Mayor-for-life reigns in a faux democracy

Voters seem content to seal Daley's power and ignore challengers

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

And now, a question from the department of metaphysics: Is it really a democracy when nearly everyone votes for the same guy, whether the reason is that he has ...

A. Performed so wunnerfully that no one else in sight could do better. Or,

B. Gathered so much power unto himself that few, if any, challengers have a chance of beating him.

Thus, the Chicago mayoral election, in which Mayor Richard Daley is considered to be a cinch to be recrowned as city sovereign for one, or both, of the above reasons. Serious voters can ponder why they have so little choice, which is the essence of a functioning democracy. True, getting three out of every four votes is not the same thing as the 100 percent that the Kremlin regularly turned out because no one else was on the ballot.

Chicago is not alone in this. In countless suburbs, you literally have no choice, because only one name appears on the ballot for many village, school and other municipal offices. There, few challengers step forward because few are interested in volunteering for a non-paying job that easily can turn into a full-time one. There, candidates are elected by acclamation.

This pretty much describes the Chicago mayoral race, as Daley's competition has been written off by the power elites--business, media and so forth. And by legions of folks who say they don't plan to "waste" their vote by voting for a "loser"--one of the most stupid concepts ever to undermine democratic government. Even organized labor, which is pouring money into anti-Daley challengers in some aldermanic races, dares not make a serious effort to unseat Daley.

Which has to fry the patience of Daley's two major opponents.

In any other city, a candidate who racked up 800,000 votes in a prior election--as Daley challenger Dorothy Brown did in Chicago during her 2004 re-election as Cook County Circuit Court clerk--would be considered a strong opponent. Here, she is casually written off as not having a chance, despite an impressive resume. She is an attorney, a certified public accountant, holds a master's degree in business administration and now manages an office with an annual operating budget of $100 million and a workforce of more than 2,000 employee positions. Daley's other major opponent, William "Dock" Walls, an aide to the late Mayor Harold Washington, is no Spanky the Clown (the perennial local candidate who, indeed, never had a chance).

For a while, it looked like we'd have what many folks considered to be a "real" race, as Democratic congressmen Luis Gutierrez and Jesse Jackson Jr. were stoking up their mayoral campaigns with heavy rhetoric about Daley's failings, principally the administration's dismal history of corruption.

Mocking Daley, Gutierrez said, "The essence of [Daley's] message is, `You know me, trust me, I have a record, but the hiring incident isn't part of my record. Jon Burge [former police commander] isn't part of my record. The scandals of contracting, those aren't part of my record. Every time there's an issue, `that's not part of my record.'"

Good stuff. But then, when Democrats won control of the House, Jackson and Gutierrez opted for the sure thing--more powerful positions in the House. In endorsing Daley, Gutierrez decided Daley wasn't so bad after all, saying Daley has made significant steps to clean up corruption.

Even for a town as cynical as Chicago, this was an act of towering cynicism.

It has been a generation now since Chicago was last bitten by real democracy, and the wounds apparently never have healed. The bitter battles that split aldermen in "council wars" during the Washington administration is the only reference point for many Chicagoans. That democracy can descend into such hostility may have been too much for Chicago voters to handle, because they've settled down to ratifying a mayor-for-life every four years.

Still, this election is a chance for voters to take democracy out for a test drive. For the first time in years, there's real competition in a number of aldermanic races, involving real, qualified candidates. True, it might be a scary thing for some Chicago voters to get back on after getting thrown by council wars. But if democracy can blossom in Eastern European capitals after decades of autocracy, why not Chicago?

Maybe it's time to give it another try.

Health-care check, please

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

It's nice and compassionate that Cook County is giving away free health care to thousands of people from the collar counties.

But with Cook County looking at a deficit approaching a half billion dollars, it's irresponsible, and the mooching by the collar counties should stop now.

Certainly not in a way that would suddenly throw indigent families from the collar counties who travel to Stroger Hospital and other Cook County health facilities into the cold. But in a way that Lake, DuPage, McHenry, Kane and Will Counties would at least pony up their fair share. Or take care of their own indigent. But in the four weeks since the news broke of the sponging, no one has stepped forward to say they should or would pay.

What can account for such generosity when doctors, nurses and clinics are getting the boot in Cook County because of budget cuts? Why, when tens of thousands of Cook County residents are waiting interminably in long lines for health care and medications, are thousands more non-residents allowed in line?

Are the boards of the collar counties jumping up and saying, let's do an accounting of how many of our residents are using services that we are morally and legally obliged to provide, and at least reimburse Cook County? Are the collar counties so poor that they can't pitch in for their share?

Apparently, the mooching had been going on for a long time, until Dr. Robert Simon, the county's health chief, tried last month to stop it. Patients, he said, would have to prove they are Cook County residents; those who aren't either must be referred to the public health departments of their own counties or pay in full. Elective surgeries or procedures would have to be paid up front.

But just before the policy could be implemented, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger rescinded it. A Stroger spokesman, speaking in the usual language of bureaucratic equivocation, left room for rescinding the rescission, or not. At the risk of appearing hard-hearted, the County Board should take matters into its own hands while it is struggling to find ways to balance its budget and end the practice.

County officials did not respond to requests by the Chicago Tribune for information on how many non-residents are served and at what cost. Whatever it is, it probably wouldn't cut very much into the mountainous deficit, which Stroger initially addressed with a cynical demand that county officers make across-the-board 17 percent cuts in their budgets.

Cynical because Stroger dodges the difficult job of finding and pushing for cuts that are more deserving than others. That would require sniffing out the worthless and undeserving who have infiltrated the ranks of county workers during his father's tenure. Stroger obviously doesn't want to be the one wielding the ax.

Cynical because it puts the onus on county commissioners to make the difficult choices. Cynical because he can veto the board's cuts, blaming the commissioners for supposedly (1) not cutting deep enough or (2) heartlessly cutting essential services--whichever serves his political purposes.

In demanding a sweeping cut of 17 percent, Stroger knew that he would raise a hornet's nest of protest, so, superficially, it appears to be a courageous act. Especially among the people who voted for him. Now, the same folks are calling it obscene and a betrayal.

If it weren't for the essential services being indiscriminately cut by Stroger, it would be hard to work up much sympathy for those voters and critics. They ignored the obvious dangers of voting for a political hack who is putting and keeping relatives and friends in well-paying positions. Some refused to vote against him because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Republican, any Republican. Others were so suffused with their pro-choice, anti-gun ideology that they couldn't bring themselves to vote for the reform that was so obviously needed. Many of them were self-styled progressives who, this time, couldn't stomach change or reform.

Time to let Stroger know that we don't like what he's doing, we're told. Call him up, give him a piece of your mind, attend a protest, send an e-mail. Too late. No use. He has almost four years left in his term, and when the next election arrives, he knows that the same people will vote for him again, for the same ridiculous reasons.

Congress to launch a hot air resolution

By Dennis Byrne
Political Mavens

As Congress, supposedly speaking for all Americans, debates resolutions that trash U.S. efforts to secure freedom and security for millions of Middle East peoples, here’s what I, a mere citizen, would like to see in the resolution, but won’t:

Whereas, the people of the United States have endowed its government with the obligation of protecting and promoting certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and

Whereas, the government of the United State affirms that these unalienable rights extend to all human beings, and

Whereas, a democracy is the best political system designed by man for ensuring these rights, while dictatorship, theocracy, monarchy and other forms of autocracy are not, and

Read more at Political Mavens

Bad Research, Worse Reporting on Global Warming

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

In trying to prove that the Bush administration is throttling research into global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists rolled out some breathtakingly bad science.

The group unveiled a supposedly scientific survey of more than 1,600 federal climate scientists as evidence that the administration was engaged in "wide-ranging political interference in research related to global warming."

"The new evidence shows that political interference in climate science is no longer a series of isolated incidents but a system-wide epidemic," Dr. Francesca Grifo, Director of the UCS Scientific Integrity Program, said in a press release. "Tailoring scientific fact for political purposes has become a problem across many federal science agencies."

Grifo obviously doesn't' appreciate the irony when he trots out a poll that is so flawed that it is manifest evidence of exaggeration, incompetence or dishonesty on his group's part.

You don't have to be a social scientist to understand that the survey was deceptive, for example, when it lumped into the same category scientists who said they actually experienced the alleged tampering and scientists who simply "perceived" that it happened to someone else. For example, the group's press release said "Forty-three percent of respondents reported they had perceived or personally experienced changes or edits during review of their work that changed the meaning of their scientific findings." But turn to the study's appendix, and you'll find that only 15 percent of the respondents said that they had actually experienced such interference.

Read more at RealClearPolitics

Obama the Hack

By Dennis Byrne
Human Events

Turns out that Barack Obama, the sainted Democratic presidential hopeful, can be every bit the hack as the next run-of-the-mouth politician.

Not long after announcing the creation of a committee to explore his possible presidential run, the Illinois senator high-tailed it to New Orleans to throw some of the mud left behind by Hurricane Katrina on President George W. Bush.

