“We’ve had two very different governors now, and while Blagojevich was a significant problem, the dysfunction in Springfield remains under Quinn. The only consistent feature of our dysfunctional state government is the Legislature,” Bambenek said.

The amendment will fundamentally change the Legislature by converting it to a unicameral (or one chamber) body and return to three-member districts with cumulative voting (total of 177 members). Additionally, it will implement long ignored reforms such as reforming redistricting, implementing term limits of no more than four two-year terms, term limit legislative leaders to only one session (two years), end shell bills, require a seven-day public viewing period for all legislative, provide for any bill to get an up-or-down vote upon motion of at least 25 members and greatly reform the process for legislative pay raises.

“Now isn’t the time to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, it is time to decentralize power in the legislature. When one man can cause political and social chaos simply to bolster his daughter’s political prospects, something is very wrong.”

In explaining why he is taking the effort to circulate a petition to put the amendment on directly, Bambenek said, “The campaign contribution caps bills shows that we simply cannot trust the Legislature to reform itself. Regardless of what someone thinks about caps, “caps for everyone but Mike Madigan” is a radical power grab masquerading as reform. The framers of the Constitution put this right of citizens in our state constitution explicitly because the legislature cannot be trusted to right itself.”

The amendment will be called the “Bambenek Put-back Amendment” design to Put the voters Back in charge. If Bambenek is successful in gathering enough signatures (legal minimum of just less than 280,000), the amendment will be listed on the ballot and requires no General Assembly Action. It will pass upon 60% of the votes approving the question.
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John Bambenek is a political activist, writer and co-founder of the Illinois Citizens Coalition (ICC), a political action committee created to inform and organize Illinois citizens to take more of an interest in state government. For more information visit the ICC website at www.yesforillinois.com.

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Republicans, for their part, were celebratory more than anything else. Speaking with Scott Wheeler of National Republican Trust this afternoon he said, “It’s a great day for Republicans and a great day for conservatives. The integrity of the Republican Party just went up.”

For his part, Wheeler takes credit for pushing Specter out of the party. After issuing a challenge that any Republican who supported the unpopular stimulus package would have a primary opponent, Specter took him up on the dare. Unfortunately for Specter, once he saw that he would be trounced in the Republican Party by challenger Pat Toomey, he picked politics over principle and sold himself to the Democrats.

Sold is the right word and in the coming days we will likely see what concessions he extracted. For starters, President Obama has promised to campaign for him next year which is no small token of support. However, in so doing, he has lost a powerful political role he (rightly or wrongly) held.

So-called moderates in the Senate are a powerful bunch. For instance, the “Gang of 14” wrote the policy on judicial appointments once the filibuster threats came out. Because of the hyper-partisanship (that still persists in the Obama post-partisanship era), moderates often are the key votes and can extract huge concessions for their votes. Those days are over for Specter because Republicans simply will not work with him again.

Democrats believe they now have a filibuster-proof majority, but likely what they gained on paper will not be that much in reality. If Specter wanted to side with the Democrats (as he is often prone to do), his party affiliation has never stopped him before. He’d cross party lines to break a filibuster. Now that he’s a Democrat, it certainly won’t give the Democrats any more filibuster-breaking votes.

Specter is also against “card check”, the unions’ top legislative priority, a stance that will hurt him in the primary if the party establishment can’t muscle whatever challenger may appear. He’s for judicial restraint and likely his positions on judges won’t change much. In short, the Democrats got a mere symbolic victory and inherited a vulnerable Senator up for re-election next year.

Whatever support Specter may have had in the Republican Party among voters is likely to vanish. Voters simply do not respond well to party switching. He will also likely face a Democratic primary challenge because the left wing of the Democrats will not embrace him either (remember how they treated Joe Lieberman?).

More importantly, while Obama is moderately popular, his policies are not. Come mid-term elections, his unpopular policies will be a weight around the Congressional Democrats shoulders. While many areas of the country do not necessarily have strong Republican farm teams, Pat Toomey is no amateur. Combine that with a candidate who obviously lacks principles and Specter faces real trouble come November of 2010.

