is Proviso Probe for sale?

A friend suggested I sell Proviso Probe, or at least discover what people are offering.

I could sell it to a buyer who would resume publishing.

Or I could sell it to one or more buyers who would take the content offline.

Or I could sell it to a buyer who removes some content, but leaves the rest. (There is some content that has been temporarily hidden that could be brought back too.)

If you are interested in making an offer, email me, RadioNyberg circled "a" Yah00 spot c0m.

What would you like to see covered?

As I explained when I started blogging on Proviso Probe again, this will only continue through the February, 2010 primary.

What stuff would you like to see covered between now and then?

Davis circulating petitions for two offices?

I received a phone call tonight from someone who had previously said Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL07) was only circulating nominating petitions for Cook County Board President. S/he said that a minor paper (unknown which one) reported Davis is circulating nominating petitions for both President and U.S. Representative (Congress).

S/he followed the information with a question about whether I would still blog through February. I responded that I would. Besides the IL-07 race, I am interested in the race for the Cook County Board's First District, currently represented by Earlean Collins. I am also interested in the race for President of the Cook County Board and potentially Proviso Township Committeeman.

BTW, I was discussing various candidates for President of the Cook County Board.

• Dorothy Brown
• Danny Davis
• Terry O'Brien
• Toni Preckwinkle
• Todd Stroger
• Larry Suffredin

Comments:

Brown ran against Mayor Richard M. Daley and she's still in politics. If Brown doesn't get on board with supporting Stroger, what further punishment is she going to incur? Brown is probably annoyed at various Black ministers who are aligned with the Democratic Machine. She figures if they backed Daley against her; she can mess-up their situation by splitting the Black vote against Stroger.

Brown also has a winning move in that she can wait until it becomes clear who is the strongest candidate and throw her support behind him/her.

I expect Davis to either file for re-election to Congress or to fold his tent completely and retire from elected politics. According to people in the meeting of the Cook County Democrats in 2006 (when the party needed a candidate to replace John Stroger on the ballot) Davis made a pitch that he was tired of commuting to Washington, DC.

I don't think "I'm tired of commuting to DC" is the pitch that inspires people to stick out their necks for you. "Don't make no waves; don't back no losers," still applies in Chicago. I don't see committeemen taking a risk with someone who doesn't want to work hard. Politics may not reward virtue, but the game doesn't reward sloth and resting on yesteryear's accomplishments.

Davis is running to reconnect with people he met during his 1991 campaign for Mayor of Chicago. He gets to be in the media. And he gets to be important when he endorses Preckwinkle.

O'Brien is hoping that multiple Black candidates stay in the race and he wins based on consolidating the "White" vote. The Democratic Party presumably doesn't want an overly Irish ticket. So there are big picture factors that work against O'Brien.

Preckwinkle has made the greatest inroads into the activist community and has impressive fundraising. Being from Hyde Park is sexier than it was before Obama.

Stroger will have the support of some of the Machine and some Black voters. But the Machine values some level of competency. Stroger may reliably defend the perks and privileges of the Machine, he brings more trouble than he's worth. County government will get more scrutiny with Stroger at the helm.

Suffredin will switch to either running for re-election to the County Board or running for Cook County Assessor against Joe Berrios. Suffredin may know more about county government than the other candidates. But he doesn't connect with voters well on the campaign trail compared to more formidable politicians.

[UPDATE: A reader sent a link to the Pioneer Press (Patrick Butler) article on Davis.

"He is definitely running" for Todd Stroger's spot and will also be getting petition signatures for a race for a seventh Congressional term.

"While he can't run for both jobs at the same time, he has until Oct. 26 -- the last day for filing petitions -- to decide" which office he'll go for, [campaign spokesperson Tumia] Romero said.

[This is typical of Danny Davis. He's obviously slinging bullshit and he thinks that because he's a member of Congress we're supposed to ignore it's bullshit.

[The one angle that sorta makes sense is if Davis is trying to bluff candidates out of the IL-07 race. By circulating petitions Davis is making it difficult for most candidates to organize and raise money. Jim Ascot is the one candidate that will plow ahead whether Davis is running or not.]

Proviso Probe will operate until February, 2010 primaries

Tonight I'm going to a committee meeting of IVI-IPO to discuss how to improve the candidate endorsement process. Two nights ago I attended a meeting with a political organization (Tenth Dems) about how to improve the organization's use of social networking.

I did get sick of blogging on stuff Proviso for awhile, but I care about some of this stuff. I would like to see Proviso elect good representatives in the February, 2010 election. After that, this blog will go away away unless some way to make it substantially more lucrative than it has been emerges.

What stories interest you? What's on your mind?

review of the rules

The reason Proviso Probe doesn't allow anonymous posting is that discussions get difficult to follow with multiple people posting as "anonymous".

If you aren't going to use the Blogger feature that allows you to create a pseudonym, please incorporate a pseudonym into your posts, e.g. "Mrs. Coffee says:".

I don't enforce this rule as strictly if I think a person is posting to Proviso Probe for the first time, e.g. a story about a death and someone is leaving a comment about the deceased.

regular blogging to resume soon

I'm working two jobs right now.

The part-time job ends tomorrow. I will start blogging regularly after this.

What should Proviso Probe do about comments?

A suggestion was made that Proviso Probe should eliminate comments entirely since the low level of discourse in comments undermines the credibility of Proviso Probe as a source.

Since All Proviso Network is available for people to make comments it seems like a reasonable suggestion to me.

What do you think?

don't post under "anonymous"

I've started tightening up on anonymous comments again.

So now you have to refrain from being uncivil and you have to create an identity for your comments.

"Anonymous" comments make discussions harder to follow. When multiple people are posting under "anonymous" it's hard to keep straight who is saying what.

ADMIN, traffic is up on Proviso Probe

I don't know if there's a big post-election surge or what.

Please post in the comments what you'd like to see on Proviso Probe.