Peraica's Press Release on his arrest for vandalizing election signs

Here is the press release Tony Peraica issued Sunday afternoon in response to his arrest on charges of election vandalism:

When passing through McCook at about 11 PM, on our way to Willow Springs, a marked McCook police car almost immediately began to follow us as we were going south on Joliet Road. We were followed for about half mile, pulled over without reason given and harassed.  Police searched the vehicle, found nothing, and were about to let us continue. 

Then, a police sergeant came to the scene followed by another, third police car, with a male wearing only jeans who pointed to me and alleged that I caused criminal damage to his property --a cardboard sign.  This apparently inebriated male, who was barefoot and without any clothes above waist, proceeded to say that he saw me damage his cardboard sign. None of this is remotely true. I never even got out of the van.

The arresting officer was apologetic but was ordered to do this and had to follow orders.

This is a blatant abuse of police authority by a desperate candidate who is using his police department to engage in political retribution just because he can. This kind of behavior has no place in our democracy.

If elected officials abuse their authority like this to trump up phony charges against other elected officials, and get away with it, what will they do to an average citizen who does not have the ability to respond or fight back.

I have been fighting corruption and illegal behavior for many years in Cook County and this is just another example of such behavior.

Tony Peraica

BREAKING NEWS -- Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica arrested for ripping down Tobolski signs

11:45 am SUNDAY

Tony Peraica, cook county commissioner in the 16th District, arrested and jailed in McCook

Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica was arrested late Saturday night when he was caught ripping down political signs from private property.

Peraica is planning his own press conference later today to call the arrest and jailing a set-up, claiming that the arrest was made in McCook where his opponent, Jeff Tobolski is the mayor.

But Tobolski reports that Periaca, who was dressed in black, and another man, were driving around in a white van tearing down signs when a Stickney police officer observed them tearing down the signs and pulled them over. They were given a warning and allowed to leave, according to Tobolski.

About 15 to 20 minutes later, the same van was seen driving through McCook in what many would describe as a last-minute political trick, tearing down signs. The van was observed by a McCook Police officer pulling out of private property with several signs destroyed on the ground.

"The police officer stopped the van. It was late at night. And as he was questioning them about what they were doing on the property and if they had anything to do with destroying the private property, the owner of the property came out yelling that they destroyed his signs," Tobolski said.

The property in question is the McCook Bohemian Restaurant on Joliet Road.

Peraica was charged with criminal trespass and destruction of private property. The complaint was signed by the owner of the bar. Peraica was held in the McCook Jail until McCook authorities allowed Peraica to be released on an I-Bond without having to post money.

The fact that Peraica was in McCook driving around in an unmarked van in black clothing is evidence enough that Peraica was up to his old mischief. He'll do his best to claim it was a political set-up but you have to be an incompetent imbecile to be allowed to be put in to a position of being caught like that.

"Peraica should resign from office immediately. When you drive through McCook you will see several large signs for Peraica and no one has bothered them or destroyed them or taken any of them down because I believe every candidate has a right to campaign without the fear of your property being destroyed," Tobolski said.

"There are many signs out there for many candidates and we don’t touch any of them. I’m not taking any signs down because I respect the right of the voters to vote for whomever they are right. Obviously, Tony Peraica doesn't feel the same way. What’s he going to do next, storm my home? His erratic behavior of a strange man is outrageous and I think every voter in Cook County and the 16th District must question his ability to run a county district and to represent anyone in this county. I am shocked a man who ran for state’s attorney and a lawyer would knowingly break the law like this.

Peraica was unavailable for comment, but he told the media he was putting his signs up late at night and on public property, even though there are laws in most municipalities that prohibit the placing of political signs on public property.

This event shows Peraica to clearly be one of the most unethical, most despicable candidates running for office. On Tuesday Nov. 2, voters can throw that kind of dirty politics out the window."

THE BIG QUESTION: What was Tony Peraica really doing that late at night driving in a van with a campaign worker dressed in black?

-- Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com

The dumbest law I have ever seen

The dumbest law I have ever seen

By Ray Hanania

The City of Belleville Illinois adopted a law two years ago to prevented anyone over the age of 12 from trick-or-treating, but it is starting to get a lot of attention these days.

It’s bad enough that some people think that Halloween is a celebration of evil and devil worship – a distortion of the true history of the children’s holiday and candy industry commercialization jackpot.

But to restrict anyone from going out in costume for Halloween is ridiculous and stupid.

The Belleville law fines anyone over the age of 12 who goes out to trick-or-treat with fines of $100 to $1,000. The city actually has assigned their police to monitor the Halloween to arrest the offenders. It’s similar to other laws in a few other communities that set age limits on fun.

The biggest complaints are that older kids and even young adults often stay out late past 10 pm or even 10:30knocking on doors to ask for candy. But most communities don’t burden their police departments and instead adopt time zones in which treat-or-treat revelry can take place, for example between 3 pm and 8 pm.