Or as Wheeler put it, Specter showed he will “hold on to political power above considering principles, party and even the people.” In 2006 and 2008, voters threw out Republicans across the country for appearing slimy and unprincipled. Specter just put himself in that category for 2010.

So can conservatives win in Pennsylvania and elsewhere? Much depends on how Obama’s Administration goes (and it is not going well so far). However, the voters are fed up with the financial shenanigans of Congress and of the States, a symptom of that frustration being the popular Tea Parties. If Republicans can convince voters they’ve learned their lesson on fiscal conservatism (and Pat Toomey is the exemplar of that idea), the voters may well welcome them back to power; certainly after the radical expansion of deficits proposed by Obama.

Take, for instance, Bill Cooper who is the CEO of TCF Bank. His bank took the bailout money even though they didn’t really need it. Cooper reports that regulators actually tried to pressure them to take the funds. On top of that, when the federal government came in with their money, many traditional lenders to banks suddenly walked away from the business that dried up the conventional source of capital for banks.

The reason for the drying up of conventional capital is that the federal government has imposed a “shareholders get nothing” approach to bailouts. If you, in good faith, invested in banks, your equity gets wiped out first. This has led to many institutional players simply not wanting to take the risk. While there is merit in protecting consumer accounts from a run on the bank, targeting shareholders has led to almost all traditional flows of capital to banks disappearing overnight.

As a result, some banks were pressured to take federal money they did not need and others had to take federal money when traditional capital would have been available in any other circumstance. The take away from this is that the law of unintended consequences strikes again. By propping up bad banks, the federal government has created a cycle of drying liquidity that forces other banks onto the federal dole.

The mode of federal spending always tends to be to hook a target into relying on federal money, turning them into a captive recipient and then imposing rules after-the-fact, when the entities have no choice but to capitulate. It was the same way with New Deal highway funds. The federal government pays to build and maintain the interstates and now that states are hooked on that money, they can impose almost any terms they want on receiving that money.

Even a better example is federal title 1 money for schools. The money was created to “level the playing field” between rich states and poor states, and rich districts and poor districts. Of course, every state got some money also. Now that the schools are hooked because of the constant upward pressure of education spending (rightly or wrongly), the districts and states can no longer say no to title 1 funds. In comes No Child Left Behind.

It’s hard to argue that No Child Left Behind (and by extension, the federal government) is the primary driver of educational policy, not parents or local school boards. Accountability is all well and good but the question is, accountability to whom?

The same is now true of bailout money. After banks have accepted the cash and have no choice but to hold it, the federal government is imposing terms after-the-fact to control the banks. This is, in effect, “good enough nationalization” (where the government controls the aspects of a business it cares about and leaves the mundane details it doesn’t care about to the business). Bill Cooper, for instance, wants to give the money back.

Rep. Barney Frank wants all recipients of federal money to be subject to end-to-end wage controls on all employees. That’s the most flagrant example of overreach to date. Of course, banks got desperate and held out their hands. Now the federal government is calling the tune.

The result is that an ever-widening portion of a major industry will fall under federal control (in part because no one wants to invest in financials anymore). As with most things, it will be the consumers and citizens who have to pay the ultimate tab but never seem to reap any of the benefits. Hopefully the banks can give back the money before it is too late.

As usual, the same people responsible for the Illinois Republican Party’s precipitous decline are once again returning to their “traditional” role in selecting the nominee. It seems incongruous to protest the backroom dealing of the Blagojevich Administration by engaging in that same kind of backroom dealing. The last time the Illinois Republican Party selected the nominee for the rest of us they brought in Alan Keyes. We all know how well that turned out. Maybe they learned their lesson, so let’s take a look at which horse they are backing.

Currently, it appears that this has resulted in coalescing support for Bruce Rauner as the salvation of the Illinois Republican Party. At this moment, perhaps he does have the policies that will bring the Republicans out of the wilderness. We don’t know mostly because he was selected in a star chambers audition in front of the party’s finance committee (basically a Cook County millionaires club).

While he has done impressively with his investment firm, he is a political unknown. What is know is that he has given far more to Democrats than he’s ever given to Republicans. With the exception of the 2008 cycle, most of his donations are to Democrats. If the secret Republican committee can’t do basic vetting of candidates, they are profoundly ill-suited to pick nominees.

