Monday, January 18, 2016
International Firm to come to Boone County
Illinois Lt. Governor to Make Announcement
International Firm to Expand in Illinois, create jobs
Flora Township/Boone County, IL - Illinois Lt. Governor Evelyn Sanguinetti will make an announcement about the future growth plans of a Northern Illinois company located in Huntwood Business Park, a property developed and owned by Ringland-Johnson Construction:
News Conference
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 1:30 pm (Doors Open at 1:00 pm)
Ringland-Johnson Corporate offices, 1725 Huntwood Drive, Cherry Valley, Illinois
Several other state and county elected officials and regional economic development professionals will attend.
The International business has chosen to expand its facility, create jobs thereby retaining an International manufacturing business in ILLINOIS. The business wishes to remain confidential until the announcement. Doors open at 1:00 pm. Please park in cul-de-sack and enter through warehouse. Ringland-Johnson Construction is located off Hwy 20, south of the Mobil station, east of the Cherry Valley Village Hall a mile, south of Wheeler Road, east on Huntwood Drive.
As always, if you have any questions or comments about the topics discussed in this newsletter, or any other part of state government, please do not hesitate to contact my office at (815) 547-3436 or email me at sosnowski@ilhousegop.org.
Sincerely,
Joe Sosnowski
State Representative
69th District
Why Hillary Clinton is in trouble in Iowa and New Hampshire
By Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer January 17, 2016
At Sunday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton faced far more than a resurgent Bernie Sanders. She faced mounting evidence of an open political rebellion among white Americans.
The dynamic has already been well-established among Republicans, where it is most acute given the predominantly white demographics of the party. Working-class whites, buffeted by the Great Recession and an economic recovery that has seen the wealthy move further ahead, are forming a key nexus of the Trump vote.
Now, white voters appear to be stirring the Democratic race in similarly surprising ways. Senator Sanders of Vermont has long held a lead on former Secretary of State Clinton in New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Feb. 9. New polls show that he is now essentially tied with Clinton in Iowa ahead of the Feb. 1 caucuses there – and even ahead among white voters nationally.
These first primary states – among the whitest in America – could dramatically change the narrative of Clinton’s primary campaign from one of inevitability to one that suggests she is teetering on a repeat of 2008, when she lost to underdog Barack Obama.
In 2016, the demographics could work in her favor, with the states that follow Iowa and New Hampshire being much more diverse, and Clinton holding a large lead on Sanders among black and Latino voters. She appeared to play to these strengths during Sunday's debate.
"Clinton made numerous appeals to black Democrats. She opened up the debate mentioning Martin Luther King Jr. ... and positioned herself as the defender and champion of President Obama’s legacy," writes Harry Enten of the "FiveThirtyEight" blog, noting that Clinton has a 57-point lead among black Democrats.
But the evidence that white primary voters might opt for a general election between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, at least at this moment, is a graphic indicator of how their thirst for “change” has only broadened and deepened since Mr. Obama’s election eight years ago.
The change they appear to want is more than a change of party or ideology to something approaching a reset button for American politics. A Trump or Sanders presidency would represent a profound rejection of business as usual in Washington. Now, it seems, white voters of both parties are seriously considering it – at least fleetingly, in the case of Democrats.
On the Republican side, the trend has been going on long enough that its causes have become fairly well known. With establishment Republicans unable to coalesce around a single candidate, antiestablishment candidates such as Mr. Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have built strong momentum heading into the Iowa caucuses.
Sanders’s latest rise has come so suddenly and unexpectedly that its causes are less clear. Yet despite the galactic differences between Sanders and Trump on policy, a clear line strings them together as politicians.
They are candidates that lack the support of the establishment wing of their parties.
They have both chosen a central talking point that their supporters connect to a decline in the prosperity of the American middle class: For Trump, immigration; for Sanders, banks and corporate greed.
And they both exude a species of frustration on the stump that is perceived as plain-talking. “Voters this cycle want to be understood more than they want to be inspired,” wrote the Monitor’s Linda Feldmann, speaking of the Republican turn away from Reaganesque optimism.
In that way, Sanders befits the apparent mood of the times. He is a fighter. His campaign speeches are Jeremiads against corporate America. While affable and avuncular, there is also righteous anger in his political persona.
