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Thursday, January 6, 2011
Dana Milbank - Nancy Pelosi perma-grins and bears it as she hands speaker's gavel to John Boehner
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Tanned, Rested and Ready | NBC Chicago
A Rahm Emanuel press conference sure is different from a Miguel del Valle press conference. Two weeks ago, when del Valle toured a Rogers Park soup kitchen, only Ward Room and an ABC7 camera showed up to cover the event.
Tuesday morning, when Emanuel spoke at the Better Boys Foundation, a Lawndale community center, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter was there. So were six TV cameras.
A podium labeled “RAHM EMANUEL - MAYOR” bloomed with microphones as radio reporters demanded a sound check from an Emanuel press aide. The candidate himself stood behind a pillar, waiting to go on, while photographers with telephoto machine-gunned for his image.
"He thinks he’s running for president,” one reporter said. "Have you seen his press releases? They said the event was going to start at 10:30 a.m. Central Time. Why do you need to say Central Time? Everyone knows it’s in Chicago.”
Emanuel was as bronzed as an Apache from a 10-day vacation in Thailand. It was the first time he’s seen his family since they spent Thanksgiving in Los Angeles, he said.
A technician lowered the podium a few inches, since Emanuel is shorter than his press aide.
The press conference was about Emanuel’s plan to expand after-school activities, at community centers like the Better Boys Foundation."In 1994," Emanuel said, "I helped President Clinton pass a crime bill. Putting more police on the beat and doing community policing contributed to breaking a 30-year crime increase. The second piece of that, getting kids, guns, drugs off the street, was kids off the street. Those who wanted to play politics ridiculed at the time what they said was ‘midnight basketball."
The Better Boys Foundation has a dance program -- "a great way to warm my heart," Emanuel said -- a computer room, and a film program.
He proposed spending $95 million so kids all over the city can have a place like this: $50 million would come from the federal government, $15 million from Chicago Public Schools, $5 million from non-profits and $25 million from ads on garbage trucks and city stickers.
"That would pay for a full year’s program for a little over 200,000 kids in the Chicago Public Schools so they have after school programs," he said. "In addition to that, there will be a third meal. Kids will be safe, and kids will be learning.”
After a few polite questions about the after-school plan, the reporters asked Emanuel what they really wanted to know:
-- Will Bill Daley be able to handle the White House chief of staff’s job?
"Bill is a friend of mine, we’ve worked together, and he’s quite capable."-- Do you want to replace Superintendent Jody Weis?
"The superintendent’s contract is up. He’s already indicated he’s interested in moving on."-- How was your vacation?
"It was a great trip. I haven’t seen my family since Thanksgiving, and I got a chance to spend time with Amy and the kids during a period that traditionally you spend with your family."-- Are you going to win the residency case?
"The board made a decision. They decided that I was doing my work as President Obama’s chief of staff. That didn’t change my status or my love for the city. I’ve been a congressman for the city of Chicago, paid property taxes to the city of Chicago, raised my kids in the city of Chicago."-- Do you agree with other candidates who want to cancel the parking meter deal?
"What is upsetting to the people of Chicago is that we used those resources not to improve our infrastructure, but to pay our bills. I will ask people to look at that deal to see if there’s any part of it we can renegotiate to get a better deal for the taxpayers."At some point, the placard fell off Emanuel’s podium.
"I hope that’s not an omen," he cracked as everyone laughed. It was good to be home.
via nbcchicago.com
Scalia: Women Don't Have Constitutional Protection Against Discrimination
WASHINGTON -- The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect against discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, according to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In a newly published interview in the legal magazine California Lawyer, Scalia said that while the Constitution does not disallow the passage of legislation outlawing such discrimination, it doesn't itself outlaw that behavior:
In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.
For the record, the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause states: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Marcia Greenberger, founder and co-president of the National Women's Law Center, called the justice's comments "shocking" and said he was essentially saying that if the government sanctions discrimination against women, the judiciary offers no recourse.
"In these comments, Justice Scalia says if Congress wants to protect laws that prohibit sex discrimination, that's up to them," she said. "But what if they want to pass laws that discriminate? Then he says that there's nothing the court will do to protect women from government-sanctioned discrimination against them. And that's a pretty shocking position to take in 2011. It's especially shocking in light of the decades of precedents and the numbers of justices who have agreed that there is protection in the 14th Amendment against sex discrimination, and struck down many, many laws in many, many areas on the basis of that protection."
Greenberger added that under Scalia's doctrine, women could be legally barred from juries, paid less by the government, receive fewer benefits in the armed forces, and be excluded from state-run schools -- all things that have happened in the past, before their rights to equal protection were enforced.
