Capitol Fax.com - Your Illinois News Radar

Monday, Mar 6, 2006

Â· The Daily Herald has an afternoon update from the George Ryan trial.

Former Gov. George Ryan is a corrupt politician who repeatedly lied about trading state contracts to cronies in return for gifts and condoned illegal licenses-for-campaign contributions schemes to live large and protect the â€œpot of goldâ€ that was his campaign fund, a federal prosecutor alleged today during the first day of closing arguments in Ryan’s five-month corruption trial.

Read the whole thing. It’s very good.

Â· Edwin Eisendrath just reported a $500,000 contribution from his mom.

Â· Eisendrath compares Blagojevich to Bush.

Â· Jim Oberweis has posted several documents that he claims back up his TV ads. More on this in tomorrow’s Capitol Fax.

Â· Supremes reject judicial ethics case.

Â· From a Bill Brady press release:

Sen. Bill Brady, Republican candidate for Governor, today called for a debate on ethics with the contenders for the Republican gubernatorial nomination to clear the air on allegations, half-truths and innuendo.

Â· From a David McSweeney press release:

David McSweeney, candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 8th Congressional District, will be joined on the campaign trail by former US Senator Peter Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald will be the headliner at a fundraising event in the early afternoon and then a “meet and greet” in Palatine on Wednesday March 8th.

Â· Jack Roeser claims he “knew Marty Kovarik only casually while he was employed by Topinka but have not seen or spoken to him since.”

Â· Chicagoist has a funny post up. Read the whole thing.

Best Performance by a Robot: Edwin Eisendrath. Eisendrathâ€™s unnatural hand movements, stilted speaking style, fake smile, and way of looking just to the side of the camera kept us from listening to anything he actually said.

Dumbest Reason to Vote for a Candidate: Rod Blagojevich. Blago gets the nod because he wants us to vote for him for having another kid. Oh yeah, and he’s a little bit wiser now.

Best Use of Truthiness: Jim Oberweis. Oberweisâ€™ March commercials attacking Topinka feature made-up newspaper headlines. His campaign manager said the â€œtext is excerptedâ€ from stories in the papers, but that isnâ€™t really the case. […]

Best Performance by a Politician in a Supporting Role: Forrest Claypool. His mere two words of â€œBE SPECIFIC!â€ played over and over again in a commercial for John Stroger still haunt us.

Â· Bill Baar has sparked a lively discussion over at Illinoize about the 6th Congressional District and what it means for the Democratic Party. And Pat Hickey has a good one going about the 3rd District primary race.

Â· AFSCME press release:

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31 will release a report on service quality in the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services at 11:00 a.m.
tomorrow (Tuesday, March 7) in the State Capitol blue room. AFSCME Council 31 executive director Henry Bayer will be joined by a group of frontline child protection workers to present the report and discuss its findings.

The report follows last Thursday’s overwhelming bipartisan vote in the Senate to approve the State Services Assurance Act. That bill, SB 2674, would set minimum staffing standards for state prisons and mental health centers and create oversight groups to determine standards for other key agencies, including DCFS.

Â· Jack Roeser has just dumped $80,000 into the Family Taxpayers Network. The group is backing a handful of legislative candidates as well as Oberweis.

Â· Here’s something funny. The Oberweis campaign gave out the wrong contact number for Marty Kovairk. Some poor guy in Wisconsin has been getting tons of calls today. Oops. He seems to be taking it in good humor, however.

Â· Andy Shaw has a report up about the Topinka thing.

- Posted by Rich Miller

13 Comments

- B Hicks - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 3:16 pm:
His mommy gave him 500-grand. My God, what happened to the one million?

How much is she going to give him if he wins?

- Lovie's Leather - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 3:51 pm:
How much did his mom give to Blago???

David McSweeney needs to go away…

- Reddbyrd - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 4:16 pm:
Rich —- we have been laughing most of the day about jimRYANS endorsing the AccordianGal and almost missed BrickheadJoe rushing in with the results of an audit sought 14 MONTHS AGO and throwing some employee into the slammer.
Sounds like MrProsecution was about to get nabbed for more bungling. Good work BrickheadJoe.
Wonder who in that massive office let this one get by? I know. Let’s blame it on Jemisch

- DOWNSTATE - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 4:20 pm:
Why don’t this guy Obie give it up.He can’t win on the issues so he is going to try using a smear campaign.Hey Obie blago let’s talk about the problems of our stae or do you think we have them.

- Anon - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 4:44 pm:
The 500,000 contribution from EE’s mother is being reported in the papers. Do people think that hurts him a little because it reinforces his effete, snooty stereotype, or not?

- Papa Legba - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 5:38 pm:
Rich, anybody.

Is it just me or did the Blago interview by the AP, that was also in the Tribune, just not seem to appear very important to the political climate in Illinois? It can’t possibly be true that our Gov. thinks the people of Illinois don’t care about ethics? Did I misread it, or has Blago really, finally drifted away into another reality? Strange comment.

“He (Blago) contends most state residents are more concerned about education, health care and other issues than about ethics.”

http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=4584909&nav=1sW7

- Schiznitz - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 7:06 pm:
It is difficult to believe a scorned lover who goes to the Oberweis campaign with 2 weeks left in the campaign.

I just can’t believe that fool Kovarik would humiliate himself like that.

My prediction is that Obie and Giddy will cancel each other out and the pecking order remains similar to the Tribune poll.

- Paul Powell - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 8:22 pm:
What’s up with the person in a “DUCK” costume following RGod around accusing him of “Ducking” the issues? Has anyone heard or seen this yet?

- Anon - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 8:44 pm:
The duck story was reported, today, on the ABC station in Chicago during the 5:00pm newscast.

- Bo - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 9:35 pm:
DCFS and IDOC need more front line staff (and support staff in general)? What a revelation. But both agencies sure seem top heavy with under-qualified staff in KEY positions.

SNAFU.

- State worker - Monday, Mar 6, 06 @ 10:17 pm:
Bo, you are right on. We have unqualified top heavy people in Corrections ect. We see this every day and nobody seems to care. GO JUDY IN 06! Wait one person does.

- Schiznitz - Tuesday, Mar 7, 06 @ 12:33 am:
Ducks and Chickens
yahoo
h1
blue
http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/ww/beta/y3.gif

- Anonymous - Tuesday, Mar 7, 06 @ 1:41 pm:
Given the billions of dollars Illinois taxpayers have paid into corrections, mental health, DCFS and other state service agencies, one wonders why they don’t already meet industry workload
standards, whatever those may be. Maybe all the money is going to fund those thousands of low-demand, high-pay patronage jobs currently filled with Democratic patronage employees.

And if AFSCME plans to request more staffing for DCFS today, perhaps the Legislature should hold off until we know the fate of the pending bill mandating that the state’s child abuse hotline send all its reports to the local police. Apparently, this bill reprents a no-confidence vote for the agency’s child protection arm, which reportedly badly mishandled a Peoria-area
case recently. This would certainly represent
a significant reduction in DCFS’ workload. Maybe we need less money for DCFS and more for the police. But we shouldn’t have to pay for both.

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