‘Radical’ Schakowsky for Senate 2010? (Updated)

The Play-Doh Prez has a hard decision to make. Which of his long-time associates — fellow radical and Democratic Socialists of America member Rep. Jan Schakowski or “connected” “long-time loyalist” Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias — will PDP back in the 2010 mid term election for his old barely-used U.S. Senate seat?

Lynn Sweet wrote April 27 at the Chicago Sun-Times that sixth-term Rep. Schakowsky “is stepping up her interest in running for the Senate in 2010 — a poll she took shows her in good shape to win a Democratic primary over Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias and Sen. Roland Burris.”

Schakowsky told Sweet “she will decide by June 8 whether she will run for the Senate or another term in the House. ‘The next part is the gut check’, she said.”

Sweet also wrote:

[Schakowsky] will send an e-mail to supporters as she continues a systematic evaluation of her chances.

“I have 10 years of seniority in the House, I am part of the leadership team, I sit on the key committees deciding our energy, health and national security policies. This is THE year during which great progress can be made. On the other hand, there would be many new and powerful opportunities serving in the United States Senate — being one of a hundred,” the e-mail will state.

Schakowsky pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners surveyed 600 likely February 2010 Democratic voters April 19-22, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. A poll shows the race is up for grabs with Schakowky at 24 percent, 22 percent for Giannoulias and 18 percent for Burris, with 36 percent undecided.

An interesting note: The poll — according to a summary — showed Giannoulias has better name recognition. Giannoulias has all but declared for the seat, raising a little over $1 million in a month.

Before we move on, there’s no question that in Illinois Alexi Giannoulias (right) has “better name recognition.” It just depends what you mean by “better”.

Let’s just look at what RBO wrote back in June 2008:

The Chicago Tribune’s Rick Pearson informs us that Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a “longtime loyalist” of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), will have a plum speaking spot at the DNC convention’s opening night in Denver.
Obama endorsed Giannoulias, a banking heir, for state treasurer and Giannoulias defeated the slated Democratic candidate. Obama has said Giannoulias provided help with Chicago’s Greek Community and Obama used the Giannoulias family’s bank for his Senate campaign fund.

Well, there’s a bit more to the Obama-Giannoulias back story.

On June 15, 2008, RezkoWatch posted the following article, “Coincidence or not? Obama, Rezko, Giannoulias”. Judge for yourself.

In 2006, when Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias was running for office, his good friend Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) not only vouched for him but also appeared in a campaign commercial in support of his campaign.

When Giannoulias visited Chicago’s SouthtownStar editorial board last week, he said that he had “met several times” with convicted political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko as a “banking customer,” Kristen McQueary reported June 15, 2008.

Before being elected state treasurer, Giannoulias was vice president of his family’s North Side bank, Broadway Bank. Rezko was a client. In addition to at least one loan secured through the bank, Rezko held a checking account there. Rezko is accused of writing nine bad checks from the account totaling more than $400,000 to Las Vegas casinos, Nevada authorities revealed last month.

Wouldn’t you know it? Rezko liked to gamble, just like his pal Christopher Kelly, who faces federal charges in a separate case alleging he hid gambling debts and cheated the IRS. Both men were close advisers to [Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich].

Giannoulias could not, and would not, elaborate on his specific financial dealings with Rezko because as a banker, that information is private, Giannoulias said. “I would love to, but I can’t,” Giannoulias said.

As for Rezko’s bounced checks, Giannoulias said they simply show “the bank did the right thing.” In other words, the bank didn’t help Rezko by covering the losses. Giannoulias said he oversaw the loan portfolio of the bank anyway and would not have been aware of Rezko’s bad check-writing habits.

Giannoulias told McQueary “Rezko never asked him or Broadway Bank to help with the gambling debts; Rezko wasn’t steered to Broadway Bank by Barack Obama, a mutual friend; and Rezko had no personal connection to Giannoulias, other than as a bank customer.”

“Where else will Rezko’s taint spill over?” McQueary asked.

As a P.S. to the June 15, 2008, article, RW asked: Would it surprise anyone to know that Obama’s close friend Alexi Giannoulias was tossed under the Obama bus more than two years ago—and Giannoulias still runs the Obama endorsement on his official website?

Well, here’s a taste for America of politics done the “Chicago Way”.

So. Is that what the Schakowsky-financed pollsters meant by “better name recognition”?

Back to Schakowsky’s possible Senate run.

“Senate Candidate No. 3″

This is, of course, not the first time that Schakowsky’s name has come up in connection with filling the vacated Illinois Senate seat.

Remember, “Senate Candidate No. 3″ in Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s December 2008 indictment was speculated to be Schakowsky, whose name was floated as PDP’s replacement at the end of October, more than a week prior to the general election.

Torture Memos

Schakowsky’s Communist Party-USA affiliated Democratic Socialists of America, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and other radical affiliations and positions should give voters pause.

Also of concern is that only last week, on April 24, Schakowsky announced her decision to lobby for an open “public inquiry into torture techniques practiced during the Bush era” by the House Intelligence Committee.

“I would like to be sure that if not the full committee, the subcommittee can play a role here,” Schakowsky said.

“One of the things I’d really like to focus on is how we can do this at least in part in open hearings, so that all of this once again isn’t pushed behind closed doors, so we can bring witnesses and have this discussion before the American people,” she continued. [...]

