EXTRA: Three more counties, 96 to go

Three more counties across Illinois let it be known Thursday they would have their clerks start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, and one more county said they may be at it by week's end.

Macon County (the Decatur area) is the one that may be up and running soon, while Jackson County (the Carbondale area, which means Southern Illinois University's presence), Cass County (a rural place located northwest of Springfield whose most notable feature is the Jim Edgar fish and wildlife park), and St. Clair County (which is half of the Illinois-based suburbs of St. Louis) are the places that are now prepared to issue licenses.

OF COURSE, THAT still leaves some eight dozen counties that are refusing to get along. Some of the reasons I have read in various reports are laughable.

Such as the counties where the clerks say they're too busy to address the issue because of the upcoming March 18 primary elections to the ones who don't see the stupidity in having a situation where Illinois gets a split personality on this issue.

Then, there are the ones who will wait until June 1 before they feel they're forced to do it. I'm curious to see which ones try to find legal reasons to try to hold out even longer than that.

Which Illinois county will become the government equivalent of the Boston Red Sox, who when they signed infielder Pumpsie Green in 1959 became the last ball club to take a black ballplayer on their roster. A stigma that still gets used against the Red Sox, from time to time.

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Gay marriage issue puts Illinois in a “stupid” zone – for the time being

A part of me wonders which predicament is more embarrassing; back when Illinois was holding out against the concept of gay couples being able to marry? Or the current one in which some people are able to marry and others not?

On marriage, three counties down -- 99 to go

That’s our current status. We’re a split state. It is the reason why there have been significant numbers of people from outside Cook County who have come to our wonderful home county to get a marriage license.

THIRTY-ONE SUCH COUPLES from the rest of Illinois (including from Champaign, Dewitt, Kendall, LaSalle and Winnebago counties) made the trip to Chicago to get a license – which means their actual wedding ceremonies will be held here.

Along with couples from Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan, along with Colorado, Kentucky, South Carolina and Texas.

We’re becoming a magnet for this kind of activity. It seems the situation of last year – where the mayor of Minneapolis could rub it in Chicago’s face that gay couples from here were venturing further north to his city to have their weddings – is over.

Now come June 1, this situation will end. Because that is when the new law permitting such marriages in Illinois will take effect. It’s only in place now in Cook County because somebody sued.

ON THE VERY legitimate grounds that the courts had already permitted some marriages for couples who were not expected to live long enough to see June 1. Why only permit it for gay couples with health issues? It does come across as discriminatory.

So now, gay couples can marry in Chicago, which is causing the rush of other people to come to us. If not for the fact that this will spread statewide this summer, we’d probably have some political people arguing that it ought to be illegal for people to travel to Chicago just to get a marriage license.

It was this very split that caused the Illinois attorney general’s office to try to provide some guidance on the issue – because in at least one county (Macon, which houses Decatur), a state’s attorney advised the clerk to do nothing to issue such licenses now. Better to wait until June 1 when the issue is forced upon them.

Which goes against the practices in Champaign County, where the county clerk is now willing to issue a marriage license to all, and McLean County, where the clerk will start doing so on March 24.

OF COURSE, THOSE counties’ focus is on university towns (University of Illinois and Illinois State University, respectively) with significant numbers of people from other places living there for a stint of their lives. They’d be the obvious candidates to follow the lead.

All of this split is due to the fact that the lawsuit that allowed Cook County to issue such licenses immediately was filed in federal court solely against Cook County. Which is why everyone else is eager to claim the ruling does not apply to them.

The attorney general on Tuesday issued a statement saying that county lines ought not to decide whether someone can get a marriage license without having to make a special trip.

But that they also need to consult with their respective state’s attorneys before deciding how to act in coming weeks.

IT ISN’T ALWAYS a matter of consistency. Take the whole matter concerning “concealed carry” of weapons. Some rural state’s attorneys were so eager to have the concept as quickly as possible that they made it clear they weren’t going to prosecute violations of firearms laws.

Just as I’m sure there are some county prosecutors who will wish to hold out as long as they can on the marriage license issue – somehow believing they will gain some bonus points in the minds of ideologues.

Which is why our “stupid” split will endure for another three months – and in the minds of some for a lot longer than that.

