The Republican Thread

[Jenksismyhero]

Don't read a thing into this type of poll this far out. Seriously. The Obama approval rating might be meaningful, but there's still 8+ months before Florida votes and 95% of the candidates haven't announced yet. The low numbers for Palin might also be meaningful since she's been such a national figure. The others?

 

Trump is up at the top because he has name recognition amongst low-information voters. Huckabee campaigned there last time and there's a hangover.

 

At this point in 2007, Rudy 91u1iani was out to a total and insurmountable lead. He wound up spending $50 million per delegate that he won.

 

Yeah that's probably true.

[Balta1701]

link

Mitt Romney made it official Monday, announcing he's formed a presidential exploratory committee for his all-but-certain second-chance Republican campaign next year with a video that highlights the nation's massive loss of jobs and says "President Obama's policies have failed."

 

The move makes Romney the second semi-declared contender — Tim Pawlenty was the first, and on the Democratic side Obama made official last week — and will allow him to start raking in campaign cash toward a massive fundraising goal of well over $50 million.

 

He also made the announcement a day before the fifth anniversary of enacting as governor a sweeping Massachusetts health care law that has emerged as one of his biggest obstacles to winning the GOP nomination and one that Democrats have been gleefully seizing on.

 

The video shows a casually-dressed Romney speaking direct to camera for two-and-a-half minutes in front of the football field at the University of New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state where he has staked his second run for president and one that borders Massachusetts.

[Balta1701]

One of, if not the most sought-after political consultant on the Republican side has signed on to manage the Pawlenty campaign.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has tapped Nick Ayers, one of the most sought-after GOP operatives in the country, to be the campaign manager of his presidential exploratory committee.

 

Ayers, the former executive director of the Republican Governors Association, will take the helm of Pawlenty’s bid for the White House when he is expected to forge ahead with his full-blown campaign for the presidency, a Pawlenty source confirmed. Fox News first reported the 28-year-old’s hire Sunday evening.

 

Ayers served as the top strategist at the RGA in the 2008 and 2010 cycles — the latter of which was under the chairmanship of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, another potential presidential candidate actively looking at a bid. Ayers also worked at the RGA with Pawlenty, who served as the group’s vice chairman last cycle.

 

Because of his back-to-back tenure at the RGA, not only has Ayers worked on a campaign in every state in the country, but he can also boast that he has played a part in large gains that Republicans made in gubernatorial races across the country last cycle.

[southsider2k5]

So not only do they want to force and coerse people into joining, but now they fine you for "disloyalty"?

 

http://www.redstate.com/laborunionreport/2...fety-violation/

 

It should come as no shock that unions have rules. They are usually a codified set of rules and union members are expected to abide by those rules. Almost always, a union’s rules are spelled out in the union’s constitution. If a member violates a union rule, a union has the legal right to place that member on trial (a union trial). If the member is found guilty at the union trial, the union has the right to impose fines, suspend or even expel the member.

 

Some of the more well-known rules are don’t cross a picket line or don’t be disloyal to the union. However, there are some lesser known union rules that could cause members to be tried by their union. For example, showing up at a union meeting intoxicated, or trying to kick a union out of the workplace (that’s disloyal), or even wronging a fellow member are all examples of rules that are in many union constitutions. And, let there be no mistake, unions do enforce their rules and fine their members.

 

Which brings us to this latest example. Last week, overturning a National Labor Relations Board decision that found a union fine was unlawful, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that a union did not violate the law in fining a member for reporting a safety violation.

 

By reporting a safety violation, a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) violated his union’s constitution when the company he worked for investigated the report and found another union member had indeed violated safety rules. In so doing the IUOE member who reported the violation engaged in gross disloyalty and conduct unbecoming a member when the company subsequently suspended the rule violator for three days.

NLRB Insight has the facts of the case:

 

Mark Overton, a member of a different Operating Engineers local union located in Albuquerque, was working for Ozark Contractors in Missouri under a special union “traveling permit” to perform work that members of Local 513 were not qualified to perform. He detected and reported to Ozark a safety infraction which, after an investigation, was determined to have been caused by another union member employed by Ozark. The company’s safety rules required the reporting of safety hazards; failure to report was subject to company discipline, including suspension. However, when Overton reported the safety hazard which subsequently was determined to be caused by a fellow union member, that member was suspended for three days. Overton was fined $2,500 by Local 513 for “gross disloyalty” and “conduct unbecoming a union member” and by actions which harassed a fellow union member. In effect, Overton faced the Hobson’s choice of being disciplined by the employer with a suspension for failing to report a safety hazard, or union discipline in the form of a substantial union fine for doing so. [Emphasis added.]

