In the land where the dead rise to vote, it is long known that the election code the state operates under is absurd. Illinois has taken ballot engineering to an art form to ensure the election results are known before the first vote is cast. Like all complex systems, however, they are bound to fail in spectacular ways.

Illinois has a long process to challenge the petitions of anyone who files for office. It is often used to keep “outsiders” off the ballot either by ensnaring them in hypertechnical offenses or simply bog a candidate down in thousands of dollars in legal fees and bury their campaign by attrition. Vote fraud is difficult to undertake on a large scale and requires many people and resources to accomplish quietly. Why resort to fraud when you can simply ensure the voters don’t have a choice to begin with?

As an example, if you file your petition paperwork with a paperclip instead of a staple, that is cause to remove you from the ballot. As a historical note, President Obama won his first election to the Illinois State Senate by removing every opponent, including the incumbent, from the ballot–thereby running unopposed. This process has been used to dramatic effect to settle elections long before voters have a say. What good is the right to vote if you don’t have any choices?

However, this system has now broken down with every candidate for president in Illinois having their paperwork challenged and all the flaws for each candidate are apparently fatal. Several candidates didn’t use their home addresses on their petitions, one didn’t use an Illinois notary to notarize their paperwork and another put in “statewide” for the district they were running in instead of “Illinois”. Even Obama was challenged, but I assume those are birther challenges and we’ll just move past those.

(more…)

In 2010, Governor Quinn signed into law a landmark budget reform law called “Budgeting for Results”.  The goal was quite simple, that spending should be tied to measurable goals of the state and that funding should change according to what best achieves those goals.  It was designed to promote transparency and accountability in the many agencies and programs of the state forcing them to measure the effectiveness of their programs with an eye of weeding out those programs that achieve little to nothing for the taxpayer.

That was the stated goal at least.  Now that the first report has been issued by the Budget for Results Commission, we see that it wasn’t about spending reform at all.  It’s about yet another attempt to justify increased mandated and structural spending at a time when Illinois has already passed a 67% income tax hike and is still operating a deficit.

Here is what the commission says about their goal:

Budgeting for Results changes the way the State allocates resources across government agencies. Rather than setting budgets agency by agency based on historic funding levels, BFR allocates resources based on state-wide goals.

…

Measurement is crucial to accountability and transparency. Reliable data and analysis are essential to inform funding decisions and make sure taxpayers see the impact of their tax dollars.

It all sounds good, so far.  In fact, it sounds downright reasonable.  Government has to do things and spending should be calibrated to do those things as efficiently as possible.

So what was the very first recommendation of this august panel to deal with a state that has a chronic and uncontrolled spending problem?

Recommendation 1:

Establish a seventh Result to acknowledge the importance of ensuring that all Illinois residents have access to quality, affordable health care, and to recognize medical assistance distinct from the human service goals. Separating costs will provide greater transparency to spending on Medicaid and spending on other human service activities. The newest Result area recommended is:

All Illinois residents have access to quality affordable health care.

You read that right.

(more…)

The culture of corruption is a well-known fixture in Chicago and Illinois politics where it doesn’t matter what you know, it matters who you know.  We have one governor on his way to jail and the one before him currently serving time for corruption.  You would think the current governor, Pat Quinn, who bills himself as a reformer would change things. You would be wrong.

One way Quinn has continued the culture of corruption is by stacking state boards and commissions, many paying lucrative salaries for little to no work, with political allies.  For instance, pro-choice activist Terry Cosgrove was appointed to the Human Rights Commission and has been a lifelong friend of the Democratic Party of Illinois and Quinn.

Quinn, however, has a new twist on board appointments.  Many of these bodies are restricted by state law from having too many members of one party on them.  This modest requirement is an attempt to ensure decisions are made on the merits instead of on the politics.  Governor Quinn has gotten around this requirement by having Democrats label themselves as “Independents” when it comes to board appointments in an apparent end-run around the law and what likely is illegal behavior.

How prevalent is this problem?  Here is a list of boards and commissions I examined to see if Quinn was following the law.

