Blaming People With Vowels At The Ends Of Their Names

A Guardian headline implies that blaming mob bosses for mob killings is unfair:

Jury Blames Murders on Mob Defendants

As opposed to blaming them on, say, non-union plumbers. Mafia attorneys agree:

Calabrese's defense attorney Joseph Lopez left the courthouse grumbling that there was no way to give his client a fair trial.

''I don't think anyone charged with a case like this can get a fair trial anywhere, because of publicity prior to trial, because of shows that they make in Hollywood and because of scripts they write in Hollywood,'' he said. ''Al Capone is probably the most famous Chicagoan we have.''

Calabrese's own brother testified to watching him strangle men with a length of rope, then cutting their throats to be sure they were dead.

I'd say it was pretty fair. Lopez doesn't need to blame Hollywood for stereotypes of corruption and organized crime in Chicago: All he needs to do is point to reality, where even the city's water department turned out to be a front for Columbian drug cartels, and people who do a few years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from the Federal Reserve can get out of the lockup and go right back into public service.

Maybe mafiosos should move to cities where they're less... anticipated.

(The title is an obscure reference to once-friend of Governor Blagojevich Dominic Longo, who, like Lopez, claimed allegations of corruption in Chicago was just Sopranos-fuelled stereotyping of "people with vowels at the ends of our names".)

Nice Constitution You Got There

It'd be a shame if it developed any "issues".

"The recent actions of the Clerk of the House of Representatives directly contravene the express language of the Illinois Constitution and prevent the governor from faithfully exercising his constitutionally mandated obligations," the lawsuit says, calling Mahoney's inaction "chicanery."

In a lawsuit filed in Sangamon County, Blagojevich says clerk Mark Mahoney, who reports to Madigan, should have entered the governor's budget reductions into the record when the House met Sept. 4. That would have started a 15-day clock ticking, requiring the House to vote on restoring the cuts by Sept. 19.

However, Madigan has scheduled a series of statewide hearings on the cuts that will last through Sept. 27. He has not set a time for the House to vote on restoring the $463 million Blagojevich cut from the new state budget in August.

Unless the courts step in, Blagojevich argues, a "constitutional issue" will develop Sept. 19 on whether the cuts he has made will go into effect. He is asking the courts to order Mahoney, who also is Springfield's Ward 6 alderman, to enter the budget cuts into the House record of Sept. 4.

Blagojevich's office is not responding to calls requesting comment. This is not surprising, because almost anything they could say would sound imbecilic.

Mission Accomplished - Three Year Benchmarks Not Met

Reader 'Tony Stark' defends the work of Team Services, LLC, the company that was hired to find sponsorship schemes to generate revenue in the State of Illinois. This scheme basically proposed to raise capital by turning state government into NASCAR, with products like "a state beverage" and "a state credit card". (That the company's founder gave Blago's campaign $4,000 and was tied to his chief-of-staff is surely sheer coincidence.)

By the way, according to a recent press release, Team Services just passed the $1,000,000 mark in sponsorship for the State of Illinois. Thought you guys might be interested in an update on that issue. I guess maybe they were worth their salt after all, huh?

The post this comment was placed on was written almost exactly three years ago, and the press release actually came out two years ago. Here's an excerpt from the original story:

Administration officials said the sponsorships could produce millions of dollars for the state. State agencies were asked for sponsorship ideas. A marketing firm was hired and paid more than $107,000 to work on the project.

A year later, the marketing firm has produced only one sponsorship deal, worth about $60,000....Officials with Team Services LLC of Maryland, the company hired to secure sponsorship deals, did not return phone calls. Seth Webb, the Blagojevich aide overseeing the sponsorship program, was not available for interviews, Ottenhoff said.

[T]he administration contends the state is on the verge of making a significant sponsorship deal for a state beverage and that other deals, possibly including a state credit card, are in the works.

"Deals of this magnitude don't happen overnight," said Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff. "There is time and careful consideration of what is involved."

There was a $15,000-a-month retainer fee.

So, if by "on the verge" the Blagojevich administration meant "years", and if by "this magnitude" they meant "a pathetically tiny fraction of the predicted revenues", then yes, you could say the program was "worth it's salt". Kindly disregard the original projections, which promised $40 million in the first year (when the original post was written), and $300 million after three (which passed a year ago).

What Team Services actually delivered, deals like a bank sponsoring 'ethnically diverse Christmas trees', are radically and hilariously different from what the Blagojevich administration originally promoted in defending the idea. In a state where prisons and universities are falling apart and health service providers aren't getting paid (in one case, mailing a pharmacist a check for $6 and change against the $2,000,000 they owed him), this was an idiotic project.

In fact, the "idea", such as it was, ultimately slipped quietly beneath the waves for exactly that reason. Since announcing the Christmas Tree deal (critical to making the state's books balance, I'm sure) in December 2005, Team Services, LLC has posted no new press releases to their site containing the word "Illinois".

You go, Gov!

The Protectorate

Even Mayor Daley is disappointed with Rod Blagojevich, and his sock puppet, Dick Durbin, says the situation has become an embarrassment, as reported in the Sun-Times.

He's called 16 special sessions on this or that issue so far this year, one less than 2004, when he also was engaged in a battle with lawmakers over the budget. He accounts for nearly half of the 67 special sessions called by governors since the state's 1970 Constitution was adopted.

That constitution gives him the authority to call for the special meetings to discuss a specific topic, but it doesn't clearly say the governor may set the date and time. It would probably be a good thing to settle that issue. But that will do nothing to settle the underlying problem -- that Blagojevich was ordering lawmakers to show up when there was nothing for them to do, often on weekends. For instance, he called a special session to address CTA funding on August 13. He offered no bill of his own, but he did threaten to veto the only realistic proposal on the table, an increase in the regional mass transit sales tax.

This is not a constitutional crisis, as the governor claims. It's a crisis of our leadership, and no court in the world can sort that out.

Of course, who isn't disappointed? Blago is so unpopular that he's waxing reclusive.

Tradition has the governor and first lady participate in the opening ribbon cutting ceremony for the fair, but weather conditions in northern Illinois prevented them from attending.

Obviously, because his personal presence is crucial. Or...

Chuck Hartke, director of the state's Department of Agriculture, represented Blagojevich at the fair. He was joined at the ribbon-cutting ceremony by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes.

...he didn't want to hang out with his new foes.

Blagojevich, who has finally signed the utility rate relief package after weeks of claiming he will "make it better", and perhaps ultimately being forced to recognize that nobody wants him to, continues to defends his budget manipulation, ignoring that the reason laws are called "bills" is because they represent negotiations between the executive and the legislature exchanging policies and cash.

Instead, Blagojevich, with his manufactured constitutional crisis, seems to fancy himself Oliver Cromwell.

