April 10, 2017
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Pritzker throws wallet into ring
Billionaire businessman J.B. Pritzker has become the latest Democrat to jump into the next year’s battle to oust Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner from office.
But first, he’ll have to take on a slew of Democrats in the March 2018 party primary election.
Pritzker, an heir to the wealth generated by his family’s Hyatt Hotel chain, announced his candidacy for governor Thursday.
Although he has operated on the fringes of the Democratic Party for years, Pritzker is best known for his role as a private investor and entrepreneur. He, along with his brother, runs the Pritzker Group. His sister, Penny, was the U.S. secretary of commerce during the Obama administration.
If the comments by his campaign rivals are any indication, they will try to turn the advantage represented by Pritzker’s vast wealth into a disadvantage in the primary contest.
State Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston has argued that Democrats don’t need a candidate of wealth to run against Rauner, that a candidate of more modest means would have more credibility campaigning for the votes of ordinary people.
Despite that kind of criticism over appearances, candidates with the largest campaign treasury can hire far more campaign staffers, buy more advertising and field much larger crews of campaign workers than those who lack the means to self-finance their campaigns.
In addition to Pritzker, Kennedy and Biss, there are two other candidates - Madison County Schools Superintendent Bob Daiber and Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar. It’s already a sizable group, but another candidate - state Rep. Scott Drury of Highwood - is said to be reviewing his chances of making a successful run for the gubernatorial nomination.
Pritzker, of course, is not the only candidate to bring a prominent name into the race.
Kennedy, the son of the late U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, is the heir to an unrivaled, although aged, political family legacy. In addition to his personal and family wealth, Kennedy also can draw on the huge political fundraising network that has sustained his family’s political endeavors for decades.
Individual candidates’ campaign resources will be significant because they’ll need to be able to differentiate themselves from their rivals. Since they mostly agree on the issues - the Democratic versus Republican gubernatorial race will be a typical liberal/conservative showdown - they’ll have to focus on the differences among them.
Whether it’s due to naivete or candor, Pritzker already has made it clear that he supports a substantial increase in the state income taxes to finance social welfare spending. The other Democratic candidates, no doubt, agree with Pritzker, but they’ve so far maintained a lower profile.
Pritzker recently told a group of party members that the state income tax should be increased to at least 5 percent, perhaps higher.
“Let’s remind everybody, the tax used to be 5 percent, and (Rauner) let it lapse down to three and three-quarters percent. And that’s what started a lot of the problems that we’ve got in the state,” Pritzker said.
Actually, it was former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn and Democratic legislative leaders, specifically House Speaker Michael Madigan, who let the temporary state income tax of 5 percent fall back to 3.75 percent on Jan. 1, 2015.
Voters will be hearing much more about the state’s state of effective bankruptcy between now and the November 2018 election.
What they’d really like to hear, however, is that Rauner and the Democratic-controlled Legislature have worked out a compromise budget and reform agreement that begins to put this failing state back on an upward trajectory.
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April 10, 2017
(Decatur) Herald & Review
Privacy legislation worth the effort
Internet privacy is among the latest hot-button debates, in part, because of a likely rollback of Obama-era privacy protections that were supposed to take place later this year.
That got the attention of some Illinois lawmakers who are looking to implement internet safeguards at the state level, including one that would allow people to find out what companies like Google and Facebook have collected on them and which third parties they share it with.
We think that is a good idea.
Most people don’t understand how a lot of this works, but just about everyone recoils at the thought of their privacy being invaded. With the internet, it is happening more and more frequently.
Surveillance of one kind or another has become the business model of the internet.
Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that if internet service providers want to collect and sell personal information, like your browsing history, they needed to get your permission first - that is, ask you to “opt-in” to their data-sharing programs.
But the GOP-led Congress voted to revoke the opt-in provision and President Trump signed the resolution last week.
Supporters of protections like Illinois is considering - a House committee has endorsed the measure - say they are needed because of what is going on in D.C.
