Greektown Belongs to Us Now

Not to toot my own horn, but, well....I suppose I can pat myself on the back with this one, since I called it WAAAAAY back on July 13, 2009.

As you can see by the map (from CNN), it was a massive red wave everywhere in Illinois except Chicago and down by East St. Louis.  This one really was "State of Illinois" versus "State of Chicago."

In the words of Jimmy Darmody, I think you'd agree that Greektown belongs to us now!

Alexi Giannoulias: The Would-Be King

Listening to the debate for Illinois Senator last night, it was difficult to pick out who was worse to listen to speak.  Mark Kirk played the professional politician and tap-danced around simple, direct questions, and Alexi Giannoulias came off as an economic illiterate, and a flat out buffoon on every other issue.  I don't particularly like either of these guys, but have enjoyed the fact that Kirk has turned into something of a fiscal hawk over the past couple years, so have been leaning his way in any case, and one statement by Alexi last night finally sealed the deal.  It seems Alexi Giannoulias considers the role of Senator to be something more akin to being a king.

ANDY SHAW:

Gentlemen, in the desert of polarized politics, there's one oasis of bipartisan. Both parties have overspent in the federal budget for years and years. And I'm wondering, if you go to D.C., facing these multitrillion shortfalls, where do you look to cut? What one or two places do you look first, and what is sacrosanct, what wouldn't you touch?

ALEXI GIANNOULIAS:

Four things. The first is we need to immediately do everything we can to promote economic growth. When people aren't working they're not paying taxes, that's less revenue long term. Again, when people aren't working, when they don't have jobs.

ANDY SHAW:

But that's not a budget cut.

ALEXI GIANNOULIAS:

But it's important. It's an important-- investment to make. The second thing we need to do-- is enact pay gold legislation, something that the Congressman voted against, to end these deficit-busting budgets that have been-- all too familiar in Washington D.C.

The third thing we need to is let the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire. We don't have $700 billion to give to millionaires and billionaires. And the fourth thing is, when the deficit commission comes out with their report in December, we're going to need a bipartisan spirit. We're going to have to take a long hard look at some very difficult decisions we're going to have to make, and because--

ANDY SHAW;

Gentlemen-- sorry.

ALEXI GIANNOULIAS:

--this country has lived-- within its means for a very long time-- Andy, we're going to have to take our medicine. We need people who are willing to make-- tough decisions.

The bold line above is my emphasis, and is the most important thing Alexi Giannoulias has said in his entire campaign.  We don't have $700 billion to give to millionaires and billionaires.


The man is talking about tax rates here, so he's discussing the topic of how much the government takes from its citizens in order to operate.  But his words reveal him as the statist that he is.  He doesn't conceptualize tax rates as a percentage of what the government is taking, rather as a percentage of what the government is generous enough to allow its citizens to keep.  In his mind, the government owns that $700 billion, and can't possibly afford to give it to those people.

This is not the mindset of a leader in a democratic republic.

This is the mindset of an authoritarian to whom all property belongs.  This is the mindset of a person who believes it is his right to control how much people are allowed to have.

This is the mindset of a king.

And this is not the mindset of someone worthy to represent the State of Illinois in the United States Senate.

Mark Kirk is Gay

So says his Republican opponent for the US Senate, Andy Martin.

Andy Martin, a noted conservative dirty trickster, put out a spot on local radio in which he pushes a "solid rumor" that fellow Senatorial aspirant, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), "is a homosexual."

"I helped expose many of Barack Obama's lies in 2008," the ad goes. "Today, I am fighting for the facts about Mark Kirk. Illinois Republican leader Jack Roeser says there is a 'solid rumor that Kirk is a homosexual.' Roeser suggests that Kirk is part of a Republican Party homosexual club. Lake County Illinois Republican leader Ray True says Kirk has surrounded himself with homosexuals."

"Mark Kirk should tell Republican voters the truth."

The seedy spot seems to take a page out the Karl Rove playbook -- in which allegations of homosexuality are pushed by innuendo and 'simple demands for the truth.' In a statement to a local Illinois station, the Kirk camp vehemently condemned and denied its content.

Now far be it from me to point out the obvious, but doesn't attempting to slur one's opponent really just reek of general ignorance and incompetence? I would hate to have contributed to this guy only to hear my dollars being set on fire and flushed down the toilet with an ad like this. This is to say nothing of the fact that even if this "rumor" were true, perhaps Andy Martin hasn't noticed, but being gay isn't exactly the political leprosy it used to be. Martin also perhaps hasn't noticed that we aren't exactly in the era of social politics these days, what with the economy in the tank, and the federal government expanding exponentially. God forbid you'd go after Kirk for something substantive like the fact that he voted for Cap-and-Tax. How about we address some of the issues, Andy? Don't be such a fag.

