himself. Somehow, I think God (or at least as He was portrayed by actor George Burns) would be just as offended.

Although the real lesson of all this may be that the issue will get brought up before Tuesday in the General Assembly.

FOR WE HAVE President Barack Obama saying he’d like to see it passed, while George wants it to fail. Although for a real strange twist, the Capitol Fax newsletter of Springfield reported that Illinois Republican Chairman Pat Brady is now saying that he supports it -- claiming that the truly "conservative" position on the issue is to back it because it keeps government out of the issue altogether.

It would be a big bummer if the gay marriage issue wound up fizzling without so much as a single word spoken in debate by a legislator who will have to eat his words some three decades from now!

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Birth before death to start off 2013

We’re in a new year, yet the cycle of life continues as it always will.

St. Anthony gave us a birth ...

For in the early hours of Tuesday before the bulk of us had even woken up for the day, Chicago experienced its first birth.

AND JUST A few hours after completing a year in which the homicide total shot above 500 for the year, the body-count clock was reset and we’re already at 1 for ’13 (the year, that is).

I have ranted before on this weblog about how much I can’t stand the story about Chicago’s first-born baby.

Which ought to be a trivial note of little real significance. Is this child’s life really going to turn out any more important than that of someone born a few minutes earlier, or later, on the same day?

Besides, I also recall the first-born in Chicago for 1989 – when I was working for the now-defunct City News Bureau right at the new year and recall the politicking that the hospitals engaged in as they tried to convince us that “their” kid was the one who came first.

EVEN THOUGH THE reality is that they all came within seconds of each other and any rational human being would have acknowledged that. Some people take this particular “first-born” status way too seriously!

So for the record, Aydan Alvarado is Chicago’s first-born human being for 2013 – coming out of the womb at 12:08 a.m. at St. Anthony Hospital. As it turns out, he was due on Saturday – but wasn’t actually born until the first few minutes of Tuesday.

Just about 3 ½ hours after Aydan’s birth, Chicago experienced its first death due to homicide.

... while Northwestern started off a death tally

It was shortly before 4 a.m. that police received a call in the West Town neighborhood, and wound up finding a 20-year-old on the ground, bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to his throat.

OCTAVIUS DONTRELL LAMB wound up being rushed to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Police as of Tuesday morning didn’t have a suspect, or any idea what provoked this particular shooting death – which in all likelihood will only be noted because it was Number One for 2013.

If anything, it reinforces the attitude I expressed last week upon learning that Chicago Police Department officials were trying to keep the homicide total for 2012 under 500.

To the point that a previous killing was reclassified from “homicide” to “death investigation.”

IT DIDN’T WORK!

That killing eventually was shifted back to homicide, and there were five more slayings in Chicago during the final weekend of the year – including three on Sunday.

Although oddly enough, none on Monday.

So the death-by-homicide tally for 2012 tops out at 505 – unless someone who has been lingering in a hospital winds up dying in the next few days. In which case, the ’12 total will inch up all the more.

NOT THAT IT really matters that Chicago had more than 500 homicides for the first time since 2008. Death is more about the individuals than the raw numbers – which are an ongoing cycle.

Like I cited before, we’re already at “1” (and counting) for the current year. The “505” figure is now just a line in the record books – for those individuals who feel compelled to count such things.

So let’s hear it for Aydan. Here’s hoping the new resident of the Little Village neighborhood winds up having a lengthy and healthy life on this planet – and that his birth won’t be the only time his existence comes to the public’s attention.

Just as the real shame of Lamb’s death is that his life came to its end before he could accomplish much of note. What a waste!

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Lucky ’13? Even if we avoid “fiscal cliff,” we really didn’t solve problem

Nobody wants to do anything. But nobody wants to take any blame for doing nothing!

A new year, yet same old cheap rhetoric

That is probably the best way to summarize the activity that our Congress engaged in during the workday hours on Monday – as they were trying to stave off the dreaded “fiscal cliff” that we’re falling off of.

THE TAX INCREASES mandated because of the federal government’s inability to reach real solutions toward fixing federal finances are supposed to be so “draconian” (another catch word that’s being tossed about these days) that we’ll sink into another recession.

Not that I seriously expect this to happen.

For it seems that the reality is going to be that our members of Congress some time in the first day of 2013 will manage to approve some way of resolving the “problem” (which is artificial in that it is a construct of the Congress itself).

The most-laughable concept I have heard in recent days is that the Congress will then take credit for “saving the nation” from economic devastation by lowering the tax hikes that ever-so-briefly went up!

DEVASTATION THAT THEY brought on us by putting this problem off for soooooo long – they did, after all, have the past year to try to resolve it. Yet how much serious discussion occurred until the final weekend?

Nada!

So when I heard President Barack Obama during the noon hour here in Chicago (real time, not that EST nonsense they follow in D.C.) say that an agreement was “within sight” yet “not done,” it made me realize that the cheap talk is in the air.

It didn’t surprise me to read later on the wire services that Obama and Republicans reached a deal to pass a measure that delay the tax hikes temporarily – in hopes that they can be permanently put off with a vote that could be taken Tuesday.

WE DON’T HAVE a solution. We may not have even had a real problem – just a partisan pissing match that won’t really go away until people get serious about government finances as a financial issue.

Instead of as a chance to score point on, and dump all over, their politically partisan critics. Which is what political people on way too many levels place their focus on.

I realize that a government official can’t do anything if they can’t get elected; meaning partisan politics is a reality that must be addressed.

Yet there are times when I wish we had officials who could actually comprehend public policy – and not just spout out a few “talking points” without really understanding what it is they’re saying.

THERE ARE TIMES I think the bikini-clad or evening gown-wearing models at auto shows know more about cars than politicians do about government finances!

OBAMA: Wishing this were someone else's problem?

It results in way too many events where the final solution that gets approved is just a stop-gap measure meant to postpone the problem from getting worse until some unspecified date in the future.

Take the other issue that many of the TV-types have tried to pair up with the “fiscal cliff” – the farm bill and provisions of it that were on the verge of expiring.

Had they expired, an obsolete formula (more than 60 years old) for determining farmer subsidies would have kicked into effect. That is what would have provoked the fears that the price of a gallon of milk could have shot as high as $8.

WHICH IS WHAT it really should cost – except for that dreaded “government welfare” that we give to the farmers in the form of agricultural subsidies.

Not that I’m bashing such use of federal funds. Helping to keep the price of food staples at a reasonable cost that people can afford to buy and consume it strikes me as a legitimate use.

As are many of the other things that some political people are looking to hack to pieces when they talk about the need for spending cuts in the name of “deficit reduction.”

They just want to cut the things that benefit people who might not be just like themselves! Which is why I have a hard time taking them seriously now. And find it reckless and irresponsible that they’d be willing to let a mechanism like the “fiscal cliff” be triggered to score a partisan advantage.

THE POINT OF the “cliff” is that it is supposed to be so horrible that we’d never want it to happen and would do anything to avert it.

Let’s hope that our political people in Washington keep that concept in the back of their heads during the next couple of days.

Because IF it turned out that we have this problem get dumped into the lap of the Congress that was elected in November (they take their oaths of office on Thursday), I really believe that we’d get to see the absurdly-low approval ratings for Congress drop to the single digits.

If not an outright zero percent backing.

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