Of Gods and Chicago Democrats

As national Democrats struggle to keep state parties in line, Governor Rod Blagojevich, a Chicago Democrat, begins suing other Chicago Democrats.

The arguments over a state budget are escalating again, with Governor Rod Blagojevich suing the speaker of the Illinois House.

Blagojevich is angry that Speaker Michael Madigan has defied his proclamations requiring the Legislature to meet in special session.

In some cases, Madigan has told lawmakers not to bother showing up. He has also convened sessions at different times of day than Blagojevich had ordered.

He wants Madigan to hold sessions at specific times and require members to attend. A state budget has passed, but Blagojevich says other related issues still require attention.

Legislators argue the special sessions are just for show. They note the governor usually doesn't submit proposals for lawmakers to consider.

One issue that still requires attention? The utility rate relief package, which the legislature sent to Rod's desk last month. That, like hundreds of other bills, has not been signed.

Obviously, it's the legislature that needs to spend more time in session, so Blagojevich can terrorize them with heavy-handed political maneuvers that are so targeted and spiteful they're increasingly causing onlookers to question his well-being. Rich Miller details what can only be described as the wrath of Rod:

He drastically slashed funding for the Illinois Arts Council, chaired by Shirley Madigan, the House Speaker's wife. At least $9 million was cut out of grants distributed by the Arts council, including a million dollars for the Illinois Channel and $1.5 million for Public Radio and TV grants.

The auditor general's office, which has produced some brutally honest audits of the Blagojevich administration, saw its funding proposal cut way back, as did the comptroller and attorney general offices, both of whom are headed by frequent Blagojevich critics. Blagojevich did not cut the spending request for his own office.

The governor also zero-funded "Operation Ceasefire," which works with former gang members. The Senate Democrats had sought to eliminate funding for the program, but it was insisted upon by the House Democrats and Senate Republicans. Blagojevich sided with the Senate Dems yet again on that one.

At least $700,000 in budgetary add-ons sought by House Democrats for AIDS testing and prevention programs were slashed from the budget and $500,000 for a program to track birth defects, backed strongly by some House Dems, also was removed.

The House Democrats had pushed for an extra $50 million for nursing homes in the budget, but that was eliminated, as was money for cost of living increases and "safety net" money for providers in areas such as alcoholism and substance abuse ($6.6 million), developmental disabilities ($11 million), mental health ($8 million) and hospitals ($40 million).

A newborn hearing program was eliminated, for instance, as was a $1.2 million pandemic flu preparedness plan. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars for a capital punishment reform study committee was zeroed out, as well as a $240,000 grant to the Downstate Innocence Project, which works to release wrongly convicted prisoners.

This, from the guy who engineered and insisted on funding for a program called "AllKids", so that his supporters could accuse his opponents of "voting against all kids".

The ultimate irony? As Blagojevich declares Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and DeKalb counties state disaster areas in response to the upper midwest's tragic outbreak of flooding, leaders are wondering why he vetoed hundreds of thousands of dollars in flood protection funds, another unresolved problem that the legislature had been addressing until Blagojevich got involved:

[Prospect Heights Mayor Rodney] Pace, sweating through his black shirt and pants next to dozens of people piling up sandbags, criticized the Democratic governor for cutting $100,000 for a berm along the west side of River Road and channeling money to health care instead.

"His health-care initiative is more important than these people's homes and livelihoods," Pace said.

Yes, it is. In fact, pretty much any insanely politicized program the Governor cooks up, no matter how low it may be on the tree for Illinoisans, is the top priority, whatever harm it may do to the state. Rod Blagojevich's daily floor show of shocking malfeasance has, quite literally, led to ruin, distracting the state for years from urgent problems that should've been dealt with years ago.

Sen. Christine Radogno (R-Lemont) said it was "clearly an outrage" that Blagojevich vetoed two $350,000 projects to help Lemont and Homer Glen, where people watched from their windows as an overflowing detention pool sent water toward their homes.

Sen. John Millner (R-Carol Stream) said his district was the victim of another Blagojevich split decision. Blagojevich vetoed Millner's half of $400,000 to replace a bridge that leads to Benjamin Middle School next to Carol Stream and West Chicago, but approved the half sponsored by Rep. Randy Ramey (R-Carol Stream), Millner said.

"Now the day after the veto, the bridge is actually closed, and there's water flowing over the top of it," Millner said.Rod doesn't want to hear about it:

"Like in a lot of disaster areas, what is most mindful to me is the resilience of the people," he said. "We want to help."

But when asked about his veto of anti-flooding funds, Blagojevich angrily turned away.

"I am not here to talk about the budget," he said.

The resilience of the people is going to be pretty much the only thing keeping Illinois going, at this rate.

At Fox Lake, Blagojevich walked through a flooded neighborhood, calling it "an act of God," asking residents to help one another and suggesting they "maybe say a prayer."

Sure, and the Utica tornado was "God's will", a veritable smiting. Blagojevich seems to claim to have a wire to God on this stuff, though this wouldn't be the first time Blagojevich has confused his personal authority with that of the Almighty. He's not alone:

In Wheeling, for example, Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine) had secured $80,000 and Rep. Sydney Mathias (R-Buffalo Grove) $120,000 to build up and stabilize a bank along Buffalo Creek when the budget passed.

Murphy suggested that the rising floodwaters may signal a higher power at work.

"It's a classic example of Mother Nature overriding the governor's veto," he said.

But Mathias had a different take: "As they say, the governor acts in mysterious ways."

It's an Act of Rod.

Yes, this whole thing is every bit as completely mad as it looks. With Blagojevich in open war with Madigan, can Ragnarok be far behind?

Budget Crisis Resolved, Sort Of, Maybe, Not Really

Blagojevich edits the budget.

"As I said when the legislature passed this budget - it leaves a lot of important business unfinished. While I'm pleased that we're making a record investment in education, families across the state are still being priced out of health coverage and don't have a way to see a doctor when they need to. A budget should reflect the priorities of the people who elected us to make their lives better. That's why I'm removing almost $500 million in special pet projects and other spending that we simply can't afford. And at the same time, we're preparing new rules and administrative changes that will give half-a-million Illinoisans access to healthcare. 250,000 women in Illinois will be able to get screened and treated for breast and cervical cancer. These changes improve the budget that lawmakers sent me. But there's more to be done. I look forward to working with them on a capital bill to provide funding for mass transit, and aging infrastructure like roads and bridges," said Gov. Blagojevich.

So, basically, spending that Illinois can't afford is being removed, and more spending it can't afford is being added.

Lots of the cuts are actually good, but unfortunately, some of the "pork" being cut is, er, not all that porky. For example, Medicaid. Then there are the local agencies that won't be getting their usual funding.

Blagojevich cut about 75% of $200,000,000 in "member initiative" spending, leading to talks of a veto override, but Senate majority leader Emil Jones has promised to try to block any override. Naturally, this leads to accusations that Blagojevich cut a deal and protected Jones' pork.

