McHenry County Blog

A press release from Congressman Don Manzullo:

FINALLY!
Manzullo, Durbin Hail Start of Algonquin Western Bypass Project

[ALGONQUIN] U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin said the strong resolve of local officials, business leaders and frustrated motorists led to today’s groundbreaking ceremony for the most awaited road construction project in McHenry County history – the $80 million Western Bypass in Algonquin.

On the books for decades, the project to solve gridlock at Routes 31 and 62 in downtown Algonquin broke ground today amid fanfare and the relief that the long-delayed project will finally be built.

The project received two large infusions of federal funding over the years.

Manzullo secured $9 million in the 1998 federal transportation bill, TEA-21, and Durbin and Manzullo worked together to secure $10 million in the 2005 federal transportation bill, SAFETEA-LU.

Manzullo thanked U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, State Senator Pam Althoff, State Rep. Mike Tryon, County Board Chairman Ken Koehler, Algonquin Mayor John Schmitt, the McHenry County Economic Development Corporation, and others for their determination to get the Western Bypass approved and funded.

Manzullo also thanked the “Road Warriors,” the conglomeration of local political, business and community groups that came together to lobby the State of Illinois for McHenry County’s fair share of road construction dollars in 2007 after Gov. Blagojevich stripped all the previously approved Western Bypass money from the state’s road construction plan.

“Finally! Due to a lot of hard work for many years by all the people here today, McHenry County motorists will soon experience relief from the horrific gridlock that has plagued the corner of Routes 31 and 62 in downtown Algonquin for decades,” Manzullo said.

“This project has long been my number one priority for McHenry County, and I’m excited to see it finally fulfilled. I only wish my good friend, the late Bill Dwyer who did so much to bring us to this day, could be with us to celebrate.”

Durbin added, “As the east-west gateway to McHenry County, the Route 31-Route 62 intersection has a well-deserved reputation as the most congested intersection in the region.

“It’s been that way for more than 20 years and the county’s population continues to grow.

“The Bypass will go a long way toward alleviating the traffic congestion that has restricted access to the businesses and shops in Algonquin’s Old Town District. As everyone gathered here today knows, this project has seen a lot of ups and downs over the years.

“I offer a special salute to Rep. Manzullo for his determination over the course of 15 years to make this project a reality.

“I was happy to help along the way and am excited to be here today as we kick off a project that has been talked about since 1952.”

The new bypass road will start at Route 31 south of Virginia Road in Crystal Lake, veer southwest into the gravel pit, cross over Algonquin Road near the Algonquin post office, veer southeast and connect back with Route 31 near Huntington Drive.

It will remove the majority of north-south traffic from the Route 31-Route 62 intersection, allowing officials to double-time the traffic signals at the intersection to significantly improve east-west traffic flow on Route 62 and eliminate the mile-long backups motorists face during rush hour.

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Photos provided by Congressman Manzullo’s office.

Wednesday, United States Senator Dick Durbin came to McHenry County.

He met with employees of NASA Education and related companies at President John Blanchard’s headquarters on Route 31 in Prairie Grove.

The first part of the visit was chronicled here yesterday.

“Last year was a disaster,” the number two Democrat in the U.S. Senate declared, “but for one thing–President Obama jobs bill on helping Veterans.

“Is there any indication that jobs bill has changed anything?” he asked.

“No,” Blanchard replied.

He said hadn’t seen any effect, pointing out that subsidizing a Veterans salary isn’t the problem.

“They can get a job.

“They just can’t hold a job,” Blanchard explained.

They need to get out of “their homelessness” and get their “responsibility back.”

“Who’s going to hire those with a criminal background?” Blanchard asked.

State Rep. Jack Franks (D-Marengo), who arrived after the meeting began, observed that unemployment in McHenry County is above the state average.

NASA Education’s Amy Johnson pointed out that Veterans don’t always want to go to work and have doctor’s appointments that disrupt production schedules.

She said there was a molding firm in Algonquin whose management understood and made allowances for the various problems.

When Durbin asked the wages people helped in their job hunting by NASA Education, Johnson said they ranged from minimum wage to $16-17 an hour at Olson Electric.

Blanchard brought up a problem that Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan face.

“They have difficulty getting Illinois certificates.”

He mentioned nurses and licenses for truck drivers (CDL’s or Commercial Drivers Licenses) especially.

Franks suggested that legislation might be needed to establish reciprocity between Illinois licensing and skills in the Armed Forces.

“There ought to be an equivalency test,” Durbin agreed.

“Amy, you put your finger on it. A lot of them are facing personal issues,” the Senator continued.

What’s needed, Blanchard said was to

• get them safe
• get them clean
• get them going in a different direction

Durbin then launched on a severe critique of private trade schools.

He said he would be holding a Chicago hearing on the subject in about two weeks.