Beyond that, I heard this ad today on WLS and was slightly taken aback that the station would even run it. You're not NPR, WLS. Let's leave the low-class nonsense to Janeane Garofalo.

Meet the Next Senator from Illinois

Politico reports today that Mark Kirk will have the GOP nomination for the controversial Senate seat to be vacated by Roland Burris, and he'll have it uncontested.

Illinois Republican party chairman Andy McKenna announced today that he won’t be pursuing a Senate campaign if GOP congressman Mark Kirk wants to run, clearing the way for Kirk to face an uncontested GOP nomination.

“As Party Chairman my goal has been to build Party unity. Mark Kirk and I met last evening as part of an ongoing discussion about the U. S. Senate race. I reassured Mark that if he chooses to be a candidate, I will not oppose him,” McKenna said in a statement.

McKenna’s comments come after he mulled challenging Kirk in the Republican primary, angered over the congressman’s recent cap-and-trade vote. Kirk told party officials Friday that he would run only if they ensured his own party chairman wouldn’t run against him.

Kirk is now expected to pursue a Senate campaign, landing Republicans their leading recruit. But his hesitance to make his intentions official (and public) has raised some doubts about how successful he will be in translating his local political success in the Chicago suburbs into a rough-and-tumble statewide campaign.

Politically speaking, I can't imagine a scenario in Illinois where Mark Kirk doesn't pick up this seat in a cakewalk. His biggest competition from the Democrats for the seat would have been Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, but she backed out last week in favor of working on being reelected to her current position. One assumes she sees the Governor's mansion in her sights, needing only to wait out the more-comical-by-the-day Pat Quinn.

Next in line seems to be Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias. Giannoulias defeated Christine Radogno for the position in 2006 after being endorsed by then Senator Obama. He seems to have done a fairly competent job thus far as Treasurer, instituting some common sense monetary policy at the State level, and making some sound investment decisions. However, while his position as Treasurer really doesn't put him in charge of how our state spends its money, the fact of the matter is that he has been the one signing the checks, in effect, while our state has found itself mired in a $11.5 billion budget deficit. This is far too easy a target for Kirk to stick on Giannoulias during the election for Alexi to get out from under. To follow, I don't know enough about Alexi's politics to find him even a remote possibility, even with President Obama's backing. And considering how things are going lately, what good will that even be come 2010? Kirk's experience at the federal level alone should find him trouncing Giannoulias.

That leaves newcomer, and political legacy, Christopher George Kennedy, son of RFK, and the current owner of the Merchandise Mart. In running the Mart, Kennedy has taken an active role in the "greening" of the world's largest commercial building, obtaining for it a LEED-EB Certification in 2007. It seems relatively unlikely to me that Kennedy will bode much of a challenge for Kirk, either, given his general lack of experience in politics in general, much less at the Federal level.

Interestingly enough, perhaps Kennedy's green credentials serve as a reason that Kirk ultimately became one of the Cap-and-Tax Eight, currently so ruthlessly despised by conservatives and the fiscally responsible of all other reaches, including yours truly. It's appalling to me and other fiscal conservatives that he has so quickly earned the right to represent the Right in the upcoming Senatorial race. In fact, his actions in continuously straddling the "moderate" line in his admittedly extremely diverse district have spurred some to call him a coward.

However, with cap-and-tax appearing to be a dead-on-arrival issue in the Senate, it seems that this too shall pass for Kirk. Barring that bill's revival and subsequent economically destructive passage with his backing, I can't particularly see much of a way that Kirk doesn't come away with the Senate seat. Giannoulias doesn't have the experience, Madigan is out, and unless Kennedy puts twice as much money out there to buy what is already a tainted Democratic seat, it's going to be really tough for him to outmatch Kirk, and he certainly won't be winning any conservative votes.

Pre-Cap-and-Tax was a time when I would have backed Kirk wholeheartedly. He talked the talk on fiscal conservatism, and at a deeper level than most. He's lost my confidence for now, but he's got some time over the next year or so to once again start walking the walk. Whether he does or not is up to him, but from where I sit, he's our next US Senator in any case. Given his tendency to follow the polling (backup in the "coward" link) I figure it's probably best to start hoping to have some effect at that level sooner rather than later.

