Mayor Daley's great big hush-hush

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Mayor Richard Daley has given the lie to one of President Barack Obama's key promises: transparency.

While Obama promises that everything about his stimulus spending and, indeed, his entire administration will be open to inspection, Daley has steadfastly refused to reveal to the public or his City Council how he plans to spend Chicago's share of the $9 billion in stimulus cash programmed to come to Illinois.

That Daley would stiff several freedom of information requests from the media for a glimpse of his wish list is standard operating procedure in Chicago. But he's also ignoring 46 of the 50 aldermen on the City Council who asked all city departments and outside agencies controlled by Daley, such as the CTA and the Chicago Public Schools, to reveal their spending plans. That kind of high-handed autocracy might surprise observers in other cities, but in Chicago, any alderman putting his signature on a petition to implore Daley to even pretty-please do something is considered traitorous.

Daley's explanation? "Yes, we do, we have our list, we've been talking to people," he said. "We did not put that out publicly because once you start putting it out publicly, you know, the newspapers, the media is going to be ripping it apart."

So might the voters be ripping it apart, if this was a normal city. But this is Chicago, which re-enthrones Daley every four years, and whatever paltry gratuity His Lordship decides to bestow, Chicagoans gratefully receive. In a normal city, such wish lists would be transparent and the public would have a chance to comment, and if it chooses, to rip it apart. That's how a democracy is supposed to work, but not in Daley's Democratic realm.

People wonder how Chicago can be so corrupt, and here's one reason. When Daley says "we've been talking to people" about the list, who do you suppose he means? Technicians who are using cost-benefit formulas to calculate where best to spend the money? Daley Cabinet members in all-night sessions debating where the money would most benefit Chicago? Spare us. The money gets carved up in the back room, by friends, benefactees and finaglers who intimately understand the opportunities arising from the arrival of the biggest pile of taxpayer cash, ever. Outside, we can smell the stink, but we won't know what's rotting until Daley, in his wisdom, decides to give us a peek.

But even if Daley's wish list was perfectly legit, it still ought to be disclosed because it presents legitimate issues for public discussion. Suppose Illinois is in line for $500 million for transportation projects. Should it go for Chicago pothole repairs or suburban intersection improvements? CTA track repairs or more rolling stock for Metra? New CTA buses or for the completion of the long-delayed Elgin-O'Hare Expressway? Should taxpayers look to the Obama administration to correct Daley's imperious, if not illegal, secrecy? After all, Obama has repeatedly promised "transparency" in government and a new way of doing business. Again, spare us. Obama's assistant for intergovernmental affairs is Valerie Jarrett, who herself rose through Daley's political apparatus to eventually head the CTA. Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and White House senior adviser David Axelrod (Obama's Karl Rove) also are Chicago products. For them to defy Daley's craving for distributing the loot as he sees fit is laughable.

Nor should we expect much from Obama himself, who will be engaging in blinding hypocrisy if he continues to allow Daley to get away with the in-your-face politics he practices in Chicago. Maybe Obama will cross me up and figure out a way to force Daley's list out into public view without humbling the mayor. My bet, though, is that Obama will keep his silence, because that will keep Daley happy. And the rest of the nation will continue its swoon, believing that "real change" has arrived.

Mr. Obama's recession

This is worth a read: Our Troubled Economy Is a Response to Barack Obama's Policies - WSJ.com

President Barack Obama's budget plan taxes wealthy to aid middle and lower classes

This story says:

WASHINGTON — From front to back and on nearly every page, President Barack Obama's new budget plan delivers a message that's seldom been heard in American politics for more than three decades: It's time for the rich to pay their fair share and lighten the load on the middle class. [Emphasis added]

Wait, a progressive income tax, which requires those in upper income brackets pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes, isn't a fair share? If not, then what is a fair share?

Barney, is there an answer in there?

MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews asked the right question of Rep. Barney Frank:

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about the numbers. Do you think there‘s enough money in the added income—the re-added income taxes of those above $250,000 a year—is there enough income up there to tax, enough taxable income to bring into the federal Treasury over time to pay for the cost of a real national health care system?

Here is Frank's non-answer, which you can see in context here:

FRANK: Well, thanks to the incompetence of the—where the financial system has worked the deregulation, there aren‘t as many rich people as there used to be and they‘re not as rich as they used to be. But over time, it will be there. But you do have to do more.

And one of the things that I most liked about the president‘s state of the nation speech—which I thought was a very good speech, very well delivered, even better than very good—he talked about ending the spending on cold war weapons. One of the great things of inconsistency that I think, Chris, of people who worry about spending—they brought us the Iraq war, the single biggest addition to the deficit, and unlike some other things, it‘s all money that we lose. We don‘t get any of it money back.

They have projected—you know, we are now—according to the Bush budget, we‘re going to spend billions of dollars to protect the Czech Republic from being attacked by Iran. Now, I‘m not a regular reader of the fatwas...

(LAUGHTER)

FRANK: Well, that‘s true. I don‘t regularly read all the fatwas that come out of Teheran, but I am not aware that they are about to declare war on the Czech Republic, and I don‘t see why I should spend billions of dollars to stop it.

Somehow, we got from asking a real question about how to finance TARP, stimulus, the 2009 and 2010 budgets and whatever comes next into fatwas. Too bad that Matthews inexcusably let Frank get away with it.

Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party

Once more it's not what is being said that's important for so many of my simpleminded colleagues, but who is saying it and how it is being said. What not engage in a debate over ideas rather than focusing, like this sorry article, on putting down the speaker and his adherents?

Northern Trust to Barney Frank: Kiss my ass.

Northern Trust seeks to repay bailout money

The golf tournament that Northern Trust sponsors has contributed more than$50 million to charity. How many people have been employed--servers, etc.--to host the tournament is no small matter...to the people who have the jobs.

Frank is engaging is class warfare, and the class he's warring against is the very people he claims to represent.

Let's hear it for Northern Trust.

Chicago gets FAA approval to spend $182 million on O'Hare expansion design

The FAA blows your money on a pie in the sky expansion of O'Hare. Aside from the questionable legality (the ticket tax was intended to be used for actual construction, not for plans), there is the sight of $182 million going down the drain for a project that the airlines say they don't even want. More proof that the FAA continues to be in the tank for Richard M. Daley

Details are here.

Dist. 214 To Host Special Meeting On O'Hare Ring Road

You mean that after years of hemming and hawing, O'Hare expansion enablers finally are going to tell everyone where the ring road around the airport will go?

Read it here.

Jindal comparisons to Kenneth the Page abound online

It didn't take long for blogdolts to begin making fun of Jindal. (Follow the links from here.)

As these the same people who would not tolerate anyone making fun of Obama's ears?

Obama's automotive history rewrite

Will President Barack Obama's assertion that America invented the automobile get the same kind and amount of attention as did the misspelling of potato(e)?

Don’t resign, Senator Burris

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Hang in there, Roland.

Don’t quit. Finish out your term as the Democratic senator representing the cheesy state of Illinois.

It’s your best, and perhaps only, way to get even with your fellow Democrats who have turned on you with a vengeance, who have knifed you in the back after your lifetime of subservience to Democratic rule. You are the Rod Blagojevich gift to fellow Democrats that would keep on giving.

Truth is, senator, your former compadres want you out, without a second to lose, even more than Republicans, who have much to gain by your hanging on. Your Democratic pals didn’t want you in there in the first place....

Continue reading in the Chicago Daily Observer

Obama could be reaching too far too quickly

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

In just a month, President Barack Obama has saved the banking, financial services and housing industries, changed the way that Washington does business, bailed out the auto industry, settled the Republican hash and saved the economy with the largest spending bill ever passed. In record time.

This week he goes on to save health care, tame entitlements, balance the budget and map the way to energy independence. At least that's all that's scheduled. Maybe he'll throw in a bonus, like curing cancer.

No disrespect intended, but it makes me think of the late comic genius Andy Kaufman, standing next to a phonograph on bare stage and lip-syncing to the Mighty Mouse song.

Obama's schedule this week includes a White House fiscal policy summit Monday, a speech to Congress on Tuesday and the unveiling of his budget Thursday.

Potomac decipherers describe this as Obama's breakaway week, in which he completes the onerous task of dealing with the mess he inherited and begins his own far-reaching agenda. Of course, the inherited mess includes finishing work on this fiscal year's budget, which—ahem—the Democratic Congress failed to pass even though we're five months into the fiscal year. My question is: When does Obama have the time to go over the budget "line by line" like he promised?

Obviously, he doesn't, but we won't count that as a broken campaign promise because, well, we'd get trashed by the White House for questioning the wisdom of this frenzy. Much as Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs racked Rick Santelli, the CNBC reporter in Chicago's futures pits, over the coals for audaciously saying what many Americans are: How fair is it when the irresponsible get rewarded by the government and the 90 percent of us who pay our mortgages on time don't? What kind of example does it set for a nation that has gone from an instant-gratification culture to one that demands instant and foolproof protection from all risk? You'll have to excuse the Chicago commodities and futures traders for raising the question, since they make their living by facing down pure risk. You would have thought the current White House would understand where the traders are coming from since the financial/investment sector was among Obama's biggest campaign contributors, according to OpenSecrets.org.

