Eliminate the Cook County Clerk’s Office

Eliminate the Cook County Clerk’s Office
By Ray HananiaSouthwest News-Herald Newspaper• Friday, February 22, 2013

When it comes to election fraud, Cook County is one of the worst offenders. While making it easier for anyone to vote, Cook County officials have also made fraud easier.
No single vote process is more susceptible to fraud than Absentee Voting.

In the past, voters were only allowed to vote by Absentee Ballot when they couldn’t vote on election day. They needed a legitimate excuse. Now, to encourage everyone to vote, Cook County allows you to vote by absentee ballot.

At a recent training session of election judges, I asked Cook County Clerk David Orr about this now common scenario:

The County receives an Absentee Ballot. But on election day, the voter comes in to vote in person. The voter is told, sorry, you already voted. The voter can protest and cast a “Provisional Ballot.”

But Orr said when he reviews the two votes, he will take the Absentee Ballot if the signature looks legitimate and reject the vote by the voter.

In other words, David Orr believes a piece of paper has more rights than a human being. Anyone can get an absentee ballot and cast it by signing someone else’s name. All you need is a voter list with their signatures on it to forge the signature so it looks real.

Why would David Orr accept the piece of paper which is sent in by mail and reject the voter who walks into a polling place to cast their ballot?

How can you accept a piece of paper that could easily have been cast fraudulently and reject the real voter who shows up and casts a vote?

What kind of Democratic System is that? The system should always take the vote cast by the person than through Cook County’s corrupt system.

Orr’s top deputy was at his side when she complained that the Feb. 26 election battle in the suburb where I was at was “disruptive.”

“I had one voter at early voting tell me that she was so disgusted by all of the people who came up to her urging her to vote for their candidate that she didn’t want to vote,” she declared at the end of the training.

“Oh yea,” I replied. “Democracy is a pain in the ass alright.”

There is something wrong with the whole process of freedom and democracy when the freedom to urge the public to vote for a candidate is “disruptive” and a “hassle” and when the office of an elected official like David Orr describes voting is a “pain.”

What David Orr’s deputy is saying is that they don’t want voters to be lobbied by precinct captains or even the candidates. That’s because they only care about the numbers. Turnout. Cook County has a terrible voter turnout, I say because the system is so corrupt.

If that means vote fraud, so be it, according to David Orr.

The Illinois Legislature should intervene and eliminate the Cook County Clerk’s office. It should instead appoint a non-elected, non-political administrator to enforce the law fairly, and cut the budget in half.

When a politician like Orr hears charges of fraud, he can easily turn his back when it involves his political allies. When it involves his foes, he can suddenly scream about fraud and corruption and get off his cushy office chair and complain.

Why should an elected official and a politician like David Orr have that kind of partisan power to help his friends?

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and political consultant named “Best Ethnic Columnist in America by New America Media and the recipient of four Peter Lisagor Awards from the Chicago Headline Club and the National Sigma Delta Chi Award 2010 from the Society of Professional Journalists. He covered Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992, and now provides media services to governments and political clients. Reach him at www.UrbanStrategiesGroup.com or  www.TheMediaOasis.com)

Finally found a great Orland flower shop

Maybe you have read my laments in the past about ordering flowers from some of the local flower shops in Orland Park. They're all misleading, and expensive. 
But this Valentine's Day I found a great Flower shop that offered the best flowers I have ever purchased.
Sherry's Flowers, 14269 Wolf Rd Orland Park, IL 60467 in the ‎

Promenade Plaza, 

(708) 403-8687.
Click here to read my past columns.
Check these flowers out from Sherry's Flowers in Orland Park.

I bought these on Valentine's Day and had them delivered. And it has been six days and the flowers smell fresh and look beautiful even today.

I can't recommend Sherry's Flowers more.

-- Ray Hanania

Whole Foods: A whole lotta of hassle going on

Whole Foods: A whole lotta of hassle going on
Anyone who has been following my writings know that I used to be a big Jewel Osco fan. I loved the store the way I loved the Chicago Cubs. It was in a competition with Dominicks, but instead of winning the World Series, Dominicks collapsed and disappeared, leaving only Jewel.
And as soon as the competition vanished, Jewel went down the tubes. The food stayed on shelves longer than usual, so that it didn't last as long when you brought it home to cook and eat. There was far more spoilage and far less enjoyment. Prices skyrocketed. But as the only game in town, they had no reason to care. It was either Jewel or a trip to Cubs Food which is a cultural disappointment.
So now comes a place called Whole Foods. I guess it's supposed to be some kind of a "green" type of save the environment place. They butcher animals but they do it in a nicer way. I don't think the animals care that they are naturally fed or chemically plowed with nutrients. Either way the poor animals end up on our dinner tables in a justified form of animal cannibalism.
But I need my tabouli and that means fresh tomatoes, green onions, parsley and cucumbers. And a bag of cracked wheat, which I used to be able to get from Jewel but for some reason has been discontinued. I always have to go to a mainstream store and then take a detour to al-Khayam, the Arab grocer on 159th Street next to the abandoned Orland Video Super Store.
Hating Jewel as much as I do, I had to go to Whole Foods. I actually loved going to that spot years ago when it was a borders Book Store at 153rd and LaGrange Road. Borders was my favorite store, too. But then they died, too, and left us with the culturally vacant and uncreative Barnes & Noble across the street. I might as well sit and sulk at Hooters for lunch.

My tiny basket with its small selection of food items that took me one hour to collect

It only opened a few weeks ago but the parking lot was packed, as packed as it was when it served Borders. I could manage. But when I got to the entrance of the store, it was frightening.
Does anyone know how to run a good grocery store any more?
The baskets were packed into the smallest entrance I had ever seen. Maybe that's why they made the baskets so much smaller than the American-sized Jewel baskets. By the time I struggled to pull a green basket out of the line of baskets, I was shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, all of them sour-pusses fuming steam over the annoyance of being near other people.
It was a nightmare. Did Whole Foods open during the Halloween season on purpose?
I couldn't walk two steps before people were snarking and pushing their carts in front of each other like a mad traffic jam on a snow covered Lake Shore Drive, struggling to find relief. As soon as I walked in, there was the parsley, and the tiniest cucumbers I'd ever seem for 2 for $300. The tomatoes were huge, and only five feet to my left. But that five feet might as well have been one mile of beachfront at Normandy on D-Day on June 6, 1944. Shoppers were strewn across the landscape, their dignity torn from their egos. Crawling through the maze of human hazard.
Who designed this place? Fire him. Or her. It's ridiculous. It's the tiniest grocery store I had ever been in, next to Trader Joe's. But I NEVER go to Trader Joe's to shop for groceries. I only swoop in for a specific food item. That place is small and packed. But Whole Food was like a cattle car packed with cows. And some of the shoppers were cows.
You know, we Americans are fat. We eat so much. We waste so much. Most of the people pushing those tiny little green food baskets that made them look four times fatter than they really are didn't need to be shopping on Sunday. They should be a Lifetime laying out a strategy to lose weight and improve their health. Don't tell me all of those people can't help it. That's baloney. Maybe a few poor souls are overweight because they have no control over their bodily growth, but the some of them are stuffing their faces like pigs in a trough ready for the slaughter.

This used to be a Border's book store. Now, it's a sardine can for consumers

The aisles at Whole Food were so narrow they hold two and half people shoulder to shoulder. When two carts park across from each other, there is no passing until the puzzlement on the faces of the shoppers is resolved. Standing there staring at a shelve with neatly arranged cans of diced tomatoes and boxes of pasta.
I made my way through the store up and down the aisles, one at a time, looking for all that I needed to make tabouli. I was disappointed, of course. They have all kinds of "ethnic foods" limited to Mexican and Italian. Nothing else.
The deli counter was on the other end. It was crunched into such a small space that it was no fun. Yes, I have fun going to the deli counter in Jewel. I just wish Jewel's food was fresher than it is. I stand there and stare at the variety of salads, remembering when I could down a gallon of potato salad and still drive a car. 
Ah, the old days!
Worse, the store made the replenishment of the deli bar a customer hassle, not an employee problem. The Glass case opens out into the crowd, not into the employee section. 
Kind of symbolized what the whole problem with Whole Foods is. This is about the store and its owners. It's not about the grocery store consumer. It's about them. And when you shop at Whole Foods is squeezing your way through crowded aisles is "shopping," you are quickly reminded that you don't matter much there at all. Not as much as the owners and their consultants who thought hey, let's take a neat idea and squish it into a match box and make a whole lotta money!
Nauseating.
-- Ray Hanania

A cynical look at the Orland Tax Rebate Program

A cynical look at the Orland Tax Rebate Program

Well, I will always be a cynic, I guess, especially when it comes to money and politics.

For example, the Village of Orland Park announced they will re-implement the tax rebate program this month (beginning October 29, 2012).

I think it is a great idea. But the timing is oh so suspicious. And I can't but help look at the motives of the village trustees. 

It's a funny thing about the word trustees. It includes the word "trust." And right now I have come to not "trust" all of the village trustees at all. Not all of the TRUSTees are TRUSTworthy in the village of Orland Park.

The Rebates will be processed beginning Oct. 29, and you can expect checks to arrive in your mail boxes in March sometime. March? You mean just before the next Orland Park consolidated election in which voters will be asked to rubber stamp the list of trustees and this time the Village clerk and village president.

The clerk, Dave Maher. is on my naughty list because of the shenanigans from the last election with his pampered son, Pat Maher. (What a mess Maher left at the Orland Fire Protection District, where I was asked to help with communications -- at a lesser cost than the one Maher had, by the way. But Maher's relatives and the relatives of the controversy-plagued former fire chief continue to twist the district's politics for their own selfish benefits.)

With the exception of Trustee Brad O'Halloran, I have never had much confidence in the trustees at all -- one in particular who is simply so hypocritical, but isn't up for election this time around.

I know Mayor Dan McLaughlin wants to do the right thing, but he is handicapped by a collection of trustees elected by little fiefdoms in the village. Each one has their political bases and alliances.

But playing politics with the tax rebate program? Come on folks. Don't you think it is transparent to people?

The rebate program was a genius idea first suggested by Mayor McLaughlin back in 2002, after the village voted to impose a .75 cent increase in the local sales tax, and after the village had their elections. McLaughlin's proposal was a good one. The sales tax would impact everyone including the large number of non-Orland Park residents who came to Orland Park to shop. To lift the burden off the backs of the taxpayers, the village offered an automatic tax rebate program so that residents would get a significant share of their taxes returned to off-set the impact of the sales tax hike.

In 2003, the average tax return was around $240 per household.

In 2008, the village decided they needed the money. The trustees thought enough time had passed and the taxpayers wouldn't remember the reasons for the rebate and the burdensome sales tax rebate. So they partially rolled the rebate back. In 2009, they eliminated the rebate. 

And in 2010 two incumbent trustees, Pat Gira and Ed Schussler barely won re-election. In fact, though they were elected, they got less than 50 percent of the vote. In fact, more Orland Park voters voted for someone else rather than them. Shameful and embarrassing performance if you ask me. (And I'll say it if you don't ask me, too!) 

The idea to re-implement the tax rebate plan came up right after that brutal election. They were concerned.

That was a shock to the Orland Machine. The bigger shock was the beating Cook County Commissioner Elizabeth Liz Doody-Gorman handed to the Orland Machine first in her re-election bid to beat down Pat Maher's feeble, crippled challenge. And then her backing that upset the cozy apple cart Maher had at the Orland Fire Protection District.

Orland's Machine doesn't like shocks and the trustees started to whimper. So, they decided let's give the voters money. Maybe that will make them happy. The economy sucks. Voters are stupid with short-memories. They'll take the money and be happy.

Well, the money being returned doesn't even come close to the money that was returned before. The trustees set a limit on how much can be returned to voters -- err, sorry, taxpayers, just in time for the next local consolidated election. They decided to return ONLY $2.5 million. If all 18,500 qualified taxpayers apply (it's not automatic this time, the village wants us to trust the trustees to make sure recipients qualify), then the average rebate will be a paltry $135.