Mark Kirk Pays to Play

When the debate was raging over Barack Obama's "stimulus program" back in February, one of the most intriguing points in the debate was brought to the table by Congressman Mark Kirk. He brought up the issue of exactly how the government raises its money, and asked the very simple question: Where will it come from? I wrote about this subject after listening to a radio interview with Kirk:

On February 10, 2009, Congressman Mark Kirk appeared on the Roe Conn show on WLS in Chicago. He began expressing this same concern about where we were going to get the money. Kirk mentioned several fairly incredible figures in the interview. First and foremost, the amount of total money we are looking to borrow is six times the amount we've ever borrowed in one year ever before.

Almost more disturbing is the actual volume of borrowing we are going to need to pull off as a country. Kirk explained that a substantial amount of the government's debt issuances are a very short-term variety, only four weeks. This necessitates that the government actually borrow substantially more than initially necessary, since it will auction a new short-term security to pay off a previous one, similar to someone paying off one credit card by taking out another one. His estimate in regard to this process was that the country was going to need to average borrowing $150 billion every week for 52 weeks. Now, this works out to something on the line of $7.8 trillion, so I, as did Roe Conn, thought this number fairly dubious. However, when pressed, Kirk explained that it was due to that short-term nature of most government debt.

Mark Kirk was on that radio interview looking out for the American people, discussing the unfathomable debt to be unleashed upon us by the people who claim to represent us. He went on to vote against the stimulus. Fast forward to the afternoon of June 26, 2009, merely four months later, with the vote for the largest tax increase ever seen ready to take place in the House of Representatives. The tax increase imposed by the Waxman-Markey "clean energy bill" is regressive, affecting the lowest income earners most egregiously, as it looks to nearly double electricity prices, and to increase natural gas and gasoline by over 50%. To even get the bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote, 85% of the money received had to be allocated to special interest groups. This means that for the estimated $5.7 trillion the bill could take in over the next 15 years (give or take), less than 1 trillion will even be available to be utilized by the federal government for anything useful. In the meantime, the bill leaves you and me holding the bag.

What are those costs? According to the analysis we conducted at The Heritage Foundation, which is attached to my written statement, the higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill's provisions take effect in 2012. For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.

But direct energy costs are only part of the consumer impact. Nearly everything goes up, since higher energy costs raise production costs. If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four. By 2035 alone, the total cost is over $4,600.

Beyond the cost impact on individuals and households, Waxman-Markey also affects employment, and especially employment in the manufacturing sector. We estimate job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2035. And note that those are net job losses, after the much-hyped green jobs are taken into account. Some of the lost jobs will be destroyed entirely, while others will be outsourced to nations like China and India that have repeatedly stated that they'll never hamper their own economic growth with energy-cost boosting global warming measures like Waxman-Markey.

So, facing down a bill that can only be described as exponentially more destructive to the American people than was the "stimulus," one would have imagined a man like Mark Kirk to be one of the leading voices in speaking out against the travesty of Waxman-Markey. Instead, with the vote looming close, and Democrats defecting in droves, we find ourselves looking at a list of eight Republican representatives voting for the bill, and none more emblazoned on my mind than Mark Kirk.

Kirk's vote comes six months after his interview with Politico where he indicated his strong consideration of running for President Obama's former Senate seat, citing his desire to see a special election for the seat, given the corruption surrounding the governor's office.

“At this point, everyone is tainted. In order to restore the trust of the people of Illinois in their representatives, this decision should not be made by people connected to a corrupt government,” said Kirk.

“We should return this seat to the people who own it — not the corrupt government. In this state, trust has been broken between the state of Illinois and its people.”

There is no question that it is President Obama's agenda to grow our government. From the standpoint of rhetoric of policy, Obama has made "climate change" a major issue. In that respect, Waxman-Markey is a major step forward for him. With an eye toward his former Senate seat, it appears Mark Kirk has voted for the bill to garner the President's favor, in hopes to earn his future endorsement.

Moving beyond the rhetoric, and dealing in reality, there is no question that the Waxman-Markey bill is the largest power grab and move toward more stringent central economic planning by the federal government we have seen in our lifetime, furthering President Obama's true agenda. It is at such a time as this that the people of Illinois, and every other state, deserve the opportunity to trust their representatives. Unfortunately, Chicago politics has captured the national stage. One does not play if one does not pay. Apparently over the last six months, Mark Kirk has gotten this message loud and clear.

At this point, everyone is tainted.