Putting a limit on the time, say 8 pm, seems more reasonable a response.

Are they concerned that criminals will be out dressed in costume to rob the homes? That’s a problem with any holiday and any circumstance. But it is a criminal problem in which police can be called to investigate. If someone wants to rob someone else, trick-or-treating is not going to make it easier or more difficult.

America is becoming a society that lives in fear. Fear of everything from terrorist threats to adults in children’s costumes.

We would rather put restrictions on ourselves and even violate the U.S. Constitution rather than use common sense and invest our resources in strengthening our police departments and justice systems to make prosecution of criminal acts more effective.

Instead, we prefer to feel good and pass laws that eliminate those potential fears. But it is impossible to wipe away every fear. Creating ridiculous laws only creates more and more fears.

Why not impose a curfew on everyone to keep them off the streets after 8 pm. That would stop prostitution, drug dealers and street gang members.

Why not ban anyone from loitering anywhere at any time? Why not bury our heads in the sand and hope all of the fears that are mongered by leaders who lack the talent to develop good solutions so we won’t see the scary things that exist in real life.

Life is sometimes tragic. Terrible things do happen. But so much good that would happen also gets wiped away when we live our lives cowering in fear and responding to those fears through ridiculous unnecessary laws is also wiped away and lost.

How about our society gets more involved in neighborliness? Why not stop the new cultural trait where we all bury ourselves in our own lives and barely say hello to our neighbors? Why not tear down the huge security fences we build around our homes and families and create security based on neighborhood networking where the protection of our children and our homes becomes a communitywide responsibility rather than the current attitude that it is none of my business?

But then, passing a stupid law is so much easier to achieve than adhering to common sense.

(Ray Hanania is a morning radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Chicagoland Syndication 10-24-10: Have we become a culture that enjoys tragedy?

Have we become a culture that enjoys tragedy?

By Ray Hanania

One of my favorite TV programs is America’s Funniest Videos hosted by Tom Bergeron, one of the funniest hosts on television.

It’s also one of the country’s most popular TV programs, too. But isn’t that the problem?

America’s Funniest Videos features videos taken by members of the public of “funny” moments. Moments like when a father tries to tumble like his four year old and ends up kicking the girl in the face. Or when a bicyclist crashes in to a wall. Or two girls on a trampoline, flying off and falling on their backs.

And these examples are not the worst.

I watch these video snippets and while I laugh, I wince, too. They have to be very painful. So why am I laughing?

Maybe that is how our culture has degenerated over the past few decades. We’ve become a society of cruelty, but we will never admit it.

Wiki Leaks recently published thousands of classified documents it obtained from a source in the military and it turns out that some of the things that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney told us about the war were in fact lies.

Far more innocent civilians were killed by our soldiers than we want to admit. But we were so excited to cheer on the war and criticize and even demonize those who had the courage to speak the truth. That our mission wasn’t to free anyone in Iraq. It was to extract revenge and to control Iraq’s oil.

We wanted to profit.

That’s very funny, too, of course.

We’re a society that drives down the expressways and only slow down to gawk at accidents. These gapers’ blocks as they are called, slow down our society but provide the kind of entertainment we have come to enjoy.

Tragedy sells. Just ask the professionals in the news media that spend hours and weeks of hard work to uncover the latest scandals. The news media motto is “If it bleeds it leads.” That means the more tragic an event, the more horrific and the more frightening, the more it pushes its way to the front pages of our newspapers and our TV news.

Is this something we should be proud of? Accepting lies rather than the truth because the lies are more entertaining?

It’s more complicated than that, of course. The truth is we sometimes prefer the lie to the truth because as much as we love tragedy and pain, we don’t like it when it involves ourselves. We don’t want to admit that we have done wrong. Just others.

So we chose the lie as the answer to complicated problems that range from the Middle East conflict to local politics.

Television is filled with programs that involve drama. Recently, while waiting for a doctor to check my back at the emergency room, I sat for about four hours at Palos Hospital with about two dozen other patients and watched the FOX Network and a series of programs involving “judges” who detail the ugliest of relationships in our society to show who is more wrong.

It took that emergency room visit to realize two things. I need to do something about my computer-driven posture. And, I have to stop enjoying the suffering of others.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all did?

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and morning radio talk show host. You can contact him at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Chicagoland Syndication: 10-24-10: Worst candidate I have seen in years

Worst candidate I have seen in years

By Ray Hanania

As voters, we’re used to bad choices. But the Nov. 2 election for the Cook County Board presents residents in the suburban 17^th District with one of the worst candidates to seek public office, Patrick Maher.

Maher is in a mudslinging battle with two term incumbent Liz Gorman. Maher has claimed that Gorman is a puppet of the hated outgoing Cook County Board President Todd Stroger, alleging she supported Strogers many tax increases, which is all a lie, of course.

