In her column today, the Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet highlights GOP U.S. Senate candidat Mark Kirk as the worst of Illinois' statewide candidates when it comes to press access (as evidenced by his four weeks of media dodging):
But the issue of Kirk avoiding the press goes deeper than the last few weeks.
Kirk has been ducking routine press coverage since he jumped into the
Senate race. He refuses to release, when asked, his government or his
political schedules. He also declines to volunteer where he is going to
raise campaign cash and who hosts the events.
NBC 5 reported on Friday that Kirk's campaign says he will be talking to the press "in short order." But don't hold your breath.
A couple of weeks ago, we noted that National Stonewall Democrats, an organization dedicated to
electing pro-LGBT candidates to office, had highlighted 30 of their favorite federal candidates from across the country and was asking supporters to whittle that list down to twelve. These final picks would then receive on-the-ground organizing support from the group. Today, they announced the results and U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias made the cut. This means the Stonewall Dems will place an organizer on the ground here in Illinois to rally local chapters around this race.
On a related note, the Giannoulias campaign released this new video of the candidate talking at length about LGBT equality issues:
While the odds of passage are still long, Illinois
Democrats aren't ready to give up $200 million in state estate tax revenue next fiscal year. Forbes' Ashlea Ebeling is reporting
that there is legislation pending in Springfield to reinstate
Illinois' estate tax -- which applies to the transfer of estates over $2
million in value once the principal dies -- and apply it retroactively
to January 1, 2010, when it first expired.
House Majority Leader Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago) told us in
May that she would likely take up the proposal during the veto session in November.
Ebeling further reports that the legislation would "tie the Illinois exemption to
the federal estate tax exemption, whatever that may be, starting next
year." That makes the revised scope of the federal estate tax, which
Congress will likely establish this summer, crucial. On that
front, Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and three Senate
Democrats proposed a progressive
estate tax plan yesterday that would set an exemption $3.5 million for an
individual but would impose increasingly higher tax rates on
multi-millionaires and billionaires. This revenue is needed more than
ever to pay down growing deficits, so keep an eye on both bills
closely.
Yesterday, Mayor Daley told reporters
that he was interested in another privatization scheme -- outsourcing
city hiring. Daley said he hoped the proposal would cut costs and
restore the public's "confidence in our procedures." Of course, if the public no longer has confidence in the city's hiring process, it's because of therepeatedpatronagescandals
stemming from Daley's own administration. But the mayor framed the problem another way: "We don't have the expertise," he said.
Ald. Joe Moore (49th Ward) thinks that's a terrible excuse. "What it represents is basically an admission on the part of the mayor
that he has utterly failed to manage the hiring process," Moore told the Tribune.
"How hard is it to tell people to not let politics enter the equation?
It is not rocket science."
We made a similar point back in early 2009 following Daley's claim that it made sense to privatize the parking meter system because city workers "can't compete with the private sector." Our response:
In short: [Daley would] rather hand off these services and
assets for the next 75 years -- at a cost to the city -- than actually do the hard work of
improving them.
Yesterday's announcement of an agreement between Walmart and Chicago's major unions would have been a lot more reassuring if a representative from the mega-retailer had stood with the labor leaders and joined them in calling it a "historic" moment. Instead we get headlines like this from Bloomberg: "Wal-Mart, Chicago Unions Can't Agree If They Have An Agreement." From the article:
This is the “first time that the largest retailer in
the world had seen fit to offer 50 cents more than minimum wage as
starting pay,” said Alderman Ed Burke, waving a printout of an e-mail
from Maggie Sans, vice president of public affairs for the Bentonville,
Arkansas-based retailer, during a meeting of the city council’s zoning
committee. [...]
Yet Steven Restivo, a Wal-Mart spokesman, later said
there was no such agreement and that the e-mail from Sans simply
clarified the company’s existing policies on raises.
It just goes to show that the Chicago labor community is going to have to keep the pressure on them as the new developments move forward.
We reported last night on the U.S. Senate's failure to pass a significant extension of the unemployment benefit filing deadline (and Dick Durbin's fiery response to the Republican obstructionists). This morning, the Chicago Reporter is hosting a "public square" discussion on the issue of long-term unemployment from Carter's Barber Shop on the city's South Side. The segment will run live from 10 a.m. to noon on Vocalo.
As expected,
the Senate Republican caucus -- along with Democrat Ben Nelson (NE) -- stood firm today in their opposition
to a jobs bill that would have extended the filing deadline on
emergency unemployment benefits through November, voting 41-57 to block cloture on the legislation (H.R. 4213). Immediately following the roll call, Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) submitted a motion to extend the filing
deadline one additional month using a small portion of the funding
identified in the bill.
That's when Illinois' own Sen. Dick Durbin
unloaded on the minority party, suggesting that political posturing, rather than concern about the deficit, is driving their obstruction. "The record is clear: It is a party of no that is hoping that the voters will vote yes in November," he said. "I hope they remember that the Republicans had no alternative [proposal] when it came to this disastrous economic situation." Watch it:
While a standalone bill extending the benefit deadline might surface next, the entire effort has been derailed for the time being. As of tomorrow, the National Employment Law Project projects that 1.2 million Americans will have lost their unemployment aid as a result.
In a release to reporters today, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee positioned Illinois Republican Mark Kirk's ongoing avoidance of the press as part of a larger pattern. They noted that four other GOP Senate candidates have similarly gone underground:
As campaign season heads into the dog days of summer, at least five Republican Senate candidates are nowhere to be found. David Vitter, Mark Kirk, Sharron Angle, Linda McMahon and Rand Paul are all in hiding, undersiege and avoiding the press. Whether the issue is a scandal involving a staffer in trouble with the law, a candidate who literally runs away from the press after embellishing his resume, a candidate so far outside the mainstream that her campaign won’t allow her to do mainstream media interviews, a candidate who is in exile after sticking his foot in his mouth way too many times, or a candidate ducking questions about steroid use, these five candidates are not running phone calls and won’t be answering your questions anytime soon.
Maine's two "centrist" Republican senators are putting state governments in quite a pickle. To lower the cost
of a Democratically-authored jobs bill that would extend the filing
deadline for emergency unemployment benefits, Sens. Olympia Snowe and
Susan Collins want to curtail an extension of the enhanced Medicaid matching rate
included in last year’s stimulus bill. That could force states to reduce coverage for folks that use the public health plan or spend
more on Medicaid in 2011 than they had originally planned, creating new holes elsewhere in those budgets.
Both options are terrible. We've already seen how funding cuts
have impacted social services statewide. And lowering Medicaid spending, even marginally, can produce a nasty ripple effect
on the broader economy. Reduced coverage means the working poor must
find more expensive health insurance, the state's federal matching
funds shrink, and business declines for professionals who rely on Medicaid
reimbursements for their livelihood -- medical providers, technicians,
custodians, and health care administrators. Marc Zandi, chief economist
of Moody’s Economy.com, estimates that some 200,000 jobs could be lost if Congress doesn't pass along the full Medicaid assistance for six months.