June 1 can’t come soon enough – and not just because I’m disgusted with the Arctic-like temperatures we have experienced this winter. The heart of the baseball season will be up and running by then!

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He’s in hiding because he knows too much, or so Mel Reynolds says

I don’t doubt that there’s a stink surrounding the story of Mel Reynolds, the one-time member of Congress who recently got deported from Zimbabwe after managing to offend the government of that African nation.

REYNOLDS: The man who knows too much?

Then again, being on the bad side of Robert Mugabe doesn’t take much to achieve. That man seems to have a problem with anyone who won’t kowtow to him.

NOT THAT THIS fact makes me feel much in the way of sympathy, since he seems determined to continue his current saga in life.

For it seems that when Zimbabwe officials transported him from the jail where he had spent six days to their airport to get him out of the country, he didn’t return to his native United States.

He went to nearby South Africa – a nation that decades ago wouldn’t have let him come anywhere nearby. But now, is the place where he claims to be in hiding because he fears that a “secret Zimbabwean death squad” is trying to hunt him down. He’s marked for assassination, or so he says.

Although I wonder just how deep in hiding could he be if both WLS-TV AND the Associated Press managed to track him down by telephone for interviews in which he told us his life’s latest sob story.

REYNOLDS, WHOSE CRIMINAL record in this country involves both state charges related to being sexually involved with underage girls and federal charges related to his tax returns, has turned himself into a self-described consultant who was helping U.S. business interests to make connections in African nations.

Which is why he supposedly was in Zimbabwe since back in November.

He now says that his experiences have caused him to learn of U.S. officials, including some from our very own Chicago, who are skirting their way around the law – particularly since Mugabe doesn’t have the best record on international issues.

Reynolds now wants us to believe that the reason he got hit with criminal charges of pornography possession in Zimbabwe is because he was threatening to expose those people.

WHICH COULD COST business and government officials serious money!

Hence, the “death squads” that would turn Mel into a corpse. It all sounds so far over the top – almost like something out of a James Bond film (at least one from the Sean Connery era, the rest get just a bit too lame to pay much attention to).

Or maybe it’s more like something from a “Get Smart” episode – it sounds more like a Maxwell Smart caper than anything else, on account of all its inanity.

In fact, about the only reason I give it any credence is the fact that the pornography possession charge seemed too trumped up – and officials in Zimbabwe were way too eager to dismiss it.

REYNOLDS WAS CHARGED with a visa violation (it had expired) that was the reason he ultimately got deported. The pornography charge supposedly was dismissed because police did not get the consent of higher-ranking authorities before making the arrest.

Which may sound reasonable to someone whose legal sensibilities are U.S.-oriented. Although since when Zimbabwe officials care about such sensibilities is the real question.

A pornography arrest was just the way to draw attention to a U.S. political official whose lingering reputation was of getting aroused by the 16-year-old in peach-colored panties.

Reynolds isn’t wrong when he says that they used the most effective weapon they could come up with to discredit anything he might have to say about business interests in African nations. He may even be truthful in his statement to WLS-TV that he essentially “bribed” Zimbabwe officials to deport – rather than incarcerate – him.

ALTHOUGH EVEN TAKING that into account, it just seems like Mel Reynolds has a knack for walking into gaffes. And why his threats to expose what he knows about corruption (a press conference to be done while in hiding, he says) likely won’t be taken seriously.

Which may well be why the Rhodes Scholar-turned-Congressman-turned-inmate never was able to live up to the promise he showed early in life.

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Does an alderman really outrank a legislator? In Chicago, of course!

Gov. Pat Quinn has been taking some abuse in recent weeks, ever since the Illinois auditor general’s office came out with its review of an anti-violence initiative the governor concocted back in 2010.

QUINN: Thinking state terms, or city?

Some think he only did it to try to make himself look better just prior to the gubernatorial election that year (the one in which he barely beat Republican challenger, Bill Brady), and the audit says there was a lot of wasteful spending – and possibly even some fraudulent behavior.

STATE SENATE MINORITY Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, came out and said she wants the U.S. Attorney to investigate Quinn, while Brady is going around saying the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative is really just a fancy label for a “slush fund.”