Gorman single-handedly kept the board from giving up and despite several failed attempts, and she put together the votes by pure stubbornness to repeal half of the Stronger 1 percent Sales Tax hike. She has been the strongest voice against tax increases on the board.

Maher has to lie because Maher has a bad secret. And in political life, there are no secrets. When he was a college student, he brutally beat up a fellow classmate over a girl, who later became his wife. Maher was charged with aggravated felony assault but the jury deadlocked over the fate of a rising star of one of the state’s most powerful political families. Instead, he plead guilty to one count of misdemeanor battery.

The man he beat at Illinois State University in 1991 is Curt Bellone. Bellone is from New Lenox.  (Click HERE to read a story on the conviction.)

This week, Bellone’s mother voiced a robo-call (a political term for a phone call that plays a recorded message to targeted voters) telling the story and urging voters to reject Maher’s candidacy.

In the passioned phone call, which I received and heard, Bellone’s mother, Karen Peterson (who is now 65), says:  "Patrick Maher brutally beat my son and has spent 19 years trying to hide that fact. Patrick Maher has spent his campaign for Cook County commissioner lying about this crime, refusing to be accountable for the crime to which he pled guilty and denying the damage he did to another human being. ... He should never be put in a position of public trust such as Cook County commissioner."

Click HERE to listen to the entire audio message from Karen Peterson about the beating of her son.

Maher is a decent person. I’ve met and spoken with him. He’s just surrounded by the usual rabble of cheerleaders looking to find their place at the public trough, and has the oppressive weight of a political dynasty on his shoulders.

He is the cousin of Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, a scion of one of Chicago’s most powerful Machine Organizations, the 19^th Ward. His father  is Orland Park Village Clerk Dave Maher. The Hynes family and friends funds much of their elections.

Maher was put in charge of the Orland Fire Protection District, quickly transforming it in to a Chicago-like bureaucracy with one of the most bloated budgets of any fire protection district in the state.

But to go higher, Maher had to bury his criminal past. He never mentioned it in media candidate questionnaires (except once, after FOX News reporter Dane Placko started investigating).

(Here is Placko's news report)



(Click HERE to view it on the FOX 32 Web Page.)

Maher’s birthdate was also changed by one day. He says it was a mistake. But everyone knows that without an accurate birth date you cannot find a criminal record.

Maher’s past is not the issue. But covering it up, is. And covering up a past instead of being a man to address it makes him a poor choice for public office, one of the worst, in fact.

When this election is over, he should quit the Fire Protection District and instead of listening to the pressures of his political aristocracy, find his place in society, one where he can raise his head up and find respect.

It’s not there, though, in this election.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Chicagoland Syndication 10-20-10: American freedoms hanging out to dry

American freedoms hanging out to dry

By Ray Hanania

You'll want to hold your nose on this one -- with a clothes pin.

Jill Saylor lives in a mobile home in Canton, Ohio, where she came up with a small way to fight global warming. But, she’s being hung out to dry by her trailer park management company.

Saylor has come to symbolize the battle between the old days when people were free, and the new days where everything is litigated in court and where “freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose” (the Janice Joplin lyrics from her song "Bobby McGee").

Do Americans have anything left to lose?

The mobile park where Saylor lives has a ban on drying your clothes out in public, in your backyard. If mobile homes even have a back yard. But according to the New York Times, Saylor is not alone. Turns out that in private communities -- places where an owner rents or leases out space for you to live -- the number one ban, among many, is one that prohibits the public drying of clothes on clothes lines outside of the home.

When I was young, I remember looking across our white picket fence and seeing dozens of backyards as far as the eye could see with clothes lines with damp clothes drying in the sun and waving in the breeze held only by wooden clothes pins. Most of the clothes were sheets, shirts and pants. But you'd see the occasional underwear and bras and private things like lingerie. But it's not the saucy aspect of the practice that has the owners of Saylor's trailer park up in arms against her. They just don't like the site of clothes hanging on a clothes line. It makes the neighborhood look, "trashy" maybe?

The world has changed a lot.

When I was young, our parents let us go trick-or-treating "until the street lights came on." These days, a child doesn't walk the street in daylight without a mother or parent closely monitoring them for tragedies like a child kidnapper, sexual predator or bullying by other students their age. And we're not talking just kindergarten. We're talking high school, too.

Some economists claim that you can save as much as 20 percent on your home energy bills by hanging the clothes out to dry rather than running them through the dryer. Everyone has a washer and a dryer these days. It's an expensive convenience, but isn't convenience supposed to be expensive?

Common sense should rule but common sense is going out the window. The clothes lines that Saylor put up were not like the old days when the line stretched from the back fence to the brick wall of the back of the house in several rows. Or from poll to poll -- many people actually had clothes line polls cemented in the backyard as permanent fixtures, a service they paid for just as they pay for dryers from Sears or now Costco.

Saylor has a unique system of squares that minimized the visual size of the drying process. It is kind of like a rectangular maze with inner lines of clothes drying. It made it all look so efficient.

