It’s happening.
It was in the news tonight.
President Obama’s Blue Revolution is coming together for the Democrats at the mid-term. All of us on the Left are realizing that, if we stay at home on election day, the Tea Party, the right-wing arm of the filthy rich screaming to take power in America and restore the Gilded Age, may gain a foothold in Congress.
But Obama’s Dems will not let that happen. Obama’s Dems are waking up.
And we will vote.
24-9: the new magic number to watch for in upcoming indictments.
A top aide to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger was arrested and charged Monday with several felonies relating to alleged money laundering and theft.
Carla Oglesby, Stroger’s deputy chief of staff, was taken into custody about 4 p.m. by members of the Cook County state’s attorney’s financial crimes unit, said Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.
Oglesby is charged with several felonies, including theft of government property over $100,000, money laundering and official misconduct.
“It’s in connection with the ongoing financial crimes investigation conducted by the state’s attorney’s office into the awarding of so-called 24-9 contracts,” Daly said.
The “24-9” reference is to contracts that fall below the $25,000 mark, the threshold requiring approval by the Cook County Board.
On Monday afternoon Oglesby was pulling out of a Loop parking garage when investigators — armed with an arrest warrant — stopped her vehicle and took her into custody, placing handcuffs on her before they drove her to a nearby police station.
Her attorney did not return a call for comment.
Todd Stroger could not be reached for comment either, the Sun-Times reports.
I remember when Todd Stroger was running to be elected to the seat his father held. I was at a meeting of a local township’s Democratic organization when a young college student asked the Democratic Committeeman if Stroger received the nod just because of his name. The committeeman responded with a lecture, “Young lady, you need to understand how things work.”
“How things work” at the time essentially meant “fall in line.” The young college student was too naive.
Weren’t we all…?
Toni Preckwinkle, clean up this mess. Please.
And work for the taxpayers of Cook County 24-7, not 24-9.
This is no surprise, but it is good news, and a very powerful endorsement from a great guy.
From Garrison Keillor:
Dear Friends,
Thirty years ago, when I started telling stories about Lake Wobegon, I put it smack in the middle of Minnesota – in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, in fact – where staunch Republicans and loyal Democrats know how to live together without yelling at each other and do what needs to be done to work out our problems.
It’s embarrassing to me and a great many Minnesotans that Michele Bachmann, a politician who is so busy grandstanding and giving interviews on Fox News that she doesn’t have time to serve the people who elected her, represents the 6th District in Washington.
That’s why I’m proudly supporting Tarryl Clark – and I hope you will join me by contributing before today’s midnight deadline.
Minnesota’s 6th District has some of the highest foreclosure and unemployment rates in the state, but in an interview with the St. Cloud Times, Congresswoman Bachmann was unable to name any "substantive" legislation she had passed.
Michele Bachmann may still be counting on sliding through to re-election on November 2nd, but this year she is running against a smart and hard-working State Senator, Tarryl Clark, who is determined to make the talking heads of Fox News sit up and take notice.
Tarryl founded Central Minnesota Habitat for Humanity and served as youth minister of her church for nearly twenty years. She grew up in a Navy family and has worked on behalf of veterans, families and children in the legislature. Service to her community is a part of who she is, and that spirit of service is sorely needed in Washington these days.
Tarryl Clark will never embarrass our state in Congress. Let’s restore some respect for the Minnesota tradition of working together sensibly by electing her this November.
Thank you,
Garrison Keillor
P.S. Instead of working to solve problems, Bachmann talks about us as a "nation of slaves" and about the need for smaller government even though she knows better – the biggest part of big government is military spending, Social Security, and Medicare. Which would she do away with? Bachmann’s so-called policies are just the old Bush economics that Alan Greenspan characterized as "disastrous." Help Tarryl defeat her by donating today.
We did it!! No, wait…WE DID IT!!!