At a campaign stop in Iowa, Stephen Marche of The Guardian compared a Sanders rally with a Trump rally he had attended two days before.
“The Bernie Sanders rally in Davenport was the precise opposite of the Donald Trump rally in Burlington and yet precisely the same in every detail,” he writes. “The same specter of angry white people haunts Sanders’s rally, the same sense of longing for a country that was, the country that has been taken away.”
A November poll by Esquire and NBC News found that “White Americans are the angriest of all” groups surveyed. “Consider the white men and women in our survey: From their views on the state of the American dream (dead) and America's role in the world (not what it used to be) to how their life is working out for them (not quite what they'd had in mind), a plurality of whites tends to view life through a veil of disappointment.”
Black Americans, by contrast, “are more optimistic about the future of the country and the existence of the American dream.”
The dynamic of white frustration is one that Clinton might find difficult to counter. Obama failed in 2012: Though he won handily, it was with the lowest share of white voters ever for a winner in two-candidate race – just 39 percent.
Iowa and New Hampshire now raise the prospect that Clinton could do worse. Even last October, the view of Hillary Clinton among white men matched their view of Obama at one of the low points of his presidency, the glitch-prone rollout of healthcare.gov, noted Aaron Zitner of The Wall Street Journal last year.
A poll analysis by Vox.com shows that white Democratic voters nationwide prefer Sanders 46 to 44 percent.
Last week’s State of the Union saw a black president trying to persuade white Americans that, though troubles remained, the national situation is not nearly as bleak as the press and presidential candidates have painted it.
To Obama’s point, the Brookings Institution reported that its economic "misery index" had, from January through November 2015, been at its lowest levels since the 1950s.
But polls tell a different story. And at the moment, they are suggesting how two states that are more than 92 percent white could turn the Democratic presidential race head-over-heels.
**************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Poll: Sanders Leads Clinton By 9 in N.H., Gains in Iowa
According to a pair of brand-new NBC News/Marist polls, Bernie Sanders has jumped out to a nine-point lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, and he's gained ground on her among Iowa voters in the Democratic presidential race. In New Hampshire, the Vermont senator gets the support of 41 percent of Democratic voters, Clinton gets 32 percent and Vice President Joe Biden gets 16 percent. No other Democratic candidate receives more than 1 percent. Back in July's poll, Hillary was ahead of Bernie in the Granite State by 10 points, 42 percent to 32 percent, with Biden at 12 percent.
Poll: Sanders Leads Clinton By 9 in N.H., Gains in Iowa
According to a pair of brand-new NBC News/Marist polls, Bernie Sanders has jumped out to a nine-point lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, and he's gained ground on her among Iowa voters in the Democratic presidential race. In New Hampshire, the Vermont senator gets the support of 41 percent of Democratic voters, Clinton gets 32 percent and Vice President Joe Biden gets 16 percent. No other Democratic candidate receives more than 1 percent. Back in July's poll, Hillary was ahead of Bernie in the Granite State by 10 points, 42 percent to 32 percent, with Biden at 12 percent.
Wounded Knee Monument?
Courtesy / Christina Rose
Tim Giago, Lakota, renowned journalist, publisher and founder of publications such as the Lakota Times, Native Sun News and Indian Country Today, has told ICTMN he has signed an agreement to purchase the historic site of Wounded Knee from James Czywczynski for $3.9 million.
Wounded Knee SOLD? Tim Giago Has Plans to Buy It for $3.9 Million
12/29/15
Tim Giago, Lakota, renowned journalist, publisher and founder of publications such as the Lakota Times, Native Sun News and Indian Country Today, has told ICTMN he has signed an agreement to purchase the historic site of Wounded Knee from James Czywczynski for $3.9 million.
Giago told ICTMN, “I signed an agreement to be the sole purchaser of Wounded Knee. The reason is that it has been sitting there idle and doing nothing for over 40 years.”
See Related: One Year Later, Still Not Sold: Wounded Knee Owner to Try a Drone Flyover
Giago, who says he grew up and lived at Wounded Knee, where his father worked at the Trading Post and played with JoAnn Gildersleeve, the daughter of Clive and Agnes (the owners of the Wounded Knee Trading Post), is making the purchase for the benefit of the nine Sioux tribal nations.