Why not? Well, some think what Saylor’s doesn't look good.

I say the restrictions are all wet.

(Chicagoland Syndication. Ge information at www.RadioChicagoland.com.) 

CHicagoland Syndication 10-17-10: Ed Vrdolyak's hand slapping - Is there any doubt the system is corrupt?

Ed Vrdolyak's hand slapping: Is there any doubt the system is corrupt?

By Ray Hanania

Let me get this straight.

Ed Vrdolyak, one of the slipperiest politicians in Illinois who everyone assumed was guilty but had a Teflon career for years until this week, gets 10 months in jail for his role in a $1.5 million kick back scheme involving a Gold Coast property.

And the same Feds are trying to put Rod Blagojevich in jail for 30 years for never taking one cent for his personal use, but did what every politician (including Vrdolyak) in pushing contractors and friends to donate to his campaign.

This is the poster image for Illinois’ infamous and oft cited “culture of corruption.” The culture of corruption isn’t just about the politicians who slip through the cracks and eventually get caught – it only took 30 years to finally put Fast Eddie in a cushy prison after another federal judge – and friend – sentenced him to probation and community service that had him making calls from his limousine to raise money for his clout-heavy cronies.

The culture of corruption in Illinois is endemic to the state government and applies more directly to the system in which the corrupt politicians play.

It’s the system that is corrupt and the people who haven’t gone to jail and the ones pulling the strings.

So what Vrdolyak got caught. Ed Vrdolyak is Mr. Personality. Mr. Popular. The pal of friend and foe. He is one of the smartest politicians in Illinois and pal-ed up to politicians he supported and fought with.

He was well-liked by the political establishment which made it easy for him to rise to the top of the grunge when he led the infamous Vrdolyak 29 to lead a race-based campaign that succeeded in stymieing the administration of Harold Washington during his first term as mayor.

This was the Ed Vrdolyak who found it so easy to bring judges of all sorts to his home for the annual private picnic in a backyard partially built on a Chicago street he managed to acquire without raising one eyebrow from the Feds.

This was the Ed Vrdolyak, who when he lost his power in the Democratic party, slipped easily into the comforting leadership of the Republican Party.

He was liked. And because Ed Vrdolyak was liked, he got a pillow slap from the first judge, who doesn’t deserve to remain on the bench. And now he is getting a slap on the wrist to make the public feel better.

Even the prosecutors, who failed to get the three and one-half year prison term for Vrdolyak that they originally sought, were excited that Fast Eddie was sent to prison at all.

Meanwhile, the unliked and woefully disdained Rod Blagojevich is being forced to defend himself against trumped up charges from the U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Oh the Vrdolyak decision to go to summer camp for 10 months must have made Fitzgerald feel extra good, considering that things haven’t been going his way as of late.

Fitzgerald’s crew failed to win a conviction of Blagojevich in the first trial on the 23 of the 24 charges. They did get the jury to agree that Blagojevich lied to the FBI. But they couldn’t get a unanimous jury nod of the serious charges of corruption.

But Blagojevich is easy to attack and Vrdolyak is difficult. The public doesn’t care too much for either, although Blagojevich has gained much support by going public to respond to the public outcries by the federal government that characterized their 18 months of pre-trial public lobbying.

Blagojevich is disliked by the politicians and Vrdolyak is held in high esteem despite his political shenanigans.

I liked Vrdolyak, too. He was a crafty shell game manipulator. But he always went too far, including in his role in the Town of Cicero with former President Betty Loren-Maltese who was sent to prison for 8 years for her role in stealing $10 million – another injustice in that the sentence was too lenient considering how much she stole from the taxpayers there.

Vrdolyak had a pattern similar to that of Loren-Maltese. While they stole, they were doling out favors to many. And in Vrdolyak’s case, many in the public who benefited from Vrdolyak’s charity wrote letters on his behalf that “swayed” the federal judge.

Vrdolyak gets 10 months and Blagojevich gets threats of 30 years.

Did you need anything more to demonstrate the state’s culture of corruption and how bad it really is?

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist, media strategist and morning radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

The Chicago Newsroom Weekly TV Program: The new and old media

The Chicago Newsroom Weekly TV Program: The new and old media
Hosted by Ken Davis
In this week's program, Ken Davis is joined by Sun-Times columnist, Esther J. Cepeda, Thom Clark, President, Community Media Workshop, Ray Hanania, independent columnist, and Neil Tesser, Chicago jazz writer. The panel discusses "The New News", a report on the state of Chicago's online media.This program was produced by Chicago Access Network TV.



# # #

Chicagoland Syndication: When Free Speech Just Crosses the Line

When Free Speech Just Crosses the Line

By RAY HANANIA

Free speech has never been more under assault. It has led to the firing of three top journalists: White House dean Helen Thomas, Octavia Nasr of CNN, and popular CNN talk host Rick Sanchez.