Which is to be expected. A lot of Republican officials are going to try to say nasty things about Quinn so as to weaken him for whichever guy they wind up nominating come the March 18 primary.

The part that gets to me about this is the fact that some members of the Legislature’s black caucus are also joining in the rants.

It was their home neighborhoods that were the focus of the initiative, and they have been upset with the governor for a reason that comes down to their own egos being besmirched.

BECAUSE THE WAY the program worked, the state gave funds to community organizations that were picked out by the members of the Chicago City Council from those neighborhoods.

It seems that some of those aldermen (Surprise! Surprise!) selected groups that were politically connected to themselves.

RADOGNO: Playing politics!

Which means we now have the state legislators for those areas saying they warned the governor not to trust the aldermen to make honest recommendations. That he should have known better than to let the City Council get involved.

Although I really don’t think those legislators really cared about the fact. They were most likely resentful of the fact that a governor wouldn’t let the legislators make the recommendations and have funds go to groups that were their own political supporters!

AS THOUGH HE went outside the “state government” family to reward someone else. Which may be true if you try to look at state government from a purely parochial point of view.

HENDON: Not the normal move

The problem is that Quinn appears to have viewed dealing with Chicago from the viewpoint that Chicago people view it. Which is that if he had put something like this in the hands of the legislators, he would have been mocked for putting it in the hands of lesser political people.

It’s just the way things work that an alderman in Chicago outranks a state legislator. Heck, even some Cook County Board members outrank legislators. When Rickey Hendon gave up his City Council post for a seat in the state Senate in 1992, it was the ultimate political demotion.

There’s a reason why people trying to get into the political structure in Chicago start out as state legislators to gain some experience, then “move up” to a post that doesn’t require them to make the three-to-four hour drive to the Statehouse on a regular basis every spring.

AND AS FOR the ones who don’t move up and remain on the legislative scene for years to come, there’s always the exception like Michael Madigan who became the almighty (and often lambasted) Illinois House speaker.

MADIGAN: An exception to the rule

But, by and large, they’re the ones who just don’t show the promise to move up in the ranks. For a Chicagoan, a seat in Springfield truly is either the beginning or the end of a career in public office. It’s NOT the middle part of substance!

It’s the complete opposite of someone from a rural part of Illinois who gets “rewarded” with a state Legislature post for putting in time as a village or county official “back home.” Which gives them that tiny perspective on life that often dictates their actions as a “state” official.

I often wonder how much that difference in perspective about the significance of one’s post dictates how much of a mess our legislative activity can become. When combined with the partisanship between the two political parties (which is what the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative rhetoric largely is), it’s a wonder that anything ever gets done right on the Statehouse scene.

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EXTRA: Now if Karen Lewis endorsed Dillard, then I’d be swayed something significant was happening here

I feel like I’ve already written this commentary. In fact, I have.


DILLARD: Teachers love him (not really

The fact that the Illinois Federation of Teachers formally decided to back the Republican primary candidacy of Kirk Dillard for governor doesn’t mean much. Certainly no more than when the Illinois Education Association gave Dillard their backing.

THE GOP FRONT-RUNNER for governor, Bruce Rauner, has made it clear that a major focal point of his campaign is to mess with organized labor. He wants to undo the influence they have with government.

So the fact that the teachers’ unions do not want Rauner to become governor next year means they want to undermine him now.

Hence, they’re backing the Rauner primary challenger whom they find least offensive.

It is telling that federation officials made it clear their endorsement – while one of the few times they have ever gotten involved in a GOP governor fight – is purely for the primary.

AFTER MARCH 18, all bets are off. In no way does this mean the teachers’ union would want Dillard to actually be governor. They’re just hoping that some of their influence can help undermine Rauner’s chances of winning the big political prize.

It’s not like this hurts Gov. Pat Quinn within the Democratic primary, because the challenger he has is one so weak that even all the endorsements in the world likely would not give him a credible chance of achieving victory two weeks from Tuesday.

LEWIS: Would Kirk want support?

The federation’s endorsement also isn’t all it could be because of the fact that the most significant local within that union – the Chicago Teachers’ Union – is separate from this action.

