Democracy 'Waking Up' with National Movement to Reform Campaign Finance

Common Dreams

 

Communities throughout the country are winning 'important victories' in the fight against big money, new report finds

by

Nadia Prupis, staff writer

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"This report demolishes the conventional wisdom that nothing can be done to break the hold on our democracy that Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions have given to corporations and wealthy special interests." (Photo: Reuters)

As the 2016 election cycle shapes up to be the most expensive in history, communities throughout the country are winning "important victories" in the fight against big money, according to a new report released Monday by a coalition of progressive groups.

Since 2010—the year the Supreme Court codified corporate personhood and opened the doors to unlimited election spending with Citizens United v. FEC—at least 23 states have enacted disclosure laws to counteract the court's ruling, while a slew of cities and localities have launched efforts to prioritize small donor participation, Our Voices, Our Democracy (pdf) found.

"This report demolishes the conventional wisdom that nothing can be done to break the hold on our democracy that Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions have given to corporations and wealthy special interests," Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause’s senior vice president for strategy and programs, said Monday.

"People are working in their communities, and now connecting state-by-state, in building a national movement to preserve democracy and make sure our government listens to and reflects the people it serves," Hobert Flynn said. "And they’re winning important victories."

That includes more ballot initiatives in 2016 than any previous election cycle to "rebalance the system so it works for voters."

Ballot initiatives like South Dakota's Government Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act, a proposal to safeguard transparency and political ethics; New York's push to close its infamous "LLC loophole," which enables special interest  groups to circumvent disclosure laws and contribution limits; and three separate measures in California that seek to overturn Citizens United, remove the ban on public financing, and require public disclosure of donors making contributions of $10,000 or more.

Other ballot initiatives are cropping up throughout the country, from Washington state to Washington, D.C., according to the report, released by advocacy groups Common Cause, the Center for Media and Democracy, Demos, Every Voice, People for the American Way, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG.

"The debate about the problem of money in politics is over," the report states. "The question is not 'if 'but 'when and how' we will reform our democracy."

The report comes as a potentially groundbreaking voting rights case continues in North Carolina, where plaintiffs are arguing that the state's election laws act as roadblocks for black and minority voters.

In his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama pledged to make dark money a priority of his remaining year in office, stating, "We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families or hidden interests can’t bankroll our elections."

Common Cause, along with dozens of other organizations, delivered one million petitions to the president following his address urging him to issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to disclose their political spending.

As of the report's publication, Obama has said he is "seriously considering" heeding the call. To that end, more than 100 groups are scheduling dozens of actions in the nation's capital for the week of April 11-18, including a three-day mobilization they are calling "Democracy Awakening," to call for reform proposals that will restore and strengthen voting rights and curb the influence of money in politics.

It will be the first mass demonstration calling for reform on both of these fronts, the NAACP said Monday.

"We’re not talking about the nostalgic disenfranchisement of 1965. Once again, states with the worst histories of discrimination are pushing for new barriers to block the young, the poor, the elderly and minority voters from the ballot in 2016," said NAACP president Cornell William Brooks. "We must answer the call for action."

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ABOVE IS FROM:  http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/02/08/democracy-waking-national-movement-reform-campaign-finance

Letters to Editor supporting Michelle Courier

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Letter: Boone County Board members support Michelle Courier

• We, as current and past county board members of Boone County are writing to express our support for Michelle Courier to be re-elected as our state’s attorney for Boone County.

  We have all had an opportunity to work with Michelle and have observed her integrity and dedication to all of Boone County.

  We urge you to join us in endorsing and re-electing Michelle as our Boone County state’s attorney.

  — Danny Anderson, Sherry Branson, Jeffrey Carlisle, Kenneth Freeman, Fred Genrich, Laura Guerin-Hunt, Dana LaPier, Raymond Larson, Peggy Malone, Craig Schultz, Brad Stark, Marion Thornberry, Ron Wait and Cathy Ward, Boone County current and past board members

• Letter: I am voting for Michelle Courier

• Posted Jan. 25, 2016 at 9:00 AM

  As a zoning board of appeals member, I have had the privilege of personally working with our State’s Attorney Michelle Courier and proudly endorse her.

  Over the last several years, we have had numerous and sometimes contentious zoning hearings over the wind ordinance. Many of the hearings went way into the late hours. Michelle herself attended the hearings. She always remained professional, impartial and focused on doing what was right, not on doing what was popular. She displayed a great deal of integrity, a quality to be admired in our leaders.