It has dominated the headlines with the threatened burning of a Quran (Islamic holy book) by a pastor in Gainesville, Fla.

And it’s before the U.S. Supreme Court, involving a father of a fallen U.S. Marine who was appalled when members of a nearby church decided to protest at his son’s funeral chanting hateful rhetoric about the war, gays and more.

The line that divides what is right and wrong on free speech is not as simply drawn as it once was when people would say you can say anything short of yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theater.

Today, it is so much more complicated. But is it because the issues have changed? Or, are we just giving the free speech of unpopular causes more play in the news media and in our daily discussions?

Thomas, Nasr and Sanchez are all victims of a political battle tied to the Middle East. And so were the threats by Pastor Terry Jones to burn the Quran.

But what about the protests at the burial ceremonies of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The father of a fallen marine sued members of a Kansas church when they showed up at his son’s funeral denouncing homosexuality. The marine was not gay, but the protesters decided to use the high profile burial as a podium to air their views nationally.

Protesters carried signs proclaiming “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates you.”

As offensive as the sentiments are, chances are the Court will rule on the side of free speech. The U.S. Constitution doesn’t distinguish between good free speech and ugly free speech, although sometimes I wish they had.

There is something wrong with free speech when it is OK to scream ugly epitaphs at the grieving family of a man who sacrificed his life so that the protesters could speak. A society that says it is OK to burn a holy book like the Quran, or presumably even the Bible or Torah, and yet in the same breath in many cities around the country, you could be arrested, face a stiff fine and even be jailed for multiple convictions if you burn a pile of leaves in front of your home.

Come to think of it, I really liked the old days when burning leaves in front of a home was OK, and few people thought about hate speech or burning Qurans.

(Ray Hanania's Chicagoland column is distributed to several local newspapers including the Southwest News-Herald, the Lawndale News and the West Suburban Journal newspapers. If you would like to add his free Chicagoland column to your newspaper, email rayhanania@comcast.com.)

Maher-Gorman battle heats up over signs and Maher's past conviction

Democrat Pat Maher accused his incumbent rival this week of tearing down his campaign signs, but Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman said the charge is another one of Maher's lies.

Some signs have been torn down, but it looks like supporters on both sides are damaging the other signs. The Gorman sign on the lawn of my neighbor was torn down last night. Maher said that his signs were also taken down the same day.

The accusation from Maher came the same day that the Gorman campaign mailed out a hard-hitting two page fold-out detailing Maher's past criminal record and his apparent attempts to hide the conviction. (Click HERE to read a story on the conviction.)

Maher said the story is false, although it has been detailed at length on FOX 32 TV by Dane Placko. The records are filed with the courts and cannot be falsified, Gorman said.

"No signs were taken down at all," Gorman responded. 


"Our volunteers went door-to-door and they got a great response from residences. We didn't open mailboxes like the other side to drop literature."


Gorman said many voters who had put Maher signs on their lawns took them down after reading about his past criminal record.


Gorman said that many voters were not aware of his past, or allegations that he intentionally changed his birth date by one day to make discovery of the court records more difficult to find. The conviction was not detailed in his newspaper interviews at two newspapers including the SouthtownStar, but when word got out that FOX 32 was investigating, Maher acknowledged his past in only one interview with the Arlington Heights Daily Herald.


-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

GAP Logo change: Shows you how shallow most people are today

Really. The GAP decides to change its logo and thousands of people -- many in the design industry who did not get the contract, start screaming. Seriously. Is that what people care about these days. The old GAP logo and the new GAP logo are truly the least important things we should be getting up in arms about in today's world. People are starving to death. Unemployment is still outrageous. And what gets people motivated

The old logo, dumped and now back:


The new logo, that has been scrapped

Honestly. The new logo looks far better than the old logo. The old logo is tired and unimaginative. The new one suggests moving in to the new century.

But the GAP owners cower under fear of offending the market, when the reality is the only people offended are a few over-active bloggers and a marketing industry upset that it didn't get the contract to design a new logo.

The GAP's real problem though is in execution. It's how they unveiled it that caused them problems. Instead of preparing the public, and alerting them so it wasn't a surprise -- surprise always makes for bad news in any industry -- they simply posted the new logo on the web site without any pre-notice and it was a surprise.

Pathetic and said reflect on our society. Shallow. Overly critical. Too angry. Ignoring so much that the GAP has done to make our lives easier. I prefer clothes from the GAP and have all my life. If the GAP wants to design a new logo, I support it.

But like with people who write letters to the editor, only those people who are upset take the time to do so. People who are happy have no emotional fuel or temper to push them to write anything. So the one angry letter looks like 500 when in fact it only represents one angry letter. And for every one angry letter, there are usually more than 500 positive people who feel the opposite but don't have the emotion-charged motivation to write and express their views.

Grow a spine GAP and tell the whiners to shut the f up!

