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Posts tagged ‘Illinois’
IL-14: Hultgren town hall meeting video, Yorkville, August 29, 2011
by n0madic, posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 at 7:12 amKendall Republicans Welcome Racial Profiling as New Family Value
by John Laesch, posted on Monday, August 29th, 2011 at 2:38 pmThe Kendall County Republican Central Committee invited one of the most divisive people in America to be the keynote speaker at their annual family picnic. I guess the six or seven Republican presidential hopefuls are skipping Kendall County, and Sarah Palin was not available, so they turned to the other media hound, Joe Arpaio.
What is scary is that Joe Arpaio, who put Arizona taxpayers on the hook for his illegal racial profiling, and is also being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, drew several hundred Republicans to a fundraiser.
I read this Beacon News article and decided Sunday afternoon was an appropriate time to pen my response. On this Sunday, I am certain that many Republicans who pledge to the Christian faith were in church pews, but where were they on Saturday when Joe Arpaio was in town? Were they at the protest outside or did they venture inside the GOP fundraiser?
Being raised on the mission field in West Africa I learned a Sunday School song that has this verse, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.”
Klinkhamer for which office?
by Downtowner, posted on Friday, August 26th, 2011 at 12:02 pmI kept hearing persistent rumors to the effect that former Bill Foster staffer Sue Klinkhamer would once again be running for Mayor in St Charles, a post she held for a term before going to work for the City of Chicago, and from there to a position as Bill Foster’s IL-14 District Director. So this morning I did some digging.
I couldn’t find anyone who would definitely confirm or deny the rumor that Klinkhamer is getting ready to run against current St Charles Mayor Don DeWitte – closest I got to it was an individual close to Sue who gave it as their opinion that it would be “a real step backwards” for Klinkhamer.
But what I did hear – and this from no less than four individuals so close to Klinkhamer that I have trouble disbelieving any of them, much less all four of them – is that she is by far more likely to run for Kane County Board Chair.
Meh. There is no reason she can’t do both – the Kane County Board Chair election is in 2012, and the next St Charles Mayoral election is in 2013. In fact Kevin Burns, current Mayor of Geneva, is hedging his bets in just this manner – running for County Board Chair in 2012, with his next Geneva mayoral election in 2013 in reserve if he loses.
Keep the Focus on the Unemployment Crisis!
by John Laesch, posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2011 at 1:35 pmLast week I attended a town hall meeting (THM) with freshman Repesentative Randy Hultgren in Sandwich, and a second in Geneva. The third THM is in Yorkville on Aug. 29. See details at the end of this post.
Question after question, the crowd pushed for Jobs-Jobs-Jobs! Many also called for a fair, progressive tax on the wealthiest of our society, the card-carrying members of the millionaire and billionaire clubs. Others pushed more spcifically for H.R. 870, the Humphrey-Hawkins 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act, a bill that imposes a speculation tax of .25% on Wall Street trading. The revenue would be used to create 2.5 to 10 million jobs.
Keep reading for press coverage, video of the THM’s, and details for the next THM.
What About the Real Crisis – Unemployment?
by John Laesch, posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 at 7:13 pmNorthern Illinois Jobs With Justice (NIJWJ) has been holding monthly events and rallies on the first Friday of every month when unemployment numbers are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The last rally was covered by The Voice (Not an on-line article, but their website tells where you can pick up a copy), and The Beacon News.
August unemploymet numbers (9.1% unemployed) showed little improvement in the economic crisis facing millions of American families. The Chicago Political Economy Group (CPEG) points out that adding the 13.9 million unemployed together with the 6.5 million discouraged workers means that over 20 million American families are still suffering even though the Great Recession was declared “over” more than two years ago.
The question is, what are we going to do about it?
SO Glad We’ve Solved Our Economic Crisis
by Downtowner, posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 at 12:26 pmReally, I can’t thank those Tea Partiers enough for making all the right moves to ensure that we continue to push the Great Recession well along the way toward becoming the Greatest Depression.