Schakowsky has indicated she is particularly after “the authors of the legal memorandums and other architects of the interrogation policies.”

“We should not prejudge where these investigations might go,” she said. “People, who were conducting the interrogations, understanding that they were legal, should be immune.”

Roll Call, via Progress Illinois, has more.

Selling Out Single-Payer Healthcare?

First, watch these two videos about single-payer healthcare. The first is Jan Schakowsky speaking at an April 18 forum. The second, which RBO has shown before, shows Barack Obama “telling the AFL-CIO in 2003 what his end goal is for health-care reform.” h/t Hot Air; videos posted by Verum Serum (more below videos).

Morgen at Verum Serum wrote April 27 on the “Democrats Backdoor to Socialized Healthcare”:

However, all the messaging control in the world wasn’t enough to stop a certain loose-cannon liberal from acknowledging what the real agenda is. Take a look at what Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) had to say at a healthcare reform rally in support of the President’s plan on April 18:
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and co-sponsor of HR-676 answered criticisms from single-payer advocates. She said the public option is not a compromise, but a strategic step toward the single-payer system and the elimination of the private insurance industry…

The public option is simply the opening salvo against the private sector, Schakowsky and other speakers said.

Both Schakowsky and McNary stressed the need for solidarity among health care reform activists, in order to build mass support and momentum toward the goal of a single-payer system.

If Schakowsky’s name is familiar it’s because she has been in the news lately criticizing the Tea Parties (her husband is also a convicted tax cheat). And no surprise, she is also a close friend of Nancy Pelosi’s.

I can hear the spinmeisters already: Schakowsky doesn’t speak for the Administration, she is not involved in crafting the legislation, she was misquoted, etc., etc. [...]

That Schakowsky is just a liberal kook with no basis for her statements, OR that in front of a receptive, far-left crowd in her home district, she actually let the truth slip out.

More about the forum below, but first . . .

This particular article about the healthcare forum was published by the Communist Party USA’s People’s Workers World (as well as on the Communist Party Illinois’ website), which should be familiar to RBO readers.

The forum itself was sponsored by two other familiar entities, Health Care for America Now and Citizen Action Illinois. Both RBO and Trevor Loudon have written several times about Citizen Action leader William McNary (left). You can read the basics on McNary here.

In November 2008 RBO connected some dots between USAction, of which Citizen Action Illinois is associated, and Health Care for America, which was launched in July 2008 by a coalition of the usual suspects:

ACORN, AFSCME, Americans United for Change, Campaign for America’s Future, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Center for Community Change, MoveOn.org, National Education Association, National Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, SEIU, United Food and Commercial Workers, and USAction.

Admittedly a convoluted article, it is well worth reading as it not only shows Schakowsky’s long-term involvement with Citizen Action — her husband, Robert Creamer, is a former director — as well as the threads that connect her with Weather Underground supporters and former domestic terrorists Heather Booth and Jeff Blum. Plus, Creamer was Obama’s choice to head his GOTV training organ, Camp Obama.

A second article, “Selling Out Single-Payer,” about events at the forum, was written by Helen Redmond; it was originally published in CounterPunch and reposted by Progressive Democrats of America.

Redmond writes:

At the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and Citizen Action Illinois sponsored rally in Chicago last weekend, single-payer advocates confronted HCAN leadership and Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) who instead of working to pass HR 676, John Conyers single-payer bill titled the United States National Health Insurance Act, are supporting the so called “public option.”

What the public option plan is, no one can exactly say. There are no concrete proposals spelling out what the plan would include, who could join it, how much it would cost, or how it would be funded. But the details don’t matter, they advocated for it anyway.

In a heated exchange with Schakowsky before the rally, she argued HR 676 (she is a cosponsor of the bill, yes that’s right) has no chance of passing and something has to be passed this year. She lied and said there isn’t enough support for single-payer, but there is for a public option. I and other activists challenged Schakowsky on every assertion and demanded she fight to pass HR 676. We said the insurance industry is going to fight just as hard against a public option as it will single-payer so let’s have a smackdown for single-payer. We argued the passage of HR 676 would guarantee an end to the crisis and finally make health care a human right that could never be taken away. She got pissed and complained loudly to her staff as she walked into the building, “Can you believe she is lecturing me?” I yelled after her, “I’m just expressing my opinion, I’m your constituency.”

The rally was a slick “Sell out single-payer and confuse em’ show” from start to finish, replete with retro 70’s song Ain’t no Stoppin’ Us Now blasting into the auditorium.

More Blago

John Ruberry at Marathon Pundit has a Schakowsky Blago flashback:

Illinois’ indicted ex-governor, Rod Blagojevich (left), is surely disgraceful and shameful.

Here’s what Schakowsky said about her fellow Democrat in 2006:

We do have a working relationship, and we have a long-standing friendship… I agree with him on his priority of health care and applaud him for the work he has done as the health care governor.

Blago was impeached for his health care policy abuses.

And…

For tomorrows primary election, here are the candidates in contested races that I am supporting…Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Schakowsky’s husband, ex-con Robert Creamer, was a top Blago campaign staffer in 2002.

BTW

This could go on and on, and should Schakowsky decide to run for the U.S. Senate, you can be sure there is much more to come. Stay tuned.