"We don't exactly trust the governor's press release to tell us the truth," said state Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro.

"The trust that has been established since 1818 has kind of been broken by this group," he said.

Mistrust is well founded:

After reviewing the budget, Luechtefeld said none of Jones' requested initiative funding was removed. The 12 members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules also kept all their requested money, he said. The JCAR members will decide on the health care proposal Blagojevich hopes to start.

I foresee another year in which the State of Illinois ends up with hopelessly cooked books, runs out of money early and has to rob emergency funds to pretend to make ends meet.

Referred To A Specialist

CNBC's Kudlow and Company is arguing over a new bill passed by the Illinois legislature, mandating that Chicago-area homebuyers who want to sign "nontraditional mortgages" spend an hour with a credit counselor. (They, too, are noting with sadness how few high schools even teach kids to balance their checkbooks.)

Now that the new law is expanding the program, the nearly one dozen Department of Housing and Urban Development-approved counseling groups who will be responsible for the measure's success aren't sure they have enough resources to handle the thousands of mortgages they will be expected to review.

The original law, known as HB 4050, was promoted by Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, a powerful politician who for years had been concerned about rising foreclosures and vacant homes in his district, a group of working- and middle-class neighborhoods surrounding Midway Airport on Chicago's Southwest Side.

In an interview, Mr. Madigan said his bill was modeled after a successful program in the 1970s that helped reduce foreclosures of loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "Counseling clearly works," he says. "Our goal is to stop the abuse of unsophisticated people."

There appears to be one significant problem: Some "unsophisticated people" don't really want to be helped, probably because they don't know enough about mortgages to, er, know that they don't know.

That memory is still vivid for some of the hundreds of people who crowded into a basement auditorium of the glassy, cylindrical James Thompson Center in Chicago's downtown Loop for a Nov. 27 public hearing called by Mr. Martinez. The atmosphere became especially heated when Rev. Al Sampson, pastor of a South Side church and an early member of Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, railed against the program.

According to a transcript, Rev. Sampson called HB 4050 "one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation ever done." He charged that it would drive out minorities from the pilot area and clear the way for white investors to snap up properties. "We know the history of housing in this town," he said.

Then Jim Capraro stepped to the microphone. For 30 years, he has been the executive director of Greater Southwest Development Corp., a nonprofit community-development group that advised Mr. Madigan, the Illinois House speaker, on HB 4050.

With the meeting threatening to descend into chaos, Mr. Martinez soon asked Mr. Capraro to leave the hearing for his own safety.

Adding fuel to the fire, a report from the University of Illinois released a month later said housing sales in the pilot area had dropped by nearly half. By comparison, a demographically similar area outside the pilot had a 20% decline.

Some supporters of HB 4050 say the pilot program wasn't given enough time. They also argue that the University of Illinois study doesn't show whether credit actually dried up in the pilot area's ZIP codes. In addition, the tumbling housing market in Chicago complicates efforts to assess the impact of the program....Nevertheless, in January, Gov. Rod Blagojevich suspended the law.

I don't understand why the Reverend Sampson thinks that it's harder for minorities to talk to a credit counselor than it is for white people, but what's clear is that people just plain didn't want to do it. Therein lies the rub: You can't help people who don't want to be helped, and don't want to help themselves. This transcends a lack of sophistication, it's simply not caring what you get yourself into. As far as I can tell, it's "racist" because some expect that the people affected in these minority neighborhoods will instead move to a neighborhood where they can get a really terrible loan without being told about it. That is a disturbing problem, but it's one of priorities and financial literacy, not race.

Despite the huge success of the program when it only applied to 10 Chicago-area zip codes, Madigan wants it to now apply to all of Cook County, creating yet another impractical burden on state government.

Mortgage counselors are worried they won't be able to handle the expanded program's caseload. Petra Villazana, a 42-year-old counselor with Greater Southwest Development Corp., says she and two other counselors were swamped while the original law was in place. "Oh, my God," she says. "We were really, really busy."

On top of her normal caseload, she usually had four HB 4050 counseling sessions a day, each lasting an hour to an hour and a half. She often bumped meetings with other clients and stayed late at work two nights a week. She did one session at the hospital with an elderly woman who wanted to refinance her home so she could pay for desperately needed repairs.

Ms. Villazana says many of her clients appeared to have been misled about the terms of their loans. In one case, a father who had agreed to co-sign a refinancing of his daughter's home in the Gage Park neighborhood didn't realize that he was actually agreeing to buy the house from his daughter, making him responsible for two mortgages if she didn't meet her payments. The man told Ms. Villazana he wasn't going to close on the loan.

One early estimate indicates that the new program would cover 19,000 loans each year. The counseling agencies believe a minimum of 25 new housing counselors would have to be hired and trained -- an increase of 60% over the current number of 41 counselors at 11 HUD-certified agencies. The state hasn't said where the agencies would get the money to hire and train new counselors.

Yeah, it's going to be tricky, since the state doesn't have a budget. Hah!

Some people who received counseling are now believers in the program. Alvaro Cortez, a 38-year-old who works in sales for an automotive paint shop, found his dream home in December for $190,000 in a neighborhood near Midway Airport. Because the house was in the pilot area and he had a low credit score, his mortgage broker told him he had to go to a counseling session. The broker seemed angry, says Mr. Cortez, who is Hispanic.

"They were trying to tell me it was racist," says Mr. Cortez, sitting in the cramped offices of the Resurrection Project, one of the groups providing the counseling. "When I came here, I saw it wasn't that."

Mr. Cortez pored over his loan documents with a counselor, who showed him how to verify his mortgage's terms. He says the session helped him stand up for himself when he went to his closing. There, he says, the paperwork showed that he had an adjustable-rate loan, instead of the fixed-rate one he had been promised. The interest rate also was higher than he had agreed to pay. Mr. Cortez refused to sign.

On his second closing date, the documents still were wrong. Mr. Cortez exploded. Finally, on the third try, he signed for the loan he had been promised and moved into his brick, two-story row house the next day.

The fact is, as I've been saying, starting with another Illinois situation, the only way you can solve this problem is by making sure every citizen has the skills they need to handle this kind of situation the day they graduate from high school, because every time you crack down on one type of "predatory lending", predatory lenders will simply invent a new one. It is not the state's job to manage people's personal finances, and it's not practical for the state to be the Windows Vista in everyone's lives, forcing them to spend hours closing "Are you sure you want to do this?" warnings each time they try to sign a contract.

Millions of people don't know how to read a loan, and that's the problem. As our wealth and prosperity as a society increases, more people encounter more complex business situations, and there is no alternative to making sure they are educated to handle it. If it's not too complicated to cover in an hour with a counselor, it's not too complicated to teach high school seniors.