I suppose it is possible that union President Karen Lewis could decide to hold her own press conference in coming days to announce that she, too, is backing Dillard and is instructing the teachers of the Chicago Public Schools to do the same.

BUT I JUST don’t think that there will be such an action. Not the least of which because I suspect Lewis' mind is more preoccupied these days with thoughts of teachers boycotting the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests.

RAUNER: The primary favorite?

Because I suspect most Chicago teachers, along with teachers in school districts across the state, will just keep their mouths shut publicly and go into the polling place on March 18 (or sooner, if they use Early Voting) and vote the way they would have even if no endorsement had been made.

I also suspect that the last thing Dillard would want is any kind of public appearance by Lewis – whose gruff persona would probably scare away even more potential voters than it would attract.

Dillard already is having to live down the fact that he regarded Barack Obama as something of a friend when the two served (and occasionally played poker) together (1997-2004) in the Illinois Senate.

DILLARD MAY BE the guy who has gone out of his way to spew some right-wing rhetoric to make it appear he’s not really some sort of liberal-to-moderate guy (in hopes of gaining votes from the socially-conservative elements of our society), but he doesn’t have the campaign cash to try to buy that image amongst the electorate.

2014 is going to go into the books as an election cycle that was able to be bought.

QUINN: Does he have 'dirt' on Bruce?

Past candidates who tried to use their personal wealth wound up having some personal stink about their lives become known to the point where it became impossible for them to continue.

Ultimately, that is going to be what decides whether Rauner has a chance of actually winning. Will the Quinn camp succeed with its finances where the underfunded GOP-types could not in terms of staining the image that Rauner has bought for himself?

IT’S POSSIBLE. THERE will be another eight months to go before this is over. All it takes is one moment that we don’t yet know about.

Which means that in the end, all this babble about teachers’ union endorsements probably won’t factor into the end result one bit!

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Who you gonna vote for? Do you or I really have much of a candidate choice?

It’s that time of year again. People can start casting their ballots Monday through Early Voting Centers for the March 18 primary elections.

I can't envision lines like this one from decades ago gathering at polling places this year across the state.

 

The public will get their say as to who should run the state government (and represent us at the federal level) come that date. And it’s likely that I will cast my own ballot sometime this week (allowing me to spend Election Day proper being a reporter-type person).

IN ACCORDANCE WITH my past policies, the Chicago Argus will make its endorsements (which are really nothing more than who I will vote for). I’ll take a Democratic Party ballot, which means I’ll be voting for Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., to have a fourth term in the U.S. Senate.

There also will be ballots cast for the pairing of Gov. Pat Quinn and Paul Vallas to be his lieutenant governor running mate, along with state Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Secretary of State Jesse White, state Treasurer nominee Michael Freirichs and state Comptroller nominee Sheila Simon.

Which is about as unsurprising as things can get.

Because aside of the fact that Quinn is being challenged on paper by Tio Hardiman of suburban Hillside, none of these people have a challenger.
 

QUINN: Won't coast to win!

TAKING A DEMOCRATIC primary ballot this time around doesn’t really amount to having much of a choice. It largely is a sign of showing that we have less faith in the Republican ranters to do anything positive about state government than we do with the Democratic establishment that got us in our current state of affairs.

Although if we’re honest about things, the people who decide to pull a Republican Party ballot in the primary don’t have much more of a choice. Their Attorney General nominee (Paul Schimpf), Secretary of State pick (Michael Webster) and Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka are unopposed.

One-time Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross (who wants to be state treasurer) has a challenge from Bob Grogan, while would-be U.S. Sen. James Oberweis must get past Douglast Truax. Neither Grogan nor Truax appear capable of putting up much of a challenge.
 

RAUNER: Probably thinks he will!

And when it comes to governor, it really is a pick between two past losers (in William Brady and Kirk Dillard), a no-name candidate with no money (which is why the only thing we know about Dan Rutherford is that he’s facing a sexual harassment allegation) and a no-name candidate (Bruce Rauner) with so much money that he can buy an image. The Illinois Federation of Teachers' backing of Dillard is more a matter of him being the lesser of evils -- from their perspective.

