Year: 2010

Dems Pick Sheila Simon to Run With Quinn; Does GOP Have a Candidate Yet?

Posted on by TL

Sheila Simon will complete the ticket, and the Dems are ready for November in Illinois.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Shortly before Sheila Simon lost her bid for Carbondale mayor nearly three years ago, incumbent Republican Brad Cole predicted a defeat could end Simon’s political career.

But state Democratic officials jump-started that career Saturday, ratifying Gov. Pat Quinn’s request to make the daughter of the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon Quinn’s running mate for the Nov. 2 general election. Cole, meanwhile, lost his bid for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor in last month’s primary.

The vote of the Democratic State Central Committee selecting Simon over veteran state Rep. Art Turner of Chicago reflected the belief that she would bring a pedigree of ethics reform — as well as some geographic balance — to the Chicago-centric fall ticket. After the vote, Quinn hugged Simon, 49, a university law school professor and former Carbondale City Council member.

"I think anyone who’s encountered any of the Simons knows that that’s a family that does believe in the ethics of service, of public service, integrity (and) friendliness," Quinn said. "It’s an honor to be on the same ticket with Sheila Simon."

I’m looking forward to getting to know Sheila Simon.

The New York Times tells me the GOP has a candidate for governor in Illinois, but I really don’t know who he is.

As Bill Brady made his way through a crowded ballroom at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue the other evening, heads did not turn to glimpse a political big shot. The Republican nominee for governor of Illinois, at least for now, is an unfamiliar face in the city.

Mr. Brady, a state senator from Bloomington who won the primary without running a single advertisement in the Chicago market, thrust out his hand and introduced himself to anyone who cared to chat at the dinner for construction executives.

One of the bystanders, Bob Fiascone, could muster only a shrug about the candidate.

“Hey, I only just now met the guy,” Mr. Fiascone said.

And I’ve never met him, but, then, you already knew I was voting for Quinn.

Good luck to Brady and his bunch, but this year will be the year of the Dems.

Fix The Schools; Don’t Empty Them With Private School Vouchers

Posted on by TL

Indian Prairie Unit District 204 hopes a little shame goes a long way toward making the state pay its growing debt. Every sign at each of the district’s 33 schools in February read "The state of Illinois owes District 204 $7.8 million."

The Chicago Tribune reports that a bill just approved by the Illinois State Senate would give vouchers to kids in worst CPS schools.

This is a mistake.

As much as I support private schools — and, believe me, I do — I am also a strong believer in the public school system. The state has an obligation to provide an education for our children. Spending money on educating our youth can only be a win-win for society. Illinois still falls pitifully near the bottom in its willingness to properly fund education.

From the Chicago Tribune:

The Illinois Senate today approved legislation creating a small-scale voucher program that would provide money for 22,000 students at the worst-performing Chicago Public Schools to attend private schools.

The students would get a voucher equivalent to the minimum amount of money the state requires districts to spend on each child. The vouchers would be part of a test program and could be used toward expenses at any private school in Chicago that is willing to participate.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. James Meeks, D-Chicago, passed 33-20 with three present votes.

This is wrong on so many levels.

According to the Tribune, Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline, argued the bill doesn’t go far enough to correct the root problems in education. “Maybe the problem starts at home,” Jacobs said. “Are there vouchers so that we can replace the parents who aren’t doing a good job?”

Seeing anyone in Springfield blaming others for the sad state of Illinois public education is the definition of irony. I know there are plenty of young people who face incredible challenges at home. But the home environment is not the root cause. Home and other challenges faced by our children are only ancillary. Residents of Illinois must be willing to accept an increase to the state income tax so those in less affluent districts can enjoy a quality education. Refusal of the state — all of us in the state — to properly fund education is the root cause of the problem.

Joseph Reyes Using Catholic Faith To Hurt Daughter And Wife

Posted on by TL

Joseph Reyes is using his Catholicism to drive a wedge between his daughter and his wife, and he needs to stop.

From the Sun-Times:

Joseph Reyes, the father embroiled in a divorce and custody case that has turned in to a religious battle, will not be allowed to take his daughter to Catholic Mass on Easter Sunday, a Cook County judge ruled today.

In denying Reyes’ request during the close of divorce proceedings, Judge Renee Goldfarb was merely upholding a temporary restraining order that says the father can’t expose his 3-year-old daughter to any other religion than the Jewish faith.

At issue is a disputed agreement that the one-time couple would raise the girl in the Jewish faith.

But after Joseph Reyes’ had the child baptized in the Catholic church last November — and emailed photos of the event to the girl’s mother, Rebecca Reyes — the case has mushroomed in to a battle over religion. And it’s grabbed national headlines.