He charged that the for-profit schools were enticing Veterans to enroll using Federal Pell Grants to pay tuition.

Yet, he said, the Federal government is not holding them responsible for educational or job placement results.

He used the phrase “fly by night operation.”

“We should never be giving Pell Grants.”

Rep. Franks agreed, suggesting the results of state financial  assistance be examined as well.

Durbin focused on culinary schools in which TV cooking shows were inspiring people to enroll.

The private schools, he pointed out were self-accrediting.

Not everything was serious, however.

I got a couple of good shots of Durbin and Franks laughing.

I don’t know what other stops he had on his Wednesday journey to McHenry County, but I caught up with U.S. Senator Dick Durbin while he was learning about NASA Education’s automotive repair business.

It has recently been re-located from Pingree Road sought of Rakow to Route 31 near the fire place store.

There people can get total care for their vehicles which are fixed by Veterans who are mechanics or training to be mechanics.

Durbin listened to the stories of three men in the shop.

He asked several times whether John Blanchard’s brainchild got any Federal funds.

The answer was “No.”

That seemed to surprise the number two Democrat in the U.S. Senate.

Blanchard explained that funding came from related business.

That and contributions.

One source of contributions results from inserts in driver’s license renewals sent out by Secretary of State Jesse White.

They solicit the donations of cars, which NASA Education employees pick up all over the state and beyond.

One of the men told of going to St. Louis and Indiana to get vehicles.

“Most of them aren’t in great shape,” Blanchard said, explaining how they were repaired there prior to being sold or given to Veterans who needed them.

That happens eight months a year.

NASA Education Foundation has to pay for the printing, but obviously the postage is paid by State government.

So far, about 120 cars have been donated.

Durbin, his staff, Blanchard and his assistant Amy Johnson, then walked over the NASA Education, the for-profit headquarters.

Again, Durbin asked, “Any government funding?”

“We’re working for our money,” Blanchard explained, after noting that the recession hasn’t hurt contributions.

He briefly outlined some of the businesses, including a re-sale shop in Carpentersville and a trucking company, among others.

The topic moved onto “the increasing difficulty at getting served at the VA.”

A Veteran in the room explained that it was “more difficult to get the appointments and make the appointments timely.”

“They’re getting swamped,” Blanchard observed.

He explained that if one needed immediate care, a hospital emergency room was where Veterans had to go.

Durbin talked about how ill-advised he thought it had been to close the Veterans Hospital in North Chicago.  He credited former Congressman John Porter with advancing the idea of combining the care of Veterans with active duty personnel at Great Lakes.

“Impossible!” was the reaction.  “They don’t speak the same language,” congressmen were told.

He told of “head-to-head battles between unions, the Navy and the VA.”

But the merger was accomplished.

“Don’t cut the budget,” Durbin said with reference to Veterans health care.

“For God’s sake, we promised these servicemen we’d stand behind them.”

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More tomorrow.

With Senator Dick Durbin on the airwaves saying that the U.S. House of Representatives failure to vote for a two-month extension of the Social Security tax cut, Congressman Peter Roskam is counterattacking:

Roskam: Fate of Tax Relief for 160 Million Americans is in the Senate’s Hands

WASHINGTON – Chief Deputy Majority Whip Peter Roskam (IL-06) issued the following statement today after the House voted to send the year-long payroll tax extension bill to Conference:

“The President has said it would be ‘inexcusable’ for Congress not to extend this tax holiday for an entire year.

“The good news is House Republicans agree.

“Families and small businesses need a full year of tax relief, not a 60 day band-aid that creates uncertainty.

“Even policy experts say a two-month extension is unworkable and ‘cannot be implemented properly.’

“The fate of a tax hike on 160 million Americans now rests in the hands of the Senate Democrats, and I urge them to return from vacation, appoint conferees, and ultimately work together to get a year-long agreement.”

Looks as if McHenry County Blog wasn’t the only one thinking Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin’s attempt to blackmail a Virginia Republican congressman who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee that controls the U.S. prison system budget was a tad too much.

Congressman Frank Wolf is not only chairman of the subcommittee, but sponsor of the legislation to continue the commission that is charged with fighting religious prosecution.

Almost a month ago Congressional Quarterly’s Shawn Zeller wrote of the trade-off that Durbin anonymously set up by putting a “hold” on the House legislation.

As Chicago Tribune columnist and blogger Bryne points out, “Even Comedy Central found reason to comment on this clown.”

Comedy Central is running an article today calling Durbin “a Tea Party zealot” for his actions.

“These heartwarming stories of semi-anonymous Senate holds always remind me of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” write columnist Ilya Gerner.

“If only Mr. Smith were a career politician willing to stand up to the influence of corrupt interest groups like ‘Big Refugee’ and ‘Big Persecuted Minority’ in order to advance the economic agenda of his home state,” she continued.