  With Michelle, we know we are in good hands. Please join me in re-electing Michelle Courier as our state’s attorney on March 15.

  — Norm Stimes, Capron

• Courier for Boone County state's attorney

Rockford Register Star

• Posted Jan. 21, 2016 at 1:00 PM

  I would like to take this opportunity to endorse Michelle Courier for Boone County state’s attorney.

  I am currently the state’s attorney for Kane County, and have worked with Michelle in my role as the state’s attorney for Kane County, Illinois. I have also served with Michelle in the Illinois State’s Attorney Association. This organization is comprised of all the elected state’s attorneys in Illinois, representing 102 counties. Despite being from a smaller county, Michelle earned the respect of her peers and was elected to represent them on the association’s board of directors.

  Michelle is an effective and proactive prosecutor. She has aggressively prosecuted crime. She provided law enforcement another tool in the fight against gang activity by filing the street gang civil lawsuit. She implemented the SCRAM program to address repeat drunk drivers. She implemented the first offender program to hold offenders accountable while ensuring justice is served. Michelle’s hard work and innovative solutions for prosecution of individuals in Boone County make her the right choice for state’s attorney in Boone County.

  — Joe McMahon, Geneva

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• Letter: Boone county has benefited with Michelle Courier as its state's attorney

 

• Rockford Register Star

• Posted Jan. 21, 2016 at 3:00 PM

  As the current state’s attorney for Lake County, I have had the privilege to work with Boone County State’s Attorney Michelle Courier. She is a leader in the state’s attorney community and has provided outstanding representation of Boone County throughout the state.

  A state’s attorney has enormous responsibilities from criminal prosecutions to providing legal guidance to ensure the proper administration of the county government. A state's attorney plays a pivotal role in public safety and county operations. The responsibility of a state’s attorney is not lessened by the size of the county. Michelle shares the same duties as I do, just with less people. Michelle has used her vast experience to provide excellent service to Boone County.

  State’s attorneys are also tasked to do what is right, even if it is not popular. Michelle has shown the integrity and commitment to justice needed in a state’s attorney. Boone county has benefited with Michelle as its state’s attorney.

  — Michael G. Nerheim, Waukegan

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• Letter: Boone County is safer because of Michelle Courier

 

• Rockford Register Star

• Posted Jan. 21, 2016 at 6:00 PM

  I had the honor and pleasure of working with Michelle Courier for four years where she served with distinction as the chief of the civil division in my office.

  As Boone County state’s attorney, Michelle has demonstrated an ability to organize and manage resources to accomplish goals without compromising time and budget restrictions. Her analytical ability and sound judgement led to the efficient prosecution of cases. A tough on crime approach to criminal prosecution has resulted in raising the bar regarding plea negotiations.

  Her collaborative skill has given her the ability to bring out the best in others, while tempering individual positions and opinions, in order to serve the interests of justice and equality.

  According to the U.S. Justice Department statistics, there are over 25,000 gangs and 750,000 gang members who are active in the United States. Gang activity has been directly linked to the narcotics trade, human trafficking, assault and gun violence. Michelle took a proactive approach in the war on gangs and filed a lawsuit against the Latin Kings making use of the Illinois Street Gang Terrorism Omnibus Prevention Act to make the citizens of Boone County safe and deter gang activity. This type of action is endorsed by the law enforcement community and other Illinois state’s attorneys.

  I have every confidence in Michelle Courier and heartily endorse her in her bid for re-election as Boone County state’s attorney.

  — Louis A. Bianchi, McHenry County state’s attorney

Obama Will Seek to Double Budgets for Wall Street Regulators

By Angela Greiling Keane 1 hour ago

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.President Barack Obama will ask Congress to double funding for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the next five years, bolstering two financial regulators that the White House sees as integral to curbing Wall Street excesses.

Obama will propose the increases in the fiscal 2017 budget blueprint that he will release on Tuesday, Jeff Zients, White House National Economic Council director, wrote in a blog post set to be released Monday afternoon. By 2021 the two agencies’ budgets would be twice the 2015 level, starting with an 11 percent increase for the SEC to $1.8 billion in 2017 and a 32 percent increase for the CFTC to $330 million, Zients said.

“The president will continue working to make sure that the financial system works for everyone,” Zients wrote. “As the financial services industry continues to rapidly evolve, some in Congress have used budget limitations to hamper the agencies charged with establishing and enforcing the rules of the road.”