Sadly, the State of Illinois, like many other states, is historically much more interested in teaching the "unsophisticated" to play the lottery than they are in teaching them to invest in the stock market, where the odds would be much better and more tax revenue could be generated.

Update: On the 23rd, Kudlow & Company featured this topic again, and the woman arguing in favor of it stated that the alternative to this kind of massive, involuntary state intervention is mass homelessness.

What planet do these people live on?

Blagojevich, Bringer of Poor

How screwed up is the economy of Illinois? Pretty screwed up.

As it turns out, however, the governor actually is driving jobs out of the state. Literally.

According to documents, the Illinois Department of Human Services, which is under Blagojevich's control, has inked a deal with a company to take an estimated 65 welfare recipients to jobs at a factory in Missouri.

In other words, the job market in parts of this state is so wretched, we've got to pay someone to truck people across state lines so they can try to earn a living.

As the state's Mad Max factor continues to increase, this is easily equally troubling: Back a few months ago, when this blog was largely inactive, a major crisis erupted in Illinois as a horrifying increase in electric rates benighted the land, leaving little old ladies sitting in the cold and dark, terrified of further increasing their three-figure utility bills. Threats were made, utility companies were accused of misleading state legislators on what the package they sought to have approved would actually do, Senate majority leader Emil Jones was accused of helping them, House Speaker Michael Madigan proposed socializing electricity, and legislators, under siege from their constituents, called an emergency Committee of the Whole at which, if I recall correctly, somebody pulled the fire alarm.

Months later, something was finally done.

The problem? Blagojevich refuses to sign it, arguing that he potentially can "make it better" if he reviews it thoroughly.

In fact, Blagojevich seems to be trying to make everything "better", since of the 700 bills the legislature has passed and sent to him this year, he had, as of the 10th of August, only signed 31 of them. It appears that politically beneficial bills, like abolishing the processing of horse meat for food (something that rarely happened anyway), get shot right through, but doing any actual work is off the table. (Congressional Democrats seem to be infected with a similar disease.)

That's ironic, because Blagojevich, noted for accusing legislators of not doing their jobs, is now giving them a raise, breaking a campaign promise and publicly declaring that his intention is to bribe them into passing his unfeasible, insane budget.

But even in his explanation, Blagojevich tried to cast legislators as venal money-grabbers rather than social-policy progressives, a move that ratcheted up tensions in the already poisonous political atmosphere of a record legislative overtime nearly 12 weeks old.

"I want to say this in a nice way, but that [salary increase] seems to be, among many legislators, the single biggest priority for them," Blagojevich said. "And I ... felt that if that's so important to them, this is what really motivates their priorities, then maybe if I respect their priorities, maybe they'll respect the priority I have, which is providing health care to families."

Blagojevich is the victim here. Do you feel his pain?

In any case, you read that right: Illinois still has no budget.

To repeat, Illinois has a state apple, but no budget.

In Blagojevich's defense, the recognition of an Official Fruit of State is a better idea than his previous scheme to raise operating funds for the state, which would've involved accepting paid sponsorships for things like official state credit cards and official state soft drinks. (Blagojevich mistakenly thought that companies would want to associate with his "brand".) The apple, however, was not Blagojevich's idea. Rather, it was brought to the legislature by a class of elementary school children with no intention of making cash off the idea.

I digress. The legislature sent a budget to Blagojevich over a week ago, ignoring his priorities and, allegedly, emphasizing their own. Blagojevich is now trying to figure out how to make it go away, rather than just signing it to bring this nonsense to an end, nonsense that has resulted in school funds not getting disbursed and widows of state troopers not getting their survivor-benefits checks.

In fact, when the woman in question, Karla Miller, called Blagojevich's office to try to get her problem straightened out, a very rude man hung up on her:

"He was very flippant and just said, you know, we're all worried about the budget and we'll get it fixed and that kind of thing," she said. "He started to get a little testy with me, and I started to get a little testy back, and then he hung up on me."

Nobody, it seems, can understand how a state run by people from the same corner of the same state, affiliated with the same wing of the same party, people so tightly associated that it'd be illegal for some of them to marry into each other's families, can get nothing done, but that's exactly what's happening.

On a day usually devoted to party unity -- "Governor's Day" at the State Fair -- the state comptroller, treasurer and lieutenant governor all condemned the Democratic bickering that has left Illinois without a budget for two weeks.

The attorney general scolded the governor for not helping people struggling to pay electricity bills. The House speaker accused the governor of unconstitutional actions, and was in turn accused of betraying fellow Democrats.

"It's embarrassing. It's not the way people envision their leaders acting," Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias said after a Democratic rally at the State Fair. "I think the public is getting sick and tired of this."

But Blagojevich said he doesn't owe the public an apology as he pushes to expand government health programs.

His latest tactic is a threat to increase health spending by $500 million without legislative permission. Lawmakers sent him a budget without the new health programs he wants, but Blagojevich says he can spend the money anyway.

The bickering is so ridiculous that at one point, Blagojevich threatened legal action against lawmakers for holding a special session at the wrong time of day, leading Chicago Democrat Joe Lyons to call Blagojevich "a madman" and "insane".

Indeed he is, and lost in the midst of all this is letter-writing Mount Carroll resident Gerald Bork, a Blagojevich fan who is perplexed by the public disgust, aware that Blagojevich ran and was elected as a reformer, but apparently unaware that it was a sham, that he is just as corrupt as his predecessor, and that he only got reelected because his opponent was no better of a candidate than he is:

Almost constantly, I am hearing nothing but criticism of Governor Blagojevich. Why?

Well, Mr. Bork, in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth...

Da Goons

Expanding on their stellar record of professionalism, the Chicago police attack a Chicago Tribune photographer.

Standing on the public way, James said, he continued to take pictures and told the officer he was a working member of the news media.

At that point, the officer knocked one of his cameras to the pavement, destroying it, he said. The other was taken from him and thrown down the block, James said.

Lovely.

Mr. Unpopular

Evil continues to be a dominant trend in Illinois politics, as Rod Blagojevich increases his smug levels.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is rejecting warnings that Illinois must have a budget in place by Wednesday to avoid financial harm to state employees and schools waiting for government checks.

The Democratic governor said Monday that Aug. 8 is ''an arbitrary date. ... It's no different from today, it's no different from yesterday and it's no different from August the 9th.''

Comptroller Dan Hynes, however, says his office can't begin processing checks for employees if a budget isn't in place on Wednesday. That means 4,900 employees might not get paid on time, and more would be affected if the budget stalemate drags on.

''Each and every day it gets worse and worse,'' said Hynes, a Chicago Democrat.

The same applies to $170 million in school aid that is supposed to go out on Friday, although Blagojevich announced Monday that the state will help schools by offering interest-free loans.

Blagojevich is sticking by his threat to reject a budget unless it meets his standards on education, health care and construction spending.

