Archive for January, 2010


Illinois Governor’s Race in Dead Heat as Primary Nears

Posted on: January 23rd, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

Democratic Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois is in a fight for his political life as he faces Comptroller Dan Hynes for the party’s nomination. Quinn, who became governor after Rod Blagojevich was impeached and removed from office, is running a state that has serious fiscal problems. In this economy, that is not something that is a rarity, but Illinois is a large state and large states have even bigger budget holes to fill.

The Chicago Tribune polled the race, which is set for February 2, 2010. Governor Quinn leads with 44% support, while Dan Hynes trails by only 4 points at 40% support. There are a large number of voters that are still undecided, leaving the race wide open. If Dan Hynes sounds like a familiar name, it is because he ran against Barack Obama in the Democratic Senate primary in 2004.

The Republicans are also going to the polls on February 2 to determine their candidate for governor. Andy McKenna, the former Republican Party Chairman in Illinois, has a tentative lead of 19% over Jim Ryan, who is staking 18% of the vote. Kirk Dillard, a former judge and current member of the Illinois State Senate, trails with 14% of the vote. Dillard is notable for having supported President Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, being featured in an ad in Iowa.

With the Blagojevich scandal and budget cuts, one would think that the Republicans would have a decent shot at winning the Governor’s Mansion in Illinois. However, the GOP has an extremely weak bench in the state with zero statewide elected officials and dwindling members in the House. Democrats are looking to pick up Republican Mark Kirk’s House seat, a suburban Chicago district that went for Barack Obama, as he runs for the Senate in 2010. Either Quinn or Hynes would undoubtedly be favorites in the fall against a weak field of Republicans.


Detroit: A City on the Brink #1 on Amazon.com

Posted on: January 19th, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

It’s not every day that an author can say that they are #1. Last week I found out that my e-book, Detroit: A City on the Brink, achieved just that. It was the best selling Urban Planning & Development e-book on Amazon.com. Help keep it there by buying your own copy for $1.99. You can also purchase a version that works with iPhones, iPod Touches, Sony Reader and other devices by buying at Smashwords. Thank you for the support everyone! This is a great honor for an up-and-coming author!

#1


We Want Our Money Back

Posted on: January 14th, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

In the fall of 2008, the financial system collapsed in a way that forced the federal government to bailout major banks on Wall Street. The program, started under the Bush administration, was known as TARP. Congress authorized the Treasury Department to spend $700 billion of taxpayer money to stabilize the system in the hope that banks would continue to lend to businesses and consumers in need of credit.

The banks instead used the money to buy their competitors. Bank of America, which received bailout funds, purchased Merrill Lynch for $50 billion. They also provided extravagant bonuses to their CEOs and other executives at a time when their companies were on the verge of collapse. As the New York Times reports, “Citigroup’s overall 2009 bonus pool is expected to be about $5.3 billion, about the same as it was for 2008, although the bank has far fewer employees.”

Wall Street simply does not get it. The American people saved the financial system from ruin. Our return is tightened credit policies, high unemployment and bank fees that promise to continue to rise. Without the American taxpayer, many of these institutions would no longer exist. Perhaps that would have been for the better as they are resisting attempts by the Obama administration to prevent a repeat of the 2008 meltdown.

Thankfully, President Obama does get it. He is proposing to Congress a 0.15 percent tax on the liabilities of large financial institutions. “It would apply only to those companies with assets of more than $50 billion — a group estimated at about 50…. The administration expects that 60 percent of the revenue would come from the 10 largest firms. As proposed, the fee would go into effect June 30, 2010, and last at least 10 years,” the AP reports. It is estimated that this tax could result in $100-$150 billion to the Treasury. The rest of the TARP money has already been paid back.

“We are already hearing a hue and cry from Wall Street, suggesting that this proposed fee is not only unwelcome but unfair, that by some twisted logic, it is more appropriate for the American people to bear the cost of the bailout rather than the industry that benefited from it, even though these executives are out there giving themselves huge bonuses,” President Obama said. “What I’d say to these executives is this: Instead of setting a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal or employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee, I’d suggest you might want to consider simply meeting your responsibility.”

