McHenry County Blog

Every day anyone who wishes to subscribe to Dave Diersen’s GOPUSA Illinoisan get the results of his daily searches for articles, mainly political. (The third button down on his web site is “Subscribe.”)

Dave Diersen’s efforts to provide people with links to political stories every day received praise from the State Journal-Register’s political columnist Bernie Schoenburg Thursday.

As Springfield’s State Journal-Register political columnist Bernard Schoenburg points out, Diersen is not shy in adding his own opinion if he thinks the Mainstream Media is slanting things against his point of view.

The links save a lot of time for those interested in things political and provide information that I, for one, would not otherwise find.

So let me ad my thanks to Dave Diersen for his seven day a week, fifty-two week a year efforts.

Every day Dave Diersen of DuPage County puts together a compilation of articles about Illinois politics at GOPUSA Illinois. That’s where I got the idea for this story. (You can subscribe to his daily email here.) Today’s email pointed me to an Illinois News Network story, which stimulated this piece.

Bill Cunningham

Chicago Democratic Party State Rep. Bill Cunningham has come up with a half-good idea. He seems like a qualified enough guy. He used to be Director of Communications for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

He wants to require statewide elected officials to disclosed their income tax forms for five years prior to the immediately before the election.

He is motivated by the Republican Governor Bill Brady’s limited release and the refusal of his Lieutenant Governor running mate Jason Plummer to show anything and is even willing to mention Democrat Scott Lee Cohen.

But, what about the other people running for office?

What about state legislators?

What about judicial candidates?

Wouldn’t you like to know if such candidates would get paid more for the office they are seeking than they earned in the private sector?

Wouldn’t you like to know if you candidate had even worked in the private sector?

Wouldn’t you be interested in where they got their income?

Some people might be.

Not that the bill has a chance of passing, but it would be a better bill, I think, if the sponsor had included himself and his colleagues in the jurisdiction of the legislation.

The bill’s number is House Bill 278.

Rep. Cummingham can be reached by phone at 773-445-8128.  No email addresses are provided on the General Assembly web site.

Don Gray, Advocacy Director of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, has done some first-class political research.

He has figured out what percentage of money the twenty top county Republican and Democratic Party organizations spend on overhead versus candidates.

As I have been known to argue in Algonquin Township Republican Party meetings, “What’s the purposed of a political party, if it is not to elect candidates?”

Below is the graphic he has for Republicans:

Compare the McHenry County Republican Party’s 40% plus spent on candidates to what Democrats spend their money on:

McHenry County Democrats spent 60% of its money on electing candidates, rather than overhead.

Thanks to the State Journal-Register’s Bernie Schoenburg for writing the article that Dave Diersen found and put on his GOP Illinois email blast.