With due solemnity, Obama joined the chorus of political opportunists blaming Bush's incompetence and indifference for New Orleans' sorry state. Talking to a special hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Obama said that in the weeks after the hurricane,"an ashamed nation looked at what had been allowed to happen here and said, 'Never again. Never will we turn our backs on these people. Never will we forget what happened here.'" (One would hope that in the future he would never again resort to the cliché "never again.") Money, he said, is "still not reaching ordinary folks" quickly enough. "Until it does, all the numbers, the meetings and the planning that's being done is inadequate."

Read more at Human Events

Tug o' war and Constitution

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Now that the Super Bowl is over, we can return fulltime to idolizing Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

Just kidding. But now that I have your attention, does anyone think that the Iraq war is pushing us into a constitutional crisis? President Bush, citing his constitutional powers as commander in chief, says he decides whether to increase U.S. troops in Iraq. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and others are holding out the possibility that constitutionally they can force an end to the war by defunding the troops.

True, this isn't as much fun as fulminating about Joe "Mouth-Run-Amuck" Biden's remark that Obama is the first "clean" African-American presidential candidate, or laying into Democratic hypocrisy for giving Biden a pass while skewering former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) for his "macaca" comment.

But it's more important, because America's system of checks and balances could face a tough test. The Constitution's framers separated our government's powers to prevent the abuse of governmental powers exercised by kings and would-be tyrants, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. The framers, tutored by such political theorists of their time as Baron de Montesquieu, concluded that the best way to check the abuse of governmental power was to divvy it up among different, sometimes competing, branches of government. Hence, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our federal government.

It has worked well, except when an issue falls into that in-between gray area, when opposing branches stubbornly claim jurisdiction. Such as with war powers. The Constitution explicitly gives the president the exclusive power to command the armed forces, meaning he gets to decide how they are used. The Constitution gives Congress the explicit power to declare war, and to raise and support armies.

But does it give Congress the power to undeclare a war? Can it tell the president to roll it all up and send everyone home? Anti-war lawmakers say it can, because only Congress can appropriate the money that the president spends, whether it is on a war or a memorial to the late bandleader Lawrence Welk. Without money to, say, buy ammo, the Army would have no choice but to pack up and fly home. Or stay with empty rifles and be slaughtered. One might say that no congressman in his right mind would want to leave the president with that sort of choice.

On the other hand, Congress can appropriate money for, say, sending the troops "over the horizon" to Kuwait, but the chief executive can defy Congress (beyond using his veto) by simply refusing to deploy the troops.

This could be a fine mess, precisely the kind of dispute that the Supreme Court often wants to avoid. So what to do? Congress can't raise its own army to "force" the president to do what it wants. The president can't send a tank or two over to Capitol Hill to make Congress do what he wants.

So, it comes back to doing what is reasonable and wise. And if you want a case in which it was unreasonable and unwise for Congress to conduct a war and, in effect, make foreign policy (another of the president's explicit powers), check out how the Vietnam War ended. Officially, the Paris Peace Accords, negotiated by the chief executive, ended it, but the war between the North and the South continued with our chiseled-in-stone promise to reply with "severe retaliatory action" if the North ever violated the treaty.

Which the North did by expanding its military force in the South. President Gerald Ford confessed he could do nothing about it because Congress had passed the Case-Church Amendment that forbade any more U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. All Ford could do was respond with diplomatic protests, which further emboldened the North and demoralized the South. When Congress subsequently withdrew its financial aid for the South, the end came. It was a North Vietnamese tank that broke down the gates to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, not a pajama-clad Viet Cong. Thanks to Congress, we lost an ally and the North imposed a brutal and deadly regime on the South.

Notwithstanding the Constitution, it has been a long-held belief and practice that the conduct of wars and foreign policy belong to the president.

That's for a reason. Because while the president might or might not bungle how he uses those powers, it is nearly certain that Congress will.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Dems Should Dump Ethically Challenged Harry Reid

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

Instead of talking in sweeping platitudes about "ethics reform," Senate Democrats might want to prove they mean it by dumping their ethically challenged majority leader, Harry Reid.

The Nevada lawmaker has been implicated in yet another land scheme that this time could net him a tidy $50,000 to $290,000. Los Angeles Times investigative reporters Chuck Neubauer and Tom Hamburger, this week revealed that Reid paid $166 an acre for valuable northern Arizona land whose market value, according to the county assessor, four years ago was worth $2,144 an acre.

Who would be a big enough fool to sell Reid the land at such a ludicrously low price? A long-time pal who would financially benefit from some obscure legislation that the senator has often sponsored.

Read more at RealClearPolitics

A super pioneer in own right

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

By now, anyone who has ever heard of the Super Bowl knows that for the first time a team in it will be coached by an African-American. Make that two: the Chicago Bears' Lovie Smith and the Indianapolis Colts' Tony Dungy.

For a professional sports league that once banned black players, it's a measure of how far they--actually we--have come. A few morons occupying the sumps of wild-eyed racists may oppose black National Football League coaches, but they're so deep underground, where they belong, we rarely, if ever, hear from them.

So, as we're about to start Black History Month, it might be a good thing to review our progress. By going back to when there were rules against blacks doing much of anything except staying out of sight. Now, there not only is an absence of rules against, say, black coaches; the welcome mat is out with a rule requiring that at least one black candidate be interviewed for each opening.

So, as Black History Month begins in a few days, we should not forget men such as Percy Julian.

The fact that most readers are asking "Who?" makes my point. Percy Lavon Julian, an African-American, may be one of the greatest chemists, if not scientists, of our time. If you're curious about how great, the popular PBS science series "NOVA" mentions him alongside Albert Einstein, Galileo and Isaac Newton. The 100th anniversary of his birth (1899 in Jim Crow Alabama, as the son of a railway clerk) passed with barely any notice outside of his profession--obscurity that can be racked up not just to the American public's scientific and engineering illiteracy, but also to his race. Amazingly, that's particularly so in Chicago, where he spent much of his remarkable career establishing a global reputation for his accomplishments in organic chemistry, especially in the synthesis of medicinal drugs.

In 1935 he synthesized physostigmine, a critically important drug for treating glaucoma, which had been available in only limited supply from its natural source, the Calabar bean. Over the next decades, the American Chemical Society has noted, his work led to numerous breakthroughs, from soybean protein, adopted by the Navy during World War II for fire-fighting foams, to chemical substances ("intermediates") that are key to the mass production of synthetics for treating rheumatoid arthritis.

Despite these achievements, and along with his master's degree from Harvard and his PhD from the University of Vienna, he still could not find employment because of active--not passive--discrimination against minorities.

Even DePauw University, where he graduated valedictorian and was elected Phi Beta Kappa, denied him a faculty position.

Rejected by academia, he turned to industry, where rejections continued until 1936, when W.J. O'Brien, a white vice president of Glidden Co. in Chicago, offered him a job as director of research for the company's Soya Products Division. There, as one chemist said, he made "an industry out of the simple soybean." In 1953 he established Julian Laboratories, which he later sold for millions. Despite his stature, folks still tried to burn down and bomb his Oak Park home.

He died on April 19, 1975, the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences.

You'll want to know more about this great man, even if your interests don't bend toward process chemistry, atom economy and waste minimization. Next week you can, as "NOVA" airs a two-hour documentary about Julian, called "Forgotten Genius." (In Chicago, the program will air on WTTW-Ch. 11 at 8 p.m. Feb. 6.) Hampered by a paucity of documentation because of his race, "NOVA" spent years tracking down and interviewing his aging contemporaries.

A moving force behind keeping Julian's memory alive is James P. Shoffner, emeritus chemistry professor at Columbia College and former board member of the American Chemical Society.

"Since I lived through some of those times, I can vouch for the honesty and integrity of the film," said Shoffner, an African-American. The movie, he said, honors a man who "was an inspiration and motivational figure for many young men and women. Although this was especially true for students and researchers of color, it was more generally true for all, no matter what their race, ethnicity or gender."

Still, said Joseph S. Francisco, a Purdue University chemistry professor, "Many African-American chemists are still struggling with some of the same issues."

Something to keep in mind as we celebrate the success of the Super Bowl coaches.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Bush's Iraq Strategy is More Than Just Escalation

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

How can so many people--Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), the Boston Globe, Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, anti-war senators and on and on--be so ignorant about such a simple concept?

They are acting as if President George W. Bush's "new strategy" in Iraq is just to "escalate the war" by sending in 20,000 more troops. As anyone one notch above simpleminded ought to be able to understand, the core of Bush's new strategy is about how to fight the enemy.

Instead of clearing an area of insurgents and then leaving, as U.S. troops have been doing for too long, they'll now clear and stay, to secure the neighborhood. They'll stay to provide what has been most missing in this war and what poll after poll say that Iraqis want more than anything else: protection and peace.

If ever there is a recipe for defeat, whether in a traditional war or one against insurgency, it has been the previous Bush administration policy to fight to the death to clear out the enemy, and then promptly leave so that the enemy can pour back in virtually on your heals. How can you expect to get commitment and cooperation from civilians that know that the insurgents will return next week with their threats, violence and brutality?

Read more at RealClearPolitics

Kick the habit, subsidy junkies

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Now here's a news flash: Government subsidies help the rich more than the poor.

This latest bulletin is from a new study concluding that 15 years of Illinois subsidies to companies in the six-county Chicago area have benefited wealthier communities more than the poor ones that the assistance was supposed to help.

Who should be surprised?

