‘The Union List’
by Downtowner, posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Originally posted at Fireside 14, Prairie State Blue, Open Left and MyDD.
What happens in Podunk shouldn’t stay there. Or at least if it does, the Democratic Party Establishment, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, the Blue Dogs among us, will have won one more unrecorded battle against those of us who want real change.
What’s happening most immediately in the IL-14 corner of Podunk (a term I use here to describe anything not directly inside the DC Beltway) is a primary and a special primary on Tuesday, between the DC insider “pick” for our district, an attorney who is a relative newcomer to both politics and our area, and John Laesch, the nominee against Denny Hastert last time out, and the only progressive in the race.
At this point, I’d call it a significant bellwether for the upcoming Congressional elections that virtually no one outside of IL-14 is paying much attention to in the glare of the presidential race, as well as a bellwether event in the battle for control of the party. So while I don’t expect this diary to get much attention, I want to leave a record of what has happened in this primary. Bellwethers, however unobserved at the time, sometimes have a way of becoming useful history for those who follow.
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Tags: 2008 elections, Bill Foster, Blue Dogs, Democrats, Dick Durbin, IL-14, Illinois, John Laesch, Pat Quinn, Pete Giangreco, Phil Hare, progressives, Rahm Emanuel, Special election, Steny Hoyer, Tammy Duckworth, The Strategy Group, U. S. House
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by Downtowner, posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Originally posted at Fireside 14, Prairie State Blue, MyDD, Open Left and Daily Kos.
Not long ago, I ran across this comment from a dedicated Foster volunteer and supporter:
This will be unpopular… (0.00 / 0)
…but you know I’m going to say it anyway!
I am much more interested in what goes on in Northern IL than I am in what happens downstate. With work, I get more than my fill of politics in Springfield and the rest of the cornfields in IL.
I just really don’t care what is happening in politics in Podunk, IL unless it’s really sexy and scandalous. Otherwise, I am bored. (emphasis added)
by: bridgetdooley @ Thu Dec 06, 2007 at 22:18:39 PM CST
As anyone who lives in Illinois knows, anything not in the City or collar counties is routinely considered “downstate” (aka “Podunk” to Ms. Dooley) even if it’s north of Chicago. The distinction here, if you are local, is that Kane and (parts of) Kendall, being collar counties, are typically considered part of the greater Chicagoland region, while everything west of the urbanized strip on the far east of IL-14 really qualifies as “downstate.”
Which would seem to imply Ms. Dooley’s term “Podunk, IL” represents the vast majority of the geographic area of IL-14, containing somewhat more than half of the voters in the district. (Of course, if you are a Chicago political insider, anything not in, oh, Chicago, pretty much qualifies as “Podunk.” Much in the way that, to a DC political insider, anything not in New York, Chicago, LA, or DC pretty much qualifies as “Podunk” but we’ll get to that later.) But maybe she really meant further downstate.
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Tags: 2008 elections, Bill Foster, DCCC, Global Strategy Group, IL-14, Illinois, Jefrey Pollack, Jim Mulhall, John Laesch, Keith Kincaid, Pete Giangreco, Special election, Squire Knapp Dunn Communcations, The Strategy Group, Tom Bowen, U. S. House
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by Downtowner, posted on Monday, December 17th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Originally posted at Fireside 14, Open Left, MyDD and Daily Kos.
So, a couple of weeks ago, I was in a public place, right here in St. Charles, Illinois, when I overheard a conversation that alarmed, but failed to surprise, me. The person doing most of the talking was talking complaining bitterly about her new job in an area public elementary school. Not a St. Charles school and not an educator. She’s a peripheral professional who has frequent contact with children however, and that’s bad enough.
Her major complaint? “All these Hispanic children.”
According to her, not only are “all these Hispanic children” unable to communicate, they are “aggressive and obnoxiously rude –
especially the girls.” I was supposed to be paying attention to what the person in front of me was saying and lost some of the conversation I was overhearing, but suspect her companion must have voiced some objections, because she started trying to explain herself dig herself in deeper.
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Tags: 2008 elections, Bill Foster, Dennis Hastert, IL-14, Illinois, immigration, Jim Oberweis, John Laesch, Rahm Emanuel, Special election, U. S. House
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by Downtowner, posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Originally posted at Daily Kos.
So I could say this:
Planned Parenthood betrayed me and all the women of IL-14 yesterday.
Some of you may remember this memorable DKos diary by Planned Parenthood back in September, when their new clinic in Aurora was under attack. Some of you may even remember that there was one Kossack/candidate here who stepped up.
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Tags: 2008 elections, Bill Foster, endorsements, IL-14, Illinois, John Laesch, Planned Parenthood, Special election, U. S. House
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by Downtowner, posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Originally posted at Daily Kos.
