Chicago Daily Observer

It is nearly Christmas, but I cannot bring myself to forgive George H. Ryan. Not yet.

After spending little more than a year in prison, Ryan wants to receive a presidential pardon from George W. Bush. Ryan was sentenced to serve six and half years for his corrupt practices, but he wants to be released early, citing his advanced age and his wife’s frail health.

Perhaps, if he had served more
of his sentence or showed any genuine contrition for his actions, I could bring myself to feel differently, but it is too early to release the disgraced and unapologetic politician now. Both US Senator Richard Durbin and Governor Rod Blagojevich have publicly supported Ryan’s request for a pardon. I think that they are off base.

I met former Governor George H. Ryan once, more than a decade ago, in 1998. He was Secretary of State at the time ... Read More...

A collection of breakaway Episcopalians have formed a single denomination to rival the mainstream U.S. church, cementing a schism that was largely prompted by the election in 2003 of a gay bishop.

Their new “Anglican Church in North America” said it includes four dioceses that recently split from the Episcopal church, as well as several splinter groups, 1,000 clergy and an estimated 700 parishes, said the Rev. Peter Frank, spokesman for the Right Rev. Robert Duncan, bishop of Pittsburgh, who months ago lead his diocese away from the Episcopal church. A spokesman in the Episcopal church said he was dubious the numbers were that high.

The new church will seek recognition from the world-wide Anglican communion, including its leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams. It is unclear how the larger church will deal with a rival on American soil to an existing church body. The tension ... Read More...

Fair to say, during his seven-year reign as Chicago’s U.S. Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald has been relentless. He’s gone after ex-Gov. George Ryan and Tony Rezko, a political fundraiser with links to President-elect Barack Obama. He came to Washington as a special prosecutor and rattled the town, sending one reporter off to jail, dragging political operative Karl Rove before a grand jury and prosecuting Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.

An appointment to any of the highly-coveted posts in Washington or New York could be
considered a reward. But some skeptics on the left and right say it may be a way for the Obama administration to remove the feisty prosecutor from the Illinois landscape where some feel he’s overstepped and overstayed.

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From Reuters

President-elect Barack Obama is not planning to implement a windfall profit tax on oil companies because prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, an aide said on Tuesday.

“President-elect Obama announced the policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel,” an aide on Obama’s transition team said. “They are currently below that now and expected to stay below that.”

More on Windfall Taxes from CDOB‘s

Bail Out Big Oil So We Can Tax it More



Bad News! Gasoline Prices are Dropping



Stocks Slumping? How about a New Tax Courtesy Candidate Obama?

Perhaps Candidate Obama could have thought of some of these things before the election.

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The first 25 Chicago Daily Observer readers to respond are welcome to join the Illinois Policy Institute for a private reception with WSJ columnist and Club for Growth founder Steve Moore as he shares his unique outlook on liberty and limited government in the new year.

Stephen Moore is the Senior Economics Writer and member of the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal. He splits his time between Washington and New York, focusing on economic issues, including budget, tax and monetary policy.

Steve had been a frequent contributor to the Journal over the years, and became nationally known when he founded the most effective political action committee in North America, The Club for Growth. Steve’s vision was to build a dynamic conservative juggernaut, which would raise large and significant amounts of money for political candidates who truly favor free-market economic policies. Under Steve’s leadership the Club ... Read More...

The rush is on at City Hall, and any motorist who uses a parking meter will end up picking up the tab—in a big way.

That’s the bottom line of a huge deal announced by Mayor Richard M. Daley on Tuesday morning, one that provides badly needed cash to shore up the strapped city treasury but also hits parking meter users everywhere in the city with up to eightfold fee hikes by 2013.

And Mr. Daley, citing the delicate financial markets, wants it all approved and enacted by Thursday, just three days after bids for the deal were received.

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We know it’ll cost more to park on major city streets, and lots of minor ones as well. What’s not certain is whether the parking meter lease deal is good one for taxpayers. The mayor and his administration argue that it is; next the city council will have the chance to weigh in. But the whole billion-dollar agreement could be wrapped up as soon as Thursday morning—just three days after city officials first viewed the bids on it. Here’s the timeline of the deal:

Friday, February 8, 2008: The city issues an RFQ inviting firms to bid on leasing the meters. Chief financial officer Paul Volpe says it’s a way “to be innovative in our approach to managing city assets.” Final bids are due December 1.

February-March: City officials review initial application information submitted by potential bidders to determine whether the firms are qualified. The city won’t say how ... Read More...

Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool was all over WLS-AM (890)—first on “Don and Roma” and later on “The Erich ‘Mancow’ Muller Show”—criticizing County Board President Todd Stroger’s troubled 2009 budget proposal Tuesday morning.

At 10 a.m., Stroger called Mancow to fight back.

“Stroger said his ears were burning more than when my friends are messing with me,” Muller said. “He seemed like a man who couldn’t take it anymore. I’m not a huge fan of his politics, but I have to commend the guy for walking into the lion’s den.”

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On Monday’s “No Bias, No Bull” program, CNN’s Campbell Brown lashed out at President-Elect Barack Obama for his flippant response to a reporter’s question: “Mr. President-Elect, reporters, we hope, are going to ask you a lot of annoying questions over the next four years. Get used to it. That is the job of the media, to hold you accountable. But this isn’t just about the media. It’s about the American people, many of whom voted for you because of what you said during the campaign, and they have a right to know which of those things you meant and which you didn’t. Apparently, as you made clear today, you didn’t mean what you said about Hillary Clinton. So, what else didn’t you mean?”

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Joseph Calomino's post misses the point. SEIU's work in Illinois is not about politics - it's about lifting one of the most underpaid and fastest-growing workforces in our state and indeed the nation out of poverty.

Mr. Calomino’s post misrepresents our union’s decades-long history of fighting to raise standards for low-wage caregivers, and the real challenges that caregivers and the families who depend on them have faced during years of underfunding these critical programs.

For more than 30 years, SEIU has united and mobilized home care and home child care workers – the state’s lowest-paid workers, who once earned as little as $1 per hour for providing essential services to Illinois families. SEIU has always been clear in our goal of winning a real voice on the job for tens of thousands of workers who do some of the most critical jobs – providing in-home care for ... Read More...

The dismal retail sales figures are in for Black Friday and the news is . . . good?

Wait a minute, the news was supposed to be bad, awful, ghastly, dreadful, etc. Analysts, almost to the person, were predicting that retail sales would decline from last year’s level, if not plummet. Some forecast economic calamity, because so much depends on consumer spending.

Not to pick on anyone in particular, but here are a few examples of pre-Black Friday conjectures:

• Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with NPD Group, said “this could be the worst holiday [shopping season] ever.”

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Part 1



For decades now, the culture sage Michael Medved has been sharing with us certain bitter truths about Hollywood…and one of them, surprisingly, is this: a host of examples show tinsel-town that America wants wholesome entertainment…not saccharine stuff but entertainment that can give them a particle of hope. But Hollywood steadfastly refuses to package these shows…not because they would be economic failures…but because the film colony itself is so damnably cross-eyed that it is unable to see straight because it concentrates on a prism of abhorrent scripts…hate America scripts, if you please…gruesome, sadistic dark films of perversion and hatred...which generally either fail at the box-office or are keen disappointments to their investors.

I have just read an interview with Joe Eszterhas, a gifted screenwriter who has turned away from this Hollywood aura and wants to make wholesome, ethically redemptive films-not candy-coated ones. He thinks…in fact KNOWS…there ... Read More...

At yesterday’s close in West Texas:

Nymex Crude Future 49.13 -.15 -.30%

Dated Brent Spot 47.42 .73 1.57%

WTI Cushing Spot 49.28 -5.15 -9.46%

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Last week the USA Today had it that Barack Obama was “injecting confidence into the battered psyche of investors and working quickly to hatch a plan meant to jolt the economy out of its worst funk in decades” after a five day run of increases in the Dow Jones.

OK, back to reality; the market dropped 679 points today or 7.6%. Quoting the WSJ on Phil Gramm “there are two kinds of Democrats on economics: those who want to milk the cow but so dislike the cow that they want to punish it, and those who want to milk the cow and thus want it to grow. The good news about Barack Obama’s emerging economic team is that most of them don’t hate the cow”.

The election is over. How about a firm announcement that President Obama will not raise taxes and tariffs?

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The current recession is unlike any other in the last couple of generations. Usually recessions happen because monetary policy gets tight or tax rates go up. Sometimes, like in the Great Depression, rising trade barriers lead to a contraction in economic growth.

This time around, the recession is not due to tight monetary policy, higher tax rates, or protectionism. It’s due to a sudden and sharp plunge in the velocity of money – what we have been calling “risk aversion hysteria” – where the speed with which money moves its way through the economy slows down as both consumers and businesses decide they want to increase their cash holdings.

Idiotic mortgage loans started the financial fire and overly stringent mark-to-market accounting rules acted as an accelerant, forcing financial firms to write down the value of their assets even when underlying mortgage cash flows are likely to grossly exceed fire-sale prices ... Read More...