• Capital Development Board – 4 Democrats maximum, 6 Democrats serving and no Republicans
• Housing Development Authority – 5 Democrats maximum, 7 Democrats serving
• Board of Education – 5 Democrats maximum, 7 Democrats serving
• Board of Higher Education – 7 Democrats maximum, 14 Democrats serving and no Republicans
• University of Illinois Board of Trustees – 5 Democrats maximum, 6 Democrats serving
• Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees – 4 Democrats maximum, 5 Democrats serving
• Human Rights Commission – 7 Democrats maximum, 9 Democrats serving
• Health Facilities and Services Planning Board - 5 Democrats maximum, 6 Democrats serving
• Educational Labor Relations Board – 3 Democrats maximum, 4 Democrats serving
• Medical Disciplinary Board – 5 Democrats maximum, 6 Democrats serving
• Judical Inquiry Board – 4 Democrats maximum, 5 Democrats serving

These are boards with real power that either spend a good deal of taxpayer dollars or wield great sway over the voters.  You can view the official party affiliation at the state website appointments.illinois.gov.  To verify true party affiliation, I checked state voting records.  Under state law, if you vote in a primary for a party, you are a member of that party.  That is how I discovered many “independents” on these boards are really lifelong Democrats, many giving a good deal of money to Democrats for office.

(more…)

Last week, an e-mail went out to all employees in the Illinois Department of Public Health to let them know that their corporate cards will no longer work after April 22nd because Bank of America is not renewing the contract and the State cannot find a replacement.

Like most major companies, the State issues corporate cards to employees to charge travel expenses and other charges related to their work. In the case of the State, this has to be done via your typical procurement processes. The below e-mail shows that Bank of America is fed up with the State and they have yet to find a willing sucker bidder willing to deal with the State’s payment cycle.

Here is a copy of the e-mail (emphasis mine):

Folks:

Not to send panic, but just a heads up to each of you as to what’s happening.

Bank of America is cancelling the contract with the State of Illinois effective April 22, 2011. They will not do another contract extension for the State of Illinos. So what does that mean? On April 23, 2011 at 12:01 a.m., the cards currently held by IDPH employees will no longer be valid. The State has been trying to finda new vendor, encourage BoA to give us a few more months, but as of this writing has been unsuccessful on all fronts. So what does this mean to our travelers? Most establishments will not direct bill especially conferences, (prior approval needed by travel office for this process) so persons required to travel will have to put charges on their personal charge cards or set aside personal funds on prepaid travel card, or pay cash out of pocket. For those who are non-GRF [General Revenue Fund] this should be not big deal, but to those traveling on GRF, this could have an impact.

One additional details are received. I will share that information with you so that you can share with our travelers.

Unti then . . . this is just a heads up!!!!

The state has for several years run budget deficits. As Illinois can’t print money and they’ve run out of cash, they have resorted to simply paying bills later and later. Some vendors have stopped doing business with the state, some vendors simply will not do business with the state or seek state business.

Bank of America is likely tired of having a customer owe millions and insist on paying on a Net-270 (on a good month). The fact that they can’t find other bidders shows that everyone knows the score here.

(more…)

Illinois has long earned the reputation as one of the most corrupt states in the union and for reasons too numerous to list here. However, not content to have reached rock bottom, the Illinois Municipal League (a collection of local government officials) and Lord State Senator Ed Maloney have decided to start digging.

This week is Sunshine Week, a week dedicated to promoting the cause of governmental transparency. It should come as no surprise that transparency is needed in Illinois. However, the Illinois Municipal League and Lord State Senator Ed Maloney believes that is the problem, not the solution.

They have introduced Senate Bill 1645 which would allow local government officials to label any individual who files more than 15 Freedom of Information Act requests in a year, or more than 5 in a month, “vexatious”. This would then allow them to summarily reject any and all FOIA’s filed by that person. There is no judicial review of this designation nor any right to appeal. You see, us taxpayers who want to know more about our government are annoying so they want to be able to shut us down.

To give you an idea of what kind of politician Lord State Senator Ed Maloney is, he earlier this year was embroiled in a controversy for sponsoring legislation that would require all home schoolers to register with the government. His stated purpose was that he was worried that people who homeschool their kids were not accountable to any government officials. You read that right, he views his job as enabling government to hold private citizens accountable for their private conduct.

The bad news is that SB1645 has already passed out of the Senate Executive Committee (the committee where “important” legislation is considered and fast-tracked) by a 10-4 margin. Disappointly, this included two Republican Senator votes (John O. Jones and Dave Luechtefeld). We can just call this coaltion the “Pay up and shut up” Coalition for their support of the public’s right to know.

(more…)

Not much more than an hour after nutter Jared Loughner shot a Congresswoman in the head and killed several others, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik starting blaming the Tea Party and the right-wing for the killing. Some of the victims were not even pronounced dead yet and this law enforcement official sought not to stick to the facts or calm the public, but being the cycle of beating his political opponents over the head with the dead bodies. We expect such gutter-dwelling rhetoric from sites like the DemocraticUnderground or the DailyKos. When a law enforcement official does it moments after one of the worst attacks against a federal official in years, it speaks to the character (or lack thereof) of the person in question.