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Battle for freedoms clothes-pinned to too much government-like controls and less freedoms

You'll want to hold your nose on this one, with a clothes pin.

Jill Saylor lives in a mobile home in Canton, Ohio. Yet she has come to symbolize the battle between the old days when people were free and the new days where everything is litigated in court and freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Americans are losing the rights to everything and they have nothing left to lose, the Janice Joplin lyrics from her song "Bobby McGee." But for Saylor, who came up with a small way to fight global warming, she's being hung out to dry by her trailer park management company.

The park where Saylor lives has a ban on drying your clothes out in public, in your backyard. If mobile homes even have a back yard. But according to the New York Times, Saylor is not alone. Turns out that in private communities -- places where an owner rents or leases out space for you to live -- the number one ban, among many, is one that prohibits the public drying of clothes on clothes lines outside of the home.

When I was young, I remember looking across out white picket fence and seeing dozens of backyards as far as the eye could see with cloths lines and clothes pins taut with damp clothes drying in the sun and waving in the breeze. Most of the clothes were sheets, shirts and pants. But you'd see the occasional underwear and bras and private things like lingerie. But it's not the saucy aspect of the practice that has the owners of Saylor's trailer park up in arms against her. They just don't like the site of clothes hanging on a clothes line. It makes the neighborhood look, "trashy" maybe?

But trashy has become our life in America these days where more and more controls are stripping away our private rights. We're living under oppressive restrictions that prohibit us from doing things that our parents and grandfathers took for granted. Some of the restrictions are the result of board members with nothing better to do. Others are the result of our own fears or maybe the conditioning which prohibits us from being the free people we are.

When I was young, our parents let us go trick-or-treating "until the street lights came on." These days, a child doesn't walk the street in daylight without a mother or parent closely monitoring them for tragedies like a child kidnapper, sexual predator or bullying by other students their age. And we're not talking just high school. We're talking kindergarten.

I used to walk to my kindergarten class. Was the world safer then or is it just a mental state of mind that is deteriorating?

Some economists claim that you can save as much as 20 percent on your home energy bills by hanging the clothes out to dry rather than running them through the dryer. Everyone has a washer and a dryer these days. It's an expensive convenience, but isn't convenience supposed to be expensive?

Everything has become a cause of a problem for someone else. We didn't have big backyard fences when I was a kid. They were short, picket fences you could see past and through. Today, everyone wants privacy. They erect wall-like wood fences that are six feet high to separate themselves from their neighbors. Maybe that is the real problem. We don't talk to each other any more. It's easy to dislike someone you don't know, and disliking people increases in a society where people lock themselves inside their castles to protect themselves from their neighbors, who might be sex predators and criminals on parole.

Common sense should rule but common sense is going out the window. The clothes lines that Saylor put up were not like the old days when the line stretched from the back fence to the brick wall of the back of the house in several rows. Or from poll to poll -- many people actually had clothes line polls cemented in the backyard as permanent fixtures, a service they paid for just as they pay for dryers from Sears or now Costco.

Saylor has a unique system of squares that minimized the visual size of the drying process. It is kind of like a rectangular maze with inner lines of clothes drying. It made it all look so efficient.

Why not? Well, some think what Saylor does doesn't look good.

I say the restrictions are all wet.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Scott Lee Cohen's campaign stands out above the rest when it comes to positive messages

Scott Lee Cohen's campaign for governor stands out about the rest

Television commercial breaks are filled with mudslinging from the various candidates. The candidates for the U.S. Senate, Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, spend most of their time bashing each other. During the 5 pm news on WLS TV, I saw six commercials from each of them bashing each other.

It's the same in the race for governor between the anointed lead candidates, Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn and Republican challenger Bill Brady are hammering each other with accusations and attacks.

It's sickening that in our culture, the only way to stand out in an election is to throw mud and broadcast a tsunami of negative commercials.

There is one candidate who stands out above the crowd. Scott Lee Cohen. Every commercial I have seen of his has been positive. Instead of bashing Quinn or Brady, Cohen has been pushing his idea to host job fairs to help people out of work -- there is 10 percent unemployment in the state -- to find new jobs.

It's so positive that the mainstream news media -- which benefits from the attack ads because they are purchased on their stations and in ads in their newspapers -- have been attacking Cohen, challenging his positive messages and questioning the job fairs. It got so bad that Cohen lashed back at the thinned-skinned hypocritical media which loves to dish it out but can't take the criticism. Cohen chastised the media for focusing on the negative, ignoring his campaign and then rushing in with absurd claims that the public is not interested in his job fairs.

It sounds like the mainstream media is protecting its election campaign revenue flow. Data predicts that $3 billion will be spent on election ads by the November 2 election, much by unanimous organizations that don't have to identify themselves or their sources. The media allows the other candidates to bash each other because it brings in big money. Bashing Cohen allows the media to suck up to those candidates.