Story continues below
Advertisement"In 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that they were protected, in an opinion by the conservative then Chief Justice Warren Burger," Adam Cohen wrote in Time in September. "It is no small thing to talk about writing women out of equal protection -- or Jews, or Latinos or other groups who would lose their protection by the same logic. It is nice to think that legislatures would protect these minorities from oppression by the majority, but we have a very different country when the Constitution guarantees that it is so."
In 1996, Scalia cast the sole vote in favor of allowing the Virginia Military Institute to continue denying women admission.
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Carol and Rahm Flaunt Their Egos | NBC Chicago
There’s a scene in Cheech and Chong’s Still Smokin’, in which the duo are giving a press conference in Amsterdam. When a reporter asks why they’ve decided to make a movie, Cheech responds with a lordly “Because,” then laughs at his own wit. It was funny then. It wasn’t so funny when Carol Moseley Braun told the press she wouldn’t release her tax returns because “I don’t want to.” Moseley Braun relented later in the day, but the fact that she thought she could get away with that answer is evidence she has not lost the sense of entitlement that was her undoing as a senator. By all accounts, Moseley Braun was a responsible, progressive politician in the 1980s, when she was Harold Washington’s point woman in Springfield. But as soon as he was elected to the Senate, her inner diva became her outer diva, and it’s never gone back inside. She celebrated by disappearing to Africa for a month-long vacation. When Congress debated a bill to take away members’ free parking at D.C.-area airports, Moseley Braun famously asked, “When is this Congress-bashing going to stop?” Her volatile, demanding personality caused her to run through five chiefs of staff in six years. At a Moseley Braun fundraiser in 1998, I was struck by how stiff and terrified her junior staffers appeared. So, a lot of senators have big egos. But Moseley Braun didn’t change after she was voted out. In late 2002, when Barack Obama was waiting for her to make a decision on another U.S. Senate run, “her basic attitude was that she had not made up her mind but obviously it is [her] prerogative to potentially run,” Obama would recall. Because, of course, it was her Senate seat, even though someone else was sitting in it at the time. At least Moseley Braun was available to answer a question. That’s more than we’ve gotten from Rahm Emanuel lately. Emanuel, who learned to be a prince at New Trier Township High School, recently disappeared to Thailand on a family vacation -- in the middle of a mayoral campaign run during the most difficult economic times this city has seen in a generation. Emanuel has so much money -- he’s said to have raised $10 million so far -- and such a big lead in the polls that he can campaign whenever and wherever he damn well feels like. That’s why he’s been blowing off community forums and declining interviews with local TV stations, as opponent Gery Chico pointed out in a very funny video. Now that Moseley Braun is the sole remaining black candidate, there’s a good chance these two egotists will meet in the run-off. They certainly deserve each other, but do we deserve their arrogance? BY EDWARD MCCLELLAND // 2 HOURS AGO Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Carol-and-Rahm-Flaunt-Their-Egos-11...
Monday, January 3, 2011
Scientists Create 52 Artificial Rain Storms in Abu Dhabi Desert - TIME NewsFeed
Fifty-two storms in Abu Dhabi this summer were artifically created.
Via Getty Images
Hail, lightning and gales came through the state's eastern region this summer thanks to scientist-puppetmasters.
As part of a secret program to control the weather in the Middle East, scientists working for the United Arab Emirates government artificially created rain where rain is generally nowhere to be found. The $11 million project, which began in July, put steel lampshade-looking ionizers in the desert to produce charged particles. The negatively charged ions rose with the hot air, attracting dust. Moisture then condensed around the dust and eventually produced a rain cloud. A bunch of rain clouds.
On the 52 days it rained in the region throughout July and August, forecasters did not predict rain once.
While fascinating, this is not the first time scientists have attempted to mess with Mother Nature. China has been tinkering with cloud seeding for years, not always successfully.
(Read TIME's story about how the Chinese artificially created snow.)
But the idea that countries in the Middle East could actually create rain in this water-poor region could go a long way to solving the area's problems with drought and is considered to be cheaper than desalination. But how controllable the weather can be is still in doubt, and the consequences of meddling with nature at this level are yet to be seen.
(Read TIME's story about the blizzard of 2010, possibly another sign of climate change.)
Clout St: Braun won't release tax returns 'because I don't want to'
Clout StChicago and Illinois politics
-->« Gery Chico says he's raised $2.5 million for Chicago mayor's race | Main | Cab ride surcharge surges to $1 starting Tuesday »
January 03, 2011
Braun won't release tax returns 'because I don't want to'
Posted by Jeff Coen at 12:17 p.m.; updated at 2:52 p.m.
Mayoral candidate Carol Moseley Braun today said she won't make her tax returns public before next month's election.
"Because I don't want to," Braun said when asked why she wouldn't be releasing them in the time before the Feb. 22 election.
Fellow candidates Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico already have released their tax returns. You can read about Emanuel's by clicking here and Chico's clicking here. City Clerk Miguel del Valle, a mayoral candidate, also has released his returns. You can read about them by clicking here.
Braun has said she won't release her returns unless she makes it to the April 5 runoff election. Such an election won't happen unless none of the candidates score 50 percent plus one on Feb. 22.
Chico criticized Braun, saying voters are entitled to see her tax returns.
"I think it's about transparency," Chico said, telling reporters he didn't know of her choice. "Give it out....There's nothing to hide. You pay your taxes, you pay your bills, you give it out."
Braun made the statement at a conclusion of a news conference she called on the controversial deal that turned over Chicago's parking meter deal to a private group in return for a one-time payout.
Braun said she would do everything she could to have the deal cancelled and renegotiated if she becomes the city's chief executive. She said more information was needed when the contract was inked.
"We might not have been saddled with such a rotten deal," she said, adding Chicago was "snookered."
Reporters asked how that would work, since the city signed its rights away after hiring its own adviser. "You sue them all," she said.
Chico called his own news conference to accuse Braun of perpetuating "hysteria" over the meter deal and offering an unrealistic remedy.
Any breaking of the deal automatically would put the citizens of Chicago on the hook for its $1.2 billion cost, he said. Chico agreed the deal was a fiasco, he said, but the situation would be worsened by a doomed, expensive court fight.The parking meter issue has been a popular target for mayoral candidates, but experts say little can be done given that the city already has spent nearly all of the $1.1 billion it got from leasing the meters.
Posted at 12:18:16 PM in 2011 Chicago election, 2011 Chicago mayor's race
Comments
She is just as arrogant as she was as a senator. She's the female Tombstone Burris.
Posted by: Rick7890 | January 03, 2011 at 03:07 PM
Yeah...she's the most qualified. *snicker* What are you hiding, Carol? If she cannot be this forthcoming now, wonder what she will be like if she got in office? Citizens deserve transparency especially since we got shafted enough already.
Posted by: Rosie | January 03, 2011 at 02:59 PM
Ridiculous! And she wants to be Mayor! I don't think so!
Posted by: Mimi | January 03, 2011 at 02:51 PM
Well, I don't want to vote for her.
Posted by: Cheryl | January 03, 2011 at 02:49 PM
This denial is a legitimate reason why the good citizens of the City of Chicago shouldn't have to vote for you! You pop in on the scene from out of nowhere, kick Danny Davis to the curb , have Jesse at your side whispering in your ear and this all somehow makes you qualified? NOT! You couldn't get reelected to Congress. Girl friend, take your tired act elsewhere!
You can't always get what YOU want!
Posted by: Dave | January 03, 2011 at 02:46 PM
Plus ca change, plus la meme
life goes on
Posted by: terry | January 03, 2011 at 02:39 PM
Gee, Carol, If I was ever suspected of using campaign funds to buy jewelry and to pay for vacations to Hawaii with my special friend, or to take trips to Nigeria, I probably wouldn't be releasing my personal tax returns either.
Posted by: Carl | January 03, 2011 at 02:29 PM
Oops - should have proof read. I meant Miguel Del Valle not Chico.
Posted by: Dave Hutton | January 03, 2011 at 02:29 PM
Then she obviously has something to hide. She needs to get off her high horse and do what it takes to show she is serious about the possibilty, very slim as it is about being Mayor.
Posted by: Citygirl | January 03, 2011 at 02:27 PM
And we get our first taste of what it would be like to have CMB as our Mayor.
NEXT!
Posted by: Mark | January 03, 2011 at 02:27 PM
I agree 100% the parking meter deal was idiotic. More of the same from the current regime we have been forced to live with for the past 20+ years. But what does C.M.B think she can do about it?
"You sue them all" ????? Does that include Daley and the City Council? Or is she going to follow the Obama game plan and rip up legally binding contracts to suit his own political needs?
With candidates like this everybody in Chicago should be very scared. I never thought I'd say this - but Chico is looking more and more like the best option we have. He doesn't seem to be part of the corrupt regime like Rahm nor is he completely out of touch with reality like Braun.