In the days following, Dupnik doubled-down on his rhetoric, naming Rush Limbaugh by name. The mainstream media piled on laying clear blame on the Tea Party, Sarah Palin and the Republican Party in general. It must be news to me, but I didn’t realize saying “cut taxes” meant “go shoot someone in the face.”

Sheriff Dupnik played a critical role in bringing an all-time low to American politics and drove a wedge deep between right and left. At a moment when we all should have come together as a country to denounce the attacks of a mentally ill individual (one whom, I might add, was known to be mentally ill by Sheriff Dupnik’s office and who was previously investigated for making threats on others by Sheriff Dupnik’s office), Dupnik stood center stage and began the national blamestorming discussion.

The fact that a politician does not even possess a residue of character isn’t surprising, unfortunately. However, for a law enforcement official to demonstrate such a lack of integrity is unacceptable. Calls for his resignation are completely appropriate, however, the citizens in Pima County have something else in mind: they have begun the process to recall the Sheriff.

(more…)

It’s no secret that health care is an industry beset by huge problems. The problem doesn’t as much stem from “evil insurance companies” as it does from a system created by federal and state governments to make a system as economically inefficient as possible.

For instance, most people do not pick their own insurance companies. Their employer does. The customer then isn’t the consumer, it is the business that contracts them to provide insurance for their employees. Patients don’t pay the doctors, the insurance companies do. In fact, the medical industry collects maybe 30% of the bills that aren’t sent to an insurance company. So their customer isn’t the patient, it’s the insurance company (or the government in the case of Medicare/Medicaid).

What you have is a system that puts all the control in people who aren’t the primary two parties in a health care relationship: the doctor and the patient. Is it any wonder why the system sucks? We’ve taken everything we know about economics and done the opposite.

However, for their part the doctors and the insurance companies have more access to legislators (due to campaign contributions and lobbyists) than patients do. The result is a regulatory system that is skewed away from patients, affordability and choice.

Illinois provides a great example of this.

(more…)

Retired Sandra Day O’Connor has had a busy month this month despite her retirement. Just this week she sat in on a federal appellate panel which struck down as unconstitutional Arizona’s law which requires voters prove that they are citizens. Apparently, it is an undue burden on non-citizens to prove that they actually are allowed to vote before giving them a ballot. Nice to see circular reasoning still prevails on the 9th Circuit.

Then, she appeared in a robocall at 1am in Nevada to campaign for a ballot proposition for so-called “merit selection” of judges. Part of the controversy is interesting since federal judges are required to refrain from political activity (for good reason) and appearing in a robocall clearly is political activity. There was, of course, the stunt of scheduling a modest number of robocalls at 1am to ensure massive media coverage of the proposition that might otherwise go unnoticed. It’s clever, really. Generate a moderate amount of controversy to bring attention to your candidate or cause, it’s been done before.

The interesting part of that story isn’t that she was doing robocalls (though that is a problem). The interesting part is what this proposition would entail. So-called “merit selection” of judges is simply a euphamistic way of saying “we’re going to take away the right to vote for judges from the citizens and give it to politicians and special interests.”

Of course, they don’t frame it like that. They say “oh, the special interests corrupt the process” and “judges have to raise money which means they’ll be tempted to trade favors” and “elections mean partisan politics and special interests can play mischief with judicial elections”. See, it’s all about reform.

(more…)

Things are getting desperate out there for Democrats, who have nowhere to hide from their legacy of failure.  Illinois has already gone into bizarre territory with Governor Quinn’s “Vote for Me or the Puppy Gets It” ads. Just when things couldn’t get any bizarre, you have this bit of insanity wafting out of the West Side of Chicago.

Democrat State Senator Ricky Hendon, best known for once getting into a physical altercation with Barack Obama in Springfield, suggested that Republican Governor candidate Bill Brady wanted to execute homosexuals and that all civil rights for women should be ended.

Here is the exact quote:

“I’ve never served with such an idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic person in my life,” Hendon said before introducing Gov. Quinn. “If you think that the minimum wage needs to be three dollars an hour, vote for Bill Brady. If you think that women have no rights whatsoever, except to have his children, vote for Bill Brady. If you think gay and lesbian people need to be locked up and shot in the head, vote for Bill Brady.”

Apparently, Bill Brady has become the Midwest’s Ghengis Khan leaping from bed to bed siring more children. The context of these remarks was his introduction of Pat Quinn during a Get Out the Vote rally on the West Side.

