Jennifer Bishop Jenkins Cook County Commissioner 14th District

One of the issues relating to the Cook County Board that has bothered was the layoffs of doctors and nurses in the Cook County health system and hiring of non-essential, non-medical people in the county simply for their support of outgoing board President Todd Stroger. Stroger claimed he was against the layoffs, but he didn't do much to alleviate the problem. Not all of the proposed layoffs happened, but many did and many open jobs were not filled. At the same time, the system is strained by increased numbers of uninsured.

Here are some stories by an uninsured person who must use Stroger Hospital. He tells about the cuts, overcrowding and lack of care.

While all this was happening, incumbent Commissioner Goslin was doing nothing but enabling Stroger.

Jennifer Bishop Jenkins will work to reform the health system in Cook County. She's identified unpaid bills owned to the system that should be collected and will work to make it more independent, with an independent board.

I know Jennifer and know that she will work as hard as she can for the Board. With a new President in Tony Preckwinkle, it will be even better to have some new reform-minded commissioners. Electing Jennifer Bishop Jenkins is an important piece of reforming the Cook County Board and improving the Cook County health system.

Dan Venturi, [Former] Chairman of Lake County republicans Comes On Site to Defend Mark Curran, Claims No God and Government. Watch the Videos and Tell Me, and Venturi, What You Think.

UPDATE:

Dan Venturi corrects me on one point and appears to be backing off his support, but I'm not sure of who:

The Sheriff is not a spokesman for the Tea Party and you know that, I am not a spokesman for the Lake County Republican Party and you should also know that.

I forgot that Venturi stepped down after it became clear he would be ousted. Sorry about that, Dan. I don't follow your local party antics nearly as closely as you follow me, but I stand by the rest and you should be ashamed of yourself for saying that Curran is not mixing religion and government because he clearly is doing just that. In fact, it looks like the Lake County republican Party has been strongly influenced by Christian fundamentalism with an eye toward ending separation of church and state and making this a Christian country.

Venturi was replaced as county republican chair by Bob Cook, a member of the republican Assembly of Lake County. If you read the by-laws of that organization, you will see on page 2 that their "purpose" includes the political philosophy that "The highest priorities in life should be belief in God first, the traditional family, and the United States of America." If you scroll down to the Appendix of that document, you will find the organization's "Beliefs, Statement of Principles and Objectives. They claim the Constitution of the United States was written under the inspiration of God. They further claim that the founders never intended separation of church and state. That would have been news to the non-Christian deists among them and it's clear that no one in the rALC ever read any of the writings of Jefferson or Madison.

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Here is part 1 of my coverage on Sheriff Mark Curran running for re-election, this time as a republican and here is part 2. It pretty much speaks for itself. At about :59 into the second video, Curran talks about the tea party as a "volunteer army". In part 1, at about 2:05, Curran begins his long complaint about secularization of our culture and calls for more reproduction. The rest is replete with references to religion and government combined. "God will not bless a nation that..." does what we do.

Dan Venturi, chairman former chairman of the Lake County republicans commented on Part 1 defending Curran. I posted the comment and you can read his comment and my response. The part of Venturi's claim I focus on here is the end:

As to the your analysis of the Tea Party, the movement is not about “God and Government” although maybe we could use more of it, it is about controlling the runaway spending in Washington and Springfield.

Did we watch the same video? Curran said" T for truth" (except he doesn't have to tell the truth about his party affiliation apparently), "E for effort". "A for the Almighty".  Sounded a lot like "God and Government" to me. What do you think?

Mark Curran is in an army, at holy war, at holier-than-thou war, but why and with whom?

See part 1 of my Mark Curran coverage.

Below is part 2 of Mark Curran's tea party speech. He calls the tea party a "volunteer army". What is he at war, a holy war, with the rest of Lake County? The country? Over what?

We gave this guy a gun. Now he's using it to play holy warrior (holier-than-thou warrior) in the park on weekends. Let's not give this guy more time if office to take that holy war to the streets and against us. Vote Curran out of office and tell him to practice his religion outside of government and let us practice ours, or not.

Alexi Giannoulias is Fighting Back and Fighting for Illinois Voters

Mark Kirk is attempting to start another Princess Nudelman fake vote fraud scandal, but this time Democrat Alexi Giannoulias is fighting back. To Kirk, any African-American voting is a problem. He tried to shut down Waukegan and N. Chicago voting last election cycle with a lawsuit based on a blank registration form sent to a dead fish on the Lake County side of Buffalo Grove, so why not a "voter integrity" program in Chicago now?

Kirk vowed to preserve "voter integrity" by making sure African-Americans are harassed away from the polls. Giannoulias' attorney sent a letter to the Cook County State's Attorney.

Read the story on TPM.

If Kirk is so worried about voter integrity, why not question Bob Dold who voted from his parents house while married, with a family and living in Chicago.

Funny

Mark Kirk's trying to ditch his fake moderate persona and Bob Dold's trying to acquire a fake moderate persona.

Mark Kirk Betrays LGBT Community (Again and Again)

The federal courts have made it easy for someone like Mark Kirk, who claims to want to be a friend of the LGBT community, but is afraid of his own supporters The courts have come down hard on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It would be easy for Kirk to just hook his wagon to those court decisions.

However, despite that and even the moral conscience of his ex-wife, Kimberly Vertolli, Kirk still cannot bring himself to support ending the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy. Now, he's waiting for a Joint Chiefs memo that's coming out conveniently after the election.

Don't LGBT voters want to know what Kirk would do all on his own?

Shouldn't, Can't Really, Sweep Foreclosure Woes Under the Rug. A Law Kirk Voted Against May Have Stopped this Mess from Growing Long Ago

There are people who say it's best to forget about foreclosure fraud. They say it will hurt the economy to stop or even delay foreclosures, even if the foreclosures are illegal. They add that completed illegal foreclosures should not be opened, overturned or corrected. They say we should not care about people who didn't pay their mortgages, so just leave it alone and that will be good for the economy.

