ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Highway Infrastructure Investment Grant: Urbanized Areas over 200K Population
Award Amount: $1,320,000
Reported Jobs: 4.66

HT Founding Bloggers and Newsalert

After the Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Mike Sneed reported a cute item last week that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan was at the White House and had taken home to her daughters “two boxes of presidential M&M candy,” I wondered if Obama aides Rahm Emanuel and/or David Alexrod had attempted to persuade Madigan that she should replace Alexi Giannoulias, the deeply flawed Democratic candidate for Barack Obama’s Senate seat–assuming that they could somehow elbow Alexi out for the good of his basketball buddy Obama and the party.

Read more at the Huffington …

There’s much much more, once you get Quinn’s capital spending plan into Excel format.  Feel free to download, sort and search on your own favorite example of how the budget crisis is being managed in Illinois.

Rockford/Infra. Improv. and Construction of the Manny Mansion education wing of the Burpee Museum of Natural History/$100,000
In Excel Format (large file)

DCEO City of Galesburg For all costs associated with construction of the National Railroad Hall of Fame $100,000

Read more here (large file)
Enjoy the National Railroad Hall of Fame

Is the Obama administration’s system of crony capitalism and political payoffs breaking up?

PhRMA has canned their chief lobbyist, Billy Tauzin
Caterpillar, BP and Conoco have dropped out of the (finally flummoxed) Climate Lobby, U.S. Climate Action Partnership.
The Financial Times notices that lobbying was bigger than ever in 2009, spending a total of $3.47 Billion, despite President Obama’s “promise to rein in the pervasive influence of lobbyists in government”.
Wal-Mart is feeling some heat from shareholders for lobbying in favor of the Democrat Party’s healthcare plans (and supposedly stifling union organization)
Even the Huffington Post is catching on, with …

On April 15, Jim Messina and Jon Selib, chief of staff to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, convened a meeting at the headquarters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) with leaders of organized labor and health care groups, including PhRMA. At the meeting, the groups decided to form two nonprofit entities to promote reform efforts, Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, that would be almost entirely funded by PhRMA. The two groups spent $24 million on their advertising campaigns; the contract to produce and place …

Just when you thought it was impossible for the sordid tale of the pawn broker, the prostitute and the Democratic nomination to get any more ridiculous, Amanda Eneman, the massage therapist who was convicted of prostitution following her entry of a guilty plea in a 2005 misdemeanor case, has chosen to be represented by celebrity attorney, Gloria Allred.

Allred, whose love of television cameras and radio microphones rivals that of the ubiquitous Reverend Jesse Jackson, denounced Scott Lee Cohen on behalf of her client and repeated the masseuse’s claim that …

From Cafe Hayek

The President is a man of principle. The WaPo reports:
Obama said he told House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that his core goals — lowering health-care costs for businesses and individuals and expanding coverage to the uninsured — remained non-negotiable.
So what better way to increase productivity and lower costs than to add 111 new boards and commissions to the slick infrastructure of health care provision in the US?
1. Retiree Reserve Trust Fund (Section 111(d), p. 61)
2. Grant program for wellness programs to small employers (Section 112, p. 62)
3. Grant …

The Illinois Policy Institute has partnered with Citizens Against Government Waste to put together the book that Springfield doesn’t want you to read, profiling over $350 million in wasteful spending.

Highlights include:

$6,500 for a tub of live bass. The state paid for fishing seminars and demonstrations using a 4,000 gallon, 40-foot long tank filled with live fish.
$353,165 for car racing. The state is funding Raceway Associates, which partners with big-time 
races like the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500, as well as a massive construction grant for Atkinson 
Motorsports Park in northwestern …

Nothing brings a greedy gleam to the eye of a plaintiff’s trial lawyer like a “baby case,” as they crudely call them. They mean a case against a doctor or hospital involving a baby allegedly injured or killed during the birthing process. The lawyers stand to pocket millions of dollars without even breaking a sweat. That is exactly the situation the Illinois Supreme Court decided to perpetuate by ruling last Thursday (Feb. 4, 2010) ceilings on noneconomic damages are unconstitutional.

Damages fall into two categories: economic and noneconomic.  Economic …