Republican congressional leaders already have said they’ll reject most of Obama’s budget plan, the last of his presidency. Obama will ask for substantial increases in funding for programs including community college, jobs for disadvantaged young people and cancer research.

Building on Dodd-Frank

Zients said additional money for the financial regulators would build on the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, the regulatory expansion enacted after the global financial crisis.

Obama will also again recommend funding the CFTC through user fees, to shift the costs for the agency to the firms it regulates. His budget will propose a fee on the biggest financial firms pegged to their liabilities, Zients said.

“We learned the hard way in 2008 just how damaging risk and leverage in the financial system can be, and we’ve done a lot to curb excessive risk on Wall Street since,” Zients wrote. “This fee is another way to further those reforms, ensuring that taxpayers aren’t on the hook for risky Wall Street gambles.”

CFTC Chairman Timothy Massad has repeatedly complained that his agency lacks enough money to carry out its responsibilities for regulating most of the derivatives market. In May, he told lawmakers that the CFTC has insufficient resources to conduct even routine inspections of exchanges and other companies it policies. 

“We simply can’t get into these entities on a regular basis,” Massad said in testimony before a Senate appropriations panel. “We don’t even get to many of the clearinghouses and exchanges once a year. That is a big problem.”

SEC chairman Mary Jo White asked at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in November for $1.8 billion in funding for fiscal 2017. She’s argued that the regulator has responsibilities that are far beyond its resources.

More from Bloomberg.com

• Obama Confronts a Failure of His Presidency in Illinois Capital
• Rubio Plays Defense in Final New Hampshire Sprint
• Trump Revels in Retail Politics Days Before New Hampshire Votes

Read Obama Will Seek to Double Budgets for Wall Street Regulators on bloombergpolitics.com

Controversial WV Legislation Tied to Shadowy Billionaires' Network

February 8, 2016

Public News Service - WV | February 2016

CHARLESTON, W. Va. - The right-to-work bill and prevailing-wage repeal just passed by the Legislature have ties to Kansas oil billionaires Charles and David Koch and their shadowy network, watchdogs say.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), the bills were based on model legislation from the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Lisa Graves, executive director of CMD, says ALEC is part of a national network of funders and front groups carefully designed to promote a pro-corporate agenda.
"The Kochs playing a ventriloquist role through these different organizations," says Graves. "Cookie-cutter ALEC bills, cookie-cutter talking points, ad campaigns by Americans for Prosperity and willing, pliable politicians who want to please these billionaires."
CMD says Senate President Bill Cole is a member of ALEC. The Charleston Gazette reported he attended what Graves called "Koch Fest," an annual closed-to-the-public donors retreat at a resort in Palm Springs, California. Cole's office said he attended in his "official capacity" and denied it was a "political event."
Graves says the Kochs have promised to raise and spend nearly a billion dollars in this election cycle. Cole says he did not collect any donations for his campaign for governor while at the Palm Springs event. But Graves says hundreds of billionaires and multi-millionaires attend the donor's retreat.
"They don't necessarily write the check at that meeting, but they're the connections," she says. "This is a network, and that produces big dividends. This is really a network where you're plugged into future funders of your campaign."
Cole's office says he did tell the donors in Palm Springs he was working to make West Virginia the 26th right-to-work state. According to the National Journal, Koch organizations such as Americans for Prosperity have supported that effort with expert testimony, advertising and door knocking and phone banking, like you might see during an election. Graves says they haven't said how much they have spent.
"What is certain is they've spent a lot," she says. "It's a real blanketing effort - ads and mailers, and spending a big sum in a small media market. The Koch brothers through AFP has been known to really inject more cash than almost any other group."
The right-to-work and prevailing-wage bills are likely to become law.

Dan Heyman, Public News Service - WV

- See more at: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/2016-02-08/livable-wages-working-families/controversial-wv-legislation-tied-to-shadowy-billionaires-network/a50274-1#sthash.iBAuaH8c.dpuf

Rauner’s “Wedge” Pledge Has Yet to Divide Democrats

 

Written by Rich Miller

Sunday, 07 February 2016 05:13

Last week, a reporter said to Governor Bruce Rauner that Secretary of State Jesse White had suggested that Rauner bring in former governors, including George Ryan, to help break the long governmental impasse that has prevented the state from having a budget for more than seven months.

