Chicago Daily Observer

You are Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House. People are screaming at you, why haven’t you impeached that lunatic of a governor already? You start muttering to yourself . . . .

They don’t remember anything, do they? I’ve been here since before the Spanish-American War and I remember everything since back then, but come on, the James Heiple circus was just 12 years ago. Heiple throws around his weight as a supreme court justice to get out of traffic tickets. He runs away from the cops and then tells them, “Oh, shut up—do you know who you’re talking to?” Lord, I am surrounded by idiots.

So we appoint an impeachment committee and they go harrumph-harrumph for the cameras about how icky corruption is, how much against corruption they all are, but then, after all, Heiple’s actions did not rise to an impeachable level. A good thing that Jim ... Read More...

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson blamed the credit crisis on global imbalances. Specifically, he repeated a story-line popularized by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke that a global savings glut (imbalance) pushed interest rates down around the world and drove investors toward riskier assets.

We call this “circling the wagons” because what this argument does is shift the blame. It shifts the blame off of the Fed, who pushed interest rates down too far in 2002–2004. It also lets the Fed off the hook for using the phrase “considerable period,” in an era of 1% federal funds rates to basically double-dare hedge funds and investment banks to use massive leverage.

It lets rating agencies, which are sanctioned by the federal government, slide, despite their huge mistakes. It whitewashes Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the politicians who supported their ability to hold mortgage rates ... Read More...

Let’s say you were a US Representative, Democratic Party Caucus Chairman, and incoming Chief of Staff for a new president of the United States coming in during a period of war, financial instability, and political upheaval. Toss in the fact that there is a major crisis in Gaza, that involves Israel, a country where you were a “civilian volunteer repairing truck brakes” during the first Gulf War.

Now lets add in the fact that you were involved in negotiations to sell a Senate seat for the incoming President, perhaps as a former investment banker who is also an innocent bystander in some serious horse trading with one of the all time great used-car salesmen in Illinois politics. Toss in the fact that your were on the Board of Directors at Freddie Mac, the failed housing finance scheme that had crushed the stock markets in recent months…..What would be the logical ... Read More...

Thanks to the media circus swirling around the governor of Illinois and his schemes to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat, little attention is being paid to the race to succeed Rahm Emanuel as he moves from the House of Representatives to White House chief of staff.

That’s a shame, because voters in Mr. Emanuel’s district, largely composed of Chicago’s North Side, will have the chance to redeem their state’s reputation. They will likely have the chance to elect, out of a crowded race, a true reformer in Thomas Geoghegan.

The courts seem to be siding with pro-democracy campaigner Paul Jacob.

(The 10th circuit) court now has struck down Oklahoma’s law forbidding nonresidents from circulating petitions. Its ruling follows similar ones, just as unanimous, in the Sixth and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in cases from Ohio and Arizona.

To quote the 10th Circuit, the right to circulate petitions in the United States of America is “core political speech,” and so is fully protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Thank you, founding fathers. Thank you, courts that uphold it.

If Idaho can boast of its world class potatoes, can Illinois pride itself
upon its crooked politicians and axle breaking potholes? Sadly, the upcoming
inaugural festivities will not dampen the impact of gross mismanagement and
higher taxes in Illinois.

I have been out of the loop recently. I mean this both figuratively and
literally. I was traveling throughout “the red states” during the past week. It
was a refreshing experience that I may write about in greater detail later.
While some readers may be saddened to learn that I have returned or, to
paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my death or exile have been greatly exaggerated,
I cannot deny that I share their disappointment to a degree. It is
disheartening for me to report to you that Mississippi currently has better paved
highways, better regulated casinos and a better class ... Read More...

Happy New Year 2009! Ten years ago on January 9th, 1999, Chicago Police Officers John Knight and James Butler investigated a suspiciously running parked car with two men slumped over in the front seat. The two men were Vice Lords Gang members armed with at least one 9mm Ruger Automatic pistol with a laser directed sight.

A gun battle ensued and Officer John Knight was murdered by James Scott of the Vice Lords and Knight’s partner James Butler was badly wounded. James Scott was allowed to plead guilty to another murder and is serving a life sentence. John Knight’s widow and three children are on their own.

Scott has been featured by the nimble fingered writers who get all warm and toasty about human beings when their subjects are soulless monsters like Scott. Left-wing lawyers and the University based 501c3 think tanks and Centers for Justice embrace the wicked and ... Read More...

The New York Times has been furiously penning policy briefs to the Obama administration. A recent editorial on black crime compresses within a few hundred words decades of failed thinking on public safety. If the president-elect follows its hoary prescriptions, he will be guaranteed to waste taxpayer money without having the slightest effect on crime.