“I am 81 years old and I am at that age where I am not looking for any personal gain. I figure the best place for Wounded Knee to be is not just owned by the Oglala, It should be owned by all of the nine tribes of the great Sioux nation.
“I am going to raise the money, buy it from Czywczynski and then put the land and trust for the tribes of the great Sioux nation,” says Giago.
Czywczynski told ICTMN Giago is the perfect person to purchase the historic site.
“There is no man in South Dakota that knows more about Wounded Knee then he does. He is an elder with three doctorates in journalism; He rode his tricycle on the steps of Wounded Knee when his father worked at the Trading Post.”
Giago says he has already created a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization called the National Historic Site of Wounded Knee Inc.
“There is already a lot of interest generated and we are getting a lot of people who are inquiring on how to donate. My attorney is Mario Gonzalez, who is Oglala Lakota, and he will be putting together the trust for all the tribes.
“Czywczynski is asking for $3.9 million; I think we can raise it. The man who owns the trading post here in Rapid City has already made a sizable donation for us to get an office, equipment and everything else in order to get rolling,” he says.
Giago has also talked with former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle in Washington DC and several friends in New York City to begin fundraising efforts in Washington DC and New York.
Why Not an Eminent Domain Takeover?
In ICTMN interviews with Sioux Tribal leaders, the process of reclaiming the historic site of Wounded Knee included the possibility of a takeover via eminent domain. Giago says that process could prove troublesome and laden with red tape.
“There has been talk for several years that we should just take this land using the process of eminent domain. They legally own the land; they have title to the land. If a similar instance happened on tribal land… there would be so many legal issues, and it would drag on for 100 years,” he says.
“There is just no way you could take someone's land that has title, even if it is on a reservation.”
“The only way we're going to do this is if we do it ourselves. I am Lakota, I was born and raised on the reservation and I went to school there so let's just buy the land back and give it back to the rightful owners.”
What will happen to Wounded Knee?
Giago says his vision for the historic site is to get the land into trust for the nine Sioux tribes and eventually build a museum.
“I'd like to see a Native American Holocaust Museum built on the site. Not just for the people who were killed at Wounded Knee but for all those who suffered at Bear Creek, Washita, Sand Creek and every tribe that had a similar massacre could have a room where they could display their history.”
He also says purchasing the historic site and building of a museum would do much to improve relations between Indian and non-Indian people.
“People in Germany, France and Italy probably know more about Indian country than people living here in America. Can you imagine a really beautiful Holocaust Museum and a big trade pavilion for Indian artisans and craftspeople? They could set up booths year-round and sell their arts and crafts to the tourists. We would have tourists come from all over the world and stay in Rapid City go to the restaurants and hotels, Take buses to Wounded Knee, It would create over 200 jobs For the people down there. It would be also a boost financially to Rapid City, South Dakota,” he says.
“There is nothing but positive things that can come from this. This will surely open the door for better relations between Indians and whites, because we be sharing a whole lot together that we didn't have before.”
“This is something that needs to be done
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/12/29/wounded-knee-sold-tim-giago-buy-it-39-million-162909
Come March, budget battle to leave Chicago State broke
By David Mercer, The Associated Press
Posted Jan. 18, 2016 at 9:41 AM
CHICAGO — Like all of Illinois' nine public universities, Chicago State University is waiting for long-overdue state funding. Come March, though, the predominantly black school on Chicago's South Side says it won't have the money to pay its employees.
The problem at Chicago State is shaping up as a wider higher-education funding crisis due to the six-month budget standoff between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly. All of Illinois' public universities have cut spending while they plead with the state to get the money flowing before they have to further — and drastically — cut programs.
Already, the state has stopped the flow of Monetary Award Program grants that many low-income students rely on. Universities so far have been covering grant costs but say they can't do that indefinitely. And Chicago State, a former teacher's college that caters to many low-income students, lacks outside resources like a pool of well-off donors that schools such as the University of Illinois can fall back on.
"A lot of our students are parents," said Paris Griffin, the student government president. "We really don't have anywhere else to go."
No one knows what will happen if Chicago State's situation doesn't change before March - whether classes come to a halt, employees go without pay or students scheduled to graduate in May have to wait.
