Chicago Daily Observer

Morgenthaler’s site tells us,

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, I believe Congress must do a better job overseeing how US money is spent. The war in Iraq is costing American taxpayers trillions of dollars. Big money non-compete defense contracts are being consummated behind closed doors for the benefit of wealthy friends of the Bush Administration with little regard to need or budget considerations. At a time of fiscal uncertainty, I will go to Congress committed to ensuring that all taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

Morgenthaler might want to start by explaining how deeply she was involved in Alsammarae and Frawley’s plans for Iraq Reconstruction funds.

Alsammarae, who lives in the Chicago area and was a college classmate of Rezko, is a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen. He left his post as Iraq’s electricity minister in May 2005, about a month after Companion got the contract. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by ... Read More...

Dear Governor Blagojevich,

On April 15, 2008, the Circuit Court in this action issued a preliminary injunction enjoining your Medicaid FamilyCare program for failing to meet certain statutory prerequisites. The other constitutional and non-constitutional objections to what your Administration have yet to be addressed. As a result, at the present the approximately 25,000 persons and families enrolled in the program are now without health insurance coverage they paid for and the doctors, clinics, hospitals that provided medical services in reliance on their getting paid under the Mediciaid FamilyCare Health Insurance Program either won’t be getting paid ever, or, if you are successful in your appeal, for many months or years to come. This is tragic for many people who relied on you and your Administration that they were covered under the new Mediciaid FamilyCare Health Insurance Program and that you could create such a program on your own authority without ... Read More...

The current joke in Springfield is that ubiquitous Governor Rod Blagojevich—a publicity hound who closely monitors political trends, yet is mired in a multitude of seemingly intractable legal, political and fiscal problems—has embraced a new 2010 re-election strategy.

His ploy – and hope for political salvation—is to join the “Dumb-R-Us Club,” consisting of embattled politicians who confess their sins and/or stupidity, fervently hoping that a forgiving and/or forgetting public may still re-elect them.

To be sure, Blagojevich hasn’t engaged in acts rising to the level of moral depravity—but the candidate who promised to “rock Springfield” and blaze a “new way,” has, as governor, proven himself just another superficial, self-serving hypocrite, concerned only with his self-preservation and advancement. Luckily for America, his presidential hopes have collapsed. Instead of the White House, Blago may end up in the Big House, joining such predecessors as Otto Kerner, Dan Walker and George Ryan.

If ... Read More...

The stealth saga of Richard Caro vs. Rod Blagojevich in Cook County Court continued yesterday, with the Governor requesting a payment in exchange for his compliance with a court ordered injunction.

Rod Blagojevich and the other defendants in the Constitutional case concerning JCAR compliance filed a notice of appeal requesting a stay of the preliminary injunction or alternatively a $14 Million bond as a condition to keep the injunction in place.

Judge James Epstein rejected both appeals, and retained jurisdiction to hold Defendants in contempt if
the injunction is violated. Judge Epstien also rejected defendant’s argument that they can’t identify the payments that have been enjoined. Defendants were given till Monday April 28 to seek a stay of the preliminary injunction
pending the appeal.

At 2pm Wednesday, April 23, 2008, Judge James Epstein is set to hear a motion requesting compliance with the Preliminary Injunction against Governor Blagojevich issued last week.

The Healthcare and Family Services Defendants have yet to take the
necessary steps to comply with the injunction previously issued. Judge Epstein will consider a contempt action to compel compliance with his previous order.

On April 15, Judge James Epstein issued a preliminary injunction immediately enjoining Governor Blagojevich and Illinois Healthcare and Family Services from continuing the expanded FamilyCare program.

On the same day Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a massive executive order to combine more state agency functions, a Cook County judge ordered that Blagojevich’s administration has to stop expanding a state health program to middle-income adults. But that’s not going to stop Blagojevich from trying. In the meantime, residents who already started receiving state-sponsored health care under the governor’s expansions are left in limbo over whether they’ll continue to receive those benefits. We’ll have more on the governor’s move to consolidate state agency functions tomorrow. It’s a mess.

Judge James Epstein has issued a preliminary injunction immediately enjoining Illinois Healthcare and Family Services expanded FamilyCare program.

The injunction was denied with respect to the expansion of the Free Breast & Cervical Cancer screening program in a narrowly worded decision.

Riverside attorney Richard Caro and business leader Ron Gidwitz have led the case against Governor Blagojevich in Cook County Court.

Who woulda thought anyone would have taken me seriously last October when I suggested that Illinois voters should be enabled to dump incompetent, dishonest and otherwise dreadful public officials by a “recall” referendum?

The idea was so, well, California-like, where voters in 2003 recalled the bumbling Gov. Gray Davis. And it so unlike Chicago and Illinois, where such a reform would be regarded as just another useless goo-goo (good-government) gesture.

But here comes the Illinois House, advancing with remarkable ease legislation that would allow voters to dispose unceremoniously of the governor, members of the General Assembly and executive branch officers elected statewide, such as the attorney general and secretary of state.

Last week, the House voted 80–25 (!) to tack onto the legislation an amendment that would exempt circuit, appellate and supreme court judges from recall. Such a wide margin of approval signals, according to the conventional wisdom, that the ... Read More...

State Senator Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, told a roomful of people in Macomb Saturday that he will seek his party’s nomination for governor in 2010.

Brady was guest speaker at the McDonough County Republican Central Committee Lincoln Day Dinner, held on the campus of Western Illinois University and including guests from four surrounding counties.

Brady ran for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2006 and was defeated in the party primary by State Treasurer Judy Barr Topinka

Illinois businessman Stuart Levine, an associate of Republican former Gov. George Ryan, had dinner one evening in 2004 with fellow businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko — an associate of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich — at the Standard Club, a ritzy members-only hotel near Chicago’s downtown financial district.

For the second time since last fall, a legislative panel threw a wrench Tuesday into Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s plan to expand health care access to 147,000 Illinoisans – an initiative he enacted even though lawmakers never approved it.

Later Tuesday, two Democratic members of the Illinois House of Representatives unveiled legislation they said would accomplish what the Democratic governor has said he wants to do by making more people eligible for the Family Care program. The legislation is House Bill 6297, sponsored by Reps. David Miller of Lynwood and John Fritchey of Chicago.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich did it again last week. The roof is leaking, the electricity has been shut off, they’re coming to repossess the car, and he’s talking about adding a swimming pool and taking a Caribbean cruise.

Illinois is perhaps in the worst financial shape in memory and has the largest budget deficit of any U.S. state. But he’s proposing new programs and bigger giveaways. Blagojevich’s state of the state speech should have been delivered by Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman. What, me worry?

Feds say governor’s adviser sought jobs for friends, family

In the weeks and months after Gov. Rod Blagojevich took office, close adviser and fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko gave the administration the names of people he wanted to see get state jobs.

And in the grand tradition of Illinois politics, those names ended up on a list. Call it a clout list, or a favors list.

But federal prosecutors call such lists evidence, and they are starting their own tradition of using them in political corruption cases.

A bipartisan panel of lawmakers wants to hear what Gov. Rod Blagojevich has to say about state government’s finances before it decides whether to approve rules implementing his proposal to expand health-care access.

The panel, known as the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, met Wednesday but postponed until Feb. 26 its consideration of rules dealing with a larger Family Care program. The governor’s desired expansion would add 147,000 Illinoisans to the program, which allows uninsured parents or guardians to qualify for discounted medical treatment.

Five years ago I wrote that the Democratic trend in Illinois was so strong we might never see a Republican governor again—barring some major scandal. Well, the past year or two set the stage for a GOP revival, but the Democrats are probably too smart to let it happen.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is drowning in a cesspool of financial scandals, personal betrayals, bizarre antics and political miscues so pervasive as to drive his favorables down to Ahmadinejad territory—and the worst may be yet to come. I speak, as many do, of indictment.

His recent last-minute, grandstand play on the mass-transit bill—injecting free rides for seniors—will not rescue him from the feds, nor will it raise his scrawny support numbers much past Britney Spears’.

I cannot explain the overall behavior of this unusual politician because I am a political analyst, not a psychoanalyst. Let me confess, however, I voted for ... Read More...

“The Three Stooges” have been resurrected in the Democratic
primary for state senator in the Northwest Side 20th District.
But instead of Moe, Larry and Curly, the three alleged buffoons are
Rich, Iris and Rod. State Representative Rich Bradley (D-40) is
challenging State Senator Iris Martinez (D-20), and the antics of
Governor Rod Blagojevich have emerged as the central issue.

A “stooge” is defined as an underling to another, and is a term
of contempt. Martinez holds Bradley in contempt, deeming him a Madigan
Monkey, stooge of Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, and do-nothing
legislator. Bradley holds Martinez in contempt, deeming her a Rod
Rooter, stooge of Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, and slavish
supporter of the governor. She “is generally supportive” of
Blagojevich, Martinez admits.