WHETHER THAT IMAGE will stand through the Nov. 4 general election so as to get Rauner elected as governor, or whether the experienced politicos on the Democratic Party side can shatter it to pieces is really about the only real question to be decided in this year’s election cycle.

That, and whether Hardiman or Truax will suffer the bigger defeat from the March 18 primary.

My point is that the results of the upcoming primary seem to be fairly straight-forward. We might as well be focusing now on the general election cycle – and I’m sure there are certain individuals who wish we could just get the whole thing over and done with on March 18 – rather than having to endure nearly eight full months of more campaigning between the two parties.

We’ve got enough headaches just from the electioneering that has taken place between the GOP governor types to last us this campaign cycle. Rauner, in particular, seems to be about nothing more than voting against the incumbent – rather than anything he would try to achieve as governor.

WHICH IS TO say that anybody who thinks they’re going to mock me for picking a Democratic Party ballot this time around ought to be looking at the lackluster choices the other party offers up.

I usually am quick to criticize people who don’t bother to vote. I argue that casting a ballot is the price one must pay for the right to complain about their government.

Although with this particularly uninspiring field of candidates, this time I may have to admonish myself a time or two before I set foot in the voting booth.

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Ho, ho and ho? Feds say Christmas party cash was really a bribe!

Did grandma ever combine this ...

There have been some fairly creative attempts to disguise the intent of a cash payment that federal prosecutors think was really a bribe. But using the Christmas holiday?

That may be a new one, and it seems to be the situation related to Curtis Thompson, who was a chief of staff to 21^st Ward Alderman Howard Brookins, Jr.

FOR THOMPSON IS the guy who got indicted on Friday (and was allowed to remain free while charges are pending in U.S. District Court without having to post bond) as the latest corruption case out of City Hall.

... with so much of this?

For the record, the amount is $7,500. That’s how much Thompson supposedly got in exchange for his professional services. Which means it falls within the trend of so many corruption cases – where the actual amount of the payoff is downright petty.

It’s not like $7,500 is anything Thompson could have lived off of for the rest of his life if he had somehow decided to skip the country and go into hiding.

According to the complaint filed in federal court, the person who was willing to make the government payoff was supposed to disguise the money (75 $100 bills tucked into a Christmas card) as donations to Brookins’ holiday toy drive and to pay for the alderman’s annual Christmas party.

THE PERSON MAKING the payoff (who in reality was an undercover informant working with the FBI) said he wanted to operate a 7-Eleven convenience store in the alderman’s home neighborhood, and he also needed certain city permits that would allow him to sell alcoholic beverages.

BROOKINS: Has a job opening for chief of staff

Supposedly, the bribe was to get the chief of staff to persuade Brookins to write an official Letter of Support on behalf of the would-be convenience store operator that would help speed along the bureaucratic process of issuing the required permits.

For what it’s worth, officials say that the businessman/informant actually attended the alderman’s Christmas party back on Dec. 19, which is when the very precious Christmas holiday card was delivered to the chief of staff.

That would make it more memorable than any political holiday party I ever have attended. The best thing I ever got was one year at a Christmas party at the Executive Mansion in Springfield, where then-Gov. Jim Edgar gave everybody silver holiday ornaments designed to look like the Old State Capitol building (the one that Abraham Lincoln would have known as the Statehouse, and where his body was on display just before being buried at the nearby Oak Ridge Cemetery).

I CAN FIND this latest case amusing because of the holiday connection.

Because it strikes me that if this had been something deeper-reaching, Friday would have been the day that Alderman Howard Brookins himself would have been hauled in front of a federal judge – and we’d be adding to the count of aldermen who have faced indictment throughout the years.

One can literally put together an entire City Council, with leftover politicos, from the ranks of those who have been indictment throughout the decades.

Instead, Brookins was only referred to as “Alderman A” in the indictment.

HE’S NOT CHARGED with anything. And he’s claiming he had no idea that when he wrote a letter on behalf of a would-be convenience store owner that somebody else was being enriched by his actions.

Which I’m sure is what would most offend certain types of people – someone else getting rich off their own efforts.

And perhaps knowing that if something does go wrong (which it did in this case because someone got caught), the blame will be spread around far greater than just the one guy.

The one who accepted a holiday card that most of us could never even dream of seeing.

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