There is something about this manic rush to set straight everything in America that bespeaks an incredible conceit, the same kind of hubris that argues that government policy can stabilize the global climate. While I detect a certain pride in the Obama administration at having "accomplished" more in a single month than Franklin Roosevelt did in an entire term, there's also the possibility that Obama may have done more damage in the opening week of his administration than President George W. Bush allegedly did in two terms.

In this feverish rush to solve everything, wouldn't it be prudent to pause a moment to appreciate the fact that no one, even by the administration's acknowledgment, knows whether the economic upheaval we've set in motion, including a change in the basic relationship between the American citizen and his government, will work? Much of what Obama and the Democrats have done already is irreversible, giving some of us the feeling that we're speeding down a dark highway at midnight with no headlights on.

Again and again, we hear that our only choice is not just to do something, but to do this something—a truly false dichotomy. But the question remains: What if we're wrong? What if we've spawned a monster—the kind of stagflation that gripped us in the early 1980s? What if the unprecedented debt we are creating is so huge that our children will have to spend so much of their wealth servicing it that they'll be denied the indulgences that this generation takes as its right. Or worse, what if the debt servicing consumes so much of the nation's wealth that future generations will be unable to afford the safety nets and government social spending that the left

GM's Plan: Subsidize Our 48-Year-Old Retirees

Lots of taxpayers would like to get the deal UAW workers still get: Paul Ingrassia in the Wall Street Journal

Obama Road Show Panned in Peoria

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

In a remarkably inept and embarrassing political stumble, President Barack Obama’s trek to the Caterpillar plant in East Peoria to pitch his stimulus package re-focused the spotlight on the Democratic death-grip on the Colombia free-trade pact.

Passage of the measure would mean for Caterpillar hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new or saved jobs, without costing the taxpayers any money—unlike the wildly extravagant $1.2 trillion (with interest) stimulus package. Yet, Obama opposes the pact and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stubbornly has refused to allow the agreement to come to the floor for a vote.

Caterpillar, the heavy equipment manufacturer, is one of the nation’s main exporters to Colombia and would be a chief beneficiary of free trade with the South American nation....

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Slow drip of financial ruin

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

It's the death of reason.

Well, maybe not its death, but passage of the $787 billion stimulus package has sent reason to the intensive-care unit, possibly to draw its last breath. How ironic that at the very moment we were celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, who with Newton, Galileo and other rational minds, freed Western thinking from the manacles of faith, miracles and doctrine, Congress and President Barack Obama launched history's most expensive government giveaway, based entirely on panic, divination and ignorance.

The emotions of fear and loathing are what spawned this monstrosity; reason and logic had nothing to do with it. It's no better than sorcery. Democrats sold this package purely on gut feeling, sentiment and intuition.

I once had a college sociology professor—Bud Bloomberg, a man as liberal as you could find—who fulminated against slapdash solutions to society's problems. First, define the problem, he lectured, and then craft the most efficient, direct and cost-effective solution, a solution that often turned out to be the simplest. The repeated failure to follow that framework in favor of a vague, hope-inspired panacea was why so many complex societal problems either weren't solved or made worse by heartfelt concoctions.

Hence, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, an unpalatable stew of every imaginable ingredient hatched by every imaginable chef, has come upon us, not targeted to any particular taste or need, but guaranteed to give every American the heaves and heartburn for generations to come. No more reason went into this gelatinous slop than the ridiculous and dishonest assertion that it was either "this or nothing." It's the ultimate whine of the naive do-something crowd that surfaces with every trouble, natural or man-made.

Senator after Democratic senator stood to disgorge this dishonest rhetoric during floor debate, repeatedly proclaiming the lie that Republican opponents had nothing of their own to offer. But you didn't have to search far to find examples of GOP solutions, such as the one on House Minority Leader John Boehner's Web site. You don't have to agree with his more moderate and targeted package of immediate tax relief for working families, more help for the small business sector (the nation's biggest job producer), no tax increases to pay for spending, jobless assistance and home price stabilization.

However, simple honesty should compel the Reids and Pelosis to refrain from saying the opposition has no plan. Democrats, of course, were able to get away with this slander because few in the media challenged it or bothered to report it. The media also have failed to challenge the economic methodologies that are the basis for claims that the stimulus will produce millions of jobs.

Reason is the facility of the mind used to intelligently form judgments, make decisions and solve problems. Emotions are feelings, desires, fears, hates and passionate drives—all of which are the tools that Obama deployed to sell the stimulus package to a gullible public. Endeavor to go through all 1,100 pages of this stuffed piggy and you'll find little rational connection between the nation's problems and its solutions—other than if we throw enough money out there, some of it will stick to the wall.

The lightning-like passage of this colossal spending package (amounting to more than the Iraq war) took just three weeks. Congress is supposed to be a deliberative body, making decisions judiciously, openly and unhurriedly. This was steamrolled.

Worse than the insult to the democratic process, however, is the substance of this lunacy. Our national debt will nudge close to 100 percent of gross domestic product, something that hasn't happened since World War II when the threat to our country was external, mortal and real, and not of our own making. Then, we had to sell war bonds to our own citizens, the only way we could finance the war. Now, with the possible drying up of foreign purchases of American debt, perhaps we'll have to revert to celebrity-studded beg-a-thons of the 1940s to buy our own debt. School kids could again pinch pennies and nickels for the cause. They'll love us for it.

Kinky links to O'Hare expansion

Chicagoist is the latest to take note of the monkey business at O'Hare and how it might threaten the expansion project.

Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan

Here is the first of many rats to be discovered lurking in the "stimulus" package: Cracking down on health care choices, loss of your doctor's ability to treat you as best he can and nationalization of your health care records, to be reviewed by a federal health czar to determine if you are being treated as the federal government decides you should be treated. Seniors will be most affected.

Tom Daschle may be gone, but his stink remains in this attempt to seek nationalized health care into the "stimulus" bill.

Sun-Times Editor Michael Cooke leaving for Toronto Star

The last of the plague that Conrad Black brought to Chicago is leaving. This is the best news that the Sun-Times has had in years, and, at last, gives the paper a better chance for survival. The respected John Barron as publisher and the new editor (the current managing editor and real Chicagoan Don Hayner would be a good choice) should provide a shot in the arm.

In the Company Of Misery…Chicago is #3

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Now comes Forbes magazine, dumping on Chicago as the nation’s third most miserable city. Local loyalty should compel me to come to poor Chicago’s defense, but Forbes didn’t lay it on heavy enough.

City rankings, of course, are total bull hockey; ever since newspapers and magazines discovered computers, they found they could gin up a cheap, but well-noticed story, by slicing and dicing the so-called data to arrive at rankings based on fraudulent methodology.

And one could conclude that the Forbes’ ranking is obviously bogus because it asserts that the nearly comatose Detroit is less miserable than Chicago. Even Forbes seemed surprised when its methodology determined that Chicago was more forlorn than Cleveland.

Not even the election of Chicagoan Barack Obama as president could offset the city’s “lousy weather, long commutes, rising unemployment and the highest sales tax rate in the country…. High rates of corruption by public officials didn’t help either,” the magazine said.

That’s it?

If you ask me, the list should have been longer, much longer.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Daley hoping to land funds for O'Hare -- chicagotribune.com

Maybe Mayor Richard M. Daley can explain while he's asking for this money, why he needs it when he and his administration time after time assured us that the money was there to move ahead on this absurd expansion. Maybe he should be required to explain to American taxpayers why they should be called upon to fix his mistakes.

Still waiting for a plausible explanation

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

For hours, a medicated Sycloria Williams lay ignored and feeling ill on a women's clinic table until she suddenly felt a sharp pain and expelled her 23-week-old fetus onto the floor, alive. Williams said she watched as a clinic worker scooped up the still-breathing infant, dropped her in a biomedical waste bag and tossed her in the garbage. From there, the infant, bag and all, allegedly traveled to the clinic roof to boil in the hot Florida sun, then back down into a cardboard box in a closet where police finally discovered it a week later, decomposing. An anonymous caller had alerted police to the killing, and it took police, search warrant in hand, three visits to the Florida clinic to find the hidden corpse. No telling exactly when the baby died, but an autopsy found she had taken air into her lungs, meaning that she had lived through at least a part of this savagery.

A doctor was supposed to have been present, but he didn't show up until an hour later. It was left to the clinic owner, who held no health-care license, to cut the umbilical cord. No one called 911, no one alerted a neonatologist to see what could be done to keep the infant alive.

