Who Votes in Chicago?

Good little article over at a tech site called engadget. "The iPad is taking away American jobs, Jesse Jackson Junior's sanity (video)"

Video shows Jesse Jackson Jr. attacking the iPad as a cause for the employment issue facing our country and then going on he somehow ties Steve Jobs' success, China, job loss, and the 1st Amendment being taken advantage of all into one quick summary.

I know at least ten kids in high school right now that could have written a better explanation of why job loss should be a more important issue to Congress. They would not have used those poster-boards in their presentation. They would have used the HDMI out on their new iPads to present their powerpoint, who makes those giant posters for everyone in Congress, someones has to be getting rich off of those.

Obituary

The Obituary of Charles Todd can be read here.

I have some video of what he said back in September '09 when September 28th was proclaimed Charles Todd Day. I'll try to dig it up and get it posted. He was moved by the city's gesture and recognition.

For the Good of Illinois - Illinois Reality Check

I receive a number of emails from political parties and elected officials from being on email lists. I dont have to necessarily support or agree with Costello, Obama, the Republican Party , or our mayor to want to receive emails from them when the send out update emails. Being informed is always a good idea. They are my elected officials even if I didnt elect them and I should want to know what they are up to, or at least what they say they are up to.

I received an email invite from the Monroe County Republican Party from Myron Neff earlier this week for their annual Lincoln Day Dinner. I scanned through the speaker list to sees whose coming to our city. The Democratic Party recently had the Governor come to town. The keynote speaker for the Lincoln Day Dinner is Adam Andrzejewski, who is the founder and CEO of forthegoodofillinois.org. I'd never heard of the site so I browsed on over to it. I started reading some info on their site regarding the state budget. This pointed me over to another site called http://illinoisrealitycheck.com/ promoting a Republican backed plan to fix the state's budget. This I had to read. Their plan tallies a quick savings of $6.71 billion. Some items are well explained and appear to be thought out, while others were quickly mentioned with little explanation.

I have no issue with a well thought out plan to save the state over $6 billion. But when a savings titled "Pension Reform" recieves the following explanation,

Meaningful reforms reduce state liability going forward and, therefore, reduce the required payments on that unfunded liability. Illinois must adopt significant pension changes, such as those proposed by the Civic Committee. Targeted Savings: $1.35 billion

I have to ask someone for the details. The total saving of their plan is $6.71 billion and the line item that saves $1.35 billions has a two sentence explanation? The document is twenty-two pages long and they documented 20% of their savings plan with two sentences split over the end and start of two pages which made it easy to glance over.

Later on in their plan there is a cherry of an item anyone living in Illinois should pay attention to.

Local Government Revenue Sharing: Review the over $6 billion that local governments receive in revenue sharing from the State of Illinois. They receive around 6% of income tax receipts, over half of all gas tax receipts, 20% of sales tax receipts on items other than food and drugs, 100% of sales tax receipts on food and drug purchases, and 100% of revenues from the Personal Property Replacement Tax. A $300 million reduction represents around 5% of those revenues. This approach has been suggested by many groups including the Governor’s Taxpayer Action Board, the Illinois Policy Institute and the Civic Committee. Targeted Savings: $300 million

The state cannot pay what they owe local communities now. Local communities are trying to find new sources of revenue and someone thinks its a good idea to take more money from what local government was operating on? Someone thinks that will be a positive for the taxpayers?, how?

I fired off an email.

After reading your plan I have one concern. You offer good explanations regarding many of the proposed cuts and ideas for saving money for the taxpayer.

I expected to see a line item regarding pensions and I found it split between pages 16-17. A proposed savings of $1.35 billion should have a little more explanation than what was given. Who will this affect and how will it affect them? How will it be implemented? Smaller dollar amounts were given much better explanations than what was provided for a cut the covers 20% of the proposed savings.

I would caution the idea proposed in the section Local Government Revenue Sharing. The state of Illinois has been overdue on paying these funds to local communities for a few years. Communities have been struggling with paying their bills without these funds. You have named nearly every revenue source smaller communities in the state have and you feel a 5% reduction is fair. Your simply passing the responsibility of raising revenue on to local government and thsi will come at the cost of the taxpayer in the end. Its money raised in those communities for those communities, why should the state simply get more of that pie?

I would welcome a response of any kind. Thanks
-Levi Ottwell

After re-reading that I suppose I had more than one concern. I didn't really expect a reply, usually nothing is sent back when you fill out the web form like they provided to contact them. I received a reply back in a little over 24 hours.

Dear Mr. Ottwell,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments on the Senate Republican Caucus' "Reality Check" plan.

In retrospect, I would agree with you that we should have offered more explanation on the proposed reforms to state pension systems. This issue has been debated and discussed to such a degree here in Springfield that I think we fell victim to assuming that everyone would be as familiar with the proposals as we are.

The truth is, the debate over pension reform could easily have filled the entire document and then some. It is a very challenging issue, as any discussion of changing retirement benefits always is. The challenge facing Illinois is that the cost of anticipated pension benefits for teachers and other public employees is consuming an ever-growing percentage of the state budget. It will become increasingly difficult to meet our basic obligations to provide public safety, fund education, provide health care and also to meet the obligations of our pension systems.

Yet, those obligations represent a constitutionally protected contract between employers and employees that cannot be lightly dismissed. Much of the debate in recent months has focused on differing legal opinions as to whether or not modifications in benefits for existing employees would violate that constitutionally-protected contract. Beyond that, significant questions exist as to what form appropriate modifications might take.

At least two organizations have taken an active role in promoting pension reforms. You may wish to visit their websites for a more thorough discussion. They are the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago http://www.illinoisisbroke.com/index.aspx and the Illinois Policy Institute http://illinoispolicy.org/news/article.asp?ArticleSource=3929. These are just two organizations and two sources for additional information.