For instance, he has given $200,000 to Democrat Mayor Daley, $150,000 to Democrat Forrest Claypool and can even boast of having given money to Democrat Rahm Emanuel (who’s signature accomplishment was the 2006 Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives). Skipping past the absurdity of the aristocracy of the party telling all of us that they know better than the voters, what, if anything, has Rauner gotten for those donations?

While I do agree that the “self-funding” candidate model of the Republican Party has been abysmal at producing solid candidates, it does not follow that having a secret tribunal of insiders who take no input from anyone (much less anyone south of I-80) is somehow the only other option. The only difference is that Bruce Rauner greased all the right palms before he formally announces his run.

There is a better way to finding good candidates and that is finding people with a solid record of political accomplishment and supporting them. Bruce Rauner’s sole accomplishment seems to be his investment company. Good for him but that doesn’t make him a good politician.

Candidates like Senator Bill Brady have years of political leadership under his belt. He’s run for office, he supports the party platform and has 16 years of political experience. He may not be well-liked among the ivory tower limousine Republicans from the North Shore, but he’s at least trying to win support of the voters not demanding their support from regal perches.

If the Republicans are to recover from the drubbing they have received in the last few election cycles, royal proclamations from on high are not the way to go. Self-funders are no either. What is needed are politicians with a record of accomplishment and a set of principles to take their message to the voters and engage them.

After 6 years of Blagojevich and Democratic corruption, the answer is a candidate who can convincingly stand up to corruption and who is willing to be transparent and open. We need candidates who will serve the people, not be beholden to nameless committeeman. Perhaps its time to trust the voters instead of letting unaccountable insiders pick our nominees.

I’m not sure the significance of the frog… they actually pick the animals used. I had asked for a lemming… just because I think lemmings are funny.

Important note that I got from a friend. We’re $4B in the hole with backlogged bills (Medicaid payments, payments to people who provide services to the state, etc). We were working on getting a $1.4B bond deal to alleviate the pressure because without any change the state will be insolvent in March. That bond deal is now dead because we have had a negative credit rating apply to us because of the governor’s legal situation. This political freak show needs to end… now.

Last week, state Comptroller Dan Hynes reported that the backlog of state bills has reached over $4 billion. Several vendors have threatened to stop providing services to the state if they cannot be paid on timely basis. Many Medicaid patients are finding fewer and fewer providers are willing to give them health care. Illinois is in a full-blown fiscal crisis that puts IndyMac to shame.

In the wake of this crisis, only two solutions are presented: to unleash draconian cuts to essential human services spending or massive tax increases in the wake of the largest global economic downturn in decades. There is apparently not a dime of waste in the state budget. There isn’t even any money spent on corrupt purposes to be cut. Yeah… and I’m a Chinese fighter pilot.

The fact is the state has been wasting money for decades. Remember the Loop Lab School that got a special $1 million check from the governor? What about the $25,000 checks from Sen. Hendon for educational programs that didn’t exist? And then there are the legislative pay increases. But that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the waste, fraud and corruption that permeates the closed-door budget process.

Earlier this year, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request on $2 billion worth of spending. This spending was the “member initiative” (basically Illinois’ equivalent of earmarks) spending of just the Senate Democrats. The interesting part of this request wasn’t that there was $2 billion in spending on “pet projects” but that the Illinois Senate and the state government refused to disclose what this money was spent on.

In a parting stiff arm to the taxpayers of Illinois, Senate President Emil Jones not only refused to disclose what the member initiative money was spent on, but he even outright rejected the Freedom of Information Act request. If you thought the Freedom of Information Act was supposed to allow taxpayers to find out what government officials were doing with their tax dollars, apparently you are mistaken.

What does this have to do with the backlog of bills? Everything. Each and every year the legislature wastes billions one these special member initiatives. In some cases they even hide those expenditures from the voters. This little 2 billion adventure in wasteful spending would cut our backlog of bills in half the first year. In two years, the backlog would be gone.

More importantly, it shines the light on the real problem, that is the legislature and governor who have pushed through unbalanced budgets each and every year with the problem coming to a head now. They may try to blame the economic downturn, but the reality is that after years of deficit spending, eventually the chickens come home to roost.

