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The first time I saw Brendan Houlihan (PDF) he was looking like a lamb lost among the wolves.
A rookie politician from the southwest suburbs, he was sitting in a downtown Cook County election board hearing room, fighting to stay on the ballot as a candidate for Cook County Board of Review, the three-person body that oversees property tax appeals. This was back in January 2006.
His opponent, Republican incumbent Maureen Murphy, had challenged the validity of his nomination petitions. Word had it that behind the scenes no less than Democratic Party chair and house speaker Michael Madigan was working for Murphy. Madigan's spokesman denied it, but one thing was certain: no major Democratic leaders from the southwest side were helping Houlihan, despite his coming from a political family (his father was a state rep from the far-south suburbs). With the exception of support from maverick Wheeling Township Democratic committeeman Patrick Botterman, Houlihan was on his own.
Eventually Murphy managed to find enough flaws in Houlihan's petitions to bounce him from the ballot. But Houlihan wasn't done yet. Since there were no other Democrats on the ballot, state law permitted the Democratic committeemen from his district to pick a nominee for the office.
The southwest-side Democrats got behind Bloom Township committeeman Terry Matthews. But Botterman stitched together enough support from north- and northwest-suburban committeeman to push Houlihan over the top, and he went on to defeat Murphy in November's general election.
On June 26 Houlihan held his first big fund-raiser since taking office. And guess who was the honorary host chairman? No, not Madigan -- that would have been too much irony even for Chicago. It was no less than Cook County Board commissioner and 11th Ward Democratic committeeman John Daley, the mayor's brother.
Houlihan didn't return calls for comment. As Botterman explained, Daley, like the mayor, was pretty much neutral in Houlihan's campaign. But Botterman says he's not surprised that Daley signed on after Houlihan won. "You know how it goes," he says. If they can't beat you at the polls, they welcome you into the club.
"Everybody loves a winner," Botterman says.
For Da Maya's brother to come calling, this job must be pretty important.
So, Brendan's gonna be one of three people who'll be 'overseeing the people who decide whether a property owner's appeal of their property's assessment is granted or denied.
Sounds like an awesome responsibility.
With an awesome amount of potential for abuse, dishonest and unfair activities.
What will Brendan do, What will Brendan do?
Become a 'member of the club'?
Most of these crooks aren't in jail because they are all made members of the 'combine' that either slated, supported and helped elect, or appointed, practically every sitting judge, prosecuting attorney, police chief, and anyone else responsible for the investigation, prosecution and adjudication of criminal acts.
When I say 'combine', I am referring to BOTH dominant, incestuous political parties, namely, the Dumbocrats and the Retardicans, two sides of the same, filth-covered coin.
The few-and-far-between honest politicians, (no, that's not the oxymoron it seems to be), rarely survive the tainted atmosphere they so bravely venture into.
What these few are up against is just like trying to clean up a gigantic shit pile with a spoon, dirty, filthy work that will never get done and that just gets those who try covered in shit themselves.
Better to bring in a fire hose and wash the whole shit pile down the sewer, where it belongs.
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT.
In reading over the many articles, and comments to same, on your site here, I noticed a few comments that suggested that your readership, especially of the comments pages, is not very numerous, as in, not many people read your articles or the comments made.
You've got a counter for the number of comments posted, but no visible counter for the number of 'visitors', either to your articles or to the comments pages for each.
Couldn't you get your web masters to implement a visible counter for each of these, so your readers could know just how may times your articles, and their comment pages, are being viewed?
This might very well encourage more people to read your articles and more readers to participate in commenting on them.
If that's something you're interested in seeing happen, why not give it a try?
And yet, maybe Brendan will make his mama proud.
Now, the only remaining question is, what makes his mama proud?
Unless, like so many before them, that was their plan all along.
What's the phrase, 'Don't judge a book by it's cover'?
And we've all had the experience of knowing a person so beautiful on the outside, you never see the ugliness on the inside, until you take a bite.
Good luck to both of them.
Individuals don't have to be backed by the 'machine' to be people who WANT to be part of the machine.
An 'independent' who, when elected, acts like a clout monkey, isn't an independent, and, quite likely wasn't one to begin with.
The only 'fight' needed is the commitment to doing the right and honest thing at all times.
Unless you are suggesting that 'someone' is going to put a gun to the head of an independent, there's no excuse for 'going along' with dishonest activities.
If Brendan is truly dedicated to 'doing the right thing', he'll be firm in his honesty, active in his efforts to utilize his share of authority to ensure said honesty and be regularly forthcoming with any and all information indicating if anyone in his area of civic duties is not doing the same.
There are a multitude of journalists, federal investigators and other interested parties who would be more than happy to accept any and all information from him, concerning any and all knowledge he may acquire about dishonest and/or questionable activities.
Time will tell just who Brendan Houlihan is.
She is very tied into LARRY SUFFREDIN who is at the politically connected SHEFSKY law firm with a lot of shennigans
and business and lobbying interests in front of the sanitary district
did John Daley chair a fund-raiser for her, too?
Sen Durbin also helped.
So did fellow appeals Commish Larry Rogers and Congressman Jackson.
The 19th ward with the Joyce's helped because of Assessor Houlihan.
HOW IS BRENDAN AN OUTSIDER AGAIN?????!!!!!