(more…)

Imagine this, your state has a budget deficit of $13 Billion dollars (despite having a constitutional clause that requires balanced budgets). The state is months late in payments to local schools. Medicaid providers aren’t getting paid to treat the poor so they stop seeing Medicaid patients. Social service providers are going out of business because they received state grants which the state isn’t paying on. What would you do to start to address this?

Here is what Illinois is doing, spending more money. As a case in point, the state has begun construction on a $580 MILLION dollar interchange between I-57 and I-294 in Chicago. What makes this a complete waste is that an exchange already exists only 3.5 miles away from the one planned. This map will help show how absurd this is.

To get to I-294 from I-57, you have to exit on I-80 and head 3.5 miles east to get to I-294. It’s not a bad jaunt, really. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs and live downstate now. I make this trip dozens of times a year. Perhaps when the interstate was built it might have made sense to put a direct interchange between I-57 and I-294. The reality is, it’s maybe an additional 2 minutes of travel time. The bulk of the additional travel time isn’t the roads, it’s the toll booths which we can all be quite sure they will continue to exist once the interchange is put in.

They justify this over half BILLION dollar expenditure because they argue having that interchange will generate billions of economic growth in the area once it is in place. Take a look at that <a href=”http://www.parttimepundit.com”map again to see how absurd that is.

(more…)

It’s no secret that ethics means something a little different here in the Land of Lincoln. We’re home to where the last 3 of 6 governors have gone to jail. Our last governor was just convicted of a “Martha Stewart” offense and is awaiting retrial on his own corruption charges. Our current Governor, Pat Quinn, has been a self-styled outsider for decades and became an accidental governor after Blagojevich was impeached. The term “accidental governor” not only describes how he became Governor but in a large part it describes his governing style.

The one amazing transformation has been Quinn, the reformer,  becoming Quinn, the business-as-usual politician. While claiming the need for “shared sacrifice” and insisting on a tax increase, his top political staff received massive payraises (up to 20%). He formed a blue-ribbon ethics commission to reform state government, then largely ignored everything they told him. However, the latest incident is the most disturbing.

His chief-of-staff Jerry Stermer had sent several e-mails from his state e-mail account to coordinate campaign messaging for Pat Quinn during the primary. He had directed the budget director of the state to produce information to be distilled into talking points by the Governor’s campaign PR firm. To his credit, he then turned himself in to the Inspector General of the state for an ethics investigation. The ethics transgression here isn’t peanuts, but it’s certainly not a case of storied Chicago politics corruption. But then things got interesting.

(more…)

After 30 days of trial and 14 days of deliberation in the up-and-down Rod Blagojevich corruption trial, the jury has announced it’s verdict.

Of the 24 counts against Rod Blagojevich, the jury found Rod Blagojevich on only one count, the Martha Stewart offense (making false statements to investigators stemming from a 2005 interview). The jury was hung on all other counts. That offense carries a maximum of 5 years and a $250,000 fine.

Of the 4 counts against Robert Blagojevich (his campaign chief towards the end of 2008), the jury was unable to come to any unanimous conclusion on any count.

As a result, the judge has declared a mistrial on the remaining counts enabling the prosecution to try again, which they said in court they will absolutely do. A hearing was scheduled for August 26th to discuss that matter.

In theory, the prosecution could attempt to retry on any counts that came back as hung but they will have time to decide that issue. However, this is good news for Blagojevich and signals that his defense team, despite much criticism, masterfully managed to dodge the bullet for their client… this time.

(more…)

It is no secret that Illinois is going broke with over $6 BILLION in unpaid bills to social service providers, Medicaid doctors, mental health providers and schools. It is also no secret that the state has a $13 BILLION budget deficit that the Chicago Democrats who control the entire state failed to address. Next year’s budget deficit will be around $15 – $16 BILLION assuming the economy doesn’t do a double dip recession.

Just last week, Illinois overtook California as the riskiest state to insure against default on bond obligations. You would think cause a sense of urgency among the elected Democrats who control the state. You would be wrong.

Yesterday, we learned from the Associated Press that the Governor was busy doling out 20% raises to his top staff. While the rest of us worry about having jobs, see our hours cut and our pay stagnates, political cronies in the Quinn administration get fat raises.

This would typically be the kind of story the public sector unions would jump on. Not in Illinois because the Democrats and unions like SEIU and AFSCME are part of the same corrupt political class that has driven the state into a ditch. There is also another reason.

On July 1st this year, 40,000 or so AFSCME state employees happily collected a 7% percent “cost of living adjustment”. July 1st next year, they will get another 7%. In short, in 2 years, they will get a 14% raise. Even in good years, 7% is well over inflation. The timing of these raises were also very well coordinated.