Blagojevich was obviously relieved to be surrounded by a friendly crowd. The governor said he was jogging in Springfield recently and passed a man who shouted, '''Hey, governor, you ... ' and I better not say the next word but it rhymes with luck. So it's nice to be here with all of you.''

A Springfield credit union is offering state employees no-interest loans if this doesn't get straightened out, and a vote is scheduled tomorrow on a budget proposal, though it carries no guarantee that it won't end up Blagojevetoed.

The Blagojevich Effect

Remember those flu vaccines that Governor Blagojevich bought from European suppliers to cover the "shortage" (a media-manufactured illusion, since we ended the season with 4.5 million vaccinations left), but then found he couldn't legally import into the United States? Remember how he ended up getting the state sued when other state officials refused to write a check to cover Blagojevich's renegade, irresponsible stunt, even as the vaccinations expired in European freezers?

Leave it to Rod, the Lord of the Gaffe, to nearly turn a bad situation into an international incident involving a major Islamic nation.

Blagojevich announced his solution in December 2005 -- the state would donate the medicine to Pakistan, which was then reeling from an earthquake that had killed 80,000 and left millions homeless.

"We are in a unique position to help thousands of Pakistanis who are struggling to recover from a terrible tragedy," Blagojevich said in a statement.

It turns out, Pakistani officials say, the vaccines never helped anyone.

There's just one catch: Blagojevich never told the Pakistanis that the vaccines were expired. When they found out, they were not too happy.

Instead, health authorities in Pakistan crushed and burned the half-million doses because they wouldn't give their people an expired vaccine, according to interviews and government records.

Some sources claimed that not all the vaccine was destroyed and that a portion found its way onto the black market. Exhaustive attempts by the Tribune to confirm this were unsuccessful. After several weeks of repeated requests by the Tribune, Pakistani officials turned over records documenting destruction of the medicine.

The vaccine, received in shipments weighing nearly 9 tons, was refrigerated for months before being destroyed in November 2006, the records show.

Pakistani health officials said they accepted the inoculations not knowing they had expired months earlier. They ultimately rejected the assurances of the European distributor, Ecosse Hospital Products Ltd., that the vaccines were independently tested and still potent.

"After all, human beings are equal," said retired Lt. Gen. Farooq Ahmad Khan, who ran the Federal Relief Cell that coordinated earthquake relief in the first five months after the disaster. "They are not guinea pigs. And vaccines, if they are not good in one country, they should not be usable in another country."

The Pakistan government didn't publicize the destruction of the vaccines, in part, to preserve good relations with an ally.

"Remember, the vaccine was sent by the Americans," said a Pakistani government source speaking on the condition on anonymity. "You could get into trouble with diplomatic relations between the two countries."

The Pakistanis probably don't realize who Blagojevich is. Nobody's going to burn any Dixie Chicks CDs over him.

"This was a bad deal from the beginning," said [Comptroller] Hynes, who was surprised when told the vaccines were destroyed. "I just want to make sure that Illinois taxpayers aren't the ones holding the bag."

The state auditor general later blasted the governor's effort as an unlawful attempt to bypass regulators.

On Dec. 30, as the first shipment arrived, Blagojevich announced the donations in a news release, saying he hoped the vaccines "will be put to use to protect people who were left homeless, weak and vulnerable after the devastating earthquake and now are in dire need of protection from influenza this winter."

He also included a quote from the Pakistani consul general in Chicago, praising "Gov. Blagojevich's concern for the earthquake victims in Pakistan as well as the Pakistani-Americans who have been tragically touched through loss of family and friends.

"Any effort to help Pakistan in its hour of need is welcome."

But a Jan. 9, 2006, e-mail obtained by the Tribune shows that just days after receiving the first shipment, Pakistani officials were threatening not to use the vaccine.

"I am deeply frustrated by the Ministry of Health's refusal to use the vaccines," Ecosse's Cochrane wrote in his e-mail to Azhar Mahmood Kayani, the Pakistani prime minister's personal physician, who negotiated the delivery with Cochrane.

In the e-mail, Cochrane reminded Kayani that the vaccines had been tested and shown to be safe by an independent institute that works for the World Health Organization.

"We did not ask for these vaccines, and when we accepted them we did not know they were expired."

The Blagojevich administration said in its statement last week that the last it heard the Pakistanis were happy and the donation was an appropriate ending to a saga.

And the governor, who has previously described his pursuit of the vaccines as "probably the best decision I've ever made," still maintains Illinois should write the check.

...and I maintain Ecosse should consider the idea of suing Blagojevich personally. It was his illegal scheme, and the State of Illinois is right to renounce it, but it's a shame Hynes and his supporters didn't do it before the contracts were ever signed.

Look on the bright side: At least Blagojevich didn't "pull an Obama" and threaten to bomb them over it, spurring violent, anti-American street protests.

Fight The People

Rod Blagojevich swears a sacred blood oath that there shall be no budget that does not comply with his will, no matter what happens.

Without a budget in place, Blagojevich issued a stern letter to the Legislature outlining his demands and calling for a one-month, stop-gap budget. He added that "a 'take it or leave it' approach on a 12-month budget, sent to me as government shutdown looms, will do nothing more than simply precipitate such a shutdown."

The new fiscal year began July 1 without a permanent budget, and a one-month financial plan expired at the beginning of this month. Although the state no longer has the power to spend money, government continued to function.

Legislative staff reported that the leaders' negotiations were positive; Patty Schuh, spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson, R-Greenville, said Watson remained hopeful a budget could be passed by the middle of next week.

But while negotiations continued privately, Blagojevich publicly announced again that he would veto any budget that didn't include his desired funding increases for education, health care, capital construction and pension debt. And Blagojevich said the budget must be balanced.

Of course, he also won't accept a tax increase. Apparently, Blagojevich went to the "Can't We Just Print More Money?" School of Economics. (It's somewhere in Belgium.)

"A last-minute budget sent to my desk that fails on these criteria will be dead on arrival," Blagojevich wrote.

That claim drew criticism, particularly from Hynes, an outspoken fellow Democrat.

"It is astonishing that after signing four budgets, billions of dollars out of balance, the governor is now finding a moral objection to a potentially out-of -balance budget, while threatening to shut down state government in the process," Hynes wrote in response.

"The governor's hypocrisy knows no bounds," Hynes added.

In another development Wednesday, some of Blagojevich's biggest supporters have broken ranks, asking him to rescind his pledge to veto an income tax hike. Leaders of several powerful education and labor lobbies presented an eleventh-hour plan, with the backing of the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, the Illinois AFL-CIO, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Those groups are advocating a 0.25 percentage point increase annually for four years, raising the state's income tax to 4 percent from 3 percent. The groups predict that each year, revenue from the tax would rise by $800 million, which they want sealed in a special fund for education.