Rauner laughed and said, “Uh, wow.”

The governor clearly did not take the suggestion seriously.

“I’m not gonna talk about the failures of the past that created this mess,” Rauner said through chuckles. “I focus on the future. I don’t live in the past. We’ve had failure in our elected government for decades. This mess didn’t happen overnight. And what we’re not gonna do is reproduce the dynamic that created it.” The governor laughed throughout most of that last sentence.

Bringing in graybeards has been tried before without success. Governor Rod Blagojevich asked former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard to town to help him pass his massive construction proposal that Speaker Michael Madigan refused to agree to. It didn’t work. The two men left town as soon as they realized how hardened Madigan’s position had become against Blagojevich.

While former governors have been through similar troubles, nothing really compares to today’s self-inflicted disaster. Madigan and Blagojevich played hardball, but the game is exponentially meaner now.

And, besides, what would the former governors say or do that could make a difference? They’d probably advise Rauner to cut a deal that doesn’t bash unions. But our governor seems wholly uninterested in doing such a thing.

The simple fact is that nothing – nothing – will change until Madigan and Rauner decide it will.

Madigan’s long history clearly shows he forces the other side to negotiate against itself until he believes they’re close enough to his position. Rauner has clearly not moved far enough away from anti-union proposals and things such as term limits for Madigan’s taste.

And Rauner, for his part, seems fed up with the whole process and has taken to issuing repeated dire warnings of political consequences to Madigan’s Democratic members if they continue backing the speaker.

But as we saw not long ago, when rank and file Senate Democrats rejected the pension-reform compromise negotiated by Senate President John Cullerton (even though a majority of that caucus had voted for a very similar bill a couple of years earlier), most Democratic legislators are in no mood to work out a deal, either, and continue to insist that the governor come to the table and finally agree to a budget instead.

Late last Thursday, Chicago State University (CSU) officially declared a “financial exigency,” which could lead to the reduction of tenured faculty and drastic reductions in programs to save the school from closure. The state’s only majority-black university had already announced last month that it would run out of money to pay salaries in early March.

CSU gets more than a third of its funding from the state, more than all but one other four-year public university in Illinois. But the governor has publicly complained that taxpayers have been throwing Chicago State’s money “down the toilet” and wants drastic reforms. For now, anyway, the Democrats are staying on the sidelines and pointing fingers at Rauner.

The governor has been talking about his grand plan for years, long before he was elected.

He never made it a major campaign issue, but it’s clear from looking at his past statements that he believes Democrats will eventually side against the unions and with social-service agencies (and places such as the CSU campus and the Chicago Public Schools) if he can, in his own words, “drive a wedge” into the party. The object is to make the Democrats choose between money for their pet causes or union rights. He’s shut off the money, but he hasn’t yet driven that wedge.

That’s probably why Rauner looked like he was attempting to tank the Chicago Public Schools’ bond sale last week with loud demands that it should go bankrupt and be taken over by the state. Without that bond sale, the school system would’ve been in danger of shutting down.

The object here appears to be to create so much chaos that the Democrats finally start negotiating to save all the programs and institutions they’ve been building for decades.

So far, that isn’t happening, but the real chaos is yet to come. We’ve seen smaller social-service agencies close, we’ve seen larger agencies shut down vital programs, but so far nothing huge has happened.

It’ll probably take the “death” of something very important and very large to test this theory.

Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax (a daily political newsletter) and CapitolFax.com.

Above is from:  http://www.rcreader.com/commentary/rauners-wedge-pledge-has-not-divided-democrats/

This Is How Much the Koch Brothers Hate Donald Trump

 

—By Daniel Schulman

| Thu Feb. 4, 2016 1:02 PM EST

 

There is one man standing in the way of the Koch brothers' plans to elect a free-market conservative to the White House in November. His name is Donald J. Trump.

The Kochs, whose fascinating political evolution I detail in my book Sons of Wichita, are not fans of the bombastic real estate mogul whose positions on everything from taxes to foreign policy are at odds with theirs. Charles Koch has said Trump's plan to create a Muslim registry would "destroy our free society"—and for months Trump has been a source of debate and discussion within their donor network, which is raising nearly $900 million for the 2016 elections. Early on in the race, some members of the network believed, as did almost everyone else, that Trump would implode on his own. Some still do. And a very small handful of Koch network donors are Trump supporters. But in recent months, the Kochs and their allies—who now are largely leaning toward Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz—have considered a campaign targeting Trump, whose candidacy they believe poses a threat to the Republican Party, if not the country at large.