Did I mention that all this occurred at an abortion clinic? Some people might say, "Oh, well, the fetus was supposed to die anyway, so what's the big deal?" Such crassness only makes the whole episode that much more appalling. Williams had sought an elective abortion after she discovered her pregnancy when she was treated for a fall. She had arrived at the clinic for a 9:30 a.m. appointment, and finding no one qualified there to do the abortion, returned to her parked car to wait. An hour later, she went back in, and a clinic worker gave her two pills. Then she returned to her car. About 11:45 a.m., she was back inside because she began to feel sick; she was told to lie down in a patient room. The clinic doctor who was scheduled to do the abortion now told staff he would arrive about noon. At 1:30 p.m., according to a later Florida health department report, she still was waiting and "feeling worse by the minute." About 2 p.m., she gave birth to her daughter; the doctor arrived at 3 p.m. This "incident" occurred in 2006, but it took until Friday for Florida to yank the license of Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique, the clinic doctor. Local authorities still are weighing whether to charge Renelique with a crime (although it seems negligent homicide would be a lay down). And Williams is suing for physical and emotional damage.

Even some pro-choice groups have found this example of a "live-birth abortion" appalling. "It really disturbed me," said Joanne Sterner, president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women. "I know that there are clinics out there like this. And I hope that we can keep [women] from going to these types of clinics." Well said, but cleverly deceptive. If there are "clinics out there like this," as Sterner said, why is that? Is society's job only to steer women away from such clinics, or is it also society's job to shut them down? Most pro-choice folks are liberals, and liberals are big on demanding more government regulation. Except when it comes to abortion clinics; every attempt to more strictly regulate abortions—even to protect women—is stoutly opposed by outfits like NOW and the abortion industry as an "intrusion on a woman's right to choose [abortion.]" Failure to require detailed reporting to and aggressive follow-up by regulators of live-birth abortions, as well as other tougher regulations, casts doubt on any claims that Williams' case is extraordinarily rare.

We could debate all day what laws should be passed to prevent such outrages, and not get anywhere. Witness President Barack Obama's vote, twice, in the Illinois Senate against a Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, and his defenders' endless determination to minimize the vote. But we won't get nearer to resolving this issue until the Obamas of the world acknowledge that a baby born alive is a person with all the rights the rest of us claim. Until the pro-choice crowd becomes as passionate about born-alive infants as they are about their pantheon of other victims. Until they finally show some humanity.

Haste makes Waste

The Obama administration has been deluging America with the propaganda that there’s not one second to lose. Even the slightest delay in passing the wasteful stimulus package will be, as they say, catastrophic.

Actually, the real reason for the haste is that the more that Americans begin to understand this $800-billion-plus (actually $1.3 trillion with the debt servicing) package, the more frightened they’ll become about what they’re doing to their kids and grandkids, and the more they’ll oppose it. One week of debate about passing the equivalent of an entire year’s budget is unprecdented, and not how a democracy is supposed to work.

Here's what's inexcusable, Mr. President

President Barack Obama bemoans the very idea that some in Congress would want to know something about what it is about to pass in the stimulus bill. "It is inexcusable and irresponsible to get bogged down in distraction and delay while millions of Americans are being put out of work," he said. (text here)

No, what's inexcusable is piling on the biggest single hunk of deficit spending since World War II with blinding speed, in two weeks. Here, Mr. President, we don't govern by edict.

So, mayor, when do we get to see the list?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Mayor Richard M. Daley isn’t releasing his “shovel-ready, wish-list” of projects he wants funded with the swelling economic stimulus package because, well, it’s “controversial.”

The unspoken premise being that the more controversial something is, the less right the public has to know about it. As the Chicago Tribune quoted Daley: “Yes, we do, we have our list, we’ve been talking to people. We did not put that out publicly because once you start putting it out publicly, you...

Continue reading at the Chicago Daily Observer

Support for Stimulus Package Falls to 37%

Uh oh, there goes the mandate. See poll by Rasmussen Reports

1st order of business: Dump the free rides

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Please. Give us a sign.

Not from some celestial body, but from way down below—the Illinois House and Senate. They need to do something right away that demonstrates they mean business when it comes to reform.

We heard senator after senator last week during Rod Blagojevich's impeachment trial claim they were on the side of the virtues and pledge allegiance to reform. We can't tolerate this anymore, they proclaimed. We must set Illinois on a new path. No longer can we be the butt of late-night comedians' jokes. We owe the people of Illinois better. Blah and blah. Words. It's all just words, until they step up to the plate and prove they mean it.

And they can start by immediately repealing free train and bus rides for seniors.

If anything has Blagojevich's name stamped all over it (other than the quickly removed tollway signs that bore his tag) it is the free-ride program. The legislators didn't want to do it. Said we couldn't afford it. Said they had no other choice. Said they were exhorted into doing it. That it was all Blagojevich's fault.

If you recall, a year ago the state was facing another one of those unfailing transit crises, and if the legislature didn't provide more state aid, riders would have to face huge fare increases and severe service cuts. Lawmakers narrowly approved a bailout package that included a sales tax increase. But Blagojevich vetoed the legislation, adding the free ride for seniors as a surprise gotcha. It hadn't been on the bargaining table. There was no public groundswell; it caught even CTA brass off guard. But the legislature (read: mostly Democrats) gave in and presto, we had free rides. Blagojevich's ridiculous, pompadour-crowned head got bigger, crammed full, as it was, of thoughts of his own invincibility. Some leading Democrats took it personally; they lost another joust with the goofball governor. Outfoxed again.

The sly political move boxed the lawmakers, because opposing it would have denied yet another entitlement to one of the country's most greedy and powerful interest groups: seniors. Not that they don't get enough breaks already, this one came out of the blue and was welcomed with open arms by the what-has-government-done-for-me-lately crowd. Holster your vitriol, seniors. I'm one of you, and, yes, I admit I've used this freebie, once. However, I happily can say that I've encountered many other seniors who were outraged by the giveaway, proving that we're not all consummate moochers.

Insert here the usual yowl from naive idealists that canceling the freebie would hurt the poor and that anyone who would propose such a thing is a mean good-for-nothing. No doubt, some folks can use a free ride, but just how many has never been convincingly established. But here's a suggestion: If you believe there's a "desperate need" for free rides for the impoverished elderly, figure out a way to means-test a free transit pass, or raise the money privately yourself. I'm sure you and your well-intentioned friends would do a great job, as motivated as you are by your goodness.

But don't give a free lunch to people who don't need one. It's like that lunatic $800 billion-plus "stimulus" package that President Barack Obama and Democrats are rushing through Congress. It's based on the logic that if you fling enough pies at the wall, a few will stick.

Returning to the time when seniors paid merely half fare would be a towering symbol of the legislature's commitment to reform. Imagine the guts it would take to reverse a newly established entitlement. It would be a national, if not international, precedent.

But it also would be more than symbolic. It's estimated that the free rides for seniors are costing other riders and taxpayers $26.5 million in lost revenue in 2009.

True, compared with the trillions that Washington is tossing around these days without a thought about the long-term consequences, it's not much. But $26.5 million is $26.5 million and because it is a "small" amount of money, it would be a good place to start.

This is but the first step that the legislature should take to prove it is committed to reform. They (and our new Gov. Pat Quinn) can dismantle some of the other money-grabs Blagojevich did on his own, the very things that caused the House and Senate to dump him.

See, it's not just a matter of the legislature's getting rid of Blagojevich. More important is getting rid of the damage he created.

Local TV news blows it

By Dennis Byrne

This is for Chicago’s television newsrooms, and I’m sure it won’t make a bit of difference:

You reached a low point in Chicago journalism when you cut away from Gov. Pat Quinn’s live press conference last week to give live voice to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s ramblings and lies in his circus-like press conference outside his Ravenswood Manor house Thursday night after his eviction from office.

This goofball had enough opportunities to air his crud, to excess. Two days of non-stop interviews by the clueless New York media. A 50-minute-long speech before the Senate, in which he explained nothing.

Meanwhile, the new governor was, could have been, making news and a lot of us wanted to hear live what he had to say about this supposed new day in Illinois ethics and financial integrity. Would he raise the income tax? What specific ethic reforms does he have in mind? Why doesn’t he know what the state deficit is?

Maybe one of the reporters at Quinn’s press conference asked those and other important questions. But if they did, none of us got to hear his answers as he gave them. We’ve seen and heard everything that Blago has had to say in excruciating detail. A few of us wanted to know where the new governor would take us.

But every single local station I could find cut Quinn off, in mid-sentence as it were, to rush out to hang on Blago’s tired ravings one last time. What did they expect he’d say that was new? Did anyone really think that he would detail how he would explain to his children what happened to him, as at least one reporter asked? Would he write a book?

