Chicago Daily Observer

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...

John McCain’s speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination was awful. Yes, it yanked the “change” flag out of Barack Obama’s hands and planted it on the GOP‘s ramparts, and yes, McCain admirably ripped his own party, and yes, there were touching moments of personal revelation.

But the speech was disorganized, overly vetted, sometimes banal, sometimes self-centered and devoid of forthright and realistic discussion of what bothers most voters: a sagging economy. What was needed was some straight talk, which I have provided here: “We’ve been hearing for years now that we’re in or approaching a recession. Gentlepeople, by any measure, we are not in a recession, but if we keep talking like down-in-the-mouth Democrats do, we’ll certainly sink into one.

Sarah Palin’s foreign policy knowledge, background and experience: Hillary argued Obama wasn’t ready for that 3:00 am call? Is Sarah?
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Jeff Berkowitz: Mrs. McCain—
Cindy McCain: Hi, how are you?
Jeff Berkowitz: Is Sarah Palin ready to be President?
Cindy McCain: Absolutely.
*********************************************************
Jeff Berkowitz: Is Sarah Pelin ready to be President?
Andrea Mitchell: NBC Correspondent and married to former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan: I have no idea.
Jeff Berkowitz: You’ve seen her for a week. What do you think?
Andrea Mitchell: It’s way too early. A day is a lifetime in politics. I’ve got to go.
Berkowitz: She has no foreign policy experience. You agree?
Mitchell: Sorry, I’ve got to do my job.
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We spent last night at the Republican Party convention in St. Paul, Minnesota speaking to ... Read More...

This atmosphere is totally distracting. I think I’ve walked around St. Paul and the Xcel Center a gazillion times, taking pix here and there, meeting bloggers and chitchatting. Also celebrity and politico sightings. That’s Laura Bush down there. I was up level with the celebratory balloons. I saw Bill Bennett the other night on the way to the Laura Bush speech and said, “Mr. Bennett!” and patted him on the arm in passing like I was his mother or something.

This morning on the way in, just past security, Jon Voight was being interviewed yet again, (pix up and left). I shook his hand, told him I was a blogger from Chicago and thanked him for standing up for the right. This morning I attended a RedState/Google brunch, met Erick Erickson and Ben Domenach, and had the honor of listening to Sen. Fred Thompson. And I got to ask the ... Read More...

It’s been a bit less than two years since I interviewed George McGovern for my book, Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House, on Bill Clinton’s post presidency. McGovern and Clinton are good friends—in 1972 while a Yale law student, Clinton worked for McGovern organizing the state of Texas—although the friendship was frayed by McGovern’s switching his endorsement last May from Hillary to Obama.

McGovern, who lost every state but Massachusetts (and the District of Columbia), in what has to count as the biggest debacle in presidential contest history, was one of several who recently offered “My Convention Memory” on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Except for Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen’s experience with another colossal loser, Michael Dukakis, none but McGovern’s are worth the time. McGovern’s, in fact, is downright jaw dropping.

In 458 words he describes a sea change over 38 years in ... Read More...

went to the media party at the GOP convention last Saturday night. It was a warm but gorgeous night along the Mississippi. Corn on the cob in the shade of an old mill, a drink on the cantilevered terrace of the Guthrie Theater, with soaring views of the river.

On the way out, I spied this person and snapped a pix. I wanted to talk to her, but she was busy. I overheard some snippet about following the lead of a man. That was my first clue. I waited until she paused from talking to some man with whom it seemed she had friends in common. She asked me if I was with him…guess she was looking.

The second clue was when I asked her where she was from. She said San Francisco.

Then I asked her if she was a blogger–she said no, an activist. What self-respecting person ... Read More...

Arrived today in MSP. I wandered around the Nicollet Mall after picking up my media credentials. I hadn’t really been in downtown Minneapolis since my first job after college. Took a few pix, then checked in and checked out the local news. The anarchists had some nice plans for us, but luckily we don’t have to duck incoming from at least this bunch. Star-Tribune:
In a statement Saturday morning, Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher said the St. Paul raid targeted the RNC Welcoming Committee, a group he described as “a criminal enterprise made up of 35 self-described anarchists…intent on committing criminal acts before and during the Republican National Convention.

“These acts include tactics to blockade and disable delegate buses, breaching venue security and injuring police officers,” Fletcher said. Deputies seized a variety of items that they believed were tools of civil disobedience: a gas mask, bolt ... Read More...

The 2008 Democratic National Convention is passing with a welter of hugs. Things are going as hoped for. The Clintons are behaving. Joe Biden is tough and globally wise. The Obamas are the new-age, all-American family.

Out there in Denver we have watched the delegates applaud the shaky but determined appearance of the Kennedy patriarch, Teddy, fighting off his brain cancer to receive the kind of cheers the Kennedys always receive in honor of public trauma past.

While the lobbyists outside the big tent were opening their luxury hospitality suites, Michelle Obama gave her keynote speech in which she assured the delegates – and the estimated 40 million TV audience – that she loved her husband, her brother, her mother, her father, her daughters, and her country. At the end there were cute kids,

There is so much love going on that one almost wishes for a snarl or two, ... Read More...