The federal regulations would place restrictions on what companies such as Comcast and Verizon can do with information, including user search histories, but not websites.
Privacy advocates say the move sends a clear signal that it’s up to individual states to step into this “right to know” debate and try to correct it.
Not surprisingly, the tech industry is largely against the proposed requirements, saying they would burden companies with an unnecessary layer of regulation and compliance costs, while stifling innovation.
Supporters of the Illinois bill disagree, contending that similar requirements in the European Union and in California, which enacted a similar measure in 2000, have not hurt business.
It’s no surprise that the American Civil Liberties Union’s Illinois chapter is backing the bill, telling the Associated Press that such legislation is needed to address the now “razor-thin” division between government and private entities that can sell data to federal agencies.
In the end, maybe this ship has sailed. Maybe there is no good way to protect our basic privacy because the internet has become such a pervasive part of our everyday lives. But efforts like the one in Illinois is worth it, if for no other reason than to initiate a dialogue over our threatened right to privacy.
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April 9, 2017
Chicago Sun-Times
Find a way, lawmakers, to give Illinois residents a pay raise
Illinois residents who make the minimum wage are overdue for a raise.
The same is true for Americans across the nation. Workers are more productive than ever, but you wouldn’t know it based on their wages. In the last four decades, their pay has lagged far behind their contributions in the work force. The disparity helped make “income inequality” a catchphrase of the decade.
As the federal minimum wage has declined in real dollars, states and municipalities have acted on their own to raise worker pay. This state is slightly better off than some others. Illinois has a minimum wage of $8.25, a dollar more than the federal minimum set in 2009.
It’s not nearly enough. That’s why Chicago and Cook County have taken measures, independent of the state, to gradually raise their minimum wages to $13 an hour.
Illinois lawmakers should take these moves as a signal to raise Illinois’ minimum. Tragically, we don’t have leaders in Illinois who are getting it done.
A bill sponsored by Democrat Will Guzzardi of Chicago to raise the hourly minimum to $15 gradually by 2022 is gaining steam in the Illinois House. It passed through a committee last week with no Republican votes.
In better times, a bill sponsor and House Speaker Michael Madigan would hammer out a compromise with Republicans. But politically, we’re living in extreme, partisan times.
So we have to question if the bill is meant to contribute to political theater in Springfield. We don’t doubt Guzzardi is earnest in his desire to raise wages for hourly workers. His bill would soften the blow for small businesses by including significant tax credits for employers with 50 or fewer employees.
But, as we see it, $15 will be dead on arrival if it makes it to Gov. Bruce Rauner’s desk.
There seems to be no room for compromise between a demand for $15 and Rauner’s agenda. “Getting people halfway out of poverty is not going to do it for me,” Guzzardi told us.
Democrats and unions are doing workers no favors by staying married to $15. The state Senate’s “grand bargain” budget package that is nearly dead had originally included a gradual increase to $11 an hour by 2021, but pressure from national labor groups led Senate Democrats to drop it. They thought it was too low.
A veto by Rauner would in some ways be a gift to Democrats, who could hammer the governor in political ads in his bid for re-election. And, no, it’s not too soon to think about the 2018 election, considering Rauner already is appearing in ads statewide with no mention, of course, of his role in Illinois’ budget mess.
Two years ago, Rauner said he wanted a gradual increase to $10 an hour over 7 years. That’s 25 cents a year, and he tied the increase to demands that he claims will create jobs and grow the economy. Democrats laughed at the meager raise.
If neither side gives at all, workers will see zilch. That’s too bad because we believe lawmakers could rally support from business groups if they really tried. The Illinois Restaurant Association still backs $11, as it did in 2014.
“In a perfect world, it would be uniform throughout the state,” association President Sam Toia told us.
In explaining Schaumburg’s decision to opt out of Cook County’s increase, Allison M. Albrecht, the village’s communications manager, last month told the Sun-Times: “It is the village’s belief that employer-related mandates are best left to be determined at the state or federal level.”
The bottom line is Illinois residents need a raise.
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