 

Overton challenged his fine by filing a charge with the NLRB. The agency ruled that the union did, in fact, comit an unfair labor practice by fining Overton. However, the union appealed the NLRB’s decision.

 

Upon appeal, the Court of Appeals reversed the NLRB’s decision, which is explained here:

 

The Board adopted an ALJ’s finding that the fine violated the employee’s Sec. 7 rights. Employees who comply with safety rules, found the ALJ, are deemed to engage in concerted behavior, because Sec. 7 gives employees the right to refrain from joining employees who ignore safety rules. The Board dismissed the union’s argument that the reporting was not concerted activity, citing Board precedent that the Act is violated when a union disciplines an employee for reporting another employee’s safety violations if, as was the case, the employee would face discipline for failing to report the violation. The union sought appellate court review of the Board’s finding.

 

Thirty-year rule rejected. Since 1977, the NLRB has found it to be a per se unfair labor practice for a union to discipline a member who has complied with an employer’s safety rules, regardless of whether the employee acted in concert with other employees or in opposition to other employees acting in concert. Despite the longstanding application of this rule, and its endorsement by the Ninth Circuit, the DC Circuit agreed with the union that this policy cannot be reconciled with the NLRA. [Read more here.]

 

While it seems unfathomable that a union’s right to enforce its rules would trump an individual’s right to report an unsafe condition (even if it involved a fellow union member), it is just another example of the length that some unions will go in controlling members’ work lives.

 

For many union members, it doesn’t pay to cross their union. In fact, it can prove costly if they do.

[StrangeSox]

That seems bulls*** on it's face*, but I can't find anything covering the story that isn't that redstate article cross-linked somewhere else.

 

Here's the decision:

http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opin...121-1301663.pdf

 

It seems it amounts to a disagreement with the NLRB's interpretation of existing law. If the judges here are correct and the NLRB is wrong, the law should probably be changed.

 

edit* not the story or the claim, but the fine for reporting a safety violation. Also that article mis-characterizes the decision; it was a grant for review, I don't think it actually overturned the NLRB's finding.

Edited April 12, 2011 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

lol, oh Joe.

 

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/04/a...ebt-speech.html

 

[mr_genius]

lol, oh Joe.

 

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/04/a...ebt-speech.html

 

Biden is so f***ing clueless

[Balta1701]

Congratulations.

Santorum went on Fox News Channel - where else? - last night with Greta van Susteren to announce that he's forming a 2012 presidential exploratory committee, which will allow him not only to raise money but also to take part in televised debates starting next month.

 

He moved toward the race with the obligatory shot at President Obama. He told Van Susteren that Americans in 2008 elected a man they thought they could believe in, but "what they realize is that America needs a president who believes in them."

 

Still, Santorum didn't sound all in the race unless conservatives show him the money. "Resources is a huge part of it," he said. "We're out there to find out whether it's real or not."

Whatever you do, just don't google his name.

[Balta1701]

Link

Ron Paul quietly took another step toward a presidential run recently, creating a so-called “testing the waters” account that allows him to start raising money toward a White House bid and could eventually become his official campaign account, a Paul aide confirmed to POLITICO.

 

The Texas congressman is expected to announce whether he will again run for the Republican nomination sometime early next month — and recent moves are the strongest signs yet that the libertarian icon will indeed launch another bid. Jesse Benton, director of Paul’s LibertyPAC, told POLITICO that the new account was opened in anticipation of creating a formal presidential committee. The small step toward a bid is the same kind taken recently by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, but it stops short of an official exploratory committee filed with the FEC.

[southsider2k5]

http://www.scottwinship.com/1/post/2011/04...inequality.html

 

I'm never going to win a Nobel Prize. Maybe in literature. I don't know why Joseph Stiglitz's new Vanity Fair piece on inequality is so off-base. But it is. And it's incredibly frustrating (1) to see someone so intelligent be thwarted by ideology and (2) to watch as his views are propagated on the basis of his name recognition.

 

What's a lonely uninvited-to-Davos blogger to do? Blog. Herewith, my fact check of the VF article. Stiglitz writes (henceforth in italics),

 

The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation's income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent.

