Chicago Daily Observer

Her last name helped, but her first name won the election.

Prosecutor Anita Alvarez came out of nowhere to win a six-way Democratic primary race for Cook County States Attorney—which is tantamount winning in November, when she will become the first woman and the first Hispanic to hold the job. (No, kiddies, Republican Tony Peraica has absolutely no chance of coming close this fall.)

She won with a small but solid base in the Latino communities, a push from some Machine committeemen and a huge women’s vote—a pattern that applied in both the city and suburbs. The female vote was stimulated largely by her self-financed, pitch-perfect, gender-oriented ad campaign.

But the hidden story involves the breakup of the—until now—solid black voting bloc that was expected to give Ald. Howard Brookins at least 30 and likely 35–40 percent of the total vote. Instead, he got only 22.11 percent, while Alvarez squeaked ... Read More...

The president just announced his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year, which he described as a “good, solid budget”. The president went on from there to claim his proposal puts the federal government on the path to balancing its budget in the very near future―by 2012. All of this sounds quite good, actually. Who could be against solid budgets that get us closer to eliminating deficits? Unfortunately, after reviewing the proposal itself, the only verifiably good thing about it is the president’s description. The reality revealed by the numbers, however, make it impossible to characterize this budget as anything remotely sound or on its way to becoming balanced.

For instance, since when does increasing the “acknowledged” federal deficit from $162 billion in Fiscal Year 2007 to $410 billion in Fiscal Year 2008, constitute being either fiscally sound or movement towards reducing the overall deficit? Sure, the president’s proposal suggests ... Read More...