Just minutes ago, bold progressive Ann McLane Kuster defeated Joe Lieberman’s presidential campaign co-chair Katrina Swett in tonight’s New Hampshire congressional primary — winning by double digits.
Annie ran a superb campaign — and PCCC members made thousands of phone calls and chipped in nearly $100,000 toward her people-powered victory.
We formed the PCCC to achieve big progressive victories just like tonight’s. Let’s keep the momentum going!
Here’s what Annie wrote to PCCC members yesterday:
The PCCC has been a great partner and has helped progressive candidates like me run effective, people-powered campaigns.
Phone calls from PCCC members to voters were a tremendous help. Many PCCC members donated $3, $4, or $10 as well, allowing us to continually expand our grassroots effort.
Thank you for being part of the “people power” that is changing this country. Your efforts are noticed and greatly appreciated.
We’ll help Ann Kuster defeat Tea Party Republican Charlie Bass in November — and help other progressive champs like Bill Hedrick (CA-44), Elaine Marshall (NC-Sen), and others.
It’ll be a big job — but we can do it with your help. Please chip in $4 to help progressives keep making history in 2010. Click here.
Thanks for being a bold progressive,
Stephanie Taylor, Adam Green, Jason Rosenbaum, Michael Snook, Forrest Brown, Keauna Gregory, Julia Rosen, and the entire PCCC team
I really don’t want to comment on Todd Stroger any more. He will not be re-elected as President of the Cook County Board, and I’m happy with that. Some local pols are still fuming over that, angry at people like me who took Todd to task. However, from his first few weeks on the job when he fell more for the trappings of the office – remember the roped-off elevator? – it was apparent that Stroger was not ready for the big chair once occupied by his father.
That being said, I haven’t really paid much attention to President Stroger recently, but, sometimes, I feel like the Prophet Jeremiah:
I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it. Jeremiah 20:9
So I have to write.
Outgoing Cook County Board President Todd Stroger has paid his $11,668 federal tax debt.
The Internal Revenue Service recently filed a “certificate of release of federal tax lien” with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds that shows Stroger and his wife, Jeanine, paid the debt as of July 7. The payment settles what the Strogers owed the government since May 19, 2008, records show.
The IRS filed a lien on the Strogers’ South Side house in March 2009 — a move that usually follows multiple attempts to collect tax debts. The Chicago Sun-Times found the lien about two months later, and Stroger initially refused to discuss it, other than to say through a spokesman he’d worked out a payment plan to settle the debt.
I’m happy for Todd and his family. I don’t want to see anyone lose a home in this economy, and I certainly understand economic struggles.
The mouth that won’t stop gabbing is starting another media blitz as the Summer of Blagojevich continues.
Beginning a weekend media blitz, Rod Blagojevich said this morning he will not take any plea deal from prosecutors, accused them of trying to criminalize political horse-trading and emphasized repeatedly that he had not been convicted of any of the corruption charges against him.
And he said the lone jury holdout against convicting him on major corruption counts confirmed his faith in God.
"I’ve always had a deep and abiding faith in God," he said on the "Today" show. "And when I look at that, it just confirms ‘Praise God.’ And I certainly thank her for her good judgment.
"If we put on a defense, I think we probably would have been acquitted" on every count, he added.
He continued to insist he had done nothing wrong, saying prosecutors had captured him on tape only discussing "possibilities" with lawyers and political advisers. "Political horse-trading …. this is what they are trying to criminalize," he said.He accused prosecutors of hypocrisy, saying they frequently make deals with convicted felons. "The very thing they charge me with, they should charge themselves with," he said.
We always knew Newton Gingrich was a piece of work, but, wow. What. A. Piece. Of. Work. he really is.
Here’s a must-read from his second wife, Marianne Gingrich, reported in Esquire:
"He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected," she says. "If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president."
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has officially moved to the left of President Obama on taxes. And that’s something, coming from a self-described lifelong Republican libertarian.
It was not enough, it seems, for Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman and a self-described lifelong Republican libertarian, to call for stringent government regulation of giant banks, as he did a few months ago.