Governor Blagojevich, for his part, has done well in pump-priming the idea that any budget cut would result in drastic cuts to essential human services. He close state parks even though it would require forfeiting federal funds and provide only a meager savings to the state funds. He cut alcohol and substance abuse treatment programs. Never has he tried to actually cut the spending glut due to corruption or waste.

Politically, this means that taxpayers can expect a large tax increase to be proposed as the “only solution” out of this fiscal mess when the General Assembly convenes in January. It is time that voters and taxpayers stand up and demand that wasteful and corrupt “member initiatives” by cut, wasteful and duplicate programs be eliminated and empowering the state’s Auditor General to seek out and find where Enron-style book-keeping is occurring in the state government.

The emerging financial crisis of both unpaid bills and an inability to craft a balanced budget has been a long time coming. It is time for the General Assembly to learn to tighten their belt before they tax even more families into foreclosure or poverty.

The Champaign County Board is poised to vote to put a referendum on the ballot that will allow the school districts in the county to benefit from an increased sales tax to pay for facilities. Some districts will then issue a partial abatement of property taxes to provide some relief in return for the increased sales taxes.

A look around the county will show that many districts are definitely in need of capital improvements and the state certainly has not helped matters with the ongoing fighting over such funds being made available to schools. However, one critical matter impedes the success of increasing sales taxes for schools: the lack of trust many citizens have in their school districts.
It is no secret that Champaign Unit #4, for example, is still struggling with issues related to the trust people have in that district. One of the major reasons that the $60 million dollar bond issue failed a couple of years ago was directly related to many voters not trusting the school district with that money. Urbana schools are not immune from trust issues because of their recent difficulties. In a time when many working families are being pinched, a solid case needs to be made that these funds will be used efficiently.
There is, however, a solution to the trust problem and that is proactive transparency on behalf of the schools. Under the Freedom of Information Act, any voter can submit requests to see the budget, any check written by the schools, salary information and contracts that a school board signs. However, this process can be cumbersome and is subject to some delaying on the behalf of government bodies.

The solution is simple: school boards should post their check registers online within 48 business hours of any transaction. All contracts and salary information should be placed on the web as well. This information is already public record, but taking the step of putting the information online without forcing voters and the media to undertake the process of a FOIA request will show a great deal of respect for the voters.
This information is rightly public and belongs to the voters. The Illinois Freedom of Information Act reads, in part: “all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts and policies of those who represent them as public officials”.
What better way is there for the school boards to show that they will spend the money appropriately than by showing the voters where the money goes? It will go far to rebuild the trust that has been lacking as of late.

Champaign County schools would not be the first to adopt a proactive stance to transparency. They would join schools in Palatine, Elmhurst, Carpentersville, and even the Collage of DuPage. In fact, Mahomet-Seymour schools already put some of this information online.

The information is already generated electronically so the cost of putting it online is effectively nothing. In fact, it actually creates cost savings by ending the expense in responding to routine FOIA requests which can be answered instead by going to the website.

Many critics of the school districts are able to lodge false charges about school spending (or misspending) because of the time and effort to get the truth. Schools should voluntarily put their financial records online not because they have something to hide, but precisely because they don’t have anything to hide. In so doing, they will join dozens of other school districts and institutions that are rebuilding trust in the schools and in government.
Many critics continue to charge year after year with each tax increase that the schools are misusing the money. It is time for the school districts to be proactively transparent to put these charges to rest. The voters are already, by right, entitled to this information. If schools want to rebuild trust and accountability, putting their financial records online is a great first step.

Senator Stevens is the poster child of why the GOP got trounced in 2006 and his race was looking to be another Democrat pickup in 2008. However, chance kicked in and preparation with the right ideas met opportunity. Stevens was recently indicted, which has thrown the Republican primary wide open in a race that should be Stevens’ to lose.

Of particular interest in this race, at least from a national perspective, is the debate on earmark reform. Earmarks are legislative tools whereby legislators insert “pet projects” into legislation without debate and shower gifts upon their friends. Senator Stevens, the earmark king, made the practice well-known and despised with the infamous “bridge to nowhere” project where he tried to direct $223 million of federal funds to build a bridge to an island of 50 people.