There is a time and a place for everything, perhaps, but there is never an appropriate time or the place to use religion to destroy a child.

State Retirement Age Moves To 67 As General Assembly Passes Pension Reform

Posted on by TL

I really don’t have a problem with this, but then, I’m not a state worker.

From the Sun-Times:

A bipartisan Illinois General Assembly handed Gov. Pat Quinn a victory Wednesday, sending him an overhauled state pension system, cutting benefits for new city and state employees to save money for woefully underfunded retirement systems.

The measure requires future workers to work until age 67 to get full retirement benefits, sets a maximum salary on which pensions may be calculated and limits annual increases in payments. There would be no change in benefits for current employees.

Legislative Democrats said the changes would save more than $100 billion — although they didn’t have exact figures from experts — over several decades for 13 state and local pension systems covered by Illinois law, including state programs that are underfunded by $80 billion.

But it has labor unions that represent government employees angry. They point out that slicing future benefits does nothing to reduce the outstanding liability.

With a 92-17 House vote and a Senate tally of 48-6, the action reflected rare agreement between House Democrats and minority Republicans, who have sparred for years over what has become an $11 billion deficit, who is responsible and how to fix it.

"It’s very important to send the signal," said Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago. "It’s very important to save the money, billions of dollars that we won’t have to pay into the system in the future."

It’s a political and strategic triumph for Democrat Quinn, who unsuccessfully pursued such a two-tiered pension program last year to reduce the amount of money the state must contribute to retirement systems while it wrestles with a budget deficit.

A statement from Quinn praised the effort to "stabilize the system, protect current state employees and provide attractive pension benefits to future state workers."

Look, I have colleagues who are working happily past 70. Is it fair that the state lost fiscal discipline and hacked into pensions in the past to try to balance the budget? No, not at all. But we’re all living longer now, and work is not a horrible thing to do.

This is only the beginning of the cutbacks for Illinois, and does not close the $11 billion deficit right now. But it’s a start.

It’s A Great Week For Obama, Everybody! Health Care And Arms Pact Breakthrough

Posted on by TL

In addition to landmark healthcare legislation passed Sunday and signed into law yesterday, President Obama has succeeded in breaking a logjam in arms control negotiations, the New York Times reports, leading to a significant reduction in deployed strategic weapons.

All of this happened while you were paying attention to the healthcare debate. Amazing that we have a president who can do more than one thing at a time.

From the New York Times:

The United States and Russia have broken a logjam in arms control negotiations and expect to sign a treaty next month to slash their nuclear arsenals to the lowest levels in half a century, officials in both nations said Wednesday.

After months of deadlock and delay, the two sides have agreed to lower the limit on deployed strategic warheads by more than one-quarter and launchers by half, the officials said. The treaty will impose a new inspection regime to replace one that lapsed in December, but will not restrict American plans for missile defense based in Europe.

President Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia plan to talk Friday to complete the agreement, but officials said they were optimistic that the deal was nearly done. The two sides have begun preparing for a signing ceremony in Prague on April 8, timing it to mark the anniversary of Mr. Obama’s speech in the Czech capital outlining his vision for eventually ridding the world of nuclear weapons.

The new treaty represents perhaps the most concrete foreign policy achievement for Mr. Obama since he took office 14 months ago and the most significant result of his effort to “reset” the troubled relationship with Russia. The administration wants to use it to build momentum for an international nuclear summit meeting in Washington just days after the signing ceremony and a more ambitious round of arms cuts later in his term.

Very cool.

Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest Who Molested As Many As 200 Deaf Boys (Video)

Posted on by TL

Somehow this sounds more horrible knowing that these kids were deaf.

From the New York Times:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

“I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.

The best summary comes from the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, "The Catholic Church punishes Patrick Kennedy for being pro-choice, but takes 20 years to suspend a pedophile priest."

And so I give you Jon Stewart, above, who lays it all on the line for us. Holy sh*t indeed.

Relax, Mom: House Approves Landmark Bill to Extend Health Care to Millions (Video and Text)

Posted on by TL

Yes, I cried a bit. Now my Mom and Dad don’t have to worry about losing their health insurance and not getting another policy because of pre-existing conditions. That’s what I thought of first.

From the New York Times:

Congress gave final approval on Sunday to legislation that would provide medical coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and remake the nation’s health care system along the lines proposed by President Obama.

By a vote of 219 to 212, the House passed the bill after a day of tumultuous debate that echoed the epic struggle of the last year. The action sent the bill to President Obama, whose crusade for such legislation has been a hallmark of his presidency.