"Our mission, our challenge right now, is to make sure that doesn't happen," university spokesman Tom Wogan said. "I can't sit here today and tell you exactly how we're going to do that."
Illinois' public universities are all dependent - to varying degrees - on state money that was due to arrive with a new state budget in July. At Chicago State, it's about 30 percent of the operating budget - more than most other state schools. As it is, the school has about $9 million on hand. By mid-March, it won't be able to meet its $5 million monthly payroll, Wogan said.
"We are exploring the possibility of borrowing," he said. The school has learned a lesson, too, he said: It is looking hard for long-term outside funding because it does not believe it can rely on the state.
Chicago State has a history of financial mismanagement, including state audits in recent years that found the school to be a financial wreck. A state audit in December, though, found relatively few problems.
Illinois is a financial wreck itself, staring down a multibillion-dollar revenue shortfall and no end in sight to the deadlock between the governor and lawmakers. Rauner wants them to approve a series of measures he says will help the state's economy and cut costs, while Democrats insisted that the budget needs to be fixed first, which they say will require bringing more money into the state's coffers.
Rep. Kelly Burke, a Democrat from the Chicago suburbs, chairs the state House's higher education committee and says lawmakers should consider short-term solutions such as granting public universities the authority to borrow to cover expenses. But the real solution, she said, is both parties agreeing to pass a budget.Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelly blamed Democrats for the stalemate — "The best way to help higher education in Illinois is for Democrats to enact a balanced budget, but they still have not done so" — and last week, a memo from the governor's office to General Assembly members criticized what it called "waste," ''cronyism" and lavish administrator perks in public universities.Rauner's characterizations of the state's universities do not fit 148-year-old Chicago State, Wogan said."We don't have private jets, our president doesn't have a country club membership," he said. "Real people are going to get hurt if nothing is done."About 80 percent of Chicago State's students are black and most have low incomes. Many are at the school because they lack the means to go farther from home or come to Chicago State after faltering elsewhere, Griffin said.She left Southern Illinois University three years ago when her daughter, Brooklyn, was born, and moved back home to Englewood on Chicago's South Side. She depends on scholarship money only available to students at predominantly black schools, she said."The things that I have been able to accomplish here I would not have been able to do elsewhere," Griffin said.Associate philosophy professor Emmett Bradbury, who earns $88,000 a year, doesn't believe the state will allow Chicago State to run out of money. And if it does?"I'm not going to abandon the students," he said, acknowledging he'd eventually have to seek other employment. "As long as the doors are open, I'll come and I'll do what I have to do through the semester."
Above is from: http://www.sj-r.com/news/20160118/come-march-budget-battle-to-leave-chicago-state-broke-?Start=2
Governor’s Hard Line Not Supported by His Numbers
Commentary/Politics - Illinois Politics
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Written by Rich Miller
Sunday, 17 January 2016 06:24
A lot of folks have taken to calling Bruce Rauner “Governor 1 Percent” because of his immense personal wealth. Rauner himself told the Chicago Sun-Times during the 2014 campaign that he was in the top one-tenth of 1 percent of income earners.
But, right now anyway, he ought to be referred to as “Governor 1.4 Percent.”
Stay with me a bit and I’ll explain.
I sat down for an interview last week with Rauner. As he does with just about every reporter, the governor blamed House Speaker Michael Madigan for stifling his beloved Turnaround Agenda. Rauner said he was “frustrated” with Madigan for saying that the anti-union, pro-business reforms were “unrelated to the budget.”
“For example,” Rauner said, “if we can get business regulatory change so I can recruit manufacturers here and more transportation companies here, and more businesses here, we can generate billions of new revenue without raising tax rates. That’s directly tied to the budget.”
“Billions?” I asked.
“Billions,” he replied, while promising to send me a detailed analysis.
A few days later, his staff e-mailed me a memo that the governor had sent to lawmakers last fall. You can see it at RCReader.com/y/rauner1 and RCReader.com/y/rauner2.
But the memo didn’t really say much of anything about revenues, other than claiming that if the governor could get Illinois to “average” levels of unemployment and Gross State Product, and if the governor could stop the migration of Illinoisans to other states, his agenda would produce a grand total of $510 million in additional revenues.