In case anyone is unaware, I want to state for the record that I worked for the Laesch for Congress campaign in ’06, I work for it now, I will work for it in future. But this diary is a personal story, not vetted by the campaign, although also an explanation of why, in fact, I started working for the election of John Laesch as my congressperson in the first place, why I’m probably going to drop in an ActBlue link in the end anyway, as well as why I am, oh, pissed off at the world today. Again.
Today Kate’s life is in danger. Again.
Kate is my late-twenty-something youngest daughter. She is herself the mother of two, my only grandchildren. Kate is smart, witty, charming, creative, funny, willful, stubborn, disorganized, proud, courageous, kind, and a free-spirit if ever there was one. I mention these things because, like most people with a chronic illness, she hates being defined by it so I don’t want it to be the only thing I say about her here, but Kate has Type I Diabetes.
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Tags: 2008 elections, Dennis Hastert, embryonic stem cell research, health care, IL-14, Illinois, insurance, John Laesch, rant, reform, U. S. House, uninsured
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by n0madic, posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Originally posted at Fireside 14 and Prairie State Blue.
Drinking Liberally is, in it’s own words, “an informal gathering of like-minded left-leaners who want to trade ideas, get more involved, or just share each other’s company… and every week kvetch, vent, ponder, and pontificate on the issues of the day.” And in DC once a month they have guest speakers. Last Thursday the guest speaker was Chris Bowers of Open Left, and I stopped in to hear what he had to say.
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Tags: 2008 elections, Bill Foster, Blue Dogs, Bush Dogs, Chris Bowers, IL-14, Illinois, netroots, Open Left, Special election, U. S. House, Washington DC
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by n0madic, posted on Saturday, November 4th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Originally posted at Fireside 14 and Daily Kos.
AMERICAN VALUES
When Republicans first began pushing internet gambling prohibition about ten years ago, it was a fairly straightforward proposition. As the titles of the legislation would indicate — Computer Gambling Prevention Act of 1996, Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of 1997 — these were anti-gambling measures, no doubt about it. And the National Gambling Impact Study Commission report recommendations regarding internet gambling, released in June 1999, called for prohibition “without allowing new exemptions or the expansion of existing federal exemptions to other jurisdictions.”
But there was a problem with this approach. The bills never made it to the floor for a vote. Too many Members had gaming interests in their districts that would be harmed by the legislation. So, in order to sweeten the deal, loopholes began to show up in these bills. So many loopholes, in fact, that House Resources Committee Chairman Don Young wrote to Hastert to complain.
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Tags: 2006 elections, Dennis Hastert, gambling, IL-14, Illinois, John Laesch, legislation, U. S. House
Posted in The Union List | Comments Off on Denny’s Double Dealing: Hastert and the Gaming Industry. Part 3 of 3
by n0madic, posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Originally posted at Fireside 14 and Daily Kos.
BETTING ON THE COME
Tough talk by the current crop of Republicans about the evils of gambling didn’t begin in response to the emergence of Indian casinos, or even with the arrival of internet gambling. The more principled of the social conservatives in the party had been profoundly opposed to gambling all along. When Pat Buchanan won the Republican primary in Louisiana in 1996, he did so while running on an anti-gambling platform. Later that year, a leading congressional opponent of gambling, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), saw his National Gambling Impact Study Commission Act signed into law. Indeed, it was the release of that commission’s report in June 1999 that proved to be the tipping point in the relations between the Republican Party and the gaming industry. Interestingly enough, however, the anti-gambling legislation that was proposed in the wake of that report didn’t make things worse between the two of them; it ended up bringing them closer together.
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Tags: 2006 elections, Dennis Hastert, gambling, IL-14, Illinois, John Laesch, legislation, U. S. House
Posted in The Union List | Comments Off on Denny’s Double Dealing: Hastert and the Gaming Industry. Part 2 of 3
by n0madic, posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Originally posted at Fireside 14 and Daily Kos.
Lost in the media frenzy surrounding the breaking news of the Mark Foley scandal was the story that internet gambling prohibition, a piece of the so-called “American Values Agenda” that Dennis Hastert and the House Republicans have been promoting this election season, had been signed into law that same day. Along with the bills included in their “suburban agenda” (you remember, that’s the one where they stressed their commitment to protecting kids from internet predators) the measures incorporated into the American Values Agenda were designed to rally the Republican base by billboarding the party’s allegiance to conservative values. Regarding the internet gambling legislation in particular, Hastert said, “It seeks to protect our children from gambling sites at home, keep our hard-earned money in the bank, and put the criminals that seek to take advantage of our family earnings in jail.” But if, by chance, any of that rhetoric gave you the impression that Dennis Hastert was seriously concerned about such things, or that he was in any fundamental way an opponent of the gaming industry, I’ve got a tip for you. Don’t bet on it.
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Tags: 2006 elections, Dennis Hastert, gambling, history, IL-14, Illinois, John Laesch, legislation, U. S. House
Posted in The Union List | Comments Off on Denny’s Double Dealing: Hastert and the Gaming Industry. Part 1 of 3