Consider farm subsidies. They began as a safety net in the 1930s for family farms, but have ballooned into one of the government's fattest handouts, dispensing billions of dollars, not so much to family farmers but to big corporations and others that don't even live on the farms. A few years ago, Congress passed the Freedom to Farm law that was supposed to correct these problems but only made them worse.

Likewise, the business subsidies. They were meant to help attract jobs and businesses to impoverished neighborhoods and communities, but actually ended up doing the opposite, according to the new study by Good Jobs First, a Washington-based non-profit group that keeps track of such things and promotes metropolitan "smart growth."

The three-year study of $1.2 billion ladled out by Illinois in 780 subsidies as part of 10 programs (most in Illinois industrial revenue bonds, but not in tax-increment-financing aid) found that a disproportionate share went to job-rich areas such as the northwest suburbs, the O'Hare International Airport corridor and booming communities, such as Naperville, which don't need any help growing.

The 43-page report begins with a quote noting how the explosion of such suburbs "at the expense of the city increases pollution, drains jobs from Chicago, isolates the poorest of its residents from employment, adds to infrastructure costs, kills inner-city property values and tax base," etc., etc.

Whoa. That's from something I wrote 12 years ago, prompting brief shock that anyone would save my column for that long. My view since then of suburban growth has become a bit more "nuanced," as they say, and free market. But the underlying thought is still correct. The column was in response to a new Motorola manufacturing plant up near Wisconsin that got $43 million in Illinois subsidies and a mere eight years later was shut down, leaving jobless the hundreds of workers the subsidies were supposed to help.

So, what to do? The report recommends more strictly "targeting" subsidies to areas of high unemployment or low income; requiring companies to locate near mass transit or otherwise increase job access; and a new law requiring subsidized companies to file impact reports and justifications for relocating within the state.

In other words, more of the same. More reports; more oversight; renewed commitments; bigger bureaucracy to receive, analyze and file compulsory data; more regulation. When will we learn? Such business subsidies, although they no doubt have scored some meaningful successes, are a perfect example of how government's good intentions often are overtaken by the shoddy, defective and ineffectual. Subsidies not working? Then pour on some more. Subsidies going to the wrong people? Then create a squad of traffic cops to make sure that the bureaucrats send the money in the right direction. Pretty soon, it's layer upon layer of futility. Without ever speaking to the basic flaws.

Here's a thought. Get rid of the subsidies. Live without them. I'm sure this isn't what the Good Jobs First folks had in mind when it issued its study. But, you can bet that in another 15 years, another group will come along and report how the new "cure" has been maladministered.

We've seen it time and again. How the creation decades ago of a welfare safety net to provide the help that families needed to get back on their feet turned into an addiction, chaining generations to a life of dependence. The only solution was subsidy weaning.

Of course, I'm ingenuous. It can never happen, because of the special interests that demand them: companies that play communities and states off each other by leveraging ever-bigger subsidies. Organized labor that seeks to "create" and "preserve" jobs. Local taxpayers who believe they're ultimately getting relief from the "additional revenues" that a big plant in town will bring. Politicians who put "constituent services" (pork) above principle. Utopians who believe that government giveaways will work if we'd just fine-tune the bureaucracy.

Just about the only ones standing against the subsidies are us naifs, who will watch helplessly as yet another public sector scheme is concocted to alleviate the harm that the last scheme brought us.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

No more magic tricks

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Go ahead and just get it over with: Raise our taxes.

Illinois' financial mess is driving the state to ruin unless a tax increase is part of the solution. For heaven's sake, even the state's business titans, who usually blanch at any mention of a tax increase, are almost pleading for one.

That's because they understand, unlike our Gov. Rod Blagojevich, that a state in financial ruin will lose jobs--in both private and public sectors--and businesses; poor people will find it even harder to get health care; the roads will deteriorate faster; and Illinois will complete its fall to below the perpetually bottom-dwelling Mississippi in virtually every quality-of-life measure.

With Illinois in hospice care, Blagojevich can forget about all those "activist government" goodies that he promised in last week's inaugural address. He also can say goodbye to all the things he bragged about achieving in his first term.

No wonder Blagojevich has asked to have a few more weeks before he has to present his budget to the General Assembly next month. By then, the anticipation will be sky-high as to what transparent gauze he'll try to hang over the state's ugly finances.

Just how bad is it? The figures already have been well publicized, from the elite business group the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicagoto the Chicago-based Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

Illinois has the largest pension-fund debt in the nation, about $43 billion, give or take a billion, depending on whom you ask. But what's a few billion, more or less, when you're already drowning in $45 billion in debt? Nobody noticing the difference would be just further excuse for Blagojevich to lift another billion or so from the pension fund.

When you add up the pension deficits, unpaid bills, Medicaid costs and other obligations, the Civic Committee figures that the state's total liability is $106 billion. That despite a provision in the Illinois Constitution that says: "Appropriations for a fiscal year shall not exceed funds estimated by the General Assembly to be available during that year." In other words, no deficit spending. Maybe we should impeach the whole lot of them, if it's possible, for violating their constitutional oath of office.

But not before they get into the usual quarrel over whether the problem is caused by insufficient revenue or "wasteful and profligate" spending. Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, claims that the deficits are not the result of overspending or waste, noting that Illinois is one of the nation's lowest-spending states (42nd). The group blames the shortage of revenue on a variety of causes, such as a complex federal Medicaid reimbursement formula that punishes states with disproportionately high numbers of impoverished people.

But to ignore the spending side is irresponsible. Just to highlight a portion of the Civic Committee's report: The cost of employee and retiree health care has been growing 14 percent a year since 2000. I suppose you could blame the shortfall on revenues, which increased only 4 percent annually when they should have been growing at 14 percent, but that's perverse.

Just look at the cost of the state's profligate spending on insurance for retired state employees: Retirees with 20 years of service don't pay for their health insurance. Many retirees are covered by plans that allow free doctor visits. The state subsidizes 80 percent to 100 percent of health insurance premiums. Employees get to retire at 55. Most of us in private retirement plans would dearly love to have just one of those benefits.

Whether spending or revenue is to blame, the problem now is almost out of hand, and only tax increases (along with spending cuts) will give this state a chance. The politicians and the special interests, such as the teachers lobby, will fight to a standstill over what those steps should be. Progressives will want a "tax swap," in which a state income-tax increase will help equalize school funding while reducing property taxes. Fine. Whatever.

Blagojevich, if he's true to form, will show up with another cockamamie scheme for selling off state assets to fund current bills, a "solution" that will drive the state into bankruptcy even faster.

At this point, the solution is beyond me, but that's why we elect those people to go to Springfield. But one more year of this nonsense, and we all might as well move to Mississippi, where life undoubtedly will be better.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

The escalating misuse of “escalate”

By Dennis Byrne
PoliticalMavens

Because ideas in Potomac and media circles travel in packs, we’re now being hounded by the word “escalate” as it applies to the Bush administration’s new policy in Iraq.

Said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.): “Based on the President’s speech, I cannot support his proposed escalation of the war in Iraq.”

Chimed in Sen. John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina: “Escalating the war is a huge mistake.”

MoveOn.Org, never to be outdone, is organizing protests to stop “the escalation.”

There’s only one problem with this chorus. It’s not Bush who is escalating the war.

Read more at Political Mavens

Iraq requires a military solution.

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

That's not what the au fait class of jabbering media and pols says, as they repeat, reinforced by each other's dictums, that Iraq requires a political solution, whatever that means, but we don't find out because the analysis doesn't go much deeper than that. They just know that President George W. Bush's new plan for victory in Iraq must be a "political solution."

The truth is that just about every war we've fought (except possibly the War of 1812) ended with a military solution. At least the ones we won. The Civil War didn't end with the political solution of the South voluntarily giving up slavery. America's victory at Yorktown was a military one in that we kicked the British out of our country. World Wars I and II ended with Germany's and Japan's military defeat.

Korea has waited half of a century for a political solution, but without the military reality of pushing the North Korean and Chinese communists back to roughly the 38th parallel, we'd be talking today not about a nuclear North Korea, but a nuclear Korea.

Continue reading at RealClearPolitics

Terrorists don't deal in diplomacy

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Now here's what should be a familiar story: One country--Ethiopia--got so fed up with waiting for the UN and the "international community" to do something about the threat of Islamic extremists in neighboring Somalia that it went ahead by itself and took them out.

If such unilateral military action sounds familiar, it's the game plan followed by President Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For six months Muslim extremists, calling themselves the Council of Islamic Courts, have been installing their oppressive and murderous version of fundamentalist Islam in parts of Somalia. The council did so in defiance of a "transitional government" that had been established last February following the requirements of the "leave-the-problem-to-diplomacy" model of foreign policy demanded by Bush-haters.

In that spirit, an international "Coordination and Monitoring Committee" was created in Stockholm (Where else?) in 2004 to "channel and coordinate multilateral support for the peace process in Somalia." Further, said former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "The international community and the transitional federal government, with the facilitation of Sweden, [had] been working since late 2005 to refine the mandate of the committee so that it can serve as an effective mechanism of support for the nascent Somali institutions."