The Kochs' Trump problem is the topic of my new piece, just out at Vanity Fair. I report:

But Trump's second-place Iowa finish was more a blow to his ego, in some respect, than the viability of his campaign. If he prevails in New Hampshire, where he's maintaining a huge lead in the polls, pressure is likely to mount within the Koch network to launch an offensive before a march to the nomination gains formidable momentum. When the Kochs and several hundred of their allies gathered last weekend for another summit, halting Trump was a major topic of discussion.

What form might this attack take? According to The Hill, the Kochs' operatives have carefully assessed Trump's vulnerabilities—and those of the other candidates—and determined that highlighting his track record of bankruptcies and predatory business deals harms his standing with likely voters. (The Democrats deployed a similar strategy, to great effect, against Romney's "vulture capitalism.")

"As to whether we would mount something like that, everything is on the table,” one senior Koch official told me. "But there's no real plan. In all of our meetings we've discussed it."

One thing that has held the Koch network back so far, in addition to the Trump backers within their ranks, is the concern that taking on Trump would inevitably draw the thin-skinned tycoon's legendary invective, which it almost certainly would. If the Kochs go after Trump, rest assured that he will take every opportunity to highlight how he's being attacked by a cabal of billionaires seeking to control the outcome of the election. And this more or less explains their caution to this point. By taking on Trump, the Kochs risk lending credence to his claims of being an outsider who is battling against a corrupt political system rigged by the elites.

If Trump performs poorly in New Hampshire, the Koch network may be able to avoid a damaging showdown. But if he wins, it may already be too late to halt the runaway Trump train, especially if there's no Trump-targeting campaign in the can. So what happens if Trump seizes the nomination? Here's where things get very interesting.

If Trump becomes the nominee and he faces self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders in November, the senior Koch official explains, members of the donor network are likely to hold their noses and back Trump's candidacy. But there's another scenario that could prove far more controversial and possibly damaging for the network: a Trump-versus-Clinton matchup. There is absolutely no love between the Clintons and the Kochs, whose company experienced one of the most traumatic periods in its history as it fought off regulators during Bill Clinton's presidency. But, so strong is the dislike for Trump within Koch network, that a Clinton-Trump race is a tough call. "I could see the network not participating in the presidential election at all," says the senior Koch official.

This doesn't mean the Koch network would stand down in 2016 entirely. Under this scenario, donors would instead channel their resources into other races. If this were to occur—and it's a very big if—that would be a stunning development for a network of donors that has been amassing such a huge warchest for the presidential race.

Read the full story here.

 

Above is from:  http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/02/koch-brothers-have-donald-trump-problem

Mick Dumke investigates Bruce Rauner

 

Above is from: http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/1306331/watchdogs-rauner-still-keeping-secrets

 

 

 

 

Might any of Rauner’s companies be involved in the proposed “prison reform”?

 

 

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Crime / Politics / News Firm tied to Bruce Rauner profits from 'court-sanctioned extortion'

Posted By Mick Dumke on 09.25.14 at 03:15 PM

• AP Photos
• Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner has ties to a company that makes money by punishing poor people for minor criminal violations.

During stops in black and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago this week, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner promised to fight crime in low-income neighborhoods by creating jobs, funding a stronger social safety net, and especially targeting the most dangerous criminals—all things that he accused Governor Pat Quinn of neglecting to do.
"What we've got to focus on is the violent crime in our communities," he said at a church in Humboldt Park. "We've got to prevent it, and Pat Quinn is failing on that issue."

 

But Rauner himself has financial ties to a company with a very different focus: punishing poor people for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses like traffic violations, often until they're so burdened with fines that they end up behind bars.

Rauner, a first-time candidate, made a fortune as a leader of the private-equity firm GTCR, and its many business dealings have been closely scrutinized since he launched his campaign for governor. In particular, questions keep coming up about Rauner's role in the firm's investments in nursing homes, and its potential liability for deaths that occurred there.

Though Rauner retired from GTCR in 2012, he's still an investor in it. Not long after he left the firm, it acquired a company called Correctional Healthcare Companies, which provides medical and mental care, including "behavioral programming," for prisons and jails that want to save money by outsourcing such services.