The problem is that leaving illegal foreclosures in place won't be good for the economy. The people proposing the status quo on foreclosures are not getting the bigger picture. Take a look at this article from CNBC. Take a look at this too. The latter contains a good explanation of what happened and why it's important. Note that there was money in the foreclosure itself. The servicers got paid more for foreclosing, so they did everything they could to keep the foreclosures rolling on. These servicers are not small operations, but include the four largest banks in the country, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase and Citibank.

First, there are the investors. A lot of investors lost money on securitized loan investments. Some just bought bad investments, but others bought investments that were never secured with collateral as required by the contracts. The notes were never signed over to the investment trusts in violation of the contracts. Those contacts require repurchase of the investment if the terms of the contract are breached.

Then, there are the payments. Who got the monthly loan payments and should they have? When mortgagors paid their mortgages, they paid servicers, and the servicers were supposed to transfer the payments to the correct investment pool. How could that happen when the investment pool never owned the loan? Who was the right party? Some never received their assignments and others may hold notes they shouldn't own. What if there was a reason some of the loans were not transferred, other breaches of contract? What about mortgages that were negligently or intentionally pooled into more than one investment? How do we figure out what was what and who should have received what? Are you going to tell these investors that they just have to accept their losses? Further, what about mortgagors who are current on their loans? Who are they paying? Who should they be paying? Will they end up foreclosed for paying the wrong entity? Could that happen to you?

We'll  likely end up with a lot of investors suing other investors for the rights to the collateral. While many Americans don't mined seeing an individual mortgagor who could not pay his loan feel the full force and effect of that inability, they sure don't want to see investors lose their investments, it's not the American way.

Then, there are the insurers, those companies that bet the individual mortgagor, the average American, would fail. Are then liable on their policies when the owner of the loan didn't own the loan through it's own actions or inaction?

There are also lots of tax issues involved with what a pooled investment trust owns, and that's a whole other can of worms.

It strikes me that this is one reason some legislators were so against opening up mortgages for renegotiation in bankruptcy. That was the old law, but it was changed. Dick Durbin and others tried to get it changed back. A lot of the problems would have come to light sooner had the bankruptcy courts been looking at these mortgages. Mark Kirk voted against allowing bankruptcy judges to look at mortgage loans for modification.

Tea For Two, Two Mark Currans That Is

Mark Curran ran for Lake County Sheriff as a Democrat. He quickly and surely drifted off to the republican camp, claiming Democrats were not nice to him. Then he said the media wasn't nice to him, so what does that have to do with the Democrats? In any event, Curran's shift happened so quickly that it showed he always intended to do so. He lied to beat the then republican incumbent..

Curran became a republican, but didn't stop there. Now Curran is a full-fledged tea partier, fully committed to blending church and state heard to be said: "When faith conflicts with politics, faith wins every time with me."

You got it right, Curran will use his office to push his brand of  Christianity and from what we hear over here it involves Opus Dei. Opus Dei is an organization founded in Spain that was designated as a personal prelature within the Catholic Church. That means that Opus Dei operates outside the Church hierarchy, but is considered to be an entity within the Church. People in Opus Dei believe their's is the real church and what the rest of the world knows as the Catholic Church is not legitimate. Members of Opus Dei try to get into government so they can bring their dogma to government.

Opus Dei also has of a reputation for being cult-like and somewhat fascist. It is intolerant of other religions, against education, authoritarian, against equal rights of women and many men too. Opus Dei also believes in mixing its religion with our state.

So, basically, our Lake County Sheriff is controlled by an international, fundamentalist religious ideology that he will always put above his role as Sheriff. You might want to consider voting this guy out before he becomes too entrenched in Lake County government.

Here's one of Curran's tea party diatribes: Note that, to Curran, the tea party is the movement to bring God into our government. He tells the audience to evangelize. Note also that part of Curran's religion is to berate the deceased Ted Kennedy. What Kennedy has to do with any of us here in Lake County, I'll never know, but that made it clear to me that he was a republican when he ran as a Democrat. Talk about moral relativism, Mark. What about your lying about being a Democrat when you were a republican?

Bob Dold, Appears Moderate, Favorite Book is the Libertarian Manifesto

Bob Dold wasn't alway touting his moderate creds.. Last year, a group called Chicks on the Right posted something they call Chicks Chat, an interview with Bob Dold. That (apparently) was before Bob Dold decided that he wanted to "appear moderate".

In the interview, Dold reveals that his favorite book is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead is one of the major literary influences in modern libertarianism. It's about an architect and his building actually builds itself, ie. workers are never mentioned. The book also contains an odd rape scene in which the victim decides the rape was exactly what she wanted. That seems like something Chicks on the Right should find abhorrent, but not so. They loved Dold's reference to Rand. I'd guess they never read the book.

I'm wondering if that's really Dold's favorite book or whether he wanted to appear libertarian to not-all-that-well-read Chicks on the Right.

And talking about whoppers.....

There's a group running ads touting Mark Kirk's already debunked military service. They claimed Kirk served in Iraq, such a blatant lie they had to retract.

The group, a 527 called the New Prosperity Foundation, posted the ad on its website. When busted they claimed the ad was posted by mistake. They claimed it was from a "video storyboard" created in April, before Carl and Terry Welch outed Kirk's military service claims as lies.