Blagojevich has a long and storied history of looting special funds, getting slapped with various injunctions and such. In the most absurd case, Blagojevich was sued after he tried to seize $125,000,000 in private donations that had been made to an environmental charity set up by the state. He lost, and in a surreal move, appealed, which only led to another courtroom defeat. So, pardon my skepticism of the idea of trusting him with a massive "special fund" for education: That's what all the other seizures of "special funds" were supposed to pay for, as was the Illinois Lottery, back in the day. Funding education in Illinois may very well be one of the most lucrative scams a con-artist can get into.

Besides, now Blagojevich has said that not only will he continue this fight, but, to drag on a tradition of ill-placed baseball references in Illinois politics, he doesn't care if he ever gets back.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich threatened on Wednesday to keep the record nine-week impasse going until he gets his way-even if that means staying at the Capitol all year.

"At the end of the day, do people really care whether or not the Cubs win in 14 innings or 9 innings?" Blagojevich asked reporters. "It's whether they win or lose."

Blagojevich vowed to pass his health-care proposal even if it takes "12 months to get it right for the people."

In a letter Wednesday to legislative leaders, Blagojevich reiterated his desire for another one-month budget and wrote that he would "never sign a budget that is constructed to appear balanced but is, in fact, unbalanced and therefore unconstitutional."

Steve Brown, spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), said the governor's letter provides "additional notoriety for his failed policies."

Even away from Springfield, Rod's fellow Democrats talk trash.

State Reps. Lisa Dugan of Bradley and Careen Gordon of Morris, both Democrats, say it's way past time for the governor to negotiate in good faith.

"It's his job to represent the whole state and his priorities don't match the whole state's priorities," said Gordon, taking time out from mingling with the diverse crowd to comment on the impasse. "What we need is a state budget that won't hurt people's personal budgets."

I've really come to believe that the only way Illinois will ever be able to bail itself out is through grassroots public education: Most Illinoisans just aren't even aware of how completely screwed up it is. They know, intuitively, there are problems, and react when corruption and incompetence hit them personally, but the mind-boggling, system-wide scope of it, even with government shutdown looming, is successfully kept out of the public discourse.

It'll Be Just Like "Mad Max"

The State of Illinois prepares for a miniature apocalyspe.

"It's frustrating. It's perplexing. It's embarrassing. And it's inexplicable," [State Comptroller Dan] Hynes[, a Chicago Democrat] said. He was referring to the inability of House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President Emil Jones and Blagojevich, all Democrats from Chicago, to agree on a budget.

Legislative leaders remained mostly quiet on the budget negotiations. After a negotiation session Monday evening, both Jones and House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, said they felt progress had been made.

Blagojevich was left out of those talks. He spent part of his day at a coal mine in Farmersville, touting the incentive package he signed to lure the Department of Energy's experimental clean coal power plant to Illinois.

You might say he was out on a snow job day.

Blagojevich's absence from the budget negotiations emphasized the thoughts that some lawmakers expressed over the weekend that the governor has become irrelevant.

Madigan and Jones have differences between themselves, and they've also disagreed with the governor on some issues. While Jones remains one of the governor's key allies, fewer than 20 out of 59 senators showed up for the governor's special legislative session on Saturday.

Similarly, when the House met early Monday afternoon, less than 30 were present for another special session called by the governor. The House met again early Monday evening, but adjourned after little debate.

The Senate also met briefly Monday with the same outcome.

Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Collinsville, defended the governor and said the budget was the Legislature's responsibility. Hoffman also filed a measure that would extend the temporary budget through August.

Of course, it was Blagojevich who simultaneously insulted the entire legislative body and ordered them to stay in Springfield, at a cost of $42,000 a day, until they give him the budget meeting the criteria which he hath ordained. They have now conducted the longest overtime session in the history of Illinois, and Rod, unbelievably, says he's proud of it, because, he says, he's "not interested in settling for any old budget that doesn't do anything for people". Apparently, his office is also oblivious to the impending disaster, with spokeswoman Rebecca Rausch having stated she "had no knowledge of agencies issuing directives about what will happen in the event of a shutdown in August", even as state agencies freak out like it's Y2K, because the whole idiotic situation is so unprecedented that nobody knows what they're supposed to do if it happens.

Governor Corruptevich has even gone so far as to declare that the problem is that he sees the glass as half full, and Madigan sees it as half empty.

No, seriously. That's what he said, despite the fact that to virtually everyone else, it seems that the problem is that the glass is in the hands of a bunch of complete non-competents. Hynes is left in the awkward position of asking state leaders to "sign an agreement" to finish the budget by August 8th, while Blagojevich, who previously claimed he would oppose another temporary budget, is now a bit more receptive, given the failure of his strongarming of the legislature. Now, it's lawmakers who have lost interest in the arrangement. If things continue at this rate, the State of Illinois eventually won't be doing anything for anybody at all.

The mood in the capital remained uncertain about when a budget resolution might come. Although some officials predicted that the Legislature would be done by this weekend, Madigan scheduled a committee of the whole meeting for Aug. 8.

If the state goes without a budget, some state employees may have to decide whether to show up for work. Also, the fate of the Illinois State Fair seemed more uncertain. Both Hynes and Jeff Squibb, spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, said they were unsure of what would happen to the annual exposition, set to begin Aug. 10.

If a budget is not passed by Aug. 8, schools will likely be the biggest loser, missing that $170 million in aid. Matt Vanover, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Education, said some school districts might have to dip into cash reserves or even borrow against future payments.

The funniest thing of all is that a mailing list I still follow covering Illinois politics featured an advertisement for a rally to demand the legislature pass a budget immediately, to prevent the closure of state government.

The unanimous, half-joking response?

"Why on Earth would we want to keep it open?"

Somehow, I doubt that the government's failure to provide services would relieve the people of Illinois of any part of their tax burden.

Check Voluntarily Bounced

Rod Blagojevich donates to charity nearly $45,000 in campaign donations linked to an indicted henchman.

The charity sends the money back.

(Not really quite that simple, but a priceless moment nonetheless.)

Willy Wonka International Airport

Every trip to O'Hare Airport is a special sort of adventure: This time, I stepped off the Blue Line, found the terminal guide, and began walking along with the signs that were directing to Terminal 2. Surprisingly, when I got to the end of the corridor, the signs were gone. Turns out, somewhere back there, a chasm opens up in the wall of the tunnel, and you're supposed to go down it. As I walked, I wound up in the Hilton, with a sign halfway down the hallway overhead that said "Terminal 2". So, I went down the hallway, and when I realized there didn't seem to be anywhere useful to go past the sign, I turned around only to see it said the same thing on the other side, yet was not directly above anything that could be construed as Terminal 2. Really, it didn't make a lot of sense that I was in the Hilton to begin with.

There was a map on the wall: Both ends of the hotel apparently outlet into Terminal 2, which was weird, since I didn't see anywhere to go before, but then again, I missed the opening on the CTA level as well, so I walked back, only to find a sign that said "Tunnel closed for modernization: Terminal 2 access 220 feet to the right."