Illinois is one of the states that's contracted with CHC. As the Better Government Association has reported, the mental care it's provided at juvenile detention facilities has been the subject of a lawsuit—though the suit was filed against the Quinn administration. Records show that the state has paid CHC about $21 million since 2012.

But CHC owns another company that does far more controversial work. Judicial Correction Services doesn't operate in Illinois, but in a number of states in the south it's a leading provider of what's called private or offender-funded probation. Simply put, the company contracts with local courts to oversee people on probation for misdemeanor offenses. The arrangement is attractive to budget-cutting officials because there are no direct costs for taxpayers: the offenders cover expenses by paying monthly fees to be supervised.

The thing is, these aren't hardened criminals—they're people snared in the court system for committing low-level offenses. And the problem with asking them to pay is that many of them are on probation because they didn't have the money to pay the fines for their misdemeanors in the first place. The ACLU calls the practice "court-sanctioned extortion."

The private probation industry—and Judicial Correction Services in particular—has been the subject of investigations by Human Rights Watch, the Nation, and the New Yorker, among others. From the Human Rights Watch report:

"Pay only" probation is used for offenders who would not be on probation at all if they had more money. They pose no threat to public safety and require no supervision. Many are guilty of offenses that carry no real threat of jail time such as speeding, driving without proof of insurance, noise violations and the like. At sentencing, judges who use probation this way ask offenders whether they can pay their fines and court costs immediately and in full. Those that can walk free and wash their hands of the criminal justice system. Those that can't are put on a long-term payment plan and sentenced to probation.

Such probationers are then responsible for monthly fees of $35 to $40, on average, and if they can't keep up, they fall further into arrears. The New Yorker's Sarah Stillman detailed the experience of a 49-year-old mother in Montgomery, Alabama, named Harriet Cleveland: she was put on probation with JCS after being unable to pay off the fines for driving without insurance or a license. From there her hole only got deeper:

In early 2012, she turned over nearly all her income-tax rebate—some two thousand dollars—to JCS. But by that summer her total court costs and fines had soared from hundreds of dollars incurred by the initial tickets to $4,713, including more than a thousand dollars in private-probation fees.

Cleveland ended up without a job and in jail. And there are many others like her. "Vast numbers of arrest warrants are issued every year for offenders on private probation," Human Rights Watch reported. "In Georgia alone, 124,788 arrest warrants were issued for offenders on private probation in 2012." JCS and other private probation companies likely bring in $40 million a year in that state alone.

Rauner's campaign wouldn't comment on JCS or the work it does. Spokesman Mike Schrimpf stressed that Rauner had left GTCR by the time it acquired the company and "has pledged to put all his assets in a blind trust if elected governor."

Schrimpf also blasted Quinn for a former prisoner-release program and the state's ongoing efforts to place some parolees on home confinement. "Unfortunately, Pat Quinn shortchanged public safety and released violent offenders early who went on to commit more horrendous crimes," Schrimpf said. "Bruce will make public safety a top priority."

Quinn's camp responded by pointing to a report that concluded he was not responsible for the "premature release" of dangerous criminals who'd committed additional crimes.

The truth is that neither candidate was talking much about public safety or criminal justice issues until Rauner slammed Quinn in an ad this week.

That's unfortunate. Though private probation companies aren't operating in Illinois, the state's criminal justice systems have extensive, expensive, and dangerous problems.

In the Cook County criminal court, defendants face their own means test to determine whether they end up behind bars: those with money to post bond can walk free, while those who lack it are locked up. It's one reason the local jail population remains stubbornly high.

Last year Quinn closed two state prisons to save money. Though the governor has insisted that the state correctional system isn't overcrowded, the prisons that remain open were designed for fewer than 34,000 inmates, but were holding nearly 49,000 as of mid-July. More than 19 percent were in on drug charges—more than for murder or any other offense.

And the prison population is projected to climb to more than 50,000 by next year, according to the Department of Corrections.

As it is, the budget for the corrections department is more than $1.3 billion for the current fiscal year.

Rauner has vowed to cut taxes while also getting the budget into shape—but he's all but called Quinn a murderer for putting some prisoners on home confinement.

Something has to give.

Privatizing and cutting services can save taxpayers money in the short run. But of course there's another way to save resources while ensuring justice: making sure that the only people in the criminal justice system are those who need to be there.

ABOVE IS FROM:  http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2014/09/25/firm-tied-to-bruce-rauner-profits-from-court-sanctioned-extortion