 

Stiglitz doesn't cite any of his figures (possibly a limitation of the outlet), but the Piketty & Saez estimate of the top one percent's income share in the most recent year (2008) was 18 percent, which is just a hair closer to "nearly a quarter" than it is to "just over a tenth". Their data says that share was 9 percent in 1985, but that should be adjusted upwards to 13 percent. Similarly, CBO says the top one percent's share was 17 percent in 2007 for after-tax income, up from 11 percent in 1989. Saez's estimate of the top one percent's share of wealth is 21 percent for 2000, 21 percent for 1990, and 22 percent for 1985. Edward Wolff's is 35 percent for 2007, up from 34 in 1983 (which I doubt is statistically different from 35 in this case). The top appears to have experienced income and wealth losses from 2007 to 2009 while the bottom experienced gains. Taken together, the top one percent's income share rose from 11-13 percent twenty-five years ago to 17-18 percent according to the most recent data. The top one percent's wealth share basically hasn't risen.

 

[uPDATE: See MIT economist Erik Brynjolfsson's comment below, which led me to add this paragraph. Brynjolfsson raises an important point (though I wouldn't call it a mistake) in noting that Stiglitz may have been referring to the Piketty and Saez numbers that include realized capital gains in "income". I chose the series excluding capital gains because the timing of when capital gains are realized has everything to do with tax law, the strength of the economy, and when people retire. The P&S series including capital gains still doesn't account for all the unrealized gains accruing to people (most importantly, those accruing to people in their retirement accounts). Capital gains realization is "lumpy" in a way that makes trends problematic.

 

But I will concede that the level of the top's income share (including realized capital gains) is closer to 25 percent than the P&S numbers I cite above suggest. Now whether their share of income including unrealized capital gains is closer to 25 percent or 17 or 18 percent is an open question. And I still say the series excluding capital gains is the way to go for trend estimation. But look, all this aside, the CBO series includes realized capital gains (but also considers taxes and other things the P&S series leaves out). And it shows the same basic trend and level as my conclusion above.]

 

 

While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone.

 

The 18 percent figure looks to be from Piketty and Saez (the change from 1998 to 2008). The claim about median incomes falling is incorrect if one takes into account the value of employer- and government-provided health insurance. (Majorities of workers with employer coverage say they prefer more generous coverage to higher wages, so it turns out employers aren't crazy in substituting ever-more-costly insurance for wages over time.) The decline in earnings (not income) for men with just a high school diploma is probably less than 12 percent. Based on some analyses I've been working on using the Current Population Survey, I find that men with a high school diploma but no four-year college degree saw a 12 percent decline in earnings over the roughly 33-year period from 1971-73 to 2003-2007, but that doesn't take into account the caveats I mention in this post. And earnings among women with the same level of education rose by over 50 percent, so that's inconvenient for Stiglitz.

 

The change in household or family income among men with just a high school diploma was, I'd wager, positive even before factoring in the caveats. And while I can't cite the paper yet, research I've seen using the PSID rejects the conclusion that wives have been forced to work more due to stagnant husband earnings—the biggest increases in work were among wives with the best-educated husbands, and while the hours of married men declined, those of single men did not (suggesting that the decline among married men was a reaction to increased work among their wives). I'll update this post when I can cite the paper (though that won't be for a couple months anyway). But think about it--did all these women increase their college-going simply in anticipation of marrying men with stagnant earnings, or did they prefer the fulfilling professional options that a college degree afforded them? Or consider--is declining fertility, delayed marriage, and increased college-going among women in developed countries around the world all somehow related to rising American inequality? You can get the basic trend on work by sex by marital status from Table 1 of this paper while you anxiously await my update.

 

All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top.

 

Nope, not if "the top" refers to "the top 1 percent" cited two sentences earlier. According to the Piketty and Saez data, depending on whether one uses the share of nominal or real (inflation-adjusted) gains and whether one includes or excludes capital gains in "income", the share of income growth going to the top one percent from 1998 to 2008 was between 22 and 33 percent. If you go back to 1988, the range is from 19 to 32 percent of gains since then. And keep in mind that when you start from an unequal distribution, if everyone experiences the same rate of income growth, a disproportionate share of gains will go to the top.

 

In terms of income inequality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran.