That's about half what was returned in the past. Just estimating how inflation has devalued the dollar over the past 10 years, I would say the $135 would represent only 30 percent of the amount rebated to taxpayers in 2002 to off-set the oppressive local sales tax hike we continue to pay. That's 1/3rd of what we should be getting back compared to what we used to get back. (Don't promise something and not keep your word. The tax rebate plan was given for political reasons, and returned for political reasons.)

Yes, the economy is bad. But it's not as bad as the performance of some of our trustees on the village board.

And there is an election coming up and the village officials don't want to get b-slapped again. That election was a whooping!

The economy was the excuse, but the real issue is leadership. And when it comes to most of the village's trustees, leadership is about as watered-down as the election campaign tax rebate will be this Spring.

-- Ray Hanania

Orland Fire Protection District hosts "Media Day" Friday Sept. 28 -- meet new recruits, officials, and view training strategies

Orland Fire Protection District hosts "Media Day" Friday Sept. 28 -- meet new recruits, officials, and view training strategies

The Orland Fire Protection District is hosting a special “Media Day” at the district’s Training Center, 10728 west 163^rd Place to chronicle the Academy training and processing of our new Firefighter hires. The event will be held on Friday September 28, 2012 from 9:30 to 11:30 AM

The media will be allowed to view firsthand a series of fire training exercises including:

·         Live fire training

·         Engine operations

·         Hose line advancement

·         Forcible entry

·         Search and Rescue Techniques

·         Fire Extinguishment

Lunch will be provided afterwards at 11:30 am.

Palos Heights Restaurant showcases local comedians

Palos Heights Restaurant showcases local comedians

Sam Buca’s in Palos Heights will showcase a lineup of local comedians at a special performance Wednesday Sept. 26.

Performers will include longtime club owner and comedian Bill Brady, comedians Brian Hicks, Paul Kelly and a special appearance by Southwest News-Herald Columnist Ray Hanania.

The show begins at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $10 each with a two drink purchase minimum. Dinner is also available for guests during the show.

For information, call Sam Buca’s, 12231 S. Harlem Avenue, at 708-361-1226.

END

Finally struggling through real exercise

I've only been a member of Lifetime Health Club now for about three weeks and I finally learned what a real workout is all about. Until now, I've been power walking and jogging on the treadmills. And I thought THAT was exercise.
No. It's socializing. I have been power walking and jogging one hour each morning. I do feel great, that's for sure. But it was just helping me keep my health balance. It wasn't really moving me to slim down my waist, which is my goal. I'm 59. I'm not going to trim down into a six-pack abdomen. My goal is just to be healthier.
Exercise is when you push yourself so far that you can barely complete what you are doing. I had a trainer help me start a real exercise program. And I barely could finish what she had me start.
I've been lucky most of my life. I had a high metabolism. I rarely gained weight and was always slim. Good heart (despite valve replacement surgery in November 2010). I didn't need to exercise, although exercise never hurts. It can only help. But now, I need to exercise. The weight doesn't come off that quickly, but it packs on much faster. Suddenly, when I lived a life with no weight at all and describe as being skinny, now I was putting on the weight without any effort.
The trainer (I'll spare her the harassment of being my trainer : ) so I won't name her) was phenomenal. Very professional. And good. She had me do some basic exercises, not on the treadmill or the popular machines, but at the weights section. Halfway through the hour I had to take a break. She was pushing but she must have thought, maybe you should be on TV's "America's Biggest Loser" program. I won't take that program for granted any more.
The weight machines. The lifts. The large ball and balance. The biggest problem I had besides getting up off the ground was keeping my balance. Heels under the shoulders. Arms straight. Breathing. Keeping your face and shoulders forward. Lifting and pulling the weights.
When the hour was up, I dragged myself out of Lifetime to the car. It was a killer. But it had to be done. Next time I do the session, maybe my Trainer will even let me actually put weights on the machines.
Hey. I'm working my way up to 10 pounds! : )
-- Ray Hanania www.hanania.com