Reflecting and Reporting on the Democratic Convention: The Kennedys, the Obamas, Ald. Burke and “moving on.”

On Monday night, it appeared Teddy Kennedy upstaged Michelle Obama a bit. It was not that Michelle was not warmly received at the Pepsi Center [This reporter kept hearing the Billy Goat’s and Second City’s “Pepsi, Pepsi, no Coke.”]

Michelle was warmly received, performed and spoke well, and she may have achieved what she set out to do. That is, be irresistibly likeable by the great majority of Americans [If not as much as her husband, at least in his league] and remove that bad taste in America’s mouth from her comment about being proud of America for the first time in her adult life—as a result of Barack’s run for President.

But, standing on the floor with the Illinois delegation, this reporter felt the tremendous warmth and affection of that crowd that Democrats ... Read More...

I’m here in Denver at the Democratic Convention, and while enjoying it, frankly miss the presence of Mike Royko with whom I palled around with at 10 conventions from 1968 to 1996 (including two Republican ones). My first National Convention was 1952 and this is my 17th convention, and in spite of Royko’s absence one of my two favorites.

The selection of Joe Biden as the vice-presidential candidate is appropriate for many reasons, but I’m lucky because on August 16 I was asked in Paris at a meeting
of Democrats Abroad where I had spoken why I hadn’t supported Biden for President.

I said that if I could choose a President I would have chosen Biden, but in a democracy you have to win, and for a variety reasons I had felt as early as the summer of 2006 that only Barack Obama had a chance of wresting the ... Read More...

Writing on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, thoughts and memories zip by—such as:

If Barack Obama had any sense of humor he would have introduced Joe Biden, his vice presidential choice, as a man both clean and articulate.

How many white guys get an intro like that?

The Biden choice has numerous implications, the most important of which is that the campaign concluded that the “experience” gap in Obama’s resume was potentially fatal to his candidacy. Otherwise he would not have selected a long-time Washington insider with tons of baggage who snuffs out any hint of “change” and adds hardly anything to electoral geographics.

On the plus side—in addition to a ream of foreign policy and national security credentials—Biden is Catholic, which will be a great help, has a heart-wrenching back-story and is solidly working class. OK—so his father once had a fortune, lost it all and the ... Read More...

As we look toward Senator Obama delivering his acceptance speech this Thursday night, few, if any, mentors loom so large in Obama’s methodical march toward the presidency over the last quarter of the century, as State Senate President Emil Jones. From community organizer in Chicago to becoming the first African-American President of the Harvard Law School to being a practicing civil rights lawyer active in politics on the South side of Chicago to becoming a State Senator and a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School to becoming a U. S. Senator who would make and win the improbable run against the best the Democratic Party had to offer, i.e., the Clinton partnership of Hillary and Mr. Bill, there has been Senate President Jones, who spoke to Barack as recently as last Monday.

Of course, Jones and Obama are quite different in style, age and in their public persona. ... Read More...

Why do Illinois Democrats keep voting for those clowns of theirs?

They’d probably reply that their clowns are a cut above the Republican clowns, and they may be right. But that still leaves the question: How can Democratic voters keep electing the very people who keep assaulting health care, child welfare and other social programs so dear to the Democratic heart?

Even the most reactionary, right-wing troglodytes have not been as successfully obstructionist as Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Senate President Emil Jones and House Speaker Michael Madigan—Democrats all—whose budget stalemate is giving social service providers fits.

In an election year dominated by the rallying cry of change, an unlikely coalition of some of the state’s most powerful special interests will spend $3 million urging voters to stick with the status quo.

The Alliance to Protect the Illinois Constitution is asking for a “no” vote on one of the most important issues on the November ballot: whether there should be a constitutional convention to make changes to the state’s 1970 governing document.

Every 20 years, the constitution requires that voters be asked whether the document should be rewritten. Sixty percent of the voters must approve the question for a convention to be called. In 1988—a time of more civil political discourse—75 percent of voters opposed a convention.

So the fox says to thefarmer, “Hey, don’t fix the henhouse door, just buy more chickens.”

That’s pretty much the same advice that you, as Illinois voters, are about to be spoon fed.

Big business, big labor and some “good government” groups have teamed up to urge a “no” vote this November on the constitutional convention ballot question. They’re planning to spend $3 million on TV and other advertising.

Illinois voters are given a choice every 20 years about whether to call a “con-con,” and in 1988 the ballot question was defeated.

The entire Illinois establishment was opposed to a constitutional convention back then, including most newspapers. But 2008 is a whole lot different than 1988, when the political world was pretty stable here and most things were on track.

“A mess” hardly begins to describe our current state political situation. Some have suggested that voters might be so fed ... Read More...

If the powers that be in Illinois are so all-fired determined to prevent the electorate from calling a convention to reform the state’s constitution, then maybe the special interests should come up with a better way to flush the corrupt, wasteful and incompetent politics out of state government.