 

Compared to nearly all of the major nations of western and central Europe, the U.S. does have higher inequality (but it may not be that far off from the U.K. or Canada). The only numbers I could find for Russia and Iran are from the CIA World Factbook (the quality of which I can't speak to). Out of 136 countries, the U.S. is ranked 40th worst. Iran is ranked 43rd and Russia 52nd. So that sounds bad, right? Meh. Hong Kong and Singapore rank worse than the U.S., and Indonesia, India, and Ethiopia rank much better than Russia. Stiglitz will have to do better than this if he wants to argue that American inequality is a big deal.

 

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else; shrinking opportunity....Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy.

 

OK, so now Stiglitz is trying to tell us why we should care about the inequality that he exaggerates. But these are just assertions. The best evidence suggests that opportunity for men to move from the bottom to the top over the course of a career hasn't changed much over the past 35 to 40 years, and it has unambiguously increased for women (see Figures 15A and 15B). Across generations, the evidence is extremely thin, but it doesn't point to an unambiguous increase or decrease in opportunity over the past few decades. As for inequality and efficiency, my dissertation advisor, Christopher Jencks, has found that there is little correlation between economic growth and inequality levels, which doesn't exactly help those who believe inequality promotes growth but is equally problematic for Stiglitz and others who believe that inequality is inefficient.

 

When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it's tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement...

 

Here Stiglitz is conflating income inequality (growing) with wealth inequality (basically flat and at a historic low in the U.S.). Whatevs.

 

America's inequality distorts out society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means.

 

So document it! The share of families with any debt rose from 72 percent in 1989 to 77 percent in 2007, though note that the share with assets also grew. Median net worth (assets minus debt) rose from $75,500 to $120,600. In the wake of the housing bust, it fell, but it was still around $92,000 in 2009. Among people with debt, median debt payments rose from 15.3 percent of family income in 1989 to 18.6 in 2007. These are pretty small changes in indebtedness, and I'm not sure how Stiglitz could empirically link them to inequality.

 

Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy.

 

Ummm...going for the Peace Prize next?

 

[T]he chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe.

 

What little evidence there is suggests that upward mobility is lower in the U.S. only for men and only for those who start out poor. [uPDATE: Just to clarify, I'm talking about only men who start out poor, not men plus all people who start out poor. See the linked paper for details, but we're talking about 12 to 13 percent of the population, roughly.]

 

All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.

 

Oh boy, the shift to political science by economist pundits is always fraught with danger. The 2010 election is a single data point (and an off-year election, when voting rates are much lower). I'll just quote from a fact sheet from a Tufts research center that studies civic engagement among youth: "The 2008 election marked the third highest turnout rate among young people since the voting age was lowered to 18." What any of this has to do with inequality is anybody's guess.

 

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies that they inhabit....The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next?...As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves it this: When will it come to America?

[Balta1701]

Stiglitz doesn't cite any of his figures (possibly a limitation of the outlet), but the Piketty & Saez estimate of the top one percent's income share in the most recent year (2008) was 18 percent, which is just a hair closer to "nearly a quarter" than it is to "just over a tenth". Their data says that share was 9 percent in 1985, but that should be adjusted upwards to 13 percent. Similarly, CBO says the top one percent's share was 17 percent in 2007 for after-tax income, up from 11 percent in 1989. Saez's estimate of the top one percent's share of wealth is 21 percent for 2000, 21 percent for 1990, and 22 percent for 1985. Edward Wolff's is 35 percent for 2007, up from 34 in 1983 (which I doubt is statistically different from 35 in this case). The top appears to have experienced income and wealth losses from 2007 to 2009 while the bottom experienced gains. Taken together, the top one percent's income share rose from 11-13 percent twenty-five years ago to 17-18 percent according to the most recent data. The top one percent's wealth share basically hasn't risen.

And this author doesn't think there is any bias at all inherent in using 2008 as his comparison point?

[StrangeSox]

http://globalagenda.co.uk/blogs/democracyi...1/04/inequality

 

I'm going to get to more fundamental issues, but first, I have to address my colleague's reference to a post by Scott Winship that claims that Mr Stiglitz got all his numbers wrong. The first claim on that post is that the top 1% of American earners take in not "nearly a quarter" of all American income, as Mr Stiglitz says, but 18% of all income, according to figures by Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, respected economists. But a commenter quickly notes that Mr Winship made a mistake here: he used Messrs Saez and Piketty's figures for income not including capital gains. This is like saying that the Queen of England doesn't really earn that much, if you don't count the money the state pays to maintain her palaces and cover her servants, food, clothes, parties and travel. The top 1% earn a large and increasing portion of their income from capital gains; it's my understanding that for hedge-fund managers, the entirety of their income is counted as capital gains due to the carried-interest rule. Mr Winship has a number of other problems with Mr Stiglitz's figures. And I don't know whose figures are better. But I am confident that on each of these claims, an argument between Mr Winship and Mr Stiglitz is going to come down to an abstruse conflict over different data sets. There is simply no way that Joseph Stiglitz inserted, say, the figure that the top 1% of Americans control 40% of the country's wealth off the top of his head. And all of the authorities Mr Winship cites also agree that inequality of income has grown markedly in America over the past 30 years. Arguing over percentages seems to me, to quote Mr Stiglitz, like an effort to "(pretend) that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened."

 

Also the links Winship provides in this section:

Here Stiglitz is conflating income inequality (growing) with wealth inequality (basically flat and at a historic low in the U.S.). Whatevs.

 

speak of growing income and wealth gaps, so I'm not sure what he's talking about. This one in particular makes the case that most of the wealth for middle-class households comes from their homes, which have seen massive drops in value since 2007, while most of the wealth for the top 1% comes in the form of stocks, which are doing quite nicely. The majority of the rise for the middle class was wiped out by the bubble, which doesn't hold true for the top 1%, since only a small portion of their wealth is held in real estate.

 

Additionally, Wolff has an updated working paper from 2010 that more clearly illustrates that wealth inequality is neither basically flat nor at a historic low through 2007 (see Table 2). It also shows the huge inequality in where wealth was held in 2007--again, for most people, it's in their homes, and they've taken massive losses in wealth because of substantially reduced home values. Perhaps Winship is correct in pointing out that the share for the top 1% is slightly overstated by Stiglitz, but a quick glance to the Gini Index in the same table shows that wealth inequality has indeed been climbing steadily since 1983. It also shows the steady climb of income disparity.

 

Table 4 shows that the top 1% have seen an increase in net wealth of just over 100% since 1983 while the bottom 40% have seen a net decrease of 62.9%. The top 1% also took in just over 35% of all wealth gains from 1983-2007, and the top 5% combined just over 70%. Income disparity is even worse.

 

Does Winship still want to maintain that wealth inequality has been "basically flat" and is "historically low?"

 

edit: Abstract of the Wolff 2010 paper:

I find here that the early and mid-aughts (2001 to 2007) witnessed both exploding debt and a consequent “middle-class squeeze.” Median wealth grew briskly in the late 1990s. It grew even faster in the aughts, while the inequality of net worth was up slightly. Indebtedness, which fell substantially during the late 1990s, skyrocketed in the early and mid-aughts; among the middle class, the debt-to-income ratio reached its highest level in 24 years. The concentration of investment-type assets generally remained as high in 2007 as during the previous two decades. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after stabilizing throughout most of the 1990s, widened in the years between 1998 and 2001, but then narrowed during the early and midaughts. Wealth also shifted in relative terms, away from young households (particularly those under age 45) and toward those in the 55–74 age group. Projections to July 2009, made on the basis of changes in stock and housing prices, indicate that median wealth plunged by 36 percent and there was a fairly steep rise in wealth inequality, with the Gini coefficient advancing from 0.834 to 0.865.

 

Note that, when these projections were made on July 1, 2009, the S&P was down over 40%. It's since climbed back to being down only 13%. Given that the stock market has recovered nicely since then and that home prices are basically unchanged or even slightly down in 2010Q4, the inequality will be even more substantial and the Gini coefficient will be even higher, perhaps nearing 0.9.

Edited April 15, 2011 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

I still stand by my "Polls this far out don't matter one bit" point. That doesn't mean I can't laugh at this PPP data.

Only 38% of Republican primary voters say they're willing to support a candidate for President next year who firmly rejects the birther theory and those folks want Mitt Romney to be their nominee for President next year. With the other 62% of Republicans- 23% of whom say they are only willing to vote for a birther and 39% of whom are not sure- Donald Trump is cleaning up. And as a result Trump's ridden the controversy about Barack Obama's place of birth to the highest level of support we've found for anyone in our national GOP polling so far in 2011.

 

Trump's broken the perpetual gridlock we've found at the top of the Republican field, getting 26% to 17% for Mike Huckabee, 15% for Romney, 11% for Newt Gingrich, 8% for Sarah Palin, 5% for Ron Paul, and 4% for Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.