"Consultative planning workshops" and "joint-needs assessments" were conducted.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

Despite workshops and seminars, Annan was back just five months later lamenting the "territorial gains of Islamic militias" and some of the worst factional (what's called a civil war in Iraq) fighting "in nearly a decade." Annan pleaded for "greater international commitment" and for foreign nations to live up to their agreements "if the dire effects of the humanitarian crisis are to be mitigated." He warned that the "besieged transitional government must be fortified."

Yeah, and a lot of good that did.

The extremists continued to make gains and started to pose a threat to Ethiopia. Because there comes a time when enough is enough, Ethiopia sent tanks, planes and troops to dislodge extremists. What happened in the next 10 days was what the Associated Press called a "stunning turnaround for Somalia's government, which just weeks ago could barely control one town--its base of Baidoa--while the Council of Islamic Courts controlled the capital [Mogadishu] and much of southern Somalia."

Now, fleeing fanatics are being captured at the borders, some with satchels of cash, presumably to pull off terror attacks elsewhere. At least one had a Canadian passport, and it shouldn't take any explanation why that should worry Americans. At least three top Al Qaeda terrorists involved in the deadly bombings of American embassies in Africa were believed to have been holed up in Somalia. If they and other extremists try to flee by sea, they'll encounter U.S. Navy patrols waiting for them.

If we are, indeed, involved in a worldwide war against terrorism, you'd think that these developments would be hailed. Not exactly. Furrowed brows on PBS' "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and elsewhere warned of the "specter of an Iraq-style guerrilla war," of "destabilization" and other similar horrors, which we're to believe are worse than the murderous Taliban-like hell that's the dream of the council.

Missing, too, are the usual European, Democratic and other condemnations of this Bushlike unilateral military solution. Is such outrage lacking because it worked, at least for now? Because it got other countries off the hook for solving the Somali problems? Or just because it wasn't Bush who engineered the invasion?

Or is it because in this particular battle against Islamic extremism, the standard pap about the need for "multilateral," "diplomatic," and "negotiated" settlements failed to work. Not only did they fail to work, but they made things worse.

Comparisons to Iraq obviously are flawed in some respects, and there's no disagreeing that Somalia will be unsettled, even dangerous, for some time to come. But here's one thought that isn't flawed: It is dangerous to sit back and hope that study groups and meetings in Stockholm somehow will deter maniacs bent on terrorism and murder. Can the UN and the international community finally bring themselves to acknowledge that the same lunacy isn't any better at ending the genocide in Darfur?

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Truth, as mangled by Nancy Pelosi and Al Franken

By Dennis Byrne
PoliticalMavens.com

If we’re to have an intelligent and informed discussion about U.S. options in Iraq, House Speaker (D-Cal.) will need to speak more precise English.“There is complete chaos now,” she replied to CBS News correspondent Bob Schieffer on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” when he tried to ask if she were worried about what might happen to Iraq if U.S. troops started moving out in four to six months, as she wants.


The point here isn’t so much her redundancy—the definition of chaos is “complete disorder,” so “chaos” should suffice. It’s like newscasters who are in the habit of saying they are bringing you the “very latest” news when putting “very” in front of latest, doesn’t make it any more recent. It’s either the latest or not. My point is larger: the habit of war opponents to engage in such hyperbole, if not distortions.


Iraq is far from chaos. If Iraq were in chaos, there would be anarchy. No one would have electricity or water. There would be no government. No one would be safe. Everyone would be shooting at everyone else.


Continue reading at PoliticalMavens

Hate Mail

By Dennis Byrne
Human Events

How ironic that all the tributes to Gerald Ford, who may be, as we are now discovering, the nicest guy ever to be an American president, have stirred a few of the bottom feeders into action.

Specifically, they’re carping about no mail being delivered Tuesday as part of the national day of mourning for the former President, not so much because they miss their mail, but because they don’t believe that Ford is worthy of the honor. Or that it would only occur to the uberidiot, President Bush, to close the post office for the likes of Ford.

Thanks to the Internet, we can taste for ourselves, the sludge-like thoughts of folks who don’t like Bush because he’s “divisive,” but take the opportunity to spew a few of their own hateful thoughts about the man.

Continue reading at Human Events

Barack Obama in Gerald Ford's Shadow

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

Is it possible to explain the mystifying public enchantment with putative presidential candidate Barack Obama in light of the virtues so lovingly and lyrically attributed to President Gerald R. Ford?

America, exhausted from bitter partisan battles, extremist politics, consuming power-lust and all around nastiness, now hungers--we're told--for a government graced with the decency, honesty, compassion, moderation and neighborliness of a Gerald Ford. A politician's political philosophy and policy positions are not as important as his personal qualities. Nobility transcends all. Give us quietude, give us a break.

Everyone, it seems, is looking for a "boy scout"--for the moment no longer a pejorative term applied to a politician who seems too naïve, too goody-goody, but someone, as the name has been repeatedly applied to Ford, of sterling character.

Possibly this explains the peculiar lack of interest by an adoring public and media in Obama's political beliefs and voting record. Obama has established himself with an uplifting convention speech, a pair of books self-describing his down-to-earth values and his sincerity. And media that either choose to, or is afraid to, tarnish this image with anything approaching a skin-deep analysis of what he would actually do as president. Standing alone is the assumption that he would somehow "bring us together."

How, exactly, would Obama do that, other than flash his attractive smile? What is there in his past that would indicate superb unifying powers? No answers have come from the Washington and political press corps, whose labors have become arid of serious political analysis.

Read more at RealClearPolitics

Hey, did you hear the story about ...

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Hey, where did all those hurricanes go? You know, the ones that were supposed to be proof that the human race is to blame for global warming?

We were warned by the media--actually it was ground into our consciousness--that in comparison to the devastating 2005 hurricane season, the worst was yet to come. The 2006 season was to be "distressingly like" 2005 (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and "another tempestuous one" (San Francisco Chronicle), which would produce more Katrinas (CBS' "The Early Show.") Turns out that there were fewer and less damaging hurricanes.

Of course, one year of reduced hurricane activity doesn't prove anything, just as one year of heightened activity didn't either, but that didn't stop a media panic attack. It was so wrong that it earned second place on the new Top 10 Dubious Data Awards list, issued annually by the Statistical Assessment Service, which describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan think tank. The organization seeks to correct media misinformation resulting from bad science, politics or a simple lack of information or knowledge. STATS concluded that the "hurricane blowhards" who engaged in "media doom-mongering" have appropriately "gone with the wind."

I would have given them first prize, until I saw the lunacy that got STATS' top award: The Dec. 13 issue of Time magazine that warned parents to throw out all pacifiers, teethers, sippy cups and vinyl toys to avoid poisoning their children with phthalates, a family of chemicals that makes plastics flexible. "This Grinch-like recommendation came despite the fact that phthalates in toys have been cleared for children's use by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the European Union's Institute for Health and Consumer Protection," STATS said. Never let facts stand in the way of a "good" story.

The rest of the Top 10:

Girls not as wild as I hoped I: The media gushed over an AP report that "all but confirm[ed] what goes on in those `Girls Gone Wild' spring-break videos:" young women blacking out from drinking, having sex with more than one partner and so forth. Actually, the American Medical Association study was a non-random Internet poll of volunteers, of which only 27 percent had been on spring break.

Girls not as wild as I hoped II: The Wall Street Journal misreported that teenage girls increased alcohol consumption more than 30 percent from 1999 to 2004. The study's mistake was that it treated, for example, a 6-ounce glass of alcohol the same as an ounce of alcohol mixed with 5 ounces of orange juice. U.S. government studies show that binge drinking by college-age women has remained steady since 1980 and daily drinking has been declining since 2002.

More crocked booze news: Forbes and The New York Times bit on a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which claimed that the alcohol industry reaped almost $50 billion, or half its revenue, from underage drinkers. To buy that, you have to believe that teen drinkers consume as much as all adult drinkers combined, and that half of all teens consume more than 1,000 drinks a year, or almost three daily.

Fishy new car smell: The Los Angles Times reported that the interior smell consisted of "dangerous" chemicals "outgassed" from polyvinylchlorides. The report was based on the claims of an environmental group that hadn't even bothered to measure how much of the chemicals had actually been outgassed in the cars it tested.

Miami vs. Baghdad: The Miami Herald and other American media went wild with filmmaker George Gittoes' statement that life is "much worse in Miami than Baghdad." Just a short glance at murder and crime statistics makes Gittoes and those who gave him credence look foolish.

An overly convenient poll: The AP announced that "the nation's top climate scientists are giving `An Inconvenient Truth,' Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy." Please. Of the "more than 100" climate researchers the AP contacted, only 19 had seen the movie or read the book.

The kids are all right: NBC's "Today" show claimed the number of missing American children had risen 44 percent since 1982. Justice Department data, however, showed no increase during that period.

This is your brain on porn: To support its claim that pornography causes physical harm, ABC's main expert was an automobile executive.

As stupefying as these mistakes were, don't expect to see the corrections get as much media attention as did the original stories. Even though the corrections make for more interesting reading, and demonstrate why the public has such low opinion of those of us in the media.


Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

`Childize' a merry Christmas

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

It's Christmas morning and time to hit the pause button, thank God.

Why does a holiday celebrated for peace and goodwill to all mankind create such anxiety, exhaustion, discord and anger?

