Tag: Illinois

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Accountability crime and punishment folly ideological culture moral hazard responsibility

Sticks & Stones

James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, came to Alexandria, Virginia, shooting, blame, scapegoat, excuses, rationalizations

James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, came to Alexandria, Virginia, where for the last few months he lived in his van … undoubtedly down by the river. Yesterday, he wielded an assault rifle, attempting to massacre Republican congressmen at a park practicing for tonight’s annual charity Congressional Baseball Game.

He shot House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who remains in critical condition; a lobbyist also in critical condition; a staffer, hit in the leg and released from the hospital; and two Capitol Police officers, who still shot and captured the shooter. Hodgkinson later died in custody.

Politically, the down-​on-​his-​luck, 66-​year-​old assailant was a big fan of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. So, what does his act of violence say about Maddow? Nothing. How much is it Sen. Sanders’ fault? Zero.

The Washington Post reports that Hodgkinson was “angry with President Trump,” noting this violence came “amid harsh political rancor and a divided country.”

Michelle Malkin declared she had “warned for more than a decade about the unhinged left’s rhetoric.” 

“The hatred is raw, it is undiluted, it’s just savage,” Rush Limbaugh offered. “These are the mainstream of the Democrat base, and I don’t have any doubt that they are being radicalized.”

It harkens back to then-​President Bill Clinton’s success in blaming the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing on “loud and angry voices” (read: Rush Limbaugh) who “spread hate. They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”

Sure, we should hold speakers accountable for dehumanizing verbal attacks on their opponents. But not for acts of violence these speakers do not commit, nor condone. 

Condemn the violence. Stop using it to smear your opponents.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Big Phony

term limits, Illinois, Bill Rauner, illustration

In 2014, Bruce Rauner won the top job in Illinois politics leading a term limits ballot initiative. The initiative garnered 600,000 voter signatures, more than enough to go to voters.

But House Speaker Michael Madigan, the one man running Illinois (into the ground), recruited a henchman to file suit. After an appellate court struck the issue from the ballot, a cowardly state supreme court refused to even hear the case.

That didn’t stop Rauner. As governor, he tried to force a compromise that would get legislators to put term limits on the ballot for voters. But legislators are not going to budge until they, including Mr. Madigan, feel threatened by voters.

So, what’s Mr. Rauner on to now? He’s working with Turnaround Illinois to blanket the state with television spots about term limits. The ad buy is already over $1 million, much of which may be coming from Rauner, says Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller.

Miller complains that the legislature won’t ever pass term limits and that, even if legislators did miraculously propose a vote, the limits don’t kick in until “House Speaker Madigan will be 86 years old, and he could still run for a state Senate seat.”

True. Madigan, already the longest serving speaker in state history, would get to serve the newly enacted limit, which is prospective, not retroactive. Still, that’s hardly an argument against term limits.

Writing in Joliet’s Herald-​News, Miller dubbed the effort “pretty much solely political and more than a bit phony.”

Political? Sure. What part of politics isn’t?

Phony? Come on. It’s not Gov. Rauner holding legislators accountable that’s phony — it’s our so-​called representatives who crookedly ignore the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits, Illinois, Bill Rauner, illustration

 

Categories
term limits too much government

Is He Serious?

Gov. Rauner

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner ran for his state’s highest office while simultaneously spearheading a wildly popular initiative — a proposed constitutional amendment to place state legislators under term limits.

Unfortunately, the amendment was blocked from voters. An appeals court ruled it outside the scope of the state’s initiative process, and the cowardly state supreme court dodged the case.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rauner’s campaign as an outsider — opposed to both Chicago and Springfield political machines — earned him the governorship.

Most politicians would cry crocodile tears for term limits and claim, aw shucks, there’s just no way to get them enacted … especially with the Malevolent Monarch, Mr. Michael Madigan, the state’s longest corruption-​serving Speaker of the House, as term limits enemy #1.

But Rauner isn’t backing off. “Rauner has at least one non-​negotiable item on his wish list for the spring legislative session,” writes Matthew Dietrich of Reboot Illinois in the Huffington Post: “passing legislative term limits.”

Rich Miller of Capitol Fax reports that “Democrats were shocked,” when an “administration official … more than implied that if the [term limits] constitutional amendment isn’t passed by May 31st, then the governor would not support any revenue increases to patch next fiscal year’s massive $6 billion hole.”