I don't buy their retraction story. I think the more likely scenario was that they finished and posted the video on the hope that some people will hear the claims and never hear the retraction, good enough for some votes. I say this because storyboards, even video storyboards, don't automatically become finished videos (and this video sure looked finished to me) unless someone ACTUALLY MAKES THE FINISHED VIDEO. I have a little experience in television production and I know that no one would put the time and energy into polishing a storyboard to remain a storyboard. Someone finished this thing and probably after Kirk's military record became known, only a few weeks after the "storyboard" was completed by their own admission.

The New Prosperity Foundation is a newer regional group formed in 2009 claiming the Midwest as its territory. It has received donations from former Bush donors, he called the "Pioneers".  The groups co-chairs are Gregory W. Baise and Ronald J. Gidwitz. Baise is president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association. Gidwitz runs an equity cap firm and was an executive at Unilever Helene Curtis. He also worked at Heller.

Another group of wealthy businessmen working to gain power through lies.I wonder if Messrs. Baise and Gidwitz have asked themselves whether it's worth putting their credibility on the line for Kirk, but I'll guess they don't care so long as they don't have to pay what you and I do in taxes each year. The only prosperity these guys are concerned about is their own.

....and so it goes until the American people decide to stop it.

Giannoulias Didn't Have to Put Much Production Into Latest Ad. Mark Kirk Created it Over Nearly a Decade in Congress.

I voted. Had to sign off about my residency.

I cannot say I know what Bob Dold signed all those years he voted from Winnetka when he lived in DC and Chicago, but today I had to sign off that I was a resident at the address listed on my registration and had lived there for the 30 prior days.

Bob Dold's Poll Campaigners Getting Aggressive, Violating Electioneering Rules in Northbrook

I guess when your candidate isn't all that great, you have to resort to this stuff.

Voters are complaining about an aggressive Dold campaigners at a Northbrook poll. The judges have told these folks that no electioneering is allowed within 100 feet from the entrance polling place (subject to school and church rules) and this man is closer and has parked a car with a large Dold sign in the electioneer zone as well. So far, from what I'm hearing, the violators have refused to move.

Bob Dold: Last Night Hannity or Spider?

Left is a picture from last nights candidate debate at BJBE in Deerfield. The tall guy in the middle is Dan Seals. I'd guess he's straddled by the 9th district candidates (someone had to keep them apart after republican Pollack was boo'd out of their debate on Sunday).

No Bob Dold to be found anywhere.

Bob Dold had promised to attend, but failed to do so.

Some say he was appearing on Fox News with Sean Hannity at the time. However, I heard that someone cried out that he saw a spider and Dold fled. So much for being an expert in pest removal.

You see, I believe the spider story because Hannity doesn't have Dold on his website for last nights show. A search of Hannity's site for signs of a recent Dold appearance came up empty.

Further, Dold failed to answer all of the questions on Hannity's candidate questionnaire. Remember, Dold wants to appear moderate. Hannity is not moderate. He's a far right wing extremist goof who supports people like Michelle Bachman and Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell. So, why would Hannity bother with moderate appearing Dold?

So, I'll go with the spider story. Maybe that's why Dold always intended to move back in with his parents in Winnetka. Mom takes care of the spiders at the Winnetka house.

Hey Mark Kirk! I told you it was mortgage foreclosure. You were busy taking credit for other people's accomplishments and told us our only worry was immigration.

In 2006, Mark Kirk was all about his suburban strategy. The suburban strategy had nothing to do with improving conditions in the suburbs, but getting Mark Kirk more money and votes. During that year, I was wrote of concerns I had about job insecurity, over-inflated housing costs, mortgage foreclosures, and  mortgage rescue fraud. Illinois state government, through Attorney General Lisa Madigan, was doing something on its level, but all Kirk and his party in DC were concerned about was making bankruptcy tougher for the little guy. Kirk was busy cutting ribbons on projects he was taking credit for, but hadn't done much on himself such as the new VA hospital. Of course, it was another of Kirk's embellishments. The Navy started the project of combining the VA and active duty medical facilities. It came out of an idea merging VA and other health centers from 1996. Dick Durbin worked to complete the hospital merger in Illinois.

In 2007, Mark Kirk was still telling the district that our biggest problem was illegal immigration. To solve the problem, Kirk suggested we send condoms to Mexico. I disagreed:

While he spreads immigrant hatred around the district, real people in the Illinois Tenth of all races, religions and national origins are living their real lives, paying their real mortgages and sending their real kids to real schools.

Battered by the U.S. mortgage crisis, the average price of a home will depreciate 5.9% in 2008, which is believed to be the steepest decline in home values since the Great Depression, according to the new Housing Predictor forecast. ~~Housing Predictor 2008 National Forecast

Guess who was thinking about problems with mortgages and investments in mortgages back then? 

Alexi Giannoulias.

The state of Illinois had laws to protect state investments. As State Treasurer, Giannoulias was enforcing the rules with our state investments. Giannoulias, however, was concerned about local governments within Illinois that were not subject to those rules and were not being as careful.

At the time, I remarked that it took my mind off of immigration. It didn't take Mark's mind off the issue.

Alexi Giannoulias Stood Up to Mark Kirk. Giannoulias Deserves the Senate Seat If Only Because He Stood Up to Kirk When Few Others Have

AmericanCrossRoadsWatch.Org - They Ask Mark Kirk To Reject Karl Rove's Dirty Tricks. Ha! They Don't Know Mark Kirk Like We Do, Do They?

Mark Kirk will never reject Karl Rove's help or the corporate and foreign money from American Crossroads and the Chamber. Kirk always looked at his career over and above the country. Kirk has had almost a decade in Congress and has never done the right thing once.

