July 28, 2019

How Illinois pols have pocketed more than $5M in what Barack Obama once dubbed 'legalized bribery'

In January, with her 24 years on the Chicago City Council drawing to the end, Ald. Marge Laurino (39th) gave herself a reward: a $27,789.78 payout from her campaign fund.

Two months later, newly retired Sen. James Clayborne Jr., a Belleville Democrat, similarly marked the occasion by paying himself $42,204.65 out of his campaign fund.

For both, the amounts matched to the penny the balance each officeholder had in their political accounts on June 30, 1998.

That’s a magic date for elected officials in Illinois. That’s because it yields a magic number: the amount of money they legally can keep for themselves, no questions asked.

Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2019/7/26/8930350/campaign-funds-illinois-elected-officials-personal-payouts-ethics-reform

July 28, 2019

Lawmakers: Push for affordable housing solutions just beginning

Lack of affordable housing affects many facets of family life — access to education and health care, for example — for Illinoisans throughout the state, Sen. Mattie Hunter and Rep. Delia Ramirez say.

It’s a truth the Chicago Democrats said they each experienced before their time in office. Each has a background in social service work — Hunter as a community organizer who grew up in public housing and Ramirez as director of a community social service agency.

Illinois’ affordable housing program received $200 million through the state’s first capital plan in 10 years, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in late June. Other investments totaling about $129 million are included elsewhere in the budget.

And while Hunter and Ramirez said that money will make a “significant difference,” they added it will take $1 billion to properly address the infrastructure need in Illinois.

Read more: https://www.sj-r.com/news/20190728/lawmakers-push-for-affordable-housing-solutions-just-beginning

July 28, 2019

Woman set to replace Puerto Rico's governor rejects job

Source: AP

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO -- The woman who is supposed to replace Puerto Rico's embattled governor announced Sunday that she doesn't want the job as the U.S. territory reels from political crisis.

Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez said in a Twitter post that she hopes Gov. Ricardo Rosselló will appoint a secretary of state before resigning Aug. 2 as planned.

Former Secretary of State Luis Rivera Marín would have been next in line as governor, according to the U.S. territory's constitution. But he is one of more than a dozen officials who have resigned in recent weeks since someone leaked an obscenity-laced chat in which Rosselló and close advisers insulted people including women and victims of Hurricane Maria.

Rosselló on Wednesday announced that he would step down following nearly two weeks of massive protests amid anger over the chat, corruption charges against several former government officials and a 13-year recession.

Read more: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article233238626.html

July 28, 2019

Statehouse Insider: Magazine ranks Pritzker best of the new governors

Governing Magazine, a monthly publication based in Washington, D.C., has some more than kind words for Gov. J.B. PRITZKER.

The magazine rated 20 governors who were first elected in 2018, grouping them into three categories — those who are thriving, those who are surviving and those who are struggling. Within each of those categories, the magazine ranked the governors in them.

Pritzker was placed in the thriving category and finished first among the 11 governors in that category. The magazine said Pritzker “has been able to make the most of his party’s solid majorities in the legislature” while also working with the GOP.

It said Pritzker’s legislative achievements showed up in progress toward restoring some fiscal stability and “a shift to the left in social issues.” It gave Pritzker credit for the capital plan and the means to pay for it, bringing the graduated income tax issue to the 2020 ballot and raising the minimum wage.

Read more: https://www.sj-r.com/news/20190727/statehouse-insider-magazine-ranks-pritzker-best-of-new-governors
(Springfield State Journal Register)

July 28, 2019

1919 Chicago Race Riots

Note: I found some links at Capitolfax,com that I wanted to share about the 1919 Chicago race riots. I haven't read the material, but I thought the information might be interesting for other DUers.


* Blood in the Streets: A hundred years ago, Chicago experienced the worst spasm of racial violence in the city’s history. Here’s how the riot unfolded, in the words of those who lived it.

* It’s Been 100 Years: Is Chicago Finally Ready To Reckon With the City’s 1919 Race Riots?: Not talking about the 1919 race riots has been the Chicago Way for 100 years, but ignoring one of the ugliest periods in the city’s history is hampering its present and future.

* Editorial: Chicago’s race riots of 1919 and the epilogue that resonates today

* Segregation among issues Chicago faces 100 years after riots

* Before Chicago erupted into race riots in 1919, Carl Sandburg reported on the fissures

* Mapping Chicago’s 1919 race riots

* Chicago Organizations Commemorate 100th Anniversary of Race Riots

* Chicago’s Red Summer

* 1919 Race Riots bike tour travels 100 years back to city’s most violent week

The source for this excerpt is https://capitolfax.com/2019/07/26/unclear-on-the-concept-114/ ..