This is great news. It means that, if Congress passes it, the taxpayer will recover all of the money that we spent to bailout these reckless companies. It also sends a signal to Wall Street that the Obama administration will play hardball with firms that somehow expect to profit off of the generosity of the American people. Passing this proposed tax will recover all of the money that was lent to the banks at the height of the meltdown. This act should only be a first step, though. We still badly need financial reform to ensure that this never happens again.

*Update*

President Obama brought up the new proposed tax on the banks in his Weekly Address. Watch below:


Is the Filibuster Unconstitutional?

Posted on: January 12th, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

The New York Times has an op-ed by lawyer Thomas Geoghegan where he argues that the filibuster has become an unconstitutional tool of obstruction. His thesis is that the filibuster was never the intent of the Founding Fathers. By requiring a 60 vote threshold in a 100 body chamber, the Senate’s minority is subverting majority rule on essentially anything that it wants.

“The filibuster votes, which once occurred perhaps seven or eight times a whole Congressional session, now happen more than 100 times a term. But this routine use of supermajority voting is, at worst, unconstitutional and, at best, at odds with the founders’ intent,” he writes. The Republican Party has taken to parliamentary stall tactics and outright stonewalling on virtually every piece of legislation – even blocking President Obama’s pick to head the TSA – in spite of the recent attempt to blow up an airliner in Detroit.

Geoghegan makes a number of compelling arguments for why the filibuster is unconstitutional:

First, the Constitution explicitly requires supermajorities only in a few special cases: ratifying treaties and constitutional amendments, overriding presidential vetoes, expelling members and for impeachments. With so many lawyers among them, the founders knew and operated under the maxim “expressio unius est exclusio alterius” — the express mention of one thing excludes all others. But one need not leave it at a maxim. In the Federalist Papers, every time Alexander Hamilton or John Jay defends a particular supermajority rule, he does so at length and with an obvious sense of guilt over his departure from majority rule.

Second, Article I, Section 3, expressly says that the vice president as the presiding officer of the Senate should cast the deciding vote when senators are “equally divided.” The procedural filibuster does an end run around this constitutional requirement, which presumed that on the truly contested bills there would be ties. With supermajority voting, the Senate is never “equally divided” on the big, contested issues of our day, so that it is a rogue senator, and not the vice president, who casts the deciding vote.

This second argument is particularly interesting to me. He is basically saying that the whole reason why we have a Vice President is to break a tie in the evenly divided Senate. You can not have an evenly divided Senate if there is a super-majority (60 vote) threshold to pass a bill. Unlike the filibuster, which is simply a rule of the Senate, this is written directly in the Constitution. The Vice President only has two Constitutional duties: one is to act as the president of the Senate, casting tie breaking votes when necessary. The other is to take on the role of president in the case that the president dies or is unable to carry out his duties. The filibuster “disenfranchises” the Vice President by eliminating one of his only two Constitutional roles.

His third argument deals with Article I, Section 5:

Third, Article I pointedly mandates at least one rule of proceeding, namely, that a majority of senators (and House members, for that matter) will constitute a quorum. Article I, Section 5 states in part that “a majority of each shall constitute a majority to do business.” Of course, in requiring a simple majority for a quorum, the founders were concerned about no-shows for a host of reasons — not least of all because the first legislators had to travel great distances by stagecoach.

But the bigger reason for the rule was to keep a minority from walking out and thereby blocking a majority vote. In Federalist No. 75, Hamilton dismissed a supermajority rule for a quorum thus: “All provisions which require more than a majority of any body to its resolutions have a direct tendency to embarrass the operations of the government and an indirect one to subject the sense of the majority to that of the minority.”