• Mark Kirk has denied that there are uninsured in this country.
• Mark Kirk pushes to deny people their day in court as a substitute for health care access legislation.
• Mark Kirk called food programs for poor toddlers unnecessary congressional pork.
• Mark Kirk voted for every deficit Bush budget.
• Mark Kirk denies the LGBT community basic civil rights.
• Mark Kirk knows energy independence is a national security issue and yet denied it to satisfy the tea parties.
• Mark Kirk campaigned downstate on the same high speed rail he voted against.
• Mark Kirk knows women should have the right to choose, yet voted for amendments to health care reform to limit that right and financially supports anti-choice candidates.
• Mark Kirk pushed for war, yet denied military personnel TRICARE coverage and refused funding for safer tanks and body armor.
• Mark Kirk told his district that he personally knew there were WMD in Iraq and spread the now famous Judith Miller lies that pushed this country to war.
• Mark Kirk told voters in 2008 that he would support the Obama agenda as a "thoughtful independent" but hasn't supported any Administration initiatives and participated in the push to make sure Obama and this country fail.

I have 5 years of posts on Kirk's career and in them you can see that Mark Kirk has never done the right thing, not once in almost a decade in Congress. Why would anyone expect him to do it now?

It's the Time to Turn Off Your Television Take Your Stand for Alexi Giannoulias

It's time to stand up and support Alexi Giannoulias now.

Over the next few weeks our airwaves will be bombarded by corporate funded and foreign funded ads attacking Alexi Giannoulias for purposes of putting Mark Kirk in the Senate.

Mark Kirk's first plan for the Senate is to block anything positive the Obama Administration and Congress can come up with to create jobs and increase business. His second plan is to complete the work of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the neo-cons to create unending war with the Islamic world. His third plan is to use wartime budget deficits to end Social Security and Medicare.

Mark Kirk will  not stand up for LGBT rights; will not stand up for homeowners illegally foreclosed out of their homes; will not stand up for the jobless, homeless or hungry. I've been watching this guy for 5 years. He wouldn't even take a week on the food stamp challenge to see what it's like to live on the bottom of American society. Not one lousy week to see how the other half lives. Really, Mark, you could afford to lose a pound or two, but the toddlers on food stamps that you don't care about cannot.

Mark Kirk gets money and media support precisely because he intends to help the wealthy and the corporate. You are the only one who can decide if that money will influence your vote.

Alexi Giannoulias has risen above, taking charge on LGBT issues, standing up for workers at Republic Windows and then doing it again for workers at HartMarx. Alexi pledges to support Social Security. His focus is on small local businesses and not the multinationals and foreign corporations pouring money into Illinois for Kirk. Mark Kirk talks about ethics, but lies and takes PAC money. Alexi has already stood up for eithics refusing PAC money and banning campaign contributions from office employees, contractors and banks.

The Kirk campaign wants you to believe that BrightStart is Alexi's failure. The truth is that it was his republican predecessor's failure and he cleaned it up. BrightStart was named in Kiplinger's top college savings plans. It was in the top 5 plans on Kiplinger's list. Yes, investments go up and investments go down. They particularly go down when republicans make a mess of the economy and that's what happened. To blame Alexi for an economy Mark Kirk supported with his congressional vote is ludicrous, but Kirk's taking advantage of the angst he helped cause to turn it in his favor.

The family bank attacks have already been debunked by FactCheck.org.

So, turn off your television, ignore the ads and vote your own head and heart. Unless you're a foreign oil mogul who owns one of the too big to fail banks, that will be a vote for Giannoulias.

Go out and early vote for Alexi, and if you are on Facebook, show your support for Alexi by joining this Facebook group: I am Voting for Alexi Giannoulias and You Should Too.

Mark Kirk and the U.S. Chambers Foreign, Corporate Donors

UPDATE: The Chamber responds that they take only a little money from their wide array of foreign offices and that it has some sort of system to separate it out. The point is that they won't show any one the figures. We're always being told by republicans that if we have nothing to hide, we should welcome unconstitutional searches of our persons, so why won't the Chamber show us the money?

The only debunk of Democrats concerns is that there's "little evidence." That's the point. There's nothing to show what's going on with the Chamber and it's collections from foreign offices. The whole point of our historic rules concerning campaign contributions was disclosure. If the Chamber does in fact have a system to separate out the foreign funds, they should be able to show us how much, from where and to where. Disclosure. Until they do that, the story stands.

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I've pointed out many times over the years that Mark Kirk was supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Last Cycle the Chamber lied about health care reform to support Kirk, and now they support Kirk's pro-big business, anti-small business and worker agenda.

What I didn't know until recently is how the Chamber is funneling money into advertisements for republican candidates like Kirk. The Center for American Progress did the research. It's reported on their site, Think Progress:

A ThinkProgress investigation has found that the Chamber funds its political attack campaign out of its general account, which solicits foreign funding. And while the Chamber will likely assert it has internal controls, foreign money is fungible, permitting the Chamber to run its unprecedented attack campaign. 

The current complaint is about the Chamber's foreign offices that raise money from foreign corporations. One of the countries identified as a donor is oil-producing Bahrain. The Chamber also accepts funding from China, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Russia.

Kirk's always been in favor of outsourcing of jobs to many of the Chambers foreign donor countries, and he moved against climate change legislation, previously identified as a national security issue by Kirk, but later abandoned by him as being merely in "the narrow interest of his district". Kirk must be their poster child for corporate interests, foreign corporate interests control over policy. No wonder they're spending so much money to lie about Giannoulias and help Kirk win a Senate seat.

Illinoisans don't have to react to Chamber-foreign-funded attack ads for Kirk and against Giannoulias, or similar ads funded anonymously through Karl Rove's American Crossroads mentioned in an earlier post. They can use their own brains and make their own decision.

Desperate Mark Kirk Stole an Old Old Old Idea to Sell TVA Like a Chicago Parking Meter. Ignores New Positive Uses of TVA. Wants to Create Enron-Like Privatization/Deregulation of Energy.