The highest homicide rate for whites over the last three decades was 32 homicides committed per 100,000 males between the ages of 18 and 24 (reached in 1991), whereas the highest homicide rate for blacks was approximately 320 homicides per 100,000 males between the ages of 18 and 24 (reached in 1993).

Even this apparent ten-to-one disparity between black and white homicide rates doesn’t tell the full story.

HT Jim Bowman, Blithe Spirit

You’ve got to admire the chutzpah and pure political chessmanship of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointing Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s senate seat. He puts the entire United States Senate to a test of good citizenship.

First, full disclosure: Though we never had a close personal relationship, I have been a friend and frequent ally of Burris since the mid-1960s when we first worked together on civil rights and independent political campaigns.

Nevertheless, he would not be on my short list for the seat. My first choice was Jesse Jackson Jr.—whom I have known since he was in utero.

I condemned Blago for being the only member of the Illinois Democratic delegation to vote for Bush’s war in Iraq, but voted for him for governor in 2002 against a far-right Republican who helped railroad the innocent Rolando Cruz halfway to the execution chamber. (I was recently reminded that as attorney general ... Read More...

It was fun to host Lynn Sweet on the phone from Washington, D. C, on my WLS radio show last night…even though she tried to filibuster until she was called on it…even though she angrily threatened to hang up early…even though she thought my questions about Roland Burris’ rejection by Harry Reid were race-motivated…when she refused to give a clue as to how the Reid-Burris imbroglio will be settled even though she said she knew (maintaining outrageously that people will have to pay 50 cents for her paper this morning to find out: brilliant chutzpah)…and even though she high-hatted the Chicago audience by saying she was talking on a cell phone while in an elevator on the way to CNN I (so much for us little people). We’re old friendly adversaries and what I said in her introduction was true: of any national reporter-columnist-commentator she is in the ... Read More...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opened the door Sunday for Roland Burris to be sworn in as a senator from Illinois. “There’s always room to negotiate,” Reid told David Gregory on NBC‘s “Meet the Press.”

From the soundings I took Sunday, I have a well-informed hunch that if Burris wants to get a deal done quickly, he needs to say he won’t run for the seat in 2010.

If legal scholars are right that the fight over Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate will be long, possibly ending up before the U.S. Supreme Court, I’ve got a question:

Who pays?

Rafts of lawyers filing briefs, arguing cases and scouring law books in a constitutional showdown don’t come cheaply. So, who will come up with the millions to defend Blagojevich’s harebrained appointment if it runs into one of the many roadblocks it faces?

Blagojevich himself? Not likely. He’s up to his eyeballs in legal bills already and if it comes to choosing between keeping himself out of jail and standing up for Burris, what do you think he’ll do?

Will Burris raise the dough? Maybe from a few pay-to-play dreamers who think they can derive some benefit from a seated Burris. But even if they could, whatever benefits Burris could bestow ... Read More...

"The report suggested that Mr. Obama had been more involved in thinking about his Senate successor than his public statements about the topic had indicated," the New York Times reports.

*

That's been clearly established. The question is: Why? Why the phony feints, Barack? My hunch is that Obama did not want to appear to be acting like a political boss - even though that's just what he was doing and it wouldn't have been inappropriate in this case. But also, if Obama actually did choose his successor in the U.S. Senate, he couldn't have helped but peeve off some of those who wouldn't have gotten the job. Barack Obama is a political animal of the first kind, and he tried to navigate a potential minefield - helping to turn it into a real one.

In the Biblical gospels, Matthew opines that “blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

In Illinois politics, the opposite is true. The parable would read: “Not blessed are lieutenant governors, for they are too meek to inherit, retain or gain the governorship.”

The good news for Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is that he will be governor sooner rather than later. Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich will be impeached and removed sometime in 2009.

The bad news is that the sooner Quinn succeeds Blagojevich, the quicker he gets the blame for the looming 2009 budgetary crisis.

The worst news is that, historically, the post of lieutenant governor has been a ticket to oblivion. Of the office’s 42 occupants since 1830, not a single sitting lieutenant governor, nor any of the seven who succeeded to governor, has been elected governor.

Quinn hopes to delay his succession until summer, so ... Read More...

“Very, very low key,” said Don Rose, a former Democratic political consultant in Chicago, describing Mr. Burris, 71, who was named on Tuesday by the state’s embattled governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. “He’s just not a terribly exciting figure. But there’s never been a breath of scandal about him.”