No, of course he wouldn’t say anything newsworthy. He talked again about how his father came from Yugoslavia, that America is a land of opportunity even for folks whose last name is long and hard to pronounce, that he did nothing wrong, that his conviction was a pre-ordained result and that he would tell us “the inside stuff” next week, if we want to listen. All the media crowd outside of his home did was feed this delusional man’s ego.

The man is disgraced. Sure, that doesn’t mean that he’s no longer a story. Sure, send a crew out to cover him if you must, as any newspaper city editor would. But suggesting that what the ex-governor had to say was more important than what the new governor was saying is bizarre. It’s as if all the TV networks had cut away from President Barack Obama’s first press conference to follow former President George Bush whine outside his home about unfair he was treated.

Quinn’s remarks at his House swearing-in were optimistic and eloquent. They pointed us in a direction where he thought we should go. He’s right that we’ve got much work to do, to restore trust and confidence. Big tests await those in whose hands the Illinois government now resides. That’s what the news is. Blagojevich is history; leave him to the academicians who study such things. We’re supposed to be journalists, bringing the public what’s new and important. That’s not what Chicago television stations gave us.

If we’re to get out of this mess, we’ll need better judgment in our newsrooms.

Study questions usefulness of animal-human embryos

The Associated Press reports

Pat Quinn, Illinois' new governor, opposed O'Hare expansion

Will he continue to? It will be a test of his independence from the bi-partisan combine that runs Illinois.

Daily Herald | What Gov. Quinn means for the suburbs

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the U.S. Increased 0.3 Percent

Let's not make big news out of this because it might raise some people's spirits and hopes. Can't have any of that.

Here are the components of the latest index:

Four of the ten indicators that make up the leading economic index increased in December. The positive contributors – beginning with the largest positive contributor – were real money supply, interest rate spread, manufacturers’ new orders for consumer goods and materials and manufacturers’ new orders for nondefense capital goods.

The negative contributors – beginning with the largest negative contributor – were building permits, average weekly manufacturing hours, index of supplier deliveries (vendor performance), average weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance (inverted), and stock prices. The index of consumer expectations held steady in December.

Best Stimulus: Homebuyers' Tax Credit

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics.com

Last October, I said that the $700 billion bailout package, known as TARP, would become the biggest flimflam ever pulled on the American public.

I was wrong. It will be overshadowed by President Barack Obama's $825 billion stimulus package as the biggest swindle ever--doing nothing more than ladling out uncounted billions to the same old government contractors, political cronies and well-lobbied special interest groups for years to come.

It will prove to be about as effective at reigniting the economy as the TARP program has been, which is to say a criminal waste of taxpayers' money for generations to come

Continue reading in RealClearPolitics

While O'Hare declines, Milwaukee's airport rises

While O'Hare and Midway airports are losing business, Milwaukee's Mitchell Airport is enjoying new growth. You can thank Mayor Richard M. Daley for that.

Milwaukee's Mitchell Airport posted record increases in 2008 compared with 2007, for the 17th straight months of record growth. The reason? O'Hare is a mess and for many travelers in northern Illinois, Mitchell has become a viable alternative: lower fares, few of the delays that choke O'Hare.

Daley's obsession with expanding O'Hare with an unworkable plan has led to this bad news for Chicago. Instead of a more reasonable plan, and a state-of-the-art south suburban airport to relieve O'Hare, Daley has pursued an expansion plan whose main objective is not a better, more efficient airport, but more jobs and contracts for loyalists.

Milwaukee should send a big "thank you" to Daley for the business.

Beyond Blagojevich: Illinois is in a state of debt

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

As much as Gov. Rod Blagojevich deserves to go, let's not forget who's sending him on his way—the ever-suspect legislature. For what it's worth, the astute political class is unanimous that the Senate will convict him of whatever it takes, and dismiss him from office, perhaps by the end of the week. But when the legislature acts with such alacrity, it is time to be dubious.

Which is why one should take soberly Blagojevich's warning that once he's gone, the way will be cleared for such chicanery as an increase in the state income tax. For all the celebration over the prospects of Blagojevich's departure—and I'm among those who will light off a skyrocket—we've debated little about what will follow. Even with him gone, we'll still be dealing with the festering mess that he and the legislature together have left behind.

The state's financial condition is wretched, perhaps the worst among the 50 states. With the next election almost two years away, legislators might be tempted to increase the income tax. Liberals have long called for an increase and last year some business interests even joined in, arguing that extraordinary steps must be taken in these tempestuous times, a view I once shared.

Illinois' deficits and debt are sky-high. For several years, state revenues had been increasing at a steady pace, but lately that has diminished in the face of the economic downturn. Even if you count the $1.4 billion from the state's short-term borrowing last month, the money available to pay the state's unpaid bills—totaling a historic $1.8 billion at the end of last month—hasn't kept up. Instead of cutting back, like most households are forced to do in an economic crunch, the state's expenditures keep growing. Even in good times, expenditures outstripped revenues, but the economic downturn now has worsened this trend. Base spending during this fiscal year (we're half way through it) increased 5.8 percent, thanks to a $764 million increase in operating expenses, education grants and retirement contributions. Education accounted for the biggest hunk of the increase—up $511 million, or 17 percent—for State Board of Education grants and $205 million, or 36.7 percent, for teachers retirement grants. It's something to keep in mind the next time we hear the whine that "schools don't get enough."

Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, who is turning out to be the state's unheralded Cassandra, sees worse ahead. General funds appropriations are up $916 million, but that doesn't include more hundreds of millions to pay required contributions to five state retirement systems. And don't forget, we have to pay off that $1.4 billion in short-term loans.

At the end of this fiscal year on June 30, the state could be holding more than $3 billion in unpaid bills, money that probably will be hijacked from the following year's budget. At some point, we'll be bankrupt, the first state to join the wave of corporate failures. Hynes calls the situation "dire" and potentially "unmanageable," words not strong enough to accurately describe the coming cataclysm.

Boring stuff, all these numbers. But I guarantee you'll feel something other than boredom when you start paying the increased taxes.

One test of the legislature's good intentions is whether, before passing any tax increase, it starts rolling back of some of Blagojevich's insanity, such as free rides for seniors on mass transit or his unilateral and unconstitutional expansion of the state's FamilyCare program. FamilyCare provides health-care coverage for families that make up to $83,000 annually for a family of four.

Fear of an income tax increase is not reason enough for keeping Blagojevich; his deceptions and cynical use of government programs for political gain by themselves demonstrate his unsuitability for government office, which is the essential charge of his Senate trial. Even if he pulls another surprise and resigns between the time I write this and the time it appears (anything is possible with this guy), his departure will still leave a state in shambles. The mess is so convoluted that it can't simply be cleaned up with a tax increase. If the legislature wants to demonstrate that it can govern any better than Blagojevich, then let it start by first lowering expenditures to match revenues.

Neo-Reagan echoes in Obama's speech

Patrick J. Buchanan, in Human Events, also saw a hint of the conservative brand in President Barack Obama's inauguration speech. In my earlier column, I heard the same thing as the voice of a neocon, which wouldn't make Pat all that happy.

And now here's Newt Gingrich also noting the conservative themes in the speech.

When I first wrote similar observations, my column was turned down by several conservative e-zines. I thought that I may have been way off the wall. At least now I'm not alone in that place.

Oh, gee, another $163 million no one noticed

Chicago will pay United Airlines $163 million to move a cargo facility that stands in the way of the next, new runway at O'Hare Airport, according to the Chicago Tribune. In the over-all scam, err, scheme of a $15 billion airport, that's not much. But did anybody bother to ask where the $163 million is coming from?

Who would have thought? By the way, did you notice that there's no mention of where the new facility will go? That's either more piece-meal planning or another attempt to keep the plans secret. Why the latter? Because the new location might have something to do with where the promised by-pass road will go--on or off airport property. Either location has serious problems, which is why everyone still is waiting to see what the answer is.

Neocon echoes in Obama’s speech

By Dennis Byrne

Well, doggone, did we elect a neoconservative president?

Barack Obama’s inauguration speech contained, in addition to the usual affirmations of liberal convictions, several eloquent endorsements of certain neoconservative ethics. My observation, of course, will provoke disbelief, if not offense.

But the speech deftly included multiple and reverential references to values, responsibility, sacrifice and duty, essentials that illuminate neoconservative oratory. I got the impression that they were not included as just a sop to the right, but were spoken with deep conviction.

Neoconservatism arose from 1960s liberalism, partially from principles enunciated by Democratic President John F. Kennedy, who spoke two memorable lines in his own inaugural speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

And: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Compare them with one of Obama’s lines that got some of the greatest applause: “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

Of course, this does not mean that Obama is a Paul Wolfowitz in disguise. Of course, Obama could not be properly defined as a neoconservative.

Neoconservatives might be called “fallen-away Democrats,” who abandoned the left after the left abandoned certain principles that Obama praised in his speech whose theme was “A New Era of Responsibility.” We older neocons shared the path of the Freedom Riders and Martin Luther King Jr. in our belief in equal rights for all. We also supported the fight for freedom not only here but throughout the world, including nations dominated by dictatorships—whether communist or fascists—and Iraq.