After years of deficit spending on war for power and fun, and borrowing from China, Mark Kirk is a fiscal hawk. That's what he wants us to believe anyway. Alexi Giannoulias says Kirk's new hawk claim might be Kirk's "biggest whopper" and it probably is.

Mark Kirk would most assuredly vote with his party to privatize and ultimately destroy Social Security and Medicare. He always votes with his party when they need him. However, Kirk does not want to own the ownership society now because he knows the truth would lose the election for him. He ducked the matter on Meet the Press yesterday by claiming to have come up with his own budget cuts rather than the well advertised republican plan to cut government programs that help people.

His big idea to save us all from deficit doom is to sell off, privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority. That's the federal utility company set up by FDR as part of the stimulus to bring the country out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, it's a symbol of the New Deal.

Thing is, the cut isn't Kirk's idea at all. It was Barry Goldwater's idea in 1964. See here too. It was so unpopular, that Goldwater had to stop campaigning on it. McCain dredged it up for the 2008 election and we all saw how well it served him.

As a policy move itself, selling off the TVA is the ultimate in energy privatization. The COB looked at the idea again back in 1997 and concluded that consumers would suffer higher costs and private utilities would get a windfall. CBO also studied the effect of the sale on the deficit and concluded it would bring no long term budgetary savings:

The prospect of using the proceeds from sales of federal power assets to help control the nation's budget has encouraged proposals to privatize all or parts of the program. But the sale of a revenue-producing asset--even one that may operate more efficiently with new ownership--might not yield budgetary savings over the long term. Selling such assets is tantamount to trading the future income that those assets could produce for a lump-sum payment today. The future income from the government's power program would equal the difference between program receipts (from power sales) and outlays (for operation and construction). A sale of federal assets produces long-term budgetary savings only if the sale price exceeds the present value of the income that the government gives up, less any increase in federal tax receipts after the sale. 

CBO also found that that the only economically viable way to sell off federal energy companies like TVA would be to remove all regulation, Enron-style.

The me the whole thing sounds familiar. It's the larger version of Mayor Daley's yard sale of parking meters in Chicago, now universally acknowledged as a bad idea.

Further, TVA is not just a power company. TVA also controls reservoirs that control flooding and preserve the habitats of threatened, endangered, or commercially important species. Private companies would not be interested in these non-profit making, but important ventures. TVA has also implemented some alternate energy ideas including wind energy and renewable generators. All that would be lost to private, corporate profits in a privatization scheme.

Selling off the TVA will do little to reduce the deficit and remove from the American people a valuable asset that could be used to roll out future clean and efficient energy. All Mark Kirk is saying with this proposal is that he wants to symbolically end the historic New Deal in order to pave the way for the cuts he denies supporting, cutting Social Security and Medicare.

So, was Mark Kirk reviewing campaign platforms from 1964 to formulate his economic plan? I doubt it. Giving away the TVA to private energy companies is probably an agenda item for the energy industry and they are probably among the secret donors to Karl Rove's group, American Crossroads, now supporting Mark Kirk with false anti-Giannoulias ads.

10 10 10

The Illinois Tenth Congressional District Democrats held a 10 10 10 event last night. In attendance were Judge Abner Mikva, Governor Pat Quinn, Senator Dick Durbin, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (fresh off her debate win from earlier in the day), Congresswoman Melissa Bean and Tenth District Candidate, Dan Seals. Also in attendance were David Miller, candidate for Comptroller, and several other candidates running for local office including Jennifer Bishop Jenkins, running for Cook County Commissioner and Anne Bassi running for reelection to the Lake County Board. Alexi planned on attending, but was called away to do that Meet the Press debate with Kirk.

My friend, Marcy Maller, won the Founder's Award for her enormous body of work since 2003 and Loretta Durbin won the Mikva Leadership Award for her work in establishing and running he Illinois Women's Institute for Leadership which has produced several elected officials and activists.

Judge Mikva told a story about uncounted votes in Cook County, something I saw myself during 2008, and Pat Quinn talked about taxes, jobs and his opponent. Schakowsky mentioned a new song, Won't You Go Home Bill Brady. Senator Durbin talked about Karl Rove and his new venture American Crossroads pouring anonymously contributed money into federal races, including the Illinois Senate race. David Miller got the crowd going dispelling my notion that he was a shy, quiet type.

Dan Seals was the last speaker. He told a humorous story about something that happened to him at an Obama event and got more serious talking about the economy.

It's probably not easy to put together an event right before an election, but it was 10 10 10, so it had to be done and Tenth Dems did a great job with speeches, food and fun. The brownies were particularly good. The Illinois Tenth Congressional District republicans weren't up to the challenge of making a 10 10 10 event for themselves. Oh, wait.... there is no such group. The republicans rely on anonymous corporate and foreign donors to support their candidates.

Mark Kirk, Claimed to Be a Teacher, but Hasn't Learned a Thing

Mark Kirk was on Meet the Press the morning. I watched it on the Internet.

The Giannoulias camp rapidly responded with a review of Kirk's version of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, more than 30 lies in 30 minutes.

Mark Kirk will have you believe that he just made a mistake when he said he was the Navy Intelligence Officer of the Year and added that he was shot at and in combat when none of it was true. He made another mistake when he voted for all of the Bush deficit budgets, and yet another when he voted to increase the spending cap, and oopsie, he did it again when he said the Bush tax cuts should only be extended temporarily. He flubbed again when he voted for the climate change bill and again when he voted for TARP. Kirk's sure learned his lesson again and again and again, but he's a 51 year old man and has been in Congress for almost a decade. When does the learning start to kick in?