July 28, 2019

Pritzker signs bills aimed at protecting immigrant youth

CHICAGO (AP) — Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed two laws aimed at protecting young immigrants in Illinois, including those whose parents are deported.

One law extends the time a child can have a short-term guardian if their parents are detained or deported by federal immigration authorities. The law doubles the amount of time from one to two years.

The other is intended to help young immigrants seeking special visas as victims of abuse or neglect. The law authorizes juvenile, family and adoption courts to move forward with and grant a petition for what’s called special immigrant juvenile status.

Pritzker signed the measures Tuesday.

Read more: http://rockrivertimes.com/2019/07/25/pritzker-signs-bills-aimed-at-protecting-immigrant-youth/

July 28, 2019

Is the first slave freed by Lincoln under a parking lot?

Twenty-two years before Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he won an Illinois State Supreme Court case that freed Nance Legins-Costley.

Legins-Costley was an indentured servant in the eyes of the law, but, by all rights, she was a slave. She’d never been free. Neither she nor anyone else ever signed paperwork giving up her liberty. Nonetheless, she was bought and sold, first while still in the womb, when an Illinois state senator bought her parents. But the state Supreme Court ruled her a free woman after Lincoln took up her cause as a lawyer.

“It is a presumption of law, in the state of Illinois, that every person is free, without regard to color,” the court ruled. “The sale of a free person is illegal.”

Carl Adams, a former Alton resident who’s written a book about Legins-Costley, has been looking for her grave since the 1990s. Finally, he says he’s found it, thanks to help from a cast of amateur historians, a librarian and a dedicated genealogist. Legins-Costley, it turns out, may be beneath a Peoria parking lot, next to a muffler shop, alongside Civil War veterans and others whose graves were forgotten over the years.

Adams says the parking lot deserves a memorial. “Because she was the first slave freed by Abraham Lincoln, I think it should be 50 feet tall,” Adams says.

Read more: https://illinoistimes.com/article-21450-is-the-first-slave-freed-by-lincoln-under-a-parking-lot.html

July 28, 2019

State officials investigating Legionnaire's at hospital

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois Department of Public Health is investigating two cases of Legionnaire’s disease in people who were patients at Rush Oak Park Hospital.

State authorities are working with local and hospital officials. Water samples were taken this week for testing. Previous samples contained Legionella bacteria.

Legionnaire’s disease is a sometimes-fatal flu-like malady caused by inhaling infected water vapor.

One patient was at the hospital in May and the other in mid-July.

Read more: https://www.apnews.com/2caf1bfacc6941f48e4990fff92c8574

July 28, 2019

Anti-Trump energy propels new Vanderburgh Democratic team

EVANSVILLE — Edie Hardcastle didn't have time for politics before Donald Trump was elected president. Now she's the new chairman of Vanderburgh County's battle-scarred Democratic Party.

Her meteoric rise says volumes about the local party's evolution in recent years. The show isn't being run anymore by people — the same people — who spent years toiling in the party vineyards, racking up victory after victory against disorganized, outnumbered Republicans. Death has claimed many of those people, even those who were relatively young. Careers and life took the rest.

The power in the Vanderburgh County Democratic Party now resides with people who became politically active in urgent response to Donald Trump. They run not on gas or food but on resistance. They haven't tasted victory yet.

"I voted — that's how active I was," Hardcastle, a biology professor at the University of Southern Indiana, said of her life before 2016. "I saw my political activity as simply making sure that I educated, basically, our future. I saw teaching as my activism."

Read more: https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/2019/07/26/anti-trump-energy-propels-new-vanderburgh-democratic-team/1816519001/

July 28, 2019

Dan Quayle: If Democrats 'put up some total left winger' Donald Trump will be re-elected

Former Vice President Dan Quayle said Thursday there are such extremes from both sides serving in Washington he's not sure he'd be considered a conservative in 2019 —and he's not surprised there is dissent in D.C.

"We're going through this phase right now, both left and right, you send the extremes down there, no wonder they don't get along," Quayle said. "Used to be center left, center right and I was always considered a conservative. I still (am), but i don't know in today's political environment where I'd fit in. Some of the conservatives probably wouldn't think I was conservative, but I am."

Quayle, an Indianapolis native who served as second in command under the late President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, appeared as a guest on the "Query & Schultz" (1260-AM) Fox Sports radio show as part of the program's "Catching Up With" series.

The nearly 30-minute interview began with talk from Quayle about sports — those irate Maryland senators he had to face after the Colts left Baltimore for Indianapolis, and Quayle's displeasure with Indiana high school class basketball.

But the conversation soon veered to politics, with Quayle seemingly comparing Bush and himself with the current administration of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

Read more: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/07/26/dan-quayle-if-democrats-put-up-some-total-left-winger-trump-re-elected/1836814001/

I know, nobody cares what Quayle says.