This is the time to create a more just, progressive state

I'm grateful that Illinois remains a blue island in the Midwestern Red Sea, with Governor Pat Quinn and a Democratic-led General Assembly ready to govern. January is in many ways the best month of the legislative calendar, because it is now when all things are possible. The deadline to submit bill ideas to the professional draftsmen and women is not until early February. Most legislators are open to ideas now, while they are putting together their legislative agenda.

The ideal bill is significant enough to improve people's lives if enacted, but not so large as to require a revolution in administration to implement. And with 177 legislators (about 95 of whom are in the Democratic majority), the path to a higher standard of living and a more just, progressive state is through dozens of these bite-sized bills, every year.

My favorite question for young people thinking about politics or government is to ask "If you were in charge, what would you change?" It has to be specific, concrete and ultimately helpful. This is the question always facing the progressive movement and the Democratic Party -- what would we change to make life better for regular people? And what change can we actually make this year?

For me, I plan to continue our path of change away from the government telling citizens they can not vote in an election because of some administrative barrier. I plan to continue our movement towards building high speed rail with actual bullet trains with my client the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. I hope we can finally make home birth safer with licensed providers and repeal the law that makes non-nurse midwives felons, on behalf of my client the Illinois Coalition for Midwifery. I plan to forge the nation's most innovative and progressive set of policies to support and grow small businesses with my client the Small Business Advocacy Council. And consistent with that mission of growing small businesses that generate jobs, I plan to work with my clients the Federation of Women Contractors and the Hispanic American Construction Industry Association to ensure Illinois' procurement dollars find their way to the smaller and diverse-owned businesses, not just the major legacy companies.

Don't let Republican control of the US House dampen your enthusiasm for implementing the progressive agenda. Aside from the obvious asset of the most progressive President in a generation in the White House and Democratic control of the Senate, there are some Republicans who fear the rising tide of the empty, angry anti-government ideology of the Tea Party in their own ranks and attempt to swim against that current. High speed rail is a good example of this internal debate, where only some Republicans take the self-defeating view that any taxpayer investment in infrastructure to improve our economy is by definition a bad idea. Some Republicans take the correct position that a taxpayer investment in high speed rail that generates real estate development, economic growth and less oil consumption is worth the money. The more we engage in the debate with our legislators and our fellow citizens on what we can do together through our government to improve our standard of living, the better.

Dream big in the New Year. The time to refine our big, game-changing proposals into more manageable laws and programs will come.

Objections to candidates for Chicago alderman filed

One of the fun parts of working as a Chicago election lawyer is the next month or so when objections filed against aldermanic and mayoral candidates are filed and adjudicated. This is the busy season.

The 2011 season is the busiest in a long time because of the huge number of open seats, both citywide and in the City Council.

As an example, in my own 43rd Ward, there are 12 candidates running for the office. 11 of them have been challenged. Only Rafael Vargas avoided a challenge.

Some (many?) of the challenges are meritless. A few of them present fascinating questions of statutory interpretation. Many of them involve lots of time grinding out one signature at a time at the Board of Elections to see if that particular scribble collected on a cold night with a pen that wasn't working really matches the digital image of a signature of a voter collected 20 years ago from the Board of Election.

For political observers and players, following the status of the challenges is a good exercise. You can check out the often-updated pdf posted by the Board of Elections here. You can see which campaigns are more aggressive at the challenge process (hint: any campaign involving Senator Rickey Hendon is exceptionally aggressive. Read his just-published book if you don't believe me) and thus likely to be more aggressive at picking up votes.

Friday is the first day most campaigns get to read the objections filed against them and the process of scheduling all of these objections starts Monday. It will be a busy and illuminating December.

If you are not rich, House Republicans are not for you

The new House Republican majority can not make it any clearer.

They want everyone to pay more over time so that the rich can pay less.

If you are going to earn more than $250,000 in 2010, then the Republicans are looking out for you.