Some secularists despise how it constantly creeps back into the public view, as if it were a bug that couldn't be stomped. Some Christians loathe what they believe it has become today in America, a profane bacchanal of greed and avarice. Some parents wear themselves down to a nub, trying to make things perfect for their children. Some children think they don't--a smaller number of whom actually don't--get their share. Some folks are offended that the Christians usurped a pagan holiday dedicated to the return of the sun for a celebration of the appearance of the Son.

Peace? Don't count on it. This afternoon, you have to clean up the dinner plates and a few days later take down the tree. Goodwill? Well, at least for the lawyers who make a mint, serving opposing sides of the Christmas wars who regard their antagonists with anything but goodwill.

Every year we bemoan Christmas. Every year we say it gets worse. Every year we try to remind ourselves what it's all about.

So, let's do it again. Do not read this standing up. Sit. Let normal respiration reassert itself, tight muscles unknot and the heart rate descend.

Now what?

Jeez, I don't know; whaddya expect? It's hard enough for me to relax without doing it for you too. But, here's what I do:

Childize (pronounced child eyes). Ize is a suffix, meaning to make or become. For children, Christmas is the whole package. At once, without contradiction, it is a religious holiday and a secular holiday. Days to flood the senses with things new, mystifying, warm, compassionate, hopeful and fun. Children don't segment Christmas into secular and religious, giving and receiving.

It's all one vast, amazing, deeply remembered sequence of events that fills heads with special memories, very private memories.

I've been blessed with three generations to childize Christmas: mine, my children's and now my granddaughters'. When I childize, I'm back on North Maplewood Avenue , trying to figure out how Santa Claus on Christmas Eve could make it down a fake, chimney-less fireplace in our two-flat with a big load of toys, while my brother and sister were holed up in the kitchen, speculating about wonders to come. And I'm wondering later why Santa would give me a tricycle whose front wheel would fall off. (I eventually learned about World War II shortages and grew to appreciate how my folks must have looked high and low to find a second-hand trike in any kind of shape). Or years later, in Northfield, walking home after serving midnight mass, through a foot of fluffy, unplowed snow, the night so quiet you could almost hear the snow falling, so snug and comforting it almost felt warm. As I turned into our driveway, I felt a tug of regret, as if I could keep walking forever, but knowing that it would become one of the most peaceful and enduring memories of my life. One that, until now, I've shared with no one.

At my brother Bill's annual Rotary children's Christmas party, it was Leia, 4 and the second oldest, who ratted out Santa. "Grandpa, that's not really Santa," she whispered after the party. How do you know? She looked at me as if no one could believe that beard. I pulled out that old fallback about Santa's helpers. Lisa, 5, knew better: "It was too Santa." I can imagine their later conversations on the matter.

Ava, dealing with a bout of the terrible twos, fussed her way through lunch until the wonderful Glenbrook North High School Express choir caught her eyes and ears. Moving closer to Uncle Bill, she soon was placidly resting her head on and then climbing onto his lap, a spontaneous and tranquil moment that touched us all, one that she was too young to remember. Sadly, we won't be out east this year to see our newest granddaughter, Julia, but when we were there on Thanksgiving, we saw her excitement at new sights.

Now we'll be picturing her bolting and bobbing in surprise at every new color and shape she sees. She's too young to remember; too bad none of us does, either.

And so, why are you sitting there reading a newspaper on Christmas?

Go find someone to childize; go see someone creating life's most precious memories. Oh, and Merry Christmas.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Cents or sensibility on detector law?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

You've only got a couple of weeks left before you must--by order of the state of Illinois--install a carbon monoxide detector within 15 feet of every bedroom in your home.

You have a right to ask why, when your chance of dying of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning is about as slim as getting struck by lightning.

Especially when no one can tell you with certainty exactly how many people die from the poisoning in Illinois, or nationally, for that matter. The Illinois Department of Public Health includes the accidental monoxide deaths with other poison fatalities, such as sulfur dioxide inhalation. In 2004, the latest year that figures were available, there were 21 such deaths. The Illinois Poison Center, whose figures are admittedly incomplete, has recorded only two carbon monoxide deaths since 2003.

Let's do the math: There are about 4.5 million households in Illinois; we can safely estimate that there are at least that many bedrooms in the state that require a detector. Figuring a detector costs anywhere from $20 to $60, that means that Illinois residents have to lay out $90 million to $270 million by Jan. 1 for the detectors. Assuming that Illinois has four accidental carbon monoxide deaths annually (which probably errs on the high side), the residents of Illinois are spending somewhere between $22.5million and $67.5 million for each life saved. No one wants to place a price on the value of a life, but that goes way beyond what is reasonable in the public or private sector at any level.

Some experts will concede that it's not a cost-effective way to prevent deaths, but they argue that the detectors have other important benefits. Dr. Michael Wahl, medical director of the Illinois Poison Center, said the health effects of carbon monoxide poisoning could be serious over the long run. He pointed to a study that found that exposure can increase the risk of a heart attack later in life. Dr. Jerrold B. Leikin, medical toxicologist with Evanston Northwestern Healthcare-Omega, said focusing only on fatalities overlooks the magnitude of serious illnesses associated with carbon monoxide poisoning, many of them indistinguishable from flu, food poisoning and neurological damage.

Others point out that the alarms will sound before anyone shows symptoms of poisoning, which could prevent serious harm. A study based on media accounts shows that cities, like Chicago, with mandatory detectors tend to have fewer carbon monoxide deaths.

Then there's the anecdotal evidence. "Oftentimes, when I diagnose a patient with accidental CO poisoning, the patient expresses how lucky he or she is," Leikin said in testimony to the Illinois House several years ago. "With general usage of these electronic detectors, luck can be taken out of the equation."

All right, all right already.

Here's where the libertarian rant is supposed to come about government not only prescribing what you can't do (eating trans fat), but also what you must do (wear a seat belt, buy carbon monoxide detectors). About the legislature, with hardly any notice, finally passing such a law after failing for years to do so. About doing the detector industry a big favor by passing the mandate. About actually making it a criminal violation, with time in jail, for ignoring the law.

But I can't rant. I'm worn out. It has just become too much. Who can be against a device that could save some lives and secure health?

Besides, how bad would I feel about my family--anyone's family--getting harmed or even dying, because I refused to shell out $20? Especially if the reason I refuse to buy one is because I don't want government telling me what to do.

After all is said and done, a carbon monoxide detector now adorns my bedroom.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Iraq report beyond naive; it's dangerous

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

For as smart and high-powered as it is, the Iraq Study Group's hope, if not confidence, that the U.S. can successfully negotiate with Iran is stunningly naive. Despite all the hype, it doesn't bring us one inch closer to ending the Iraq war.

The group's suggestion that our national interest can be served by trying to bargain our way out of Iraq with Iran has no basis in history, fact or reason. It's more than stupid; it's also dangerous, for the U.S., Iraq, the Middle East, Europe and anyone else within flying distance of Tehran.

Just read the complete report and you can't avoid asking yourself: What in the world can we offer Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he would want in exchange for bargaining with us? What can we give Ahmadinejad, other than our utter betrayal of our commitment to Iraq, and to freedom and democracy in the Middle East? What can Iran possibly gain by pulling our chestnuts out of the fire?

The answer is, nothing. But the group doesn't bother answering such questions. Not rationally, anyway. The one answer we get is that Iran is so anxious for "stability" in the region that it would be glad to help us calm things down in Iraq. And the reason Iran wants stability? The group's answer is breathtakingly simple-minded and wrongheaded: to avoid its own internal turmoil if Iraq collapses into chaos.

"Iran's interests would not be served by a failure of U.S. policy in Iraq that led to chaos and the territorial disintegration of the Iraqi state," the group's report said. "Worst-case scenarios in Iraq could inflame sectarian tensions with Iran, with serious consequences of Iranian national security interests." Why? Because, the report reasons, Iran has minorities of Shiites, Christians and Jews.

I had to read this several times, because I didn't believe what I was reading. Did I somehow miss that Ahmadinejad's highest (or even lowest) goal in the current Middle Eastern turmoil is to create stability in Iraq and Iran? Is there even a hint in anything that Ahmadinejad has said about his intention to wipe Israel off the face of the world and so forth that signals that he'd give up his bloodlust if, well, Iraq would just settle down? Would Ahmadinejad stop helping terrorists kill infidels if ... what?

Fundamentally, the report asserts that Ahmadinejad can and would use his influence to help get Sunni insurgents, rogue Shiite militias and Al Qaeda in Iraq to cool it, because he doesn't want minority Sunnis, Christians and Jews in Iran to upset his government. As if he's had any trouble keeping the lid on the Sunnis, Christians and Jews, not to mention the majority Shiites, in the first place.

And what if Iran decides not to participate in diplomacy and negotiations? What if Ahmadinejad decides Iran has more to gain by letting the U.S. suffer a humiliating defeat, and that an Iraq in turmoil (which is partially his doing in the first place) ultimately serves his greater purpose: making Iran the Middle East's top dog?

The study group never really gets into that possibility.