Bradley switched to the Senate race ... Read More...

Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s proposal to make Illinois one of the first states to offer free rides on public trains and buses to senior citizens sounds good, so who, the governor himself has asked, could possibly oppose it?

Plenty of people.

Some critics question the proposal’s costs and fairness, while others say it amounts to a naked ploy to win political points by handing out freebies. Still others say it’s something they might otherwise support, but they fear the last-minute initiative could lead to the defeat of a funding bill meant to bail out mass transit, which had seemed close to becoming law.

When the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (ISTHA) was established in 1941, Austin Wyman (the initial head of the organization) said the tolls would be eliminated by 1984 when outstanding bonds were paid off.

Instead, the Authority has done just the opposite, maturing into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy without any end in sight. It’s an excellent case study on the instinctive nature of bureaucracy; a testimony of self-preservation, growth, and government waste.

If nothing else, Governor Blagojevich makes a great case for the media to keep an eye on politicians.

Here are a couple of sites worth watching:

And on Reverse Spin, Dan Curry has been keeping us up to date on our Governor for some time, and has had the audacity to notice that Governor Blagojevich shares a lot of funding sources and politican machinations with Senator Barack Obama. Dan is relentless on organizing facts, and does not flinch from scrutinizing issues.

Key Illinois lawmakers appeared ready Thursday to back Gov. Blagojevich’s surprise offering of free bus and train fare for senior citizens in order to avert a Jan. 20 meltdown of the CTA.

His move to end the bitter, six-month transit funding dispute came after the House and Senate narrowly approved a bailout package boosting the sales tax in Cook and the collar counties by a quarter of a percentage point and imposing a tax on Chicago real estate transactions.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich raised the stakes in the political battle over funding Chicago-area mass transit, saying he would only endorse a sales-tax increase lawmakers sent him Thursday if they also agree to give senior citizens free rides on local trains and buses.

Cornered by fellow Democrats after nearly a year of maneuvering on both sides, Blagojevich made the brand new demand as he sought to soften the political damage of breaking his long-held vow to veto a sales tax increase.

At the peril of veering from constant criticism of the Chicago Media, our editors have found reasons to cheer on our local publications on a variety of issues.

Here are 5 top examples of good reporting that made it through to publication, and even had follow-ups in some cases.

1) The CTA is in financial trouble. We not only know about it from 1st hand experience, all of the major media outlets carried stories about financial problems in our mass transit systems, an even considered a variety of proposals (including-gasp-higher fares) to fix the issue. Abstenteeism, lack of riders, muddy minded management, poorly planned capital projects all received at least a scrutinizing glance.

2) TIF District Mania. Ben Joravsky at the Chicago Reader has been accused of being obsessed with TIF districts: good for Ben. In Ben Joravsky and the Chicago Reader there is finally some oversight ... Read More...

For those who already are convinced that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is nuts, here’s something to add to the growing pile of evidence: He’s now insisting that legislation he once signed into law is unconstitutional. You can reasonably ask why he enacted the law in the first place, and the obvious answer is that the law no longer serves his cynical political purposes, so he pretends that the law, and the Illinois Constitution, doesn’t apply to him.

Eight northern Illinois counties are suing the state over the special election called to fill the seat vacated by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. County election officials in the 14th congressional district are seeking more time between the February 5 primary and March 8 special…

SPRINGFIELD – A Cook County judge is allowing Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to intervene as a third party in a lawsuit that challenges Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s authority to expand a government health-care program without lawmakers’ approval.

Opposing Blagojevich in the lawsuit are Riverside attorney Richard Caro, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Ronald Gidwitz and Greg Baise, president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. They say the Democratic governor overstepped his authority by expanding a program the General Assembly did not fund.

A Cook County judge is allowing Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to intervene as a third party in a lawsuit that challenges Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s authority to expand a government health-care program without lawmakers’ approval.

Opposing Blagojevich in the lawsuit are Riverside attorney Richard Caro, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Ronald Gidwitz and Greg Baise, president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. They say the Democratic governor overstepped his authority by expanding a program the General Assembly did not fund.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan formally intervened Thursday in a lawsuit that effectively pits allies of her father, House Speaker Michael Madigan, against Gov. Rod Blagojevich in a political and legal dispute over health care spending.

Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a motion intervene on December 26, 2007 as a plantiff in Richard Caro and Ron Gidwitz constitutional case agains Governor Rod Blagojevich.

The Shriver Poverty Law Center has also filed a motion to intervene, as a defendent in this case.