The new Mark Kirk is nothing but a deficit hawk. Everything he voted for (presumably except 2 wars) will be off the table for him now. The new Mark Kirk won't raise taxes, won't borrow from foreign governments and won't make any of the cuts he knows no one wants, cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Kirk has new special cuts he's going to make, magic bullets that will save money and hurt no one. When questioned, it turns out that Kirk's special spending cuts are to sell off the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Southeastern Power Administration and cut off citizens access to the courts. The former is just a further privatization of energy and the latter saves little and curtails significant and important rights of Americans to recourse against corporations that sell dangerous and defective products and services.

None of Kirk's plans will stimulate the economy or increase jobs. His plan is mean to further push wealth upward and outward to Europe, India, China, Brazil and other places where they still make something that's worth something.

Kirk has not grown and will not grow. He's still good for over 30 lies in 30 minutes and if he's still having to learn major lessons in life at the age of 51 we have to doubt if he'll ever learn.

John Lennon's wisdom on peace, plus some of my thoughts

Saturday, Ellen and I attended the “Give Peace a Chance” exhibit at the Lake County Discovery Museum. The exhibit focuses on John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Bed-In for Peace (1969).

The director of the museum recognized Randi Scheurer as being the impetus (squeaky wheel) for bringing a pro peace exhibit to the Lake County Discovery Museum. UPDATE: We've since discovered that Jean Lowes Paskalides also worked on the event.

When I think of Lennon’s vision for peace, a few of his songs come to mind.

Revolution (video)

In the Beatles Revolution (lyrics, 1968), Lennon expressed sympathy with the goals of people advocating for change (and in 1968 “change” included ending the U.S. war in Vietnam), but favored implementing specific reforms through the existing political institutions. Lennon explicitly rejected violence as a tool and leaders who advocated hatred. Lennon reassured listeners that the problems of the world would work themselves out. Lennon returned to the theme of problems working themselves out in Watching the Wheels (lyrics, 1980).

Give Peace a Chance



During the Bed-In for Peace, Lennon wrote and performed, Give Peace a Chance (lyrics). Give Peace a Chance encourages people to not take ideology so seriously. It mocks people and institutions who are pompous and self-important. Rather than describing a path to peace, it focuses on the aspiration for peace and blames ideologues and the self-important for standing between the people and peace.

Imagine (video)

In 1971, Lennon released Imagine (lyrics, which was inspired by a 1964 a poem by Yoko Ono). Imagine challenged listeners to imagine a world without the major causes of war: religion, nation-states or materialism. The chorus says,

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Happy Xmas (video, warning: disturbing images)

Also in 1971, Lennon released Happy Xmas (War is Over) (lyrics). The song acknowledges the destructive nature of fear. I think the song chides people for not accomplishing more to realize a more peaceful world. The song ends with,

War is over, if you want it
War is over now

Lennon asks people to believe that ending war is possible and exhorts them to do something about it.

Causes of war

Lennon identified ideology as being the essential ingredient for war. If one believes in an ideology with sufficient zealotry, one goes along with the killing to support the ideology. One also goes along with creating the human organizations that prepare to kill and use other forces of oppression to assert the ideology.

Religion and nationalism are two types of ideology that have led to war and systematic oppression, but they are not the only kinds of ideology that motivate people to create armies and kill.

Neo-Liberal Economics

Recently I've encountered the position that Islam is uniquely a threat to world peace and stability because it sanctions violence to spread the faith. In God Is Not One, Stephen Prothero blamed the excesses of Islam (the 9/11 attacks) for causing the United States to invade Iraq.

Westerners purveying anti-Islamic bigotry often portray Islam as particularly militant and lacking the respect for human rights and international law that have developed in the West.

When comparing Islam to the West, these people compare Islam to Christianity. Christianity engaged in "convert or die" theology, but that was a long time ago.

But the ideology that motivates the West is Neoliberal economics. The elites in the West are so confident of Neoliberal economics--it's scientifically proven!--that they feel they are doing the world's poor a favor by forcing the economic system on poor countries.

Neoliberal economics has a track record of making a few rich people really rich and doing very little to uplift poor people and poor countries. In many countries of the world, the average citizen is worse off than in 1945 when the Western economic powers began aggressively pushing Neoliberalism through international financial institutions and "free trade" agreements.

The West kills to enforce Neoliberal ideology. But because of the belief system of the West--that Neoliberalism is not only good but true--those deaths don't count as enforcing ideology. They are... something else.

So, Lennon was right to identify ideology as a problem. But he did not foresee the world after the collapse of Soviet communism. Absent an alternative economic ideology, the ideology of Neoliberalism would be promoted from an ideology to a truth, a truth worthy of killing people who refused to assimilate.

"And the world will live as one"

The scary thing about ideology is it's need to force everyone to join the belief system.

People--especially religious people--often argue that if everyone adopted their ideology the world would run better. "Libertarians" who follow F.A. Hayek often make this type of argument.

Well, if one had the power and was sufficiently brutal, s/he could create harmony by forcing everyone to adopt any one ideology. If everyone was Roman Catholic, we'd just have the Pope decide whatever major conflict arose.

Lennon's aspiration to have "the world live as one" sounds totalitarian to me. What if everybody is happy with the way the world is organized and I'm not? Will I get to object?

To be free, people need to be free to live under an ideological system of their own choosing. And they should feel secure that people who subscribe to other ideological systems aren't going to use force of arms to compel them to convert.

Maybe Lennon was using shorthand to describe the world at peace, but in my vision of a world at peace, I would clearly state that each individual should be free to choose the ideological system that holds together her/his society. One should be able to pick from multiple social contracts.

And followers of one ideology should not compel followers of another ideology to convert.

Happy 10 10 10 in the 10th!