It's pathetic. Voters are tired of the name-calling, the attack mailers and TV commercials. They are nauseating. I want to see one candidate who spends his money focusing on what he will do to help the people of Illinois, not waste money attacking his opponent so that he can bring him down and make his own poll numbers look better. That's what negative ads do. They bring down the opponent and make the attacker appear to be better. In reality, the attacker doesn't look better. They stay the same as they were.

But they could be better if they would focus their attention telling voters how they plan to deal with Illinois' gargantuan economic problems. How do we get people back to work? How do we raise revenues without increasing the burden on the already over-burdened taxpayers? How do we trim waste and end corruption and make sure that the taxpayers get their money's worth from our elected officials.

I'm not hearing that from Kirk, Giannoulias, Quinn or Brady.

But I am hearing it from Cohen.

Voters should wise up and stop allowing the media and the negative attacks to lead them through another election in which the same old people are put in power and nothing changes. Nothing.

Take a careful look at Cohen and judge for yourself. The guy has his act together.

As for those who would attack him for his personal issues -- a failed marriage, a bad relationship -- well, everyone is in the same boat. Every person in Illinois has something that is embarrassing in their life. No one is any better than Scott Lee Cohen. He's just a human being like all of us.

But if a candidate can be judged on how they conduct themselves in an election, Scott Lee Cohen has risen above the rest.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Tribune slams Joan Murphy and Deborah Sims but endorsed Liz Gorman for the Cook County Board

Tribune slams Joan Patricia Murphy and Deborah Sims, but endorsed Liz Gorman for the Cook County Board

5th District (South Side, south suburbs): Incumbent Deborah Sims has a disastrous pro-tax, anti-jobs agenda, but Democrats in her economically distressed district renominated her over a far superior candidate. Her opponent on the Republican ticket is Miriam Shabo. No endorsement.

6th District (south suburbs): Time and again, incumbent Democrat Joan Patricia Murphy has cast votes that punished taxpayers and employers in her district. We've noted before that Murphy is fiercely dedicated to three things: obeying Stroger, kowtowing to big labor and raising taxes: In 2009, Murphy, like Sims, even voted against a sales tax rollback that she had co-sponsored. Republicans offer a much better option in small-businesswoman Sandra Czyznikiewicz, whose reform votes on the board could begin to undo the damage Murphy has wrought on her constituents. The Tribune endorses Czyznikiewicz, who wants to immediately repeal the remaining half of the Stroger sales tax increase — and who is determined to cut the county's bloated spending.

17th District (southwest, west and northwest suburbs): We could fill the page detailing the to-and-fro in this hard-fought race. WFLD-TV outed Democrat challenger Patrick Maher for not coming clean in candidate questionnaires about his arrest for severely beating a fellow student in his days at Illinois State University. GOP incumbent Elizabeth Doody Gorman faces questions — but not charges — about a transfer of money claimed by Chrysler Financial Services to the Orland Township Republican Organization. We can't begin to adjudicate all of the competing and complex accusations in this race. But we do suggest that voters look past the dispiriting volley to focus on this: Gorman aggressively co-led the fight to roll back Stroger's sales tax hike, and she has a solid record of working to reduce county spending and streamline this government. The Tribune endorses Gorman.

Local Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to be featured on "The Ray Hanania Show"radio

Local Soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to be featured on Chicagoland radio

Elmhurst, Il – Soldiers from the Chicagoland land area serving in Afghanistan and Iraq will speak to the Chicagoland audiences about their experiences in a new segment to be broadcast on “The Ray Hanania Show” on WJJG AM 1530 radio called “Voices of our Soldiers.”

The new segment is being coordinated with the U.S. Military command in Kabul, Afghanistan and in Baghdad, Iraq.

The first interview will be with Sgt. Joshua Hall, whose mother is from Yorkville and fiancée lives in Batavia, Illinois. The segment will be broadcast live from Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2010 at 9 am Chicago time (6:30 pm Afghanistan).

Hall is a member of the US Army infantry fighting the terrorists, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The public is invited to call in and show support for the troops by calling 708-493-1530 during the segment.

“This is an exciting segment for the show. As a veteran who served during the Vietnam War, I am very proud of our military who have served to protect this country from terrorism and extremist violence,” said show host Ray Hanania.

Hanania, a former City Hall reporter (77-92) and radio talk show host at WLS AM, launched the WJJG radio show in February 2008. The program focuses on listener talk and interviews with people in the news.

The program is broadcast Monday through Friday, Mon-Thurs 8-9:30 am and Fri 7 to 9 am. On Fridays, Hanania simulcasts a show between 7 and 8 am with WNZK in Detroit, Michigan focusing on American Arab issues. Hanania is American Palestinian. His co-host in Detroit is Laila elHussini who is American Syrian.

The audience can listen to the show on radio and also live on the Internet every morning. The show also broadcasts in live video, too, at www.RadioChicagoland.com. WJJG AM 1530 broadcasts primarily to the Northern Illinois region and is a daytime FCC licensed station. The signal can be picked up as far south as Orland Park, Illinois and to the Wisconsin and Iowa borders.