It's as if the purity of the process is an end in itself (as it is with a number of American critics of the war). There is no thought about what the negotiations should achieve in our national interest, or what should happen if diplomacy fails. It's nearly impossible to carry the group's arguments to their logical conclusion, because they are devoid of logic. I think the group implicitly realized that itself when it fell back on the following as the ultimate reason why Iran should (would?) participate in the "Support Group" of Iraqi neighbors:

"An Iranian refusal to do so would demonstrate to Iraq and the rest of the world Iran's rejectionist attitude and approach, which could lead to its isolation. Further, Iran's refusal to cooperate on this matter would diminish its prospects of engaging with the United States in the broader dialogue it seeks." As if the "world" isn't already aware of Ahmadinejad's "rejectionist," as well as his belligerent and bloodthirsty, policies. Jeez.

You'd expect more from former secretaries of state and defense, top White House aides and a Supreme Court justice. Maybe we flatlanders are such simpletons that we don't understand (Washington cliche warning) the "nuances" of foreign policy.

But we know idiotic when we see it.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

ISG Prescribes Vietnam All Over Again

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

"...[Y]ou have my assurance of continued assistance in the post-settlement period and that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam."

That was a pledge by President Richard M. Nixon to Republic of South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu that the United States would not abandon his nation, if he would only cooperate in negotiations with North Vietnam to end the war.

Nixon's word wasn't worth crap.

Nor, obviously, is our word to the Iraqi people, if the Iraqi Study Group has its way. We betrayed millions of people by abandoning our principles and trashing our promises when we stood by--willingly and intentionally--as South Vietnam fell to the tyranny of North Vietnam. Now, as the ISG provides us with intellectual cover for weaseling our way out of Iraq, we're about to do the same to the Iraqi people.

Let us review history, which we appear condemned to repeat:

Continue reading at RealClearPolitics

City saves us from ... ?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Good thing that they're keeping a film about Christmas out of a Christmas festival on Daley Plaza.

Christians, Jews and Muslims already have elbowed their way onto the plaza with a creche, menorah and crescent and, worst of all, a huge Christmas tree, symbols of their religions. Shouldn't that be enough? If Chicago were to allow showings of "The Nativity Story" film clips during Christkindlmarket, what would be next?

Nature-worshiping Druids? Allow them onto the plaza and they might want to poison us with the sight of an oak tree, one of nature's creations that they venerate. The Falun Gong also might show up, with their offensive meditating. Who knows, they might even try to cash in by selling books on the benefits of reflection. As we all know, no one should be able to use the government or its property to profit personally. In Chicago, we have strictly enforced rules against that kind of behavior.

Covens of Wicca also might invade the plaza, wanting to practice their magical powers by stirring boiling pots of eels and frogs. Or we might have to step around unsightly piles of dead chickens left scattered about by careless adherents of the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye.

If we're not careful, the Inquisition might demand use of the plaza for a few autos-da-fe, to weed out the heretics. The plaza could become another Piazza della Signoria, always available for hanging and burning a Savonarola or two.

Chicago Bulls center Ben Wallace might show up in a headband.

You might think that this is an exaggeration, but if the city gave an inch now, all sorts of oddballs, cranks, crackpots and fanatics soon would be invading the plaza. Oh sure, for standing up to the horror of a Christmas scene on the plaza, the city got scalded by those right-wing religious zealots for its so-called attack on Christmas. Under this unfair onslaught, no wonder the city said it had been misunderstood. As it said later, its intent was only to keep "blatant commercial messages" off the plaza.

Well, that's as good as any excuse, and if you want to believe it, that's fine by me, because the effect was the same: shielding the public from the vulgar scenes of a mother and child.

Actually, I think that the city might be on to something. Christmas has become so commercialized with its retail sales frenzies that any Christmas message is, indeed, a commercial message. So maybe it all should be banned from the plaza--Christmas trees, creches, the "festive" trappings. Even Macy's Christmas lights that are visible from the plaza should be extinguished. It's all designed to make someone a buck anyway.

Of course, the summer farmers market also would have to be banned from the plaza, because folks are making money off that too. While we're at it, we might as well take away the flowers, benches and the Picasso Thing. Make the plaza the lifeless, sterile place that it was intended to be in the first place. Suitable only for celebratory gatherings of all the payrollers, insiders, grafters and other serpents who feed off the taxpayers. If the plaza can hold them all.

I'm just grateful--I won't offend you by saying to Whom--that the city's exclusionary actions on the plaza have provided more evidence that we've all come to appreciate the true meaning of diversity. To foster our diverse society, we must not allow anything that reminds us of our differences, especially if that reminder comes in a public place, and most especially if it is about religion. Exposing people to different religions, let alone religion in general, will give them the wrong idea; they might end up thinking that we're different. How can we be a diverse society with folks walking around thinking they're different?

Let us pause for a moment, in the silent night of a new winter, as we are comforted by a blanket of new-fallen snow, to use this joyous and hopeful season to renew our commitment to diversity. And what better way to do it than by stomping out any public recognition of our differences?

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

More Harrumphing From Jesse Jackson

By Dennis Byrne

The opportunistic Rev. Jesse Jackson is at it again, using comedian Michael Richard's use of the "n-word" to flog white Americans for a supposed streak of racism that we stubbornly refuse to recognize or let go of.

Speaking in Little Rock on Thursday, Jackson said Richard's outburst directed at comedy club hecklers was not an aberration, but symptomatic of a deep racism throughout the land, of an "anti-black mania," as he put it. "Don't just stop with the comedian," he said, pointing to other incidents that he would have us believe indict the entire country.

Aw jeez, not again.

Read more at RealClearPolitics

Apologies Don't Mean Anything Anymore

By Dennis Byrne
Human Events

Enough already with the apologies.

We’ve turned ourselves into a nation of apologizers. Or, more precisely, a nation of people demanding apologies.

We’re up to our eyeballs in apology ultimatums. Actor Michael Richards was barraged with demands to apologize for hurling racial slurs at hecklers during a comedy club appearance, but when he did, it wasn’t enough. His career is ruined, supposedly. Likewise, a professional basketball player, Damon Jones of Cleveland, called a press conference to apologize for getting booted out of a game, but for some it was “too late.” In a recent call for public groveling, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) needed to apologize to soldiers in Iraq for implying that they’re dropouts and losers.

Rush Limbaugh had to apologize to Michael J. Fox for doubting his afflictions. Rep. Charlie Rangel (D.-N.Y.) for calling Vice President Dick Cheney a "son of a bitch."
Ted Haggard, an evangelical Christian leader, for paying for gay sex and hypocritically violating his preachments. Republicans for having anything to do with evangelicals. Idaho Gov. Jim Risch for ordering an emergency hunt of 160 elk that had escaped from a hunting preserve. The sponsors of a TV ad about a Florida constitutional amendment for demeaning Italian-Americans. President Bush for … well, everything.

Continue reading at Human Events

No Room for Nativity Story in Chicago Plaza

By Dennis Byrne

Right on schedule, just before Christmas, a new movie about Christ--the Nativity Story--already has offended, before it's shown.

And for the offense it is expected to cause non-Christians to suffer, the city of Chicago has driven it out of a public plaza in the heart of downtown.

Actually, it's not even the film itself; it's just some video clips promoting the movie, being played during Christkindlmarket, a festival celebrating the birth of the Christ Child that's been held on the Daley Plaza in the city-county government plaza for 10 years.

At first, a city official explained it didn't want the clips shown because it would be "insensitive to the many people of different faiths" who attend the festival or walk through the popular plaza, which is known for its enigmatic Picasso sculpture.

Continue reading at RealClearPolitics

Living high on the D.C. hog

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

While perusing my latest colorful and delightful mailing from the Chicago Botanic Garden, I noticed a message from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), prominently displayed.

He said some nice things about all the unseen volunteers, and then got to the heart of the matter: congratulating himself for lagging some federal funding the garden's way. "I am proud that I was able to assist in securing funding to support the Joseph Regenstein Jr. School of the Chicago Botanic Garden."

Even at the Chicago Botanic Garden, congressional earmarks blossom.

The garden's $1.5 million federal harvest was tucked away in the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act, which provides billions for highways, bridges and so forth. At the garden, it goes for "infrastructure additions, with repairs and upgrades to sidewalks, bridges and parking lots," as well as upgraded accessibility for the disabled.

Great for the garden, one of my favorite places. No so great if you're from New York or Wyoming. Taxpayers there can reasonably ask why they should have to pay for parking improvements in Glencoe.

Welcome to the wonderful world of earmarks, the secretive process lawmakers use to plant pet vote-producing projects in the federal budget. The most notorious example was a couple of $450 million bridges in Alaska that the state's two senators unsuccessfully tried to corral. A Wall Street Journal-NBC poll last spring found that 39 percent of voters thought earmark reform was the single most important thing for Congress to do, which it didn't, which is one reason that Republicans lost control of both houses.

Now voters have called the Democrats to show their cards, and several proposals are knocking around. Generally, the proposals are designed to require more transparency, but each contains some flaws, such as the House proposal that would apply only to "district-oriented earmarks" that directly benefit constituents, thus leaving out contractors and campaign contributors outside of the district.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) is co-sponsoring a bill designed to block a lawmaker from requesting an earmark that would benefit a company, group or lobbying firm that employed a member of the lawmaker's family or a former member of the lawmaker's staff.