Cuddy seeks to reform this practice with a common-sense solution, to make earmarks public and subject to debate. In the long-term, he believes the federal government shouldn’t be spending any money on local projects. If a town would like a public swimming pool, they shouldn’t be able to charge taxpayers in another state with the bill. The practice of trying to get “free federal money” needs to stop. It is a bit like sending a sandwich to Washington and lobbying for the leftover crumbs and calling it “success”.

Cuddy comes from a business background and applies economic approaches to policy issues. For health care, he argues it isn’t about who pays. That’s simply a matter of passing the high cost of health care around. The problem is the high cost and inefficiencies built into the health care system. He points to Walmart as a successful example of innovation to take an industry and radically reduce its costs. The high cost of health care is linked to another issue that he speaks on: immigration.

One of the causes of the high cost of health care is the “unfunded mandate” that hospitals must treat everyone who shows up regardless of their ability to pay. This includes illegal immigrants. The result is that those costs for health care are passed off on paying customers through higher fees, higher copayments and higher insurance premiums. The debate on who pays is an interesting aside, but it misses the point. Health care costs are skyrocketing.

Cuddy understands why immigrants would do anything they could to get to the United States. The incentives are so great compared to what is in Mexico, it just makes sense. The senseless moralizing against illegal immigrations (i.e. “ZO NOES! They Broke the Law!”) does nothing to solve the issue, especially when both the governments of Mexico and the United States encourage this. He argues the incentives need to be changed by enforcing the law, particularly on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants to push down wages.

Foreign policy, in general, he argues should disentangle us from foreign engagements. We’re in Iraq and we should finish the job, but the process to close foreign bases and end power projection is a task Cuddy believes the United State should undertake.

Cuddy winning the primary is not a given, he faces another Republican, Vic Vickers who will throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race. However, on the issues, Cuddy is clearly superior and shows Republicans what they need to do to stop losing. In short, Republicans need to run on their platform instead of running a platform to redistribute the spoils of power to their friends instead. Cuddy also has the endorsement of the Republican Liberty Caucus which has a strong presence in Alaska.

Cuddy is running to restore balanced budgets, to fix elections that overwhelmingly favor incumbents so that citizens can have a meaningful place in the political process again. It’d be a welcome change from Ted Stevens and hopefully will inspire more candidates like Cuddy to run for Congress.

This is the starting point of David Freddoso’s new book, The Case against Barack Obama – The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate. For instance, it is little-known that Barack Obama’s first real election challenge was his primary race against… Hillary Clinton. In 1996, he ran for the State Senate but used Illinois’ arcane (and unconstitutional) election laws to throw every other candidate off the ballot. He won office unopposed.

In 2004, he ran for Senate but the sexual dalliances took down his main primary opponent. The general election race, however, would be pure comedy if it wasn’t so tragic for the Illinois Republican Party. A Republican version of Obama, Jack Ryan, won the primary nod, but he was not well-loved in the inner-circles of the state GOP organization. His divorce files were made public, and more sexual dalliances came out (at least those were with his wife) which sunk Ryan.

For weeks, the Illinois GOP could not find a nominee. They had to import Alan Keyes to run against Obama, who’s only campaign point seemed to be “Jesus would not vote for Barack Obama”. Obama won his Senate seat without any real opposition in what would have otherwise been a very bad year for the Democrats.

To political observers, it seems absurd that a product and participant of Chicago machine politics could credibly claim to be the voice of change and hope to reform Washington D.C. Not impossible, sure, but it defies credulity. Freddoso examines the facts of Obama’s career in Illinois, his relationships and his rise to power to definitively show that Obama is not the sterling immaculate candidate he portrays, but in reality, is just another Chicago politician – albeit with a better speech writer.

Throughout his tenure in the Illinois General Assembly, Obama had given favors and steered state contracts to contributors and friends. In particular, he has a great deal of ties to real estate developers that benefited from his state legislative career and he benefited from their success. Developers having access to the corridors of power is nothing new, especially in Chicago, but for a candidate who is preaching an anti-lobbyist anti-special interest message, the evidence shows he didn’t practice what he preaches.

The Obama campaign has steadfastly refused to speak the nitty-gritty of policy on the stump and has run a “cult of personality” campaign. This is why it is a timely and important work to show the man behind the façade, but to do so in a legitimate way. Many, mostly slanderous, attempts have been made to show Obama as some kind of un-American Trojan horse candidate. This has only helped to inoculate him against legitimate criticism. However, Freddoso sticks to the record with copious footnotes to back him up.

Most of Obama’s more radical leftist connections are public record. The public fallout from the Rev. Wright controversies started to bring to light that strange company that Obama has kept. In particular, Freddoso touches upon Obama’s relationship to Bill Ayers who was part of the terrorist group the Weathermen. Obama may try to walk and talk like a “moderate” on the stump, but he surrounds himself with the far left.

The book is a thorough treatment of Obama’s career, what he has done and how he got there. The image that emerges does not mesh at all with the icon of hope. The media, for their part, simply has not dug deep into the mirage that is the Obama campaign. The book provides a sorely needed analysis for a candidate who is almost getting a free ride to the White House. It is fact-based, well-researched and is critical reading for anyone interested in who Obama really is.

Last Friday, the United States House of Representatives adjourned without voting on an offshore drilling bill supported by the Republicans. Instead of adjourning and going home for the five week recess that was scheduled, hilarity ensued.

The Republicans stayed, talking on the floor to "debate" the energy bill. In response, the Democrats turned off the microphones and the lights. A Republican Congressman figured out how to brute force the A/V closet and got the microphones back on. They tried to marshal the press out of the press room with the Capitol Police until a Republican decided to host an impromptu press conference.

To "pad" the numbers of people on the floor, they allowed staffers and visitors down and were shouting back up to the gallery and back. In short, it was a little bit like 7th grade homeroom when the teacher leaves the room.

Well, the Republicans decided that it was so much fun, they are doing it again today. To be fair, energy policy is something that merits serious consideration, but childish antics more suited for playgrounds than Congress is not the way to go about it.

But it appears that a faction, a small one at that, of Republicans have been spurred on by unserious pundits and activists. I say a small faction because this morning, RedState sent out a desperate e-mail for anyone in the DC area to head down to the House floor. That's right, they want the fever swamp bloggers down there to hoot and holler like it’s a high school house party when mom and dad are away. Of course, RedState is not new to childish and superficial politics.

Energy policy is a serious issue and families are being pinched by higher (albeit now falling) gas prices. I've been driving all around the state of Illinois in my pickup for a campaign I'm running, and I can tell you first hand its rough. We do need a diversified energy portfolio for this nation. Offshore and ANWR drilling certainly is part of that, as are other programs, such as expanded nuclear and wind power.

The Democrats, for their part, have shown themselves unwilling to deal with the issue, at least before Election Day. They have every incentive, the more pain people feel at the pump, the more they blame the party that controls the White House. It's a transparent hope that they drag their feet until November and then ride in to the rescue, showing the Democrats as the "energy" party. It isn't the first time someone played politics with important legislation; it won't be the last.

However, instead of carrying that message or showing that even Barack Obama is starting to support a new energy policy, childish games ensue. What happened to the party of ideas?

Instead of an intellectual advancement of a sound energy policy, the oxygen is sucked up by infantilism. The voters are fed up by politicians who are not advancing their values and they want solutions. They are so fed up, many have whole-heartedly embraced a mirage of hope and change. It should tell Republicans something that a strong chunk of the electorate has placed their hopes in cleaning up Washington on a … Chicago machine Democrat.

While it may be giddily amusing to engage in a general ruckus on the House floor, nothing is well-served. With the Republicans going into an election cycle where the conventional wisdom declares it to be a blood-bath-in-advance for them, you'd think they wouldn't give voters yet another reason to throw them out of office. Maybe they've already resigned themselves to defeat. I'd rather they be the party of ideas and leadership and not "a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more." At least those engaging in the antics are the minority of Republicans.

Just a fun little thought. Every since I heard more than one political consultant said they designed campaign ads and such so that it would be just slightly over the line to generate controversy and enter the news cycle, I’ve started to get skeptical of these controversies. It’s a very smart play, generating controversy to get free airplay.

It’s also a good reason why honest people don’t get involved in politics anymore… they don’t like playing the BS game.