This post is brought to you by the number 10:

2 Vintage Sesame Street - The Number 10 - Funny bloopers R us

Ellen's Top Ten Things to Do in the Tenth:
10. See a movie at the Highland Park Theater
9. Take a walk at the Ryerson Conservation Area
8. Go to the Deerfield Farmers' Market to buy honeycrisp apples and cinnamon honey
7. Visit the kitties and puppies at Orphans of the Storm and leave a donation or make a friend for life
6. Have a spiritual moment or visit the gardens at the Baha'i Temple
5. Try to figure out where in the 10th Bob Dold lived from 1991 to 2007
4. Eat a pulled pork sandwich while working on your computer (they have wifi) at Chicken Charlie's
3. Take your dog to the dog park in Lake Forest
2. Go to 10 10 10 in the 10th tonight
1. Vote for Dan Seals for  Congress

things federal and state gov't could do about foreclosure fraud

How should Congress address the issue of foreclosure fraud?

1. Hold hearings to determine the extent of the problem.

2. Increase penalties substantially for individuals who perpetrate the fraud.

3. Increase penalties that benefit from the fraud if it is perpetrated by people under the company's supervision.

4. Have the Justice Department audit past foreclosures. Look at a representative sampling from all lenders. Lenders who have more foreclosure fraud go to the front of the line for complete audits.

5. Make sure companies that engage in fraud are required to make their victims whole.

6. Implement a bounty system. If an employee is told to engage in fraud or pressured to engage in fraud, s/he can report this to authorities and receive a bounty to start in a new career. The funds for these bounties will be made by taxing profits of banks that make money on home loans.

7. States should implement oversight that audits each foreclosure before it's approved. The goal should be 0% fraud in mortgage foreclosure. Companies that cannot attain the goal should be prevented from participating in the mortgage business in the state for seven years or more.

8. States should implement a fee for conducting a foreclosure. This fee should be high, perhaps 10% of the maximum value of the loan. Right now the consequences for the borrower are high if the lender forecloses, but it's not that bad an outcome for the lender. Make it more costly for the lender to write a bad loan and you'll see the lenders exercising better discretion when loaning money.

Dear Sun-Times

Dear Sun-Times,

Good job with your endorsements.

One thing though. You say you "no longer know Mark Kirk, where he stands or what he would do." Now you finally do understand Mark Kirk. You just didn't before. Take a look at my archives.

Love,

Ellen Beth

p.s. My mom would have loved this:

Giannoulias, a son of Greek immigrants who earned a law degree from Tulane and briefly played professional basketball in Greece, takes an entirely more straightforward approach. He is direct where Kirk dodges, takes a stand where Kirk heads for the hills. He is smart, but not a smarty pants.

Mom always hated Kirk's smirk. It was just like that of George W. Bush.

Mark Kirk, Why not fight to free this guy? He just won the Nobel Peace Prize

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo just won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his work for gradual, peaceful change.

Liu is in prison in China for co-authoring Charter 08, a document calling for democracy in China, an end to Communist Party rule and greater freedoms. He's serving 11 years.

Human Rights Watch has called for Liu's release, but we've heard nothing from Mark Kirk

Kirk, a long time defender of the single political prisoner he can use to grandstand on, has said nothing about Liu.

Oh, Liu isn't from the Islamic world. There's no warmongering with Islamic countries in fighting for Liu. There's no bombing of Iran to come out of a free Liu Xiaobo campaign.

Further, Kirk doesn't care about anything that goes on in China. He's said so many times. He's even betrayed this country to China.

Newspaper that Endorsed Mark Kirk Called Out for Sexual Harassment: "Bankrupt Culture"

The New York Times got the story:

The new management did transform the work culture, however. Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

Then, there's Mark's favorite thing, bad quality and high executive pay:

The company is now frozen in what seems to be an endless effort to emerge from bankruptcy. (The case entered mediation in September after negotiations failed, and a new agreement between two primary lenders was recently announced.) But even as the company foundered, the tight circle of executives, many with longtime ties to Mr. Michaels, received tens of millions of dollars in bonuses.

Go figure.

Bob Dold's and Mark Kirk's Tax Cuts and Corporate Stock Buybacks

From Bob Dold's website:

I support a lower corporate tax rate for America’s business. The United States currently has the second highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. We must lower this tax rate to make American business more competitive globally and to spur job creation nationally and in the 10th District.

From Bob Dold's Facebook page:

Thank you to all those who came to the AARP debate today. The key to move our country forward: extend the tax cuts, cut the spending and send small business commonsense thinking to Washington!

Mark Kirk On the Issues:

Voted YES on making the Bush tax cuts permanent. (Apr 2002)
Voted YES on $99 B economic stimulus: capital gains & income tax cuts.

Mark Kirk recently told the press:

While Giannoulias has said he would favor ending Bush-era tax cuts for taxpayers whose household income exceeds $250,000, Kirk said he favored keeping the cuts in place across the board for the next two years.

The big headline in the Washington Post today?

U.S. companies buy back stock in droves as they hold record levels of cash.

From the story:

Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year, according to Birinyi Associates, a stock market research firm. But the rise in buybacks signals that many companies are still hesitant to spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could produce economic growth.

Some companies are buying back shares partly because they don't want to invest in developing new products or services while consumer demand remains weak, analysts said.

Guess what? We have a demand side economy.

The problem is that we have a supply side congressman who wants to be our senator and a supply side candidate to replace him.

Sound familiar?

Ann Coulter is in trouble for voting from mom and dad's house. Hey didn't Bob Dold vote from mom and dad's house too?

From the Brad Blog:

The complaint was filed by Daniel Borchers, a conservative Christian critic of [Ann] Coulter's following allegations in the New York Daily News in January that she had illegally voted by absentee ballot in CT, using her parents address there, in 2002 and 2004, despite being a resident of New York City at the time.

What's with all these republicans who cannot seem to move on with their voting lives after they've already moved away from their parents homes?