It's an obvious, although limited, start, but I'm wondering whether the problem lies in Congress, or with us. In strictly economic terms, the lawmakers are doing a service for their clients--the Chicago Botanic Gardens and other worthies of the kind that Durbin proudly announces in his press releases. Who, for example, could argue against $300,000 for a library and technology center at Cristo Rey High School, a model preparatory school serving Pilsen and Little Village?

Durbin credits himself for securing $84 million worth of military projects (some call it pork) for Illinois, including: $12 million for lightweight armor production and other programs at the Rock Island Arsenal; $4.45 million for a titanium processing project in Lockport; $3.25 million for acoustic ballistic detection technology in Barrington; $1.8 million to help small businesses develop high-performance infrared detection materials in Bolingbrook; $1.3 million for airburst ammunition research in Marion; $3 million for a program to help small businesses supply goods and services to the Defense Department in DeKalb; $1.3 million for fuel cell development in Des Plaines; $2 million for improvements to maintenance data systems in Peoria; $1 million for accelerated research into nanotechnology to better detect chemical and biological weapons, Evanston; $2 million for improvements in the Navy supply chain system, Vernon Hills; $2.5 million for an infrared targeting and surveillance system for the Navy, Barrington ... you get the idea.

Can you argue with the need for any of these programs? Even when the specifications for each project may have been written so that only one or a limited number of companies or institutions--which just happen to be in Illinois--can meet them?

Earmarks create jobs and profits, and in the case of universities and military installations, expand empires. Can we expect the beneficiaries to join the outcry against earmarks?

One solution is to give the president line-item veto power, allowing him to kill earmarked projects that he believes don't belong in the budget. But even that has its limitations. Would he risk losing support of a lawmaker in an important vote by striking his pet project?

We like to think that we can solve such problems by passing another law or tightening another regulation. But none of that will work as long as some of us just love that Washington money.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Flee Iraq, relive shame of Vietnam

Hasty exit would stir chaos, not freedom

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The folks who believe the Iraq war looks increasingly like the Vietnam War are right.

At least the part where the United States pulls out and leaves millions of people hanging out to dry. That part where the war comes to a dishonorable, murderous end. Like on the day, April 30, 1975, that America broke its promises to millions of South Vietnamese and jumped ship. The day on which hysterical Vietnamese civilians and officials were crowding a ladder to the top of the U.S. Embassy, pleading for a seat on the last American helicopter out. The day that crowds of Vietnamese swarmed the embassy gate, crying for escape or protection, as North Vietnamese tanks approached. The day that uncounted thousands turned into freedom-seeking boat people.

We abandoned millions of people to be stripped of their freedoms, imprisoned for their beliefs or slaughtered by a monstrous, tyrannical regime. It was one of the most shameful days in American history. It was our own day of infamy.

Blame public opinion for bringing shame on ourselves. Public opinion demanded a Congress that simply decided to choke the life out of the South Vietnamese. Yes, the Iraq war is beginning to look a whole lot like the Vietnam War.

Only this time, we're supposed to quit after sacrificing a lot less. House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi and others recently had the gall to equate the Iraq war with World War II because it had surpassed the length of European combat. Tragic, indeed, but comparable, no.

This is not to minimize the sacrifice of those who have fought or died in Iraq, but in World War II, almost 300,000 American military personnel died in combat, as compared to nearly 3,000 in the Iraq war. (More than 47,000 died in Vietnam and nearly 34,000 in the Korean War.) Civilian deaths in World War II amounted to at least 38 million, compared with the 30,000 to 60,000 by UN and other reliable estimates in Iraq. (The recent, ridiculous 600,000 estimate by researchers from John Hopkins is not included among the reliable.)

This is not to diminish the importance of any life; its value is not set by the number of people who die with you.

But it is to make the point that the cost of defending the freedom of millions in the Middle East has been somewhat less than Pelosi and crew would have it.

Of course, no one would admit to abandoning the Iraqis. So, the critics take a different, more fashionable tact: argue for the partition of Iraq along religious and ethnic lines. One of its leading exponents is Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who will be committee chairman next year. So, we'll hear a lot more about how Iraq should be divided into "autonomous" Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish regions.

But it is just another, perhaps worse, form of abandonment.

First, the Iraqis don't want it. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes found wide support among Iraqis for a strong central government. "Majorities of all groups do not favor a movement toward a looser confederation and believe that five years from now Iraq will still be a single state. A large majority sees the current government as the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people," the survey concluded.

Second, as Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN envoy to Iraq, told the Financial Times, the alternative to a united Iraq is "not three independent entities, but chaos that will expand to all the region." For one, it will increase Shiite Iran's influence in Iraq, further destabilizing the region. "No one is talking about Iraq anymore, but about how the British and the U.S. will get out," he warned.

Polls consistently show that the American public is unhappy with the way things are going in Iraq and wants us to depart. And Democrats, lead by the likes of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) who wants an "immediate redeployment," claim they represent American public opinion demanding a speedy withdrawal.

But here's a word of encouragement as we slide toward a Vietnam-style ending: A Newsweek poll finds 51 percent of respondents are very worried and 27 percent somewhat worried that a Democratic Congress would push for a too-hasty withdrawal.

With 78 percent worried about what a Democratic Congress might do, perhaps the American public learned something from Vietnam after all. Will the Democratic Congress?

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

The New York Times, again

How it gives only one side of the story, again.

When U.S. Army Gen. John Abizaid, appeared as the star witness in the first congressional hearings on the war in Iraq since the Democrats won control of both houses, he was asked how the U.S. could get the Iraqis to take on more responsibility in the fight against the insurgents, the New York Times reported this:

Mrs. Clinton pressed the Democrats’ case that a change in military strategy was necessary to prod the Iraqis into taking responsibility for their own country. “Hope is not a strategy,” she told the generals. “Hortatory talk about what the Iraqi government must do is getting old. I have heard over and over again, ‘The government must do this, the Iraqi Army must do that.’ Nobody disagrees with that. The brutal fact is, it’s not happening.”

But it left out Abizaid’s superb reply. I had to read one of those mid-country newspapers—the Chicago Tribune—to find it.

Abizaid replied that, "I would also say that despair is not a method. And when I come to Washington, I feel despair. When I'm in Iraq with my commanders, when I talk to our soldiers, when I talk to the Iraqi leadership, they are not despairing. They believe that they can move the country toward stability with our help. And I believe that

We're just wild about the ethically challenged Nancy Pelosi

Why didn't we hear much about this before election

Follow the links to some remarkable stuff that makes interesting reading about the woman who is going to make this the "most ethical" Congress ever.

Nancy Pelosi: One of Mikhail Gorbachev’s most useful idiots

Will Nancy Pelosi, riding a wave of voter anger about insider dealing and political corruption to the position of Speaker of the House, turn herself in? When the House kicks off its expected wave of hearings into corruption, which committee will take its whacks at Nancy? We anxiously await to see if this is true.

And another

Stroger victory proves it: Weak voters elect weak leaders

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

What if U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald had run for Cook County Board president against Todd Stroger? My money says that Fitzgerald, the most successful reformer to hit town since Ft. Dearborn was erected, would have lost. Just like Tony Peraica lost to Stroger. Maybe even worse.

Last week, Cook County voters demonstrated that they would tolerate anything short of a sharp stick in the eye. Some of us had hoped that voters this time, at last, for once in our lives, would opt for honest, efficient, clean and open government. That was in the mistaken belief that voters would not put up with Stroger's stunning lack of qualifications and the secretive and presumptuous way he was selected to run by party bosses. We were wrong.

In the commenting business, it is bad form to question voters' judgments. Post-election is the time to be gracious, to wish the winner luck, to issue calls for cooperation, to nod affirmatively that the "people have spoken" and that we should give the winner, no matter how much of a mope, a "chance." To do otherwise is considered sour grapes, the sign of an arrogant, poor loser.

But sometimes voters need to be told when they screwed up. Such as when they selected two disciples of quackmeister Lyndon LaRouche in the 1986 Illinois Democratic primary for lieutenant governor and secretary of state.

In a way, Stroger's election is worse. Unlike the ignorant voters who marked their ballots for the two LaRouchies without having the slightest idea who they were, Stroger voters knew exactly what they were getting: a county government so poorly run and moth-eaten by political opportunists that its two-year budget deficit approaches a staggering $600 million.

And they knew exactly what they were voting against: honest, efficient government.

The bulk of those self-interested voters was obviously committed to the old way. They ask "not what you can do for your county, but what your county can do for you."

They were joined by single-issue social liberals who could not put aside their blinders, even once, to vote for the better candidate. Add to that African-American voters who, as stubbornly as the Deep South racists of Jim Crow, refuse to put aside racial identities.

Nowhere does it say that democracy is infallible; that voters don't make mistakes. We've been constantly reminded of that by Democrats who say that President Bush was the biggest mistake voters ever made.

"OK, OK," you say. "You've made your point. Why not just let it rest?" Because the values, standards and mind-set of the electorate are important. An electorate that tolerates corruption will get corruption. One that puts up with incompetence, in pursuit of narrow self-interest, will get government that swims in muck. To bash public officials without criticizing the people who installed them is hypocrisy.

Next up is the Chicago mayoral campaign. I use the word "campaign" lightly.