South Bend Tops Nation in Home Value

Posted on: January 11th, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

The Today Show recently aired a piece in which they named the top 10 U.S. cities based on home value. Factoring into their list were things such as cost of living, rising home prices and job growth. My hometown of South Bend, Indiana came in at #1 on the list. Not too shabby, I would say.

Real-estate contributor Barbara Corcoran ranked South Bend first among the “Top 10 Cities for Bargain Homes.” She noted that the median “price is just $89,000, and prices have been rising steadily for almost a full year now.”

There’s certainly a lot of potential growth in the South Bend area. Taking advantage of the University of Notre Dame, the city has opened a high-tech research park known as Innovation Park. Right now the city is focused on being a leader in nanotechnology. Last year Notre Dame was awarded the Midwest Academy of Nanoelectronics and Architectures, which will partner with other research universities to advance the technology. Other developments in South Bend include the newly opened Eddy Street Commons, which combines retail, shopping and dining into one multi-use district.

Here is the full Today Show list:

1. South Bend, Ind.
2. Akron, Ohio
3. Topeka, Kan.
4. New Haven, Conn.
5. Tucson, Ariz.
6. Minneapolis
7. Portland, Maine
8. Miami
9. Kingston, N.Y.
10. Trenton, N.J.


Th!nk Electric Car Plant Coming to Elkhart

Posted on: January 10th, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

We’ve done a lot of reporting about Elkhart and the state of the economy on this blog. President Obama of course brought national attention when he visited the city twice, once to announce an electric vehicle that would be made in the city. Another electric car company will be moving to town in the near future with a vehicle that is fully electric.

Th!nk announced last week that they would be making the Th!nk City in Elkhart. The manufacturing plant will be capable of producing 20,000 vehicles per year once it is fully operational. While production will not begin until early 2011, it is yet another sign that the economy is rebounding. The company says they will create 400 jobs by the year 2013.

joeandthinkcar


GOP Chairman Says Party Won’t Win Back House

Posted on: January 8th, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

If you watch television at all, particularly Fox Conservative Opinion Channel (otherwise known as Fox “News”), you have probably heard a lot of Republican pundits talk about how they are going to retake the House of Representatives in the fall election. While it certainly would not be out of the realm of possibility if current political circumstances continue, most respected analysts expect Democrats to lose roughly 15-25 seats. This would go along with historical patterns that see the president’s party lose seats in the second year of his first term (George W. Bush was the only modern exception directly after 9/11).

In order to win the House, however, Republicans would need to pick up 40 seats. That’s roughly double their current projected pickups. It is also more than Democrats managed to win in the 2006 elections or 2008 elections. In those years, with President Bush’s approval rating in the high 20s to low 30s, Democrats won 31 seats and 21 seats, respectively. President Obama’s approval rating stands around 50 percent, where it has been stabilizing for several months. Unless there is a significant drop in the president’s approval rating, it seems highly unlikely that Congress will switch hands.

The chairman of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, agrees with me. In an interview with that same Fox Conservative Opinion Channel, Michael Steele shut the door on the possibility. Sean Hannity asked him if Republicans would win back the House. His response: “Not this year.” He went on to cast doubt on whether Republicans should even return to power. “If we do that, are we ready? I don’t know. That’s what I’m assessing and evaluating now.”


What has the GOP done for America?

Posted on: January 7th, 2010 by Kyle. | No Comments

There has been a lot of hoopla over the “socialist” agenda of the Obama administration. But the same critics of the administration that is actively trying to repair the country after the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression don’t have any ideas of their own. In fact, they can’t even point to any of their own accomplishments when they had control of Congress from 1995 to 2007.

It’s a fair point to make. I think that history will not look back kindly on the antics of the Republican Party over the past year. Democrats won the 2008 election with a mandate for change. Reacting to that, the Republican Party is doing everything that it can do to derail the agenda of President Obama and the Democratic Party in Congress. They are not just a “party of no” for the sake of saying “no”. Their aim is to prevent this president from operating in an affective manner and embarrass Democrats in Congress. The American people should repudiate this detestable behavior.