Eric Cantor announced today that, no matter how large the deficit and the debt, the Republicans are going to look out for the rich people who are going to earn more than $250,000 this year by making everyone else pay higher taxes to pay back the debt to the Chinese for the next 40 years in order to finance the tax cuts for the rich.

Here is the article in the Tribune:

In another ominous sign of new political gridlock developing in Washington, House Republican leaders Sunday took a hard line on compromising with President Obama on extending tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year.

"I really want to see that we can come together and agree upon the notion that Washington doesn't need more revenues right now," Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, said on "Fox News Sunday."

"And to sit here and say we're just going to go about halfway, or we're going to send a signal that it's going to be uncertain for job creators and investors to put capital to work, that's exactly what we don't need right now."

Obama has proposed permanently extending tax cuts for American households making less than $250,000 a year, but he has argued that the country cannot afford to extend those cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

The president repeated that proposal in his weekly address this weekend.

"At a time when we are going to ask folks across the board to make such difficult sacrifices, I don't see how we can afford to borrow an additional $700 billion from other countries to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent, even for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," he said.

So the Republicans are saying that they want the rich to pay less in taxes in order to take on more government debt which we will all eventually have to pay back. And that means you and I (assuming you, like me, won't be paid $250,000 or more this year) will pay more in taxes becaus the Republicans want to make sure that the rich pay less.

Do you want to pay more in taxes so that millionaires can pay less? I don't. That's why I voted for Democrats to run the government.

If you voted for a Republican to run the government, and you make less than $250,000, are you a little surprised that the Republicans now that they are elected want to make you pay more taxes?

Somebody's got to pay the government debt.

And if the rich pay less, that means we pay more.

NYC video on how they are improving quality of lives today

The core message of the video on how the Bloomberg Administration has worked to improve the quality of lives -- today -- of New Yorkers is to change the perception of streets from existing for automobiles to exist instead for people. The other message is to transform their bus network into a surface subway system by increasing speeds, removing bus stops, putting fare collection at the station (instead of on the bus) and implementing traffic signal prioritization to hold a green light for a bus.

Nice video about corporate-funded mis-informants

This is funny.

New website: Register to vote until October 26 with the grace period

The Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly have worked over the last few years to reduce the barriers that the government puts between citizens and their right to vote.

For many people who move every year (especially people under the age of 30), letting some obscure government agency know their updated address a month before each election is a real burden that creates an unnecessary barrier to vote. The deadline to register is a month before the election. Recognizing that this bureaucratic rule has been keeping citizens from voting, the Democrats (led by Robin Kelly, James Meeks and Will Davis) have created a three-week grace period where citizens can register to vote after the regular deadline if they do so in person at the office of the election administrator.

This year, the Democrats have taken the program a step further by putting grace period registration on each college campus.

I'm excited to promote a website my friend Abby Abraham set up that promotes the new grace period registration. It's http://www.IllinoisVoterRegistration.org . Please check it out and spread the word -- especially to people who may not be registered to vote at their current address.

This is what government is supposed to do: serve the people by reducing *their* administrative barriers to voting. I appreciate the Democrats (and the very few Republicans) in the General Assembly who have voted for these bills -- and the Democratic governors who have signed the bills into law.

Illinois voters may decide US Senate control. Vote Alexi

On the one hand, it is a little thrilling to have a general election where my vote actually matters. I'm not used to that in Illinois. Since 2002 or so, every general election in November has been largely a foregone conclusion with an unbroken streak of Democratic statewide victories for the last three general elections.

Not in 2010. We are now a purple state where almost every single statewide contest is a close one. Two two most important elections are for Governor and for U.S. Senator and they are both neck-and-neck.