 

Among that 23% only willing to vote for a birther Trump is cleaning up even more, getting 37% to 13% for Huckabee and Palin, and 10% for Romney and Gingrich. He's a lot weaker with the 38% who say they're perfectly happy to vote for someone who's dismissed the birther theory- with them Romney leads at 23%, with Huckabee at 18%, Trump at 17%, Gingrich at 10%, and Palin at only 7%.

[kapkomet]

Donald Trump = Sarah Palin with a penis and some money.

 

What a f***ing blowhard.

 

[mr_genius]

I still stand by my "Polls this far out don't matter one bit" point. That doesn't mean I can't laugh at this PPP data.

 

Trump!

 

[southsider2k5]

Too bad Biden doesn't get abused the same way Bush or Quayle did, because he totally deserves it.

 

[southsider2k5]

As much as I love Biden, Blago takes the cake.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spo...-president-2008

 

Obviously, we can be skeptical of almost everything that comes out of Rod Blagojevich’s mouth. But it is an entertaining claim:

 

“In fact, David Axelrod, who works for Obama and very correctly picked the right horse, after the 2004 presidential election, called me the Wednesday after,” Blagojevich said in an interview on WGN Monday, “and talked to me about considering running for president in 2008.”

 

This story isn’t that outlandish. At the time, Blagojevich was governor of a major state and as he notes, the first Democrat governor of Illinois in 26 years. Obama had just been elected to the Senate and faced all of the much-discussed problems – inexperience, an unusual name, the question of whether the U.S. was ready to elect a black president, and so on.

 

Note in the interview, Blagojevich says to not write him off from having a political comeback; he declares he’s working on a book about great comebacks. “The chapter on me is waiting to be written.”

 

[southsider2k5]

http://madiganville.com/?p=287

 

On this morning’s Don Wade & Roma show on WLS Radio, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich said that there was a deal in the works in 2008 with House Speaker Mike Madigan to appoint his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the election of President Obama, in exchange for key legislation as well as for Speaker Madigan to oppose a state income tax hike that he later helped pass.

 

 

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady called on both Mike and Lisa Madigan to publicly answer Blagojevich’s claims, particularly in light of the fact that Speaker Madigan played a major role in enacting the recent Illinois income tax increase, which passed the General Assembly by one vote (and which Madigan himself voted in favor of).

 

“If Speaker Madigan felt so passionately about raising the state income tax, was he really willing to throw it under the bus so his daughter could be appointed to the U.S. Senate?” said Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady.

 

Ironically, today is also Speaker Madigan’s 69th birthday, which the Illinois Republican Party is ‘celebrating’ with a video poking fun at Speaker Madigan’s 40 years in Springfield.

 

“Here we have yet another example of why Mike Madigan has been in Springfield too long,” said Brady.

 

← Happy Birthday, Speaker Madigan!

[StrangeSox]

Seems kinda silly to demand explanations or hold others accountable for crazy stuff Blago says to save his own ass.

[southsider2k5]

Seems kinda silly to demand explanations or hold others accountable for crazy stuff Blago says to save his own ass.

 

This is Mike Madigan. Despite the source, do you have a doubt in your mind that this is possible, or even probable? I know I don't.

[StrangeSox]

This is Mike Madigan. Despite the source, do you have a doubt in your mind that this is possible, or even probable? I know I don't.

 

Not exactly, but it's still a cheap attack based on the self-serving accusations of a demonstrably insane person.

[southsider2k5]

Not exactly, but it's still a cheap attack based on the self-serving accusations of a demonstrably insane person.

 

Sure it is. That doesn't mean it isn't true though. Hell Blago is a product of Madigan himself, so he probably know the dealmaking better than most.

[mr_genius]

Too bad Biden doesn't get abused the same way Bush or Quayle did, because he totally deserves it.

 

 

i hate Joe Biden

[NorthSideSox72]

Sure it is. That doesn't mean it isn't true though. Hell Blago is a product of Madigan himself, so he probably know the dealmaking better than most.

1. Lisa Magidan was not going to take that seat, even if it was offered.

 

2. Both she and her father have already said, clearly, that no such discussions occurred... and note that the tapes do not reflect such a conversation in any way.

 

3. Blago is absolutely not a "product" of Madigan. Quite the opposite in fact, they hated each other. And I don't use that word lightly here.

 

Criticize Madigan's politics and methods all you want, I won't go out of my way to defend them. But let's at least try not to have opposite day here.

 

[Balta1701]

Gingrich is struggling early on the fundraising side.