Here is the link for all Chicago Daily Observer Coverage of the Richard Caro vs. Rod Blagojevich Case.

Can you remember when a Governor Moonbeam held office in California rather than Illinois? Our zany adolescent masquerading as a fifty-one year old has hit upon a new scheme to bolster his sagging popularity with the electorate: Blagojevich is reported to be considering purchasing venerable Wrigley field and assigning its operations to the habitually inept Illinois Sports Facilities Authority.

Since the State of Illinois cannot attend to its most basic responsibilities, Blagojevich feels that an afternoon at the ballpark is just the cure for what ails us. Moreover, state ownership of the ninety-five year old stadium will help keep the team in Chicago rather than moving to the suburbs. As an added benefit, the deal may aid the Sam Zell’s purchase of the Tribune Corporation. Zell has indicated that he will sell the Cubs franchise and the associated real estate separately to pay for his purchase of the media conglomerate.

Filing as independent taxpayers of Illinois, businessman Ron Gidwitz, Illinois Manufacturers Association President Greg Baise, and Riverside lawyer Richard Caro have joined in a single lawsuit vs. the Blagojevich Administration.

In court action Tuesday, Caro, joined by lawyers from the firm of Ungaretti & Harris presented a complaint and request for a temporary restraining order to restrict State of Illinois spending to legislatively approved purposes.

The position of the Illinois Attorney Generals office was questioned, as the office is representing the defendant (Comptroller Dan Hynes) as well as intervening as a plaintiff.

The Economist’s description of Hugo Chavez sounds very familiar to those who are experiencing Rod Blagojevich in Illinois. Both practice “21st century socialism, i.e. old-fashioned autocracy”. Both face weak political opposition, and a weak dissenting media, prompting Col. Chavez to demand a constitutional change making him president for life.

Here, Governor Blagojevich has done Hugo Chavez one better. Seeing that he does not have the votes for his spending plans, Gov. Blagojevich has jettisoned the constitution, and unilaterally appropriated funds to spend as he sees fit.

If Illinois had the oil revenues of Chavez, assuredly he would have succeeded. By spending money he does not have, Gov. Blagojevich has crossed into a financial territory that may be not only illegal but sufficiently unpopular enough to at long last prompt Illinois business leaders, lawyers, and taxpayers to smack back.

Richard Caro has lead the way. Caro, who has been close to ... Read More...

Nearly drowned out by the media silence, the Richard Caro case vs. Rod Blagojevich continues in Cook County.

In a phone conversation with Caro, a long precedent of case law involving the judiciary acting to requiring state agencies to act within legislative spending and authoritative boundaries.

Cases have been successfully argued against such state boards as the Illinois Liquor Control Commission, the Nursing Home Licensing Board, the State Board of Education specifically referring to the executive branch of state government working beyond their legislative authority.

Caro also expects some consolidation of the Ron Gidwitz/Illinois Coalition for Jobs litigation with his own litigation as suggested by Judge Zappa in Sangamon County.

On Governor Blagojevich’s behalf, the Chicago Tribune, Sun Times and the Chicago Reader have steadfastly refused to publish any notice of the Caro lawsuit, nor the dismissal of the Illinois Coalition Lawsuit, which Judge Zappa concurred with the attorneys for ... Read More...

Dear Governor,

Your criticism of those who oppose your recent expansions of healthcare programs to persons who do not satisfy established legislatively approved eligibility requirements as being **** Scrooge-like in many ways,” is telling. What you don’t understand is that concerned citizens and taxpayers like myself, who are fully supportive of making basic healthcare available to all, want those reforms to be achieved in a constitutional manner. The Separations of Powers Provision in our State Constitution strictly prohibits the Executive from infringing upon or exercising the powers the Constitution exclusively reserves for the Legislature to exercise. It is for the Legislature to decide to amend, expand public assistance programs, enact new ones, and to determine the funding that will be made available for each such program.

That question is asked and answered in the affirmative by the Illinois Policy Institute, a free-market think tank, in its thought-provoking new analysis: “CTA looking in all the wrong places: Sustainable solution requires new thinking and real reforms.”

I can’t remember anyone seriously and convincingly making such a claim since the early 1970s when, as the Chicago Daily News urban affairs reporter, I started covering the CTA. That’s when it became conventional political wisdom that mass transit should be considered to be a public utility requiring a public subsidy. Hell, I even bought it.

Except for this: How many public utilities (e.g., the electric and gas companies) operate like the CTA, with their consumers paying only about half the costs, while taxpayers pick up the other half? After more than three decades of shoveling money at mass transit, without success or surcease, and as state politicians flop around ... Read More...