The U.S. Senate race between Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk is particularly important, because it looks like it may be the decisive race that determines whether Democrats or Republicans will control the United States Senate. Democrats control 60 votes in the Senate today, and Republicans are going to win at least half a dozen seats. If Democratic voters in blue states don't show up and vote, then Republicans can win even more. And one of their high-water marks for the biggest victory for their agenda would be a win in Illinois of Mark Kirk over Alexi Giannoulias. That is a very real possibility. Today, polls show Kirk is ahead.

The federal Republican Party supports the agenda of corporate America and rich people. Bottom line. That's why they want the George Bush economy where the rich get richer, the corporations do whatever they want and the middle class get pummelled.

The Democratic Party is what makes the middle class. That's where affordable education comes from. That's where affordable health care comes from. That's where middle-class jobs come from. That's where upward mobility comes from. Government shapes our economy, like it or not. And when the Republicans run the government, they shape the economy to benefit the rich and powerful.

If we don't elect Alexi in Illinois by coming out to vote in the next few weeks, then we are likely handing control of the federal government to the rich and the powerful, guaranteeing that our standard of living will continue to stagnate while the rich will get richer.

It feels more like a chore than making history this time, but that's what work is. It is work to build a middle class. And the work for the next few weeks is getting you and a dozen others like you to vote Democratic.

Fix the filibuster (if we can't abolish the US Senate)

The most undemocratic legislative body in the Western world - the United States Senate where the half million people of Wyoming get as much power as the 12 million people of Illinois - has a particularly bad rule that has stifled popular will from becoming the law of the land.

That rule is the most recent incarnation of the filibuster where one Senator (who represents a tiny fraction of the people) can block the rest of the people from implementing their will.

This filibuster, which is not in the Constitution and was most famously used to block the implementation of civil rights legislation for years in the middle of the 20th century by southern racists (then Democrats), has grown in its destructive power to block the ability of a majority of citizens from shaping government to their vision. It locks the status quo in place. And it needs to be tamed.

I've signed this petition and I encourage you to do the same so that leaders of the Senate, when the convene in January and have an opportunity to fix the filibuster, will be more likely to do so.

Elections should have consequences. The 2008 election should have had more consequences than it did, and the reason why the country has not gotten as much of the improvement that we voted for is because of these radical anti-change legislative rules like the filibuster.

Help fix the filibuster by signing this petition.

Why should Bush tax cuts expire? Great explanation from White House

This is a great explanation from a natural communicator on why President Obama and the Democrats are right to push end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Why would we borrow money from China to give to American millionaires a tax cut of $100,000 each? That's what Republicans are pushing to do.

Language that doesn't favor cars over transit or people: excellent memo on objective language

Language matters. It shapes how we approach politics and governance.

And to reduce our dangerous reliance ("addiction", as President George W. Bush put it) on foreign oil, our country needs to burn less gasoline by driving and flying less.

That means we need more trains and buses, from local transit to high speed rail, for our transportation network.

And that means our transportation officials need language that doesn't favor the automobile. We need to use objective language.

Jarrett Walker on his blog Human Transit found an excellent example of a memo from the City Administrator of West Palm Beach, Florida to all Department Heads directing them to use objective language to describe transportation choices. He accurately notes that most of our transportation language is biased in favor of ever-more investments in automobile traffic, which distorts the public will.

A few paraphrased examples:

Instead of referring to a car accident, refer to a car crash or car collision. After all, almost all car crashes are preventable with policies that create slower speeds or with better choices from the person at fault. The term accident suggests that nothing could be done to prevent the random occurence and lessens the drive to prevent future collisions in the future.

Instead of referring to an alternative to car traffic (which implies that non-car traffic is outside the mainstream), refer to non-motorized modes of transportation or be specific to refer to walking, biking or transit.


Instead of referring to an upgrade or improvement to a road, which implies that every investment in road capacity is a good thing, refer to the project objectively as a lane addition or a change in the road.

We still over-invest in roads and under-invest in trains in our country. Our 1950s-era language to describe road investments is a part of the reason why our policy hasn't caught up to our economic, national security and environmental objectives to spend more on transit and less on roads.