Rep. Alan Grayson Explains Mortgage Foreclosure Fraud

Rep. Grayson does a good job of explaining many of the problems of mortgage foreclosure fraud. The question that he doesn't answer, probably because he is not in possession of the information, is whether those who purchased loans and securitized loan bundles actually paid for them. Did loan servicers ever remit the payments to the owner of the indebtedness? Since no one really knows who owns many of these loans, would it be easy for servicers to skim funds? How would the accounting look? How would note owners detect they were not being paid? We know that in some cased more than one lender claimed a loan in foreclosure. However, these parties would also be expecting payments of principal and interest before the loan went into default. So, were there any disputes between parties all claiming to be the note owners prior to foreclosure? Why didn't this sort of a problem surface prior to the foreclosure problem?

My questions come from my sinking feeling that the entire secondary market was based on little or no real value. After the tech stock and housing bubbles, it wouldn't be unusual (anymore) to hear that yet another market was based on nothing.

I'd like to hear from all the candidates running for U.S. House and Senate what they'd recommend we do about all this.

Mortgage Foreclosure Fraud in a Nutshell

I've noticed that a lot of people are getting confused about the current story of mortgage foreclosure fraud. Here's a nutshell version I commented on Kos with a few embellishments. Of course, it is oversimplified, but it may help you get a general picture of what happened:

1. Person buys house he or she cannot afford after being told he can afford it under new loan programs and everyone is doing it--all old rules about only using one quarter of income for housing you were taught in Jr. high school out the window.

2. Person gets a loan on house.

3. Person gets a second loan on house at the same time--called an 80/20--no equity.

Mark Kirk's in His Usual Pre-Election Panic

In his last U.S. Congress election, Mark Kirk had supporters tell voters that Kirk supported the Obama agenda. He actually had some people in Mark Kirk t-shirts sporting Obama signs and others in Obama t-shirts sported Kirk signs.

Real Estate Titles from Bad Foreclosures are Failed and not Blighted

A new phrase has emerged from the world of real estate titles, "blighted titles". The term is meant to describe the now clouded titles that emerged from tainted mortgage foreclosures where the party foreclosing was not the party who owned the debt.

Some in the industry are saying the problem was caused by "sheer volume". I doubt that very much. I think it was reckless disregard for the truth with a whole lot of bad intent and because of that, I dislike the term blighted titles. It implies some force of nature caused the problem like worms or weevils as if the problem was inevitable. The problem was most certainly not inevitable but man-made by some greedy men (and women).

HH46-IR and the Black Hole, My Endorsement for US Senate

HH46-IR from
 the Spitzer Space Telescope

HH46-IR is a newborn star or protostar. Images of it were first sent to earth by the Spitzer Space Telescope launched in spring of 2003. If surrounded by a dense cocoon of gas and dust to keep up the pressure while allowing infrared and microwave radiation to seep through, it will become a star one day.

A black hole is a region of space is the result of a deformation of space time. Nothing, not even light can escape. The event horizon surrounds the black hole. It's undetectable and marks a point of no return. A black hole grows by absorbing other matter. The black hole is the evolutionary endpoint of stars. Once you move past the point of no return, you're sucked into the black hole and there is no escape.

A surprise endorsement

You'll be surprised, but I've decided to endorse Bob Dold for U.S. Congress from IL-10. Here's my modest proposal (h/t Balloon Juice):

"Somehow, I told you so doesn't quite say it"

In 2008, I blogged about mortgage foreclosures. I was concerned that foreclosing lenders were unable to produce the notes to the loans they were foreclosing. I was concerned because once a real estate title is clouded by uncertainty, the property becomes difficult (or impossible) to sell, mortgage or lease. Real estate transactions that were once routine suddenly become impossible to complete without a law suit requiring attorneys, notices, discovery (depositions and document production), hearings on motions, sometimes trials and filing and attorneys fees.

Rahm Emanuel Performs Miracle

I am glad to see Rahm out of the White House.

I'm not glad to see him back in Chicago.

Daily Herald Mirks Dold Voting/Tax Issues. Misleads Voters. Wrongfully Maligns Bloggers

Here's the Daily Herald's preposterous article. Here's my response:

Dear Mr. Lissau,

I object to the story insofar as it claims that the bloggers questioned the tax breaks. That is not correct. It's not the tax break that is the issue. Mrs. Dold could apply for the Homeowner's Exemption for her own sake. The issue is that the requirements for the tax break call Bob Dold's voting record into question. Mrs. Dold voted in Chicago.

Bob Dold and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. Amateur Hour or Brazen Arrogance?

On the heels of the residency, vote fraudiness issues of early this week, Bob Dold was caught having failed to properly disclose expenses of his bus tour on his latest FEC filing. Illinois Reason did an in depth report on the Dold campaign FEC matter complete with picture of the illegally parked campaign megabus. My only encounter with the bus was at an event he scheduled at the DQ in Northbrook. The bus didn't even show up. We caught up to them later in Highland Park.

Bad Week for Bob Dold Continues: FEC Looking Into Dold Campaign Finance Reports

Now it looks like Bob Dold has more than residency and voting problems. He has FEC problems as well.

The FEC sent the Dold campaign a letter threatening an audit or enforcement action if they didn't add some debt and expenditures not originally listed.

Are you rich enough to be represented by Bob Dold, the prince of insect poisons?

I think I know why Bob Dold, candidate for U.S. Congress in the Illinois Tenth District, is trying to run on the notion that he's a "lifelong" resident of the district. It's not literally true, but it may be figuratively true. I think Dold is not trying to give voters his address. He's trying to tell them that he views the world parochially as one who never left the high income nest of his parents. He's telling voter's that he will represent the narrow interests of places like Winnetka and Kenilworth.