Now Mr. Greenspan is wading into the most fierce economic policy debate in Washington — what to do with the tax cuts adopted, in large part because of his implicit backing, under President George W. Bush — with a position not only contrary to Republican orthodoxy, but decidedly to the left of President Obama.
Rather than keeping tax rates steady for all but the wealthiest Americans, as the White House wants, Mr. Greenspan is calling for the complete repeal of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, brushing aside the arguments of Republicans and even a few Democrats that doing so could threaten the already shaky economic recovery.
“I’m in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money,” Mr. Greenspan, 84, said Friday in a telephone interview. “Our choices right now are not between good and better; they’re between bad and worse. The problem we now face is the most extraordinary financial crisis that I have ever seen or read about.”
Mr. Greenspan, who led the Fed for 18 years until he retired in 2006, warns that without drastic action to increase federal revenue and reduce the long-term growth in health care costs, bond investors could make a run on Treasury securities, driving up the nation’s borrowing costs and leading to another global economic crisis. This is not the first time Mr. Greenspan has urged fiscal restraint; he warned in 2008 that the country could not afford the tax cuts proposed by Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate. But his sweeping call for rescinding the Bush tax cuts, which he has articulated in a recent appearance on “Meet the Press” and an interview with The Financial Times, among other settings, has rankled former colleagues.
I never understood Trickle-Down Economics. Cutting government revenue never results in economic growth. Instead, the richest of the rich buy bigger yachts, and the national debt increases, often exponentially. Republicans never had the discipline to cut spending. Democrats fund projects that offend the G.O.P. and libertarians, but also balance budgets, repairing damage done by the G.O.P.
I’m with Harry Truman and Bill Clinton: "If you want to live like a Republican, VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS."
Sometimes, it’s that simple.
Thanks, Alan.
Who are the unemployed in America? Do they really not want to work, as the Republicans have been arguing?
Had a bit of a chat tonight with someone on Facebook who I haven’t seen since 1981, when we graduated high school in Pittsburgh. He still lives in Pittsburgh, went to college in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is someplace special, but it’s good to gain perspective.
I love Pittsburgh, but, for a number of reasons, I’m glad I moved years ago. Pittsburgh is still very, very segregated, racially and socio-economically. My former high school classmate is stuck in Supply-Side Voodoo Economics land, “Imagine how good our economy will be when everyone is out of work! Reduce government spending, cut taxes, encourage entrepreneurship. That’s how to create jobs. Unemployment checks…please!”
Reduce government spending — okay, but what government spending? Cut taxes? How will we pay for everything President George W. Bush spent, especially when we’re still paying for everything President Ronald Reagan spent?
Want to get to know the unemployed a bit? Read what they’re writing here, at Unemployed-Friends. Unemployed Friends is a busy, busy forum. These are real people out of work because Republicans trashed the economy. Pure and simple.
And they want to work.
The G.O.P. is wrong wrong wrong for the economy. Always have been. Always will be.
Mokena loses $25,000 on an election faux pas.
Well, that’s my take.
If the dude was more than 100 feet from the entrance to the polling place, well, then you lose.
A Will County arbitration panel agreed Thursday with Mokena resident Tino Lettieri that the village violated his civil rights on Election Day in November 2008 by not allowing him to pass out election materials in the village hall parking lot.
The panel of three attorneys awarded Lettieri $25,000 in damages.
"All I wanted was a public apology," Lettieri said. "They admitted to no guilt."
Jim Harvey, attorney for the village, said he was "disappointed" in the decision.
"I did not think it merited $25,000," he said. "There was no physical damage."
Each side will have 30 days to decide whether to reject the decision. If either does, the case would go to trial.
Harvey said the village will have to consult with its insurance firm to decide, because insurance would pay the damages.
Kudos to the Will County arbitration panel. This would most likely be upheld in court. This is more than a faux pas. On election day, best to err on the side of caution.