Our purpose in the "Reality Check" document was not necessarily to endorse any particular plan, but rather to acknowledge that pension reforms must be a significant part of any budget solution. We set an aggressive, but also realistic, goal of finding $1.35 billion in savings from the state's retirement systems. One of our goals is to jump start negotiations as to how to achieve those savings.

Your point regarding local government revenue sharing is well-taken. This is also a very difficult issue that will require balancing the needs of the state and the needs of local governments. As with almost every reduction recommended, Senate Republicans recognize that these are difficult choices and that ultimately negotiations will be needed to balance the needs of the state with the needs of the local governments. However, you are exactly correct that we should not simply pass on the costs to local taxpayers. Protecting local taxpayers must be an integral part of any negotiation.

Again, on behalf of the Senate Republican Caucus, I want to thank you for taking the time to review the proposal and for your thoughtful comments. Illinois would be in much better shape if all citizens took the time and interest that you have taken to learn more about these public policy issues.

Sincerely,

Mark Gordon
Director,
Communications and Public Affairs
Illinois Senate Republican Caucus

Now I have some more reading to see what the plan is really based on. I do appreciate getting a response. I am very appreciative that it was not a canned response. Sounds like the plan is centered around a few negotiations. How do you negotiate with all of the local communities in Illinois? At least the document had savings explained and outlined in a way most people could understand there may be hope for the state budget.

Colbert PAC

If I'm up late enough I usually catch part of The Colbert Report. Even if you do not agree with the political views he has and I'm not saying I agree with him all or even most of the time. I do often agree with the method he uses to illustrate how shockingly ridiculous the system is.

If you don't understand what a political action committee (PAC) is, Colbert gives a fairly good description and illustrates the flexibility in how the money can be spent along with commentary and perspective from Trevor Potter. Colbert ends the segment stating he is starting Colbert PAC whose goal is "Making a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow"

Maybe my generation is missing the point, at least some would think so since we tend to tune into things like "Colbert" over "Meet the Press". I tend to think we understand whats going on fairly well. We may tend to look at things with a simplistic approach and be ridiculed for it, but I have always heard a lot of the "older" generations tell people my age how things used to be simpler and better because of it.

Seriously Cahokia? & Columbia's Election Recap

Cahokia:
The situation in Cahokia only gets worse and worse. In '09 four men were charged with vote fraud, two of which were newly elected village trustees.

One of these men, Trevor Tompkin, again became mixed up in a situation with Cahokia police yesterday at a polling place.

According to Tompkin, the officer, who was not identified, asked him, "Why are you eyeballing me?" to which Tompkin said he replied, "I'm eyeballing you because you're eyeballing me." The officer then placed Tompkin in handcuffs.

Read more: http://www.bnd.com/2011/04/06/1659842/cahokia-poll-watcher-on-probation.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz1IkgjWzSO

"Why are you eyeballing me?" We're supposed to believe a police officer said that out of the blue? And the response to the officer was "I'm eyeballing you because you're eyeballing me."? Seriously? Then the cuffs were placed on him. If that dialog is what actually happened it's the most ridiculous back and forth between a cop and a person I've heard of since I last watched a good rerun of Cops from the 90's.

I imagine more was said between the two before he was arrested.


Columbia:
At least Columbia didn't have any arrests at polling places yesterday during our election.

Instead we had four new aldermen elected. No incumbents won the right to serve four more years. With the vote totals from the election a candidate really needed to have a few blocks of their wards turn out and vote to win. 200-300 voters is all it took to win yesterday. That's it.

If your candidate won then I hope you follow their actions at city hall very closely and make them stand by what the told you they could/would do for you, take notes and keep them accountable.

If your candidate lost, I'll assume you'll be watching their successor very closely in order to point out their failures and what they have done that you do not like or want. I would however caution against this. It will be nearly impossible to measure the newly elected aldermen against what the sitting aldermen accomplished and stood for while they held the position. In every ward that had a true aldermanic race the candidates stood for different ideas and very different ways of achieving even similar goals. I feel these comparisons will only continue to split the community. I encourage those who voted for the incumbents to grade the new aldermen on what they said they could/would do if elected. They all had some lofty goals, some of which I feel may be unattainable. Grade them on what they said they would be, not on what you wanted from your candidate.

For those of you who did not vote, I would ask why not? Then again if you take the time to read the blog I would hope you took 10 minutes yesterday and voted. If you were silent yesterday I would encourage you to keep tabs on your aldermen in the same manner I stated everyone else should. They are your aldermen now.

In closing I would offer the incumbents leaving office soon my thanks. As disingenuous as that may sound post election, I do mean it. Your time spent serving the city should be appreciated and a thanks should be extended to you, being an elected official is often a thankless job at the end of the day.

Election Day

Well I stopped and voted on my way into work this morning.

I was there at about 6:50 and was number 15 in my precinct who had voted this morning. I hope as always that there will be a good turnout. I try to keep the site fairly neutral so I wont say who I voted for. My ward gets to choose between Jeff Huch and Brad Oberkfell.

When selecting a candidate I tend to weigh out the negatives/positives they have on an individual basis and then weigh out what their impact will be on the council as a whole. I see two individuals that have what the feel are the best interests of the community in mind, I truly think the feel they do. I then see two very different possible impacts on the city council. I'm still not sure which council impact will be best for the long term health and future of Columbia.

Is it too early for someone to start doing their homework and paying attention to what the city is facing to run for office in 2013? A lot depends on this elections outcome. Plenty of claims were made and regardless of who wins, I plan to hold my new aldermen to their campaign promises. I hope all of you do the same.