All the way across the hotel again, and eventually into a half-finished chamber with a number of glass walls. Normally, when people talk about "transparency", they mean making things easier to see or understand, but this seemed bent on obscuring things. I had to wonder if the designer hadn't originally wanted to lead passengers into a hall of mirrors to be taunted by a sinister, disembodied voice, but someone had clearly put a lot of time into planning out how this would go for passengers, someone who was watching the videotapes now and having a good laugh.

"Well, here we are," I said.

"Yeah. I've never tried to find this terminal before," she lamented.

Examining one of the walls, I saw it seemed to have doors set into it, as well as a small button on my side. Knowing what it had to be but suspicious of everything at this point, I reluctantly pushed it. Sure enough, it called an equally transparent elevator. When we got in, we collaborating and pushed the button that seemed to be where we'd want to go. Fortunately, it was the right button, but on the way up, from a new angle, we could see there were stairs one either side and the elevator itself was actually not critical. In the terminal itself, there was no guidance except the airline signs behind the desks, and the corridor was far too long to see them all, so I had to ask someone from Air Canada how to get to the JetBlue desk. Getting my boarding pass from the automated system was the only really straightforward part: Once I had it in hand, I walked to what seemed like the logical end of the terminal, only to see a giant 'no gate access' sign blocking my way. (Apparently, everyone else thought it was logical, too.) Even at security, the lines were frozen while an Indian guy from a private contractor argued with a woman checking ticket stubs about why this might be happening. In any case, now I'm here, at my gate, on my laptop. After seeing a passenger complaint about a broken water fountain at gate E8 that had been broken for quite some time as of November 2006, I killed some time and stretched my legs by walking over to try it out, since I could actually look up and see the offending plumbing fixture. It's apparently not been repaired, so everyone can just calm down: The flow of fresh water just dribbles down the side of the mouthpiece, probably just as it has for thousands of disappointed passengers before me.

The important thing at this airport is to keep moving: If you stay in one place too long, the Minotaur will get you.

Seriously, though, why is it like this?

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

In the old Green Acres TV show, getting to Hooterville involved going to Chicago, then changing planes twice, hopping a bus from the county seat over to Pixley, and then taking a little train. There's a local belief among some that Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and The Beverly Hillbillies, all of which existed in the same mythical region, were actually a Hollywood caricature of old-time Southern Illinois. The arguments are fairly compelling, made even more so by the fact that without American running connections to Williamson County Regional Airport (MWA) anymore, getting here has reverted, more or less, to the process above. (In one of those bizarre moments that help define our nation's hilarious airline industry, MWA's manager only found out American service to his airport was being cancelled when the company providing the service called him in his capacity as a passenger to advise him to seek a refund.)

I got here by taking the bus to New York City, taking the shuttle to JFK on Long Island, flying to O'Hare by JetBlue, taking the L downtown, taking a water taxi to Union Station, finding out my train that night was not going to work out, getting a hotel, and catching it in the morning. Going back to Binghamton will mean essentially doing my inbound in reverse: Taking a train to Chicago to stay overnight before I go to O'Hare to fly to JFK to take a shuttle to Manhattan to catch a bus to Binghamton.

The alternatives: To fly directly from Binghamton to Marion or vice versa would involve no fewer than four airports via two airlines with an almost certain overnight layover in Chicago each way due to the very limited schedule Mesa is flying to MWA, and going two hours to Syracuse to get a direct flight into Chicago wouldn't actually help as much as one might think, since it'd be a direct flight into the wrong airport, adding another hour or two of ground transportation and another security check into the mix. Amtrak would mean 20 hours from Chicago to New York City on the Lakeshore Limited, a train that has been about four hours late every time I've ridden it. (Amtrak employees swear CSX actively sabotages their schedule, and based on what I've seen, I believe them.) Then, I'm still in Syracuse. If I was going that way, it would almost make sense to get a sleeper, but it's not the most scenic route: Elkhart, Toledo, Erie, Rochester. Paying Amtrak a lot of money to read, alone in my bunk, while these cities roll by in the dark, seperated by mostly flat terrain... This was crossed off the list promptly. St. Louis was right out because transportation from Lambert Field is, uh, best described as limited.

That's the redeeming factor of the Wile E. Coyote transportation scheme I eventually cooked up: No one leg of it is intolerable, and in between, I get to do things I enjoy, which, given that my stopovers are Chicago and New York City, is very worthwhile. However, I still marvel at the whole situation. Unless I post tomorrow night from the hotel (and I'm going to try to have enough fun that I can't), you won't see much out of me til Thursday. It's been a great trip: I've done quite a lot more than I'd originally planned, and spent some great time with my father, who I haven't seen since I moved. Plus, I'd simply forgotten how much I like Illinois in general. If all goes as intended, I'll have dinner with a friend I haven't seen in almost as long when I get back to Manhattan. Good times.

Protecting You From The "Scammers"

Longtime readers of Free Will are familiar with the deeply held belief of many readers that the City of Chicago manufactures fake parking tickets. Their arguments, such as never having driven their car in Chicago in their entire lives, are compelling. Now, the State of Illinois has found a new way to screw you out of $25, as reported over at The Consumerist.

I'm an Illinois (the sucker state) resident and I just had a lot of fun with the Traffic Safety School program.

A couple months back I got a ticket. I totally deserved it and opted for Traffic Safety School to keep it off my insurance.

You send in the ticket cost plus an additional 25 dollar fee to sign up for the class. If you want to take the course online it's an additional 10 dollar fee. Already this feels like a racket, but like I said I did the crime so I'll do the time.

Problem was, I never got my registration letter. After a month I was starting to get nervous, since if you don't complete the course it goes on your driving record. I called the Traffic Safety School...and was placed on hold for 30 minutes. Then disconnected. I called back and was on hold for 20 minutes, then an automated message told me they were closed (this was during their business hours). So that's 50 minutes in the middle of the day, my lunch hour at work essentially.

I called back the next day they were open and was on hold for 25 minutes before getting an operator who told me I'd have to speak to a customer service person and...yes...put me on hold. This time for only 10 more minutes.

Finally, I got to an actual person who was supposed to help. She explained to me that they mailed out the letter with the registration info and never received it back. I told her I've never had a problem with my mail so this was kind of surprising. She said I was "placed in a class" and that if I wanted the online course it would be another 25 dollars.

That's -The cost of the ticket -25 dollars for traffic school -Another 25 dollars for the online version (which you'd assume costs LESS to run)...I asked why this fee was in place, she explained that "scammers" were the problem. I said I was not scamming and that I was curious why I had to pay a fine in addition to the fine. She said "Maybe you should drive more safely and avoid all this hassle."

About ten seconds later she had put me in the online class. Not a lot of paperwork/legwork. She then told me to "Watch my mouth" and hung up.

