Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Telephone Swag

For those of you who like to keep track of the fundraising activities of our local officeholders -- licit and/or illicit -- file this story under Dialing for Dollars.

Everyone knows Lake County Board Chair Suzi Schmidt is running for IL Senate 31, so your LakeCountyEye was not surprised to receive an invitation to a Nov 12 fundraiser.


NewsSun

The IL GOP picked up the event on their website.

Illinois Republican Party

Not to be outdone, Republican Federation put the event on their website.

Lake County Republican Federation

Being in an uncharacteristic generous mood, your LakeCountyEye decided to dial Schmidt's fundraiser RSVP number and got ... JoAnn Osmond's Legislative Office. (Apparently they make these cell phones for 12-year-old teenagers, because those itty-bitty little keys make it way too easy to misdial.) Anyways, your LakeCountyEye tried again and got ... JoAnn Osmond's Legislative Office. Again.

This being a muckraking investigative blog, and being a student of The Google, your LakeCountyEye has verified that 847-838-6200 is indeed the posted number for JoAnn Osmond's Legislative Office.

Illinois General Assembly
Try the number yourself if you're skeptical.

Your LakeCountyEye is no simple country lawyer but nonetheless is pretty sure something like that is not legal. Well, that is if 5 ILCS 430/5‑35 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes is to be believed ...

State Officials and Employees Ethics Act
Your LakeCountyEye seems to recall that it was State employees doing political fundraising while on the taxpayer's dime that got George Ryan tossed into the federal lockup. Just sayin!

Anyways if you're a constituent of JoAnn Osmond's but all you are hearing from her is a busy signal, your LakeCountyEye suggests to keep trying. The magic crystal ball predicts that the lines will open up sometime after Nov 12.

16 comments:

Team America said...

So here's a link to the News-Sun article which is a little more balanced than your hit piece on Suzi.

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/newssun/news/1876603,5_1_WA11_SCHMIDT_S1-091111.article

At least I have an elephant on my blog. When are you guys going to drop the 'we are a non-partisan blog' claim?

Team America said...

Here's the hypertext link for the article since the entire address was rather long.

redtail said...

Hit piece? Oh please. This posting presented documentation of the facts of a clear misuse of government resources. In other words, very like what Blagojevich and Ryan did. What answer do you have to that, team america?

Team America said...

My answer is, read the News-Sun article. The explanation seems pretty clear to me.

Bystander said...

This is a BIG red flag. Osmond may be telling the truth when she says she pays for the phone line and the office herself, but what are her constituents to think? How can they believe that her focus is on representing them fairly when she's also conducting political business at the same time, with the same phone number? Couldn't she at least get a separate line?!

I am familiar with the workings of several of our local state legislators' offices. Most do not use their legislative offices for political purposes, even if they do pay the expenses themselves, and I have not heard of any who use their regular legislative phone number for said business. Shame on Joanne Osmond! This is a breach of common sense if not ethics.

Matt said...

Team America subscribes to the political ethic "IOKIYAR."

redtail said...

"IOKIYAR." Never heard of that before so I went to the interwebs for an explanation.

"It's Okay if You're a Republican."

Yep, that's Team America's operating philosophy, all right.

Crazy4glf said...

Sanford had an explanation.
Foley had an explanation (and help from Shimkus?).
Craig had an explanation.

Now, TA has an explanation.


If a Dem does it, it is immediately wrong.
If a Repub does it, we must await the fair airing of the facts. Unless of course one is Ted Stevens and the Bush Justice Department screws up.


Love the slam at the Lake County Eye for allegedly being partisan when providing copius substantiation.

TA posts conjecture, characatures, insults ad nauseum with no substantiation or a modicum of decency and that is ok.

Barney Baxter said...

Alright you chipmunks, let's everyone play nice.

Hi TA, whenever we get a scoop here we run with it. If you got some unpublished dirt on the Democrats send it to lakecountyeye@gmail.com and we'll post it here.
-BB-

Team America said...

BB - fair enough. But only after I post it at Team America. ;-)

Anonymous said...

The silence on this "non-partisan" blog about Dr. Keller said it all.

Matt said...

Spare us your righteous indignation over the Keller issue. It's one local issue that unfortunately involved a death.

Where is your concern for those who die every day from lack of health insurance, including the 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 who died last year as a result of not having health insurance? That's six preventable deaths a day. And we can thank republican obstructionism for delaying any reasonable solutions, because, heaven forbid that it should raise your taxes any (which it won't).

redtail said...

I'm one of the (infrequent) bloggers here and if we had known anything more than what was in the paper about Keller, we would have posted it. Why rehash something the MSM is already all over?

Barney Baxter said...

Just for the record, the LCE took a look at the Keller Kerfuffle on Aug 12 of this year.
-BB-

Team America said...

Um, yeah, but the spin on the story here was not Keller's misdeeds, but trying to gin up evidence that I was somehow improperly informed about it. Considering the magnitude of the story, not this blog's most shining moment for investigative journalism.

Barney Baxter said...

Shrug, TA, you were all over the play-by-play. To -- erm -- death. We provided some color commentary.
-BB-