He's not.
James Houlihan
And who, pray tell, 'gave' him this power?
Could it be a combination of those loyal-to-the-machine citizens who do vote and those many citizens who do not vote, whether registered our not?
Houlihan is not that bright.
Shore is bright, has some good conservationalist credentials, and has some good ideas.
She unfortunately is associated with Conartist Convict Cramer and his husband Jan the Man.
But she will do some good.
But she is not a real reformer but will do some incremental good and actually will understand issues for Water Reclamation.
Her surrounding cast of Robert Cramer, Jan Shakowsky, and lobbyist and politically connected lawyer and hypocrite arrogant Commissioner Larry Suffredin are real corrupt sick evil cabal.
Only if your house were to burn to the ground and you'd provide proof of same to the Assessor's office.
"re stop
May 30th - 5:21 p.m.
My intended audience, if you're correct, has been focusing on individual, incumbent politicians for decades, buying into the false premise that an incumbent office holder has, somehow, earned the 'right' to be re-elected, unless that person has done something or things to warrant being 'fired'.
This premise is what is responsible for all of the lousy 'representatives' we have been burdened with for generations.
Before you point out that these 'public servants' were duly elected by the 'people', let's examine that assumption.
First, ask the question, 'How many citizens are, at any given moment in time, qualified to vote, ie., 18 years of age or older, citizens, whether born or naturalized and residents of the area holding an election.
Think of that number as 100% of all eligible voters.
Next, I believe we can safely propose that, as a rule, no more than 50% of the whole are registered to vote at any given time, for any given election.
So, we start with only half of all eligible voters are registered.
Then, we can also safely propose that, of those 50% who are registered, usually only half of those voters actually show up at their respective voting places and casting their votes.
Thus, we see that approximately 25% of all eligible voters actually vote in any given election.
Since, at most, a candidate needs only 51% of voters to choose him/her to win, we can safely conclude that a mere 13% of the total number of eligible voters are deciding who are elected public servants are.
Granted, many will say that the 50% of eligible voters who don't register are, theoretically, expressing and enjoying their right to vote by not voting, and that the 25% of the whole, who are registered, but don't vote, are doing the same.
What I wonder is, why would 75% of those eligible to vote choose not to, choose to either register, but not vote, or not even register at all.
I don't believe it is because 75 out of 100 citizens are making this choice voluntarily, at least not as the word is defined in Webster's.
I believe, and propose, that most of the 75 out of 100 don't vote, or register to vote, because they have concluded that their vote doesn't matter, won't change anything, isn't important and isn't worth the time and effort it takes to participate.
In this, they are substantially correct, as the present public perceptions of the accepted political practices is designed to discourage the majority of citizens from participating in the political process.
Your focus on individual candidates is the crux of the problem, however counter-intuitive that sounds.
We can only afford to focus on the individual candidates when we have honest, intelligent, ethical and naturally helpful candidates to consider.
We waste our time and energies considering and analyzing the 'professional' politicians, as they all, with few exceptions, are cut from the same cloth and want us to believe that there are no other kinds of cloth to cut from.
The typical 'professional' politicians are rank opportunists, willing to act in a hurtful/harmful manner as easily as act in a helpful/harmless manner.
The typical 'professional' politician is only honest and forthcoming when he/she is forced to be, defaulting to dishonesty, deception, misdirection, stone-walling and blatant double-dealing as the rule, rather than the rare exception.
This is what the voters, both the 25% who routinely vote, and the 75% who do not, should be focusing on.
This is the fresh, honesty and plain truth presumption that all voters should take with them into the voting booth, every election, with the challenge to the INCUMBENTS to ALWAYS have to convince enough voters that THEY DESERVE to be re-elected.
This is why the entrenched incumbents strive to keep the public believing that the challengers should be the ones who have to convince voters to elect them, why the entrenched incumbents promote the wide-spread belief that they have to have screwed up really bad to warrant the voters firing them.
Until such time as enough voters open their eyes and realize that, contrary to the 'professional' politicians assertions, THEY are OUR EMPLOYEES, not our 'leaders', 'masters', 'betters', or 'bosses', we will continue to be led, like sheeple, down that primrose path to poverty.
In the 'private sector', one's employer requires that the employees efficiently produce value for their pay.
In the 'public sector', we, the employers, seem to accept much less value from our employees, our 'public servants', than we would ever think to accept from our employees, should we own a business.
We seem to accept much less value for our tax dollars from our 'public servants' than we would ever accept from our local store, contractor, service provider, etc..
The reason we accept paying so much, for so little, is, I believe, to be found in our generational conditioning to see and accept our 'government servants' not as our employees, but as our 'leaders/masters/bosses/superiors.
They are anything but......
Focus on firing all incumbents.
Use the outlined, mathematical formula.
Register to vote and Vote on Election Day.
See what will happen when the entrenched incumbents are shown the door.
Should the newly elected challengers FAIL to PROVE they DESERVE to keep their jobs, vote THEM out, using the same strategy.
REPEAT AS NEEDED, for as long as it takes to inspire honest people to enter what will be true public service.
The experience of seeing your vote result in change will inspire more and more citizens to participate, will force any who are elected to be much more responsive to the desires of the people, and will allow us to truly know what a democracy actually is."
Dont think so.