That's about the level of customer service I used to get, too.

Certainly you shouldn't get a break for the convenience of doing it online, given the purpose of it, but an extra fee? Maybe they can put the unemployment office on a 1-900 line, and really rake in the dough.

You Can Be A Cop Or A Criminal

...but in corrupt Chicago, what's the difference?

Criminals:

A former gangster has recounted the gruesome details of more than a dozen murders in the trial of five Mafia leaders in Chicago, including a killing that helped to inspire the Hollywood film Casino.

He was lured to a basement with the promise that he would become a mafia "capo", or captain, while his brother, Michael, would be inducted into the organisation as a "made guy". Within seconds of their arrival, Nicholas Calabrese had grabbed Michael's legs as an accomplice slipped a rope around his neck.

While they were strangling him, Calabrese said he heard Tony Spilotro, say: "Time to say a prayer", as he realising he had walked into a trap.

Cops:

Hundreds of Chicago police officers have had 10 or more complaints filed against them, and at least four members of an elite police unit have racked up more than 50 each in the past five years, according to a published report.

The high numbers, reported by the Chicago Tribune, are the latest black mark on a troubled department. Chicago police have been under fire for several recent incidents, including two videotaped beatings involving off-duty officers at bars and the indictments of six officers in a Special Operations Section on charges ranging from burglary to armed violence.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow ruled last Monday that the public had a right to see the documents, but the city appealed. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday granted a stay to let the city keep the list secret until judges decide what to do about the case.

In one of the videotaped incidents, an off-duty officer was seen brutalizing a female bartender. In another, a gang of cops was seen beating four businessmen downtown. Even while the City of Chicago resists federal rulings demanding transparency, Mayor Daley (who was previously implicated in helping to cover up much broader claims of police torture has appointed a Los Angeles attorney previously responsible for helping oversee the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to lead a new, ostensibly independent oversight agency.

By the way, the Judge Lefkow mentioned above, is, indeed, that Judge Lefkow.

A Matter of Priorities

What do you get when a state that should be in survival mode is instead trying to figure out how to pay for health insurance for the children of families who can already afford it? System-wide collapse.

While Illinois lawmakers and Gov. Rod Blagojevich haggle over a spending plan for the coming year, documents show some state facilities are literally falling apart.

From leaky roofs to broken air conditioning systems, state documents show that bureaucrats are spending millions of dollars to try and stay one step ahead of the deterioration.

At Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln, for example, documents show a leaky roof installed 19 years ago has resulted in at least two cells being left unusable after it rains. Officials say it could get worse, eventually affecting the gymnasium, a computer room and several other key offices.

"If not repaired, this building may soon become unusable for its current functions," Warden Gregory Firkus wrote in a letter requesting $329,150 in emergency funds to fix the problems.

At Shawnee Correctional Center in Johnson County, officials said there are numerous fire code violations that have cost taxpayers $667,800 to fix in recent months.

At the state's main office building in Chicago, officials estimate the cost to repair a fire-control pump at $150,000. Without the emergency repair, the safety of the occupants of the building, as well as important state records, is in question.

Records show roof problems at the minimum-security lockup in Vienna have cost more than $2.4 million to fix. Without the work, officials said the interiors of 10 buildings were in jeopardy.

Northern Illinois University has spent nearly $486,000 in recent months on emergency repairs. The roof on the Neptune West residence hall was so leaky that several dorm rooms had to be closed. Road surfaces on the campus also had to be repaired to make sure emergency vehicles could reach at least two dormitories.

Southern Illinois University says it needs nearly $400 million to upgrade facilities at its Carbondale campus. At Illinois State University that figure is over $250 million. Eastern Illinois University says it needs $120 million to upgrade facilities, while the tab at Western Illinois University is $105 million.

Blagojevich has tied these critical repairs to his controversial jobs programs, some of which I addressed many moons ago in a post entitled "Just Give Him Your Wallet". Essentially, since Blagojevich is psychologically incapable of liberating the state's economy, he wants the state to create jobs directly by spending billions of dollars it doesn't have to build, among other things, roads and highways it doesn't need. In one case, he dug up $20,000,000 to hire bricklayers to add different colors and textures of bricks to state highways, to "add variety" to the system.

This isn't Alberta, Kuwait or Norway, folks. The money isn't coming out of the ground, there isn't an unlimited amount of it, and the basic duties of state government are not being performed. It's one of those situations that's truly alarming, because you have to wonder, if things are this bad, exactly how Louisiana-like would it be if there were a natural disaster?

The Breck Governor

How much does it cost for Rod Blagojevich to pretend he's a rock star?

Stuck for weeks combing over numbers in the state's fiscal impasse, Gov. Rod Blagojevich found himself the object of ridicule Saturday over a newly discovered $600 bill for a makeup artist he used when he unveiled his budget months ago.

The $600 bill was mistakenly paid with taxpayer funds, and the makeup artist is reimbursing the state, said Abby Ottenhoff, Blagojevich spokeswoman. The governor's political fund provided records that showed the artist had billed the campaign fund and been paid with campaign funds already.

But the $600 bill, first reported in the Southern Illinoisan, became a momentary subject of debate in the House.

As Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) attempted to send lawmakers home for the weekend, Rep. Ron Stephens (R-Greenville) jokingly questioned when to expect a meeting of the "Gubernatorial Cosmetology Committee," prompting laughter from many of the 53 lawmakers at the brief session.

"Word has not arrived from the second floor," said Madigan, referring to the governor's capitol office.

In the Senate, President Emil Jones (D-Chicago) noted he does his own makeup for appearances, saying he's "got a little powder to put on."

"We all want the governor to look good, but I don't know why he spent taxpayer money to look good," Jones said. "I don't think he would intentionally use taxpayer money to look good."

He assigned a taxpayer-funded bodyguard the job of carrying his hairbrush, used taxpayer-funded prison psychologists to monitor media coverage of his administration, and used taxpayer money to hire his own camera crews. What universe does Jones live in where he doesn't think Blagojevich would do this?

Speaking of pretending he's a rock star, his ongoing travel habits are still a concern:

Blagojevich was rightly criticized for his practice throughout most of May and June of flying from Chicago to Springfield, staying a couple of hours and then flying back. At a cost of $6,000 a day, it was a needless expense when the governor should have been in Springfield working full tilt on the budget.

Then Blagojevich's office announced that, beginning July 5, the governor would be staying in Springfield until a new budget is passed. Five days later, Blagojevich held a news conference to say he was calling the Legislature into special session to consider a gun-control bill. Three days after that, he held a news conference on health-care costs.

Care to guess where he held the news conferences? That's right, Chicago.

So even when he stays overnight in Springfield, Blagojevich still finds a way to run up the tab on the state airplane.

Blagojevich, seemingly insane, says that the ongoing budget crisis conforms to his plan, "totally what I envisioned".