All Posts Tagged With: "Illinois politics"

Anyone interested in the George Ryan story should watch the clip of Carol Marin’s interview w/ Scott Fawell and his squeeze from tonite’s Chicago Tonite:   http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=42,8,8&vid=082609y

This brings back all the questions of what is politics and what is government and where are the lines.  That discussion has been lost w/ the total political and governmental incompetence of Blago.  But w/ Ryan there was a serious debate lost on where has the line shifted w/in the criminalization of politics and the redefinition of ethics.  Fawell was the downfall of Ryan and Ryan was the ghost of politics past and Patricks Fitzgerald/Collins were/are the ghosts of politics/government future.  Discuss….

As the Blagojevich circus continues to unfold, I want to recommend that our readers check out the updates at the Capitol Fax Blog. Today, two of our contributors, John Bambeneck and myself, have been debating on the threads.  I hope you’ll join in.

Impeachment hearings *** Monk’s cell phone tapped? ***

Question of the Day

The question of the day is based on a proposal by State Rep. Will Burns, who I got to know when I was working in Springfield.  Will is a creative and bright young rising star in the Democratic party.  And I always thought he was also a genuinely nice guy. Read more…

Check out this picture from 1980 of a young Rod Blagojevich posing with Richard Nixon, who is giving Blagojevich his autograph.  And a bit of history from the TOC Blog:

If Blagojevich did set about modeling himself after Nixon, he’s most of the way there. Like his jowly political hero, Blago’s not going down without a fight. Tricky Dick didn’t resign until after the House Judiciary Committee had approved the articles of impeachment and Nixon was certain he would lose the House vote and the subsequent Senate trial.

(Thanks to Kiyoshi for sending this to me)

Attorney General Lisa Madigan wasn’t the only one to file suit today to remove Rod Blagojevich.  Urbanagora contributor John Bambenek also filed suit today.  Read more…

The following is a guest post by longtime Urbanagora reader Amanda.  Amanda is commenting on this Press Release by the Blagojevich Administration.

As a student of economics, I think of policy as a way to “get the incentives right.” An argument could be made that parents not paying child support is a market failure, where the market for raising children would normally operate with parents meeting the finanical needs of their children.  In an attempt to correct this market failure, Illinois Human and Family Services and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources created a program to withhold hunting and fishing licenses to child support deliquent parents. I’m not going to go into whether or not hunting is a “right” or a ”privilege” to be “granted” by the state, but that is also an interesting question.  Illinois found a way to track down a certain subset of delinquent parents and gave them the choice to either pay their child support payments and get their license or not pay and not have the right to hunt (legally). The fact that the program contributed to the greatest collection of child support payments on record suggests that the policy is working.  Could there be other ways to find delinquent parents and get them to cough up the money to make their kids’ lives better off? Suspending driving privileges is another step, though if the Illinois driver never gets pulled over, he/she would only face “payment or suspension” every 4 years (renewal requirements for 21-80 year olds) rather than the yearly renewal of hunting and fishing permits.