Chicago Daily Observer

The dismal retail sales figures are in for Black Friday and the news is . . . good?

Wait a minute, the news was supposed to be bad, awful, ghastly, dreadful, etc. Analysts, almost to the person, were predicting that retail sales would decline from last year’s level, if not plummet. Some forecast economic calamity, because so much depends on consumer spending.

Not to pick on anyone in particular, but here are a few examples of pre-Black Friday conjectures:

• Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with NPD Group, said “this could be the worst holiday [shopping season] ever.”

The $700 billion financial bailout may be the biggest flimflam ever pulled on the American public. It has all the earmarks of a good con: Bankers and assorted Wall Street grifters will make off with hundreds of billions of dollars, abetted by Washington politicians, while we get stuck with the tab.

We can thank Wells Fargo & Co, a big Western bank, for exposing this swindle for what it was by agreeing to buy Wachovia Corp., a troubled Eastern bank, thereby rescuing it from a government-arranged shotgun marriage with Citigroup Inc.

For those of you who still cling to the fantasy that Barack Obama is “about change,” you should note how he, or his minions, want nothing to do with reforming politics in Illinois, perhaps the most corrupt state in the Union.

“Throughout his political career, Barack Obama has fought for open and honest government,” proclaims his campaign Web site. Apparently, no longer. When the Democratic presidential candidate—now his party’s industrial-strength voice for our deliverance from political corruption everywhere—was asked by a reformer if he would help get his political mentor back home to get off the dime and move the most minimal of state ethics legislation toward passage, the Obama campaign sent word back that amounted to a “no.”

From the US Census Bureau:

• Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233.

• The number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007. The number of uninsured children declined from 8.7 million (11.7 percent) in 2006 to 8.1 million (11.0 percent) in 2007.

• Income inequality decreased between 2006 and 2007, as measured by shares of aggregate household income by quintiles and the Gini index. The share of aggregate income received by households in the top fifth of the income distribution declined, while the shares for the third and fourth quintiles increased. Meanwhile, the Gini index declined from 0.470 to 0.463, moving closer to 0, which represents perfect income equality (1 represents perfect inequality).

• In 2007, the family poverty rate and the ... Read More...

I don’t think a lot of folks were all that serious about an Illinois Constitutional Convention until the established powers gathered to squelch the idea.

Here is the full list of the special interests:

AFL-CIO Illinois
American Insurance Association
Center for Tax and Budget Accountability
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
Citizen Action Illinois
Illinois Association of Convenience Stores
Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools
Illinois Association of School Administrators
Illinois Association of School Personnel Administrators
Illinois Business RoundTable
Illinois Civil Justice League
Illinois Education Association
Illinois Farm Bureau
Illinois Federation of Teachers
Illinois Manufacturers Association
Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association
Illinois Retail Merchants Association
Illinois Retired Teachers Association
Illinois State Chamber of Commerce
Illinois Teachers Retirement System
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association
League of Women Voters of Illinois
National ... Read More...

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.—From the Declaration of Independence

Sounds like governance as practiced by “progressives,” when, in fact, it was referring to King George III. Eating out our substance was one of only a couple dozen complaints against the British crown that were cause enough for these 13 colonies to declare themselves to be “Free and Independent States.”

A multitude of offices hardly seems to be a fit enough description of what Washington D.C. and Springfield, Illinois have sent our way to eat out our substance. The only break we have received is a temporary reprieve provided by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Dancing Egos inhabiting Springfield because they’d rather suck each other’s blood instead of ours, at least for the time being. When they tire of clubbing each other, ... Read More...