Posted by: Dave Hutton | January 03, 2011 at 02:24 PM
I don't want to vote for you.
Posted by: rhino | January 03, 2011 at 02:15 PM
This is the type of complete lack of anything even coming close to resembling competency that Carol Moseley Braun demonstrated during her one term as U.S. Senator.
The fact that she refuses to release her tax returns, strictly on the basis that she doesn't want to, should send up a whole forest of red flags all over the landscape.
If anything, Carol Moseley Braun has now proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that she is totally unqualified to serve as Mayor of Chicago, much less 3rd Grade Level Meter Maid of Chicago.
Posted by: CGull | January 03, 2011 at 02:12 PM
Two front-running candidates release their returns, you won't. Carol...you're only hurting what little chance you have of winning (and that's pretty little).
Posted by: bigdog0319 | January 03, 2011 at 02:06 PM
What the heck is she HIDING???
Posted by: Ralphie | January 03, 2011 at 02:03 PM
One word: "LOL!"
Posted by: joa a | January 03, 2011 at 02:02 PM
Is anyone surprised?
Posted by: Joy Rogers | January 03, 2011 at 02:01 PM
What a coincidence Ms. Braun, I won't vote for you because I don't want to.
Posted by: Pablo | January 03, 2011 at 02:01 PM
So she has played another card, and it once again proves Braun is not playing with a full deck. "Reporters asked how that would work, since the city signed its rights away after hiring its own adviser. "You sue them all," she said." A good indicator as to how she may solve problems for the City. Not a good problem solver. Our next Mayor needs to be smarter than the average bear, "sue them all" is not what I would expect to hear from an effective leader.
Posted by: Giacomo | January 03, 2011 at 01:56 PM
Wonder why?
1. Moseley Braun was the subject of a 1993 Federal Elections Commission investigation over $249,000 in unaccounted-for campaign funds.
2. She helped her mother hide assets so that her mother could recieve Medicare benefits.
That's why she might not want to.
Posted by: md_chgo | January 03, 2011 at 01:56 PM
I wont vote for you because I don't want to!
Posted by: chicagomicky | January 03, 2011 at 01:50 PM
Another democrat with something to hide. But that's OK, all the dems running are crooked as a dog's hind leg. That's how the Chicago sheeple love them.
Posted by: Larry | January 03, 2011 at 01:50 PM
This is nauseating.
Posted by: Charlotte | January 03, 2011 at 01:48 PM
Is she trying to hide *more* embarrassing overseas business activities?
Posted by: Chris | January 03, 2011 at 01:46 PM
Braun is so arrogant and she knows nothing about contracts. She would spend millions in attorneys fees (probably some friends) to try to void this contract and then give back the money which the city doesn't have. Unbelievable!
Posted by: Kathleen1325 | January 03, 2011 at 01:42 PM
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Your alderman's expense account
How Chicago's 50 aldermen are using their expense accountsWhat's your alderman's side job?
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Tribune investigation: How cash and clout transformed Chicago neighborhoods.
What's your alderman's side job?
All 50 aldermen on the Chicago City Council had to file paperwork earlier this year detailing their outside income and gifts. The Tribune took that ethics paperwork and posted the information here for you to see. You can search by ward number or alderman's last name.
What's the estimated property tax bill in your town?
The Cook County Assessor's office has put together lists of projected median property tax bills for all suburban towns and city neighborhoods. We've posted them for you to get a look at who's paying more and who's paying less.
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Illinois Has Days to Plug $13 Billion Budget Gap - Bloomberg
Dan Hynes, outgoing comptroller for the state of Illinois. Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg
Jan. 3 (Bloomberg) -- William Atwood, executive director of the Illinois State Board of Investments, talks about the possibility Illinois lawmakers may approve a plan to sell $3.7 billion of bonds to fund the state's pension contributions. Illinois State Board of Investments manages about one-fifth of the pension funds. Atwood talks with Jon Erlichman on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)
Illinois lawmakers will try this week to accomplish in a few days what they have been unable to do in the past two years -- resolve the state’s worst financial crisis.
The legislative session that began today as the House convened will take aim at a budget deficit of at least $13 billion, including a backlog of more than $6 billion in unpaid bills and almost $4 billion in missed payments to underfunded state pensions.
The fiscal mess is largely of the lawmakers’ own making, and failure to address the shortages threatens public schools, local governments and other public services, said Dan Hynes, the state’s outgoing comptroller.
“We’ve reached a very critical and concerning point,” Hynes said in an interview in his Chicago office, with packing boxes stacked in the corner. “What’s missing right now is a general understanding by the public of where we are, of how bad it is, and what the fallout would be if we don’t deal with it properly.”
What the public may not appreciate, Wall Street does. Illinois shares with California the lowest U.S. state credit rating from Moody’s Investors Service, which in September forecast possible “further financial deterioration.” Unlike California, Moody’s assigned Illinois a negative outlook.
Illinois’s deficit, about half its $26 billion general-fund budget, puts it among the U.S. states confronting $140 billion in shortfalls in the coming fiscal year after closing $160 billion in gaps this year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group.
Debt Costs Rising
Hynes, 42, predicted the deficit might rise to $15 billion by midyear, and that prospect has come with a price tag. The cost of insuring Illinois debt against default rose to a five- month high last week as the state headed into this year without a plan to finance a $3.7 billion pension-fund contribution.
Insuring $10 million of Illinois debt against default cost $350,000 a year on Dec. 29, more than California’s $298,000, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Illinois and Arizona were the weakest states in a Dec. 30 financial-strength index report from the Chicago office of BMO Capital Markets, a financial services company.
Lawmakers meeting in Springfield will consider spending cuts, an expansion of casino gambling and a proposal from Democratic Governor Pat Quinn to borrow $15 billion to pay overdue bills and help fill the budget hole.
The bill before the House would create five new casinos, including one in Chicago, and authorize electronic gaming at horse-racing tracks and nine existing casinos. The measure has passed the Senate.
Borrowing Plan
Quinn, 62, also has proposed boosting the state income tax to 4 percent from 3 percent, raising about $3 billion a year.
The governor needs Senate approval of a borrowing plan to make this year’s payment into the pension funds. The Illinois State Board of Investments will start buying back assets sold to pay benefits if lawmakers approve the debt sale, William Atwood, executive director of the panel, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television today.
The three pensions run by the board, which manages $10 billion, have been selling assets to pay retirees since Illinois failed to contribute for the fiscal year that began July 1.
Borrowing by Illinois is what credit analysts, Hynes and bond investors point to as a major reason why the state’s financial standing fell so far so fast.
Gross Criticism
Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, said Illinois was one of the states whose debt he would avoid.
“Illinois is probably in the worst shape,” Gross said in a Dec. 28 interview on CNBC.
The widening gap between Illinois’s expenses and revenue drew criticism from Moody’s. The disparity underscored the state’s “chronic unwillingness to confront a long-term, structural budget deficit,” it said in a Dec. 29 study.
The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and politicians’ unwillingness to cut budgets explain the descent since 2008, said Tom Johnson, president of the nonpartisan Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois. Annual sales and income-tax revenue fell for the first time in modern history, he said.
“The state was hoping for a quick recovery or inflation, and they didn’t get it,” Johnson said in a telephone interview. “And there was no appetite to reduce the escalating costs of spending.”
‘Revenues Went South’
The falloff in revenue aggravated the state’s historic practice of delaying payments to vendors and carrying those costs on from one year to the next.
“Revenues went south, spending went north,” Johnson said. “It’s unsustainable.”
The current-year budget deficit of $13 billion is roughly half the size of the state’s general-fund budget. Borrowing to pay bills continues. In November the state sold $1.5 billion of bonds backed by tobacco settlement payments to help pay vendors.
“We have seen a lot of the budgetary tools that really don’t qualify as real solutions used, whether it’s short-term borrowing, pension borrowing, delays in payments, the sale of future revenues,” Hynes said.
Illinois business leaders have warned that the state’s failure to properly fund pensions means the plans will run out of money to pay promised benefits before the decade ends.
“We’re in the midst of the most severe financial crisis in recent memory,” Miles White, chairman of Abbott Park, Illinois- based Abbott Laboratories, said Sept. 27 at a forum on state affairs.
Operating Expenses
“The state has been spending $3 for every $2 it takes in, and borrowing to cover its current operating expenses,” said White, chairman of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.
The state had $64 billion of assets to pay estimated liabilities of $126.4 billion as of June, or less than half the amount needed for almost 723,000 workers, retirees and other beneficiaries, according to bond documents.
The question facing lawmakers is whether they can reverse the slide into more debt. The gravity of the situation is registering with the General Assembly, said James Nowlan, a former member of the state House and now a senior fellow at the University of Illinois Institute of Government & Public Affairs.
“I think they’re finally educated that all the one-time adjustments and shenanigans have been pulled, and they are now facing the fiscal abyss,” Nowlan said in a telephone interview. “But maybe I’m too hopeful.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Jones in Chicago at tjones58@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Tannenbaum at mtannen@bloomberg.net
via bloomberg.com
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