That ain’t “billions.”
And while $510 million is nothing to sneeze at, it won’t even cover the interest on the state’s mountain of overdue bills that’s been accruing because the state has no budget and no way to pay them.
Of course, the state has not had a budget since June and has no way to pay those overdue bills because the governor refuses to negotiate a new budget until he gets his Turnaround Agenda passed, which according to his own memo wouldn’t produce enough revenue to pay the juice on money owed to the state’s vendors. That doesn't take into account the money owed to universities that haven’t received any state funding, creating major crises at several of them. Or the money owed to all the social-service groups that make up our safety net, forcing the state’s most vulnerable to go without.
And while $510 million seems like a lot of money, the governor’s projected revenue growth from his Turnaround Agenda would only be a 1.4-percent increase over the last state fiscal year.
Hence, “Governor 1.4 Percent.”
And would it even be that much? Rauner has said he would agree to higher state taxes if legislators agree to his Turnaround Agenda. But as a Republican legislative friend pointed out to me last week, that tax hike would reduce growth, even with all of Rauner’s agenda items.
“The point is that they can’t argue that these anti-labor changes will magically produce $510 million of economic growth/revenue and then discount the negative effect of a tax increase on economic growth,” he wrote me.
True.
But maybe the governor was a little confused and meant to include state governmental savings in that “billions” remark.
So let’s go back to the memo.
The governor claims the state would save $1.75 billion by making his demanded changes to union collective-bargaining laws. Roughly $750 million of that would come from cutting health-care costs for state employees. The rest isn’t explained.
He also claims that workers’ comp reforms would save the state $65 million a year. So we’re looking at about $1.8 billion in savings. That’s far more substantial, but so far he’s getting absolutely nowhere because he’s taken such a hard-line stance against unions.
To be fair, Rauner’s memo also claims that local governments would save billions more with his reforms, but some of his numbers just don’t add up, like overstating the savings on allowing governments to opt out of prevailing-wage requirements on non-federal projects.
I’m not all opposed to doing some pro-business reforms. I think an easy case can be made that workers’ comp costs are far too high, for example.
But I spent part of an afternoon last week listening to an otherwise tough-minded woman cry helplessly on the phone about the literal implosion of the state’s social-service safety net.
And one of the greatest charitable groups in the history of this state, Lutheran Social Services of Illinois, is facing an existential crisis because the government owes it $6 million.
In my opinion, the payoff for continuing this governmental impasse is not worth the price being paid.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax (a daily political newsletter)
Above is from: http://www.rcreader.com/commentary/governors-hard-line-not-supported-by-numbers/
Tom Kacich: Rauner offers glimmer of hope on pension plan
Tom Kacich: Rauner offers glimmer of hope on pension plan
Sun, 01/17/2016 - 7:00am | Tom Kacich
If you're looking for something good amid all the rotten news in Illinois, here's a little something: Gov. Bruce Rauner says there's some agreement on the fundamentals of a pension reform plan.
That's not to say that a deal is imminent, he cautioned.
"The president of the Senate (John Cullerton) and I agree on what it's going to take to have a constitutional pension reform, and the speaker's staff is not disagreeing. I can't say they'll be out there proactively being positive, but they're not really disagreeing. And that's a big deal," Rauner said.
It's a big deal if it gets worked out, resulting in "billions of dollars in pension savings at the universities as well as school districts and state government," the governor said.
But state employee unions already indicated opposition to Cullerton's plan, which is said to include a provision that makes employees choose between retaining cost-of-living increases in retirement or taking pay raises now. That may not be the offer made to employees.
"We have now the agreement of what would be constitutional. Now we just need to work out — and the devil is in the details — which parts of compensation should be used for consideration. We're talking about that right now," Rauner said.
"Will we get a bill done? I've introduced my bill, and I've said to the General Assembly, 'Introduce one. You passed 530 bills last year.'
"I love pumpkin pie, but you know what? They're not doing their job, and we have a crisis in pensions, and they didn't introduce a pension bill. Let's this year do only 50 bills, but let's have them be bills that matter: pensions, schools, local control, term limits."
He makes it sound so simple.
Above is from: http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2016-01-17/tom-kacich-rauner-offers-glimmer-hope-pension-plan.html
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