“Would the governor really threaten to crash the entire government over a term limits bill?” asks Miller … answering, “Yep.”

Goodness, Gov. Rauner is absolutely serious about enacting the reform the people of Illinois know is Step 1 in fighting the state’s rampant corruption: term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Gov. Rauner

 

Categories
ballot access incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall

Getting to Ballot in Illinois

My business is citizen initiatives. So I notice when courts — at the behest of corrupt politicians like hyper-​incumbent Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan — block a popular initiative to limit the power of corrupt politicians.

Politicians like, say, Mike Madigan.

The initiative would have forced state lawmakers to step down after eight years in the legislature. Although the petition to post the question earned way more than enough valid signatures, a judge kicked the question off the ballot. Then an appeals court refused to reverse; and, finally, the state supreme court let a ballot deadline pass without reviewing the case. All this obstructionism was rationalized by a derelict misreading of the state constitution and motivated by a desire to preserve and protect Illinois’s political class, which is as bankrupt morally as the state is fiscally.

Another attempt at ballot-​blocking proved less successful. It seems that “private detectives” (or maybe just thugs) hired by somebody in Illinois’s GOP establishment tried to intimidate signatories of petitions to get the Libertarian candidate for governor on the ballot. These visibly-​armed creeps pushed signers to disavow their signatures in hopes of keeping the LP candidate off the ballot. So far it hasn’t worked, and the Illinois Libertarian Party has filed criminal complaints in the matter.

From these cases I conclude that things are pretty rotten with respect to the state of representative government in the state of Illinois.

Thankfully, voters there want a change. They just have to keep pushing for it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Empowering Abuse of Power

Have a yen to cling indefinitely to political power? You probably oppose term limits … as well as the citizen initiative rights enabling voters to term-​limit you.

And when voters possess both initiative rights and a willingness to exercise them, it wouldn’t surprise me if you pray that any judge assessing a duly petitioned-​for term limits question deems it unconstitutional. Even if it’s garnered 596,140 signatures, 300,000 more than the minimum valid signatures required.

You guessed it: Not a hypothetical scenario. And not, of course, about you.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner is leading to impose eight-​year term limits on all legislative service in Illinois. The petition has more than enough valid signatures to reach the ballot. But incumbents sued, citing an early 1990s decision by the Illinois Supreme Court that declared a different term limits question unconstitutional.

Cook County Judge Mary Mikva agrees; “precedent dictates a very narrow provision for allowing the voters to directly enact term amendments to the Illinois Constitution.” Her June 27 ruling is being appealed.

The state’s notoriously corrupt political class may wish upon a constellation, but wishing won’t make the cited precedent relevant.

As Jacob Huebert, senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, argued in a recent op-​ed, “term limits are exactly the type of provision the Constitution’s framers thought citizens should be allowed to propose and vote on.” He added, “This isn’t just a common-​sense reading of what the Illinois Constitution says; it’s also what its framers said explicitly when they included this provision.”

The stated aim of republican constitutions in America has never been to protect incumbents from effective citizen oversight and control.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Term Limits Now

Government of, by and for the people.

Yeah, right.

If government were “of, by and for” us … well, for starters, we’d have term limits.

Especially in Illinois. The Land of Lincoln has become the nation’s capital of corruption — four of the last seven governors went on to serve time in prison.

The state’s most powerful politician is House Speaker Michael Madigan, the longest-​serving speaker in state history. Madigan is powerful, yes, but not at all popular — rated negatively by a substantial 65 percent of the public.

So much for popular government.

But yesterday, the negativity of Illinois politics was met quite positively — and head-​on. The Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits delivered to the state Board of Elections a 36-​foot long box, weighing nearly two tons, filled with 68,000 pages of petitions containing nearly 600,000 voter signatures.

That’s more than enough signatures to place the constitutional amendment onto the ballot. The measure will limit state legislators to eight years in office. It will also reduce the size of the state senate and increase the size of the state house, while upping the legislative vote needed to override a governor’s veto to the same two thirds threshold found in 37 other states.

Yet, hours before all those voter signatures were presented to officials, an attorney connected to Speaker Madigan filed a lawsuit hoping to block the vote. The news report on the lawsuit quoted “sources who asked not to be identified for fear of risking their ability to secure state grant dollars.”

Term limits. Now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.