Democrats hailed the vote as historic, comparable to the establishment of Medicare and Social Security and a long overdue step forward in social justice. “This is the civil rights act of the 21st century,” said Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat in the House.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Summoned to success by President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled Congress approved historic legislation Sunday night extending health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans and cracking down on insurance company abuses, a climactic chapter in the century-long quest for near universal coverage.

Widely viewed as dead two months ago, the Senate-passed bill cleared the House on a 219-212 vote, with Republicans unanimous in opposition.

Congressional officials said they expected Obama to sign the bill as early as Tuesday.

A second measure — making changes in the first — was lined up for passage later in the evening. That measure would go to the Senate, where Democratic leaders said they had the votes to pass it.

Crowds of protesters outside the Capitol shouted "just vote no" in a futile attempt to stop the historic vote taking place inside a House packed with lawmakers and ringed with spectators in the galleries above.

Across hours of debate, House Democrats predicted the central bill, costing $940 billion over a decade, would rank with other great social legislation of recent decades.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Delivering a hard-fought victory in President Barack Obama’s year-long pursuit of a national healthcare overhaul, a divided House tonight narrowly voted to approve a Senate-passed healthcare bill which both supporters and opponents call historic in its sweep.

The 219-212 vote will deliver to the president’s desk an initiative for which he has fought on Capitol Hill and campaigned across the country: A healthcare bill that he finally can sign.

This was the first step of a two-part drama unfolding in the House this evening, with another late vote expected soon on a package that reconciles differences between this Senate-passed and now House-approved bill and another measure which the House approved in November.

Together, the two bills would present the president with a long-sought triumph for the signature domestic agenda of his presidency, a bid to offer health insurance to an estimated 32 million Americans who are uninsured and improve the coverage of those with insurance.

The second measure, also expected to pass the House tonight, will have to go to the Senate, where leaders hope to approve it by a simple majority vote under a process of "budget reconciliation.” Any changes made in the Senate, however, will return that legislation to the House before the president can sign the second bill.

"I know this bill is complicated, but it’s also very simple,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) during the final debate. "Illness and infirmity are universal, but we are stronger against them together than we are alone…. In that shared strength is our nation’s strength.”

"Tonight, we will make history for our country and progress for the American people,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in the leadership’s closing argument. Crediting Obama for his "unwavering commitment to healthcare for all Americans,” the speaker said "this legislation… if I had one word to describe it tonight, it would be opportunity.”

Boehner is Half Right: Health Care Is NOT An Entitlement … For The Rich

Posted on by TL

Commentary

Representatives Boehner (R) and Hoyer (D) were on Meet the Press this morning with David Gregory. Boehner said, once again, health care is not an entitlement.

He’s half right. At last I can agree with him in part.

Health care is not an endtitlement for the rich, and right now that’s all health care is in the United States of America: an entitlement for the rich.

Health care is a fundamental right. Where is the pro-life movement on this crucial life issue?

Pass the Bill: Democrats Say Health Bill Will Pay for Itself in the Long Run

Posted on by TL

So pass the bill.

From the NYTimes:

House Democrats initiated a 72-hour countdown Thursday on their yearlong effort to overhaul the health care system, unveiling a nearly final version of the legislation that promptly won additional support with a promise that the bill would more than pay for itself over the next decade.

Armed with detailed legislative language and a report on the bill’s costs from the Congressional Budget Office, Democratic leaders and White House officials kicked off a new round of arm-twisting to line up the votes they will need to pass the legislation when it comes to the House floor in the face of intense Republican opposition on Sunday.

House Democratic leaders were still struggling Thursday to lock in the 216 votes they need to pass the bill. They are believed to be at least a half-dozen votes short, but say they are confident they can secure the needed votes.

With the fate of his top domestic priority still up in the air,President Obama postponed a foreign trip that he had been scheduled to start Sunday to be on hand for the final House vote and a subsequent round of voting that would begin in the Senate next week to complete work on the bill.

The legislation’s chances seemed to be improved by the budget office report, which estimated that it would reduce projected federal budget deficits by $138 billion over the next decade, with additional tax revenue and Medicaresavings. Many of the House Democrats who have continued to waver over the bill had been concerned about its long-term costs. The bill would provide insurance coverage to most of the uninsured, put new restrictions on insurers and seek to lower rising health care costs.

The version of the bill unveiled on Thursday is based on the bill passed by the Senate in December, but it incorporates a package of changes that would address concerns raised by House Democrats. Under the timetable outlined by Democratic leaders, the House on Sunday would pass the Senate bill and then immediately approve a package of changes. If signed by Mr. Obama, the first bill would become the law of the land, but the second one would go to the Senate, where it could be approved by a simple majority, using a procedure intended to avoid the threat of Republican filibuster.

Pass the bill. Today is the day to make history. History will prove you right.