So, neo-cons are entitled to be heartened to hear Obama’s words spoken. These words:

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true.

“They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task….

I saw in Obama’s speech, and in his campaign, a certain thread of social conservatism, a characteristic of many neoconservatives. He has done what no what white commentator could get away with doing a decade ago without getting scorched for “racism”: He appealed for a return to responsibility for black males and a restoration of the African-American family.

Admittedly, there is a danger in going too far with the neoconservative comparison. His pledge in foreign relations to balance negotiations with a strong America did not go as far as Kennedy’s “pay-any-price” commitment, a commitment that, by the way, got America involved in Vietnam. Some of his aggressive government interventions would not inspire neoconservatives to shout hosannas.

But uniting the country means more than getting people of different skin colors, religions and nationalities in the same room. It also means respecting the cherished beliefs of many, which Obama has done.

That was a good speech you gave, Mr. President.

Worst. Inauguration. Ever.

Is this the only person who had a bad experience when almost 2 million people pressed onto the mall to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama? Did the media intentionally ignore reporting such bad experiences because their script said that everyone was in a rapture?

Hat tip to Blithe Spirit

Inauguration Day 2009

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

This is for those of you who have had it up to here with the inauguration hype. The rest of you who regard Barack Obama's presidential oath-taking today as the arrival of the Ultimate State of Being can go back to your rapture.

Others who have been alternately amused and appalled at the excesses of the precoronation preparations of the past few days should gather around for a little curmudgeonly reflection.

Oprah Winfrey unintentionally caught the unearthly spirit of it all the night Obama was elected when she told the TV show "Access Hollywood": "There are not even words to talk about what this night means. Everybody keeps using the word historic—there's never been a night like this on the planet Earth . . . nothing can compare to this."

The media have almost fatally choked on their endless diet of stories about parties, dress styles, the tears, the attending stars and celebrities, the electricity zapping through the heavens and the rest of the fawning. Please, someone apply the Heimlich maneuver.

PETA will be giving away unwanted fur coats to the homeless, splashed, of course, with paint so they cannot be sold later, not even by the homeless who could use the money. The swells in their evening gowns and tuxedos are being encouraged to ride mass transit to their galas, where they will dine off biodegradable containers. All plastic and Styrofoam have been banned, of course. "We're obviously not going to have paper towels in the bathroom," said one organizer, preferring instead air dryers, making me wonder if they have calculated which leaves the larger carbon footprint.

It's all so precious. Strikes me that if they had truly wanted to leave the smallest carbon footprint possible, they could have done their part by holding the inauguration in a phone booth. Instead, the extravagant affair has the flavor of rubbing the losers' noses in it.

But, that's the winner's job. The presidential inauguration may be our nation's strangest celebration: Half of the 300 million Americans are joyful, exuberant or out of their minds with excitement. The other half are sad, if not angry, or frightened. That's the way it always has been.

So, we might as well sit back and enjoy it. Even take some pride in the peaceful transfer of power. If this were Zimbabwe, the losers would be cranking up their tanks right now, instead of moping in front of their TVs. Obama's supporters sometimes may resemble whirling dervishes, spinning out of control. But, their joy is genuine, their adulation sincere and their optimism authentic. The rest of us shouldn't step on it; we should honor it. After all, it is a historic event—the first black man elected president. We have come far in my lifetime.

Many of us now are sitting on the sidelines, from which the cheering (or booing) emanates. It will be a matter of pride that in our disagreements with the new government, we will never lower ourselves as far as the Bush-haters have done for the past eight years, with their endless stream of scorn and sneering.

Obama's theme for his inauguration is "Renewing America's Promise." In his speech today I hope he will recognize the wellspring from which America's promise flows—a shared disposition to look for better times. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt, who helped to pull us out of our gloom, recognized it. Perhaps Obama will, too, understanding that reigniting our optimism would do our economy more good than any $1 trillion stimulus package. The man came from nowhere (nothing better describes the Illinois legislature) and rose to the nation's most exulted office. He ought to be given a chance and respect. Even though I disagree with so much of what he stands for, I hope he succeeds. Even if it means I'm wrong. For a change.

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant. He blogs at dennisbyrne.blogspot.com

Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune

Daley to nail down stimulus money for O’Hare Airport expansion

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Unless I miss my bet, watch Mayor Richard M. Daley glom on to a big hunk of that $825-billion stimulus package for his loopy O’Hare Airport expansion.

Forget about getting your potholes filled or any of the other critical public works projects that you think should be done. They’ll all have to wait in line behind Daley’s desperate need for money to continue his O’Hare “modernization” boondoggle.

Continue reading in the Chicago Daily Observer

A heart-rending view of a murdered neighborhood

Here you will find a video of the homes and businesses in the peaceful, well-maintained neighborhood that will be destroyed by Mayor Richard M. Daley's O'Hare Airport expansion. This is highly recommended, if you have any sense of compassion.

Move on, would ya?

By Dennis Byrne
Political Mavens

One would hope that the Bush haters would take this opportunity to take a break, what with the impending inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. But no, their anal obsession with getting the outgoing president to confess to his “mistakes,” again was ignited on Monday by his final press conference.

In it, he admitted mistakes, but apparently not the right ones or enough of them. Said one snide guest on the PBS Newshour, aside from ruining his country and the Republican party, he probably doesn’t have to apologize to the country for much.

Continue reading in Political Mavens

Speaker Madigan to Illinois: It wasn't worth trying

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Now that Senate Democratic big wheels Dick Durbin and Harry Reid have decided to seat Roland Burris, Illinois Donkey Party leaders cannot escape blame for failing to call an election to fill President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat.

House Speaker Michael Madigan on Sunday finally voiced an excuse why Illinois voters should be stiffed, and he demonstrated anew that however hard Democrats try to climb out of the hole they've dug for themselves with this mess, the deeper they sink.

On WGN radio, Madigan said even if the legislature enacted a law removing Gov. Rod Blagojevich's power to appoint a successor and set a date for a special election, he couldn't trust the governor to sign it. "I think that had a bill gone to the governor's desk providing for a special election, Blagojevich would have vetoed the bill, made his appointment and then there'd be a matter of a motion to override in the legislature. But the appointment would have been made." Realist that he is, Madigan may be right, even though he first said he would call a special session to pass special-election legislation. Blagojevich first said he would sign such legislation, but jumped ahead with the Burris appointment instead.

This is funny: Madigan cringing at the thought that his arch-foe Blagojevich might veto something, and then using it as an excuse to do nothing. Whatever happened to the idea of passing something just to back the governor into a corner, such as a deficit-heavy budget that contains no revenues? That once was standard practice.

More important: Why not pass something because it's the right thing to do, such as giving Illinois voters a chance to elect an Obama replacement? So what if Blagojevich had vetoed a special election? Madigan could have demonstrated that at least someone, anyone, was on our side. That someone in this woebegone state wasn't so frightened out of his wits about losing a slice of power that he would stick up for the voters. In this, Madigan has come off as oily as Durbin and Reid, who, while trying to speak earnestly about what is true, good and real, appear as insufferable fakers.

It's ironic justice that Madigan, by his inaction, could wind up with a ticket in the 2010 general election headed by a loser anyway, Roland Burris.

Now, if you think Democratic pirouettes can't get any funnier (or sadder) than this, then wait until the fight over who fills Rahm Emanuel's 5th Congressional District seat heats up. The Northwest Side and northwest suburban district has produced such luminaries as Blagojevich and convicted former Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski and we're breathless to see who is the next to bubble up from this swamp.

The stage is set: Mayor Richard Daley isn't taking sides, having been deprived of a kinky political organization headed by convicted felon Don Tomczak; Democratic state Rep. James DeLeo, who is the big dog in the district, failed to install a candidate at a Saturday slating session of the district's committeemen, and now the race is wide open. This should be a classic bloodletting.

The political family tree in the district is so incestuous that it looks like an inkblot. You've got Ald. Patrick O'Connor (40th), Daley's City Council voice box, vying for the seat against state Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago), a lawyer representing real estate interests in City Hall. Supporting Fritchey are several powerful committeemen, including Ald. Richard Mell (33rd), the guy who gifted us with his son-in-law, Blagojevich, Also supporting Fritchey is another kingpin, Ald. William J.P. Banks (36th), who just happens to be the uncle of Fritchey's wife and related to a few other cloutmeisters.

O'Connor was crowing that he had the committeemen's endorsement nearly sewn up, but he fell far short of Fritchey, who fell short of winning the outright party slating. There's a bunch of other office seekers that'll add to the confusion before the March 3 special primary, prompting Ald. Thomas Tunney (44th) to declare an open primary to be a good thing because "the voters need to be heard."

Now, that's really funny. It's something that his fellow Democrats have strenuously avoided saying about picking Obama's replacement. Meanwhile, the joke these guys are playing is on Daley, who, thanks to the global laughter generated by his party, can kiss his treasured 2016 Olympics goodbye.

Hail, Burris

I guess this means that we don’t get to vote.

More and more, it looks like we’ll be stuck with whomever the bumbling state and national Democratic leadership picks for us to take President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat.

Dick Durbin and his gaunt buddy, Harry Reid, are the nation’s two most powerful U.S. senators. But they’ve come out looking like a couple of Tasmanian Devils from the Looney Tunes cartoons, bouncing all over the landscape while trying to figure out how to keep a loser, Roland Burris, from taking the seat. Letting the voters take a crack at picking the replacement isn’t even a part of their rhetoric.

Continue reading in The Chicago Daily Observer

Sarah Palin: Will Caroline Kennedy get 'kid-glove' treatment from media? -- chicagotribune.com

This paragraph showed up in the middle of a story about Sarah Palin asking whether the media will treat Caroline Kennedy's aspirations for a Senate seat with the same kind of treatment the Alaskan governor received in he quest for the vice presidency:

The media have published numerous reports containing criticism of Kennedy's lack of experience in elective office.

If you read the entire AP Story in which that paragraph appeared, you'll see that the paragraph was inserted by the reporter or the editor, without attribution. In other words, it was the reporter's/editor's own response to Palin's question. Whether or not the media treats the aspirations of the two women the same, the inserted paragraph should be attributed to someone, or it should provide some evidence that the statement is correct.

This is poor journalism, which is evidence of either incompetence or the bias that Palin believes exists. Are they teaching any of this in journalism schools anymore?

Illinois Democrats play a starring role in this mess

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

According to a New York Times editorial, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, by appointing Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate, has reduced the Illinois Statehouse to an opérabouffe.

For us flatlanders who had to look it up, an opérabouffe is an operetta, performed in an extravagant burlesque style, containing elements of comedy, satire, parody and farce that often ends happily. Except, this bouffe has no happy ending. And, if I may point out to the Times and other keen observers of the Illinois political scene, Blagojevich didn't single-handedly turn Illinois into "La Belle Helene." Blagojevich had a lot of help, and all of it came from Democrats, the Times' favorite political party. The ones who run the state, from whose maw emerged President-elect Barack Obama. The ones who control both houses of the legislature, occupy every statewide elective office and debauch Chicago and Cook County governments—Democrats all.

If any lesson is to be learned from this farce, it's that Democrats here know how to get elected but can't govern. It wasn't just Blagojevich who turned Illinois into the nation's most financially challenged state. Illinois Democrats were co-conspirators in wringing huge deficits, stiffing Medicare and other service providers and stuffing the budget with politically motivated programs. I would remind the Times that the legislature, over Blagojevich's objections, passed a budget that was $2.5 billion in the red in a blockheaded attempt to embarrass the governor.

The Democrats' most recent blunder was their stunning failure to pass legislation that would have stripped the governor of the power to appoint someone to fill Obama's Senate seat. They could have authorized Illinois voters to pick the replacement in an election, but, no, our beloved Democrats could not take the slightest chance that voters, at last fed up with the donkey party, might elect a Republican. Illinois Democrats could have easily spared U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the rest of the party the embarrassment of trying to turn away the Senate's only African-American. Instead, Illinois Democrats can take the blame for putting Reid in the position of having to explain to a guffawing nation why his party could legally slam the door shut on Obama's replacement. If you don't think that Blagojevich managed to plant a sharp stick in Reid's eye, you must have missed the senator's squirming and deplorable performance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" as the program's new host, David Gregory, skillfully grilled him.

And squirm Reid should. His refusal to seat Burris is so arbitrary that it could set a precedent theoretically allowing Republicans, once back in control, to refuse to seat Democrats simply because they're from Chicago—which, come to think of it, isn't a bad idea. The legalities of the Burris affair have become so tangled, I don't see how a replacement—whether named in a special election or by a successor to an impeached and convicted Blagojevich—could legally bump Burris out of his seat.

Truth is, Democrats are stuck with Burris and all that implies about being the party that spawned the allegedly "corrupt" and goofy Blagojevich. That's how it should be. Reid, and all those other Democrats who keep saying Burris would make a "fine" senator, will discover another truth: Burris, spawned by the same party that gave us Blagojevich, is a mediocrity, perhaps even an embarrassment, something they couldn't miss if they saw him stumble through his appointment news conference. Here's a measure of Burris' character: He silently stood by while his staunchest supporter, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), implied that anyone who opposed the appointment would be guilty of lynching a black man. Burris has yet to repudiate that inflammatory racism, something the Democratic Party can't afford if they want to hold together Obama's "inclusive" coalition. Burris would be facing gale-force head winds in either a special or the next general election because even Illinois' remarkably untroubled electorate will remember Burris was crass and stupid enough to accept Blagojevich's appointment. Burris' only chance is for Republicans to pull their usual vanishing act.

"The many problems of Illinois cannot be addressed so long as Mr. Blagojevich remains governor," the Times editorial intoned. Not quite. It should have said: "The many problems of Illinois cannot be addressed so long as Democrats run the state." Someday, Illinois' blind Democratic voters will see it.

The True Cost of Blago's folly

If legal scholars are right that the fight over Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate will be long, possibly ending up before the U.S. Supreme Court, I’ve got a question:

Who pays?

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Rod finds a dumbass to appoint senator

Anyone willing to accept Gov. Rod Blagojevich's appointment as Illinois' U.S. senator should be considered too stupid to hold the job.

Incredibly, the besieged governor actually found someone crazy enough to agree to fill President-elect Barack Obama's vacated senate seat. That person is Roland Burris, a lifelong creature of smarmy state and local Democratic politics, a former one-term state attorney general and three-term state comptroller.

Read more in RealClearPolitics

Give optimism a chance

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

On the cusp of a new year, America has gone bipolar. Barack Obama's election has precipitated tears of joy, fresh zephyrs of hope brushing our cheeks and dreams of goodness and kindness shadowing us forever. The economy has kindled the fires of fear, unseen since the Great Depression and World War II. The popular mood is perfectly described as bipolar, a disorder characterized by abnormally elevated feelings approaching mania, paired with grinding episodes of depression. While the two extremes usually are separated by periods of normal feelings, America has been seized by the acute version, in which alternating cycles of depression and mania rapidly replace, if not overlap, one another.

Exhilaration one moment, despair the next. Gaiety in the morning, misery at night. Optimism squelched by pessimism. Is there a pill for this? If so, can someone write a prescription for 305 million of them, one for every American, so that we can get on with our lives? There's no begrudging the joy that slightly more than half of American voters are feeling after they elected their elixir for the eight years of President George W. Bush. It's easy to get swept up in the jubilation, and I'm hoping the optimism can drag us out of our wretched economic mood. As the nation is on the verge of plunging into the worst state of public indebtedness relative to the gross domestic product since World War II, even some conservatives harbor the hope that Obama will succeed.

Working against the optimism, however, is an emerging, perhaps permanent, sense of pessimistic fatalism that has gradually eroded the buoyancy and confidence that long has defined the American character. Sadly, doom and gloom have become the plan of the day. Our disposition has turned sour and skeptical, as we have become a nation consumed with bad news. We have obsessed about acid rain, the ozone hole and now global warming, the latter requiring no less than geoengineering, an elaborate human conceit that says we can control our climate on a global scale.

In the past year, we fretted about the plastic in baby bottles that could cause obesity and illness. We discovered that we can get cancer from hot dogs, that heavier rainfall can cause autism in children and that our shower curtains can poison us. These well-publicized alarms have been debunked by the Statistical Assessment Service, a non-partisan organization that closely examines bad science and media abuse of statistics. Yet, the debunking never receives as much attention as the initial alarms because, I've concluded, we'd rather be alarmed than relieved. "Don't sweat the small stuff" used to be a popular expression. Now every caution morphs into a dire warning, every forecast a prophesy of ruination, every disquiet a budding calamity. Premonitions and forewarnings greet us in every edition and newscast. Our demise awaits.

If you're as fed up as I am with all this, perhaps you'll join me in my one New Year's resolution: Look for the favorable, the upbeat, the good news. Knock off the bad-mouthing. Brush off the accusations of being Pollyannaish, naive or, worse, Republican. Exult in the prospects, understand that we can pour whatever trillions we can get our hands on into the economy, but it won't do any good unless we, ourselves, look forward with trust and confidence. Apply the same excitement and optimism you feel about the new Obama administration to the economy. This should not be a partisan thing. With Democrats entering the White House, I fear Republicans now will take every opportunity to remind us how bad things are or will be, just as Democrats did when Republicans were in office.

The constant bad-mouthing, beyond what reality requires, got us to where we are now, turning a limp economy into a poor one, threatening to turn a recession into a depression. Whatever the underlying economic fundamentals, whatever policies the new administration and Congress institute, nothing will pull us out of our slump if we continue to say, as a CNBC anchor did: "I think . . . things are worse than we think." Whatever that means.

Stop whining and act like grown-ups. The end is not near. The end is far.

Another told-ya-so for Park Ridge

Mulligan: O'Hare noise commission was 'sell-out' to Chicago's interests

Dear Santa Claus, how about some credit?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Hello, Santa's hot line?

This is Santa Claus. How can I help you, Dennis?

Wow, I got through to you instantly, no press 1 for English, no long menus to select from. Didn't even have to say, "representative."

Well, if I can fill every stocking in the world in one night, don't you think I can arrange a little thing like direct dial? Look, lad, I don't have much time; I've gotta get outta here tomorrow night. What is it you want?

Credit.

Well, you've got it, my boy. You've done good. I give you a lot of credit for that.

No, no, Santa, not that kind of credit. Actually, what I meant is the kind of credit that you can use to buy stuff with. A house, car, plane tickets to get the hell out of here for someplace warm.

OK, son, I'll put a Visa card in your stocking. How's that?

That'd be fine, except I don't need another credit card. Those banks keep sending me a bunch of them, even though I never ask for them. What I meant is credit for everyone. A mortgage in every stocking. A Macy's credit card for every consumer. A car loan for every driver. Haven't you heard? The problem with our economy is the lack of credit.

Been kind of busy, Denny. Explain it to me.

Nobody's buying anything because they can't get any credit. Banks aren't lending because they're afraid that they won't get their money back. It started because greedy bankers were giving mortgages to homeowners who didn't deserve credit. Now, everyone is panicked, people 'fraid of getting laid off.

So, the problem is that everyone had too much credit, and the way to fix it is to give everyone more credit? Look, I might be a jolly old fat man, but I'm no fool.

No, seriously. The economists tell us that's the only way to get us out of our depression, figuratively and literally. They say empirical analysis reveals that market disturbances combined with aggregate demand shocks as well as inconsistent short-term interfacing of prices and money supply contribute substantially to rampant economic fluctuations, which in turn produce the credit complications that we're . . .

Dennis, stop with the gibberish.

Sorry, got to thinking like an economist there for a minute. Thanks for slapping me out of it, Santa.

So, how much credit you want from me?

Hard to say, Santa. Here's what we're in hock for: Start with the $700 billion in TARP funds, dozens of billions more for the auto industry, another—what?—$600 billion to $850 billion for the economic stimulus President-elect Barack Obama wants, reworked home mortgages by Freddie and Fannie, an economic stimulus package that didn't do much, plus all the government, corporate and consumer debt already outstanding, plus all the unfunded debts like Social Security and Medicare. That'd be about $70 trillion, give or take.

Impossible. There's not that much money in the entire world. How can anyone ever pay it all off?

Who's saying we should? It's not actually money we need; it's credit. No one uses money anymore. You just borrow it from someone, who borrows it from someone else, who borrows it from someone else, and so on and so on.

Wait, this sounds like a gigantic Ponzi scheme. Except instead of using cash, you're using credit. An endless chain of borrowing.

Now, you're getting it.

But who's going to lend me the kind of money you think that I should be handing out so that we can climb out of the recession? A lot of folks don't even believe in me.

Are you kidding? Who has a better credit rating than Santa?

Every year, you give out hundreds of billions of dollars in Christmas presents, without borrowing a red cent. That's called collateral, Santa.

But what happens if I default on all my loans? Won't the banks call in my collateral and take all the toys that I want to give to all the good little girls and boys? What about the children?

Oh, I wouldn't worry about them. Instead of presents under the tree, just slip them some IOUs. We've been doing it for years.

Pat Quinn compounds our mess

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

In a famous but widely misquoted observation, Lord Acton, the British man of letters, said: "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Exhibit A is the discredited Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn appears to be trying to make himself Exhibit B.

The populist Quinn looks ridiculous with his wavering on whether he or voters should name who gets to sit in President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat. First, Quinn was for an election. Then he said if he became governor that he would appoint the next senator, no election necessary. Now, he says, he would be amenable to only appointing a temporary replacement until an election can be held.

One wants to shake him by the lapels and demand that he make up his fool mind.

Only political calculations beyond our ken can explain his inexhaustible wishy-washiness, and in this, the self-professed independent has turned himself into just another Illinois politician.

If Illinois voters need anything less now than an appointed senator—even a temporary one—I can't think of it. No appointed senator—even if named by Simon Pure, or if he's Simon Pure himself—will escape the taint attached to Blagojevich's alleged efforts to hawk the seat to the highest bidder. Only a special election will help palliate the stink that now is attached to the seat.

Quinn would have us believe that his motives are untainted, that he would appoint a senator because Illinois "needs two senators" while "important issues" are being debated in Washington.

As if having our own president isn't enough.

Earlier, after he said we should have an election, he said we shouldn't have one because it would cost too much.

Sure. We've heard this from Quinn before, when he successfully pushed a constitutional amendment that reduced the size of the Illinois House and eliminated the "cumulative voting" system of electing its members. That system, which guaranteed a minority party member from each district, produced some of the finest lawmakers in memory.

It created a bloc of honest and able lawmakers willing to blow the whistle on the villains and creeps that populated Springfield, a bloc that wasn't blotted by the campaign cash doled out by the leadership to keep the sheep in line.

Cumulative voting didn't cure all Springfield pestilences, but it was a useful check.

Nonetheless, Quinn seized the issue as an opportunity for his long-simmering political ambitions, camouflaged as championing the rights, wisdom and virtues of the common people.

He successfully sold an electorate, ignorant of the benefits of cumulative voting, on the idea that the system was too expensive, when, in truth, the cost of lacing the capital dung heap with even a small amount of emollient was worth the expense.

Quinn has been a publicity hound from the start. For years, reporters routinely knew that if it was Sunday, Quinn would be holding a news conference on the light news day, about something, anything.

At every turn, the man called for a referendum on something; he wouldn't miss a single issue in which he would take "the people's" side.

On Sunday, I turned on my TV set, and there was Quinn again, on national TV this time, unveiling his latest great thinking.

One can only speculate which of Illinois' political machinations accounts for Quinn's indecisiveness. But the changing political landscape requires reflection on several points: Whoever is appointed Obama's successor, even a temporary one, would enjoy the advantage of incumbency, however brief—in the special election. Democrats, fearing opening the door for a long-shot Republican win in a special election, may prefer that Quinn, a Democrat, do the appointing. Or perhaps not, because Quinn isn't trusted by fellow Democrats, and could fail to appoint the "right" replacement.

Whatever smoke the politicians are blowing for what they are saying or doing right now, one thing is clear: No one should be appointing anyone to the position. Whoever is appointed would be suspect from the get-go, whatever his or her merits. But more important, Illinois voters put us into this mess, and they must now get us out of it. We don't need a benevolent dictator. If anyone doesn't believe that we can do the right thing, you can look at it this way: We couldn't do worse than electing another Blagojevich.

SNL itself is the joke

New York Gov. David Paterson's office lashed out at an impersonation of him on the final 2008 episode of "Saturday Night Live" that made him into a blind, bumbling, whack job with a drug problem that may (or may not) be classified as "a former one."

His office said, "The governor is sure that Saturday' Night Live,' with all of its talent, can find a way to be funny without being offensive."

No it can't. Saturday Night Live hasn't been funny for years, insulting or otherwise.

Unsung Hero--the other Fitzgerald--Behind Blagojevich Arrest Could Fill Senate Seat

By Dennis Byrne
Human Events

Is it possible that the next U.S. senator from the persistently blue state of Illinois could be a Republican?

It’s not out of the question, thanks to the state’s current monumental political scandal -- the arrest of its sitting Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, for allegedly trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat and assorted other shakedowns.

Of course, the only chance of a Republican succeeding Obama is if the state Legislature decides to take the power to fill an empty Senate seat away from the governor, and call a special election. At this moment, a tide is growing among state legislators to do just that.

Blagojevich, if true to form, could try to stymie that plan by sitting on the legislation for 60 days before letting it become law -- enough time to throw a wrench into the works by unacceptably delaying the primary and general election into mid-2009. He also could try to use his amendatory veto to insert unacceptable provisions, such as pushing back the date of the election.

If the Legislature manages to take away his power to appoint, there may be no better Republican candidate than the unheralded hero of the Blagojevich scandal: the former Republican senator from Illinois, Peter Fitzgerald.

Credit rightfully is being heaped on the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation), for running the investigation that led to Blagojevich’s arrest. But if it weren’t for Peter Fitzgerald -- who preceded Obama in the state’s junior senator’s seat -- there would never have been a Patrick Fitzgerald here who has done such a marvelous job of rooting out corruption.

Read more in Human Events

"You need a little corruption to make government work"

At least that's what we're told. But here's another example of how Illinois' seamy reputation costs us big: State delays $1.4 billion debt offerings

Thanks, Rich Daley

Forbes magazine names Bensenville as America's fastest dying town. Bensenville says it's not dead yet, but blame Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's plans to expanded his pot-of-gold, O'Hare Airport, for threatening the town's existence.

Read it in the Daily Herald

More baloney from the New York Times

In a long article, the New York Times implies that President-elect Barack Obama's good government motives are what inspired him to push for an Illinois ethics bill that indirectly led to Gov. Rod Blagojevich's downfall.

Bunk.

The truth is that Obama had to be pushed to do it, as explained in my Chicago Tribune column at the time.

Pressure had been growing in the good government community for Obama to live up to his image as a reformer by picking up the phone to call Sen. President Emil Jones, a Blagojevich ally who had blocked a vote on the ethics legislation. Obama acted only after his stubborn refusal to involve himself threatened to seriously tarnish his good guy image during the campaign.

None of this was made clear in the New York Times article, but what do you expect?

Illinois Has Long Been For Sale

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

So, do the rest of you now have some idea of the depth of corruption in Chicago and Illinois, and why some of us were so concerned about electing a president who emerges from this cesspool?"

Read it in RealClearPolitics

Axelrod says Obama and Blagojevich had spoken about the open Senate seat.

But wait, didn't President-elect Barack Obama say today that he had not spoken to the governor or his office?

Here is the television interview in which Axelrod made the statement.

Then--voila--here is the statement Axelrod later issued that said he was mistaken.

You decide.

Illinois voters: Can you top this?

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

The question on everyone’s lips isn’t so much whether the arrested and disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich is guilty as it is: Is the man nuts? Instead of going to prison, shouldn’t he be tossed into the loony bin?

The feds have been sniffing around his office since 2002, and as recently as last week he allegedly was actively trying to ring as much as $300,000 from a politician who’s interested in getting appointed by Blagojevich to President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant senate seat.

Only a fool, knowing that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the FBI are breathing down his neck, would simultaneously try to enrich himself by selling a senate seat, extort money for his signature on legislation, hold up legitimate state business to silence editorial criticism, and this, most incredibly, squeeze a $50,000 campaign contribution for an executive of a children’s hospital at the expense of sick kids.

You gotta wonder when he had time to be governor.

The man-is-crazy theory receives suppor...

Read more in The Chicago Daily Observer

Just dump Holder now

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Bill Ayers is right; he's not a terrorist. He's a joke.

It's not Bill Ayers that soils President-elect Barack Obama's terrorist-fighting credentials; it's Obama's attorney general nominee, Eric Holder. And if Obama truly wants to unite us, he should dump Holder now.

Or at least make Holder fully explain his role in President Bill Clinton's grant of clemency to 16 terrorists from the Armed Forces of National Liberation, known by its Spanish acronym FALN. It's a question Holder has been dodging for more than a decade, and the one he will have to answer if he expects to be confirmed by the Senate.

For Chicagoans, terrorism carried out by the FALN, a radical and violent Puerto Rican independence group, is no mere political matter. It set off 120 bombs in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them in Chicago and a few in Schaumburg—at Marshall Field's, Sears, J.C. Penney, the federal and county buildings, Great Lakes Naval Training Center, several banks and Cook County Republican headquarters. It was in Evanston that the law finally caught up with them. U.S. attorneys from here and the New York area opposed the clemency, as well as the Justice Department, the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons. Former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno called them an "ongoing threat" in 1999, before Clinton sprung them. The FALN terrorists were not convicted of killing anyone, but Congress, which overwhelmingly condemned the clemency, concluded the FALN terrorists were responsible for five deaths. By standard practice, the clemency petition should never have reached Clinton's desk because none of the terrorists had applied for it. So, who did? How did Clinton get it into his head (or did he originate the thought) that the terrorists should walk?

The conventional wisdom points a finger at Holder, then deputy attorney general, and Holder has provided little evidence (other than his denials) that the process was on the up and up. Documents have revealed that Holder met with Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and other Democratic congressmen with Puerto Rican constituents to discuss the case beforehand. Holder suggested that congressmen get the prisoners to issue an expression of remorse to speed their release. Why? In congressional hearings, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) tried to find out, but in Holder's clumsy evasiveness just about all that Hatch could get out of him was an admission that no one bothered to question the bombing victims. Otherwise, Holder steadfastly pleaded executive privilege. Documents later revealed that Holder's (or whoever's) analysis reached Clinton's desk without the standard go or no-go recommendation.

Much has been made of Obama's relationship with Ayers, famous for his role as the co-founder of a radical idiots group called the Weather Underground. While the Weathermen were violent, the FALN overshadowed them. For all the heat generated by the Obama-Ayers affiliation, the president-elect has a lot more explaining to do to justify Holder's nomination as the nation's chief law-enforcement officer.

Ayers denied in a recent New York Times op-ed that he was a terrorist, and his reasoning (he didn't kill or hurt anyone) is goofy. You get a better reading of him from his book, "Fugitive Days," an adolescent attempt to rationalize a juvenile fling. Presumptuously comparing himself to John Brown and Nat Turner, Ayers fails to appreciate that his '70s rhetoric is as dated as bell-bottoms. Yet, he still takes himself seriously.

Forget him.

Much of the criticism of the Holder nomination so far has focused on his role in Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, a fugitive who owed $48 million in taxes and faced 51 counts of tax fraud. His wife, Denise, made substantial contributions to the Clinton presidential library and Hillary Clinton's senate campaign. President Clinton also granted pardons or commutations to his half brother, Roger; to Susan McDougal, for her role in the Whitewater scandal; and our own convicted congressmen Dan Rostenkowski and Mel Reynolds. (All of which should be kept in mind if President Bush pardons—which he shouldn't—Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby.)

Why Obama wanted to resurrect all these troubling memories by nominating Holder is beyond me, especially in light of his campaign rhetoric about "bringing us together." I know, anyone who questions the Holder appointment will be accused of driving us apart, as if we have no right to ask for an explanation. But an explanation for this outrageous freeing of the FALN terrorists is required in an age when the threat of terrorism has worsened. It raises a question: What precisely does Holder plan to do with all the terrorists now in custody? It's more than a fair question.

Modified Loans Do Little to Help Homeowners

Why does this surprise anyone?

Virgin America to start hub service

But not at O'Hare Airport.

Only a couple of days after Virgin withdrew its unsuccessful effort to land at O'Hare,, the airline announced that it would launch service from Boston to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Too bad Chicago.

Virgin pulled out of Chicago because it was unable to negotiate access to O'Hare gates. And why is that, especially now with so many unused gates there?

Because United and American, which control 80 percent of the traffic there and most of the gates, didn't want the competition. Nothing against Virgin, they just don't want anyone else showing up, offering lower fares, better service or connections to unserved markets.

Wait a minute: Isn't the airport publicly owned? Don't taxpayers pay for it? Shouldn't the city of Chicago, the landlord, recognize that the airport needs more competition?

The answers are yes, yes and yes. But the cozy relatiionship between the two airlines and City Hall prevents any significant competition at O'Hare. We don't need no stinkin' competition.

So, screw the airline passengers. And screw the taxpayers.

George Ryan for U.S. Senator

Here’s who Gov. Rod Blagojevich should appoint to fill president-elect Barack Obama’s set as U.S. Senator: George Ryan.

Wait, wait. It’s perfect. Kill two birds—as it were—with one stone. All the stress would be lifted from the shoulders of local and state political creatures in one fell swoop. They could return to their primary occupations of doing bigger and badder things by resolving the two biggest issues weighing them down: Should President George W. Bush (or Obama when he becomes president) grant clemency to convicted felon and former Illinois Gov. George Ryan? And who should be Illinois get Obama’s seat.

The solution is flawless. It is the consummate intersection of two apparently unrelated bafflements.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Justice for Park Ridge and Des Plaines?

Several years ago, Park Ridge and Des Plaines withdrew their opposition to the expansion of O'Hare Airport. In Des Plaines, voters elected a pro-expansion mayor after years of opposition, thanks to some heavy footwork done by the Democratic patronage army in the east part of town. Before that, the Des Plaines mayor withdrew his town's membership in the Suburban O'Hare Commission, a consortium of communities opposing O'Hare expansion.

Having sold out, the towns now are full of angry residents complaining about the increased noise that the new northern runway at O'Hare has brought to their communities. According to the Chicago Tribune, no one expected the runway to carry as much traffic as it does, so now Des Plaines and Park Ridge are suffering from the consequences of their folly by lower-flying planes and increased numbers of flights. Apparently, they believed Chicago when it assured everyone, especially in those communities, that the northern runway would not have that much impact on their quality of life.

Perhaps Des Plaines and Park Ridge will have second thoughts and rejoin the opposition.