Now with U.S. Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Luis Gutierrez overnight deciding not to run against Mayor Richard Daley, the heat is off. Apparently they figured they could do more about Chicago's waste, fraud and abuse from the heights of Capitol Hill. Two lesser-known candidates remain, but one can only assume they'll carve up what little opposition will remain against the mayor.

Some independents may have taken hope that organized labor was stepping up to support anti-Daley aldermen, but they're going to need a lot of extra help, now that the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce brazenly has decided to take the side of waste, fraud and abuse by assembling big bucks to defeat anyone who strays from the drove.

After countless indictments and convictions by Fitzgerald, a majority of the electorate appears, with the election of Todd Stroger (and the re-election of Gov. Rod Blagojevich), ready to countenance more of the same.

One would have hoped that Fitzgerald's exposure of the depth of the graft would have convinced more voters of the need for change.

With a majority of voters not persuaded, Fitzgerald's value narrows but remains no less important: taking on the organization, one grafter at a time, putting away or scaring enough of them to at least reduce their inventory.

Without Fitzgerald, absolutely nothing would stand in the way of waste, fraud and abuse. Certainly not the electorate.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

For Obama, Problems at Home?

By Dennis Byrne

Chicago--By popular acclaim, the winner of the mid-term elections is Barack Obama. If the number of studio appearances he made election night means anything, the Illinois Democratic Senator is a shoo-in for President, commissioner of baseball and the papacy.

Funny thing, though, in Illinois, where he was a minor player in the state Senate before national media adulation propelled him into the presidential spotlight, his glow might have begun to dim.

At question is a newly disclosed suspicious deal he made with an indicted political fundraiser to improve their adjoining properties in a pricey neighborhood on Chicago' South Side. The "neighbor" in the deal is Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who indicted for plotting to squeeze millions of dollars in kickbacks out of firms seeking state business. He has pleaded not guilty, but allegations muddied the campaign of Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who nonetheless was re-elected Tuesday by ever-forgiving Illinois voters.

Continue reading at RealClearPolitics

Candidates, stop hiding behind push-poll curtain

By Dennis Byrne

Happily, Election Day will end not just those maddening campaign commercials but also a more intrusive annoyance: the push poll.

It starts out as a typical poll. "Would you care to answer a few questions about the elections," the voice on your phone asks. "Whom do you plan to vote for?"

Then it gets weird. As in: "Candidate A beats his wife; does that make you think of him more or less favorably?" Or as my daughter Kati heard when she was called: "Does the fact that Congressman Mark Kirk accepts special-interest money make you think of him more favorably or less favorably?"

So, if you are a supporter of Kirk--the Republican from the north suburban 10th Congressional District who is seeking re-election against Democrat Dan Seals--how are you supposed to answer? Oh, sure, I want my congressman to take special-interest money, so it makes me think more favorably of him.

Which is exactly how Kati, being Kati, answered. Then came four more questions of the same nature, each trying to make Kirk look like he was doing something wrong. And each time, Kati answered that she thinks more favorably of him. She even had the interviewer chuckling. But actually, it wasn't so funny.

"It's like Mark Kirk went out and shot 100 people," she said. "What kind of poll is this anyway?"

The answer is: dirty, low-down and negative.

Kati later told me the caller ID number was 509-765-4321, which turned out to be "disconnected." But she did get the company's name, Communications Center Inc. in Spokane, Wash., which had a real number and a real person answering. She was Judy Goodrich, director of operations, who explained that they don't make up the questions, they just make the calls. She said she could only identify the client if the person agreed, which the person apparently didn't because Goodrich didn't call me back as I asked.

Considering the nastiness of the questions, slinking around is to be expected. I couldn't find anyone who filed a report indicating that the push poll about Kirk was a campaign expense, which probably means that no one is fessing up. The Mellman Group, a well-known Democratic polling firm representing such political clients as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, recently completed a poll showing Kirk's "favorability and job performance rating have [sic] deteriorated significantly," but that was taken before Kati's phone call. Besides, who would be stupid enough to actually use those fabricated push-poll "results," especially since push polls are condemned by the American Association of Political Consultants.

Still, it would be nice if the origins of these scummy attacks were as "transparent" as, say, sponsors of those repulsive televised campaign ads. Take Communications Center, which often is mentioned by visitors to the whocalled.us Web site, which accepts complaints about perceived violations of the National Do Not Call Registry. One from Illinois described how "the questions turned to negative statements about a Republican senator in our state up for re-election. After the third negative statement ... I finally asked why the questions seemed more like Democratic talking points and the caller confirmed that the Democrats had sanctioned the survey. I then hung up as this was just a cheap ploy to get their agenda out."

(Here, I'll stipulate that both parties probably use such polls.)

Said another: "I received a call from this [number] asking for my 92-year-old mother by first name only. They would not say who they were! ... I tried the number back also and got the same message that it had been disconnected." Some reported receiving calls at 2 a.m., or "up to 20 a day." Almost all said they were on the "do-not-call" list prohibiting solicitations by telemarketers.

Goodrich said Communications Center is acting legally because "market research" is exempt from the list. She referred me to donotcall.gov, which backed her up. The Web site also explains that calls "on behalf of political organizations" are permitted.

As always, politicians have themselves covered. The laws don't apply equally to them, or to their friends in the survey business. Ask the politicians why, and they'll say political speech can't be constitutionally prohibited, even when it's an intrusive call into your home.

Blah, blah. At least they should have the courage to require that when they commission a push poll, they must crawl out from under their rocks so we can see their disgusting selves in the full light of day.


Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Suburbs to Chicago: Butt out of our congressional elections

By Dennis Byrne

If you're a suburban voter and someone knocks on your door asking you how you plan to vote in the congressional election, you might want to ask for some ID.

Chances are the ID would have a Chicago address. That's because Chicago Democrats are being recruited to work against Republican candidates throughout Cook County and collar counties.

The Illinois Democratic Network, or IllinoisDemNet as it calls itself on its Web site, is proud to be transporting campaigners from Chicago (and Evanston) to work for Democrats in congressional races from the Wisconsin line to as far south as Joliet.

There, they are knocking on doors and making calls for Democratic candidates Dan Seals (against incumbent Republican Mark Kirk in the north suburban 10th District), incumbent Melissa Bean (against Republican challenger David McSweeney in the northwest suburban 8th District), Democrat Tammy Duckworth (against Republican Peter Roskam for Henry Hyde's seat in the west suburban 6th District) and John Laesch (against House Speaker Dennis Hastert in the west and southwest suburban 14th District).

This may not sound like much of a deal to some Chicagoans who have no use for the suburbs to start with, but suburbanites, such as myself, might not like it because we, after all, live out here in part to be away from the city's lousy schools, higher crime rates and politics as it is practiced in Chicago. Suburbs to Chicago: Butt out. Do we send in squads of suburban Republicans to work Democratic precincts? Haven't you screwed up Chicago and Cook County governments enough already? Do we need lakefront and limousine liberals to tell us how to vote?

IllinoisDemNet asserts that it has no connection with the Chicago organization or any other Democratic organization, that it's just a bunch of progressives, liberals and moderates who are passionate about their cause. Except that the volunteers are picked up at the 44th Ward Democratic Organization, in the district of Democratic U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (the guy who parachuted outsider Duckworth into the 6th District race) and the Democratic Party headquarters in Evanston, in Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky's district. After I inquired, the Web site deleted the fact that pick-up sites were connected to party offices. Not deleted were some destinations, such as the Duckworth and Bean field offices.

As of my deadline, IllinoisDemNet had ignored my e-mail asking such questions as the group's party affiliation and funding.

Such secrecy tells Ryan McLaughlin, Roskam's campaign manager, that the group has something to hide.

"The Chicago political machine's reputation for corruption goes back decades, and it's not surprising that in their efforts to expand their fiefdom, they are trying to implant their proxy in a suburban congressional seat," he said in an e-mail. "Duckworth has embraced the city's agenda, ahead of suburban families, and would merely be an extension of the Daley-Blagojevich-Emanuel machine with a different address."

McSweeney isn't so sure. In an interview, he said that his opponent, Bean, has virtually no organizational support, mainly because her support of the Central America Free Trade Agreement lost her the backing of large organized labor. McSweeney figures that liberal organizing support instead is going to the third candidate on the ballot, Bill Scheurer. The absence of a Bean organization shows she is "out of touch" with the district and her natural Democratic constituency, McSweeney said.

As suburban voting demographics trend in favor of Democrats, it only makes sense for the party to increase its organizing there, relying on the main source of party volunteers and patronage workers: Chicago. Importing outside help is not unprecedented or confined to Democrats. In this country, everyone has a right to speak for or against a candidate, no matter where.

Then why is IllinoisDemNet so chary of saying who it is?

There's good reason to ask about political groups that say they're independent. Consider: Last year, the Friends of Lane Evans (a congressman from western Illinois) paid a $185,000 civil penalty under a federal consent decree. The committee ran afoul of federal election law by creating an organization, the 17th District Victory Fund, that spent $330,000 on, among other things, a turn-out-the-vote campaign for Evans.

The Federal Elections Commission said it "found that these campaign-focused activities were so closely coordinated with the campaign that they represented contributions from the Victory Fund to Evans. The contributions exceeded federal limits and included funds from prohibited sources, in violation of [federal election law]."

IllinoisDemNet won't answer my questions. I wonder why.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune