“[The governor] cut more than $240,000 for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project at the University of Illinois, Springfield, and $800,000 to address the state’s DNA testing backlog. Another $1 million to offset the cost of videotaping police interrogations was cut,” Kristen McQueary reported on Sunday.
I thought of this while reading these stories today:
That’s how much more money the governor is putting in his pocket by refusing to excise the pay raises included in the budget bill the legislature sent to him.
Of course, that money will eventually end up in a defense lawyer’s pocket, but that just makes it worse.
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“[T]he governor faced blowback for his decision to leave a 3.8 percent cost of living adjustment intact while cutting hundreds of other programs, including those relied upon by the developmentally disabled, autistic children, the elderly and battered women,” Dave McKinney writes in a Sun-Times story apparently not available online.
The Blagovevich administration says it had no choice but to leave the pay raises alone because of state statute, but McKinney points out that in 2003 Blagojevich said “In these difficult times, when state agencies are being consolidated, when the number of state personnel is being reduced - in short, when others are being asked to sacrifice - this is not the time to give pay raises to the governor, lieutenant governor, to the constitutional officers, to the men and women of the General Assembly, or to the Supreme Court or Circuit Court judges.”
The judges eventually got their raises thanks to an Illinois Supreme Court ruling, but Blagojevich’s veto for everyone else stood.
Barack Obama is coming under fire for his indelicate denials that he is a Muslim. I just realized watching Seinfeld how Obama should address this in the future. Just add the line, “Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”
* “As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
“Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“’I will never forget the quote,’ Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. ‘He said, We have a very tightly wrapped message.’”
Last Thursday morning, Barack Obama announced in a video to his supporters that he would become the first presidential nominee to ever drop out of the public campaign financing system since it was introduced in a spate of post-Watergate reforms. Obama had previously pledged to campaign within the system and had never declared it “broken” up until the time he announced his decision.
Later that evening, campaign manager David Plouffe sent an e-mail to supporters saying he wanted “to add a little context to the video message you received earlier announcing that we will not participate in the public financing system for the general election.”
Like Obama’s announcement, it was an exercise in disingenuousness.
“Even though we stood to receive more than $80 million in taxpayer funding for our campaign,” Plouffe wrotes, “the system has been so gamed and exploited by our opponents that it is effectively broken.”
As if Obama was making a great financial sacrifice to righteously uphold a principle.
Of course, by opting out of the system, Obama stands to raise far more than the $80 million cap designed to even the playing field, tamp down the influence of money in campaigns, and prevent campaign spending arms wars into the future.
Instead of upholding a principle, Obama revealed his nature.
The Internet has been around a long time now - long enough to threaten the survival of many newspapers, including the Sun-Times - and yet, the traditional media still largely has a cornpoke view toward the dangfangled technology. And these are the people begging for your trust and patronage?
By that title, you’d think this would be a piece appreciating the use of the Web to combat scurrilous smears - a tool not available to, say, those smeared by Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s; or to poor Edmund Muskie in 1968, who, like Hillary Clinton, never really cried; or to Nixon’s enemies in the 1970s and Michael Dukakis in the 1988 campaign and so on.
But no. This, instead, is another tired rant against the Internet. Let’s take a closer look at the complete lack of rational thinking emanating from the geniuses at the Sun-Times.
“For several weeks, a scurrilous rumor about Michelle Obama has wafted through the blogosphere with an awful stench.”
Note the correlation of the blogosphere with a place reeking of an awful stench. How does that explain Rush Limbaugh and Bob Beckel?
Maybe the Sun-Times ought to rail against the radiosphere and TVsphere.
“But you didn’t hear about it in this newspaper for the best of reasons: Not a shred of evidence said it was true.”
The Sun-Times no problem publishing a Christopher Hitchens column a few months ago, though, stating as fact that Bill Clinton was a rapist. (And where is the S-T’s outrage at WTTW for allowing a local author to state that Bill Clinton “is dating” on Chicago Tonight recently without proof?)
“As it finished up business for the spring session, the Illinois House passed the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act, which would require manufacturers to affix a label to any product used by children that has more than trace amounts of lead,” the Tribune editorial page notes today. “It’s widely known that high concentrations of lead can cause serious health problems.
“The House voted 105-1 to protect children.
“The Senate? The Senate didn’t bother. The bill stayed in the Rules Committee.”
Yes, Emil Jones - once again - is to blame. But first: Who was the lone House member who voted against the children?
The Trib didn’t tell you; that’s why you read Division Street! And believe me, a little thing like that isn’t easy to track down in a state like this.
“Former Gov. James R. Thompson doesn’t get it and never will. Why should George Ryan remain in prison? Bob Dylan answered the question decades ago in his song, ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,’” Mark P. Bloedel of Oak Park writes in a letter to the Sun-Times today.
As Bloedel - via Dylan - goes on to explain, “George Ryan must finish his sentence because the ladder of law must have no top and no bottom.”
A nice nugget from Lynn Sweet on Saturday: “Pfleger is the subject of a documentary being made by Chicago-based David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist. On Friday, Axelrod told me in an e-mail that the film project has ‘been dormant for much of the last two years due to other commitments.’”
Working title: Irony Man.
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More on Pfleger (and his weird apology on Sunday blaming YouTube) over at the Beachwood.
1. Barack Obama officially disowned Trinity Church on Saturday but remains associated with a far more sinister organization with a long record of divisive misdeeds and criminal behavior that is likely to become an issue in the general election: The Cook County Democratic Party.
To pick up on what a Division Street commenter points out, I wonder if there is video of Pfleger excoriating Children’s Museum opponents from the pulpit; he’s already called their position “morally indefensible” and stood by Mayor Daley’s ridiculous assertions of racism.
*
What’s unfortunate is that I happen to think Pfleger has nothing but the best of intentions. But zealousness and a trigger-happy mouth that overwhelm facts and reasoned discourse are not virtues no matter what the cause; they are the exact traits decried in others who also think their causes are righteous. True leaders maintain minds open to honest inquiry and evaluation with an allegiance to truth, rather than allowing themselves to be absorbed into insular environments and their choir books.
Division Street is NBC5’s blog about Chicago news and politics from the perspective of Steve Rhodes, a 20-year veteran of the newspaper and magazine world and more recently, the proprietor of the Chicago news and culture review, The Beachwood Reporter.
That’s how much more money the governor is putting in his pocket by refusing to excise the pay raises included in the budget bill the legislature sent to him.
Barack Obama is coming 
Last Thursday morning, Barack Obama announced in a video to his supporters that he would become the first presidential nominee to ever drop out of the public campaign financing system since it was introduced in a spate of post-Watergate reforms. Obama had previously pledged to campaign within the system and had never declared it “broken” up until the time he announced his decision. 
The Internet has been around a long time now - long enough to threaten the survival of many newspapers, including the Sun-Times - and yet, the traditional media still largely has a cornpoke view toward the dangfangled technology. And these are the people begging for your trust and patronage? 
“As it finished up business for the spring session, the Illinois House passed the Lead Poisoning Prevention Act, which would require manufacturers to affix a label to any product used by children that has more than trace amounts of lead,” 
1. Barack Obama 
One of my Beachwood readers points out the historic nature of the 