The Chicago Tribune didn’t stretch itself unduly to mention a lawsuit brought as a public interest by my friend Richard Caro. But what the legislature won’t do…and what all the combined weight of the editorialists’ cannot evidently accomplish…Richard—who passes the plate every Sunday at 11 a.m. Mass at St. John Cantius (the mother church of authentic Catholicism) is accomplishing. He is like Roland at the pass, the heroic medieval soldier who held the pass in Spain enabling his comrades to pass through unharmed by the Saracens and who with his dying breath blew the trumpet that summoned reinforcements.

Who is Richard Caro and what is he doing? He’s a mild-mannered (deceptive) public interest lawyer, a doctor of jurisprudence, who is today’s version of the English barons at Runnymede who taught the tyrant King John a needed lesson in 1215—and got him to sign the Magna Carta, the charter of our ... Read More...

Iraqi parliament has shown more courage in solving its problems than Illinois legislators

For all of the Iraqi parliament’s flaws, I would trade it straight up for the crowd that we’ve got in Springfield. Ridiculous, you say? Then, consider what both have accomplished. First, the Illinois state government: (This space left intentionally blank.)

That’s right, nothing. Maybe the Iraq parliament hasn’t done much more but think about its challenges compared with Illinois’ crew. Iraq has to repair centuries of tyranny and brutalization. The country is split in three, marked by a centuries-long and sometimes bloody religious feud. With virtually no experience with self-government, the Iraqis are expected to come up instantly with a government and culture that respects democratic values.

The mayor coughs up $40 Million in financial assistance for one of the most successful corporations in the country that has just finished a $12 Billion merger. The governor arranges for a $4 Million to be paid to a good friend of Karl Rove. In a time of record high gas prices, both senators arrange a 50 cent tax on imported ethanol to assist a local conglomerate, while using the same conglomerate’s private airplane to travel back and forth to Washington D.C.

The senator who extols the fact that he comes from a poor neighborhood campaigns for a public school monopoly, while neither he nor his children have attended a day of public school. The other senator campaigns for sugar tariffs, while 10,000 Teamster union workers are laid off because of high sugar prices. Such a combination of favors to business and the State enterprise monopolies in exchange for campaign ... Read More...

Here we go again!

In my misspent youth, I watched Abbott and Costello comedies on television often enough to memorize some of their routines. It wasn’t that difficult. If a comedic bit worked, Bud and Lou were certain to repeat it over and over again. Some of their most celebrated sketches were performed in the movies as well as on radio and television. Constant repetition of familiar routines may have served to hasten the end of their careers as headlining entertainers during the Fifties.

Listening to our politicians engage in brinksmanship and double talk, makes me pine for a straight man like Bud Abbott. He could at least put over some of the nonsense more skillfully than our elected officials.

Higher taxes are being threatened by City Hall and the County Board, but how much of it is genuine and how much of it is part of a bait and ... Read More...

Isn’t there some way for fed-up citizens of Illinois, Cook County and Chicago to force their governments into receivership?

After all, when a corporation is as stunningly incompetent as are Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, legislative leaders, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and his toady City Council, creditors can force it into bankruptcy in which a court-appointed trustee straightens out the mess or, if necessary, shuts it down to preserve the remains.

Why have Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Illinois General Assembly had such a difficult time agreeing on a transit budget?

When a dispute turns deep, bitter, personal and prolonged, something more than just disagreement over ways and means and outcomes is going on. Mere negotiation—“You give me a little more of this and I’ll demand less of that”—doesn’t work anymore. The parties are out of touch with reality—probably because it changed while they weren’t looking. To help get our leaders back in touch, here’s the transit reality check they’ve been missing

Cites Possibility that Taxpayers’ Dollars Have Been Spent in Violation of State Constitution.

Former prosecutor and current public interest attorney Richard Caro who has been in the forefront of a constitutional battle to keep the governor of Illinois from transgressing the rights of the legislature, has filed a motion for reconsideration after a dismissal of his case by a circuit court judge.

In his motion, Caro pointed out that his action was designed to prevent any public expenditure in behalf of the AllKids bridge program by transferring money not appropriated to it by executive fiat. Judge Kathleen Mary Pantle did not address that point in her preemptory Sept. 28 dismissal of his lawsuit, he says.

Caro’s point that monies have been in fact expended unconstitutionally has to do with the governor’s Aug. 30 announcement that the program was being established and implemented. Judge Pantle concentrated on a very narrow point ... Read More...

To the surp