Chicago Daily Observer

When the public’s loathing of Congress is soaring, why is the re-election of Sen. Dick Durbin, an architect of that body’s many disorders, thought to be a cinch?

How low is Congress’ job approval rating? While President George W. Bush’s is a dismal 32 percent, according to RealClearPoli- tics.com, Congress’ is an even more wretched 21 percent. As the Senate majority whip and second in command, Durbin can’t escape blame.

One can find many reasons why Durbin shouldn’t be re-elected and his Republican rival Steve Sauerberg deserves a closer look: Durbin’s grinding partisanship, among the worst in the Senate, according to washingtonpost.com; the millions he has raised from clout-heavy, legal, securities, investment and real estate interests, according to OpenSecrets.org; his craven about-face on abortion; his unabashed love of earmarks. True, some voters might support Durbin for those reasons. But when measured by the Democratic mantra—the willingness or ability to change ... Read More...

Panel Discussion on the ballot question at the November 4, 2008 election on the Constitutional Convention (“Con Con”) This is an issue that will be voted on by all of us in Illinois and this is a great opportunity to become educated on what it would mean for Illinois to have a Con Con where our laws would be reviewed. It is an important issue so please come and join us for the panel.

Tuesday, September 23

6 to 8 pm

English, 444 N. LaSalle, 3rd Floor, Chicago

$10 for non-members, Cash bar

RSVP to events@crwn.org

Panel to include Bruno Behrend, Host of the Extreme Wisdom Radio Show on WKRS – 1220 AM broadcasting out of Waukegan, Illinois, and State Representative John Fritchey in support of the Con Con, and Dan Proft of Urquhart Media LLC, and Jeff Mays, president of the Illinois Business Roundtable and ... Read More...

If anyone doubted something I’ve written repeatedly on this page—that Bill and Hillary Clinton prefer to see a McCain victory on November 4th, so that Hillary can run unencumbered in 2012—just get a load of Bill today with the ladies of “The View,” and in other interviews, as he prepared to open his Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

He could not have been sweeter in his tributes to John McCain and, especially, to Sarah Palin. Although using the word “hot” in relation to her was probably not the most politic word choice. “I come from Arkansas, I get why she’s hot out there,” Clinton said. “Why she’s doing well.”

Dorothy Tillman for Alderman

This endorsement, which Obama made before the 2007 municipal elections, is also problematic, for Tillman is widely known for engaging in cronyism when it comes to competitive City contracts. According to the Chicago Tribune article cited above,

> Obama endorsed former Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd), calling her “a very early supporter of my campaign.” Tillman was then under fire for her stewardship of the scandal-plagued Harold Washington Cultural Center, where contracts benefited members of her family.

There is a reason Dorothy Tillman is a former Alderwoman. But Obama sees no conflict in endorsing a candidate whose flagrant nepotism led her constitutents to reject her candidacy, even though she was an incumbent with key endorsements. I quote Obama from the same article:

> “I have been very proud of my track record as a state legislator and as a U.S. senator in terms of maintaining highly ethical ... Read More...

GOOD NEWS PENDING! The back order supply is being manufactured as you read this. We do not have a delivery date, but are expecting to have a firm date in a couple weeks.

It is with grave apologies to all who have been inconvenienced by the situation. Our current list of back-ordered rain barrels will be the first fulfilled when the new shipment of rain barrels become available. We will post the news here, try to reach you by phone if you are on this list, or send an email if you would like. Add your email address here by alerting us: publicaffairsinfo@mwrd.org.

Future orders will be limited to on-line credit card sales only. No product will be provided unless you have a receipt as a “pre-sold” item. Instructions for pick up on future orders will also be posted here when the supply line is filled.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed,” Biden told Couric. “He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”

As Reason’s Jesse Walker footnotes it: “And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, ‘Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?’”

Would Chicago area foundations like the MacArthur Foundation and the Pritzker Family Foundation, as well as major corporate and public donors, have provided $110 million in matching funds for such an agenda?

Could anyone have realistically expected such an agenda to have improved student outcomes?

Somehow I doubt it.

Rather, I think there was a more pressing purpose at the heart of the award and the support it engendered among certain elite institutions and individuals in Chicago. Ironically, while Kurtz wants to tar Obama with the red paint brush of the 60s “radical” Ayers, an understanding of the real purpose of the CAC indicates a much closer political alliance between Obama and Ayers.

When the United States of America was still in its infancy, our Founding Fathers decided that the leadership of this new nation would come from the people and by the people. Accordingly, education was made widely available; after all, anyone could become the president of the United States. Today that belief lives on among average citizens.

If one were to judge by our media, this would not be so clear. It might even seem that a person must have attended an Ivy League school, have enough self-mastery to keep their faith in a coat closet, be well-traveled and be politically well-connected in order to qualify to run on a presidential ticket. What does this have to do with competence? I am not quite sure.

I wonder how many Americans have experienced this lifestyle, or believe that only these elites are competent to run our country? Poor Abraham Lincoln would be ... Read More...

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC‘s agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland’s ghetto.

The Treasury Department has told members of Congress that the US faces a financial tsunami if a bill to allow the government to purchase up to $700 billion of toxic financial securities from financial firms is not passed – this week.

Unfortunately, this solution of giving the US Treasury almost unlimited power to buy distressed securities could be avoided if the government made some simple (and temporary) changes to mark-to-market accounting rules. So far, and for many unknown reasons, these changes have been considered off limits.

Why drawing such a hard line in the sand is so important, is a real mystery. Certainly, firms that took excessive risk should be punished. And the US should avoid creating moral hazard whenever it can. But saying; “I told you that you would stay in your room for a whole week if you disobeyed, and I don’t care if the house is burning ... Read More...

Events moved at broadband speed last week (9/14–9/20) with the stock market plunging, bouncing back, plunging, then bouncing back again to finish with a narrow loss—while Barack Obama’s poll numbers went straight up, from minus 1.5 to plus 8 in some polls, averaging out around plus 3.

His turnaround, unlike the market’s, could remain for some time to come. At least until Friday’s great debate.

It was the week John McCain made what may be the ultimately fatal gaffe of the campaign, proclaiming the fundamentals of the economy are sound—just as the market was plunging 500 points and the entire system teetered on the brink of collapse.

He quickly redefined “fundamentals” as the “American worker” for those poor saps among us who always thought the fundamentals were gross domestic product, inflation, productivity, unemployment, money supply and such trivia. Of course he admits economics isn’t his long suit.

Perhaps more than ... Read More...