The Tribune has a pretty
strongly worded editorial today on why you need to get to the polls. Think of it as a practice run for February 2011:
Your former governor, Rod Blagojevich, will be indicted within days on fresh charges of public corruption. Yet another of Chicago's felonious aldermen, Isaac "Ike" Carothers, learned Monday that he's prison-bound. Prince of darkness Edward Vrdolyak awaits his sentencing by a different federal judge. And the polls close at 7 p.m.
No, those three gentlemen aren't on Tuesday's election ballot. But the Illinois culture of political sleaze is. You can skip the election and, once again, give the insiders of Illinois and Cook County free rein to tax, borrow, spend, reward their cronies and generally lord it over you.
Many of the pols who run Illinois and Cook County still hope you'll forget what they've done. Don't. Push back. You matter.
if it's so important to them, then why couldn't they bring themselves to endorse any of the candidates running to be the democratic candidate for governor?
ReplyDeleteI voted already - even saw Denise Davis while I was there.
ReplyDeleteSo, if Denise and I can find our own way to the ballot booth, there's no reason that you can't.
Get out there.
The system doesn't work if you don't participate.
As someone whose relatively new Chicago it seems nearly impossible (without extensive research) to know who to vote for, from what I know of Chicago politics, its all crooked, everybody seems to be "corrupt", is it really just voting for the lesser of 2 (or more) evils???? smh seems very disheartening.
ReplyDeleteProbably the only thing that MIGHT improve the politics in Chicago would be to vote out ALL incumbents and vote in some fresh blood.
ReplyDeleteThat and Term Limits! If its good enough for the office of the President of the US, it should be good enough for every political office in the country. It is the career politicians, the Daleys', the Burkes', the Madigans' that allow corruption to envelope the entire political process!
Appprently nobody reads the trib, becuase nobody showed up for elections. Unreal.
ReplyDeleteEnough people showed up to send the Toddler packing - Go Toni!
ReplyDeleteEnogh showed up to keep Senator "Dolittle" escept to tacitly sopport extending the life of TIFs. Dump Steans! Get that "stain" out.
ReplyDeleteGlad to be rid of Toddler, but Steans should have been booted as well. I guess money talks though.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else notice "Carol Ronen" on the D ballot yesterday?
ReplyDeleteYou wanna toss someone from the train?
Toss her.
Even if you have to write in "other" (as I did whenever given the chance).
She'll be alright, her inflated, unethical pension will break her fall.
Yo,
ReplyDeleteI did see Carol Ronen and I did want to toss her from the ballot.
Unfortunately, I am old and I would need a forklift to move her corruptness. So much hackatood.
I've been looking at the results from yesterday's election and some interesting things occur to me.
First, Jim Madigan did relatively well in the 46th Ward against Heather Steans. Got about 44 percent of the vote. Considering her machine support and family moola that ain't bad.
Of course he got trounced in the 48th Ward. Relatively big turnout there. Surprise, Surprise.
He may join the race to replace Helen. Hell, why not. The way that race is shaping up there will be more candidates than voters.
Here is a ward and precinct based breakdown of the election:
http://www.chicagoelections.com/wdlevel3.asp?elec_code=27
Here is a 46th Ward precinct maparnoonie:
http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_ATTACH/Wards_Precincts_46.pdf
If only 25 percent of the people voted I refuse to hyperlink anything.
Ya lazy bastards.
Amazing that Carol Ronen has the balls to put herself on the ballot again. She is exactly the person that Quinn (who she supports) and Hynes are referring to when they complain about double dipping politicians, who manevour pension enhancements.
ReplyDeleteRonen in the 48th Ward (along with Committeeman Tom Sharpe in the 46th Ward) were big Blago supporters. Blago rewarded Ronen by appointing her to a high paying administrative position just as she stepped down from her elected post. Holding that position for a few months allowed her to retire at a higher ending salary that sweetened her retirement package with an additional million of taxpayer dollars.
And, Art Berman who held that elected seat before Ronen did exactly the same thing a few years earlier.
... and apparently, 66% of the district didn't seem to care that Steans got her seat via the situation which allowed Ronen to soak the tax payers.
ReplyDeleteTo anyone who didn't vote yesterday ... some of the most inept and corrupt people in the state owe you a big thank you.
I didn't much care how Steans got her seat either, but I was impressed with her push for nursing home reform, her legislation to stop future Labor Ready placements near schools, and her other efforts to address public safety issues.
ReplyDeleteShe had consistently supported Democrats, which is why she supported Blago over Judy Barr Topinka. Both were losers, but it was supporting the lesser of the 2 evils.
Steans was attacked for coming from a family with big money. I don't attack people with little money so I won't attack people with a lot either. I'm delighted she won because she quickly won me over when she started in office.