McHenry County Blog

The Rockford office of the U.S. Attorney’s Office moved into their new digs last week.

And today, there’s the official dedication of the new building for which Congressman Don Manzullo and Senator Dick Durbin managed to get inserted into budgets over a period of years.

Here’s what the old courthouse looks like:

Below are a couple of views of the new structure:

It will be a little longer walk from the parking lot to the new courthouse, but not much longer.

Mass at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church began the day for those attending the first McHenry County Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

Boulder Ridge Country Club was the next destination.

Down Randall Road to Miller Road the cars drove.

The place was packed.

Over 500 people by one estimate.

After the welcome by event chairman Fred Wickham and a prayer by Msgr. Daniel Hermes, breakfast was served.

A prayer for our country’s leaders, out nation and families was offered by Jeff Ladd, Jr.

There were politicians courting votes.

Both Congressman Randy Hultgren and Joe Walsh were in attendance.

The two are Pro-Life.

The sanctity of human life was one of the topics of the main speaker, Raymond Cardinal Burke.

Another was birth control.

The Cardinal spoke at length.

The Cardinal’s biography identifies him as “one of the foremost authorities on Roman Catholic cannon law.

“Raymond Cardinal Burke leads with an unwavering passion for the integrity of Catholic doctrine embodied in the words of Jesus Christ,” it continues.

The Cardinal was born in 1948 in Richland Center, Wisconsin.

Ordained by Pope Paul VI in 1975 in Rome, one of his first assignments was teaching religion at Aquinas High School in LaCrosse, Wisconsin.

After studying canon law at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, he became the first American to hold the position of Defender of the Bond of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Catholic Church’s supreme court.

He now serves Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, to which post he was appointed in 2008 by Pope Benedict XVI.

McHenry County’s local prelate, Rockford-based Bishop Thomas Doran, helped celebrate the Mass and gave a talk at the breakfast.

Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.org, also spoke to the group. It’s a lay movement of committed Catholics who “are passionate about living our the truths proclaimed by Christ and His Church in the modern world.”

Issues promoted include

• the dignity of the human person from conception until natural death
• the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman
• religious freedom for all people

But, back to political figures in McHenry County.

Candidate for Coroner Anne Majewski was in an exuberant mode.

I saw a photo of Crystal Lake Mayor Aaron Shepley.

From the program, I see that County Board member Nick Provenzano played a role.

So did County Board candidate Mary Alger.

County Board member Barbara Wheeler, who is running for State Representative, was caught posing with Patriots United Brian Kelly and Judge Michael Chmiel.

You see Jean Bianchi with Rosemary and Bob Blazier in the photo below, so I assume State’s Attorney Lou Bianchi was also present.

Below is a list of the members of the Board of Directors of the prayer breakfast.

Thanks to Capitol Fax Blog for the following:

Meanwhile, Reuters columnist David Clay Johnston reports that Navistar, Continental Tire, Motorola, Ford, Chrysler, Mitsubishi and other big Illinois companies are keeping the state taxes deducted from their workers’ paychecks. “If you’re already on the payroll, they get to get keep half of them,” Johnston says. “If you’re a new hire, they get to keep all of them.”

The video is below.

This is so simply unbelievable I can’t figure out why I haven’t heard about it before

If you own a small business, shouldn’t you get the same tax break?

Previously, McHenry County Blog has reported on the contributions from Commonwealth Edison, Ameren and others to State Senator Pam Althoff and State Rep. Jack Franks.

Both voted to override Governor Pat Quinn’s veto, Franks a last minute switch.

State Senator Dan Duffy gave a scorching speech against the bill, addressing the

• business end, which he said required an outside audit to see how efficiently Com Ed is operating, and the
• ethics’ side, pointing out that the father of bill sponsor Mike Jacobs was a Com Ed lobbyist.

Newly-appointed State Rep. Kent Gaffney also voted “No.”

I figure that balance requires me to look at the donations that State Rep. Mike Tryon, who supported the bill, received.

The figures you see below are taken from the Committee on Political Reform’s data base, a compilation of businesses and executives thereof who the Committee judged to have a financial interest in the Senate Bill 1652′s veto override.

The total is $5,750.

To put this in perspective, here are the totals of contributions Tryon reported to the State Board of Elections for the first three-fourths of the year:

• 1st Quarter – $1,754
• 2nd Quarter – $30,714
• 3rd Quarter – $21,690

Total – $54,158

So contributions that the Committee for Political Reform consider linked to companies supporting the electric rate hike bill total 10.6% of Tryon’s contributions for the first three-quarters of 2011.

When Governor Dan Walker was in office, fall sessions were called “veto override sessions.”

The next Democratic Party Governor, Rod Blagojevich has similar problems.

As this past week shows, the third Democratic Party Governor in a row can’t get along well enough with the General Assembly to sustain his vetoes.

Even when he is right, as he most assuredly was on his veto of the Com Ed/Ameren electric rate hike bill.

If you have not seen the contributions that the State Senators who voted to override Senate Bill 1652, please take a look at what I found.