Today we’ve learned that in the wake of the Debt Ceiling Deal of Doom being signed, sealed and delivered, the stock market continues an alarming slide and the Chinese have downgraded our credit rating. A special shout out to Enabler in Chief Barack Obama, for his exquisitly choreographed moves in response to the Economic Terrorists in Congress. But I want to reserve my most special shout out of all for local Illinois Economic Terrorists Randy Hultgren and Joe Walsh, because it’s just not easy for two freshmen congresscritters-turned-economic-terrorists to accomplish so much in such a short time. Helluva Job!
Damn. I just used the “j” word didn’t I? Sorry, so sorry. Forgot. We are all supposed to be pretending that there is no problem with one in ten Americans being unemployed by obsessively focusing on a deficit that could be much better handled if we just worked on getting them jobs. Damn. Did it again didn’t I?
Well, will just have to hope that Congress is so busy right now that they failed to notice someone worried about jobs. I think it’s more likely than not.
IL-14: Hultgren and Walsh just seem like the same guy
by Downtowner, posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 at 5:21 pmBut they are not really. I can tell you that in person Hultgren is very pleasant and Walsh is downright scary.
Beyond that, though, politically they are pretty much…okay, you got me, the same guy. For instance, yesterday they both voted against the Deal O Doom that raised the debt ceiling limit today. Not that I mind their no votes, I just mind that they are representative of the short-sighted Tea Partying mentality that got us into this invent-a-crisis in the first place.
Why worry about what these two do? Well, I feel compelled to do so on a personal level, as I currently live in the new IL-14 (though I could cross the street to borrow a cup of sugar and be in another district, and drive five minutes in the other direction and be in a third) so I can look forward to one or the other of these Economic Terrorists being my congresscritter in the near future. Well, one of them already is, but the main point is they are both prominent Illinois Economic Terrorists, hell-bent on destroying the middle class, our country, and certainly my chances of ever getting health care in America.
And there is slim to no chance that anyone in this district will run against whichever of them ends up the Chosen Annointed Economic Terrorist in Chief of the IL-14 Tea Party and thus try to stop them from committing future acts of economic terrorism on my behalf.
It’s just depressing.
Loyal to a Fault
by n0madic, posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 7:35 amLike a lot of progressives, I’ve been troubled by the President’s response to the debt ceiling crisis which Republicans in Congress have been engineering lately. I’m not a deficit hawk. I believe we need more social investment, not less. So, as far as I’m concerned, both sides of this negotiation are on the wrong side of the debate.
And it’s not just that allowing the debate to narrow in this manner leads us to bad policy choices. It’s also bad politics.
So, when the Progressive Change Campaign Committee began circulating a petition that it hoped would stiffen Obama’s spine in these negotiations, I signed on. And I posted a link to it on my Facebook wall as well, hoping that others of a like mind would sign the pledge, too.
IL-11: Foster’s Financials
by Downtowner, posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 7:30 amI had a theory about why Bill Foster was running for Congress again, this time in the newly redistricted IL-11. It had to do with the fact that his terminal financial disclosure statement from his stint in IL-14 showed that he’s sold out of ETC (the company owned jointly with others, including his brother who ran the business) and his wealth at that time seemed to be locked up in a promissory note, in combination with the fact that his campaign essentially owed him a million dollars – i.e. he was a million in debt. To himself.
My theory was influenced as well by persistent rumors I heard at the time of Foster’s last campaign against Hultgren, that he was rather bored in Congress, would like to return to physics, etc, etc. Not rumors I had ever passed along as, so far as I could tell, they came from no one very close to him and seemed speculative at best. But I heard them frequently enough that I was surprised to hear he was interested enough in being in Congress to decide to run in IL-11. And then there is the lack of any staff as of his first new FEC filing of this campaign – not even a professional fundraiser.
So my theory was simple: Foster had decided to run to raise enough cash to pay himself back that million dollar loan to his campaign fund, and if he won, okay, but if he lost, well that would be okay too. Now I think that theory is simply wrong.
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Building Illinois-Iowa Solidarity for Locked Out Roquette Workers
by John Laesch, posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2011 at 9:30 pmI attended the Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice monthly meeting this weekend to learn about another chapter in the ongoing war on the middle class. Buddy
After the meeting, Buddy shared his story with radio host Adam Klugman. You can listen by clicking the link.