(more…)

Just one day after the Democrats seized control of Congress, the Chief Executive of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, received the patent for a residential cap-and-trade system (Patent 6904336), What this means is that Raines, along with several colleagues who also “own” the patent, could stand to make huge amounts of money if the cap-and-trade regime was ever brought to the residential marketplace. What does this have to do with Fannie Mae? Absolutely nothing.

To understand the implications, a little discussion about patenting is needed. Patents are basically “ownership” rights to an invention. If you invent something, you can license it to others to produce and collect royalties. Each year, thousands of patents are sent to the US Patent Office for consideration. Many “patent houses” simply put in very general patents so they can turn around and sue businesses later for “stealing” their inventions. Sometimes it’s legit, many times its bogus.

As examples, Amazon holds the patent of “one-click purchasing”. Litigation ensued on that. There’s a patent on a “self-executing webpage” which is the reason why a few years ago Microsoft had to convert Internet Explorer to not automatically play media as soon as someone visited a webpage. (i.e. why you have to click a YouTube video for it to play).

Here is where things get interesting. Cap-and-trade legislation literally creates an asset out of thin air. It requires some means to “value” the asset and some means to trade it. In essence, it would lead to government created assets and trading mechanisms. However, when this patent was awarded and applied for, cap-and-trade was not even on the public radar yet.

It is important to remember a few things. Franklin Raines has privileged access to Congress and politicians. He knew and could talk to them about what they were thinking and what they planned to do. As head of a government corporation, he also had a degree of access to the Patent Office to help “smooth the way” to get a patent.

(more…)

The University of Illinois Alumni Association recently awarded it’s “International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement” to the current President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado.  Since the University of Illinois is the premier university for the state of Illinois, let’s see the list of accomplishments President Correa can boast of while claiming this prestigious award:

• Transparency International listed Ecuador as one of the world’s most corrupt countries under Correa.
• He has seized numerous TV and Radio outlets in his country.
• He has jailed reporters critical of his government.
• Organzied crime has had a magnificient rise during his reign.
• He has rammed through constitutional changes to increase his power and extend his term of office.
• He was found to have FARC terrorists fund his campaigns.
• Documents found by Colombia show that he has actively worked with FARC terrorists. FARC has also been involved with kindnapping Americans.
• Ecuador has provided a safe haven for FARC terrorists to launch attacks on Columbia, an ally of the United States.
• Ecuador has ties to both Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and has increased ties to Iran.

(more…)

In what quickly became the headline story from the results of the Illinois Primary on February 2nd, Scott Lee Cohen was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor. This charming gentlemen spent around $2-$3 million of his own money to win the election.  Here is where things get weird.

Dem Lt Gov Candidate Scott Lee Cohen

The Chicago Tribune, in writing on his victory, immediately highlighted he was charged with domestic battery. Then news came fast and furious. He was a chronic user of anabolic steroids. He was abusive to his wife and children and even went so far as to try to “force himself” on her. He held a knife to his prostitute girlfriend’s throat. As he was spending millions running for office, he was a dead beat dad falling behind on child support payments he obviously could afford. His divorce file was found and put online. Those documents were not even sealed.

This, of course, presents a huge problem for Illinois Democrats. The Lt. Governor runs independent in the Primary but in the General the Governor and Lt. Governor are paired.  Governor Pat Quinn is, understandably, less than pleased. However, by law, there is no way to get rid of the Lt. Governor candidate unless that person drops out. To say the Democrats are in a state of panic is to put it mildly.

(more…)

When ACORN was caught stacking voter rolls with fake names leading up to the 2008 election, we stood up and took notice. Maybe an aberration, maybe part of a plan to undermine our system of elections. On Election Day, Black Panthers were inside a Pennsylvania polling station intimidating voters. They ultimately got off and the prosecutor who went after them was “reassigned”. Still, maybe it is simply coincidence. What if a high-profile state Attorney General argued that voters have no right to vote in secret?

I’m not talking about Card Check, I’m talking about the voting all of us do in every election. Consider the following words argued in Champaign County Court in Illinois by the Illinois Attorney General’s office headed by Lisa Madigan:

While plaintiff attempts to suggest to the Court that there is a fundamental right to a secret ballot, no such right exists. (bottom of Page 11 of pleading)

The Attorney General’s office argues that the United States Constitution, nor any fundamental right, protect a voter from being able to vote in secret. In effect, this means that it is only out of mere courtesy that the government doesn’t simply sit in the voting booth with you making sure you are making “fully informed decisions”.

(more…)