Hanania is an award winning syndicated columnist on mainstream American and Middle East issues. His columns are published in local community newspapers and his Middle East column is published in the Jerusalem Post and distributed by Creators Syndicate.

END

At least State Rep. Kevin McCarthy knows how to campaign

At least State Rep. Kevin McCarthy knows how to campaign

State Rep. Kevin McCarthy ventured from his office, one house away from me, to stop by and say hi. He's walking the precincts, which is a good thing to do these days. Not take the election for granted.

McCarthy's challenger, Jeffrey Junkas, hasn't been around at all and the one conversation I had with was uncomfortable as he has somewhat extremist conservative views. 

I wasn't home when McCarthy came by but my wife and son said he was the epitome of respect. He acknowledged he has to get out there more and work harder to reach voters with his message. And he was respectful, which means he understands the role of columnists. I don't expect friendship but I do expect elected officials to talk to the voters.

I didn't like McCarthy's mailers

, though I know he is a good person

. They were below him. The one slamming Junkas was not worth the time or money to print, the usual strategy of a PR consultant with no real experience. Why slam Junkas when you can tell voters what you stand for? And be specific. Tell your media people to work a little harder at representing what you really stand for in the mailers. Don't waste my time with a generic mailer with pictures of seniors on it, especially one with a black eye. It was offensive. And had it not come in the mail, I might not have wailed on McCarthy's campaign.

There's no doubt in my mind that McCarthy is going to win. Junkas doesn't have the money. He has an abrasive personality. And he has helped to split the Republican party with his internal squabbles. I happen to like Cook County Commissioner Liz Gorman, the Republican incumbent. She's a good representative. And she's stood up for the right causes. Maybe Junkas should look around at who is around him and make some new decisions if he really wants to be a contender.

And just because you are going to win, Rep. McCarthy, doesn't mean you should take the voters for granted. Mail out some good literature. Tell the public what you stand for. Speak from the heart, not from the talents of some over-politicized political consultant.

I want to see a mailer who tells the people who McCarthy is, followed by one that tells the voters what he plans to do and why.

That would impress me.

Working hard to earn voter support, even if you have a cake walk, is a good way to show the voters you care.

-- Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com

Maher loses firefighter's backing in county race against Gorman

Local Firefighters Union Backs Off Endorsement

(Orland Park, Illinois) – Support for 17th District Cook County Commissioner Democrat nominee Patrick Maher continues to melt away in the wake of news reports documenting Maher’s misstatements about both his academic and criminal records and his attempts to conceal his criminal past. (Reports from Fox News Chicago, the Southtown Star, and the Daily Herald). The latest group to walk away from Maher is the local firefighters union that (through their PAC) had planned to endorse Maher, who currently serves as the Board Chairman for the Orland Fire Protection District. After initially recommending an endorsement of Maher, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 2754, per a vote by their executive board, has decided against endorsing Maher and instead will remain neutral in the race for 17th District Cook County Commissioner. “Given the information that has come out about Mr. Maher’s problems telling the truth, the union clearly did the right thing by rethinking their endorsement and deciding to stay neutral and showed political courage in doing so,” said Cook County GOP Chairman Lee Roupas.  “Working families in the 17th District have a friend in Commissioner Liz Gorman,” Roupas added.   “She has a strong record on the County Board of fighting for working families and opposing the pervasive fraud and mismanagement institutionalized by the Democrat Machine.” ###

Junkas targets Republicans in issues mailer

Junkas targets Republicans in issues mailer

Unlike his counterpart on the Democratic ticket State Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Republican challenger Jeff Junkas is focusing on the issues.

McCarthy's first mailer was an attack piece against Junkas. His second mailer was a generic worthless full color piece of literature that showed McCarthy in a generic do-nothing photo sitting with three little old ladies with white hair. He was talking generally about senior care. Both were mailed to Republicans and Democrats in the district, an expensive proposition, for sure.

Yea, like no one supports seniors, jobs and education. What do you stand for McCarthy and what are the initiatives you will pursue if re-elected?

No answer.

But at least Junkas, in his limited mailer to Republican voters (not Democrats), Junkas addressed specific issues and ideas. And I like them.

He says he's going to turn Springfield upside down. If he does that, Springfield would be rightside up, which would be an improvement for sure.

But he lists five good ideas in his piece: 10 percent pay cut for ALL state elected officials, and term limits; sell the state's fleet of luxury airplanes and helicopters and sell all non-emergency vehicles; conduct a forensic audit of state spending to identify areas of waste, fraud and mismanagement; property tax reform that tales politics and corruption out of the system; and cut bureaucratic red-tape that over-regulates employers and costs Illinois jobs.

I like the first three but the last two are generic too, but at least he has three good ideas.

McCarthy and Junkas are facing-off in the 38th House District November 2. Orland Park is the heart of the district.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com