More locally, Bryne writes a post headlined,

Dick Durbin, hack that he is, thought he could get away with this dirty trick…

“but thanks to the blogosphere he won’t,” the first line of his article continues.
“Come on, Dick, even for you this is a bit far,” Byrne concludes.

Durbin’s tactic even got coverage in a Washington Post story by Michelle Boorstein.

In typical Illinois style, U.S. Senate Dick Durbin has been fingered by CQ Weekly’a Shawn Zelle as the one who put a hold on the unanimous consent agreement passage of re-authorization of the US Commission on Religious Freedom.

This is the independent agency that is credited with pushing the Bush administration to understand the north–south conflict in Sudan as primarily a religious one, according to Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute and one of the US Commission on Religious Freedom.

What’s Durbin price for allowing the bill to be passed by unanimous consent?

He wants the Federal government to buy the over ten-year old, barely used maximum security prison in Thomson, Illinois.

That’s where President Barack Obama wanted to transfer terrorists being held at Guantanamo.

That’s what the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) reports.

The pressure point for the proposed blackmail (my word, you can call it “log rolling,” if you wish) Zeller says,

“…could be that Rep. Frank R. Wolf, the Virginia Republican who sponsored the legislation creating the commission in 1998, chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that funds federal prisons.”

“If true, it is appalling that Senator Durbin would tie the continuation of USCIRF to any other issue,” IRD’s Faith McDonnell wrote.

This is not a poll question.  If it were, we know there would be a low percentage thinking they were worth much.

This is a question of how much wealth those who represent us in Washington have.

There are six Congressmen for which McHenry County residents have present or potential future interest.

The Center for Responsive Politics, which operates Open Secrets Blog, has listed the net worth of all Congress folks.

The net worth of our two U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, plus Congressmen Peter Roskam, Don Manzullo, Randy Hultgren and Joe Walsh’s reported figures are listed below:

I’ve not a clue what the numbers mean, but you can see we have a rich Democratic Party U.S. Senator in Dick Durbin and a way less wealth Republican U.S. Senator in Mark Kirk.

The two most veteran Congressmen–Don Manzullo and Peter Roskam–are the wealthiest.  Both are attorneys.  No outside jobs are allowed for Members of Congress, by the way, so they are not still practicing.

The poorest are the two running against each other in the new 14th Distrct.

You know their name–Randy Hultgren and Joe Walsh.

Hultgren appears marginally more well off than Walsh, whose child support issues have made front page and continuing news.

Both report maximum net worth in the $50,000 range.

No surprise there.

Illinois Democrats hiked the state income tax 67% in a lame duck session.

This time it is U.S. Senator Dick Durbin.

He wants to impose sales taxes on internet purchases.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass reminded me Sunday why I didn’t support former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney four years ago.

He refused to say he would retain Patrick Fitzgerald as Chicago’s U.S. Attorney.

Call be crazy, but I don’t think if Fitzgerald had been replaced or if he is replaced in the future with an attorney with local contacts that the campaign against the corruption so infecting the body politic in Illinois would have (will) continue.

The irony is that both Senator Dick Durbin and pre-President Barack Obama promised to keep Fitzgerald on, even though he was getting close to Mayor Richard Daley.

The reason the GOP establishment wants us to believe that its members want to get rid of Fitzgerald is that he prosecuted and convicted Vice President Dick Cheney’s assistant Scooter Libby for perjury.

Lying to a Federal Agent.

Some of us think the real reason that Fitzgerald was named as Special Prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak case was to distract him from rooting out political crooks in Illinois.

Fortunately, that strategy did not work.

Besides that diversion, I’m been told that his Chicago office was assigned the task of reviewing a treaty on Antarctica.

Just the place where you’d think you would find experts on that subject, right?

Anything to put Fitzgerald assistants to work on anything but political corruption.

Romney’s answer to Don Wade and Roma on WLS-TV was

“Oh, I can’t possibly make that, he-heh, assessment now. It’s a little ahead of my time. A little presumptuous of me to be picking U.S. Attorneys.”

Let’s see.

The two Democrats who would make the choice say they would keep Fitzgerald, but a leading Republican couldn’t say the same thing.

I thought that spoke volumes then.

It still does.

If I ever get a chance to ask him a question, that will be the subject.

The McHenry County Economic Development Corporation held at event featuring U.S. Senator Dick Durbin in McHenry at McHenry County College’s Shah Center Monday.

It was apparently private, but some who do not approve of the Number 2 Senate Democrat’s policies found out about the affair and showed up with picket signs.

Signs I see say,

• Durbin’s a Debt Denier
• No New Taxes on Rich Biz Owners, Durbin!
• You Will Not Downgrade the Tea Party
• Durbin Out! 2014
• S&P Says Ryan Bill No Downgrade