But they haven’t. Instead, business and labor, the self-righteous and greedy, along with some pure of heart folks are spending a ton of money to get you to vote “no” when you are asked in the November election whether you want to call a state Constitutional Convention.

I don’t think a lot of folks were all that serious about an Illinois Constitutional Convention until the established powers gathered to squelch the idea.

Here is the full list of the special interests:

AFL-CIO Illinois
American Insurance Association
Center for Tax and Budget Accountability
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
Citizen Action Illinois
Illinois Association of Convenience Stores
Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools
Illinois Association of School Administrators
Illinois Association of School Personnel Administrators
Illinois Business RoundTable
Illinois Civil Justice League
Illinois Education Association
Illinois Farm Bureau
Illinois Federation of Teachers
Illinois Manufacturers Association
Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association
Illinois Retail Merchants Association
Illinois Retired Teachers Association
Illinois State Chamber of Commerce
Illinois Teachers Retirement System
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association
League of Women Voters of Illinois
National ... Read More...

The presidential candidate for change has adopted the twin themes of “hope” and “change” for his political campaign. These themes are the creation of David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s senior campaign adviser. It was a stroke of brilliance to tap into the widespread disaffection with Washington D.C. and the growing irritation among normal citizens that they have no say in their federal government. With approval ratings of the U.S Congress being around 9% (in other countries there would be an armed coup by now), the timing was perfect.

However, the same distrust and disgust are just as true with the state government of Illinois. We have a governor under multiple federal investigations, a General Assembly that can never seem to pass a budget, and political patronage happening out in the open with no regard for citizens. The gridlock in Springfield is universally despised and all other attempts to reform Illinois have ... Read More...

I was born in Chicago. The year was 1960, and I no doubt voted for John F. Kennedy for president.

When I worked in Illinois thirty years later, the political process was often explained to me as a contest over which set of county officials — Democratic Cook or Republican DuPage — could stay up the latest on election night to manufacture the greater number of votes.

Such is the reputation of Chicago and Illinois. Corruption remains an integral part of the political culture.

Today, the state’s previous governor has retired to a prison cell. The current governor is the target of an ongoing criminal probe. State government — though controlled wholly by the Democrats — is wholly gridlocked.

Worse yet, as a report by the Commercial Club of Chicago bluntly puts it: “Illinois is headed toward financial implosion.”

This is the environment from which Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s presidential ... Read More...

The Chicago Daily Observer takes to the Airwaves to talk about the Constitutional Convention, with Frank Avilla, Bruno Behrends,Tony Peraica, and John Powers.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.—From the Declaration of Independence

Sounds like governance as practiced by “progressives,” when, in fact, it was referring to King George III. Eating out our substance was one of only a couple dozen complaints against the British crown that were cause enough for these 13 colonies to declare themselves to be “Free and Independent States.”

A multitude of offices hardly seems to be a fit enough description of what Washington D.C. and Springfield, Illinois have sent our way to eat out our substance. The only break we have received is a temporary reprieve provided by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Dancing Egos inhabiting Springfield because they’d rather suck each other’s blood instead of ours, at least for the time being. When they tire of clubbing each other, ... Read More...

What describes the nature of Illinois politics better than the hiring of Democrat strategist David Axelrod’s firm by an establishment Republican to squash any possibility of a state constitutional convention?

Voting to convene a convention to revise the Illinois Constitution—which is required by that very constitution to be on the ballot this November—is hardly a subject on everyone’s (or even anyone’s) lips, but you never know when the natives might act up and demand a change in the nation’s most dysfunctional state government. No telling what it might lead to, something like, oh, government that works.

The Democratic and Republican powers that have run this state (into the ground) can’t have anything like that, so a coalition is about to hire Axelrod’s ASK Public Strategies and the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton to jointly run a $2-million to $3-million media and advertising campaign. “We haven’t signed the contract, ... Read More...

If an incarcerated person was up for parole, would you want their fate determined by a board set up to keep the public safe or would you prefer a panel of other inmates to determine who should be set free? Sure, the question is ridiculous; no way would a sane person want Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy deciding if Jack the Ripper should be a free man. However the same common sense does not apply when it comes to the asylum known as the government of Illinois and the inmates who are the elected officials.

In state of Illinois, the legislators are deciding if a constitutional amendment should be on the November ballot, which would permit the recall of elected officials. Please allow me to rephrase that sentence. Politicians are deciding if their constituents have the right to have them fired if they are doing a lousy ... Read More...

In November 2008, Illinois voters will decide whether to have a constitutional convention. A “yes” vote for a convention will allow us to get to the work of cleaning up Illinois government, constitutionally limiting spending, and making it tougher for government to raise your taxes. The changes we have to make to accomplish these goals require amendments to the Illinois Constitution.

The only way to get those amendments now is to go through the legislature. But the legislature is the main obstacle to getting meaningful amendments to the ballot. It never will vote for the kinds of amendments that will get us there because doing so will limit legislative power. And let’s face it: the legislature never will allow the people to vote on any question that might limit legislative power.

The legislature has a sympathetic judiciary to do the heavy, and controversial, lifting. That’s what happened nearly 20 years ... Read More...